#/Companions/GnPy

[shroudandsands]

Febhyurary 18 Shadow.

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #9: Lend an Ear

You look at your terminal, drenched in a wave of listlessness as you watch time slowly tick by on the corner of the screen. You haven’t done much of anything this evening. Especially not after the long day you’ve had- seriously, how did someone screw up hard enough to brick half the auto-fabs in the building? And why is it your problem that they did? Ugh. You haven’t touched the laundry. Your shoes are sideways and up against the wall from where you kicked them off. There’s food in the cupboard but you can’t be bothered to get up and get it. It’s too early for bed and you can’t dredge up the energy to get off the couch you’re laying on anyways…

Flicking through the intranet gets you about as much entertainment as you’d imagined. People being morons on the boards, uploads that you aren’t entirely sure are meant to be there, missing person reports that you’re pretty sure are supposed to be sent directly to hunters- Ah ha, there’s something. You click in on a custom feed someone set up. You’d poked in it before, on the clock of course, and you were pleasantly surprised to find that it was made by a local reforger. Well… as local as those guys got given the whole profession. But nonetheless it was cool to see. Pretty rare that the reforgers post much of anything regarding their work, the outside, and the various things they found. If they did it was usually poorly formatted or without much in the way of comment on the thing itself. I mean- Who’s supposed to find a random old cube of electrope interesting enough to look at in and of itself? But that’s where this guy caught your eye. You scroll through the feed. You hadn’t checked it in a few days- It seems as if he’d gone out on an expedition and he’d been putting out short updates while he did. You’re glad you missed it, frankly, and got caught up right as he posted about his return… and the recording of his adventure through the old city. You get up, energized, and grab something out of the cupboard to eat. Can’t watch something this good without food, right? Bust out the sweet stuff for once. You could splurge. You throw yourself back onto your couch as you flick play on the display.

-- You’re greeted by a POV recording from a module in his mask. His calloused hand comes down through the frame as he looks up towards what seems to be an old manufactory building. Or, at least, that’s what you guess based on the semi-similar markings to what were on the same sort of buildings today. Y’know. Like your workplace. You scowl until he begins to talk. “Alright. Got pointed here by a friend of a friend, said they’d been scroungin’ in here for scrap when the floor started givin’ up under ‘em. Somethin’ about how that’s right up my alley, seein’ as nobody was gonna dispatch a hovercraft out here…” You can hear as he adjusts his gear out of frame. He lifts his electrope tether up into view of the camera before twirling it a couple of times. “Well. Let’s get started then, shall we? This is the Rusty Reforger and I’m here to take you through a pre-surge manufacturing facility meant for specialty conversion of electrope rations.” You watch as the purple-shone electrope swings high and flies all the way towards the top of the building. It snaps taut as it grips on like a magnet. And then he climbs.

--

Galena rolled away from the editing deck he’d cobbled together from various finds and things he’d been given by other reforgers. Taking salvage for yourself like this could certainly be seen as a little but selfish, sure, but in his own mind he’d certainly earned it. Not like he had much to do around their apartment anyways. Or… his apartment. He sighed. At least the last trip had been a fun one. Old electrope clocks with odd circuitry. (He turned one of them in. Good scrap. The other three went to a fellow reforger.) A scale that checked both the mass and conductivity of pieces of electrope placed on it. (Pretty rare. Especially since it was still working. He was tempted to keep this one for himself, but couldn’t do that in good conscience. He left it with a contact in the outskirts who might be able to put it to better use.) A tool meant to re-etch electrope circuits and sigils in the field. (Out of date by a damn good while, of course, and incompatible with modern techniques. But it would be pretty valuable to someone who worked with antiques or restoring old pieces… He made a couple calls to find an old friend. They screamed over the line when he told them.) There were plenty of less notable items, of course, but admittedly he’d had a lot of fun talking about even the most mundane finds. And it seemed as if the people who watched his work did as well. It was… nice. Having so many people tune in to listen to him talk about the devices of the old kingdom or even simply a few decades out of fashion was invigorating. Especially when some of the comments were enthusiastic- “Saved my night with this one, Rusty. Shit day at work and nothing to do after having my ass handed to me… and then you show up with this!”

[shroudandsands]

Haunted

He kicked backwards from his desk. The chair rolled back with some complaint as he spun out towards the middle of the room.

The desk was covered in all the small bits and pieces he’d salvaged last week. Utilitarian finds mixed into the oddities. Stuff that would see more than a shelf or the gentle touch of some niche collector or expert that he’d go and see personally. Someone who’d look at old lines of electrope circuitry and see a history that could never be spoken into words. Something that would’ve sparked life into him any other day. Any other life. But no. Not this one. Not the one he saw when he looked out the window.

For someone like him the world always seemed to move out of sync. His eyes were always cast downward. Locked onto the old, locked onto history, locked onto yesterday. Sometimes so deeply it was as if his boots were crunching gravel that was laid down long before he lived only to smell the fresh dust of stone. Or that his fingers trailed through dust that had only just fallen the morning of. Or the taste of lightning on his breath was something unusual, something otherworldly… In a city where death had lost its grip… he spent his days with ghosts. Sometimes the neon reminded him. When the attack happened he was outside of the city. Perched in a ruined tower with a chisel in hand. Slowly removing the face of an electrope panel that had likely once been used to track work orders and worker locations. He didn’t know anything was wrong until he’d gotten a call- frantic, panicked, scared- from Pyrite. From his wife. His angel on the other end of a scope. He wasn’t quite sure what was real yet. Even as he answered, his chisel momentarily held in his mouth as he fished out his mask so he could answer, he couldn’t quite place what it was. As if he’d split out of the present. A wakeup call for a perpetual dreamer.

She told him to stay out there. He asked why. She hung up.

He could taste the dust as it fell around him, the panel gently set onto the ground. The hum of his tether slipped through his brain like a chord. The sight of shifting lights settled on his eyes. All to draw out something in him that he couldn’t quite capture in his mind. Something that he could never wrap his hands, so expertly delicate and precise, around. His thoughts returned to him as his memory leapt from that building. As the rumble of an electrope engine took him from outskirts to carnage. From ghosts to the dead. Unfocused eyes looked out the window. It was harder to tell the difference, now. The blur of his arrival was marked just as much by the destruction as it was by the relief. At finding Pyrite, at her seeing him, at her screaming at him for being a complete fucking moron how could you think this was smart- and the ensuing embrace that did little to calm the fear that gripped him. But it was enough to keep him behind the wheel of that van. Keep people moving to safety. Keep his head in the present. Just for that moment. Just for one crisis.

He waved off the cobwebs as he groaned to his feet. Scooping up some of the not-quite-ancient pieces of tech and oddities and lifting them to the light. Older pieces of electrope from before the storm. Some recent- salvaged from the malfunctioning sentries. And some more recent still… taken from wreckage that had been scattered far and wide by the fighting. His contribution to the effort. Even as it felt so foreign in his hands. Practical pieces of tech for repairs, for fighting, for helping along a limping and aimless city. Something to put it on life support while everyone else figured out the chaos. Until someone woke them all up from the shock. He chucked them into the crate beside his door with the other pickups. The crisis hadn’t ended. But his involvement in it had. There wasn’t anything more for him to do. Not a man who worked best away from the world. Not a reforger who worked alone more days than not. Not a coward. Another piece chucked into the box. Another for the pile. Another to be picked up by whoever was sent to collect them. He’d stopped checking.

He chucked his boots towards the desk. His gear was dropped beside them. He fell into bed. He settled into the familiar dent he’d worn into the mattress. His feet rested into a divot. His arm off the side. The small of his back supported by the one singular piece of support that persisted. His breath left him like a death rattle.

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #5: Stamp

It was raining.

He pointedly ignored the footsteps behind him. They, in their kindness, pointedly did not speak up. Not that there was much to hear over the storm that intensified over their heads. To everyone else it was a moment to hole up, to wait, to keep their heads down in the outskirts. To him it was a sign. A bad one. Good. The electrope tether hummed in his hands as he spun the end of it in rote motion. How far up, this time? His practiced eyes spotted anchor points all the way up the structure. Checking them off like they were a puzzle to solve, like something one might work on over a morning coffee. There wasn’t any need for the shorter hops today. No point in taking a path with the handholds and stopping spots close together. That would be for The tether slammed into the ground as his fist met stone. The blood dripped down his knuckles; the rain washed it off. The pain hadn’t arrived yet, but it was no mercy there. He looked at the exposed, sliced flesh. He flexed his hand, over and over, as if he could grip the half-formed memory that got away from him. Okay. It’s fine. It’s fine. Ignore the extra set of footsteps behind you that’re the wrong ones His other fist hit the stone. Then he picked up his tether.

Putting his climbing claws and boots on was a bit more difficult now. He appreciated the extra time to get rained on, at least, while he was still on the ground. It felt therapeutic in a way that little else could. Indulging in misery in the preparation for something that was supposed to bring him joy. Indulging in rage as his manufactured claws bit into the same stone that he’d used to draw his blood. Better than a fistfight he knew he’d lose. Better than a conversation with someone who understood. The wrong footsteps were still down there. He punched his way through an old window, shattering it in tune to a thunderclap as he hauled his way inside. Even now he couldn’t help but evaluate the insides for valuables, for safety, for picking out the interesting things to give as examples He slumped against the wall. He landed in the shards. He could feel them cut him through his gear. He knew he’d have to clean himself up. Who knew what was on these old windowpanes. He could get infected. …It was so hard to care. Or, rather, he wished it was. He wished it was. That was half the problem, wasn’t it? Forgetting made it so easy to lose your grip on all the other emotions from it. Forgetting made it so easy to pretend everything was fine. It was hard to let his hate pull him down like gravity when it could find no purchase on him. When hate had no barbs with which to anchor. When pain could barely substitute. Self flagellation barely got him anywhere besides a response of hoping it didn’t get infected.

He shifted to bring his bag around to his side. Fished in it for a long moment as if to pretend he didn’t know each and every pocket in it and where everything was- even if he’d thrown it around in a rage before. Even if he’d realized things were missing His bloodied fist closed around a piece of metal and electrope. His regulator flashed to life in the wake of a thunderclap as he held it up in the dark room. But his eyes weren’t on it. A shadow in the lightning flash. “…Galena,” Came the voice of the wrong footsteps. That soft, diffuse green glow of a presence that he’d wished stayed on the ground. The gentle and kind hand that reached out with a comforting touch- His tether snapped taut and yanked him to his feet before it could. Before his eyes could fall on the other. She wasn’t who he wanted to see. That wasn’t the name he wanted to hear She knew it, too. He climbed back out into the rain.

He couldn’t remember reaching the top. It had been struck relatively recently. The old infrastructure not meant to take direct bolts like that, not meant to sustain that kind of damage. Frankly it was impressive the building was still upright with a giant hole blown in the top of it. The rain could get in now. Rot the insides, rust them and corrode them, and slowly warp the structure until it would slam into the earth without warning. He wondered how long it would take. He stared at the regulator in his hand. He wondered how long it would take.

The heel of his boot crunched something metal and worn. The sparks caught like lightning against the wet stone. Like a poor mimicry of rage. Like a half-thought copy of something real. Slop made by a rusted mind. He anchored his tether to the one last support column that could handle his weight.

He leapt from the tower.

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #27: Memory

Sometimes, inwardly, he wondered if it would be worse knowing. Was everyone right? Was the Queen right? Why did he doubt them- This is how they had all lived for so long, after all. He couldn’t recall his parents. He couldn’t recall his grandparents. Surely there were friends that he could no longer recall. People he’d met in passing. Moments that no longer existed. And yet it had never brought him a moment’s hesitation. He wished he drank, sometimes.

It was funny, at least, how some of what he could remember was solely secondhand. The shape of an absence that didn’t quite make sense and hurt his head as he attempted to give form to it. Attempted to define the shape by what was around it, by what it could’ve possibly been. An extra pair of boots. An old set of climbing gear. Routines that didn’t make sense for him alone. Callouts in moments where there was nobody else- The flicker of his wife’s terminal. A half-garbled photo. He hoped she didn’t know he’d seen it. He rolled away from his editing deck, the heels of his hands digging into his tired eyes. This wasn’t something to think about when he’d just gotten back. His gear was still piled in a corner, his boots were still on, he hadn’t even thought of taking time to shower. If he were being honest with himself he’d want nothing but to fall over onto his bed and let sleep take him for an indeterminate amount of time. Days, probably, with how he felt at that moment. But he wasn’t being honest with himself. He groaned as he stood and began the slow process of getting everything put away while his terminal slowly chugged through transferring his footage. Boots kicked off. His gear pieced out and hung up. His bag upturned and dumped directly onto the floor so he could get all of his water bottles in one go. Cold packs chucked over into their charging hub. Various pieces of small scrap chucked into his “get to it later” bin. Laundry thrown onto the Laundry Chair. He’d have to get to that. Eventually.

He was back in his chair. Nothing to do but watch a progress bar tick away. A drink on his desk and a bar of… something in his hand. Sure he might be eating it, actively, but he couldn’t exactly say much about what it tasted like. He stared at it for a moment after another bite. No, he shook his head, don’t think too much about the metaphor there. Don’t do it. Seriously don’t go thinking about it you’re not gonna do anything helpful for yourself-

Galena rested his face in his hand, the other resting on the desk in a final pose of giving up. Why was he doing this? He could almost speak aloud that the only reason he’d begun recording his work was because he’d already gotten into the habit of talking while he was climbing, inspecting, and planning. He couldn’t bear to think of why he’d started. So there had to be something else. So he made it into this. His work turned into a 24/7- going from a piece of his life to the entirety of it. Where he once shared most of these moments with Pyrite and the shape of an absence, he now recorded them for innumerable strangers who found themselves in want of it. He could remember quite a few profile pictures and their varying flavors of responses to it. That didn’t feel like it should help. There should have to be something more substantial, right? That’s why Pyrite was always gone to- He ran a hand through his hair, sitting back up. Flying a little too close to the sun there, Gal. At least the momentary spiral cut out right as everything finished transferring over. Nothing left but to get to the relatively light editing process. He was never really about big budget or flash- He’d looked at tutorials for even the basics and decided he liked being low effort ‘cause fuck that- and had mostly just needed to cut footage so that it wasn’t 90% him wandering around for the runtime. He found out some people wanted that, weirdly, so he did have a full-length channel but…

He scrubbed through the runtime. A delve into an old arena that hosted pit fights. Or, at least, that’s what he could surmise from the fact he had to drop through a dilapidated first floor then crawl through a collapsed basement to get to it. Nothing really worth remarking in most of it. He could cut more than half the footage and he’d still have more than plenty. Ramblings about period parts of the building, the weapons left scattered about, the light pipes which he found utterly fascinating, a few rusted lockboxes that contained old currency and older electrope. It was good. One hundred and fifty three instances of Queen Sphene standing in the background. In the distance. In a reflection. He rubbed at his eyes with forefinger and thumb.

He put the edited and cut version up that night. It took him two more days to post the full version. To convincingly hide the shape of where she had been.

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #23: On Cloud Nine

“Wanna see somethin’ cool?” Her fool’s gold gaze flicked up towards him. He was sitting on the edge of her balcony. She didn’t ask how he got there. “…Sure. Why not?”

The plaza outside the residential unit was empty, clear, and blessedly free of any of the sentries on patrol. Pyrite was kicked back on a bench with a drink from the Vue in her hand, lazily watching him with a raised brow and a constant question resting on her lips. It went unsaid, of course, as he stood a little ways before her and stared up towards the top of the building. Inspecting, waiting. He clicked his tongue. “Alright. Surveillance gone- You just hang out down here, yeah?” He gave her a thumbs-up and an award winning smile that hadn’t quite gained all the years that would come. “I promise it won’t take long.” “Sure, Gal, I’ll wait. Long as you don’t expect me to follow you up there. Or you don’t come down with somethin’ that’s gonna get the Queen asking us where our minds went…” All she got back was a wink. She sighed.

He was already scrambling up the side of the building before she could say anything else. He wasn’t normally much of a law-breaker. No reason to be in his life. But there was one law he took great glee in disrespecting at every opportunity- As he flung himself from the bottom of a wall to its top ledge with nothing but his fingertips and toes he gave a loving curse to gravity trying to keep him on the ground. A surveillance drone’s engines whined underneath him as he slipped into a nook that barely fit him. Just enough to hide from its gaze as it swung around the building; then upon finding nothing worth looking at, it chirped and swerved to fly off towards the overpass that lay high above them. He tried not to laugh. Tried not to wave at it as it went. Another floor up, another terrace, now he was really getting into the weeds. Portions that were never really meant for some random people to be climbing on. Or standing on. Or just being near. He was fairly certain most of the top side of the building was maintained by drones and sentries judging by how little of it seemed to be made accessible from the inside. Fine with him- In fact. That’s exactly why he was here. It was a pretty important part of Solution 9- and Everkeep as a whole, really- that each level was independently capable of maintaining its atmospheric conditions. Everything from air quality to humidity, temperature to air movement. And most of it was controlled by behemoth structures of electrope that were the near-constant subject of surveillance, maintenance, and updates. While he found these gargantuan machines to be truly magnificent wonders of technology, he had a more grounded focus. A smaller scale idea in mind. The selfsame machines had smaller, localized, and specialized variants spread out throughout Solution 9. Many of which adorned the top and sides of buildings and structures- Especially the residential buildings. While no access was available, really, from the insides there was no reason to restrict them from the outside. Nobody sane was gonna climb the damn thing to get to them. And even if they did, what were they gonna do? Not like they had much in the way of controls, right?

As Galena slipped his flat-knife between the body of the machine and the maintenance panel he couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of him. He was, frankly, insane enough to do it. Especially for something like this.

“Hey, Pyre,” Came the crackle of his voice over her earpiece. She blinked out of the daze she’d fallen into before cocking her head and looking up. She couldn’t see him. “Yeah? You in trouble… wherever you’re at?” “Nope, just wanted to ask you a question.” She sat there for a moment, her jaw set. “As long as it ain’t the one I’m thinkin’ of.” He returned the momentary silence. “Remember when I was readin’ off those old sensor reports to ya?”

She clicked her tongue as her brow furrowed. She set down the drink she’d been ignoring and took in a breath as she tried to recall- That was years ago now, wasn’t it? They’d been assigned together. She was his guard, he was the scavenger. Get into an old monitoring station and take everything- even the wiring in the walls. Honestly it hadn’t been much of a memorable day. The rain was heavy but the lightning was merciful. “…Yeah…? You found some old storage or whatever and got really excited about… weather reports? I remember it was somethin’ about the rain.” The confident sound of his laugh came crackling through. “Yeah, the rain. Really old rain and weather reports that I don’t think anybody else would care for. But do you remember the specifics of why I was so happy to find ‘em?”

He didn’t need to see her face to know what expression she made. She didn’t need to see him to know he was grinning ear to ear.

A drop of water hit her on the head. She shielded her eyes as she looked up- Another, then another. The smell of rain filled the plaza, the taste of it filling the artificial lawn, the sight of it spilling across the walkways, the feeling of a light summer shower that hadn’t graced much else in so many a year, the scent of petrichor filling her head like a drug. But the sunlight of Everkeep’s sky-high life still glinted down. Galena’s voice crackled again as she stood in it, dumbfounded by him as she watched him descend down the side of the building giddy like a kid on his birthday. He was soaked. He was laughing. He was laughing the whole way down. “Sunshowers, Rite!”

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #13: Butte

He watched as lightning pooled overhead; as it dripped down towards the earth in craters and rumbles as if it had decided that the rain could no longer do without its accompaniment. As if the dark night that wrapped the ever-bright light of Everkeep could not do without its competition. His breath fogged his mask for a moment before he continued to trudge on towards the hill.

In his broad, but admittedly shallow, knowledge of Alexandria’s history he’d taken a lot of interest in the varying creations of peoples past. The small. The mundane. The fantastic. The elaborate. Everything from the most basic of tool to the greatest warping of electrope. Only recently had he decided to fill a hole in that knowledge that he had long since ignored. Footsteps that tracked their way up an abandoned hill; a place left behind by all but a few of the newest reforgers in their midst. The people of Xak Tural, the newcomers, who still held onto their old ways. As he rested his hand on the fence gate he corrected himself. It wasn’t just theirs. His, now, too. He swung the rusted gate open, its squeal almost hidden by the downpour that continued to roll through the sky and down the hill. But it couldn't dampen the sound of footsteps as he plodded his way past each and every headstone. Each grave. Each memory.

He’d sifted through archives for quite a few nights looking for this place. Sleepless. Tireless. Endlessly flipping through what physical records still existed where digital records had long since been wiped, corrupted, or misplaced. So little was there to find even in something that could be held in his own two hands. He’d had to get involved with a few others, good friends now, who specialized in the preservation of what little physical history Alexandria still had. But they’d never been able to find much, if anything, for what spoke of the old kingdom. Those memories, perhaps, were left only to the Queen. To Sphene. He stopped to kneel before a makeshift marker. A recent addition. The graveyard had been left to rot not long after Everkeep had finished its construction. Names were still visible on some of the stones. Old, unremarkable from anything he could glean. The persons entombed under could have been kings or paupers and he would have no way to guess- And less to imagine. Little else was known about it. Even its name had been all but scrubbed from history… much like all other aspects of death had been. The Cloud, for all the surety it had given him before, could only conjure to mind the wrenching gut that came as lightning continued to stretch spindly fingers down from the dark heavens above. He pulled off his gloves to expose calloused hands. His thumb wiped away oxidation and grime that had begun to plague the metal plate he’d nestled in a pile of stones. He’d made a point to ask some of the older Shetona of their home. Their rituals. Their place. What was appropriate? Alexandria had gone so long forgetting its dead. He had gone so long forgetting the dead. What do you do? What helps? The cairn was a sad sight in the midst of it. But it was a sight. You could still hear footsteps through the rain.

“Galena…” Came that practiced voice. Footsteps that had continued through the rain. He didn’t turn. He continued to carve through the grime with nothing but his fingertips until the steel of it was clean once again. Until it dimly showed the reflection of the rumbling sky above. He placed it back amidst the stones stacked high. Then he produced another stone from his pocket. He placed it with the others. His breath fogged his mask as he knelt there for a long moment. Two moments. Three. He waited to feel something. Anything. Either the heart-stopping weight of grief or the soul-lightened relief of forgiveness from… something. Certainly anything other than the pale green concern that stood politely behind him and off to the right. Waiting for him to speak up. To respond. Anything. He couldn’t anymore.

He turned left. He trudged down the hill.