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drewthelocalnerd · 1 month ago

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Liz, Biotechnician

Part 6

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“Coco, can you hand me those clamps please?” Liz pointed off in a direction she wasn’t looking in, head down over her latest contraption, goggles blocking out her peripherals. Coco, used to this guessing game, deduced the human meant the clamps on the opposite side of the room, and handed them over with their branch.

“Thanks,” Liz said, continuing her work.

“Explain to me again,” Coco started, synthetic voice intoned a question coming, “exactly what are you doing? Our current research is based on the Armeaters, so I do not understand what this device is for.”

Liz popped the clamp onto the edge of the device and soldered a few more wires.

“Officially? These are supposed to be little roving cameras to watch the little buggers, one each to track behavior patterns and eating habits.”

“There are only three specimens, Human Friend Liz, why have you made six devices?”

“Yeah, so, unofficially, right? I’m gonna use them to spy on some crew mates of ours.”

Coco didn’t say anything, not right away, but almost immediately they stiffened up, their trunk shaking all the way to their canopy. Finally, they worked up the courage to ask-

“Human Friend Liz… why?” If a Sprygan could sound exasperated, Liz thought this would be how.

“Well let’s see hon, because I’m really good at my job, I really like my job, and you, and my friends, and these assholes cost me a fucking arm-”

Liz took a deep breath and put down the pliers she was digging into her good hand.

“I’m just… I’m tired of waiting for something to be done about it. I can’t do nothing, I physically can’t. The idea that there’s something going on that could be a threat to me and mine, and I’m just sitting here waiting for it, it making me ill.”

“If you are unwell, perhaps Human Jane or-”

“No, not that kind of ill honey,” Liz said, softer this time. “This is just something I have to do, okay? It’s a human… it’s a Liz thing, okay?”

Coco was quiet for a moment, possibly pondering the implications of a Liz thing. The human in question kept to her work, setting in circuit boards and double checking the motors. When all was said and done, what sat on their shared work table resembled a half dozen billiard balls, numbered one to six in Liz chicken scratch style.

“Good,” Liz mumbled, “now to just…” she brought her cybernetic arm up and tapped a few flesh fingers across her metal wrist.

“You have upgraded the new appendage?” Coco asked.

“Oh yeah,” Liz smiled. “Couldn’t resist.”

Liz used her metal thumb to press down on the pointer finger of the same hand, like she was trying to pop the joint. Something clicked, and a small hologram appeared, shimmering above her wrist.

“You like it?” Liz was excited to show her friend. “Took me a while, but I was able to integrate a remote controller into the arm. It’s a total drain on the battery, but I couldn’t think of anything else to keep the weight down. Now I can control these little guys from anywhere on the ship.” She flexed her metal hand and the drones spun to life, motors whirring quietly, cameras coming into focus. “Whatever they see gets recorded to my own personal server, and I can tap into their feed any time with my arm. Awesome, right?”

“Friend Human Liz, this seems like a violation of several GAIL Fleet regulations,” Coco protested.

“So is sabotage and dismemberment,” Liz shot back. She walked over to one of the air vents in the wall and pulled the grating off. She flicked her fingers again, and the drones rolled off to do their unofficial duty, down into the darkness and the bowels of the ship.

“Well, now that that’s done,” Liz clapped her hands and turned back to her companion. “Lunch?”

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“Human Friend Liz, I am still unable to comprehend your actions from before,” Coco said, leaves full of chocolate.

“You and everyone else I’ve ever worked with hon,” Liz said, chuckling. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to understand it. If it goes wrong, I take the blame, if nothing happens, then nothing happens. If it turns out they find something, we both get credit for saving the ship. Everybody wins here, and only I potentially lose, so it’s fine.” Liz waved her hand, brushing aside any chance of argument when Coco raised a vine to protest. “Let’s just talk about something else, okay? You don’t need to worry about any of that.”

“Alright,” Coco finally conceded, their bowl now empty of chocolate bars. The mess hall around them was noisy, like normal, but held a sense of tension like strained wires. The ‘half way point’ was coming up, six months of the mission already completed. Word was that GAIL command was going to perform an inspection day of, to see if the mission was worth finishing. While the idea of an inspection interested her, Liz’s concern lay elsewhere. The half way point meant that possible relief personnel were able to come aboard, and certain bastard crewmen were going to be thrown off. She was very much looking forward to that. Maybe then she’d be able to sleep again, recall the drones and actually get some proper scientific work done. All she had to do was keep her now many heads on a swivel until then.

But Liz also didn’t want to think about that right now. Yes, she built surveillance devices and is (probably) illegally spying on her place of work, but right now she was just trying to have lunch with her best friend. Her friend who could not shut up about it.

“Here, ask me something,” Liz said, shaking her head to clear her thoughts. “I bet you have questions about something else, literally anything else.” She was being mildly manic, and she knew it.

Oh well. Happens, she thought.

“Such as what?” Coco asked.

“Just…,” she took a deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity, and held it there. An old trick she’d learned in therapy to slow her heart rate. She let the air out slow in a long sigh. “Just anything you wanna know hon.”

Coco stared at her, or Liz assumed that’s what it was since the Sprygan didn’t have a face. Finally they asked:

“Friend Human Luz, why do you not mate with others of your species?”

Liz choked and spit her drink out in comedic fashion.

“What the hell Coco, warn a girl before you get personal like that!” Liz coughed out. “Where did that come from?”

“All strange action today aside, this has been on my mind for some time, since we endeavored to assist Human Jane in her ‘girl talk’ problems. You repeatedly stated ‘that’s not really my thing’. I simply wanted clarification.”

Liz wiped her mouth, backburnering all thoughts of drones and spy craft.

“Well, I don’t know, I just don’t want to I guess,” she said, embarrassed. Explains her lack of desire to a tree was odd in any aspect you looked at it.

“It was my understanding that non botanical lifeforms reproduced through mating and had a biological imperative to perform the act of-”

“Woah there hon,” Liz said, chuckling nervously. “Slow down there, no need to get technical on me.”

“Again, my apologies, I simply wish to understand. I am under the assumption that humans want to mate, furthermore Human Jane has proven this to be a substantiated theory, mating outside your species in fact.”

Liz blushed, and for the first time thought she should apologize to Jane for teasing her so much. Her face was hot, and it must’ve been incredibly annoying to her friend. Truthfully, Liz wasn’t sure which she wanted to talk about less now, her maniac ideas to spy on the ship or this conversation.

“I dunno hon, it was just never really something that interested me. Think of it this way, every human you’ll ever meet is kind of like their own sub species, with their own biological directives. Mine just happens to not involve… doing that.”

“I see,” Coco said, calmly accepting Liz’s rambling as fact. “This is very informative, thank you.”

Liz thought the conversation was going to continue some words further, but her cybernetic hand started beeping, the alert she’d set to confirm the drones had made it into the assigned positions throughout the ship.

Good, she thought, just gotta wait and see now.

“Human Friend Luz?” Coco poked her shoulder with a vine. Liz looked back up.

“Hmm? Sorry, what were you saying?”

“I was saying a thought occurs. If the Human Friend Liz sub species you speak of does not mate and procreate, how will you produce descendants to carry on your genetic material?”

“Oh, that? I planned to clone myself at some point, see if that one wanted kids or not.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that Liz can do what they want. My parents said I was crazy, but all I want to do is tinker around with stuff. I’m better with machines than people, so I figured that was a good middle ground. They get possible grandkids from the clone, I don’t have to get a boyfriend, and I get to keep doing science.”

“This seems…,” Coco said hesitantly, “this seems like something you would do, yes.” Coco reached a vine across the table hit the repeat button on the Vending Machine. It spat out more chocolate bars. “Yes, I can see you making this kind of plan.”

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Walking back to the lab, Liz began to see something odd along the floor and walls. Little nicks and scratches here and there, mostly along the base of the walls, but some were almost at hip hight. Her first thought was maybe some sort of maintenance accident, but no, there too many and too spread out for it to be contained to one section of hallway. The next instance of odd was a broken mug on the floor, shattered. Coco picked up a piece, the largest the saw, and turned it over. It had a small cartoonish picture of a purple cow on it.

“What the hell?” Liz asked, not of Coco, more of just a general wondering out loud.

“Human Friend Liz,” Coco began, voice synthesizer jarring her out of her thoughts. They pointed a vine down the hallway. “Look.”

Liz followed the direction they were pointing and gasped. The door to the lab was open, and in the doorway, one of the baby Armeaters was sitting there, mewling, either for attention or food, no one could say. Upon seeing Liz and Coco, however, it jumped up into squeaks and trotted over to them, happy as could be, and started chewing on Liz’s shoe with its little baby teeth.

“Oh shit,” Liz said, grabbing it up by the scruff with her metal hand, ignoring its protests, and let it teethe on her cybernetics while the two scientists bolted for the lab.

The room was the same as when they’d left it, all except the glass tank holding the Armeater creatures being smashed to pieces. Not a single other creature was still in the lab as far as Liz could see.

“Oh shit,” Coco said.

#deathworlders of e24 #humans are deathworlders #humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space orcs #humans are strange #humans are space australians #earth is space australia #humans are insane #humans are terrifying

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