04 [Video]

[seekingsuzee]

[Catalina's in her space-age room, sitting on her bed among an impressive number of rainbow pillows.]

So.. are there any.. normal people here? Like.. not murdering psychopaths or nudists or weirdos in masks? Seems like every time I turn this thing on or... go for a walk I run into some kind of freak. I'm not the only sane person left, right?

Comments

[thinkin_man]

I don't think normal even exists. Everyone has their quirks.

People can't always help the way they look, either.

[seekingsuzee]

What? Oh, no, I didn't mean like... I mean normal as in not scary or killing people.

[thinkin_man]

Oh. Well, I'm not scary or killing people.

[seekingsuzee]

Well.. that's good. What's your name?

[thinkin_man]

Some people here call me Subject Delta. I like to go by Johnny though.

[seekingsuzee]

Johnny? Okay. I'm Catalina. Been here long?

[thinkin_man]

Nice to meet you, Catalina.

I've been here a while, yes. You?

[seekingsuzee]

I've been here a couple months. I was on a spaceship before this so it's really different to see people other than the crew and to be able to go outside. Not that this place is better than the Christa but.. it's a nice change. Sort of. No homework at least.

[thinkin_man]

I was in an underwater city before this, so I know how you feel.

[seekingsuzee]

An underwater city? Wow. Did it have windows so you could see like.. sharks and whales and things outside?

[thinkin_man]

Yes. I've seen my fair share of sharks.

There were a lot of windows, actually.

[seekingsuzee]

Wow. Must have been kind of scary knowing all that pressure was only inches of glass away, pushing in on you at several hundred PSI, ready to give way at any minute as entropy ate away at the stability of the structure. Space at least is pretty predictable; you can't really know ahead of time when a storm or tectonic activity will cause massive damage underwater though.

[thinkin_man]

The pressure wouldn't be able to hurt me. I'm grafted into a large diving suit. So no, it wasn't scary. I even walked around outside the city by myself.

Space sounds much more interesting to me than the ocean.

[seekingsuzee]

Grafted into a diving suit? Is that what your species does to undersea dwellers?

Space can be interesting sometimes. But the times in-between are very, very long. And boring. Space really isn't a destination, it's more the road you travel on. Even when it's nice... you can't help but thinking "are we there yet?"

[thinkin_man]

No, not everyone. I was part of an experiment. It wasn't my choice.

There are other people from my city here. The rest of them aren't like me.

I could imagine how long it would take. I'd still like to see the planets close up.

[seekingsuzee]

What king of experiment?

Really? Well, it's good you're not here alone...I mean, no one here's alone but... I mean, at least you have people from home.

Yeah... or comets, ion storms... it's really very pretty sometimes.