bigapplesauce | CATCHMECATCHMECATCHMECATCHME...! [closed]

Current Location: Central Park
Current Music: October 6th, 2013

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CATCHMECATCHMECATCHMECATCHME...! [closed]

The thing about space is that, frankly, it's enormous. Bloody massive, in fact. Just so very much of it stretching in so many different directions, and here, right now, currently drifting among the assorted debris caught in the Earth's lunar orbit in a slow, forlorn arc, Wheatley finds himself thinking that space, space is just - well, it's terribly overrated, really. It all looks more or less the same, to be honest. Big, black, empty space, with a little dusting of stars here and there, nothing special, just a few pinpricks of illumination to highlight his current complete and unending isolation.

Not complete maybe. Not entirely.

"Space," hums a delighted, dopplering voice in his audial processor for the millionth time in - well, Wheatley's not entirely sure how long he's been up here, but he's certain it's been quite a while. Ages, in fact. Some very long, very lonely, very loud bloody ages. The shared link between his audial processor and his companion's has given him some company, he can say that much, some sort of radiowave variation to offset the noiseless vacuum of space, but it's not saying a whole lot in the end, as said company is not exactly the best or most engaging conversationalist. In fact, the only other personality core around has exactly one topic on hand to discuss at inarticulate and immense length, and that is -

"SPAAAAAAAAAAACE."

"Right," sighs Wheatley without much enthusiasm. "Bang on. Space. Got it in one. Loads of it. Don't ever plan on running out, no sir, we can check that one in the column of things that we have at our, at our collective disposal. Space." Wheatley has long since come to accept the fact that emotional modulation doesn't seem to have much of an impact on his hyperactive companion's extremely one-track mind - regardless of how angry he's gotten, how desperately he's cajoled or pleaded or politely asked or screamed for the other core to pipe down for just a sec, mate, just one bloody second, is that so HARD?, the space core remains, as always, blissfully, elatedly, happily unaffected, lost forever in its euphoric personal daydream.

"Yeah," says Wheatley, watching the star-studded perpetual night spin lazily past. "Yeah, look, mate - d'you mind keeping it down over there? Trying to reminisce here, terribly important."

It was all his miserable, miserable fault. He'd been greedy, and bossy, and monstrous, and he'd mucked things up so colossally that she'd had no choice but to launch him into the great empty vastness of space. Really, he doesn't blame her for that - who would? She'd made the best choice she could, and he'd - well, if he's honest with himself, which has become increasingly easier here, in space, with no one to listen or care for a word coming out from discarded, broken, tiny old Wheatley's vocal processor, he'd conversely made the worst choice.

Hence: the banishment. To space.

Until, suddenly, he's not anymore.

He doesn't get a great deal of time to adjust. He gets the briefest impression of white, intensely hot light, and the barest flutter oh god, it's happened, I've been knocked out of orbit, I'm about to fly into the flipping SUN, and then, just as abruptly, he's somewhere else. It's terribly bright, and something's wrong with his optic, something's got to be off there, because everything is just more than a bit wonky, and, most impressively - no space! No space at all!

Wheatley does not get very long to process the latest in this unforeseen string of events as he's dropped, literally, on top of something squirming and squishy and moving like it's got limbs and he's got limbs, and he realizes he's got limbs and realizes the person beneath him has got limbs and reacts in the only reliable way he knows and understands: he screams, realizes he's acquired an entirely different vocal processor and screams again, and tries, with absolutely no coordination behind the movements or any idea what to to do with his newly-acquired body with its variety of long, gangly limbs, to scramble upward and off and away from the person beneath him, all with the absolute maximum of volume available to his vocal processors.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

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A spike of alarm from the nearest People is the first warning Daine gets that the rift is about to cause some sort of minor ruction in the area - the sort she's come to associate with new arrivals - and the sudden blot of a shadow around her small, innocuous pigeon shape is the first warning she gets that it's going to happen right on top of her. She barely has time to react, let alone think clearly. All she knows is that whoever (or whatever) it is will crush her unless she gets bigger, fast, but not too big or else folk will really panic.

And that is how the new arrival ends up landing atop an extremely flustered siberian tiger. He doesn't sound very happy about it. Well, neither is she.

Daine grunts as he flails about and lands a few solid blows, though she also notes that if he was really trying to attack her properly, he's doing a poor job of it. It seems more likely that he's just lashing out at random, and she's too close to miss. Mithros, what a racket. He's like an overgrown child throwing a tantrum.

This is awful, and she lets out a groan of general objection as he continues to thrash around on her back like a landed trout. She has to stop him or he's going to bring all sorts of unwanted attention. They're lucky enough to be in a more woodsy area, and her coat blends well with the autumn colors, but they aren't that far from the path.

Tiger isn't a very reassuring shape, but at least it's a powerful one. Daine twists out from under him, ears flattened against the noise, then heaves herself atop his gangly frame and pins him to the ground. That puts an end to some of the thrashing, but he's still screaming, and she doesn't know what else to do but plant a large, furry paw over... well, she was aiming for his mouth, but her paw's big enough that most of his face ends up covered.

She enjoys the comparative silence for two breaths, then hastily reshapes her mouth enough for speech. "Calm down. No one's hurting you. You're all right."

Wheatley flounders.

He doesn't mean to do it consciously, or intentionally, or even at all, really, but the thing beneath him not only has limbs but it has a good deal more hair than he thinks humans are generally allocated, and it's very big and very orange and all he can think of to do, at the moment, is continue to make sounds. Vocal processors are still fully operational, big check in the 'pluses' column!

Hitting the ground properly is a particularly disorienting experience, the softened whumpf of limbs hitting leaves and leaves kicking up and him struggling to make some good proper sense of the fact that he is no longer spherical and metallic and creaky but made of corners and limbs and edges, all of them a good deal longer than he thinks they ought to be.

Then someone turns out the lights. He's blind. Noooo no no no no no, he can't be blind where are the lights why isn't his optic working.

The words reach him distantly. Wheatley wishes he could answer, he really honestly does, but the most he can manage is a strained, "mmmmmmmph," from beneath whatever thing is muffling him, legs kicking feebly once more for good measure. Legs! He's got legs. Legs and arms. What's wrong with his optic.

His attempt to answer tickles her paw. Daine carefully shifts it down a little, still covering his mouth but at least allowing him to see. Even that small mercy might be a bad idea - she's still a tiger, so seeing her better probably won't make him feel any better about his situation - but at least any further screaming will be muffled.

"Listen," she says, tail lashing irritably, "I can uncover your mouth, but only if you promise not to start screaming again, understand?" Does he? Most folk at least come through speaking Common. "Nod your head if you're ready to talk sense instead of just making noise," she tries, peering at him.

He's not really sure how to put a name to what it is he's looking at, and even less the dramatic shift in perspective he's suddenly grappling with. He shuts one eye oddly, experimentally, then another, then both fly open in shock. Oh - and oh! He's got two! Two optics! Fancy that, that's unbelievable, that is.

Having not quite drawn the line between biology and being unable to vocally enunciate, he's yet to put forth any kind of filter between his brain and the audible, delighted sounds of having made that sort of discovery all on his own. He's got two optics! He makes a happy little mmp! of alarm, jolting lightly.

And that's when the rest of him catches up to his eyes, and he realizes he's looking at a great big striped orange - thing. He's not sure he's got a word for it. The mainframe did, probably, dozens of thousands of hundreds of words for things like...deer, and birds, but being snapped back into his battered little orblike body had resulted in quite a significant drain of that knowledge formerly accessible to him via the mainframe, and now he's not really sure if he's looking at a deer or a bird, but the other options - he's got to imagine there's quite a lot, maybe some grand big number like a hundred or a thousand more - currently evade him.

This generates, perfectly understandably, another startled little jerk. He looks at the thing and it is talking and oh but that is not normal, this thing isn't Aperture Science technology and he is mostly certain of that, the minimalist black-and-white design and hated little logo is a dead giveaway most of the time. He looks up at the thing, eyes wide and anxious and more than a little bit terrified, and it's difficult but he has a very pronounced interest in being permitted to move and talk all on his own again, so he manages a tiny nod.

What is he doing? Daine swivels her ears back dubiously as the man winks his eyes, each in turn, and then makes some startled little hooting sound. Then he seems to get his first proper look at her, and he jerks in surprise, eyes widening. Well, she can forgive him that; she must look fair alarming like this - not even a proper tiger with her mouth shaped the way it is.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she promises. "Just... try to be calm. And quiet." Moving gingerly, she shifts her weight off of him and lifts her paw away from his face. "There."

And he's free! The talking orange striped...thing backs off and he sits bolt upright, immediately throwing all available resources into adhering to its instructions exactly, which is alarmingly difficult when he's still getting used to the idea of no longer having monocular vision.

"Absolutely," he says, somehow managing to sound both cheerful and intensely, deeply nervous at the sight of some great big orange talking thing that is probably not a deer or a bird. "Shutting up, being quiet and calm and not talking, immediately, going to make that number one. On the, uh, the list of priorities. Got a list of 'em. Not yet, actually, but if I did, being quiet would be at the top. The uh, top, top priority, that."

He looks down and notes that there is a great deal more of himself than he's used to based on the fact that he's able to look down and see himself at all, and what he sees is arms and legs and outerwear he's sure counts as vaguely professional in the human definition, and promptly forgets any and all instructions as he lets out a squawk of dismay.

"I'm human!" he yelps, casting about wildly for the nearest remotely sympathetic bystander. "I've got legs. Arms! Those lunatics - what'd they do to me?"

Horse lords. She's unleashed a torrent. Daine's eyes widen, her ears flatten, and she slowly leans away from him as if all his babbling is exerting a physical pressure on her. He reminds her a little of Andrew - the thought gives her a pang - but even Andrew didn't natter on like this.

And Andrew never acted surprised to have a body before, either.

Daine adjusts her vision immediately, looking at the newcomer with her mind more than her eyes, but there's no spark of wild magic about him. Whatever he was before, she doesn't think he was one of the People. She blinks, gives her head a little shake, then lays a steadying paw on his shin.

"Not so loud," she reminds him. Then, "What's your proper shape, if you're not a two-legger?"

"I've got hands," he proclaims, now looking at the orange stripey thing in a beseeching, desperate plea for empathy or understanding or some sort of confirmation that he's not going mad. Has he? Is this Android Hell? Does one have to be an android to go to Android Hell? Is that what they do there? Snatch poor defenseless personality cores from space and drop them in great gangling human bodies and fling them at orange stripey things willy-nilly?

"I'm an intelligence - I'm a personality core." Absolutely no reason, no reason at all for the striped-up orange thing to know his original function, which is absolutely not in any way true by the way, for the record, and he would like to let all hypothetical persons know that, not that it matters. "I was 'round the moon. I was in space. A floating around little orb in bloody space, you know? And all of a sudden, straight out of nowhere, no warning whatsoever, I get picked right out of bloody orbit! Like it would be so terrible to give me a little warning, you know, someone popping by to say, 'ho there, just so you know, we've got a slight relocation plan in store for you, just thought I'd give you an update!' And I'd say 'yes, now thank you,' that's just good manners, isn't it?"

In the midst of the explanation, he's completely forgotten the request for volume control.

Edited 2015-08-27 02:05 (UTC)

Daine's ears prick forward at the explanation. Some of it is a bit beyond her, but she thinks she gets the basics. He was some sort of machine - maybe even part of a ship, like the TARDIS - but since he didn't have a two-legger form, the rift took the liberty of sticking him in one.

She supposes that could be seen as kinder than just dropping a hunk of machinery in the middle of Central Park. If you squint.

"I know a ship who's been to space," she says. "She's got a two-legger body like yours, too."

Her ears catch the sound of approaching footsteps along the path, and she doesn't trust folk not to glance their way with all the noise he's making. Whatever a 'personality core' is, it seems as if his particular personality tends toward the loud and indignant. Regardless, folk'll ignore a man talking too loud quicker than they'll ignore a tiger.

"Look," she says. And then she changes, shrinking into the smaller, less overtly alarming shape of a wolf. Through the trees, she could as soon be some sort of large dog. She keeps her voice down, both to implicitly remind him that there's no need to shout, and to keep passers-by from realizing she's the other half of this conversation. "My shape has changed, too. I remember how strange it was the first time it happened, but I got used to it. You'll get used to being a two-legger and having hands and things, I promise." She wags her tail. Even if it doesn't reassure him, it should reassure anyone looking their way. "Hands are fair marvelous," she adds. "You might even like them."

Edited 2015-08-27 02:45 (UTC)

"A two-legger," he pronounces, eyes flaring with interest. That is a definite good term to have on hand. Bloody accurate on top of it! Human is really not a very good term for them, is it? Though, granted, 'two-legger' is a bit on the misleading side. Bit more accurate would be 'two-arms-two-eyes-one-mouth-one-nose-two-legger,' but that's a bit of a mouthful. 'Two-legger' is probably best, then. A good judgment. A good call.

"And a ship," he says thoughtfully, but he doesn't get much time to address that at any length before the striped thing shrinks down to a smaller, much less orange, other thing and he immediately yowls his escalating distress and did not think it would be possible to fall further when he's already more or less splayed across the ground, but he still manages to fling himself flat on his back as if that would achieve any further distance from it.

"How do you live like this?" He tries to pull one of his hands up from the ground for inspection and achieves little more than a feeble flopping sort of motion reminiscent of a beached fish. "Hands. All these bits and - and being a smelly - a sort of, um."

No, hang a minute, no, he is not making that error again. His ideas might not be one hundred percent fantastic at the best of times, but he has learned from that mistake and he knows not to make it again. Smelly humans. And now he's one of them.

Oh, dear. She's not sure if 'two-legger' is a phrase she wants anyone outside of her and the People actually using. It just sounds strange coming from someone else. Then again, it sounds as if he's used to being quite a bit removed from humanity, himself.

And it's certainly less likely to cause offense than smelly.

Daine cants her head at his prone form, and after a moment's consideration, lowers herself into a similar sprawl. Maybe he'll be less nervous of her if she's not towering over him (though he's so gangly that it wouldn't be a problem if he just sat up straight). "You get used to it, as I said," she replies mildly. "If it makes you feel any better, human noses are rubbish compared to a shape like this one. You'll hardly smell a thing."

She heaves a sigh, then stretches. "My name is Daine. What's yours? If you have one," she adds as an afterthought. The TARDIS has a name, but he doesn't strike her as being all that much like the TARDIS when all is said and done. Maybe folk don't name their machinery wherever he's from.

Will he? Do people just get used to this sort of thing? What if he stuffed a couple dozen humans into personality cores, see how they liked it? He just went from being a spherical little core in space to having great long noodley appendages sticking all out of him, and binocular vision on top of it, and he's supposed to just get used to it? It's absurd! Mad!

Wait, now, what's she doing? What's she - is she lying down? What's she doing that for? He's got no proper cognitive grasp on this body yet, what's her excuse?

"Wheatley," he says, then, a little too quickly, "just Wheatley."

"Wheatley," she repeats. Well, it's better than nothing, and no less unusual than some of the names her friends have. "It's nice to meet you." That's a bit of a fib. It's been far more interesting - and loud - than nice. But he knows what manners are, he mentioned them before, so it can't hurt to be polite.

And now that the dubious pleasantries are out of the way, she can attempt to tell him what's happened to him. "The thing that brought you here brought me here, too. It's called the rift. It's been taking folk from all over the place, different realms and different times, and dropping them here in Manhattan." She rolls up onto her chest and pricks her ears at him. "We're in Central Park, and it's the sixth of October, and the year is 2013." She pauses for a moment to see if he's keeping up.

Well, now, no no no no, that can't be right at all.

"2013?" he looks at her, unknowingly communicating a bizarre mixture of confused and affronted. "But that's - don't think you can fool me with that. Time travel's not been conventionally sanctioned by any industry and it's not anything She would try, even She's not mad enough for that."

Anxiety now ramping up considerably, he copes in the only method he knows to use.

He keeps talking.

"The outside's supposed to be - outside," he finishes inadequately, finally managing to fling out a hand in a broad, flailing, sweeping gesture. "Nothing's living out there! That's what She kept saying and you know, when I was all plugged into the mainframe I saw it and it was true! There was nothing! Not for miles and miles!"

"Why would I try to fool you?" she asks, her canine features displaying polite bewilderment. He's been yanked out of space and stuffed into a two-legger shape he's never had before; you'd think he'd be inclined to believe just about anything.

Daine gets to her feet, then gives her fur a shake. "Where I come from, we've got magic and monsters. It's a different realm - and so is this one, compared to where you're from. It might not look like it from here, but we're in a huge city, and there's plenty of folk alive here." She looks down at him, canting her head a little to one side. "I could show you, if you like. You might as well try standing sooner rather than later, anyway."

Magic? Monsters? The only monster he knew was - Her, actually, and not anyone else, not even anyone else. But She was strictly a monster in the sense that She was God, and She ruled everything, even him, and She ordered everything around and stamped out anything that didn't agree. What's she mean by bloody monsters? What else has she got crammed in there as some great bloody secret?

"Plenty of folk," he repeats, trying for bright enthusiasm and landing somewhere closer to paralyzing trepidation. "Plenty of people. Absolutely normal people. Right. Fantastic. Well."

He looks at himself and blinks in a vaguely assertive manner, steeling himself. "All right, no point in putting things off now, is there? Just gonna coordinate the old knees aaand - "

And upsy-daisy, there we go, synchronize the odd limbs here and get them all functioning properly, up he goes and fully vertical and then it's just a matter of getting his balance up to snuff. He seizes his chance and braves a valiant step forward, arms windmilling as he tries to keep up what is frankly a bloody dangerous maneuver, all her idea by the way, if he'd had his way he'd still be lying comfortably on the ground but he's got to at least give it a go so forward he steps.

And he crashes into a tree.

He thinks.

"Right," says Wheatley into the grass. "Bit harder than it looks, isn't it?"

"A bit," Daine concedes, padding over to peer at him. At least he managed a step before he went down like a sack of potatoes. "You'll do better next time." It's an easy encouragement to offer; he can't very well do much worse.

"Try leaning on my shoulder," she suggests. "It might help you keep your balance." She ought to be able to support most of his weight if it comes right down to it. He's tall, but he's more gangly than weighty.

It takes a bit longer than it should, entailing far too much yelping and nearly crashing into things and actually crashing into things and pulling fur and pulling hair and a thoroughly trampled patch of grass, but he makes it, wobbling coltishly about as he tries not to look down because it is high, it is frightfully high and he's still getting used to the idea of being so far up all the time.

"Right, then," says Wheatley, far too brightly for someone who has just spent the past ten minutes doing what passing bystanders can only assume is meant to be a twisted full-body imitation of a pretzel. "S'pose there's something to be said for the body after all, isn't there? No rail, for one! No rails, and binocular vision, that's gotta be a step up, eh?"

He grins at her, and immediately the expression crashes into a frown. "Wait, what's that you are now? Meant to serve a purpose, is it? All...four-legged and furry?"

It takes Daine a few moments to respond. She let her mouth lapse into a canine shape, and as his struggle to stand wore on, she took a less alarming - and a bit taller - wolfhound shape, instead. She's panting from the dual challenges of helping him stand and not getting crushed by him when gravity got the best of his uncoordinated limbs.

"I was a wolf," she explains once she's caught her breath enough to reshape her mouth. "And now I'm a dog. They're related." After a beat, she adds, "And I was a tiger before that - when I had stripes." She tips her head back to look up at him. "Do you not have those where you come from?" He didn't seem to think much of humans, but at least he knew what they were. You'd think a familiarity with two-leggers would mean he knew what animals were, too.

"Tigers," says Wheatley thoughtfully. "No. No, think I'd remember something like that." Something all big and impressive and striped-y, yes, he's certain he'd remember. Maybe it was something in the databases. Probably was, now, wasn't it, something She had listed away as one of those many many species that were simply no good for testing, and once he'd become Her he hadn't paid anything much mind if it wasn't related to testing just the same. Tigers and dogs and wolves simply hadn't been a blip on the testing radar.

Lucky them, thinks Wheatley ruefully. Lucky, lucky them.

"We just had humans, mostly," he admits. "Well, not mostly. Not very many at all, really. Human and ummmm, and - birds! Awful lot of birds."

And space, plenty of that too, but he doesn't think he should be counting that. He shudders.

"We going anywhere?" he asks brightly, not terribly eager to relive his memories of the old place. "Not that I'm not loving this whole field here, it's, um, it's very nice, very lovely, very - very green, that, it's just that, well, I'm given to understand there's something of a day-to-night sequence, is that right?"

Mithros. What sort of miserable place only boasts two-leggers and birds? He had seemed surprised to learn that they're in a city - maybe there was some sort of disaster in his universe that wiped almost everyone out.

Little as he likes being stuck in human shape, Daine can't help but wonder if the Rift did him a favor, bringing him here.

Daine resists the urge to give her fur a shake; that might send Wheatley sprawling again. "I can take you to a place where folk like us are living," she says. "Once we get around more people, though, I'll have to stop talking." After a beat, she adds, "Dogs don't normally talk." Not aloud, anyway, or in ways most two-leggers could understand. But Wheatley's still new to animals in general; she doesn't want to bog him down with too much information at once.

"Don't talk?" he repeats, more than a tad bamboozled. So what point do dogs have, then? Do they just wander about generally like woolly, mute, disreputable carpets? No wonder there weren't any lying about in the old Enrichment Center.

He claps his hands together in very much a 'gathering oneself' fashion, all good and raring to go.

"Right, okay, moving, then." He bounces on the balls of his feet and by some miracle of physics does not immediately go sprawling. "All right and ready to do that. Moving. Straight ahead. One foot in front of the other. Walking."

His rate of nervous bouncing subtly increases.

"Got to, um, got to get the legs working, the feet, the big ol' linear step, eh? Just going toooooo - "

He inches forward, wobbling precariously, and, upon realizing he hasn't gone pitching over onto the ground again, nearly whoops with delight.

"Look at this!" He points gleefully at his feet, looking between them and Daine in a rapid back-and-forth. "Look at tiny Wheatley now, walking and moving about like a regular old human, how's that?"

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CATCHMECATCHMECATCHMECATCHME...! [closed]

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