no_fastolfe | 6.0 There's the rub

It was certainly not a medical coma in any way. It was like sleep-- a long, untroubled sleep, with elements of physiological stasis to prevent muscular decay and other unwanted bodily functions.

I nearly wish I hadn't woken up. This ship looks like a dead world and the archives are full of fear and missing people. I can be no help, could have been no help. I would rather have gone on sleeping.

[Private to Sherlock after some backreading]
I am not redeemed and continue to have no idea-- or urgency to find out-- what the terms of my redemption are.

[Filtered to inmate-buddies-- Rinzler, Rhade, Dracula, Rassilon, Rex]
You are well, then?

[Infirmary filter and Sherlock]
I am going to need the services of a mentologist. I would like to discuss options for medications. It became extremely apparent during the involuntary honesty flood that my mental state is not what it was at home, and that I have had little success controlling my reactions to stress.

[Here's where pride intersects awkwardly with some kind of vestigial empathy] However I am hardly in dire need, the situation is still largely under my control: I realize that the infirmary is short staffed and there was a concern of injury resultant from the barge phenomena.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It is strange to me, quite how much-- I so seldomly entertain guests at home. But it has been... pleasant, in some circumstances here.

I have taken to sitting through my meals. No one particularly has to know what's in my coffee mug and milk carafe, after all.

I have been here for about six months. I fear I wouldn't have been particularly good company much before now. But I begin to enjoy being social.

I-- I don't think I should like to become so used to it.

[:/ face. Some Spacers do entertain people, have parties, but mostly their space is theirs and it's just... how you do.]

Yes, the cafeteria atmosphere does leave something to be desired. But once upon a time the winter feasts were something to look forward to in my existence, so I think at this time of year I naturally become somewhat more social.

Ah, I see. It might be tolerable, restricted to one or two events a year--though I am less social than many Aurorans, who may throw half a dozen such parties in a year. [Those crazy kids!]

I prefer small groups of known quantities. Dr. Snape-Jones' movie nights are as populous as I can easily enjoy.

I used to throw the most brilliant galas...but my taste for crowds really does vary. I have discovered the quiet joys of solitude with a good book. Have you visited the library lately? I have a few recommendations I could make, and it is much less oppressive there of late than it was during the rule of those two...crazy people.

...Crazy people? I have only known Chromie to be the librarian and she is amenable. I go there often to read-- technical manuals, and I have a discovered an author from my timeline-- a historical fictionalist named Asimov who extrapolates the fables and apocrypha and dry historical texts of Robotics into prose stories. It was heartening. Even if his bias towards Earth is quite obvious.

There was an assistant librarian in there who demanded heart sacrifice for overdue books, and a disagreeable dwarf who was racist against nondwarves and very vocal about it. They made the library a most unpleasant place.

Asimov? I shall have to look at his work. I have been reading a great deal of Eastern and Western Earth philosophy, myself.

...I am glad, then, that I was not subject to that sort of treatment. It would have made my stay far less enjoyable.

He writes technology for the child-- or I should say, I do not mean to offend, means that he describes as if to a stranger technology and principles that should be familiar to any Auroran. It may make his writing more accessible to a non-Spacer.

It was...a unique experience, dealing with them.

No, no, that is all right. I understand what you mean. I am a complete...what is the word...layman. I am a complete layman when it comes to your time period, with less practical education than a young boy.

You are not to be blamed.

[Not the response she gives to people she doesn't like, but then hypocrisy is strong in this one.]

There is a short story, it is very charming-- about a young girl who loves her household robot so much that she forces her parents to reclaim him even in the tide of anti-robot earth sentiment. And he is happy to return to her. That story I felt was rendered very well, I have the name of the collection, if you like? [Her face gets soft for that. Of COURSE the little girl wanted to get Robbie back, and she likely went on and became a roboticist because why wouldn't you love your childhood robot?]

It does sound rather charming. Of course, I come at it from the point of view of another nonhuman race learning to get along with humans. I have had some success, but do not yet have the capability for very strong attachments.

Then perhaps 'I, Robot' will be of interest for one reason than one. It is set in a time in Earth history when robotics was new and popular reaction to them mixed.

I shall have to peruse the entire Asimov section then. He sounds brilliant.

The man who fictionalized my own story and society...

...not so much.

The man is only competent but he is rarely offensive.

I regret that your experience was not the same.

Never let a nebbishy little Victorian man with repression issues and an obsession with the epistolary form write a book about you. I kid not.

If you want to know my actual story, just ask.

Perhaps some time I will-- I find your actual existence more interesting than some sensationalized piece of conjecture.

Oh, that I promise.

6.0 There's the rub

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