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zampanobra · 4 years ago

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An Elegy For Cyberpunk

The genre isn't gone, but the silver lining sure is.

William Gibson's Neuromancer is one of those books that I can't remember ever not having read. But I do remember that it wasn't long after I read it that I was introduced to Shadowrun, which quickly supplanted D&D as my go-to RPG. I'm not sure how well I understood what was going on in the plot, and was probably too young to understand a lot of what was going on. (Later on, when I started to understand self-loathing, it made a lot more sense.)

Even then, I loved the world, the technology, and the aesthetic. Gibson is fantastic at showing an entire scene through a couple of hints. He doesn't lean into a lot of what we've come to think of as "cyberpunk" aesthetic, and I prefer his much more understated settings more than a lot of his more over-the-top progeny.

Aside from how it looks, though, a common trope is its focus on people on the fringes of society--the "low life" going along with the "high tech." It's not always criminals, although these lines get a tad blurry due to the increasing corporate dominance that is another common trope of the setting. This is even more the case in the Shadowrun RPG, where your characters ("runners") are mercenaries for hire by all the corporations vying for an edge, where law enforcement has itself been privatized, and where governments' roles in their citizens' daily lives are steadily eroding. (Although a dragon is elected president of one of the major North American countries, so there is that.)

Those familiar with this setting and the tropes associated with it may have raised an eyebrow when I said that there was a silver lining associated with cyberpunk. I'd even venture to say there's an actual optimism in many of these stories.

The Cyber Trickles Downhill

There's a public intellectual of sorts named Eliezer Yudkowsky who started a ~~cult~~ website called LessWrong, and who talks a lot about technology, science, and what-not. He has various "laws" attributed to him, one of which is that "Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point." The idea is that, over time, increasingly powerful technology will be in the hands of everyday people. It's kind of like the cliché about how we all walk around with smartphones that are orders of magnitude more powerful and capable than the computers used to send people to the Moon.

Unfortunately, this is not how it generally works out. When better computers and connectivity end up in people's hands, so does a great deal of capture: DRM, surveillance (both corporate and governmental), monopolization, and more recently the move to software-as-a-service (where you have to pay a subscription to keep using something on your personal devices). You can get around much of these, but only but devoting significant time and effort to doing so, and you may often have to do without some aspects of those services. It's rarely going to be as convenient as the more intrusive version, and in some cases you may be outright prevented from communicating with people without using it. And this is without getting into situations where your information is turned over to third parties without your even having an option. In my own life, two of our doctors' offices use third-party portals that include some aspect of record keeping, schools and daycare facilities use them, and I'm of course subject to any of the national things like credit reporting agencies.

Meanwhile, things like artificial limbs and the like have generally made their greatest advances in times of war. Prosthetics in at least some form go back to Ancient Egypt, but a formal industry focused on their production would not come into being until far later. In the United States, it was the Civil War that would drastically increase demand, with thousands of amputees surviving the war and seeking prosthetic limbs: one study estimated that 70,000 men lost limbs during the war. Part of this was the development of the Minié ball, a more modern bullet that caused more irregular wounds to flesh and was heavy enough to shatter bone. Medical science being what it was, doctors generally decided that amputation was a better approach than trying to piece the patient's body back together. After the war, the federal government created the means for the prosthetic boom by agreeing to provide prosthetics for any veteran who needed them.

One veteran, James Hanger (who had himself lost most of a leg) was dissatisfied with the available options, and so developed an artificial leg that hinged and was shaped more like a human leg. He went on to establish the American Artificial Limb Company after the war (which still exists as Hanger, Inc.). Mass production of artificial limbs wouldn't come about for another 60 years or so. Nonetheless, this next development was again spawned by the same combination of factors: a massive conflict leaving thousands upon thousands of amputees (World War I in this case) combined with the federal government providing the money. (War is, indeed, a racket.)

Little seems to have changed into the present, when it's now the perpetual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with military-oriented welfare programs being the only ones not under constant attack by austerity.

So it is that cyberpunk's dream of widespread limb replacements seems unlikely without coming on the heels of years of additional thousands of traumatic amputees and billions of dollars in subsidies. Under our current system, after all, there is no incentive to continue improvements to artificial limbs without government footing the bill, and the government in turn seems largely unwilling to pay attention to the needs of its citizens that don't have any connection to the military.

The other technologies that epitomize the cyberpunk genre are equally captured. All the improvements to computer technology in the world don't help without the infrastructure to connect them to each other, and service providers have made sure that they can maintain their monopolies (the lucky few have two options). So it is that we get things like data caps, which Comcast introduced for its customers just a few days ago as of this writing, during a time of pandemic when more and more people are reliant on broadband internet access to work and go to school.

In a similar vein, computer and communications technology has become only selectively easier to use. The basics are much simpler, to be sure, but the kinds of things depicted in cyberpunk--hacking and maintaining some semblance of privacy to name two prime examples--are harder and harder. Privacy in particular requires a near constant battle against the hydra of corporate interests that are constantly trying to chip away at it. And not just in terms of taking data itself, but even the expectation of privacy.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube--they're all predicated on making us share. And of course we do exactly that. Why wouldn't we? We have an innate need for community and connection. But just as advertisers long ago figured out that they could turn our own wiring against us, so-called social networks (anti-social networks?) took our desire for connecting with other people and purified it until it became a freebase. It's difficult to avoid and even harder to quit.

It takes money, knowledge, and work to even slightly escape, and even then it's not really possible unless you happen to only interact with similar privacy-minded folk or cut yourself off from society entirely. It takes almost nothing to be entirely mapped.

Meanwhile, the task is made that much harder by the fact that it's not entirely clear why our data is worth anything. The conventional wisdom is that it's for targeted advertising, but I have to wonder if that's actually worth anything anymore. Then again, it could be completely ineffective but still something companies want to do, since marketing believes that someone has to see a product multiple times before they'll actually seek it out. Plus, there's always the possibility of Facebook et al. cooking the books, as they did in the case of view counts on videos some years back.

Regardless, this lack of knowledge makes it harder for us, because we can't target our defenses. We don't have a clear idea of what's valuable and what isn't, what data is already out there and what data is still being sought. We can't, for example, make digital chaff to flood the collectors with junk.

Chains of Chrome

I'm told that essays should have some part of the author in them, and I can't help but notice that this approach--intertwining personal anecdote with the overall point--is used all over the world. Maybe it's a matter of not getting outside my own writing, but it seems to me that simply what I'm writing and how says more about me than talking about the smells in the bookstore where I bought my first copy of Neuromancer, or some story about my relationship with the friend who introduced me to Blade Runner. I personally have more faith in readers than that.

Having written what I have already, is it really surprising to know that what draws me to the genre more than anything is freedom? It may seem strange to associate freedom with the extremely powerful corporate entities and material conditions of most cyberpunk. But notice, these stories don't focus on the corporate bureaucrat trapped in a structure they'll never escape. Instead, it's the technologically-enhanced ronin, whether their particular weapons are blades or computer viruses. They ultimately answer to no one but themselves, and can generally find a way to live their own lives within the cracks in the business edifice. Sure, drama demands that this not always be true in some way, even if it's as simple as the criminal's reputation.

It's not difficult, then, to see the appeal. I have no skills to sell even if there were still a market for such things (instead of credentials). Mercenaries are rightly outcast, since chances are they'll be put to worse use than even a state-sponsored military. There's a reason that Blackwater has had to change its name two or three times by now.

Cyberpunk allows us all of the freedom of a new frontier by finding that frontier within an existing structure. Its characters aren't constrained the way we are in our daily lives, and can overcome both human nature and human society through the technology available to them. What is now considered experimental or only the purview of DARPA is to them a child's toy, with far better ready for purchase on the streetcorner.

In many ways, cyberpunk is a product of its time, when technology seemed to offer at least as much possibility as threat. Now, we don't really trust technology to be enough. We see the slow-motion apocalypse of climate change and don't believe that we can invent our way out of it; recognizing that even if the device existed, someone would figure out how to capture its benefits. I'm not sure it'll be anything so stark as having clean cities and then a burned wasteland surrounding them, but we'll only be saved to the extent that we're useful.

Cyberpunk showed us an increasing commodification of our lives, but even those imaginations couldn't foresee the degree to which this would be true, while they simultaneously underestimated its subtlety. The trackers on every website that form pieces of the economic puzzle that is ourselves feel too small to fight, and so we sell ourselves in a thousand pieces. Even being a corporate spy in a future dystopia is more honest.

#cyberpunk #inequality #tech #computer

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antialiasis · 6 years ago

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Dumbo

Before I convinced Shadey I wanted to watch it before seeing the remake, I actually had not ever seen the original Dumbo and had only the vaguest idea what happens in it. Watching it for the first time now was kind of fascinating. Even aside from the jarring old-timey racist bits, there's something really distinctly old-fashioned about its style and storytelling - a crystal-clear sense that this is a movie from back when animation was still relatively new and mostly comedic shorts rather than serious narratives, and it would never play out the way it does if it were being made today.

For example, Casey Jr. the train is randomly animate, where no other objects are; this seems a fantastically weird choice today, when we generally expect that objects are not alive and don't talk unless it's a movie about objects being alive, but in Dumbo, they just sort of casually made this one steam engine sentient, just because they wanted to animate a lively steam engine. The animation has an exaggerated style where everything moves and squashes and stretches as much as possible, because look, we're making drawings and they can move! Animated storks - not representations, but the actual storks - fly over a map of the US complete with names written on it, as if this were literally what it looks like - it's weird and quirky and exactly like something that'd be in old animated shorts and exactly like something that wouldn't be in modern animated movies.

The actual story is structured really strangely. The movie is only 64 minutes long. It opens with a fairly long sequence, I think literally ten or fifteen minutes, about a stork delivering Dumbo to his mother and singing happy birthday to him. None of this is in any way relevant to the rest of the film, beyond the fact that Dumbo was born; it's just a cute sequence that they thought of. After this, Dumbo is mocked and made fun of, his mother is locked up for trying to defend him, and Timothy the mouse befriends Dumbo and inspires the ringmaster to make him the centerpiece of a new act, which is only all the more humiliating and miserable. Dumbo is briefly comforted by his imprisoned mother before unknowingly drinking some alcohol-laced water, hallucinating the highly disturbing "Pink Elephants on Parade" song, and then waking up in a tree. By the time we actually see Dumbo fly, with the help of a supposedly magic feather, there are only a couple of minutes left of the runtime. Immediately they go back to the circus, Dumbo tries to fly during his act only to drop the feather, Timothy tells him in mid-air that the feather wasn't actually magic, Dumbo successfully flies without it, and then it's closing credits montage time. The montage shows that Dumbo and his mother stay with the circus, despite how abusive they consistently were to them, only he's famous and privileged now so it's fine, I guess.

Whatever you think of the original film, I immediately pinpointed several things I expected would definitely be different in a modern retelling. In any conventional modern movie, Dumbo would learn to fly much earlier; he'd spend some significant time believing that he could only fly because of the feather, the revelation that the power to fly was inside him all along would be during the climax, and surely after that we'd actually see Dumbo using his feather-free flying ability in some heroic way - to save his mom, say. And he'd definitely not be made to stay at the circus at the end, unless we got to see some concrete evidence that the circus had changed: the circus people in the original were one-dimensional assholes, and by any system of morality that doesn't just sort of automatically assume that animals exist for human entertainment, he should have ditched them.

Tim Burton's live-action remake made all the changes I'd been expecting - but also a whole lot more that just kind of baffled me. The original Dumbo is clearly mostly a story about bullying and ostracism, in that fairly conventional form where it turns out the feature everyone bullied Dumbo for actually gives him a special enviable talent - and mostly, Dumbo is ostracized by the other elephants. The story is mostly about the interactions between the animals, who comprise most of the speaking cast, though Dumbo himself doesn't speak. In the remake, though, for some baffling reason they decided to make the animals nonverbal in general. Instead, a host of human characters are added - the circus performers are meant to be sympathetic, one of them is a tragic army man whose wife died with two children who serve as the main protagonists, there's an amusement park owner villain, a rich banker... Meanwhile, Timothy Q. Mouse, the deuteragonist of the original, is relegated to a tiny cameo as a regular mouse in a cage. There are no other elephants (or I don't think so? If there are, they are nonentities). Dumbo is ostracized and mistreated only by humans - but that just doesn't quite have the same meaning as him being rejected by his own kind.

Instead, a loose adaptation of the original film (save the revelation that he doesn't need the feather) takes place within the first half of the movie, and the second half is an entirely new plot about the circus being overtaken by an evil corporation that wants to make Dumbo do shows at their giant theme park. At the end, the kids and the circus people help Dumbo and his mother escape to India, the entire theme park burns down, and the circus becomes independent again and stops mistreating animals. The overall theme isn't really about bullying at all; it's more about the idea of the weirdos and misfits coming together and supporting each other against the cruel, conventional mainstream. That's a fine theme in itself, but it's very much not the theme of the original Dumbo.

As an adaptation, therefore, it's a strange one. It isn't telling the same core story - some of the same events are involved, but it's just not at all about the same thing as the original. As its own independent film... well, it's still a pretty strange and confused one, rooted in cliché, and full of things that are just obvious frustrating nonsense. The circus gets a full tent of people excited to see a regular old baby elephant, and they think Dumbo's adorable; then they see his adorably huge ears and... not only does the entire tent of people start loudly mocking him, they start chanting "Dumbo, Dumbo, fake, fake, fake!" What on God's green Earth. For one thing, Dumbo's ears obviously only make him cuter, who are you people. For another, why would you loudly jeer at a fucking baby elephant, what is wrong with you. But perhaps most audaciously... even if Dumbo's ears weren't real (and why would you think they're fake, when the circus had initially made every effort to cover them up), he is still a goddamned baby elephant, exactly what they came here to see! What are you complaining about! In the original Dumbo, the people are pretty simplistic and cartoony in behaviour, but he got laughed at when he tripped over his ears into a puddle, and then there were a few asshole teenagers making fun of the ears - not this entire audience of bizarre aliens in human suits just all getting together to bully a baby animal.

It's all like this - just the weirdest writing choices. The feather doesn't work psychologically on Dumbo by convincing him that he can fly because he's been told it's magic. (Dumbo himself doesn't really have much of a personality or drive the story.) Initially he flies for the first time because he accidentally sucks the feather into his trunk and this makes him sneeze, which sends him flying off the ground. Then as the movie proceeds he stops actually sneezing and starts just taking off on his own after sucking the feather into his trunk. At this point there is zero reason for anyone to think the feather has anything to do with this, but even the girl who's obsessed with science and experimentation doesn't think to question this until the end. Meanwhile, after learning that a baby elephant can fly on its ears, the amusement park owner somehow decides he wants Dumbo's act to involve a fully-grown woman riding on his back, and expects this to just work, and then absolutely nobody questions whether maybe Dumbo can fly his own weight but not the additional weight of an adult human. (He is a baby! He's small! Nobody would expect an animal of his size to carry an adult on the ground!) The woman, who's supposed to be sympathetic, literally gets on his back and expects him to take off before these people have even seen him fly on his own at all! Why is nobody asking the reasonable questions here, not even the, again, girl whose sole character trait is her desire to be a scientist? It was just bizarre and enraging, and only made it harder to see any of these people as actual human beings. Instead of "Pink Elephants on Parade" being a nightmare dream sequence, it's just a while of Dumbo staring up at a circus act involving elaborate soap bubbles that kinda sorta look like elephants changing shape; it doesn't mean anything or say anything for the story, it's just a "Hey, technically we've got this song from the original movie in here, sort of!" For anyone who hadn't seen the original, this bit would just be baffling; for anyone who had, it's a pathetic imitation removed from the entire context of it.

So all in all, the live-action Dumbo was a strange, strange film. The original Dumbo genuinely could have used a remake - but instead of focusing on improving the ways in which that story faltered, the remake just tried to do its own unrelated thing, and that thing was just pretty weird. The message is cute in itself, but this story did not need to be about Dumbo, and Dumbo did not need to be turned into this.

#dumbo #dumbo 2019 #disney #review #ramble #adaptations

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animayze93 · 4 years ago

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Eco-Friendly Food Storage

On This Page

Domestic food storage

Food storage facilities

This Eco-Friendly Food Storage From SuperBee Consists of Reusable Wax Wraps

Food storage safety

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Domestic food storage

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Dry storage of foods

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sarahw-world · 8 years ago

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The characters: Vegeta and Bulma. AU: Future/sci-fi. Setting: Vegeta has a hardcore crush on Bulma and finally gets the guts to express it to her. It doesn't go as planned.

Vegeta walked into the tiny repair shop and stoodin front of the counter, removing his dirty white gloves and ringing the bell.

“I’ll be there in a second!” A loud, femininevoice yelled from the back room, accompanied by a string of ear-piercing, stridentnoises. “Son of a…! Damn it!” The woman roared.

The Prince chuckled at the crazy sounds thatresonated throughout the small shop. He couldn’t help but be amused by Bulma’santics, always fascinated by her each and every move, whether it was seeing hersmall but curvy body bent over as she was fixing one of the planet’s many spacepods or simply wiping off the sweat from her creamy forehead with the back ofher hand…

“Hey, Vegeta! What’s up?” She said cheerfully,leaning on the counter with one hand and taking a large gulp from a cold drinkwith the other, offering him a fantastic glimpse of her generous cleavage atthe same time.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, inwardlycursing himself for his complete and utter inability to talk like a regularperson whenever the Earth woman was around. Ever since they’d met, about fourmonths earlier, when he’d brought her one of his broken scouters, he’d foundhimself fabricating excuse after excuse in order to be able to run into her,his body constantly begging him to spend time with the stunning woman. Herbright blue eyes and matching long wavy hair were the first thing that hadcaught his attention, together with her extremely evident intelligence andvivid personality. She was funny, as cute as a button and yet, at times, shepossessed a tongue and temper that could put any Saiyan to shame.

“Are you alright?” Bulma softly asked, frowningin concern. “Are you here to pick up your scouter?”

Vegeta nodded gracelessly, feeling his roughhands tensely clutch the border of the chipped wooden counter.

“Alright…” She continued, still feeling likethere was something wrong with him today. “Let me go get it!”

She turned around, getting back inside the backroom with a pair of very starvingSaiyan eyes fixed on her graceful movements. As soon as she left the room,Vegeta banged his fist on the counter, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration.

‘What the Hell waswrong with him? Since when did a puny, insignificant female have this effect onhim? She should be the one feeling nervous! No! Grateful! That’s right! Sheshould be feeling fucking grateful that an extraordinary warrior such ashimself had chosen her as a future mate…’

Today was supposed to be the day.

He’d been planning it for days, ever since he’dabandoned the planet to go on his last mission two weeks ago. It had turned outto be one of the most dangerous tasks Frieza had assigned him and his comradesto do. Before he parted, he’d picked up his newly repaired armor from Bulma’sshop and, later, he’d had to battle the bastards from the planet he’d beenordered to purge while he carried her sweet, unmistakable scent all over him.It had been both intoxicating and maddening, and he’d finally had the courageto acknowledge to himself what he’d been afraid had happened ever since he’dfirst laid eyes on the woman: he’d fallen in love with her.

He’d fallen for this weak, fragile creaturewhose planet, and most of her entire race, had been destroyed by his evilMaster no more than six months ago. And yet, her brave spirit and exuberantpersonality had remained untouched, luring him like a moth to a flame.

No other woman woulddo.

He was supposed to leave on a mission in lessthan twenty-four hours, and he couldn’t leave without a promise: her promisethat she would be his and his alone, and that she’d be waiting for him when he’dreturn from his latest duty.

“There you go!” She said proudly, sittingcasually on top of the counter, right next to him, and handing him the scouter.

He took it, making a phenomenal effort not to lethis hands shake at his uneasiness.

“Thank you,” he finally managed to reply in alow, uncomfortable voice.

“Um, you’re welcome…”

Bulma could see him fidgeting with the smalldevice, something unusual in a man that had always been so strong, proud andconfident, and she couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was botheringhim.

They both shared an uncomfortable silence for aminute before Bulma attempted to break the ice a little.

“It’s strange, you know?”

“What’s strange?” He answered immediately,secretly grateful for the woman’s natural chattiness.

“Well… Your scouter… It wasn’t really, youknow… It wasn’t really broken.”

‘Shit!’

“It wasn’t?”

“Nope. It worked well, the only thing wrongwith it were a couple of pieces missing. It was as if someone had just removedthem…”

He knew it, the woman was too damn smart forher own good and, of course, that’s why he’d fallen so hard for her.

“I temporarily lent it to one of my comrades,”he lied.

“Really? Which one?”

“Nappa.”

“Nappa… That’s the bald one, right?”

“Yes.”

“I see…” She replied unconvinced. “Well… I’dsay your comrade must have been the one to take those missing pieces…”

She jumped from the counter, landing on thefloor and walking towards a small sink in the corner of the room. She grabbed asmall white cloth, dampening it and wringing out the excess water as sheproceeded to remove several grease stains from her smooth ivory skin.

“Where’s the human male?” He finally asked, almosthypnotized by her elegant actions.

“Uh?” Bulma replied distractedly. “You meanYamcha?”

The Prince grunted.

“Oh, he doesn’t work here anymore. He’s too…You know… I guess ‘clumsy’ would bethe right word,” she snickered, shaking her head. “Now he’s a cook in arestaurant downtown.”

Vegeta couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow atthat. “A cook?”

Bulma laughed.

“Well… That’s what he says… To tell you thetruth, I’m sure he’s more like a kitchen helper, or even a dishwasher. You knowYamcha, almost everything he says is a lie or some kind of exaggeration…”

“So, you’re not mates anymore?” Vegeta askedcautiously, the question making Bulma raise her head in shock.

“Mates?” She asked wide-eyed.

“Yes, mates… You know, like…”

“Like a boyfriend?”

“Is that how it’s called in your planet?”

“I guess… You mean like a partner, right? Likea couple?”

“That is correct.”

“Gods, no! Ugh! No!” She replied, horrified. “Imean, I thought he was cute when I met him, and it was nice to find a fewpeople from my home planet in here but… No… He’s just not for me…”

The Prince walked towards her, standing by herside as she kept grooming herself, and thinking that this could finally be hiswindow of opportunity.

“I see… And why is that?” He asked casually.

Bulma looked at him for an instant, blinking afew times and tilting her head to the side thoughtfully.

“I don’t know… Well, obviously, he lies a lot,so he’s not very trustworthy, which is a huge turn off in a guy. But he’s also,kind of… I guess the right word is soft.”

“Soft.”

“Yeah…” She shrugged, going back to her taskand languidly rubbing the cloth across her neck.

Vegeta smirked triumphantly.

Oh yeah, he knew justwhat kind of a man this little female needed…

“So, what you’re saying is, you are looking fora man who is strong.”

“Um, I guess? I mean, I’m not even reallylooking for a…”

“Like a Saiyan Prince,” he declared solemnly.

His words made Bulma instantly drop her clothand look at him in complete shock. One look at him told her he was deadserious.

‘Wow…’

“Ve-Vegeta, I…” Before she could find the rightwords to reject his proposal, the warrior gently held her pale hand between hismuch larger ones.

“Bulma,” he said with an intensity she hadnever witnessed in any man before. “If you take me as your mate I swear, on mySaiyan honor, to protect and cherish you, fighting your battles by your side,for all Eternity.”

Bulma felt her legs tremble, her pulse racingwhile this man, the most attractive man she’d ever known, basically asked herto marry him.

‘Why? And, why today,of all days?’

She wanted to say yes, more than anything she’dever wanted in her entire life, but she couldn’t, not when she was so damnclose…

Tonight was the night she was about to escapethe planet in search of the mythical magic Dragon Balls that would allow her,if the legends turned out to be true, to wish her home planet and itsinhabitants back to life once again.

She couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t give up on her biggest dream for a man,especially not for a ruthless warrior that possibly had no real concept of whatlove truly was and would probably end up breaking her poor little hearteventually anyway.

“Vegeta,” she sighed. “I… I really appreciateyour proposal and… It’s, it’s very, verytempting but… I just can’t accept,” she finally replied, kindly removing hernow very sweaty hand from his own. If she kept feeling his warm touch muchlonger, she didn’t trust herself.

The Saiyan let out a breath he didn’t know hewas holding.

Well, he hadn’t seenthis one coming…

He cleared his throat and raised his chinproudly in a pathetic attempt to hide his humiliation.

“I see. May I ask why?” He enquired in the mostneutral voice he could project.

“Well, uh… I’m leaving tonight, you see? Myboss gave me a couple of weeks off and I’m going on a trip,” she lied.

She was going on a trip, alright, but her bossdidn’t even know he’d never see her again after today, not that he’d noticeanyway until she was long gone, since he barely spent any time in the smallrepair shop.

“A trip?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Um, uh, it’s this small planet called Namek.I’ve heard it’s really nice, and very similar to Earth…”

Vegeta squinted his eyes suspiciously, butchose to say nothing more. He’d had enough humiliation for a day anyway, so hewalked towards the counter and grabbed his white gloves.

“How much do I owe you?” He asked, stillavoiding her gaze, unable to stand her pity.

“Uh, you know what? This one’s on the house!”She replied.

She tried to appear joyful, but deep down shefelt heartbroken, not just for him, but for herself as well. It was hard tobelieve but, suddenly she felt the strong urge to throw caution to the wind andsay yes to this enigmatic, handsome Saiyan warrior.

“I’m afraid I can’t accept that. Here,” hesaid, offering her a small black card. “You’ll need funds for your trip Isuppose.”

Bulma just took the card, unwilling to start anargument with the man.

He nodded, his dark eyes penetrating her verysoul, and he turned around, exiting the shop and walking away from her life.

“Woman,” he declared, still giving her hisback. “You will never find a man more suited to be your mate.”

The earthling swallowed heavily.

“I don’t doubt it, Vegeta,” she whispered inall honesty.

He grunted in confirmation and disappeared intothe crowd, leaving a very confused Bulma sitting heavily on a small chair and onthe verge of tears.

‘What just happened?’

A few hours later, a mortified Saiyan Princewas still trying to bury his shame in alcohol.

“Pour me another! And leave the fuckingbottle!” He yelled.

“Motherfucker…” Vegeta mumbled to himself whileNappa and Raditz kept staring in surprise, never having seen their Prince insuch a poor state.

“That filthy fucking lizard motherfucker… I’msick of this shit!” He yelled, slamming the glass against the table.

“Okay, I have to ask. Did something happentoday, Vegeta?” Nappa finally enquired.

“Mind your own fucking business, baldy…”

“Come on, buddy, don’t be like that! We justgot a sweet deal, you know?” The bigger man said, leaning a little into Vegeta.“Raditz just brought me the details of our next mission. We’re leavingtonight, and it looks like child’s play. Look… It’s this small planet calledNamek, and apparently the inhabitants are really weak. There’s a bonusinvolved, and all we have to do is retrieve some…”

“The fuck did you just say?” Vegeta asked himin inebriated shock.

“A-About what?”

“The planet… What’s it called?”

“Um, Namek?”

“Sonofabitch…” The Prince slurred, smiling lazily.

‘Oh… This was so damn sweetit had to be fattening…’

He stood from his chair all of a sudden,drunkenly walking towards the exit door.

“Vegeta? What the fuck is going on?” Raditz askedin bewilderment at the sudden change of attitude in his Prince.

“Just pay for the drinks and let’s get the Hellout of this planet, asshole!”

Vegeta got out of the bar, silently allowing thecold, crisp air of the night to clear up his mind.

He was going to needit.

The next time he faced the woman, he wouldn’tfail.

He’d make her his, showing her in whatever waypossible that they were made for each other, whatever the cost, even if he hadto slaughter that despicable lizard bastard himself in order to keep her safeforever.

Vegeta didn’t know that, in that very moment, ablue haired woman was sitting on her small bed, her few belongings all packedup as she waited in the dark for the three earthlings that would join her inher new adventure: a bald monk, a dirty perverted old man that possessed asurprisingly great talent for martial arts and Yamcha.

In her trembling hands, she held a smallobject: the black card a certain Saiyan Prince had given her just hoursearlier.

She’d finally checked the contents of it.

Ten million credits.

A small fortune, enough to purchase even asmall planet if she wished.

Bulma stood by the window, her watery eyes lostin the starry sky. Now, more than ever, she was fully determined to find theDragon Balls and make her wishes come true.

One of those wishes now included the promise ofgetting to see her perfect man one more time.

Somehow, somewhere, she knew they’d meet again,and when they did, she would never let him go…

#vegebul #vegeta #bulma #question #YES! I GOT MUSHY IN THE END BECAUSE BULMA WOULD NEVER REJECT VEGETA FOR TOO LONG!!!

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