trans_9 | Keeping Occupied

Cale stood in the media library in one of the pod-rooms, the broken pod-room, to be exact. His brow was creased and his nose scrunched up as he concentrated on the bizarre-looking terminal on the wall. He pressed one of the buttons and got a low ‘beep’ in reply, but the screen remained blank. He tried another. Another beep, still blank. He frowned but he wasn’t giving up. With practically nothing to do on this ship—what with the medbay taken over by the crabby green guy and this being the only other area left on the ship (the sensoriums were almost in constant use by other crew members) with any kind of identifiable technological aspect to it, Cale was determined to at least keep himself busy. And busy meant trying to TURN THAT DAMN SONG OFF!

Over and over the thing had repeated. Never stopping. Never giving even a moment’s break, and with the door wide open and it playing full volume, it was impossible to concentrate anywhere else in the media library—which is what he’d been trying to do earlier. Now, he was determined to fix what was broken…or at least drive himself crazy trying.

Beep. Beep-beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep. Beep.

There! Right there! He’d had it. It went away but he’d still had it, if only for an instant. The screen flashed for just a moment and then went black again. He was making progress, getting closer. It was just a matter of time before that painstakingly awful song was gone for good.

“Yeah, and you thought I couldn’t do it, didn’t you,” Cale said aloud, apparently speaking to the troublesome terminal. “Well, I’ve got news for you buddy, I am about to own you.”

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Rose leaned in from where she was standing behind him, practically breathing on his neck. ~~Right in his personal space where he liked her to be.~~

"We haven't even been here a week and you're ALREADY gone crazy enough to start talking to yourself? Nicely done."

"You're fighting a losing battle there dude."

"Says who?" Cale replied, his attention still focused on the task before him.

Cale jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion. However, when he turned to see who it was that had decided to bother him, his surprise quickly turned to annoyance.

"Oh, it's you," he said, pressing another series of buttons on the terminal. Just then his nose crinkled in disgust. "Don't you ever brush?"

"Says the guy who got a tentacle to the face when he tried to get at the wiring,"

"Guess you just gotta know which buttons to push," Cale answered. "Kinda like girls."

Yeah, right, like Cale knows how to push a woman's buttons. The only button he manages to be able to push is the one labeled 'Piss Her Off'.

He taps a few more keys, seemingly at random--but really not. But the screen still remains blank. Yet, somehow, he's still getting somewhere. He knows he is.

Rose narrowed her eyes, stepping around him to prop her hip on the terminal nextdoor.

"If you found a toothbrush stash in this f**king labyrinth feel free to hook a girl up. Otherwise stuff it. The hell are you trying to do to that poor thing anyway?"

"I've seen you talk to girls. That statement doesn't really make me all that optimistic."

"Turn it off. What's it look like?" Cale said. The song that had been on perpetual repeat finally drew to a close and there was silence for a brief moment. Cale almost looked hopeful until...

...it finally started up again.

"Damn!"

"Ok, so it was a bad analogy," he admitted. "Still doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing..."

Rose snorted. "You don't know what you're doing idiot. Let me try."

Unceremoniously muscling her way into his personal space again she gave the keyboard a quick scan and then punched all the buttons Cale had previously plus two more.

The speakers shrieked and cracked for a second like a radio changing stations very loudly, spit out part of the chorus from 'Lime In The Coconut', then shreiked straight back to '3 O'Clock Blues' again.

Rose gave the panel a flat angry look.

"Oh now you're just screwing with me."

Maybe if she ran it through with a sword...

Cale's hands flew to his ears when the new song came screeching over the speaker system only to switch back to 'Three O'Clock Blues.' Only, this time, the song was louder.

"Well, congratulations, One-Eyed Wonder, you found the 'volume up' button," he snarked, shoving her ~~(Cale shoved a girl!!)~~ out of his way so he could take over again.

"So that's why you're randomly pressing buttons."

"I'm not randomly pushing buttons," Cale said. He hit another sequence of keys which resulted in the screen lighting up again. This time it stayed longer than before--if only by a few seconds--before fading black again.

"See."

"Hey!" Rose shoves him back, but not enough to displace him from the panel again. "At least I got it to DO something dumbass."

"Yeah, so did I before you showed up," Cale informed. "Don't you have babies you should be eating?"

"Gave them up for Lent. Then get stuck in my teeth." She quips, then glares at the panel some more. "Did you try the red button? It's always the red button."

"Oh yeah, Genius?" Cale said. He then punched another series of keys and, this time, he hit the red button. 'Three O'Clock Blues' was interrupted and replaced with...

"...Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
really really wanna zigazig ha..."

Then it switched right back to 'Three O'Clock Blues' in the exact same spot it'd left off. Cale stared at Rose with a blank 'you're an idiot' look on his face.

"Oh yeah. That worked," he said dryly.

Rose looked at him like he'd just shoved a beloved pet of hers in a blender, then gave the control panel a sound kick.

"Who the hell makes a starship this advanced and thinks the SPICE GIRLS is an essential addition to the music archive?!"

"The who?"

"The BAND that does that song that just played!" She was fuming now, one hand threaded angrily into her hair. "You couldn't find anything else on a radio in the early nineties I swear! Stupid frickin... would it KILL you to play something by The Presets?" She's yelling at the ceiling now. "Or, you know, anything that actually DESERVES to be on a hits album would be GREAT!"

"The 90's?" he echoed. Yeah, he obviously wasn't following.

"Okay, here, let me try." Dany said, poking at the buttons. The song switched to something slightly more eerie sounding, that grew into what could be only be described as ghostly hip-hop...

(He's a Phantom)
Yo Danny Fenton, he was just fourteen
When his parents built a very strange machine
Designed to view a world unseen
(He's gonna catch 'em all cuz he's Danny Phantom)

When it didn't quite work his folks, they just quit
But then Danny took a look inside of it
There was a great big flash everything just changed
His molecules got all rearranged!
(Phantom, Phantom)

...before switching back to '3 O'Clock Blues'

"...When did I get a theme song?"

"Beats me," Cale shrugged once the song had reverted back. "I don't even know who you are."

He rested his hand on the keypad again and let it sit there for a moment before he started tapping the buttons again. This time, he did it slower, listening closely to the intonations as they beeped.

Rose let her rage deflate a little, eyeing him with a bored sort of frustration.

"Yeah. The 1990's. What year are YOU from anyway?"

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