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littleevilisa · 8 years

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LIP March Madness: Introduction of Human Emotions in a Virtual System

Summary: There are some thing you should not mess with. Katniss should have known that before stepping inside the Dreamatorium. Now she has to run through its simulations to find her friend Beetee before he’s lost forever. Sort of. Based on Community season 3 episode 16 “Virtual Systems Analysis”.

Rated: T

A huge thank to @titaniasfics for betaing, and to the ladies at @loveinpanem for hosting this round.

I don’t own THG nor Community

The battle rages all around her. She sees the Men in White fall by the dozen, but the gray uniforms of the rebels lay on the ground, too, marred with blood and dirt.

The epic music swells in a crescendo of brass and percussion.

She uses her bow to block the shotgun-axe of a soldier, then punches him in the guts and stabs him in a soft spot of his neck with her combat knife.

The Crafter is at her side, wielding his powerful plasma spear with purpose. They need to open a path through the battlefield to get to the Reasoner and the Hunter, who have almost reached the President’s camp, leading the assault.

She arms her bow with incendiary arrows, the ones with the yellow tips. She lets them fly in one breath, one fluid motion.

feeew feeew feeew twack twack twack

The soldiers hit by the arrows fall to the ground in silence, dead. She hears the wilhelm screams of those around them, caught in the fire caused by her deadly weapon.

She jumps on top of a big rock to incite their men, raising her bow over her head as if she's holding the flag of their nation.

“People of Panem!” she screams. “We fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!”

“Dreamatorium, stop simulation Battle of the Tree Island.”

I huff, stepping off the pile of dirty laundry we’ve been using as the rock. “It’s the fifth time, Beetee. What did I do wrong now?”

Beetee props his broomstick against the green and orange wall of the Dreamatorium, the room that Gale and he use to play out their imaginary games. Or, as they like to call it, render imaginated dreamscapes. “You keep saying the line with the wrong tone, Katniss. Too fast. And you put stress on the wrong word. It should be on justice, not hunger.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s the same. We’re just playing, it’s not like we’re shooting a scene.”

He looks at me blankly for a full six seconds. That is his reprimanding face. “I think I’ve asked too much of you when I gave you the role of the Mockingjay.” he says in his mechanical tone. “You have the right physical appearance and temperament, but you’re not much of an actor.”

I’m regretting deciding that it would be a good idea to get into the Dreamatorium with Beetee - or D13, as he likes to call the room because it underwent a series of updates after its first inauguration. The adorable nerd all movie quotes and obsession of being inside a TV show is actually a giant bossy jerk. Figures this is what I get for deciding to play wingman for Gale.

This morning Dean Trinket, wearing one of her flamboyant outfits, half man and half woman, because she was bearing good news and bad news, announced that the exam the study group have been trying to cram for at the last minute was postponed. Everybody had immediately jumped at the occasion and took a three hour lunch break. Haymitch was going to see the first half of three different movies. Annie wanted to go with her husband Finnick to a fancy fast food across town. Peeta didn’t tell us what he was going to do, probably sleep in his Lexus. And Beetee was calculating that, without eating, Gale and he could make-believe a whole episode’s worth of The Mockingjay. But I had seen the looks Gale had been sending in Johanna’s direction lately, and decided last minute that I could play with Beetee in the Dreamatorium.

So I got stuck playing the protagonist of Beetee’s favorite TV show, about a young woman leading a rebellion against the cruel dictator that had been enslaving her country. While Gale and Johanna are enjoying lunch at Sae’s Diner, where Beetee would never eat because one of the waiter said he hated Die Hard.

“Beetee, can't we play something that I know about?” I ask. “Like, nature conservation?”

Once again Beetee looks at me with his blank face, but this time I recognize the undertone of judgment.

“You're mad at me for helping Gale out with Johanna?” I ask incredulously as I take off the elastic headband I've been using as the Mockingjay's head piece. “You think you're gonna lose Gale.” The two have been best friends since day one of the study group, and basically inseparable since they moved in together at the beginning of the year. Not even the fact that I moved in the same apartment a couple of months ago could change this dynamic.

“I'm not petty, Katniss.” he answers condescendingly. “I'm mad at you because you tampered with the fabric of the group. How do you know that Gale and Johanna pairing up won't destroy everything? I run every possible scenario while studying this stuff.”

I scoff. “So you can do that, but I can't? You shouldn't be such a control freak.”

He nods. “I kind of have to.” He glances around us. “You think this is just a room where Gale and I play dinosaurs versus riverboat gamblers together. Sure, it's how I got the construction approved, but, much like myself, the Dreamatorium has higher functions.” He walks towards a cardboard on the wall with buttons and levers drawn on it. “Would you like me to show you how your stunt with Gale and Johanna will play out?”

I gesture to him to do as he pleases.

He puts his finger on a big red button with push written on it and says, “Dreamatorium, execute simulation Gale/Johanna. Render environment Sae's Diner.” He pulls a fake lever and pushes a couple of random fake buttons. Then he moves to the center of the room and crouches as if he is sitting on a chair.

Beetee imitates Gale's voice and usual demeanor. “Those appetizer were dope and legit!” Then he switches position and pretends to be Johanna. “I don't usually support lunch because it's unfair to breakfast.” He gets back to be Gale. “I've never thought about meals fighting each other.” he says in wonderment.

As I watch him talk, the room around us morphs into a rendition of the diner's interior, while Beetee actually turns into Gale.

“I guess this is why you never see any two of them on the same table,” he says.

Beetee's orange outline runs from Gale to Johanna. “So I guess Katniss would really like us together.”

Back to Gale. “She probably doesn't understand people. I don't know why she thought I might be romantically interested in you.” He shrugs.

Back to Johanna. “Well, the sooner the food comes, the sooner this will be over.”

The waiter arrives to their table, and Beetee jumps inside him. “I'm afraid your food won't be ready for another half hour. I'm too busy misunderstanding the whole point of Die Hard.”

Back to Gale. He looks longingly in the distance. “I can't wait to get home to Beetee.”

I need to interrupt this stupid game. “So what? You can dart back and forth doing impressions of our friends. There's no science at work here.”

The simulation gradually disappears. Beetee stands up, back at being himself. “You're right.” he says. ��The science is at work in here.” He walks to a little walk-in closet and opens it. Inside there are carton tubes attached to each other with duct tape. “This is the Dreamatorium's engine. My thoughts are collected in this box.” He points a green box with his name written on it. “What I know about my friends is stored here.” Another box saying other people. “Both are distilled by logic and then recombines into objective observation. I'm able to simulate any of the study group and even a half accurate Cray in over seven thousand unique situations.”

“Beetee, it's cardboard and a funnel.” I point out.

“You see it that way because it's calibrated to a specific level of brain function.”

I'm offended. “Oh, right. I'm stupid.”

“Not stupid.” Beetee says. “Just less able to see what I see.

This statement doesn't calm me. It actually has the opposite effect. “You've got it all figured out, huh?”

My phone beeping with an incoming call distracts me from the tirade I was about to spit out. I leave the room.

It's Gale. Checking on Beetee, making sure he's okay. Asking me to make sure his bestie is comfortable because he worries about him when he is not around.

I'm incredibly annoyed.”He's fine! He'll always be!” I almost shout. “He just implied that I work on a lower brain function, so business as usual. I don't understand why people bend over backwards to take care of him.”

“He's just extra sensitive in the Dreamatorium.” Gale defends him. “It takes a lot out of him to run that thing. I don't want you to break his brain.”

I roll my eyes. “Bye, Gale.” I say, and hang up.

I barge back in.

Beetee is intent on something in the engine/tube construction. “I've been thinking about our Mockingjay scenario. Perhaps it would be better if you played the Clone Maiden. She was in two scene and only had three lines.”

I look at him with squinted eyes. “I have a better idea.” I march to the thing. “Your scenarios would be a lot more realistic if you'd take all your thoughts and logic and add one step to the process.”

He watches me closely as I take the other people box. “What are you doing?” he asks me with a mix of confusion and alarm.

“From now on, before you do or say anything, you're gonna think about how it affects the people around you. We lower functioning brain call it empathy.” As I talk I switch the box in my hand with the Beetee one, that I put where the other was.

Beetee suddenly starts letting out a high pitched whimper.

I look at him, alarmed. “Beetee?”

The whimper turns into a scream as Beetee start hitting the side of his head. Then, as suddenly as he began, he stops and falls to the ground, completely still.

Fuck. Did I just break Beetee?

I run to his side, shaking him and calling his name. “Do you remember when you wanted me to tell you when you were scary weird instead of cute weird?” I tell him. “'Cause this is scary weird.”

He blinks twice, then looks at me in confusion. “Katniss?”

I sigh in relief and help him stand up.

“Hello, Katniss.” Okay, this tone doesn't sound at all like Beetee's. This is not good. “What was I doing on the floor? Were we... doing it?” He gives me a devilishly handsome smirk.

“Are you being Peeta, now?” I ask him.

As soon as the question is out, Beetee morphs into Peeta, broad shoulders, blond curls, and all. “Well, I'm not being a Kardashian,” he jokes.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. I didn't break him. I just caused one of his usual breakdown. “Where are we now?” I ask, annoyed.

“We're in the rangers' lounge of Greenmeadow National Park.” Beetee/Peeta says as his clothes change to a ranger uniform and the Dreamatorium becomes a wooden cabin. I'm back in my Mockingjay outfit instead of the black jumpsuit I used as her uniform.

“A national park?”

He nods. “It's a sexy emotional park where rangers save nature and make love, often simultaneously. Our stories, ripped from the headlines. Our passion, unbridled. Our coffee...” he says, looking at the coffee maker in a corner of the room, “eh.” He dramatically turns to me, getting so close to me that our bodies are only a few millimeters from each other. “Make love to me, Kat.” He cups my face in both his hands and I have to restrain myself not to melt into his sudden touch. “I know I'm just a ranger and you're a hotshot park manager. But damn the rules, damn the system, damn our completely incompatible body types. I want you.”

I shake myself out of the spell Peeta's closeness and words cast on me. I need to remember this is not Peeta, but Beetee playing him.

I push away his hands. “I get it, Beetee. We have different sensibilities.” I turn around and walk away. I don't want to spend another second with him.

I'm in the living room, halfway to my bedroom, when I stop dead in my tracks. Beetee is not following me, as he usually would do when someone leaves the Dreamatorium before the simulation's over. I don't even hear a sound coming from the room.

It's not a good sign.

I huff and walk back in the rangers' lounge.

Peeta is still here, still looking at me with his passionate gaze.

I sigh. This man child is really getting on my nerves. “Okay, ranger Peeta. Do you know where I can find Beetee? I owe him an apology.”

Peeta's brow furrows as he shakes his head. “Beetee? Never heard of him.”

I roll my eyes. Awesome. Let's see if playing along can help. I square my shoulders and raise my chin, commanding. “I asked you a question, officer.”

“I'm a ranger!” Peeta shouts.

“And I'm your manager!”

“I left my wife for you and she was pregnant!”

I squint my eyes at him. “Who you think paid the doctor who inseminated her?”

The 'horrible' realization makes Peeta take a step back, in shock.

“Now tell me what I want to know or God as my witness, I'll have your badge.” I say in a demanding tone.

“Fine.” he barks. “Dr. Mason might know. Dreamatorium, render environment bio lab.”

An orange electric blur crosses the room, and the wooden cabin turns into an high-tech lab.

“Look,” Peeta says, “there's Gale and Johanna, the biologists working for the park, fooling around with each other.”

Yes, Gale and Johanna are here, dressed in white lab coats, awkwardly touching each other's face.

So if Beetee says that he sees something, that thing appears? Well, I can do that to. I point to his left. “Look, there's Beetee having overcome his issues.”

Peeta looks at me with a deadpan expression. “Nice try.”

Beetee's outline leaves Peeta and darts to Johanna. “We've just discovered an antidote for the terrible fungus that is killing the vegetation in the park.”

The outline jumps to Gale. “Using an unapproved procedure. Now, we're going to kiss.” He turns to Johanna, bends down as well as he can from his towering height, and make a strange sound, opening his mouth in an o shape. He darts back and forth between the two of them, doing the same sound over and over.

I have to resist the urge to throw up. This doesn't even remotely look like two people sharing a kiss, but I definitely don't want to see, or think, about Gale and Johanna making out. There are some thing a friend should never see.

“This is what you think I want?” I ask Beetee.

Johanna turns towards me dramatically. “What do you want, manager?”

“I want to talk to Beetee.”

“There's no one here by that name.” Gale says.

I glare at him. “You're lying.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I am. So what? I was raised on the mean street of the Seam. I'm not scared of you.”

Think fast, Katniss. What would make Beetee work with you? How can you lure him out of his hiding place?

The idea flashes through my mind in a nanosecond, and immediately a syringe appears on the laboratory table next to me. I grab it and plunge it in Gale's arm, pushing the piston. “Sodium pentothal. Commonly know as truth serum.” I announce. “Now tell me everything.”

Gale's face scrunches up in a last effort to resist the substance running through his veins. It is useless, though. Soon, he is spilling words as a fountain spills water. “I saw Beetee's name in the park files. I love butt stuff. I hate spiders. I stole a pen from the bank. I cried during About a Boy... the soundtrack...” He bites his lips not to cry. He sniffs and keeps talking. “Once I didn't wash my hand after touching some disgusting thingie I found during an inspection in the park. I can see why women find Clive Owen attractive and I might just as well be attracted to him. I use comparison to Hitler to win arguments on the internet at the drop of a hat. I know nothing about wine. I'm more turned on by women in pajamas than lingerie, I like that they feel comfortable. I didn't get Inception. I didn't get Inception! So many layers!”

By this point he has started sobbing uncontrollably. But I don't have time to console him. We need to stay on the topic. “You said you saw his name in the files. We need to find them!”

I turn to Peeta and he nods. “Dreamatorium, render environment archive study room.”

The lab disappears and in its place is our study room, where the majority of the study group's adventures start. Annie and Haymitch are here.

“Look, there's the head ranger, Annie, talking to Haymitch Abernathy, the alcoholic, Pulitzer Prize nominee who got lost during an excursion in the park last week and was found only today.”

“Mr. Abernathy, what were you doing sitting in that cave?” she asks the older man.

He slurs, visibly intoxicated. “I thought 'twas a train.”

I walk to Annie, impatient. “Annie, get me the file on Beetee.”

She looks at me in confusion. “Beetee doesn't exist, my friend.”

I grit my teeth. “He exists if I say so. This is my park.”

Annie clicks her tongue. “Your park is a simulation being run through a filter of other people's needs. Beetee's been filtered out because nobody wants him around.”

This shocks me. Does he really think that about us? About himself? “I want him around.”

“Well, you're not simulated.” Annie retorts.

I square my shoulder again. Apparently, the only way to obtain something from Beetee is if I'm a demanding boss. “No,” I start, “but this is!” I slap the air.

Annie's head snaps to the side with a second delay, her hand clutching her red cheek.

“There's more where that didn't came from.” I state.

“This is a private compartment!” Haymitch shouts.

I ignore him, focusing on Peeta. “Get the files.” I order him.

He lifts his right eyebrow. “Why me?” he asks.

“Because you can see the cabinets.” If I make Beetee think that I believe everything he says while he's playing Peeta, perhaps it will be easier to get what I want. But Peeta keeps looking at me with his raised eyebrow, expectant. I scrub my face and huff. “And I'll make love to you.”

He pumps his fist in the air. Apparently I'm not the only one hot on getting two members of the group together.

Peeta walks to a random cabinet behind him and immediately fishes out a file. He browses the papers, his brow furrowing the more he goes on. “There is a Beetee in the park, but he's not a ranger.” He pauses, looking at me in astonishment. “He's a missing hiker.”

Suddenly Annie screams. “Notify security!”

“Conductor!” Haymitch blares after her.

I run to Peeta and hastily grab his hand. “Please, enough with this game.” I say. “Take me where I want to go.”

Peeta looks at me for a second, his eyes then falling on our joined hands. “Follow me.” He leads me out of the study room. “You should probably run in place and let the hall move around you.”

I do as I'm told, and the hall starts sliding quickly. We arrive at a glass door and barge through it.

And suddenly we are on a beach at sunset, wearing our white bathing suits. A pretty motif is playing in the background.

“What's this music?” I ask Peeta.

“It's your theme. It plays every time we have an interaction written to enrich our story arch.” he answers.

“Where are we?” I ask, confused.

“Exactly where you wanted to be.” Peeta says. “The last day of the study group's vacation, first year. The night we kissed.”

I remember that day. We had separated from the others, deciding to go for a walk on the beach. We were sitting on the foreshore, the waves lapping our toes, when Peeta addressed the fact that he was glad I hadn't gotten through with my decision to move to Capitol College. He said that without me the group would have probably died out. I told him that it wasn't true, that the group would have survived my departure. He retorted that that would have happened had he been the one to live. Because no one in the study group really needs him. I replied that I did. I need him. And then we kissed. The best damn kiss of my entire life.

But something else strikes me right now. “Beetee wasn't there, so whose memory is this?” I ask.

Peeta shrugs. “Maybe it's yours.” he says. “Maybe the Dreamatorium really works. Or maybe Finnick was watching from the treeline and told Beetee about it.”

I turn towards the trees planted next to the beach to offer some shelter to the bathers during the hottest hours of the day. Sure enough, Finnick is there, hiding behind a large trunk. He leans forward and says, “We don't have cable at home.”

I turn back to Peeta, suddenly pissed. Is it because I just found out that someone was spying on Peeta and me in such a private moment? Or perhaps because Beetee is using it against me, to make me give up my search for him? “Knock if off, Beetee.”

Peeta shakes his head slightly, still looking at me with the same eyes of that day on the beach. “I'm not Beetee. You're confused, as I was. But not anymore.” He cups my cheek in his left hand and leans towards me.

His closeness, like earlier, sends my senses in overdrive. A spark runs from the place where his hand is resting to all my extremities. “Peeta...” I whisper.

Wait. No. What the hell am I doing? This is not Peeta!

I shake his hand off and take a step back. “Beetee, stop! I don't wanna do this.” The music around us stops.

“Are you sure about that?” he smirks.

I don't understand how that face can make me go weak at the knees. “I mean...” I shake myself again. I can't be deterred right now. “That's not the point.” I say as firmly as I can. “I want to talk to Beetee. I'm taking the files.” I mimic grabbing the folder Peeta is holding and browse through it. “Aha! It says that Beetee was taken to the ranger lounge after he was found earlier this morning. Condition: never better.”

Peeta gives a breathy laugh. “You're not holding anything.” He shakes his head and holds up the file in front of me. He opens it up and starts reading. “Beetee Latier, missing hiker 1373. Control freak with no empathy. People bend over backwards to take care of him. Signed, park manager Katniss Everdeen.” He shows me the paper with my signature.

I should be concerned that Beetee knows how to forge my signature, but at the moment it's something else that causes me to worry. He overheard what I told Gale on the phone earlier. Of course he wouldn't want to talk to me. I'm the biggest jerk ever. “That's out of context.” I try to defend myself, knowing that I shouldn't.

Peeta shushes me and wraps an arm around me. The music starts all over again. “You thought about everything, Katniss. With Beetee gone and Gale and Johanna together there's nothing standing in our way.”

I'm confused. “What?”

“This is your dream, Katniss. This is why you played wingman for Gale. This is what's important to you.” He leans forward again, this time trying to kiss me.

I shove him off of me, enraged. “You are not Peeta!” I shout. “Because Peeta cares about Beetee. And I didn't push Gale and Johanna together so this would happen.” I move my hand between us. “I did it because I thought they were missing a chance to see if something could happen, and this would have been a bonus.”

Peeta lifts his eyebrow and smiles. Damn me and my big mouth.

I keep talking, aggravated. “We are not here. And I'm not staying here because I hate whoever you are!”

I walk away.

“You should probably storm off in place.” Beetee says.

But it's too late. I bang my head against the wall of the Dreamatorium, where the treeline starts, and fall on my ass.

The beach disappears. We are back in our apartment.

“Where do you wanna go next?” Beetee asks.

I massage my forehead. I'm so tired of his games right now. “I wanna be alone,” I mumble.

“Sounds good to me. Dreamatorium, execute simulation Katniss/Katniss.”

The Dreamatorium morphs once again. This time it's the study room.

“There,” I hear my voice say. “Now we're alone.”

I turn around to see a copy of me smiling. Gosh, how irritating can Beetee get? “Great, now you're me,” I say, standing up to face him.

“Why are you blowing our magic moment with Peeta?” she asks me, angry.

I roll my eyes. “It's not magic. It's not even real.”

My copy smiles. “But we love Peeta.”

“Not like this!” I spit out. “Not to the point that we play with our friends' lives to get what we want. We prefer to get lost in the memories that we share with Peeta, and we keep running the same scenario over and over hoping for a different result, dreaming that we had the guts back then to act on our feelings.”

She puts a hand on her chest. “Running scenarios? Careful now, you're starting to sound like Beetee.”

A sudden epiphany hits me. I sound like Beetee. What if I take it to the next level and start acting like him, just like he is acting like me?

“So... I shouldn't be saying things like...” I try to imitate Beetee's monotone voice as best as I can. “Star Wars. Mockingjay. Cougar Town. Cool, cool, cool.”

My copy looks at me with a mixture of fear and disbelief. “Stop it!”

But I'm on a mission now. Beetee is not the only one that can use the Dreamatorium to make things the way he wants them. “Pop culture, pop culture!” I say. “I'm on a TV show.”

“You're gonna get in trouble!”

Right in that moment, I turn into Beetee, colorful sweater and t-shirt and all. “Meta, meta.”

My copy steps back, terrified. “It's Beetee! I got a Beetee here!” she screams.

Cray, the campus head of security appears next to me. Beetee outline jumps on him. He grabs my arm forcefully. “That's it. I find you guilty of being Beetee. You're under arrest.”

He drags me into the hall, to a row of lockers. We stop in front of a locker covered in danger signs. Cray opens it and shoves me inside with a maniacal laugh.

The inside looks nothing like a locker. Mostly because it's as big as my bedroom. The place is completely empty except a figure slumped against the gray, metal wall, his wrist cuffed to a metal ring.

I recognize the outfit of the Crafter. “Beetee?”

He looks up at me, confused. “Beetee.”

I finally found him. The real Beetee, not the one being mean to our friends. I'm so relieved. “Yeah! I found you by turning into you. How cool is that?”

He looks away. He doesn't seem as thrilled as I am about this newfound ability of mine. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool.” His catchphrase doesn't have the usual wonder in it.

“Where are we?” I ask, casting a glance around us.

“We're inside a locker.” he deadpans. “It's where I spent a lot of time during high school.”

I turn back to be myself. Why would he think any of us, in this case me, would lock him in here? “You know how absurd it is to think that this is where we'd put you?”

“Well, I'm not stupid.” he says. “You can see I've increased the square footage. It's a metaphorical locker. It's a place where people like me are put when everyone has finally had enough of us.”

I roll my eyes. He's so dramatic sometimes.

Beetee keeps talking. “I've run the simulations, Katniss. I don't get married. I don't invent a billion dollar website to help people have sex. I don't make it into Sundance, Slamdance or Dance Pants. Gale invents Dance Pants in 2019, but don't tell him. He needs to stumble onto it.”

I need to stop his rambling. “All right, listen. The scenarios you run in here are great science fiction. They're impressive, detailed, insightful. But they're not accurate at all. Science fiction never has been. Look at 2001. Did we get a space odyssey? Nope. We just got snowboarding in the Olympics. Your simulations are just your anxieties. You're afraid you won't fit in and that you'll be alone. I got news for you. It's the same for all of us. So you'll never be alone and you'll always fit it.”

He looks at me with a sad, little face. But I can see the start of a new hope at the back of his eyes.

I keep talking. “I meddled with Gale and Johanna because I was trying to make life go according to a script. But I can't. You can't. We both need to get more used to winging it. It'll be less work.”

We share a little smile. Here it is, my weird friend.

“Let's get you out of here,” I tell him.

“I don't know how.” he says looking at his handcuffs. “These fake shackles don't have a fake key.”

I crouch down beside him. “Isn't that what a plasma spear is for?” I ask him holding up the weapon of the Crafter, materialized out of nowhere.

Beetee smiles a little. “Technically, no. But that's fine.”

I point the spear at the shackles. A ray of plasma energy sprouts out of the tip of the weapon, hitting the handcuffs and destroying them, freeing Beetee.

He massages his wrists.

“So, should we get back to lunch?” I ask him.

He cocks his head to the side. “I guess so. A bit more anticlimactic than I would have simulated it, but whatever.”

I scoff. “Anticlimactic? Dreamatorium, execute simulation Battle of the Tree Island.”

Standing up next to the Crafter, the Mockingjay juts her hand out to him. “The Reasoner and the Hunter have opened up a path for us.” she says. “What do you say, Crafter, should we go free our people?”

The Crafter looks up at her. He sees the determination in her eyes, the perspiration on her face, her black combat suit covered in dirt and blood. A new hope blossoms in the Crafter's heart. He'll stand with the Mockingjay till his last breath.

He grabs her hand and stands up.

They scream their battle cry, launching themselves against the Men in White. The Mockingjay grabs one of them by the neck and starts punching him in the guts.

“Katniss!” the man cry out in pain.

I immediately stop my assault and let go of Beetee. “Oh, my God! I'm so sorry!”

I help Beetee stand up. “No, no.” he says. “You're committing. This is good stuff.”

We share a big smile. I guess that I understand why Beetee and Gale think that this room is so special.

#LIP March Madness #loveinpanem #thg fanfiction #Katniss and Beetee now bff #there's a slight undertone of Everlark of course #I couldn't help myself #Introduction of Human Emotions in a Virtual System #things I write

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starcitizenprivateer · 7 years

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Whisperer in the Dark

Writer’s Note: Published originally in Jump Point 1.1, this story takes place before the events of The Lost Generation.

People complicate things. That’s what they’ve always been good at. Take a look at any functioning civilization and you will see chaos, confusion, and frustration. It could be human, Xi’an, Banu, Vanduul, whoever. We may look different, be built different, but boil us down and you’ll find the same insecurities, fears, and anxieties gnawing.

Tonya Oriel watched the yawning abyss outside the window. Kaceli’s Adagio in 4 gently wafted through the otherwise empty ship. Scanners cycled through their spectrums on the hunt for any flagged anomalies.

The void. It was pure. It was simple. It was permanent.

A calm serenity huddled around Tonya’s shoulders like a blanket, the kind that can only exist when you are the only person for thousands of kilometers. Everyone else can have Terra, Earth, or Titus, with their megacities teeming with people. Never a moment where there wasn’t a person above, beside or below you. Everything was noise. Tonya needed the silence.

Her ship, the Beacon, drifted through that silence. Tonya customized almost every hardpoint and pod with some form of scanner, deep-range comm system, or surveying tech to get her further and further from the noise.

The problem was that the noise kept following.

* * * *

After three weeks on the drift, Tonya couldn’t put it off any longer. She was due for a supply run and to sell off the data and minerals she’d collected. After repairs, new scrubbers, and a spectrum update, she hoped she’d have enough for some food.

The Xenia Shipping Hub in the Baker System had been the closest thing to a home she’d had for the past few years. Tonya set her approach through the shifting entry/exit patterns of ships. The station’s traffic was busier than usual. As soon as the Beacon docked, her screen buzzed with a handful of new messages from the spectrum. She passed them to her mobiGlas and went to the airlock.

Tonya paused by the entry and savored this last moment of solitude as the airlock cycled, then hit the button.

The sound of people swept inside like a wave. She took a second to acclimate, adjusted her bag and crossed into the masses.

Carl ran a small information network out of his bar, the Torchlight Express. An old surveyor for a long-defunct terraforming outfit, Carl traded moving minerals for slinging booze and information. Tonya had known him for years. As far as people went, Carl was a gem.

The Express was dead. Tonya checked local time. It was evening so there was no real reason why it should be like this. A group of prospectors sat at a table in the corner, engaged in a hushed conversation. Carl leaned against the bar, watching a sataball game on the wallscreen. His leathery fingers tapped out a beat to some song in his head.

He brightened up when he saw Tonya.

“Well, well, well, to what do we owe the honor, doctor?” He said with a grin.

“Don’t start, Carl.”

“Sure, sorry, doctor.” He must be bored; he only called her that when he wanted to pick a fight. Tonya slung her bag onto the ground and slid onto a stool.

“Anything interesting?” Tonya pulled her hair back into a tie.

“I’m great, Tonya, thanks for asking. Business is a little slow, but you know how it is.” Carl said sarcastically and slid a drink to her.

“Come on, Carl. I’m not gonna patronize you with small-talk.”

Carl sighed and looked around.

“At this point, I’ll take any patrons I can get.” He poured himself a drink from the dispenser. Tonya swiveled her mobiGlas around and showed him her manifest. He looked it over. “Running kinda light this time, huh?”

“I know. You know any buyers?”

“How much you looking to get?”

“Whatever I can,” Tonya said as she sipped. She could tell Carl was annoyed with the non-answer. “I need the money.”

“I might be able to get you ten.” He said after a long pause.

“I would give you my unborn child for ten.”

“With all the unborn kids you owe me, you better get started.” He said. Tonya smacked his arm.

One of the prospectors drifted over to the bar with empty glasses. He was young, one of those types who cultivated the dirty handsome look. Probably spent an hour perfecting it before going out.

“Another round.”

As Carl poured, the prospector looked at Tonya, giving his looks a chance to work their magic. They failed. Carl set a fresh batch of drinks down. The prospector paid and went back slightly deterred.

“I think someone liked you.” Carl teased.

“Not my type.”

“Living?”

“Exactly.” Tonya watched the prospectors. They were really in an overtly secretive conversation. “Any idea what they’re here for?”

“Of course I do.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“Nothing… well, not to me anyway.” Carl pulled an earpiece out and held it out to her. Tonya wiped it off and took a listen. Suddenly she could hear their conversation loud and clear. Tonya looked at Carl, stunned.

“You have mics on your tables?!” She whispered. Carl shushed her.

“I deal in information, honey, so yeah.” Carl said, almost offended that he wouldn’t listen in on his customers.

Tonya took another sip and listened to the prospectors. It only took a little while to catch up. Apparently Cort, the prospector who tried to woo Tonya with his ruggedness, got a tip from his uncle in the UEE Navy. The uncle had been running Search & Rescue drills in the Hades System when their scanners accidentally picked up a deposit of kherium on Hades II. Being the military, of course, they couldn’t do anything, but Cort and his buddies were fixing to sneak in there and harvest it for themselves.

Kherium was a hot commodity. If these prospectors were on the level, they were talking about a tidy little fortune. Certainly enough to patch up the Beacon, maybe even install some upgrades.

Even better, they obviously didn’t know how to find it. Kherium doesn’t show up on a standard metal or rad scan. It takes a specialist to find, much less extract without corrupting it. Fortunately for Tonya, she knew how to do both. “You’ve got that look.” Carl said and refilled her glass. “Good news?”

“I hope so, Carl, for both of us.”

* * * *

Carl offloaded her haul at a discount so she could set out as quick as possible. Last time she checked, the prospectors were still at the Express and from the sound of it, they wouldn’t leave for a couple hours, maybe a day.

Tonya disengaged the Beacon from the dock and was back in her beloved solitude. The engines hummed as they pushed her deeper into space, pushed her toward a lifeline.

The Hades System was a tomb, the final monument of an ancient civil war that obliterated an entire system and the race that inhabited it. Tonya had it on her list of places to study, but every year Hades was besieged by fresh batches of young scientists exploring it for their dissertation or treasure hunters looking for whatever weapon cracked Hades IV in half. So the system became more noise to avoid.

Tonya had to admit that passing Hades IV was always a thrill. It’s not every day you get to see the guts of a planet killed in its prime.

Then there were the whispers that the system was haunted. There was always some pilot who knew a guy who knew someone who had seen something while passing through the system. The stories ranged from unexplained technical malfunctions to full-on sightings of ghost cruisers. It was all nonsense.

There was a loose stream of ships passing through Hades. The general flight lane steered clear of the central planets. Tonya slowed her ship until there was a sizeable gap in the flow of traffic before veering off toward Hades II.

She passed a barrier of dead satellites and descended into Hades II’s churning atmosphere. The Beacon jolted when it hit the clouds. Visual went to nil and suddenly the ship was bathed in noise, screaming air, and pressure. Tonya kept an eye on her scopes and expanded the range on her proximity alerts to make sure she didn’t ram a mountain.

Suddenly the clouds gave way. The Beacon swooped into the light gravity above a pitch-black ocean. Tonya quickly recalibrated her thrusters for atmospheric flight and took a long look at the planet around her.

As was expected, it was a husk. There were signs of intelligent civilization all around but all of it was crumbling, charred, or destroyed. She passed over vast curved cities built atop sweeping arches meant to keep the buildings from ever touching the planet itself.

Tonya maintained a cruising altitude. The roar of her engines echoed through the vast empty landscape. The sun was another casualty of this system’s execution. The cloud systems never abated so the surface never saw sunlight. It was always bathed in a dark greyish green haze.

Tonya studied the topography to plot out a course and set the scanners to look for the unique kherium signature she had programmed. She engaged the auto-pilot and just looked out the window.

Being here now, she kicked herself for not coming sooner. It didn’t matter that this was one of the most scientifically scrutinized locales in the UEE. Seeing the vastness of the devastation with her own eyes, Tonya felt that tug that a good mystery has on the intellect. Who were they? How did they manage to so effectively wipe themselves out? How do we know they actually wiped themselves out?

A few hours passed with no luck. Tonya had a quick snack and ran through her exercise routine. She double-checked the settings on her scans for any errors on the initial input. A couple months ago, she was surveying a planet and found nothing, only to discover on her way back that there had been one setting off that scuttled the whole scan. It still bugged her. It was an amateur mistake.

She brought up some texts on Hades. Halfway through a paper on the exobiology of the Hadesians, her screen pinged. Tonya was over there like a shot.

The scope gave a faint indication of kherium below. She triple-checked the settings before getting her hopes up. They seemed legit. She looked out the front. A small city sat above endless sea of dead trees lay ahead. It looked like an orbital laser or something had hit it excising massively deep craters from buildings and ground.

Tonya took a closer look. The craters went about six hundred feet into the ground, revealing networks of underground tunnels. They looked like some kind of transport system.

Tonya looked for a suitable landing spot with cover from overhead flights. If she was still here when the prospectors showed up, her ship would be a dead giveaway and things would get complicated.

She strapped on her environment suit and respirator. She could check the ship’s scanners through her mobiGlas but threw another handheld scanner/mapper in with her mining gear just in case. Finally, she powered up her transport crate, hoping the anti-gravity buffers would be more than enough to lug the kherium back.

Tonya stepped out onto the surface. The wind whipped around her, furiously kicking up waves of dust. She pushed the crate in front of her through the blasted forest. Gnarled branches clawed at her suit as she passed. The city loomed overhead, black silhouettes against the grey-green clouds.

Her curiosity got the better of her so Tonya decided to take a ramp up to the city streets. She told herself the detour would be easier on the crate’s battery. Smooth streets are easier for the anti-grav compensators to analyze than rough terrain.

Tonya moved through the barren, empty streets in awe. She studied the strange curvature of the architecture; each displayed an utterly alien yet brilliant understanding of pressure and weight dispersal. This whole place seemed at once natural and odd, intellectually fascinating and emotionally draining.

The kherium signature was still weak but there. Tonya maneuvered the crate around destroyed teardrop shaped vehicles. Pit-marks in the buildings and streets led her to suspect that a battle had taken place here however many hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The crater closest to the kherium was a perfect hole punched through the middle of the city into the ground. Tonya stood at the edge, looking for the easiest way down. The crate could float down but she would have to climb.

In a matter of minutes she secured a line with safeties for herself and the crate. She stepped over the edge and slowly rappelled down the sheer wall. The crate was making what should be a simple descent a little more complicated. The anti-grav buffers meant that any kind of force could cause the crate to drift away, so Tonya needed to keep a hand on it at all times. To make matters worse, the wind started picking up, flinging small rocks, branches and pieces of debris through the air.

A shrill scream tore through the air. Tonya froze. She heard it again and looked for the source. The screaming was just exposed supports bending in the wind.

Suddenly she realized, the crate had slipped out of her grasp. It slowly drifted further out over the crater, the swirling wind batted it around like a toy. Tonya strained to reach it but the crate floated just out of reach. She kicked off the wall and swung through the churning air. Her fingertips barely snagged the cargo before she slammed back against the wall of the crater.

Her vision blurred and she couldn’t breathe from the impact. The HUD went screwy. Finally she caught her breath. She took a moment or two before continuing down.

The scanner from the Beacon couldn’t isolate the signature any clearer to determine depth so she had to rely on her handheld. The kherium looked like it was situated between two tunnels.

Tonya secured the crate, climbed into the upper tunnel, and tied off her ropes. She checked her suit’s integrity in the debris-storm. The computer was a little fuzzy but gave her an okay.

She turned on a flashlight and activated the external mics on her suit. The tunnel was a perfectly carved tube that sloped into the darkness. Tonya couldn’t see any kind of power or rail system to confirm her transport tube theory. She started walking.

Hours passed in the darkness. Tonya felt a little queasy so she decided to rest for a few minutes. She sipped on the water reserve and double-checked her scanner. She was still above the kherium and it was still showing up as being in front of her. That much hadn’t changed.

She heard something. Very faint. She brought up the audio settings and pumped the gain on the external mics. A sea of white noise filled her ears. She didn’t move until she heard it again. Something being dragged then stopped.

IR and night vision windows appeared in the corners of her HUD. She couldn’t see anything. In the vast stretches of these tunnels, there’s no telling how far that sound had travelled. Still, she went to the crate and pulled the shotgun out. She made sure it was loaded, even tried to remember the last time she had cause to use it.

Tonya started moving a little more cautious. She doubted it was the prospectors. For all she knew it could be some other pirate or smuggler down here. Regardless, she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The tunnel started to expand before finally giving way to a vast darkness. Tonya’s night vision couldn’t even see the end. She dug through her supplies and picked out some old flares. She sparked one.

It was a city. A mirror city to be precise. While the one on the surface reached for the sky, this one was carved down into the planet. Walkways connected the various structures built out of the walls on the various levels. She’d never heard of anything like this before. Everyone speculated that it was civil war that destroyed this system. Was this a city of the other side?

She came to an intersection and the first real sign that the fighting had spread here. A barricade of melted vehicles blocked one of the tunnels. The walls were charred from either explosions or laser-blasts. A shadow had even been burned into the wall.

Tonya stood in front of it. The Hadesian seemed to have a roundish bulky main body with multiple thin appendages. A thousand year old stain on a wall is hardly much to go by, but even as a silhouette, it looked terrified.

A cavernous structure was built into the wall nearby. Tonya approached to examine the craftsmanship. It was certainly more ornate than most of the other buildings down here. There weren’t doors down here, just narrow oval portals. There was some kind of tech integrated into the sides.

Tonya decided to take a look. It was a deep bowl with rows of enclosures built into the sides. All of them were angled towards a single point, a marble-like cylinder at the bottom of the bowl. Tonya descended toward it. There was a small item sitting on top. She kept her light and shotgun trained on it. It was made from a similar marble-like stone as the cylinder. Tonya looked around. Was this some kind of church?

She leaned down to get a better look at the item, careful not to disturb anything. It was a small carving. It wasn’t a Hadesian shape. Not one she was familiar with. She weighed whether she should take it.

Tonya’s head suddenly swam. She stumbled back and steadied herself on the enclosures. After a moment or two it passed. A subtle stabbing pain started to ache in her arm. She stretched it, trying to work out the ache. She took a last look at the small carving.

Tonya stepped out of the ornate building and brought up her scanner. The kherium was close. She followed the scanner’s directions into the dark and twisted tunnels. Her eyes stayed locked on the growing glow of the screen. She tripped over something. The scanner clattered across the floor. It echoed for a minute.

Tonya shook her head slightly. This place… She turned her lights back right into the face of a rotted corpse, its mouth open in a silent scream.

“Hell!” she yelled as she scuffled away from it. She looked around. There was another form on the floor about twenty feet away. A strongbox sat between them. The initial shock subsided.

Tonya got up, grabbed her scanner and walked over to the first body. Its skull had been cracked open. There was no weapon though. No club or bar nearby. That was odd. The other one had clearly shot himself. The gun was still in his hand. They were definitely human and based on their clothes; they were probably surveyors or pirates. She didn’t know what kind of elements were in the air here so she couldn’t give an accurate guess how long they’d been dead but suspected months.

She shuffled over to the strongbox and kicked it open. Kherium. Already extracted and carefully wrapped. Sweet relief drifted through the exhaustion.

“Thanks guys.” Tonya gave them a quick salute. “Sorry you aren’t here to share it.” Something flitted across her IR window.

Tonya snatched up her shotgun and aimed. It was gone. Her breathing became rapid and shallow as she waited. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She pumped the gain on the external mics again and scanned the hall. The whole time, telling herself to calm down. Calm down.

Every movement of her suit amplified a hundred times in her ears. She tracked the rifle through the tunnel, looking for whatever was in here with her. Something came through the static. Close.

“Welcome home,” it hissed.

Tonya fired into the dark. She spun behind her. Nothing down there. She racked another round and blasted anyway. The shots blew out the speakers in her helmet.

She grabbed the strongbox and ran.

Ran through the slippery, sloping tunnels of pitch-black, now in total silence. She passed the intersection, where the Hadesian still raised its arms in terror. She kept looking back. She could swear something was there, just beyond the range of the IR, watching from the static.

Tonya sprinted up a rise to see the grim overcast light of the exit, now just a pinhole. Her legs burned. Her arm killed. All she wanted to do was go to sleep but she wasn’t going to stop. If she stopped, she knew she would never leave.

She pulled herself up the rope and pushed through the blasted forest back to the Beacon. Thirty seconds later, the thrusters were scorching earth. One minute later, she broke atmo.

As Hades II drifted away, she tried to steady her nerves. Her environment suit slowly twisted on the hanger in the decontamination chamber. She noticed something.

The respiratory functions on the back were damaged. The fall in the crater must have done it. It bashed up the feeds and she was getting too much oxygen. The headaches, nausea, and fatigue… even that voice. Even though it chilled her still. They were all probably just hallucinations and reactions to oxygen poisoning.

Probably.

Tonya set a course back for the Xenia Shipping Hub in Baker. She had goods to sell, true, but right now, she wanted to be around people.

She wanted to be around the noise.

Back in the decontamination chamber, the tiny Hadesian carving sat on the floor.

THE END

#star citizen #squadron 42

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inexcon · 7 years

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