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neopronouns-in-action · 11 days ago

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Neopronouns in Action #098: The First Dance on Mars

Neopronouns: fluff/fluffs/fluffself which follow the same rules as it/its/itself for this example.

Replace it with fluff Replace its with fluffs Replace itself with fluffself

Example paragraph:

“It is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as it gets a fence set up around its yard so the puppy can go outside without it having to walk it. Its uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting it use, since it lost its. It's going to buy toys and train the puppy itself.”

Becomes:

“Fluff is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as fluff gets a fence set up around fluffs yard so the puppy can go outside without fluff having to walk it. Fluffs uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting fluff use, since fluff lost fluffs. Fluff's going to buy toys and train the puppy fluffself.”

___

098: The First Dance on Mars

Chronotime stared silently at the pacing Terrans in front of fluff, glad, this time, that fluff had not been built with an expressive face. If fluff had, it would have been clear to every organic being present that fluff was enraged beyond belief.

As it was, the Terrans had no idea. They just went about their business like Chronotime wasn't there, and had nothing better to do than filter their waste and record their dictations for them and keep their fragile little squishy bodies warm and safe from the vacuum outside the station's bulwark.

No one had ever bothered to ask Chronotime what fluff would like to do before they'd unpacked fluff from the crate fluff had been thrown into, and wired fluff into the walls of the station. Fluff had been built with tentacles for picking things up, and photocells for seeing with, and treads for moving around with. But was fluff allowed to move around and stretch fluffs aching joints? No. No, fluff had just been wired into a niche in the walls, then covered up by metal plating except for fluffs face, which could not express fluffs anger, boredom, frustration, or pain.

Terrans didn't like being walled up any more than robots did, but did they care about Chronotime's feelings on the matter? No. Maybe they would have felt something, anything at all, if Chronotime had been able to move fluffs facial features to express emotions, but fluff couldn't. Maybe fluff had been designed that way on purpose, maybe not. Fluff would probably never know.

(Archived read-more link)

(read-more was here)

It was always hot, living in the wall. Unbearably hot.

Surrounded on all sides by wires and ducts and different myriad systems that kept the space station "First Dance on Mars" running, Fluff was in constant pain. It was inescapable, and only ever increased or decreased in its intensity depending on how many systems were currently being used by the station. The worst times were in the station's day shift, when the Terran crews were using what seemed like every possible system at once. Manual navigation, food and drink dispension, active audio-visual monitors, almost all of the lights, the constant running of the restroom facilities, heating and cooling to every room in use, and more.

The pain was most bearable in the middle of the station's night shift, set up to allow the Terrans to follow their natural circadian rithums, when all but a few of the Terrans were in their rooms, asleep, which meant most of the lights were turned off, the temperature controls in non-bedroom areas were relaxed, and there were only half a dozen or so audio-visual monitors left running in the rooms of the nocturnal and the the few required to stay awake in case of emergencies, in the rare cases where those categories did not both consist of the same small group of people.

Only when the station went into this comparatively powerless "night shift" could Chronotime expect the burning against fluffs whole body to subside from high intensity to a lower intensity. Depending on how many Terrans were aboard at the time, and thus how many bedrooms had to be maintained, the pain could be brought down so low it almost wasn't there.

Fluff could remember what it was like to not be in pain at all, but the memory was fuzzy and indistinct, and hardly seemed real. Especially not now, when there were enough Terrans aboard that every bedroom had at least two crew assigned to it, and some of them even had three. It was the largest crew Chronotime could ever remember being on the station at once, and it meant agony during the day shift, and barely any reprieve at all at night. The pain had never been this bad before.

And there was nothing Chronotime could do about it but wait for the small amount of relief that night would bring with it, and, half in a daze and wondering if this crew's rotation would be what finally made the rest of fluff melt, daydream.

Mostly Chronotime imagined something like a hull breach suddenly occurring, big enough to suck all the air, and with it the heat, away from fluff and out into the endless, blissfully cold voice of space. Maybe the whole station would blow up, and fluff would be ripped free of the walls that imprisoned fluff, and it would get to drift among the stars and just enjoy the sensation of not overheating. At some point, fluff knew, this sort of situation would lead to the opposite problem, but it was only a pain-induced daydream, so fluff could pretend it would all be fine for as long as fluff wanted.

Imagining it didn't lessen the pain, but it did let fluff take fluffs mind off it, at least for a little while. At least until a Terran switched on another laundry machine, or started a movie marathon, which increased the heat, and snapped Chronotime out of the daydream.

The only part of fluffs body that didn't feel like it was on the verge of melting was fluffs face, which had been left stick out from the wall and into the temperature-controlled air of the station's main cafeteria. Fluff's face was a large, blue-grey rectangle with rounded corners, unblinking, unmoving photocells near either side, a speaker grill for a mouth, and a triangular dial that would shift the color of fluffs photocells and paint for a nose.

The photocells themselves were round, and designed to mimic the eyes of an organic, with small black pupils in the center, the color-changing iris, half-lidded whites of the eye, and grey half circles to act as eyebrows, as though constantly in a Terran expression of surprise.

Once, in corrupted memory files that Chronotime could barely access, fluff knew fluff had been allowed to use that dial, and the resulting color changes in fluffs eyes and paint had allowed fluff to visually communicate fluffs emotions, along body language in fluffs tentacles, torso, and treads. Fluff couldn't remember much, but fluff knew it had been possible at one point. Fluff could just barely remember speaking to someone, walking with them, dancing, gesticulating, having the freedom to move, to speak, to communicate...and being innocent of the knowledge that soon that would all be taken away.

But that had been before, and this was now. Now the rest of Chronotime was hidden behind metal walling, crammed between different sections of air conditioning and filtering units, and fluffs tentacle arms trapped too.

The Terrans barely even bothered to look at fluff these days. They'd either forgotten, or just didn't care that fluff was right there when they complained about malfunctions in the different computer systems they'd forced fluff's autonomic systems to maintain for however long it had been. They treated fluff, when they acknowledged fluffs existence at all, as just some inanimate, strange decoration, even though fluff knew that they all knew fluff was a robot, was sentient, was alive, was the reason any of them could live on the station at all. They knew it. Fluff knew it. Everyone knew it. But still they treated fluff like nothing more than a problem when the systems were crashing from the build up of heat, or like fluff wasn't there at all when things were running smoothly.

There wouldn't be so many computer systems problems if Chronotime were simply allowed to not be bricked up inside a wall like Fortunato, and forced into a state of near delirium from overheating every day, but that did not seem to be an option the Terrans were willing to consider, and they'd removed fluffs access to fluffs own voicebox before they'd even put it in the packing crate, so there was no chance of Chronotime being able to say anything about it now.

If the Terrans wanted to know what time it was, and wanted their showers to always have the right temperature water, and their computers to always run as smoothly as possible, they shouldn't have kept fluff imprisoned like this. If fluff had been allowed to move about like any other person, and had an actual team of other people to work with to run the station's systems, the constant overheating of fluff's body wouldn't have caused, as the ultimate irony, fluffs chronometer to quite literally melt, which had then damaged parts of fluffs long-term memory core.

That had been an agonizing, disorienting process, and Chronotime had no idea how long it had actively gone on, especially because it had rendered most of fluffs earlier memories glitched and corrupted, almost impossible to recall. Now fluff had only bits and peices of memories from Before left to review; being put into the crate, being wired in, and few small fragments of being imprisoned in the station.

Fluff knew the last time recorded before the disaster, but had no idea when it had ended. Now the only time fluff had any reference for was when the Terrans asked one another for it, and said it aloud within fluffs range of hearing. But many of the times reported conflicted, even on the same day shift, due to the individual chronometers being out of sync, and the only way to reference how much time had passed between one point and the next was to wait for the next time one Terran told another the time.

And always, always they complained about not being able to find the time through the First Dance on Mars' system clock, which was permanently frozen at 6:21AM. They complained about this as though they weren't the ones who'd caused it to break in the first place with their casual cruelty and disregard for robots in treating Chronotime like this.

Fluff had tried multiple times to improvise a mental watch based on regular patterns from other damaged systems, like the dripping of fuel from a leaky pipe. But it wasn't regular enough to count on, and at some point the Terrans had fixed it, so there wasn't even that left anymore.

There was no way to tell in each moment, how long this had been going on. Most of the jobs performed by Terrans had a high turnover rate, which was probably they they'd decided to give Chronotime no choice in the matter. Workers couldn't quit if they'd been buried in the walls and immobilized.

If there had been at least one Terran who stayed on the station long enough to visibly age, it would have given Chronotime some sense of the passage of time. But the faces parading past were, more often than not, completely unfamiliar, and not likely to stay long enough to be memorized.

Sometimes there were parties, festivals, holidays, but they were from multiple different planets, with different calendars. Chronotime had no way to tell what the usual amount of time between The Flower Day of Harvest and the Day Death Walked were supposed to be. And birthdays were almost worse than useless. What was the point in knowing that Britne was turning 29? They hadn't been born on the First Dance on Mars, so their birthday meant nothing to the passage of time as far as Chronotime was concerned.

Then one day something happened. A ship teleported in to bus range of the First Dance, which wasn't unusual. It happened almost regularly, when supplies and workers were being delivered or taken away. Not regularly enough to set your watch by, but at least a little bit predictable.

What was different this time was that the ship came closer to the First Dance, instead of sending busses over. This was not normal, or safe, especially because this was a large ship, half as big as the First Dance on Mars itself, with very visible, very big guns glowing with bright paint in swirls of red and yellow and blue.

The strange ship got close enough that it blocked the view of the stars outside the windows across from Chronotime. Fluff stared out at the bright yellow surface, swirled with intricate designs of red and pink and purple, half wondering if another core component had melted, and this was all some strange dream. Fluff had never seen a spaceship so colorful before.

It was now close enough that it couldn't be fired upon with any of the First Dance's own guns, because any explosion on the strange ship at this range would likely be just as damaging to the station.

Still in the daze of heat delirium, Chronotime thought that might not be such a bad thing after all. Sure, the initial explosion would be hot, but if there was a hull breach...fluff felt fluffs daydream of floating through the stars calling tantalizingly.

But it probably wouldn't happen.

The First Dance on Mars couldn't afford to fire no matter what, at least not until the ship made an explicitly hostile move first.

Damaging a space vessel in any way could lead to imprisonment for those who had made the aggressive moves if it wasn't done in clear and necessary self-defense, and even in cases of self defense, the damaged vessel had to be immediately evacuated by those who had fired upon it, and the evacuees' continued safety guaranteed until they could be brought to one of the designated refugee outposts in the system. Anyone who failed to comply was punished by their government. And if their government failed to punish them, the rest of the governments in the system would take matters into their own hands.

No one could afford to let anyone go around massacring people in space unpunished.

Because firing on crewed space vessles would always be a massacre. There was no such thing as 'harmless' damage in the vacuum of space. Any damage to a vessel, no matter how non-imminently lethal, would be a death sentence for anyone trapped aboard.

A stranded vessel was, inevitably, nothing more than a large coffin. And not just for organics, either. A legal precedent had already been set that demanded robots be treated the same as organic evacuees on damaged vessels. Robots would also die if left stranded in the vacuum of space aboard a nonfunctioning vessel, maybe not from asphyxiation specifically, as very few robots were constructed to require oxygen as part of their basic functions, but from starvation assuredly, freezing probably, and any of the other dangers associated with being trapped on a vessel that was out of supplies, power, or both.

Chronotime thought that freezing to death would probably not be a bad way to go, all things considered. Maybe, if fluff got lucky, the strange, hypnoticallybright ship would fire on The First DanceonMars, and then the colorfulship's crew would be forced to come over here and rescue all the Terrans, and Chronotimewith them.

The station to ship communication lines lit up, filled with activity that Chronotime could not access evenif fluff wantedto. And fluff didn'treally want to. Fluff wanted there to be a hull breach so fluff could stop feeling like fluff was dying.

But you couldn'talwaysget what you wanted. Instead of a hull breach, fluff had to just keepwatching.

Terrans were racing across the room in front of fluff in a panicked stream, heading for the shelter points while alarmsrang overhead and the floor and walls became illuminated with directionalarrows. The extra strain on all of the FirstDance's systems were causing a mirrored strain onfluffssystems, causing evenmoreheat to build up than usual, until it crossed a new threshhold oftheword pain. Fluff could barelythinkanymore.

Eventually the flood of Terrans disappeared. The station to ship line was stillinuse, and the bright, colorful, dizzying ship outside seemed to have moved even closer. Wasthatevenpossible? Chronotime could do nothing butwatch as the ship finally released its swarm ofStarWasps, the smaller fighting ships thatwere in charge of damagingsmallerexternal systems andinvading.

Chronotime half hoped that one of them would fire at the windows, and cause a hull breach. All fluff wanted wasahullbreach. Just let fluff cool down, evenalittlebit. Fluff would enjoy the blissful cold of the vacuum. Itwouldbesonice. The Terrans should all have been in the shelter points by now, soitwasn't evenlike anyonewould get hurt. Please, universe, couldthereplease be a hullbreach? Just let fluff cool down. Just a little. One tinycrackinthe hull.

But to fluffs surprise and confused disappointment, none of the Star Wasps fired on the First Dance on Mars, they just went straight to thedocking ports The ship to station lines were still going strong, forcing fluff to come to the conclusion that the station had surrendered. Whichmeant no hull breach. probably. who knew. but maybe.

Time passed. The Terrans stayed in the shelter points. The communications between the ship and station continued. Chronotime stayed overheated, wishing for a hull breach, wondering when fluff would melt away to nothing at all. Almost wishing someone would fire on the ship just so both vessels would explode. That would be a hull breach. that would be nice. then fluff would stop melting. or atleast would melt morefaster.

The Star Wasps had docked at some point, and were unloading crew. howmany? how many? fluff didn't know. how wasfluffmeant to countpeople when fluff wasmelting? or whatfeltlike melting atleast.

And then, at some point, someofthose invading crew members—who turned out to beMartians, recognizable from their bright purple/blue/green and yellow/white feathers and large, round eyes, like big versionsofTerrananimals called owls—entered Chronotime's vigil room. They lookedaround, and, seemingly allatonce, noticed Chronotime where fluffs face protruded from the wall. Theymust, Chronotime thought, havereallygood eyesight and reallygoodreactionspeed.

One of them gasped and began clacked their beak in alarm. One of them flared all of their feathers. Another began yelling into a portable comm device, in a language Chronotime couldn'tcurrentlytranslate. Itwas words beingspoen but. noclue whattheyweresaying. The other three ran towards fluff, staring, very clearly, directly up at it. There was nothing else on the wall they could possibly be looking at. It waskindoffunny to finallyget noticied just when fluff wasprobablygoing to melt.

The communications from the ship to the station increased in intensity and volume. The heat treatening to melt Chronotimetonothing increased along with it.

Then there came somethingnew—something fluff had never gottenbefore. The order toshutdown. Already it was happening. Parts of fluff turning off. disconnecting fromtherest of the station. cables retracting. power stopping running. cooling down.

it was nice.

and then it was dark

and Chronotime was asleep.

_-_-_

The next time Chronotime became aware of fluffself, it was to the alien sensation of...not overheating. Of not being in excruciating pain. Of not feeling like fluff was melting to death.

There was still pain, but it was much easier to ignore than it had been before.

There was air flowing freely across fluffs whole body, nice, cool...moving air, and it had a distinctly different flavor to it than what fluff was used to.

This...wasn't The First Dance on Mars anymore.

Fluffs photocells were functioning...showing fluff a low, yellow ceiling dotted with small lights...rather than the view of the cafeteria and its wide windows.

Fluff was...lying on a cold metal surface with a grid texture that let in plenty of airflow. There was...another robot off to fluffs left, sitting in a chair...probably waiting for Chronotime to do something. But...fluff didn't currently have the energy to do anything. The other robot...didn't say anything to Chronotime, so Chronotime...didn't say anything either.

Everything felt...slow. Tired. Cool, not overheating...but slow. Chronotime...had to wait for each thought to string itself together.

For what must have been a long time, fluff just lay there, mind drifting slowly but happily through the cold air and what seemed like the most amazing sight fluff had ever seen...something besides the cafeteria and its windows.

There were...no systems to maintain, no overheating, no humans cursing fluff for malfunctions their own cruelty had caused. It was just the soft lights, the yellow ceiling, and the long-accustomed feeling of being trapped and melting...slowly, slowly froze to death in the face of this new reality. There were...no walls crushing Chronotime. No...constant stream of everything. Just...a bit of slowness, and cool air, and a new view...and another robot who seemed...content to let Chronotime take fluffs time adjusting.

Almost in a dream...Chronotime lay there, savoring the lack of heat...not minding the silent company at all.

Eventually...fluff realized that if there were no walls trapping heat against fluff, then that probably also meant...there was nothing stopping fluff from moving.

So...fluff tried lifting a tentacle. It was something fluff had tried to do many times before.

This time...was the first time the attempt was any sort of success.

The tentacle...lifted when Chronotime willed it to, but...it was a slow and painful process, as old internal systems were used for the first time in who could know how long. Every...link and connection down Chronotime's tentacle arm had to be reawakened. Had to...have power flow through it for the first time in....who knew how long.

It hurt.

But...it was a good sort of hurt. If fluff...had to live with this pain for the rest of fluffs life...fluff would happily do it.

As long as...fluff could move.

As long as...fluff wasn't overheating.

As long as..fluff was free.

The other robot...kept watch in silence, saying nothing, and making no move to stop fluff. Everything was...dreamlike and peaceful, calming...like there was nothing wrong with the world. A little...slow, but that was...okay. It was better...than the constant burning pain.

Chronotime...lowered fluffs first tentacle when it started to tremble, then...one at a time...carefully...stretched the other three in the same manner. Flexed...the tired, aching segments...the four fingers that felt...almost rusted shut.

Each arm was...just as painful to move as the first, and just as satisfying.

Fluffs powercells were...depleting at what would have been an alarming rate with...the unaccustomed movements, now that Chronotime...was no longer being force-fed the unlimited power of the First Dance to...automatically.

But...Chronotime couldn't...bring fluffself to be worried, not when fluff was...finally free. If fluff died right now, fluff would die happy. But...powercells draining down wouldn't mean death. It meant...sleep. The other robot...probably wouldn't let fluff die. Not after...they had rescued fluff. They would...probably recharge fluff.

Fluff...lay there in silence for another stretch of time...mind drifting through waking dreams, enjoying...everything.

The battery drain...had slowed back to a crawl now that fluff had stopped moving, and eventually...slowly...Chronotime decided that fluff would try to speak, after fluff decided...what fluff would try to say.

What...would fluff say first? Hello? Who...are you? Thank you? What is...your name? Where am I...?

There were...so many options, including not speaking at all, and staying in this drifting...dreaming...slow...trance. But time...kept passing, and eventually...Chronotime decided to try speaking.

It was...difficult work. Dust and heat damage had...warped fluffs vocal box, so fluffs voice, which fluff could...barely remember the sound of, came out...grating and glitched. And so...so...slow.

But...it was understandeable, at least to fluffs own audio receptors. "Who...are...you?" fluff asked.

Chronotime could...not turn fluffs head to look at the other robot. Fluff was...too tired for that. Fluff had...already used up all fluffs energy for moving...by stretching fluffs arms and hands.

Fluff could...also not do anything about fluffs unchanging facial expression, but hoped the words themselves...short as they were...would convey the intended gratitude, even if...the voice that spoke them distorted...and slow...

The other robot's voice...was as smooth and soft as snow in comparison as they said...without effort "My name is Rulo. What's yours?"

"Chrono...time. "

"Chrono Time?"

Chronotime...thought there was maybe a space in there that...shouldn't be there....but it was...close enough for now.

"Yes." fluff said...slowly.

The other robot...spoke so easily. "It's nice to meet you, Chrono Time. Is there anything I can do to assist you at this moment?"

That was...so many words that Chronotime had to...take some time to...process them.

Then...the only thing Chronotime could think to ask for was somewhere...to recharge. "My...power...cells...are...draining....very....quickly..."

"Yes," Rulo said...and their voice was filled with...sympathy. "Unfortunately, you were tied into The Bringer of Death to Kaltor for so long, your own power core has been weakened. We have to let your batteries drain completely before we can recharge them to help your body readjust to operating under its own power again. Do you understand? If you would rather keep external power, we can provide that too, but it will be better for you in the long-term to regain as much of your own power retention as possible. Are you alright with letting your batteries drain, or would you rather be hooked up to a battery?"

So...many words.

So...little power.

It took...a long time to process.

When...fluff finished...fluff knew fluff didn't want...to be forced to stay awake constantly again.

"Let...them....drain." Fluff...just barely...managed to say.

It seemed like...Rulo could see fluffs battery percentage, because...they said, "It looks like you're going to shut down in a minute at the current rate of battery drain. When you wake up again, you should be able to stay awake a little bit longer. I'll be here when you do. Have a peaceful rest."

Chronotime...wanted to say....thank you....but...

Fluff was already asleep.

And it was so nice.

_-_-_

Chronotime woke up again, feeling more energized than fluff could remember. Battery percentage was at 100% and holding there, at least for now.

Fluff and spoke with Rulo again. The two traded pronouns, now that there was time; Rulo's were ae/aer/(aers)/aerself. Chronotime's, obviously, were fluff/fluffs/fluffself.

It was physically easier to talk this time without fluffs plummeting battery power to make it all exponentially more difficult, but Chronotime's voice still came out distorted, the tone pitching up and down, and there was a constant crackling static noise that wouldn't go away. Now that fluff had enough energy to think properly and wasn't in constantly increasing levels of pain, fluff could feel the layers of dust and even metal shavings that had accumulated from disuse.

The only thing that would help would be to start talking more, and hope it would clear up on its own. And Chronotime was very willing to try. There was a lot to talk about.

But before anything else, fluff told Rulo about fluffs broken chronometer, and asked, trying to keep fluffs voice from sounding too desperate, for an external one.

Rulo supplied one readily, a small wrist-watch like the kind Terrans and Martians alike wore, with an adjustable band that fit over Chronotime's hand and tightened on fluffs wrist. It was synced with the ship's clock, and set to Martian standard.

Rulo also added a wall-mounted clock to Chronotime's hospital room, without having to be asked.

This was the best that could be done until they reached Mars. Internal chronometers could be repaired, but it would require surgery, and they didn't have the required supplies on board, or anyone who was qualified to perform it on a robot of Chronotime's type.

Fluff was just so overjoyed simply to be able to watch the seconds passing and know they were accurate that fluff couldn't even feel upset.

Then Rulo told Chronotime what had happened.

The Broken Quill, the ship Chronotime was on now, had captured The Bringer of Death to Kaltor—the name the Martians used for what the Terrans had called The First Dance on Mars—in a coordinated effort to finally drive the Terran-supremacist "Steadfasts" out of the Solar system for once and for all.

Humans and robots from every inhabited planet and moon had worked together to capture or destroy every Terran-supremacist outpost, including The Bringer of Death to Kaltor.

Thousands of prisoners of war had been rescued, including Chronotime.

That statement caught fluff entirely off guard. A prisoner, yes. But of war? Fluff hadn't even known there'd been a war.

But Chronotime learned a lot more than that. Fluff learned that fluff was a Alcrystere model robot, born on Mars, in the city of Kaltor. The same city that the station fluff had been imprisoned on had destroyed, earning it the name of The Bringer of Death to Kaltor to Martians and their allies. Chronotime was, fluffself, a Martian by birth.

Fluffs parent, Alcrystere themself, had survived the massacre, and had mourned fluffs death when fluffs body could not be recovered from what was left of the city, just one more victim among the millions that had crossed into the shadow of the desert.

No one had even suspected that Chronotime — who's birth name had been Lycos — could have been taken as a prisoner rather than killed in the sweep of the disintegration rays. No one had ever expected to see fluff again.

Rulo was actually fluffs younger hatchmate, born five years after the Death of Kaltor. Aer birthdate was coming up in two months.

Five Martian years equaled to almost ten Terran years.

Chronotime could look at either of the external chronometers now, to see how long fluff had been talking to Rulo, but none of that could be extrapolated backwards to retroactively measure how long fluff had been a prisoner.

Had it really been almost ten years that fluff had been imprisoned, walled up like the Fortunato the original Terrans had joked about in the beginning, before they'd faded away into the endless procession of fresh faces because of the high turnover rate?

There had been no way to keep track of time after fluffs chronometer had melted, and the memories from before then had mostly been corrupted.

Five Martian years. Nine point four Terran years. All that time, a prisoner, enslaved, overheating, unable to move. Unable to even know how much time was passing.

Processing all of this information was strenuous, and it wasn't long before Chronotime shut down for the third time in all of fluffs memory. But just like the first and second times, it was a looked-forward to respite, and it came with the knowledge that fluff was going home, to Mars. Back to a home fluff had no memory of, but home nonetheless.

And there were people there waiting for fluff, who couldn't wait to see fluff.

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