trans_9 | All in the name of SCIENCE! [open]

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All in the name of SCIENCE! [open]

Dustin had lost track of how long he'd been on this ship. Months, maybe. More than months. Entirely too long at any rate—long enough that a semi-permanent prosthetic, an on-the-spot improvisation that was meant to last him for just under three quarters of a year, was beginning to deteriorate.

Well, not exactly deteriorate, per se. But it was definitely due for some upgrades that would prevent it from deteriorating, or at any rate allow for repairs should the fail-safes give out, thus making it a properly permanent establishment within the ASIS modifications.

This required only one chip. This one chip, Dustin knew already, would cause him quite a few problems.

There was the makeup of the prosthetic itself to account for, firstly, in that he created it for functionality rather than improvement—that way he could continue to use his arm and hand for the delicate tasks that they could perform before getting smashed, such as building—surprise!—computer chips. This required that all of the standard pressure, touch, and heat receptors be rebuilt within the structure, and that all internal circuitry be wired directly to his peripheral nervous system. All of these receptors and wires, therefore, were live, and would receive any negative impact or crushing or probing actions towards the prosthetic as they would in the normal arm. As in, painfully.

Secondly—and relating to the first—Dustin had no way of turning off the prosthetic in order to dig around in the first place. That would, naturally, be one of the primary functions of this ASIS chip he was installing. It was only a matter of getting the damn thing in that would be a problem.

And thirdly, he had to find a good place to undertake this.

At first Dustin thought about holing himself inside his room, which seemed like a good enough plan until he remembered the first two points mentioned above and that, with all the noise that would likely occur as a result, Yoshimi would kick him out for disturbing her reading, or would otherwise force him to go to Medbay and have some random Engineer poke around in it. So then he thought about his forge—and, after remembering that there were customers involved, the City in general—but the only really secluded areas were several hours of walking from the primary opening by the tubes, and if something went wrong that would be another several hours of walking back before he found electricity and medical supplies and someone competent enough to actually help.

There was the Observation Deck, of course, which would work nicely at certain hours and with the right crowd. The only issue there was that the rest of the crew—all of those that didn't frequent the place during the normal hours—would be there later, and those tended to be the most fussy and intrusive people around (or the most insane). Hydroponics seemed likely, but there were the same problems there as there were with the City, compounded with a population of captive alien carnivores that may react negatively to the sound of wounded animals.

That left the Hangar and the Dart. Seeing as the usual inhabitants of that location were competent mechanics or level-headed military types—at least around the Dart's parking area—then they could be commandeered should something go amiss; there were plenty of extra supplies in his ship; and there was even an inbuilt stereo. Perfect.

Visitors to the Hangar might encounter some bizarre sounds added to the background ambiance of rumbling motors and Stacy's pulse. Faint music, some sort of upbeat partying tune from the twenties, cackled and blared its distortions from the hull of a sleek black spaceship within a crowd of fighters. And through the open airlock, prosthetic arm firmly strapped to a thin working surface next to a mountain of tools, wires and soldering material, Dustin could be heard groaning into an improvised overcoat pillow against the wall whilst he steadily undid another screw.

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It was more the need to fill idle time that brought Ratchet down the hangers; it was one of the places he hadn't given much time to really getting a feel for yet. The countless different ships were intriguing in their diversity and the massive constructs that were apparently little more than armored shells were... well, those were kinda creepy. Like someone's bones just standing around. They even had faces...

He picked up on the music after a while, following the sound through the rows of ships to a cluster of what looked like combat frames. The dark ship docked in their midst stood out and not just because it seemed to currently be doubling as a stereo. He circled until he found the source, stopping in front of the airlock and taking in the scene inside; it looked messy. Arms crossed, he waited until the man inside removed the tool from his arm before saying anything.

"I was under the impression that operating on yourself was something you did when you weren't somewhere with a perfectly functional medical wing."

Dustin felt he was being watched. This might've seemed obvious, considering that his visitor was standing almost right in front of him, but his full attention was directed to the task at hand and his overall perception was, thus, badly stunted. It wasn't even until he'd removed the screw, transferred it to the large magnet with the rest of its liberated brethren, and shakily deposited the screwdriver upon the airlock floor that Dustin even registered that he had been directly addressed. With a few deep breaths to gather his nerves, the genius pried his eyes from his partially dismembered prosthetic and caught sight of the intruder.

He was a robot.

Other days and other encounters would see Dustin pondering how this creation worked, possibly plotting how to get a look inside its chassis (this sounds dirty but you know what I mean), because hell, sentient machinery that isn't a construct of the ship itself, how did that happen I wonder? But right now Dustin wasn't in the inquiring mood. As a matter of fact he wasn't in much of any mood for anything.

"'S a different sort of operation." The genius dragged his functioning hand to the work surface, burrowing his head into his overcoat as he wiggled away the radial plating. He didn't get very far along.

Ratchet knew how this worked- even if he had been noticed, you don't say anything sudden to someone with a screwdriver stuck in their arm. That's just not playing fair. So he waited patiently, expression scrunching up when he got the curt answer, as expected as it should have been. Not that he blamed the human- most lifeforms got cranky when pain was involved and it almost certainly looked involved here.

"You're prying open your arm. I think that still counts," he shot back, moving up to the airlock to get a better view and resisting the knee-jerk reaction to just take over. "What are you trying to do? Aside from possibly finding a very creative way to pass out."

Dustin instinctively shifted in the opposite direction of the approaching sentient robot for obvious reasons. Ratchet had caught him in a very vulnerable position here, so needless to say that Dustin was acting with far more caution than he normally did, and with a hearty overlay of paranoia to keep him on alert.

"They wouldn't know where to start." He gave up on trying to ease off the covering and reached for a pair of needle-nose pliers, but hesitated, clearly unnerved about continuing with an audience. Instead he brought up his hand to swipe away the clumps of hair glued to his brow and affixed the robot with a level stare. "You wouldn't know where to start. So why are you still here?"

Dodging questions was never a skill Dustin became fluent in.

Let it never be said that Ratchet didn't appreciate a health dose of bluntness; he doesn't look particularly offended by the upfront accusation. "Well, since you ask, I thought I might hang around and watch you squirm like a pinned Insecticon for a while since I've got nothing better to do."

A pause. He stared right back at Dustin. "Look, there's a reason you don't usually hear about one handed surgeons. I may not know the part number for your ulna, but I do know how to remove plating."

Glare glare glare. There were words screaming and tripping over one another behind those eyes, but Dustin was too focused—too tired—to properly express them.

"I don't care. You're not—" The pliers wedging open a vacant notch slipped, scraping past sensor nodules like glass through arteries. Dustin hissed and tensed, biting into his overcoat. "—not touching my arm. G-Go away."

"No." There was no 'sorry for intruding' or anything similar. He just wasn't going to go away, simple as that and it was the human's poor luck that he just happened to be around when he was.

Shifting into a better position, he reached over and pushed Dustin's one functional arm out of the way. On his own free hand, the mechanics along the underside of his wrist moved to produce a thin, hooked pick. It was handy in keeping wire bundles out of the way or in this case, providing some leverage. The tip of the hook slipped into the notch Dustin has been trying to wedge up and he worked the plating up.

Dustin blinked once. Just once.

Then there was a robot prying open his arm.

The genius yelled and sputtered, immediately trying to pull away, but he'd sealed his own fate by strapping in his prosthetic to a very much unmoving platform and thereafter quickly realized that he wasn't going anywhere. Instead Dustin settled with trying to jam those needle-nose pliers underneath Ratchet's outer shell and letting out a continuous stream of profound curses.

On the plus side his arm didn't hurt as much, as that hook was doing a good job of wedging open the prosthesis’s plating while avoiding the sensory nodules underneath. It would probably go a bit faster if Dustin wasn't struggling so much, but, you know. Good luck with that.

Really, he was trying to do this with a little bit of finesse and the cursing he could ignore, but not the excessive wiggling and especially not those pliers. "Hey, cut it out! You're supposed to be working on your own arm, not mine!"

He swatted at the offending tool with his free hand, trying to make a bid for yanking it out of the humans grip. "I've got a laser scalpel in my index finger- don't make me use it." And he gave a twist and a tug on the plating, intending to pop it.

Ratchet's words, unfortunately, went unheard by the struggling man on the floor, who continued to curse and scuttle and fight just about as much as he could against the robot's grip on his otherwise free arm with a surprising amount of strength for such an emaciated form. He fought and struggled and cursed and tried to jam those pliers into whatever exposed surface he could find right up until Ratchet got enough leverage to pry open the troublesome section of prosthetic, which popped off rather suddenly and took several dozen sensor nodules and their respective wire bundles with them.

Dustin howled with pain and screwed his eyes shut, falling blissfully silent as he tried to catch his breath.

Dustin was doing a very good job of scraping paint and putting dents in Ratchet's arm and palm with those damn pliers and maybe he yanked a little harder than was necessary for the trouble. But better to just get it over with in one go if you asked him.

He wasn't going to say that the human deserved it because, really, no one deserved to have their 'skin' peeled back like that, but goodness. That was an impressive fuss he'd put up. Supporting the panel with one hand, he retracted the hook and replaced it with a thin nozzle. The spray was cool- a dampening agent that was good for spot numbing mechanical sensors.

"Do you feel better now that you've got that out of your system?"

Dustin wasn't entirely sure what had just transpired—either he was attacked and maimed or assisted and revived, in either case by a sentient machine that just, you know, happened to be passing by on this wonderful day—but whatever it was, he was quite positive that he didn't like it. Thus, his spat reply:

"%#$* you."

And Dustin dropped the pliers in favor of clutching his shoulder, steadily numbing as it was, and curling the rest of him against the wall while he waited for the shock to wear off.

"You're too kind."

He took the time while Dustin was passive and more or less quiet to inspect the workings of the arm itself that he could see without moving anything. The workmanship was remarkably advanced for a human and while it was possible that someone else on the ship had done this for him, he doubted it. At the same time, it was apparent that this was something of a patch job; good, but not perfect.

"Did you build this yourself?" He peered closer. There were a couple of connection points that could stand to be reinforced...

True facts. If it was perfect, then Dustin wouldn't have needed to go through this mess in the first place. Of course it wasn't, it needed to be, and, thus, here we are.

In the meantime the genius had sufficiently recovered, more or less with his dignity still intact (he'd made a few good dents in Ratchet's armor, yeah?), and though he wanted nothing more than to pick up those pliers and have another go at the robot's face for putting him through this, he was also aware that this wasn't a terribly threatening encounter. The machine wasn't deliberately harming him, and judging from the equipment concealed in his fingers he was actually built for these sorts of situations. Then again, so was any licensed surgeon, and Dustin certainly didn't trust any of them.

"...Yeah." He eyed Ratchet wearily and gave a slight flinch as he moved in closer. "What's it to you?"

In Dustin's favor, Ratchet's arm looked like it was doing a good impression of a golf ball; he could feel pressure inside one of his knuckles where the sharp head of the pliers had gotten between a joint and ruptured a hydraulic line. The auto repair systems would get it taken of, but yeah, he'd given back pretty good. At least no one had lost an optic.

"You did a good job," he answered frankly. "Please tell me this isn't what you do for regular maintenance, though. You build a robotic arm and can't even give yourself an access panel that's not covered in sensory nodes?"

Dustin's thick brow rose an inch in honest surprise. It didn't last long, however; not only was Dustin used to getting compliments on his work, because quite frankly most of it was rather amazing, but that second comment set his temporarily-inflated ego spiraling for excuses to save itself from being completely destroyed.

"I was a bit short on planning time." In other words, it was extraordinarily difficult to plan for a massive interdimensional alien invasion and the consequent reliance on a makeshift piece of equipment for well past its warranty date whilst half-drugged and in traction. He'd at least planned to have Clay around for when this procedure actually took place. As much as he hated to admit it.

"Guess so." He didn't really hold it against the human, but he couldn't have let it slide without pointing it out either. "So- you never answered my question: what are you trying to do here? Nothing's broken and I find it hard to believe that you'd go through this just to touch up solder points." Unless he was some kind of masochist and the screaming and flailing earlier pretty much ruled that out.

Dustin gave Ratchet one last flat glare—less of a threatening gesture and more of a static, closing one—before shakily removing his good hand to pick up a pair of tweezers. There was quite a bit of electrical insulation in there that needed to be removed before he could proceed any further, and so long as the sensors were numbed now seemed like the best time to continue working.

"Upgrades." The scruffy genius paused to reconsider, already realizing that such a simple answer would not satiate this robot's apparently persistent personality. "Mainly ones that will keep me from having to go through this again."

Yoshimi is looking for her (for lack of a better word) boyfriend...thing. She seems to spend a great deal of time doing this. In fact, it has come to represent a full third of her life on the meatship: One third is devoted to reading and lazing about, another third is split between fiddling around in Engineering and sparring in the Sensoriums, and the final third is spent either actively with Dustin or...looking for him. Or wondering where he is while being too lazy to go look for him.

Fortunately, she's feeling particularly exuberant today, so she has gone on a quest of epic proportions in order to find--and likely bother--said boyfriend thing. Also fortunately, she's fairly certain she knows where he is, which makes it less a quest of epic proportions, and more a mildly exhilarating stroll.

First, she checks his forge, and crosses it off the list hidden in her pink-thatche head. Then, she ambles through Engineering and Neuropathy, crosses those off, checks the Mess (in the unlikely event that he has chosen to eat without her prompting for once in his scruffy life), and shuffles down to the Hangar.

From outside the Dart, she's a little baffled to hear him making peculiar noises, because he usually works silently, and...what the Hell would he be doing by himself when he--nevermind, not going there. We'll just let her bafflement continue without further examining it.

She knocks on the hull of the ship, and when he doesn't seem to be replying or shouting for her to &*$% off or some such, she opens the door to find him poking around in his arm, and her little eyes light up a little greedily.

"Have I ever told you how much I want to know how that thing works?" She pads over, flashing a mildly concerned look at him for the moaning and groaning in what certainly sounds more like pain than--uh, well, what sounds like pain from in here, but choosing to ignore his pain in favor of letting the Ultimate Mechanics Dork squealing in the back of her head take over her motor and mental functions.

Well, so much for staying in the room.

Dustin glanced sharply upward, stiffening as Yoshimi entered his temporarily expanded personal bubble and, like the oh-so-compassionate girlfriend he was used to, immediately decided that she wanted to know how his prosthetic worked. Well, Yoshimi, you'll be happy to see that said prosthetic has been mostly dismembered just below the humeral junction and is now a mess of stray wires, electrical insulation, and sensory nodes sparking in protest against the outer plating upon which they are attached, dangling like the brittle roots of a loose tooth right before it pops off and makes a big mess on some poor child's dinner plate. They would, similarly, be what was causing Dustin so much grief currently; at least he'd gotten off the main casing. Just two more to go! Joy of all joys!

"No." Dustin shuddered an exhale of relief—at least it was Yoshimi and not some psychotic stranger like his paranoid self kept expecting—and began gingerly clearing away insulation with a pair of plastic tweezers. "Now's not the best time, either."

She rolls her eyes, keeping distinctly out of his personal space as she watches--she knows that hovering would just be annoying at this point, and she knows not to mess with that tone of voice.

"I'll be quiet," she says, too busy cataloguing wires and junctures and loose components to arch a skeptical brow at him as she usually would. "I don't need you to walk me through it to figure out its mechanics." Which is fairly true, though, knowing him, he's come up with some brilliant, more efficient way of rigging some infinitesimal part of it that she won't understand by sight alone. She'll deal with it when the time comes.

Unfortunately, this vow of silence lasts only a few minutes. That's one of the downsides to her being as close to comfortable with him as she is--words come easily to her when she's relaxed, and even more easily when she's intent on something that isn't her own social anxiety.

"What exactly are you doing, anyway?"

Dustin tracked her across the airlock, pausing in his methodical cleaning to make sure he knew exactly where she was stopping to watch. This didn't bother him as much as it probably should; Dustin wasn't exactly worried about Yoshimi purposefully coming to sabotage his prosthetic or anything along those lines, he trusted her too much, knew her too well. It was more along the lines of her prodding him whilst manipulating very delicate wires, or stepping on some stray supplies that he hadn't gotten around to organizing yet.

There was also having Yoshimi asking him entirely too many questions while he was trying to work, but at least in that case Dustin could just ignore her. Which he did. Mostly.

"Upgrades."

"Well that's informative," she says, quirking an eyebrow slightly. She wasn't going to pester him for information--she could just watch and learn. Right?

...right?

She just hopes she doesn't stop being able to recognize things anytime soon, because as the Chick from the Future, that would be embarrassing.

Tucking hair behind her ear, she settles herself more comfortably in an out-of-the-way corner from which she has a decent view of his workspace, expression vacillating between blank-faced concentration and something that almost resembles boredom, only less bored-looking. She almost sincerely hopes that her presence isn't bothering him, except that it very well may be bothering him, and she doesn't plan on leaving now that she knows what he's doing.

Dustin returned that eyebrow quirk just about as well as he could manage with his scrunched expression, having decided that Yoshimi had chosen a good enough place to settle, she wouldn't screw up anything. As a matter of fact her presence was almost comforting; like when he used to work in Leroi Lake with Codi, though it was less with her and more underneath her curious gaze. In the beginning she used to ask questions, every once in a while, and Dustin would explain them to their full extent, but eventually it subsided to just curious watching and, later on, occasional passing of tools that she knew he needed or somesuch. She didn't do anything, didn't hinder anything, and yet just having her around made him feel so reassured and motivated.

Although it should be noted that Dustin didn't expect Yoshimi to recognize everything inside that arm of his. He'd made it from scratch, after all. The only person he expected to recognize its parts in detail was himself.

"...Would you prefer the..." A pause as he steadied his hand, which was badly shaking and in danger of disturbing sensory wires within the insulation. "...abridged but slightly more informative version?"

Motoko's knuckles contained, like the rest of her, a high metal content. Therefore, they made a sharp sound when knocking against any hard surface, artificial, to the right ears. Knock knock, Dustin. Someone wants your attention.

Hello, Motoko. Have a very uncomfortable-looking genius in an airlock, who also currently happens to have an exposed bundle of wires propped out of his open prosthetic and is delicately freeing them with a modified box knife.

See him glaring at you through the open door like some sort of heavy-browed deer in the headlights.

"I'm a little busy, Major."

"Good," she replied, knowing that his vulnerable position would mean he would find escape difficult. What, did you think she didn't plan these things?

"I want to talk with you about your responsibilities aboard this ship."

Dustin breathed a sigh, deciding that it was safe to go back to work. So much for not being interrupted, yeah?

"What about them?"

"Just how busy are you, Silver?" She drawled, conversationally. Motoko wasn't given to being friendly with Dustin, but this particular meeting was taking an oddly casual edge to it.

"I understand that you work in engineering, but does anyone besides your little girlfriend actually give a damn?"

Dustin's gaze snapped back up, squinted brow shadowing a glare that was absolutely venomous. Good job, Motoko—you've found a pressure point.

"I do whatever I think is necessary to keep everyone's ass relatively unscathed. That keeps me busy enough."

She's had better death glares from corpses, Dustin. You're not going to intimidate the Major, not in this lifetime.

"No one notices when you skip work, because you don't actually work for anyone, or on anything worth monitoring," she pointed out, knowing that it meant he had no oversight. He wasn't working for anyone or any group, but he was working, so no one bothered him, each assuming he was under the purview of someone else. It was a fine example of the lack of structure in this fleshy shithouse.

It was a waste of his skill.

"How would you like to do something that actually matters?"

Edited 2010-08-25 05:36 (UTC)

Well, one can dream.

Dustin remained silent, instead returning to his current task of splitting open that one bundle of wires. The three or four layers of cables within the radial unit bore a disturbing semblance to tendons, which hardly stopped him from taking a box knife to the humeral juncture and the transition chips within.

"I'm sure you have plenty of suggestions for me."

Dustin was like a child, pretending he didn't care, cutting at his work with unnecessary force, because he knew she was right. Motoko watched impassively for a few seconds, letting the silence measure out his uncertainty for him.

"I'd like to offer you a job."

His uncertainty was duly measured, if not emphasized when the numbed artificial nerves that Dustin was cutting through at the moment decided to let him know what he was doing with fresh stabs of discomfort. Sweat sprung from his brow and his composure fractured clean.

"Of course you do. What is it?"

"I'm putting together a team of specialists. We need an engineer who is practical enough not to run out of cover when he's being shot at," she suggested, calmly. The Major's eyes were very red in the warm light the airlock's illuminating dome cast.

"Or you can continue to work on your own. 'Whatever you think is necessary,' right?"

She was smiling; it wasn't a pleasant smile.

This was an odd sort of situation that Dustin found himself in, although it should be noted that it wasn't unfamiliar. From the time he left the Lake 'till well into his twenties, the vast majority of his work had been along these lines--the term 'Engineer' was often used, actually, and was even the name he'd come to give those ancient and far-spread Specialists that shared his intelligence--wherein he was part of a small team, he didn't ask questions, and in the end he had enough information to make his own informed decisions and, thus, decide if the group needed to continue on with its plans or not. It was usually those groups of high priority that would hire him, after all, and even those that weren't could be guided towards better things.

That was in his prime, of course. It had been some time since Dustin had last engaged in such activities, at least back on Earth; proportionally speaking he'd reached middle-age three years ago, and in his 'retirement' of writing patents and traveling the world on light vigilante work he'd gone brittle. His failures upon the ship were testaments to his increasing frailty. In time, Dustin would no longer be able to actively protect those that required his services. He would become just another civilian, body useless because he was trapped in his mind.

Dustin refused to let this happen.

"...What would you have your engineer do?"

"What does any engineer do? Solve problems."

It would take very little to miss Dustin's record- but the Major had been paying attention, and she had sharp eyes and a perfect recall. He was faltering- his home grown cyberization wasn't going to be enough, any more. It was that same deterioration that had given her Bouma. Once, he'd been a gun-runner, working both sides of the war while his own damn legs fell out from under him. When she'd taken him on, it had afforded him an upgrade.

Not that Motoko would trust anyone in medical to run cyberization surgery on a living human. Even the best doctor they had was only a single step above medieval.

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All in the name of SCIENCE! [open]

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derp derp, I'm so sorry