#lunch in space

[cuprohastes]

Lunch In Space (Part 4)

There is an old Human tradition. We keep it alive to this day. When things are Very Bad(tm), for example, your shuttle is about to perform a high-velocity Lithobraking Manouver, you invoke the Ancient Words of the Ancestors. Usually "Oh, sh*t".

I, as I'm sure you're now aware, am culturally sensitive, and cultured, so when chunks of Oscar started becoming Free Range and my life support lit up red, and Oscar's little Atrix-face started doing some very worried little colour combos, I took solace in this hallowed and time-honoured tradition and went with "Ru-ROH".

Now you may be thinking, gee, having your life support blow out while flying around the backside of a planet while everyone is too busy to come to pick you up is bad.

I mean, sure. It literally is.

But what doesn't kill you instantly gives you the opportunity for a really slow, horrible death so you can appreciate it so much more.

I took the life support unit off.

Counter-intuitive, but there you go. I jsut clipped one of my lanyards to the bottom attach point and released all the clips.

All the connectors that move all my various essential fluids and gasses are on failsafe connectors. They close automatically because it'd be super dumb if they didn't.

So now I'm just using passive insulation and things are going to get very hot very soon.

I turned the Life Support unit over and found a... Space Squid. 

I mean that's what it looked like. This conical, bullet-shaped shell,  with tiny little thruster vents, and then on the bottom of the cone, a bunch of little tentacles, sensor windows and what looks like miniature tools.

At first, all I saw was the shell so I grabbed it and yanked it out. I screamed jsut the tiniest amount when it wiggled its tentacles at me, but then it folded up and glared at me, and tried to puff away. 

My mighty human fingers of course were more than a match for this.

My mighty human Brain took a few more seconds to catch up because Oscar wasn't loaded with enough coffee for peak human cognition and I did a comical flail and found two more of the little suckers trying to eat through Oscar's skin.

"I Yeet Thee!" I told them and yanked them off and threw them in the direction of away.

The first little guy was with me but still sulking. I think it was out of gas, to be honest.

So that leaves me inside Oscar, who's rapidly becoming a sauna.

Luckily, I am just covered in tools, patches, and other Fix-things stuff so I started checking the life support pack.

Not good. Squiddy had already chewed some quite important stuff - the valves all closed, but now there's no way to re-circulate a lot of the air supply.

A bit about life support. It's not just a couple of bottles of air mix.

There are coolants, thruster gasses that you just top up while you work, water, which is circulated through Oscar's inner lining, the uh, Yellow and Brown lines, and then the Scrubber which is kind of a back-up and also means you can go longer without an umbilical, or without large air tanks. It also prevents the inside of Oscar from filling up with condensation.

So anyway, the thruster tank and the air tank were basically there but unusable.

Two of four of the batteries were cracked. They got isolated by the technical process of just pulling them out. They're not supposed to be dangerous, but why take the risk?

Oscar was a nice toasty 40ºc by the time I got the life support back on and I almost cried when the cooling started to pull out all that heat.

And then I almost sobbed because Oscar told me I had three and a half hours until station rendezvous and approximately two hours and twenty minutes of life support.

So I shut almost everything down. Inspection lights, most of the computing, interior displays, and after one last use, the uh waste processing.

That got me an extra 40 minutes of power. What else?

Well duh.

My power tools have bi-directional charging. I plugged them into my utility ports and hey OK, now I was only 5 minutes shy. OK.

So what else?

The Scrubber - It's running out of... scrub-ability.

There's a thing you can do that you should never, ever do, because it's suicidally stupid and bad. Honestly, I've always wanted to try it.

I turned the temp down past freezing and told the auto-doc to go to Oetzie mode. 

Now, this isn't an official process. It's one of the macros I've developed in bored moments - I submitted it to a couple of trade journals, both of whom told me I was a dangerous lunatic.

So I asked the Most Dangerous Human.

Miranda is a mutant. She burns 4000Kcal a day sitting still. Her IQ is supposedly about double or more than a normal Genius. She hates her life. Literally everyone in her species is kind of sad and bumbling and unable to grasp concepts she finds simple.

She lacks intellectual stimulation, and just craves novelty or anything that might make her feel for a moment, that she can be part of normal life.

When I met her she was running a comic book store. 

She's considered the most dangerous living human because nobody can figure out if she's going to take a nap, then re-write the rules of linguistics, develop an AI that will take over the Human race or stub her toes and decide to eradicate all living things in a Light Millenium.

As someone who's spent an afternoon shovelling food into her and listening to her do the most hilarious routine on why Comic Books should be weaponised, I can tell you that she has no more ill will toward anyone who doesn't write Justice Interplanetary than the common dog owner has for their pupper.

But Stever Aronnomis and Gixy Lurraine? Your days are numbered. Especially after Issue 17.

Anyway, Mir-Mir took about eight hours and re-wrote the Oetzie protocol, and got published in about 19 interdisciplinary publications. She was nice enough to credit me with the original work, and that got me a job and a weekly visit from the People In Black to check that I'm not also a supervillain or plotting to steal people's essential fluids to make Tsin sports drinks.

Anyway.

Oetzie mode gives you near-fatal hypothermia. It's not quite suspended animation but it's close as you can get while maintaining a really good chance of waking back up.

All I had to do was program a really simple little macro that would ping for immediate assistance and flag the file with re-animation instructions.

Already I was getting chilled. My teeth were chattering and I was trying to relax and jsut lket it happen. My littel budd the spac squid was stuill floting her. gabe it one o th deb bat  klklklkkkkkkkkkk

Ow.

Seriously. I was feeling very disoriented. Everything was too bright and I felt very woozy and my jaw ached, but apart from that, the pins and needles, the way all my clothes felt like broken glass and the uncontrollable shivering, I felt surprisingly not dead.

Also not in Oscar.

I was having trouble focusing my eyes, but hearing I could manage.

Two Tsin were discussing eating me.

Voice One: "Well he's dead. I say we just ask. You know Humans - it's either 'no, you can't because we have a whole bunch of traditions and sacred laws that cannot be broken' or 'haha yeah that's what they'd want' and then they ask you if you want some sauce."

Voice Two: "Yeah but... what if the othre humans get upset that we asked? What if they think we killed this one to get the meat?"

Voice one: "They were in an un-powered EVA suit with no air, and the life support running colder than the Caffeteria Freezer. I don't care what stupid plan they had, not even a Human can survive that."

This is it. The moment that I have been living for all these years. You always hope one day you get the chance, and now finally it's my time to shine!

I sat up and said "Do you two mind? I'm trying to get some sleep."

Their horrified screams were like a warm bath. Ahhhh!

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.

[yuwuta]

whenever you and satoru have an argument, he holds your hand and he won’t let go until he’s certain you’re not mad anymore. you’re telling him off because he forgot to unpack the dishwasher again, and he knows that’s his fault and you have a right to be mad but he hates when you’re mad and even worse when you’re mad at him, so he does the first thing that comes to mind and laces your hands together. now you can’t leave and be mad at him alone, you have to be mad at him while he’s connected to you and satoru has learned that that far reduces the amount of time you spend mad at him. getting upset because he led you two in the wrong direction? holding hands until you’ve cooled down. upset with him for being reckless mid-fight? he drops his infinity just to be close to you, holds your hand and tells you the curse can wait, he needs your forgiveness more. mad at him because he forgot something important on his way home? you’re holding hands until you forgive him—which could be all the way until you go to bed, or dragging you by your connected hands with him to the store to pick up what was forgotten. you get irritated with him in public? he’s quick to hold your hands and beg for kisses. sometimes the first years see you steaming and satoru following you like a lovesick puppy, his leash being your laced fingers and megumi just sighs and explain to yuuji and nobara that, “they’re fighting. this is their get along tactic, just leave them be.” 

[spookberry]

"i kissed a girl once when i was 12" is kind of a losing response anyways

[egophiliac]

Do yoy like their silly little dance

the inside of my brain at any given moment:

[ddeck]

commander fox that spends two hours before his shift doing a full drag make up routine because no one will know if he just doesn't remove the helmet is this anything

[cucumbermoon]

In the very first scene of The Wire, Garak asks Bashir if he was up late “entertaining one of (his) lady friends.” Bashir explains that no, he was up really really late reading a boring book that he hated. Why did the important space station doctor deprive himself of sleep reading a terrible book that he didn’t like? Oh, because this guy he has lunch with likes it.

I want to point out that Garak’s question was obviously intended to serve as the official “No Homo” announcement for the ensuing (very homo) episode, as was obviously necessary for super gay episodes of tv in the 90’s. However, Julian’s response was so gay, I submit that it instantly Homo’d the No Homo.

[becca-e-barnes]

Sub Bucky and a breeding kink 💀 dead unlived it's one of my favourite things 😌

This is pretty high up there on my list of dream fantasies 🥵 these are two of my biggest weaknesses, don't even look at me rn

One of life's greatest joys is cuddling with the other person's head resting on your chest so you can play with their hair and rub their shoulders. I love that shit, having someone else's body weight on you is so comforting.

I imagine that's something Bucky would really enjoy too. It's so soft and sweet and tender and getting to feel cared for would really appeal to him.

But that's up until his hands work their way under your top, up over your bare skin so he's able to cup your breasts and bury his face between them while he's getting his hair played with. Life's pleasures don't get much simpler than that.

After a few moments he shifts slightly, tugging the neckline of your shirt out of the way to give himself space to kiss and nip your skin. All of a sudden he's desperate and it's beautiful to watch.

"Please." He whispers between frantic kisses, flicking his tongue over the stiff peak of your nipple before engulfing it with his warm, eager mouth.

"Please, what?" You tease, tugging on his hair just a little for emphasis.

He groans, frustrated by his own lack of coherence, pulling his mouth from your nipple. "Please let me put a baby in you."

That's not what you were expecting but fuck, he makes it sound pretty appealing.

"Bucky-" You begin but he cuts you off, giving your other nipple the same attention as he gave the first. God, that's distracting.

"You'd make. Such. A pretty. Mommy." He whispers, kissing his way down your body until he reaches the bottom seam of your top. From there, he pulls it off, letting it fall to the floor before removing the rest of your clothes.

"You'd look so pretty with a little baby bump." His huge hand rests on your bare tummy, imaging how your body would change.

"I want it, Buck." You mean it too. It doesn't sound like such a bad idea when he's taking his clothes off.

"I know you want it." He groans, rubbing the tip of his dick against your soaked core. "Y-you're so wet."

He presses his hips forward, sliding inside you and you can't explain it but you swear it feels different this time.

"Don't even think about pulling out." You cup his face in your hands, keeping his eyes on you and you almost worry he's going to fuck himself senseless into you. "I want you to make me a mommy. You're going to give me every single drop of cum and when it starts to drip out of me, you're going to fuck it back in."

His head falls onto your shoulder, sobbing a pathetic moan against your already hot skin. The pace of his thrusts matches his need, his hips slamming into yours and when he finally gives in, he cums inside you with your legs clamped around his waist, making sure he couldn't pull out even if he wanted to.

[humming-fly]

The best thing about coming into a fandom late is getting to make the jokes everyone else already made 3 years ago

[causeimanartist]

The sillies

[hotwaterandmilk]

I don't know why but I find these brief profiles for the love angels in Shougaku Ichinensei 11/1994 really cute. Illustrations above by Kirishima Sent.

-

Wedding Peach / Hanasaki Momoko

Born March 3rd. Blood type 0. Cheerful, but a little clumsy… A girl with angelic blood who fights devils using the power of love.

Angel Lily / Tanima Yuri

Born July 7th. Blood type A. Gentle, good at fortune telling. A girl with angelic blood who fights devils using the power of intelligence.

Angel Daisy / Tamano Hinagiku

Born May 5th. Blood type B. Tomboyish, good at fighting. A girl with angelic blood who fights devils using the power of courage.

-

While the girls are still described as angels, their profiles state that they each combat the devils using different "powers". Love for Peach, intelligence and courage for Lily and Daisy respectively.

I also find it interesting that Yuri is described as having a talent for fortune-telling in this profile. In the Secret File art book section discussing the original setting ideas for the series, Hinagiku was planned to have precognition/clairvoyance talents. However, none of the heroines retained this as a primary character trait in the finalised anime or Ciao manga (save for Yuri suggesting the missing bride's location in episode 9 of the anime).

While courage stayed as a core element of Daisy's power and persona in both anime and manga (Hinagiku performs her oironaoshi by calling "Angel Courage Daisy"), Lily's intelligence didn't become amalgamated in the same way. Interestingly though, the hint at psychic ability did remain in the oironaoshi call "Angel Prescience Lily".

This is what I love love love about older media mix titles like Wedding Peach. There are just so many changes across the different adaptations that I'm still finding out new things as I gain access to various old magazines (which is hard because ugh, they're SO expensive). And there really are a lot of different versions of the Wedding Peach story to read in print alone:

If I had a bunch of spare cash on hand right now for fandom purposes I'd be buying more magazines to scan/share and paying someone to do a proper translation of the Secret File book (because I really can't get the nuance right with the interviews). Oh well, I can dream!

[cuprohastes]

Lunch In Space Part 5

To be fair, the two Tsin med-tech were being really quite considerate. It's a Tsin thing.

The Tsin eat their honored dead, and thus, the question of whether they could persuade the Human Admin team to let me be dinner was kind of an indicator of high regard.

Either that or the Caf was out of Grottled Greebs and they were snacky.

They also were the techs there to keep the medbay hardware running and not the people who were allegedly treating my case of non-fatal death, so they get a pass on not noticing I was still alive.

The fact I was sitting up without any large chunks falling off told me that the how-to revival guide had been used and nobody had tried throwing hot water on me.

The actual medical team arrived in short order, no doubt alerted by one of the machines that was attached, or possibly by the brief screaming fit from the Tsin.

After an hour or so I was feeling much better, and me and my new tech buddies were shooting the breeze about the station, which had stopped falling apart.

"It's the space squid." I told them.

They politely indicated that I was obviously deranged.

"No really... Say did they bring in all the stuff that was with me? There were a couple of busted batteries."

"I dunno. I guess?" Said one who I'd decided to call Gnax, since that was what he introduced himself as. The other was Gwingbit, by which I determined they were a small male and a small female. Large females traditionally get descriptive names like Walks-In-Sunlight, over in Admin.

Gnax pulled out a tablet and held it in his upper right hand and checked. "Yeah. We grabbed everything in case... you know."

In case it turned into an inquest. 

"Sure but uuuuh, you really need to grab those batteries before they get recycled, they may still have evidence - the same thing that got the station got me".

Gnax scampered out eagerly. I got the feeling he was excited to be part of the big story and that his day-to-day wasn't very interesting. While he did that, Gwingbit sidled closer. For someone who looks vaguely like a four armed pangolin with ears way too close to their nose, the body language is often surprisingly human.

"So uh, you know Strong-Like-Sunlight?" She said.

"I cannot say I do... or," I said getting a suspicion, "I might not know that name?"

Gwingbit muttered, "Dave The Human". 

Oh right, Dave's actually a Large Female - Not that they're much bigger than the Small females. The names don't really translate well, so it's a sort of... For Dumb Humans label. Tsin have four genders, and I have very politely never asked about how that works. 

I never thought of Dave as anything but one of the Daves, but from what I know, I suspect she's actually kind of all that and a purple breadroll by Tsin standards.

"Oh, I'll tell her you said hi!" I told Gwingbit making her day, and then clammed up because Gnax trundled back with a cart, upon which were the smashed batteries. 

I had a vague memory of trying to feed my space squid one before going under. 

The induced hypothermia pretty much conserved my oxygen and power past the projected point of death, but reading between the lines, everything was tapped out by the time the rescue drone caught up. I got lucky.

We peered at the batteries, and the two Tsin made subtle "crazy human" gestures at each other, so I grabbed one and peered into it. Nothing. 

I picked up the other... well well! I dug my thumbs in and eased the already split case open, and lo and behold, there was my little buddy the space squid, tentacles curled, evidently napping after having snacked on the good stuff.

Gnax said something that the translator declined to provide a translation for but it was probably "oh snap" or "Gosh!".

"Who's the crazy human now, huh?!" I said with glee then screamed and dropped Squiddy because he just unfurled and tentacled my fingers a bit.

He tucked and rolled and we stuffed him in a plastic storage tub. I dropped the battery in and then we all looked at each other and felt dumb because this guy and his friends had eaten the station apart, so maybe a little plastic tub was not the impermeable barrier we hoped.

Squiddy on the other hand explored a bit, using it's little silvery tentacles to pet around the tub while we watched and made videos, then went back to nibbling the splayed open battery. 

We could see the little grinder it was using to snarf down little flakes.

I was very glad it was a dry battery or we might have had a nasty leak.

And about then, Raxy came screaming in.

You ever heard an Atrix screaming? Not reccomended. For a start, when you see a little guy on his own, it means that things are bad. And I knew Raxy so this was going to be something bad happening to someone I knew.

I knew it was Raxy, he was still wearing his jumper. I - in my spiffy paper pants and shirt - leapt off the bench and almost twisted an ankle. 

"Where's Gondy?!" I screeched and Raxy grakked at me, about a tenth of which I got, and hit turbo mode, doing a u-turn and heading out.

I am a highly trained EVA specialist. I can tell a "Timmy fell down the Well" scenario, and I was already moving. 

"Call the emergency response team" I yelled as I hurled after the small lizard. There was only really going to be one thing this could be - Gondy was hurt or in trouble.

Three turns and a sprint later he hit one of the bulkheads to a damaged section. The airlock was closed, but through the window I could see Gondy floating just beyond the airlock door on the other side. She was feebly pawing at her helmet which... Grak in a basket, it was cracked and leaking!

I yanked the lever for the airlock, closing the far door and crash equalised the pressure, hauling the door open before the atmosphere had stopped being misty and ploughed in, bare-foot into the freezing cold room to take a closer look. 

I was sure Gondy was still alive but I could see she was in a bad way. I couldn't tell if it was an impact or one of the space squid.

"Where's the emergency team?!" I screamed - Gnax was screaming into his tablet and Gwingbit was hauling the emergency cart towards us.

Well, clearly this was not going fast enough and given the fairly traumatic colours Raxy was displaying, he shared my opinion. 

I looked him in the eye and said with a calmness I didn't feel; "I'm going out." And then scooped the little guy up and bowled him out the airlock and pulled the door shut, panted deep and hard while I braced... and blew the atmosphere.

OK so things got unpleasant fast. When you crash dump the air out of an airlock, it vents both up and and down from the station, not out the door. 

It takes about ten seconds and then the door lock releases and it automatically opens - It's designed on the assumption that if you just pulled the lever for an emergency vent, you really need to get out fast. Think Fire.

Anyway about now my hands were swelling up, and it felt like I was drowning - Pretty much the case since I was screaming, and my lungs were filling with a froth, which itself was expanding and evaporating.

Top tip: Don't try and hold your breath when you depressurise. It will kill you even worse than vacuum exposure, and that's saying something.

In low pressure, water boils and freezes at the same time and I was exhaling all the water that had been keeping my tissues nice and plump.

You don't want to know what it felt like on my eyes. Or my skin.

About now I had maybe thirty seconds before I was dead. Maybe half that before i lost the ability to move.

I lunged and wrapped my arms around Gondy's leg, hauled her into the airlock by yanking back as hard as I could.

As she slid in and the gravity field hooked her she hit the floor and slid... I already was staggering over, mostly blind and kind of hooked my forearm around the big emergency lever: Designed for anyone in a spacesuit to operate: Thank my lucky stars it was, because my hands were swollen up too far to use my fingers.

I wondered why I was still screaming, and realsied the door was shut and the air was flooding back in. I yawped like crazy to equalise the pressure on my ears, tongue swollen up kind of hilariously. I mean I'd laugh but I was having problems breathing around it. Come to think of it, it might be because I just blew out a lot of tiny blood vessels in my lungs too. I wondered if my lungs might be filling with blood. 

The inner door opened to show two horrified Tsin. I walked past them and then passed out mid step.

When I woke up, I felt like I'd been sand blasted and there were a lot of tubes in places that didn't normally have tubes.

There's a joke about nurses installing new holes in you if you're not polite and at some point I must have said something bad about coffee, because someone had come along and punched an exciting number of new orifices into me.

I also had a fanclub.

My two adoring Tsin were practically glued to my side, and Gwingbit was making those soft little chirps which is the Tsin way of beaming so wide the top of your head comes off.

"You guys really are space orcs!" She squeeped. "Nobody believes it. you walked into a vacuum, like..." she waved. "If I didn't have the video, they'd never believe it! You're like a... a... I don't know! In one day you got hit so hard it tore the docking rail off, then you discovered the things that ate all the seals on the modules... And then you ran out of air and got frozen and just got up from being dead. And and and then you walked into space and just grabbed Atrix..."

"She's called Gondolier Dottirsdottir. Picked it this morning" I rasped. Wow. This morning? Less than 10 hours ago.

"... and Strong-Like-Sunlight came in to see you..." Gwingbit added. Ah. There we go.

They saved Gondy. Her helmet got cracked by high velocity crap that punched through the wall, stunning her and giving her a slow leak. I don't know how much longer she had but when they got her helmet off, she'd already taken some damage to her eye and face. 

Luckily, not more damage than we can deal with, though she was blind in one eye for a month. 

I got off lightly! My skin peeled off like a sunburn and I had to spend time on a ton of steroids and on extra oxygen since I slightly freeze dried most of my lungs and throat.

As for the space squid? As near as we can tell they're a Von Neumann machine. They mine, replicate and use a distributed network. They might even be smart, if you get enough together!

When they hit the station they just saw a big lump of something useful and started by stripping out all the most useful things they could find. Which largely was the stuff that held the place together.

There's a frequency they don't like. They poured off the station like you wouldn't believe once we blipped it at them. Who figured that out I don't know.

As for me? Now I just have to live with everyone wearing t-shirts that say "EVA 43: Just Going Out."

They couldn't have used my name? 

[twelvemonkeyswere]

Donna Noble is so powerful in how grounded she is. The first time we meet her, she saw the Doctor was so deep in his anger and grief he was going too far with the alien spider, and she told him "Doctor, you can stop now." He snapped back immediately into reality. Their journey ends this week with her telling him "Doctor, you can stop now," and the Doctor once again listens to her and accepts it's true to the point he tells so to himself.

Donna Noble not just has saved the world, her family, her home, herself, and the universe a couple of times, but also she saved her best friend many times over, and built a life for herself so good she was able to bring him back to it

[synthaphone]

Finished the Royal Centibytes, in both pre- and post-conversion flavors!

I thought court jesters would be a fun change of pace from king/queen or prince/princess- there's a precedent for royals to occasionally be things like heralds and war(?)horses, and I wanted to make a royalgirl who isn't a princess, noblewoman, or queen. I got to learn a little about some historical female court jesters while looking for references, which was cool!

I agonized for a while over whether I should put eyelashes on the one that I arbitrarily assigned 'Royalgirl', but ended up deciding that they look cute.

[learnelle]

On Sunday I took a walk around my neighborhood and found a bunch of maps for sale! I bought some of the places I lived in France before moving to Paris. I hope that I won’t be moving again anytime soon :-)

[cold-neon-ocean]

Some quick rendering practice with a new space whale of mine ☄️🐳✨