forum "And it became Human, in most ways that mattered." // OxO // OPEN

Started August 10, 2019 by @ElderGod-Icefire

tune

Zev glanced over at her, then looked at the movie again. He could move her to one of the bunks later, after the movie was over. He watched it quietly, even though he already knew all the twists and turns the plot would take.

She was out within seconds of her eyes closing, welcoming sleep and giving her body a rest. Thesa didn’t shift around as much as she normally did either as the movie trailed on, her book somehow becoming nestled right next to herself again also as if she was protecting it.

Zev was quiet, and let the majority of his brain shut down. It was good for him to be able to do that on occasion. It accomplished almost exactly what a human brain does while they're asleep, processing information and compartmentalizing it. His eyes remained open; if he wanted to sleep, he would do a full shut down with a timed wake up.

(XD I couldn't think of what to write, my next few responses will be longer once I get some sleep in me)
She pulled the blanket tighter around herself and relaxed into sleep as the movie continued and eventually finished, cozy besides laying on the floor.

(lol it's fine! Do we wanna time skip to the morning?)

When the movie finished, Zev decided to just shut down, and began the shutdown process, setting the timer for six hours. He closed his eyes, laying flat on the floor.

(Lol Yeah)
Thesa slept like a rock, out cold and barely shifting around at all. Almost exactly eight hours later, she woke up though, her body on a schedule and not breaking that schedule. She sighed and yawned, eyes opening slowly as she stretched and slowly woke up. Looking around, she realized she was still by the television, meaning she hadn’t moved to the crew bunks at all.

Zev was awake, and had already checked the dataport for a reply from Alexi. "Good morning." He greeted. "I talked to Alexi about what you asked for, and he said both can happen, although the meeting will take place aboard his ship, and you will be frisked by an Android or two for a weapon before being allowed in."

“Morning,” She replied, pulling the blanket around her shoulders and listening to what he was saying. Thesa nodded, eyes half closed in tiredness, “Sure, I’m fine with that.” Today was going to be a long day.

Zev nodded. "Alright. I shall get to work, you can join me whenever." He started walking back to where he had left his suit. He put the suit on, heading out to continue working. It had done his brain good to have those six hours of "sleep".

She nodded again and groaned as she stood up, keeping the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Scooping up one of the packets of food from where they sat in he floor, she started to wander the ship, looking for somewhere to boil the water so she could eat. Her stomach growled loudly, clearly liking the idea of food and she looked in every room to try to find a place to prepare it.

The kitchen section was located not too far from the rec room, although unfortunately half of it was missing, and it was sealed off in the back. She could still go in, it was just missing half the room. Zev started working again.

Soon she stumbled into what looked like a kitchen, a smile crossing her face for a moment. Thesa headed in quickly, food packet in hand as she looked around for a pot to boil water. She set the food down and seen found a small pot that would work perfectly. She abandoned the blanket and folded it up carefully after filling the pot with some water and setting it boiling.

Zev kept working. For a moment, the lights and engines all flickered off, leaving her in the complete dark, before coming back on again as if nothing had happened, everything working again. The engines, however, seemed to be straining a little more than usual, their vibrations louder than before.

She froze when the lights went out, tense and knowing exactly what was happening. The ships engines were clearly not used to this much use in thirty years and were failing, meaning she either had to get off the ship before the life support went out or figure out what she could do go. Thesa sighed, rubbing her head. It was too early to be dealing with this. She poured the boiling water into the food packet and jogged to the hole in the ship, popping on her helmet to ask Zev what to do over the built in communication system. “Hey, zev, ships engines are straining and I don’t think they’ll work for much longer. What should I do?”

Zev started walking. "Let me check the engines, i might be able to get them to hold together. Get in your suit and stay in it." He told her as he headed to the engine room. "In the event that they fail, we will have to complete repairs on the front cockpit as quickly as possible so that we can restore pressure so you have somewhere to sleep and eat."

“Got it.” She pulled off her helmet and slipped into the suit, scarfing down her food before sticking her helmet back on and wandering back to where she was to grab all of her things. The power went out again momentarily and she felt her feet lift off the floor before touching back down. She cursed and hurried faster, the hum of the engines becoming even more strained.

Zev went to the main computer controlling the engines. "Diagnostics check." He commanded, going through the information. He frowned. Fuel. He realized. He commed These. "Do you have any spare Gölrod Fuel?" He knew that thst fuel was hardly ever used any more, as most spaceships ran on far cleaner things now. He doubted she would have any, but that was the whole reason the engines were failing. They were reaching the end of the fuel. He had carefully conserved it by keeping no lights or life support running, and only the bare minimum heat that was required to keep his joints and brain functioning. But now, with Thesa, it had been running at half capacity. It had only had enough fuel to run at full capacity for a year. It had only barely stretched for thirty, and then keeping it at half for days? Had sucked it all the way down.

Thesa shook her head and snorted, “Nope, I haven’t seen any of that fuel for probably a decade now.” She grabbed her blanket from the kitchen before going to get her other things. The lights flickered and she sighed, shaking her head as she reached the room with the TV and scooped up her other stuff.

"Ah. Well. That's the fuel the ship runs on, and it has less than an eighth left. I'm going to put it on minimum, so it's going to be dark, gravityless, and a bit cold." He said, flipping switches. The engines straining got quieter as the artificial gravity turned off, and the majority of the lights clicked off.

“Where should I put my stuff? And I’m hoping we can get the front window in so I can go back to my ship.” She was a little unsteady as her feet lifted off the ground and she started floating, though she quickly got used to it. The only thing that made her uncoordinated was the darkness, her cursing soft in the communications set as she bumped into walls as she tried to get around.

He floated in her direction. He stopped at a computer terminal to activate minimum lights. One light on at quarter power, every tenth light. Which meant it was still very, very dim, but not as bad as it had been. "I'll show you where to strap it down. As for the window, once we get your stuff strapped down, we can get started on it."

Thesa nodded, looking up as the lights flickered on barely. She had a face of relief that she could see again and she floated around the hall. Pushing against the walls with her feet to propel herself forward and towards where she thought he was. “Alright. Let’s get this stuff strapped down then, I don’t want to loose anything.”

Zev nodded, and spotted her. He floated over to her. "Come on." He floated away, pushing off the walls as he went. Leading her to a small room, he gestured to some straps on the walls. "You can put them there."

She did as he said with another nod, fastening it all down and turning back to him, “Let’s get this ship finished up.” Sleeping on a cold, dark ship didn’t sound fun at all and she didn’t want to work another day, making her decide that as much as she didn’t want to, she would work as hard as she could and finish the work today.

Zev nodded. "To the cockpit then. I already have the window measurements for your cockpit, so we just have to take care of the cockpit here in the Daedalus." He said, and led her through the halls to the cockpit, drifting inside.