Strange 2/?
A 20 in 09 fic. Prompt: Strange. This is Part Two of at least three.
There was a time when the world made sense. There was a time when stargate went with SG-1. That time is gone, just like David. -Timo Sonnenschein, Gh'au Shiplog#24601
Linke wished they would have had time for explanations but Frank was adamant that they leave as soon as possible. He shoved Timo and the shells in the van, Jan not needing any incentive to follow after them. Linke could only clutch the door handle as Frank floored the gas. Frank talked rapid-fire as they drove.
“We’re going to drop Jan off at the moon base. If we try to take him into zero space, the radiation will kill him.” Linke didn’t bother to say ‘I know.’
“Why can’t he just stay here?” Timo asked. Frank grit his teeth.
“If he stays here, the Council will kill him,” Linke said. “Regular humans aren’t supposed to know about non-Terrans. Hybrids are allowed but he’s not.”
Timo’s eyes widened and, for once, he had nothing to say. Linke thanked the Unnamed Gods for that blessing.
They reached the warehouse quickly. It was in a terrible part of time, the sort of place odd sounds wouldn’t be questioned so much as dutifully ignored, but most of what lay before them was holographic projections anyway. Frank drove straight into what appeared to be a cement wall, passing through with all the ease of walking through an open door. Linke kept his eyes studiously forward, knowing Frank would leap into action at any second. He heard Jan gasp. Timo made no sound.
Frank wrenched his door open, snapping orders to Jan and Linke, the latter of whom ignored them. Jan grabbed the shells and stood nervously at Frank’s side while Linke took his time making sure Timo was halfway alright. He took a great deal of pleasure at the purple color around Frank’s cheeks.
“Get in,” Frank ordered, gesturing behind him.
“Get in what?” Timo asked. “There’s nothing there.” Linke cringed. Really bad timing, Timo, he thought. Really fucking bad timing. Frank looked pissed.
“Just do as he says,” Linke said, trying to move his mouth as little as possible.
“But there’s nothing ther-”
Linke grasped the back of Timo’s shirt and shoved him forward, pushing through the hologram before he could say something stupider. Once they passed the barrier, Timo stopped to stare at the apartment sized hatch. Linke glanced up, his eyes sweeping the ship. Last time he had been inside of there had been well over two years ago. Not a lot seemed to have changed. Frank certainly hadn’t.
“Linke, power it up,” came the order the second Frank and Jan crossed the barrier.
“I can’t. I don’t have the e-”
“Then show Timo,” Frank snapped, cutting him off. “We don’t have time for this. The longer we stay here-”
“-the worse it gets. I know.”
Linke chewed it over in his mind, trying to think of a way to make this work.
He sighed and grabbed Timo by the wrist, dragging him to the converter just inside the hull from the engines. Timo seemed to be in a daze, not that Linke entirely blamed him, considering it was his first time inside a ship. He had to all but slam the rapper’s palm onto the converter to get the flow going, wondering whether it was a smart idea to use such an obviously unstable source but, really, what choice did they have?
The engines hummed as energy poured in. The cabin grew increasingly warmer until the temperature was just below uncomfortable. Frank checked the various screens, punching buttons in a seemingly random array. He gripped the clutch, pulling it back slowly. The engines hummed louder.
“Hold on,” Linke murmured to Timo.
With an awful screech, they were off.
“Just a little longer and we’ll be off this dratted planet,” Frank called from the bridge. “We’ve reached the last stretch of the thermosphere. Engine speed at 2500 kilometers per second.” Linke nodded, only vaguely aware of what Frank was talking about or that he was talking at all. Timo was growing increasingly anxious, though he was hiding it well, and that was eating away at Linke’s focus. His overwhelming urge was to yank Timo off the bridge and get him as far away from the vid screens and the controls as he could. Frank was spouting jargon like nobody’s business and that, coupled with his sudden animosity towards the rapper, was making things worse. A confused and uneasy Timo was not a good thing.
Just as suddenly as they had lifted off, the sound of the engines calmed to a dull roar. Frank checked the vid screens once more before sitting back and stretching his arms behind his head.
“We should reach the moonbase within a few hours, no more than six at this speed.”
Timo’s eyes flicked from Frank to Linke but he said not a word. Linke nudged him.
“Why don’t you go find Jan? He’s gonna need someone to distract him for a while.”
ØØØ
Linke scratched at his left arm, at the tattoos there. It had started as an attempt to wile the time away and to keep out of Frank’s hair; now it had turned into a question and answer session with Timo and Jan alternating.
“So you’re an alien?” Timo asked. Linke shook his head.
“I’m human but my people left Earth a long time ago. Humans have had the capacity for space travel since before the Roman Empire. Most just haven’t been able to survive the radiation. The Apollo moon landings are as far as normal humans can get. A regular human gets past this solar system and they die from exposure.”
“Uh, so this…thing between us, what it? I know I didn’t feel this way just a couple days ago.”
Linke smiled.
“I didn’t either. My people are different from normal humans. There isn’t quite the need to get married and settle down since any union among Halarrans is considered acceptable if it produces children so long as both parents provide for the child. We do get lonely, though, with our long lives so a thousand or so years ago the Gods gave us a blessing in the form of chu’bid bonds, special bonds that form between two people to facilitate long-term companionship.”
“You’re religious?” Timo asked incredulously.
“I believe there are spirits out there that brought us together,” Linke said serenely. He had spent the last few hours searching for a sign that his suspicions were correct, that his mysterious illness had been simply a trial to prove his worth as a proper chub’bid partners. Everyone knew that these things were rather mysterious. One had to experience them firsthand to truly understand. “We’re somewhat like soul mates, Timo.”
Frank snorted. He had been listening to the conversation but this was the first time he had actually said anything.
“Not even close. You’re feeding off his energy, Timo. It’s a drug to you, one that you’re addicted to. Every time you two get together, you get a hit and you’re good for a while. The longer you stay away, the more you need. You start pulling from anywhere you can, taking little bits every day but getting more and more as time goes on until you drain everything else. You fucked Juri’s power up badly until it was almost down to nothing and then you centered on Linke until you nearly drained him, too. That’s why he’s been in so much pain lately. You’re killing him by staying away.”
“Lately, your energy needs have been increasing. Basic electricity wasn’t enough to sustain your body, at least not in the amounts you were exposed to, so you keyed into Linke’s life source. That’s how we’re in this mess.”
“He’s a receiver, he can’t send electrical energy so most people can’t pick up on his output. His energy signature is very different from mine or yours and you somehow-” Frank’s emphasis on somehow made Timo flush- “got addicted to it.”
Linke glared at Frank. “That’s not true, Timo. It was a test by the Gods. It’s in no way your doing.”
“Then explain why you weren’t the only one affected,” Frank demanded nastily, his head cocked towards Timo. “Tell me why you didn’t even start looking at Timo till this shit went down.”
“The Unnamed Gods were testing me!”
“Your Gods are a fucking joke!”
“You wouldn’t understand, you’re not Halarran!”
“I fucking well understand that he’s killing you and you’re too damn blind by your mystical crap to realize it!”
ØØØ
“Then David is just like Juri. He’s real, just without a body, right?” Jan asked. Juri’s shell was still in his lap, held protectively between Jan’s folded legs. Jan had flat out refused to let Juri or David out of his sight since lift-off, for which Linke was grateful. Timo was in no shape to cope with a low-functioning shell. If anything, he’d make the situation worse when he drained the absolute reserves from the shell.
“He’s a sensory hologram. He can make you think you smell him, hear him, even feel him but there’s nothing there. David’s model is top of the line, though. He’s hard to tell. The artificial intelligence’s astounding.”
“It’s not AI,” Linke said. Frank rolled his eyes.
“Of course not, if you really believe that garbage about essences and brain technology. I’ll concede that David was a person once but he’s not now. You need a body to be human and a shell doesn’t cut it.”
Linke blinked, rearranging his thoughts, trying to make Frank’s words go away. That discussion had taken place a long time ago, when he and Frank had first truly met, when Linke had first seen the sweet, home-sick southern boy façade flake away to reveal the diva offworlder beneath.
Linke shook his head. “No.” He licked his bottom lip and frowned, trying to think of something unbiased to tell Jan. There were conflicting theories about the nature of shell people, ranging from an absolute belief in their humanity to the far more conservative views that Frank held. It was tempting to start up a debate with Jan, very tempting but they couldn’t afford a major argument with Frank at the moment. Frank, lead singer of Panik, could take a fight any day with his mellow personality. Frank the half-Terran pilot was far more mercurial in temperament. It was a pity; Linke would have loved to go into it with someone who hadn’t grown up with the technology.
“David is an experimental technology, that is an indisputable fact. Juri, as you said, is a person without a body. He has a functioning brain stem that uses the shell for sensory input. He’s very much alive but completely dependent on that shell for life support. As such, he can be removed from that shell and placed into another one, tapping directly into any computer network that can support him.
David isn’t like that. Juri was dying when he was removed from his body. David was never removed.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“David is an imprint, a copy of himself.” Linke gestured but realized Jan was not making the right connection. He was slightly disturbed by the idea of being the first person to explain this to Jan, wondering whether his explanation would have a lasting effect, positive or negative. “It’s a bit like saving a file onto a disc or burning a CD, in that it’s a perfect copy of the original just not the original.”
“A clone,” Jan said dubiously.
“Not re-”
Suddenly, the ship banked hard to port and they were thrown across the room, the engines screeching.
“Juri!” Jan screamed, grabbing for the shell as they rocked dangerously back and forth. Linke groaned and got up onto unsteady feet, the room blacking out as he moved forward, clutching at the walls he barely remembered as he made his way to the controls and Frank.
“What happened?!” he yelled over the engines, his voice cracking slightly with the worry that was impossible to hide. Frank whipped his head around, his teeth gritted in a hard line.
“Something hit us, obviously.”
Linke couldn’t resist rolling his eyes.
“Don’t be a snothead. I came up here to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine as you can see,” Frank said, flicking a toggle-shaped button. His eyes were already back on the controls, his face a bored mask. “Go back to playing with Timo or whatever it is you two get up to together.”
“I wasn’t with Timo,” Linke said acidly. Frank was getting on his last nerves. Linke really wanted to take a swipe at the pilot, knock some goddamn manners into his Arrogancy. “I do do things other than spend time with him.”
“Sure you do,” Frank muttered, not deigning to look back at Linke.
“Fuck you,” Linke snapped. He stormed out of the bridge, wishing very much that the hydraulics on the door would allow him to slam it.
He was out of the cabin too soon to see Frank smile.
ØØØ
It was little more than two hours more before they reached the moonbase. Frank took Jan and Linke onto the bridge and sealed the doors so that Timo couldn’t hear a thing. He was anxious, not content to pace back and forth but unable to find anything better to do.
From Frank’s talking earlier, Timo could figure out that Jan was going to leave them very soon for some reason he didn’t honestly understand. All this talk of energy sucking and the weird little bit with Linke and the room off the bridge had done nothing to ease Timo’s confusion. Something was wrong with him, wrong enough that he could go into space and Jan couldn’t.
Timo didn’t feel like he was sucking energy out of anything. He hadn’t felt anything, not even a jolt when Linke had placed his hand down on that machine and the engines had started.
Well, if he really thought about it, he might have felt something. A faint burning or something. There had been heat involved but Frank had expected Linke to be able to do what he had made Timo do. Timo frowned but didn’t stop his pacing.
He pressed his ear to the bridge door, hoping to hear something. He might as well have been listening to a brick wall. Timo growled and slammed his fist into the door. Surprisingly, it opened and Timo found himself being crushed into a hug by Jan, the DJ looking almost tearful.
“I don’t know when we’re gonna see each other again,” he said. “Frank didn’t want me to but I wanted to say goodbye before I go. I promise I’ll take care of David for you.”
Timo nodded, his arms neither holding nor pushing Jan away. He was confused.
“We’re here already? Why’re you taking…him?” Timo couldn’t bear to say David. That thing wasn’t David.
“Chris says I can fix them at the base,” Jan said, smiling weakly up at Timo. “When you come back, they’ll be back to normal.”
“Jan-” Timo began. “David’s not ever going to be back to normal.” Jan pulled away from him and looked at him fiercely.
“Not you, too. Frank doesn’t think Juri’s real but I know he is. He’s got thoughts and feelings that are too smart to not be human. He’s real,” Jan said sadly, petting Juri’s shell like a lap dog. He looked up at Timo, straight into his eyes. “And I want him back.”
ØØØ
Frank scrubbed his hand through his brown hair and bit the inside of his lip, suppressing the urge to say a few choice words. Linke was kneeling next to Timo, who was laying on his side, dead asleep on the floor of the bridge. The bassist looked worried, exhausted, obviously reluctant to leave Timo there alone.
Frank said emotionlessly.
Linke said, his eyes not moving from where Timo’s chest rose and fell. Frank’s brow creased.
Linke whispered. Frank scowled.
Linke said, glancing back at his friend for a moment before turning back to Timo. He traced down Timo’s shoulder to his elbow, stroking it gently.
Frank’s eyes flashed.
he spat sarcastically.
Frank nodded.
Neither spoke. Timo stirred slightly but did not awaken.
“You can’t sleep on the floor.”
Frank gave Linke a dubious look.
Linke protested.
Frank shook his head.
Linke paused.
Frank grinned.
ØØØ
Timo stared out the viewport. Outside was a black abyss of swirling stars and asteroid belts, cold, lifeless, a complete vacuum. The pressure on the cabin had to be enormous. Surely their oxygen supplies were running low.
"That's why they have the plants," Linke said, settling down next to him. Timo glanced at him. He was still unused to the sudden need for proximity with the bassist. It wasn't like he had ever been interested before now. Every second they spent apart, Timo felt guilty, wondering how long it would be before Linke started fading away.He still didn't understand what was going on. Frank's words scared him, honestly. The very idea that he was feeding off of Linke, that he'd been feeding off of David and Juri, scared the hell out of him. He'd never felt it, not a single bit. Timo wanted to tell Frank he was wrong, that there was a possibility that these feelings he had for Linke were something else entirely.
"Thought you couldn't read my mind," he said, looking back out the viewport. Nothing had changed. The points of light were lightyears away. The zero space jump had only been able to take them so far. Frank had explained it to him- well, Linke, to be honest but it had bled through quite clearly to Timo. Zero space jumps were inaccurate and because of that dangerous. Without the ability to precisely determine coordinates, it was difficult to avoid asteroids and other space debris, which tended to coalesce around planetary systems. Jumping from one solar system to another was easy, the coordinates were able to be jumped by a rough hundred thousand kilometers; jumping any closer was like closing your eyes and pressing a random button on a video game console. You would certainly get somewhere in the general area of what you wanted but the likelihood of such a reckless act turning out well were zero to none. It was only when Timo realized that Frank was speaking in what he would call Terran metaphors that he realized the speech was meant for him and not Linke. Frank had, after the initial few cutting words and half-fights, largely ignored Timo. It was obvious he was angry about more than he was letting on.
"And what would you be thinking about other than the massive waste of energy it took to get into orbit?"
"Why shouldn't I? I've never driven a car and yet I just fucked up the whole ozone layer to save my own ass."
"It's no more than a mid-size factory would put out."
"It's still a fucking waste."
Linke’s words only distracted Timo for a few seconds before the awful thoughts started seeping in again. Timo remembered the screams. No one else had heard them, David had asked Timo if he was okay. Was that his programming? To pretend and tell Timo what he wanted to hear? If David was just a computer program playing off his senses, had Timo ever had a best friend? Or was David some sort of intricate toy, an imaginary friend he got along with so well because David was made to agree with everything he had ever said.
Linke wrapped an arm around him, pulling Timo into his side.
"Shh," he whispered. "It's okay, Timo."
Timo realized he was crying. He reached up to wipe the tears away but Linke was already there, drying them on his sleeve. Timo choked on a sob, cuddling into Linke's chest. He wasn't going to hurt anybody again. He had to touch Linke, no matter their feelings for each other, or Linke would start to weaken. The screaming would come back. This time Timo would know it was because he was killing Linke slowly.
There was a time when the world made sense. There was a time when stargate went with SG-1. That time is gone, just like David. -Timo Sonnenschein, Gh'au Shiplog#24601
Linke wished they would have had time for explanations but Frank was adamant that they leave as soon as possible. He shoved Timo and the shells in the van, Jan not needing any incentive to follow after them. Linke could only clutch the door handle as Frank floored the gas. Frank talked rapid-fire as they drove.
“We’re going to drop Jan off at the moon base. If we try to take him into zero space, the radiation will kill him.” Linke didn’t bother to say ‘I know.’
“Why can’t he just stay here?” Timo asked. Frank grit his teeth.
“If he stays here, the Council will kill him,” Linke said. “Regular humans aren’t supposed to know about non-Terrans. Hybrids are allowed but he’s not.”
Timo’s eyes widened and, for once, he had nothing to say. Linke thanked the Unnamed Gods for that blessing.
They reached the warehouse quickly. It was in a terrible part of time, the sort of place odd sounds wouldn’t be questioned so much as dutifully ignored, but most of what lay before them was holographic projections anyway. Frank drove straight into what appeared to be a cement wall, passing through with all the ease of walking through an open door. Linke kept his eyes studiously forward, knowing Frank would leap into action at any second. He heard Jan gasp. Timo made no sound.
Frank wrenched his door open, snapping orders to Jan and Linke, the latter of whom ignored them. Jan grabbed the shells and stood nervously at Frank’s side while Linke took his time making sure Timo was halfway alright. He took a great deal of pleasure at the purple color around Frank’s cheeks.
“Get in,” Frank ordered, gesturing behind him.
“Get in what?” Timo asked. “There’s nothing there.” Linke cringed. Really bad timing, Timo, he thought. Really fucking bad timing. Frank looked pissed.
“Just do as he says,” Linke said, trying to move his mouth as little as possible.
“But there’s nothing ther-”
Linke grasped the back of Timo’s shirt and shoved him forward, pushing through the hologram before he could say something stupider. Once they passed the barrier, Timo stopped to stare at the apartment sized hatch. Linke glanced up, his eyes sweeping the ship. Last time he had been inside of there had been well over two years ago. Not a lot seemed to have changed. Frank certainly hadn’t.
“Linke, power it up,” came the order the second Frank and Jan crossed the barrier.
“I can’t. I don’t have the e-”
“Then show Timo,” Frank snapped, cutting him off. “We don’t have time for this. The longer we stay here-”
“-the worse it gets. I know.”
Linke chewed it over in his mind, trying to think of a way to make this work.
He sighed and grabbed Timo by the wrist, dragging him to the converter just inside the hull from the engines. Timo seemed to be in a daze, not that Linke entirely blamed him, considering it was his first time inside a ship. He had to all but slam the rapper’s palm onto the converter to get the flow going, wondering whether it was a smart idea to use such an obviously unstable source but, really, what choice did they have?
The engines hummed as energy poured in. The cabin grew increasingly warmer until the temperature was just below uncomfortable. Frank checked the various screens, punching buttons in a seemingly random array. He gripped the clutch, pulling it back slowly. The engines hummed louder.
“Hold on,” Linke murmured to Timo.
With an awful screech, they were off.
“Just a little longer and we’ll be off this dratted planet,” Frank called from the bridge. “We’ve reached the last stretch of the thermosphere. Engine speed at 2500 kilometers per second.” Linke nodded, only vaguely aware of what Frank was talking about or that he was talking at all. Timo was growing increasingly anxious, though he was hiding it well, and that was eating away at Linke’s focus. His overwhelming urge was to yank Timo off the bridge and get him as far away from the vid screens and the controls as he could. Frank was spouting jargon like nobody’s business and that, coupled with his sudden animosity towards the rapper, was making things worse. A confused and uneasy Timo was not a good thing.
Just as suddenly as they had lifted off, the sound of the engines calmed to a dull roar. Frank checked the vid screens once more before sitting back and stretching his arms behind his head.
“We should reach the moonbase within a few hours, no more than six at this speed.”
Timo’s eyes flicked from Frank to Linke but he said not a word. Linke nudged him.
“Why don’t you go find Jan? He’s gonna need someone to distract him for a while.”
ØØØ
Linke scratched at his left arm, at the tattoos there. It had started as an attempt to wile the time away and to keep out of Frank’s hair; now it had turned into a question and answer session with Timo and Jan alternating.
“So you’re an alien?” Timo asked. Linke shook his head.
“I’m human but my people left Earth a long time ago. Humans have had the capacity for space travel since before the Roman Empire. Most just haven’t been able to survive the radiation. The Apollo moon landings are as far as normal humans can get. A regular human gets past this solar system and they die from exposure.”
“Uh, so this…thing between us, what it? I know I didn’t feel this way just a couple days ago.”
Linke smiled.
“I didn’t either. My people are different from normal humans. There isn’t quite the need to get married and settle down since any union among Halarrans is considered acceptable if it produces children so long as both parents provide for the child. We do get lonely, though, with our long lives so a thousand or so years ago the Gods gave us a blessing in the form of chu’bid bonds, special bonds that form between two people to facilitate long-term companionship.”
“You’re religious?” Timo asked incredulously.
“I believe there are spirits out there that brought us together,” Linke said serenely. He had spent the last few hours searching for a sign that his suspicions were correct, that his mysterious illness had been simply a trial to prove his worth as a proper chub’bid partners. Everyone knew that these things were rather mysterious. One had to experience them firsthand to truly understand. “We’re somewhat like soul mates, Timo.”
Frank snorted. He had been listening to the conversation but this was the first time he had actually said anything.
“Not even close. You’re feeding off his energy, Timo. It’s a drug to you, one that you’re addicted to. Every time you two get together, you get a hit and you’re good for a while. The longer you stay away, the more you need. You start pulling from anywhere you can, taking little bits every day but getting more and more as time goes on until you drain everything else. You fucked Juri’s power up badly until it was almost down to nothing and then you centered on Linke until you nearly drained him, too. That’s why he’s been in so much pain lately. You’re killing him by staying away.”
“Lately, your energy needs have been increasing. Basic electricity wasn’t enough to sustain your body, at least not in the amounts you were exposed to, so you keyed into Linke’s life source. That’s how we’re in this mess.”
“He’s a receiver, he can’t send electrical energy so most people can’t pick up on his output. His energy signature is very different from mine or yours and you somehow-” Frank’s emphasis on somehow made Timo flush- “got addicted to it.”
Linke glared at Frank. “That’s not true, Timo. It was a test by the Gods. It’s in no way your doing.”
“Then explain why you weren’t the only one affected,” Frank demanded nastily, his head cocked towards Timo. “Tell me why you didn’t even start looking at Timo till this shit went down.”
“The Unnamed Gods were testing me!”
“Your Gods are a fucking joke!”
“You wouldn’t understand, you’re not Halarran!”
“I fucking well understand that he’s killing you and you’re too damn blind by your mystical crap to realize it!”
ØØØ
“Then David is just like Juri. He’s real, just without a body, right?” Jan asked. Juri’s shell was still in his lap, held protectively between Jan’s folded legs. Jan had flat out refused to let Juri or David out of his sight since lift-off, for which Linke was grateful. Timo was in no shape to cope with a low-functioning shell. If anything, he’d make the situation worse when he drained the absolute reserves from the shell.
“He’s a sensory hologram. He can make you think you smell him, hear him, even feel him but there’s nothing there. David’s model is top of the line, though. He’s hard to tell. The artificial intelligence’s astounding.”
“It’s not AI,” Linke said. Frank rolled his eyes.
“Of course not, if you really believe that garbage about essences and brain technology. I’ll concede that David was a person once but he’s not now. You need a body to be human and a shell doesn’t cut it.”
Linke blinked, rearranging his thoughts, trying to make Frank’s words go away. That discussion had taken place a long time ago, when he and Frank had first truly met, when Linke had first seen the sweet, home-sick southern boy façade flake away to reveal the diva offworlder beneath.
Linke shook his head. “No.” He licked his bottom lip and frowned, trying to think of something unbiased to tell Jan. There were conflicting theories about the nature of shell people, ranging from an absolute belief in their humanity to the far more conservative views that Frank held. It was tempting to start up a debate with Jan, very tempting but they couldn’t afford a major argument with Frank at the moment. Frank, lead singer of Panik, could take a fight any day with his mellow personality. Frank the half-Terran pilot was far more mercurial in temperament. It was a pity; Linke would have loved to go into it with someone who hadn’t grown up with the technology.
“David is an experimental technology, that is an indisputable fact. Juri, as you said, is a person without a body. He has a functioning brain stem that uses the shell for sensory input. He’s very much alive but completely dependent on that shell for life support. As such, he can be removed from that shell and placed into another one, tapping directly into any computer network that can support him.
David isn’t like that. Juri was dying when he was removed from his body. David was never removed.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“David is an imprint, a copy of himself.” Linke gestured but realized Jan was not making the right connection. He was slightly disturbed by the idea of being the first person to explain this to Jan, wondering whether his explanation would have a lasting effect, positive or negative. “It’s a bit like saving a file onto a disc or burning a CD, in that it’s a perfect copy of the original just not the original.”
“A clone,” Jan said dubiously.
“Not re-”
Suddenly, the ship banked hard to port and they were thrown across the room, the engines screeching.
“Juri!” Jan screamed, grabbing for the shell as they rocked dangerously back and forth. Linke groaned and got up onto unsteady feet, the room blacking out as he moved forward, clutching at the walls he barely remembered as he made his way to the controls and Frank.
“What happened?!” he yelled over the engines, his voice cracking slightly with the worry that was impossible to hide. Frank whipped his head around, his teeth gritted in a hard line.
“Something hit us, obviously.”
Linke couldn’t resist rolling his eyes.
“Don’t be a snothead. I came up here to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine as you can see,” Frank said, flicking a toggle-shaped button. His eyes were already back on the controls, his face a bored mask. “Go back to playing with Timo or whatever it is you two get up to together.”
“I wasn’t with Timo,” Linke said acidly. Frank was getting on his last nerves. Linke really wanted to take a swipe at the pilot, knock some goddamn manners into his Arrogancy. “I do do things other than spend time with him.”
“Sure you do,” Frank muttered, not deigning to look back at Linke.
“Fuck you,” Linke snapped. He stormed out of the bridge, wishing very much that the hydraulics on the door would allow him to slam it.
He was out of the cabin too soon to see Frank smile.
ØØØ
It was little more than two hours more before they reached the moonbase. Frank took Jan and Linke onto the bridge and sealed the doors so that Timo couldn’t hear a thing. He was anxious, not content to pace back and forth but unable to find anything better to do.
From Frank’s talking earlier, Timo could figure out that Jan was going to leave them very soon for some reason he didn’t honestly understand. All this talk of energy sucking and the weird little bit with Linke and the room off the bridge had done nothing to ease Timo’s confusion. Something was wrong with him, wrong enough that he could go into space and Jan couldn’t.
Timo didn’t feel like he was sucking energy out of anything. He hadn’t felt anything, not even a jolt when Linke had placed his hand down on that machine and the engines had started.
Well, if he really thought about it, he might have felt something. A faint burning or something. There had been heat involved but Frank had expected Linke to be able to do what he had made Timo do. Timo frowned but didn’t stop his pacing.
He pressed his ear to the bridge door, hoping to hear something. He might as well have been listening to a brick wall. Timo growled and slammed his fist into the door. Surprisingly, it opened and Timo found himself being crushed into a hug by Jan, the DJ looking almost tearful.
“I don’t know when we’re gonna see each other again,” he said. “Frank didn’t want me to but I wanted to say goodbye before I go. I promise I’ll take care of David for you.”
Timo nodded, his arms neither holding nor pushing Jan away. He was confused.
“We’re here already? Why’re you taking…him?” Timo couldn’t bear to say David. That thing wasn’t David.
“Chris says I can fix them at the base,” Jan said, smiling weakly up at Timo. “When you come back, they’ll be back to normal.”
“Jan-” Timo began. “David’s not ever going to be back to normal.” Jan pulled away from him and looked at him fiercely.
“Not you, too. Frank doesn’t think Juri’s real but I know he is. He’s got thoughts and feelings that are too smart to not be human. He’s real,” Jan said sadly, petting Juri’s shell like a lap dog. He looked up at Timo, straight into his eyes. “And I want him back.”
ØØØ
Frank scrubbed his hand through his brown hair and bit the inside of his lip, suppressing the urge to say a few choice words. Linke was kneeling next to Timo, who was laying on his side, dead asleep on the floor of the bridge. The bassist looked worried, exhausted, obviously reluctant to leave Timo there alone.
Frank said emotionlessly.
Linke said, his eyes not moving from where Timo’s chest rose and fell. Frank’s brow creased.
Linke whispered. Frank scowled.
Linke said, glancing back at his friend for a moment before turning back to Timo. He traced down Timo’s shoulder to his elbow, stroking it gently.
Frank’s eyes flashed.
he spat sarcastically.
Frank nodded.
Neither spoke. Timo stirred slightly but did not awaken.
“You can’t sleep on the floor.”
Frank gave Linke a dubious look.
Linke protested.
Frank shook his head.
Linke paused.
Frank grinned.
ØØØ
Timo stared out the viewport. Outside was a black abyss of swirling stars and asteroid belts, cold, lifeless, a complete vacuum. The pressure on the cabin had to be enormous. Surely their oxygen supplies were running low.
"That's why they have the plants," Linke said, settling down next to him. Timo glanced at him. He was still unused to the sudden need for proximity with the bassist. It wasn't like he had ever been interested before now. Every second they spent apart, Timo felt guilty, wondering how long it would be before Linke started fading away.He still didn't understand what was going on. Frank's words scared him, honestly. The very idea that he was feeding off of Linke, that he'd been feeding off of David and Juri, scared the hell out of him. He'd never felt it, not a single bit. Timo wanted to tell Frank he was wrong, that there was a possibility that these feelings he had for Linke were something else entirely.
"Thought you couldn't read my mind," he said, looking back out the viewport. Nothing had changed. The points of light were lightyears away. The zero space jump had only been able to take them so far. Frank had explained it to him- well, Linke, to be honest but it had bled through quite clearly to Timo. Zero space jumps were inaccurate and because of that dangerous. Without the ability to precisely determine coordinates, it was difficult to avoid asteroids and other space debris, which tended to coalesce around planetary systems. Jumping from one solar system to another was easy, the coordinates were able to be jumped by a rough hundred thousand kilometers; jumping any closer was like closing your eyes and pressing a random button on a video game console. You would certainly get somewhere in the general area of what you wanted but the likelihood of such a reckless act turning out well were zero to none. It was only when Timo realized that Frank was speaking in what he would call Terran metaphors that he realized the speech was meant for him and not Linke. Frank had, after the initial few cutting words and half-fights, largely ignored Timo. It was obvious he was angry about more than he was letting on.
"And what would you be thinking about other than the massive waste of energy it took to get into orbit?"
"Why shouldn't I? I've never driven a car and yet I just fucked up the whole ozone layer to save my own ass."
"It's no more than a mid-size factory would put out."
"It's still a fucking waste."
Linke’s words only distracted Timo for a few seconds before the awful thoughts started seeping in again. Timo remembered the screams. No one else had heard them, David had asked Timo if he was okay. Was that his programming? To pretend and tell Timo what he wanted to hear? If David was just a computer program playing off his senses, had Timo ever had a best friend? Or was David some sort of intricate toy, an imaginary friend he got along with so well because David was made to agree with everything he had ever said.
Linke wrapped an arm around him, pulling Timo into his side.
"Shh," he whispered. "It's okay, Timo."
Timo realized he was crying. He reached up to wipe the tears away but Linke was already there, drying them on his sleeve. Timo choked on a sob, cuddling into Linke's chest. He wasn't going to hurt anybody again. He had to touch Linke, no matter their feelings for each other, or Linke would start to weaken. The screaming would come back. This time Timo would know it was because he was killing Linke slowly.