#salvaging the ship of theseus

[proxycrit]

Part 1 / Part 2

Emmet remembers when he and Ingo first brought Elesa to explore Celestial Tower, back when they were fourteen and thought they were immortal.

“Allegedly, the bell chime will bring ghosts home”, ingo had told emmet with the pompous knowing energy of a child who read way too much brochures. “It’s culturally significant! We must ring it.”

“Hmmm,” emmet had responded suspiciously. “Brother. The bell is at the top of the tower.” The implication stands: Ingo, there are thirty flights of stairs between here and the top, and no elevator to speak of.

Don’t be a coward, Litwick had told Emmet with the blaise tone of somebody who’s going to be piggy backing off of somebody else. Go ring the bell. Tynamo, sensing a litten fight, floated towards a loitering blitzle.

Ingo turns his lilipup eyes on Elesa, who’s squinting at the carved stone faces of the front door.

“Elesa? What do you think?”

Elesa thinks. She shrugs. “We already made our way here,” she said in accented galarian. “Might as well make it the rest of the way. Ganbatte!”

Emmet sighs. “This is a mistake,” he tells the two in exhaustive patience, but lets himself be dragged into the building.

Last time the twins were here, Ingo caught litwick— but not before she managed to nab a good chunk of Emmet’s soul. It’s not terrible; he felt fatigued for a week and bounced back pretty quickly, but it was the principle of the whole situation— celestial tower’s a pain in the ass and Emmet will stand by that until the day he dies.

Like right now.

The map isn’t working. Emmet checked it once. He’s checked it twice. He’s taken out his pen and written on it, which he would usually never do but desperate times call for desperate measures. The compass he brought spins useless circles. It’s like chargestone cave up here, but worse because instead if electric pokemon it’s all ghosts.

“We’re lost, yyup yup!” He announced to the crew. “I vote we eat Ingo first.”

“I love you too,” Ingo told Emmet placidly. “But we all know between the two of us, you’re the tastier one.” Litwick gives Emmet a thumbs up. Emmet gasps in mock affront.

“Elesa, help!”

Elesa gives the two of them a wary look. It took two floors for her to realize this is not just a weird temple with strange rocks, but a full out graveyard. She’s not very happy about that development.

“Don’t drag me into this,” she tells them. “Teme wa urusaii.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” Ingo reports back.

Emmet, who’s cheerfully struggles with Galarian on a good day, simply gives her a thumbs up.

The three painstakingly crawl their way up. And up. If all else fails, Emmet told himself, at least they can orient themselves towards high ground.

“We’re like pidoves,” Ingo gasps. He has fallen behind them on the stairs, with Emmet taking the lead through sheer spite despite his legs going numb on floor twenty two. “We, hah, we are attracted by the magnet of the bell, like, like probopass-“

“I am emmet! You are not making, sense!” Emmet called back. Elesa, who’s stuck between them and looking two steps from perpetual collapse, giggles.

“No, no hear me out, Ingo wheezes. “What if the bell’s a magnetic pole? And that’s why your compass doesn’t wo, woo, hahh, work.”

Emmet stops to rest, just because Ingo is using precious breathing air to infodump. Elesa gratefully slumps against the railing. Tynamo and litwick, lazy in their still small size, have settled on a weary blitzle and look very smug doing so. (Emmet is not jealous, he tells himself. Emmet is also lying.)

“The bell’s important,” Ingo had repeated.

“Okay,” Elesa responds. “If it’s important to you, then it’s important to us.”

And Emmet finds that he agrees with Elesa. Partially because they crawled up twenty fucking three flights of stairs, but also because Ingo thinks this is important, so it is.

And here’s the thing—

— emmet doesn’t remember much after that.

The rest of that trip was a blur of exhausted groaning and burning legs, and by the time the trio managed to breach floor thirty, people’s brains have all but dribbled out their ears. Emmet remembers being disgustingly sweaty. He remembers blitzle almost tripping to death and litwick’s swearing. He remembers tynamo sticking to his neck like a damp towel. He remembers Ingo’s excited sneasel smile, and the way the sunset bounced off of Elesa’s hair.

He remembers the brassy ring of the Celestial bell. It sounded like victory.

But it was Elesa’s cackle turned scream as Ingo swiped cold hands down her neck that sounded like home.

—-

So when the conductor at thirty one, lost and disoriented in the Impossible Place, heard the sound of a familiar bell, ringing over and over and over-

-the sound of laughter-

-EMMET! Elesa cried-

-like a homing pidove, the conductor, thinks nonsensically as something in him perks up.

(Emmet had always liked winning, more than anything else, and the sound of victory calls him home.)

—

Elesa catches lightning in a bottle. Elesa, arms outstretched, finds purchase in her brother, and does not let go.

Emmet is so, so cold, Elesa thinks as the wind steals air from her lungs. (That’s okay. She’s already breathless from a terrible business called hope.)

Emmet stares back. His hands flap against Elesa’s jacket. Elesa desperately drinks in his wan face and too wide eyes and his frost bitten lips. In a tiny, meek voice, almost lost to the wind, he asks:

“Are you real?”

Elesa lets out an ugly sob. Her tears whip away in the wind as they fall. Emmet’s frightened countenance turns immediately to alarm. His shaky grasp becomes a solid grip as they spin through the air, cushioned by chandelure’s psychic.

“I think so??” Elesa warbles. She sees Emmet’s eyes dart to her mouth. He’s reading mirroring her, she realizes with giddy delight— it’s such an Emmet thing to do, to read lips, and-

“I am Emmet,” Emmet breathes. His eyes have started to water. “Yyou are Elesa- Oh dragons, Elesa!?“

Elesa reaches. Hesitates.

Emmet grabs elesa by the lapels and crushes her tight against him. Elesa holds on, and the grief and relief in her accumulates into a wet sopping mess. She’s ruining his jacket, she mourns, but its okay because he’s dripping all over hers.

She can’t hear what he’s saying into her shoulder, can’t read what he says, but everything’s okay because every part of her is chiming

You came back

You’re here

I’m not alone anymore.

Around them, the air distorts as Chandelure’s psychic wavers, flutters, and solidifies. Gravity reverses its call as they settle gently on the ground, dust billowing in all directions.

The ghost pokemon drops next to them, shaking so hard the musical clang of glass makes Elesa flinch.

You fucks, Chandelure gasps. DON’T GO LEAPING OFF BUILDINGS, I AM NOT YOUR EMERGENCY PARACHUTE.

“I’m sorry,” Elesa gasps, still giddy from the adrenaline.

AND YOU! Chandelure howls, whirling on Emmet, who’s still staring at the ghost with huge eyes. He’s gripping on to solid ground with the energy of a man who realized he could have been a splat on the ground.

YOU LEFT!

Emmet winces.

You- You left us, you left me-

Ah, ah no, Elesa thinks as golden globules of light shed from Chandelure. This is what a ghost looks like crying.

Emmet holds out his arms. Chandelure drifts into his embrace, and shakes, and shakes, and shakes.

You left me, the ghost pokemon whispers. How dare you. How could you.

“I didn’t mean to,” Emmet whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Stop doing this to me, Chandelure demands. Golden brine joins human tears, like drops of sun trapped in wet glass. Stop going where I can not follow.

And Emmet holds his tongue, because he knows he can not promise staying. Not while Ingo and Eelektross are still in Hisui.

(In the back of Emmet’s hurt and shattered mind is a spark. Synapses connect. The cold breach of the Distortion does nothing to drown out the sudden flare of hope in Emmet’s chest, so great he can not breathe, so strong he can not feel, because there’s a path. A difficult, painful path through the Space that Can Not Be, but a path all the same.)

“Elesa, Chandelure-“ Emmet’s voice breaks. He wants to tell them about Eelektross. He wants to tell them about the terrible past that is Hisui. He wants to explain how the last five months were filled with horror and wonder and fear and hope.

Hope, he thinks. So he says this:

“I know how to get Ingo home.”

NOTES:

AAAAAND THAT’S ALL FOR THIS DRABBLE. ITS OUT NOW. I CAN FINALLY GO BACK TO POSTING HAPPY SHENANIGANS! (Now you know the shape of their story.)

Thanks for reading this monster of a post!

[powder-of-infinity]

Oh don't look at me like that, girl. I told you I'd make a pilot out of you. I told you that I would determine your schedule. I never said that I would make a combat pilot out of you. That was always what you concluded in that silly little brain of yours. Now get in that cockpit. The cargo isn't shipping itself. It need to be delivered, people's lives depend on it.

Don't fool yourself. I am still a handler. *Your* Handler, and I am perfectly authorized to kick your butt until you break. Now, will you get in that cockpit and bring food to civilians cut off from any other supplies, or do you require a demonstration?

Oh? Getting hit in the chest hurts? Well then, stop whining and get into the cargo mech. And it is a *cargo* mech. Stay on your route and out of trouble. I'm tired of burying my pilots.

The conditioning? You mean the weird sex stuff? Sure. We *can* do that. If you behave yourself, that is.

I ask you again. Do I need to beat the crap out of you, or will you get into the cockpit? Cockpit? Good girl. Be back by twentyonehundred, and I'll treat you like the combat handlers do.

Oh? How I would even know? Silly girl. I used to be a combat pilot myself. I even have Theseus on base, to rescue my girls.

She's a beauty. Salvaged her a couple years ago. Superheavy brawler. To make sure the enemies know the ares accord are conventions, not suggestions. Enough babbling. One kiss and then your outta here.

[critterbitter]

Do you have an ao3/plan on uploading your work there?

(Does a lil jig) I have no work on ao3 but I have been drabbling together some stuff! It’s a long term project though haha, and I’m not likely to post because I’m still job hunting. (Shakes my little hat) but i can be convinced! Some stray dollars for lunch mmmight motivate me. Ehe.

For people curious what I WANT to write, if i have time:

Hisui Horizon Event — (alternate version of Canon but flavored with my war crimes.)

Ingo is sent to Hisui with no name and no memories. He copes.

Without her anchor, Chandelure fades. (Elesa and Emmet, mourning the loss of their third, will not let her slip gently into the grave.)

Salvaging the Ship of Theseus — (definitely canon divergence because, well.)

Emmet and Eelektross fall into Hisui seventeen months after Ingo’s disappearance and a month before PLA.

May I introduce: Shitty merchant Emmet, who’s definitely not fluent in Hisui flavored Kantonese. One concerned Eelektross, who’s about to change the landscape of pokemon-human relations forever. Warden Ingo, who is attempting to retire wardenship to go looking at the rift bubbles. Lady Sneasler, who’s using Ingo as a babysitter for her three rascally sneaslets.

And a very angry Elesa, armed with an extra pissed Chandelure, as they hunt down Sinnohian legends to get their favorite muppets back.

(HERE’S A DRABBLE. I have a lot of thoughts for Salvaging the Ship of Theseus. So many thoughts. Help. HELP.)

(Sigh. I have so many outline ideas. But writing is hard so yall. Art or fics, I’m not powerful enough to do both.)

But also interest check? Intwest chweck? WAH (gets swatted at with a broom))

[syn4k]

i feel really fucking sorry for every historian that is going to have to research this century in this future. Hey I know this is a bunch of words on tumblr.com on an internet designed to degrade down over the years which is terrifying but like if anyone from the year 2110 or some shit like that manages to see this, please know that it sucked for all of us learning about this stuff too

if this post can be salvaged from the wreck of theseus' ship that this site will eventually become and survives until then, hello humans in the future. everything is very scary right now. i think everything's always been scary but its different when you're staring down entropy itself

here are a few things that i want people from the future to know:

in between all the crazy shit going on in the 21st century weve been eating dinner and petting animals and scheduling times to hang out with friends just like weve always been just like we always will be. for every huge groundbreaking event you learn about theres gonna be several million people at any time going "damn" and immediately putting their phones down and going to do regular shit cos life goes on man

we're still telling stories! just like always! and singing stupid little songs just like always and most of it will be never recorded and lost to time forever but please dont be sad even if you dont know the origin of a story or song just know that in creation you are connected to the past always :)

i hope the internets still up we got a lotta good shit on here

i love you. we love you

has tumblrs search function been fixed yet?

what version is minecraft on

seriously dont get sad about whats been lost. its ok. it was here once and it was beautiful

i love you

i love you

i love you

if you really are reading this in 2110 then i am almost certainly dead by now

(unless the events of 17776 by jon bois occurred in which case yippee! immortality! we still got 2 years til april 7th 2026. holding out till then o7)

i love you

[dragon-swords-prophecies]

FIC ASK GAME TO CORRECT BLOG THIS TIME

✅ list one or two favourite lines you’ve written and explain why they’re your favourite

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

😊 say something nice about your writing

~ @akindofmagictoo <3

✅ list one or two favorite lines you've written and explain why they're your favorite

''Oh, and please tell that poor fellow lying on the sidewalk outside that I hope he feels better soon.''

There was a long pause. ''He's dead, I can't really... do that?''

''Oh dear. Tell him tomorrow, then? I'm sure he'll be back on his feet in no time!''

Every single thing balloon guy says is my favorite, but especially this (and the alligator incident). The first murder has just happened, and there's a guy's body laying on the sidewalk, and balloon guy walks past and thinks ''ah, yes, this is Perfectly Normal for humans. large pools of red liquid around them are nothing to be concerned about!'' he does not know what death is. despite many attempts to explain it he has remained politely confused about why humans vanish sometimes for the last several hundred/thousand years.

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

yes! with herald I completely changed the time it was set in and the genre of the story (1890s-inspired steampunk -> 1940s noir-ish), but also with one of my other wips. frost & fire, which I haven't talked about in like two years, got completely and wildly changed at least three times. the reason it's on draft four (?), despite that I've never actually finished a draft of it, is that every time I massively changed the plot/characters/other majorly important element, I started a new draft, because the other one was so far gone it couldn't be salvaged. at this point it's basically the ship (wip?) of theseus

[starstruckpurpledragon]

So I like to get amateur crafty with jewelry, it can be a fun way to pass the time but not to the point I wind up hyperfocused on it and it's hours later, I've forgotten lunch and a work meeting and have three dozen earrings with matching bracelets, 'how did that happen?' type of thing.

Which means that sometimes my mom will pass me her stretchy bracelets when the elastic cord starts to give out so I can fix them.

Now the thing about these types of bracelets is that the makers looooove to hide where the elastic cord is tied off inside one of the beads. Not a bad idea really. But.

They glue the damn thing in there.

The last two of these I've repaired (IE, replaced the elastic cord) I've managed to pry out the glued bits and salvage the bead for reuse.

Sadly. Not this time. I've let my mom know the situation and that I've found similar enough brown jasper beads on sale. Basically I told her if I eyeballed the stone type correctly (if I have, then I'm giving credit to being a geologist's grandchild and claiming it has given me magic stone-identifying powers) then I will replace only the glue-jammed bead. If it isn't then I will replace all the beads and keeping the leftover to play with either way.

She's fine with me doing a ship of theseus with her bracelet (did not phrase it as such to her, she'd have had no idea what I meant) so for now her bracelet shall continue to sit around disassembled until the replacement parts arrive.

(As another sign that I have ADHD and it's inherited, she gave me this bracelet to fix in the spring; I'm only just now getting around to it. She had forgotten she'd given me a bracelet to fix and was like 'which one???' so it'll be like she's getting a brand new bracelet when I give this back to her.)

[talesfromsigil]

Surely she wouldn't release a chapter with something important about to happen in it when she's about to go on vacation, right?

[g0atbutts]

replace the cpu, then. bam. machine fixed. immortality maintained. carry over whatever code you can salvage from there, and ship of theseus that motherfucker.

People love to talk about the immortality of the machine, but I'm a mechanical engineer, so I know they delude themselves. Most machines are far more mortal than flesh.

How long does a machine last? A car is a very solid machine, expensive, precision designed, and you're lucky if you get more than three decades out of them.

Your enemy is not the flesh. It's entropy. It's the death knell of the energy imbalance. If you want to live as a complex machine you will, by necessity, generate a great deal of entropy until your machine breaks irrevocably.

You want to be immortal? Then don't worship the machine, worship the stone, the forest. Seek that which is either simple enough to never know death or diffused enough to accept every death.

[devouring-hive]

Recycling???? Like they're gonna take your pieces that can be salvaged.

"Are we still talking about this? Very well. The Ship of Theseus, does its name mean anything to you?"

[proxycrit]

Salvaging the Ship of Theseus au! Posting on the sketch acc because i haven’t decided on anything permanent yet.

Emmet’s having a grand time guys.

He’s doing great!

On a side note, here’s Ingo!

Ingo’s fighting very hard to retire from Wardenship after seeing a whole train fall from the sky and land on the other side of Hisui. Unfortunately, this is a track he can not disembark until either him or Sneasler become permanently indisposed.

He’s also doing great! Don’t worry about it!

[reactor-stress-is-a-resource]

>> Oh, yeah, the Winterhalter's absolutely alive for how it acts when I'm workin' on it. As for the gun, there's no compensators lmao I raw dog that shit

>> I pretty much never get into scraps with any ship much bigger than I am, though, so one shot does it. Line it up, put her into drive, maximum forward burn, and KABOOM. Works well enough for my purposes, but there's still some vertical spin and backward travel.

>> A SHIP SCALE BASILISK THOUGH!?!?!?!?!? I. Do not want to be near that, as awesomely powerful as that sounds. And on a transport ship??? I mean the Winterhalter's an old salvage tug so I guess I can't talk. Then again call her the ship of theseus because NOTHING inside is stock. She's like a hot rod under the hood, I'm immensely proud of it.

>> Anyways the transport ship

>> Engine limiters my beloathed, they get in the way so often when trying to screw with a ship's power and speed.

>> Oh, the eye thing! I have a projector kinda like that, it's in my shoulder though. Mostly it's just used so Volta can fade in whenever he takes control through my built-in player two implant. That would be really cool, to just. be able to project things from your eye.

>> And as long as that PMD-esque-creature-machine puts out thermal energy, it sounds perfect for my needs. And 'unstable' only makes me want to use it more lol

[Pyroclast]

>> HI I JUST FOUND YOUR BLOG

>> REALLY OLD TECH & ENGINEERING 🤝

>> Need to get in touch with more engineers on here. Making things/making things blow up with friends is one of the most fun things in existence I think

>> Anyways here's my pride and joy, the ISV Winterhalter. Installed that short-cycle lance myself

[Winterhalter outside.omif]

IMAGE ID: A small salvage ship that looks mostly like a box, with a gun half its size and three quarters its length bolted to the top

>> What're some of your projects? Love hearing about what other people have made :)

>> [Pyroclast]

>>HELLO!!!! Oh it’s really nice to meet someone who likes old tech, I LOVE working on older freighters they’re so much more clunky and tactile than ones these days, those things are ALIVE they’re like some sort of beasts to me.

>>Ohhh the Winterhalter looks SO good!!! What kinda considerations did you make for the recoil on that lance? Can the engines produce enough power to counter the force that would push the ship backwards? Hell, if I made something like that I just know I’d send myself careening off into space.

>>I’m actually between projects right now!! I just finished up putting a ship-scale Basilisk on a transport ship which was SUCH a fun project. It was so unstable and I had to figure out how to route enough power into it to get the most efficient pulse without completely fucking up the projected speed of the ship. I ended up having to take some limiters off the engine which shouldn’t be a problem at all unless they try to run like a million things at once including the Blinkspace generator and Basilisk.

>>I have been thinking about some little projects, though! I’m gonna build a portable printer into my new prosthetic arm so I can have repair materials on the fly AND I’m gonna put a compact projector in my prosthetic eye just for fun.

>>Oh oh oh! Now that you’re here I should grab you something outta my workshop! I heard you kinda blew up a Perpetual Motion Drive you needed, I think I got, hold on…

[Crashing, clattering, and comical banging noises]

>>HERE WE GO!!! It’s not really a PMD, it’s not even IPS-N, but it does basically the same thing!! It’s paracausal, I think, and WAY more unstable than anything IPS-N makes but it’s functionally the same thing. Don’t look inside it, though. If it hurts my brain it’ll melt yours.

[princess-of-the-corner]

What’s Charlie like in your au?

Okay Charlie! Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!

Charlie is genuinely 100% a real person in my AU. Not a robot.

That said.

She did inherit her dad's interest in robotics. One of the reasons she liked being with him in his workshop as a kid.

She steered away from that for a while, trauma of what happened making her wary of anything that reminded her of Back Then. But she still ended up taking to working with mechanical parts and programming pretty easily even if it wasn't directly into animatronics.

The evens of Silver Eyes go as they did. Going back for the memorial, uncovering the truth, nearly getting killed by confused animatronics, having to kill William to escape.

Despite even more trauma, Charlie feels very much for all that was lost. The children who lost their lives, her father whose dream was shattered. She decides that she doesn't want to let Afton ruin all of that.

She applies herself more into robotics, deciding to major in it at college. However, she also takes a side study into the supernatural.

She eventually goes back to the original location for two reasons.

The first reason: She wants to make sure the souls of the children are properly able to move on. She's able to properly summon and talk to them. Which gives her some insight into why Afton killed them in particular, and that the events of Silver Eyes aren't the first time he came back there. The children are worried about moving on, knowing that Afton could have become a Ghost too. And that he won't stop. Charlie promises to deal with that(low-key having already thought about that before).

The second reason: Charlie wanted to salvage the old parts. Get a jumpstart on how these animatronics worked. And also bring a little bit of her dad's work into the new place, even if she knows it'll all get replaced eventually. Ship of Theseus and all that.

Charlie moves somewhere away from Hurricane, aware that the people might be uncomfortable with her decision, and opens the new pizzeria. With better and improved Animatronics.

Over the next several years, Charlie expands the company. From just the little pizzeria, to the Pizzaplex. In between upgrades to the location, she works on upgrading the security. Making it as hard as possible for anyone to harm the children. Whether it's Afton's Ghost or some more mundane killer and/or creep, she has that on lock.

(No seriously. I have headcanons on a LOT of the security measures that should be in the Pizzaplex but Vanny deactivated).

Along the way she meets up with Michael and Elizabeth(now both Ghosts) and agrees to bring them into the company. Michael as part of Security, and Elizabeth eventually becoming a co-creator for the animatronics.

She also goes though a lot of regular Human staff, with the only one sticking around through it all being one of the first security hires Jimothy "Phone Guy" Deacon.

Sometime along the way, the Animatronics also start becoming Alive on their own. Not possessed, but genuinely their programming becomes complicated enough that they're people now.

Charlie, now head of the Pizzaplex and still working on it, is still very dedicated to both fun and safety. However, due to not wanting to let everyone know 'hey there's a serial killer Ghost who pops up sometimes', she does her best to keep that and the darker history under wraps. Not full on cover up, but just. Do not capitalize on the 'spooky rumors'.

[onceandfutureoshainspector]

- ??? whatever i tell this bot i wasn’t in the army. did i just get drafted by marriage????

- i guess i’ll go meet the CAPTAIN. i have so, so many questions for them.

- last voyage??? this thing is pointed in the general direction of the PRYDWEN, and it looks like it’s got a bunch of rocket boosters attached to the underside, so it might be capable of flight in some bullshit kind of way (probably how it got here tbh) - is the CAPTAIN planning an attack?

    - oh my god, arial naval battle between OLD IRONSIDES and the BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL’s flagship. i am hoping and praying so hard.

- first step though: finding a way up. the ability to climb a rope ladder would come in handy right about now.

    - found it eventually. looks like OLD IRONSIDES has been here long enough that they’ve built a super rickety bridge up to the hatch - it didn’t land here yesterday.

- the interior of this place is filled with junk? like just random stuff like salvaged monitors and shopping trolleys full of rotary phones. it looks almost like they’re trying to upgrade the ship while maintaining a degree of its historicity.

    - oh yeah, the crew are all robots. i feel like there might have been some kind of misinterpretation of instructions that led to these shenanegans.

- [insert ship of theseus joke here]

[shootybangbang]

[Talking Bird] 17: In which beans are ruined

[Ao3 Link]

At the mention of Trelawney, Arthur dimly recalls a scrap of half-remembered conversation from last year, when he’d idled with the man in a Lemoyne saloon while waiting for a mark to arrive. The first flicker of your existence, passing him by unknown. Like the brief touch of a licked finger through candle flame: deceptively benign, with just a whisper of the burn to follow.

Somewhere between his first and second glass of whiskey sours, Trelawney had mentioned the burgeoning demand for opium in Chinatown. A former contact of his had recently left the high stakes poker circuit to get in on the profit, and he’d lamented the loss.

“It’s a shame,” he’d said, absently swirling the ice cubes in his emptied glass and regarding the swirling wood grain of the countertop with a pensive, faraway look. And for once, the sentiment had sounded genuine. Knowing him, the man was grieving a lost business opportunity more than anything else, but it’d been a long time since Arthur had heard him even bother to feign emotion for a stranger. “She’s not suited for smuggling in the least. Can’t say I can see this ending well.”

Less Trelawney’s gift for prophecy and more stating the obvious, now that he knows exactly who he’d been talking about. Prickly disposition, clueless when it comes to violence, and far too trusting of strangers. The cavalier attitude of someone who’d never been exposed to serious conflict and who, having since been exposed, lacks even the conviction necessary to put a bullet in the man holding her hostage.

And far too delicate besides.

When you’d pulled the blanket down your shoulders to untie your braid, Arthur had tilted his head back just enough to catch an eyeful of your backside. A pretty thing to put to paper: the wet swathe of hair draped over your shoulder, the faint shadow of your spine a dark curve flickering with the shifting of firelight. Soft, dappled lines wrapped in the body of someone who’s caused him nothing but grief in the past weeks.

The view had confirmed something he’d already been suspecting: your lack of threat to anything larger than a rat terrier.

Judging by your physique, you’d probably struggle to lift anything more than fifteen pounds. Maybe twenty, on a good day. A veritably pathetic amount of muscle tone with none of the etchings that rough living leaves behind.

Some foreign high society girl fallen on hard times, he guessed. But oddly, none of the clumsy caution people of that strata have when confronted with any sort of real work. You’d fallen into the rhythm of whittling bark off the cottonwood branches too comfortably for someone unacquainted with physical labor, handled the knife with a deftness that comes only from rote repetition.

“I knew Trelawney had connections to some gang out west, but I never thought…” You shake your head slowly, dazed by the absurdity of this new development. “Did he know? When I sold them those bonds, did he realize they were yours? And why—”

“Nah, he wouldn’t have known. I, uh… wasn’t too keen on tellin’ folk I got robbed by a woman.” He rubs the back of his neck and lets out an embarrassed huff. “Told ‘em the whole thing was a bust.”

Looking back, he may as well have told them the truth. The lie hadn’t done much to salvage his pride, and had prompted weeks of jibes at his own expense. Snide little asides from Micah, overt ridicule from Bill, and the painful ordeal of Sean.

“Gettin’ sloppy in your old age,” he’d quipped. “I’ll tell you what you need, Morgan. You need to let someone else hold the reins for a change. Someone quick on the uptake, someone young and hot-blooded and—”

“Get back to me when you’re done complimentin’ yourself,” Arthur had replied, already walking away.

“Wait, Morgan — take me with you next time you ride out! I’ll scout somethin’ out, and we can…”

Sean had been insistent as a mosquito and twice as annoying, but ultimately bearable so long as he had a beer in his hand or a pillow over his head. His own head, though he’d been sorely tempted otherwise.

No, what had really driven him to leave camp had been Dutch.

Dutch and his put-upon fatherly air, all stern mouthed disapproval and downward sloping shoulders. His pointed observations of Jack’s tattered jacket, well on its way to becoming a patchwork Ship of Theseus. Pearson’s dwindling supply of seasonings, so scarce that the stews have become bland to the point of near inedibility. The stocks of medicine running low, bandages boiled so many times that their fibers have since frayed to a cobwebbed consistency.

“I know you’re doing your best, son,” Dutch had sighed, casting a weary eye over his threadbare kingdom. “God knows you’re the only man I can depend on to get anything done around here. But folks are… well. Folks are struggling.”

Arthur’s eyes had slid momentarily towards Dutch’s tent, resting on the golden gleam of the gramophone and the crisp cotton sheets laid across the bed. An unbroken sea of white, with not a stitch out of place. And not twenty feet away, Hosea’s shabby lean-to, the older man’s bedroll bearing the same disjointed array of colors as the rest of the camp’s accoutrements.

Dutch always did have a taste for the finer things in life. A level of refinement proportionate to the depth of his ambition, which in earlier days had been tempered by kinder, simpler ideals. Feed those that need feeding. Shoot those that need shooting. Robin Hood-esque, with a western (and occasionally lethal) twist. Evelyn Miller had been a fixture even then, but in those halcyon years Dutch had not yet twisted the author’s words to the tottering worldview that he’s since constructed.

The gang’s nascent success had bred standards and attracted new followers. A ragtag flock all too eager to nourish their leader’s growing, malignant appetite for grandeur.

“Just one last score, and we’ll be clear of all this… this manmade rot.” Dutch said, gesturing in the direction of Blackwater. “But for now, we’ve got to play their game. Get our hands dirty for the time being so we can wash ourselves clean of all this when we’ve finally got the means.”

Arthur had departed under the pretense of retrieving the missing bonds (impossible) or locating some cache of similar value (near impossible), but in truth he’d done so primarily for the preservation of his own sanity. More and more these days, he’s been seeing cracks in the foundation of the man who’d given him this life, dragged him out of the gutter and set him with a previously unwavering sense of purpose. And it feels treacherous — traitorous, even — to take any of it into question.

But as always, the open road and the unabiding sky of the prairie settled him into a different mindset altogether. The cycles of flora and fauna in untouched wilderness exist completely separate from the artifices of men, with the legacies of countless tiny lives encapsulated in the fine grit of the dust to which all things return. And in that certainty comes an overwhelming comfort. Everything else seems trifling in the wake of the vast perpetuity of nature.

A few days spent wandering would do him good, he’d decided. Spend some time away from all the trappings of civilization, then rob some poor sap on the side of the road so as not to return empty-handed.

And then you’d ruined his plans entirely by literally walking into him as he’d been passing through Strawberry.

“Well,” you say, offering up a small, nervous smile. “What now?”

What now, indeed. Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “Guess we take a visit to Trelawney’s,” he replies, already dreading the inevitable embarrassment of explaining the whole sorry situation to the man. “And if it turns out you’re tellin’ the truth, I’ll give you a ride from Rhodes to St Denis.”

You frown and furrow your brow. “Rhodes?”

“Yeah, Rhodes. Trelawney’s got a caravan there on the outskirts of town. You didn’t know?”

“You can’t take me to Rhodes,” you say automatically, as if stating the obvious. “I mean… look at me.”

“You’re a woman?” he asks stupidly.

“I’m an Oriental, you moron. And Rhodes is a fucking… it’s a fucking Raider town.”

“You’d be with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

You shake your head and set your mouth into a grim, flat line. “That’s worse. They might think we’re together. And they don’t take kindly to miscegenation.”

Your words have to them the quality of a veil being drawn back, exposing a corner of this country’s ugliness he’s not often been privy to. A familiar knot of guilt tugs at his innards, accompanied by the unpleasant, impotent sensation that surfaces each time he catches the ungracious stares of the crowd when walking into town with Tilly by his side. Each time he hears the practiced courtesy in a shopkeep’s voice drop away when the man turns away from him to address Charles. Each time he watches Lenny reread for the thousandth time the letter from his dead father, the creases in its paper worn so deep that it would have long since fallen apart were it not for the boy’s careful, reverent handling.

“You know those big plantation houses just south of Rhodes? They hire Chinese sometimes to work the fields. Cheaper than sharecropping, apparently.” The look on your face is drawn and bitter. The bite in your voice suggests something personal, the sting of an injury not yet healed. “One of the boys got involved with a white housemaid. He’d saved up for train tickets to Philadelphia, and they were… he was going to marry her there. Wanted an August wedding. The number eight’s lucky for us, you see. So August 8th, 1898… he thought it was all very romantic. Used to make this stupid joke that he wished he’d met her ten years earlier. Raiders strung him up in an oak tree a couple weeks before they were set to leave.”

Arthur’s tongue lies silent and heavy in his mouth.

You take in a deep breath that rattles with the failing determination of someone struggling not to break their composure, then look to him with a desperation so absolute that it seems almost indecent to witness. “Why don’t you just leave me here? Keep me tied up if you have to. Come back for me when you’re done with Trelawney.”

In the short span of time that he’s known you, you’ve made enough of an impression to warrant several conclusive classifications. A haughty, pampered little thing. An ineffective liar. A self-destructive fool — but not stupid. Definitely not stupid.

The sheer idiocy of your suggestion indicates a fear so deep that it’s completely severed you from your senses. Just a frightened little bird caught in a trap, scratching and clawing for the narrowest possible opening for escape.

“You’re tellin’ me to tie up a woman and leave her in the middle of nowhere? May as well just hand-deliver you to the wolves. No,” he says firmly, trying to shake off the unwanted pang of sympathy. Dutch had been right about one thing — the gang did need money, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let this opportunity for it slip away out of misguided compassion for a woman who’d literally robbed him as he’d bled out. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Soon as we near Rhodes, I’ll tie you to Boadicea the same way I did when we left Strawberry.”

You blink and utter a disbelieving, “Excuse me, what?”

“Reckon they’ll treat us both a hell of a lot nicer if they think you’re a bounty. Gives me plenty excuse for keepin’ you in one piece, too.”

Your face ventures on a quick journey through the five stages of grief. The grief in question being for the loss of your dignity. The blank look shifts to a glare. You open your mouth to spit out something no doubt acerbic and very rude, but a flash of uncertainty crosses your face and you quickly bite your tongue. Then you lower your head and squeeze your eyes shut. When you finally open them again, there is a defeated resignation in them that attests to a lost mental argument.

“You better ride slow if you don’t want a repeat of this morning,” you say wearily.

Arthur shrugs. “Can’t throw up if you got nothin’ in your stomach. We’ll just skip feeding you breakfast tomorrow.”

To his relief, the atmosphere lightens to blessed, familiar hostility. You tell him to go fuck himself. That you’ll literally fight him for the apples you know he has tucked away in his saddlebags. That maybe you’ll throw up anyway purely out of spite. That he’s a miserable piece of shit who you wish—

A sudden flash of lightning illuminates the outcrop for a fraction of a second, painting everything beneath it into harsh shades of white and black. It strikes as sudden and violent as a fiery whip crack, leaving behind it the bittersweet scent of burnt grass and a curl of grey smoke like a departing ghost. Its near-simultaneous clap of thunder drowns out your last sentence with an ear splitting boom so encompassing that the vibration of it seems to rattle down to the bone. The silence that follows has in it the anticipatory hush of the void prior to Genesis. You shatter it with a quiet but appropriately placed, “Jesus Christ.”

The land outside is hedged low in the horizon, and the vastness of its sky swallows all else. It crowns as its dominating feature the movement of its anvil-shaped clouds. They shift leaden and portentous, translucent bellied and lit up by the jagged tongues of lightning darting throughout quick and sporadic as pale dragonflies. Roiling violet like the murky blood of some vast organism, pulsing membranous over the prairie with a fury of near biblical proportions. And below, the buttes with their strange eroded shapes like scattered islands in a black sea of grass. In the torrential dark, their silhouettes flash ivory with every strike of lightning only to sink back into the hushed umbra of night.

There is a muted look of awe on your face, as if witnessing for the first time the true scale of a storm. Something that before now had been glimpsed only through the gaps between high-shuttered buildings. Tempests caught in concrete snares and, not unlike the men that build them, diminished until they are but a feeble whisper of their former selves.

“It’s beautiful,” you murmur. “I never knew rain could be like this.”

With a jolt of displeasure, he finds that the soft expression on your face renders you unexpectedly pretty in the fire’s flickering light, the amber reflection of it bright as copper in your eyes. A gentle chiaroscuro, the smooth line of your cheek and shadowed hollow of your throat the anchor points to which his eye is drawn.

You shuffle a little closer to the outlook’s rain-veiled edge. The roughspun blanket, still drawn tightly around your shoulders, shifts. Arthur quickly averts his eyes, but even so is met with a sliver of bare skin that runs neck to navel. The subtle outline of a breast, the mild fishbone curve of a rib.

And all at once he’s unbearably, disastrously hard, filled with a painful but directionless longing — not just for intimacy, but for the simple reassurance of another body pressed close, skin to skin and breath to breath. A kind of tenderness he’s been deprived of for so long that the memory of it brings not warmth but the brittle cold of hoarfrost. Absence like a thick pane of ice, the things he’s lost visible just underneath.

From the periphery of his line of sight, you’re but an indistinct blur in the vague shape of a woman. How appropriate then, that you should be the focus of this formless arousal. And how infuriatingly pathetic. He hadn’t lied when he’d said you weren’t his type, and yet here he is, his cock stiffer than it’s been in months at just the suggestion of a woman’s naked body.

In desperate search of both distraction and something to obscure himself with, Arthur pulls back the front flap of his satchel and fishes out your blue notebook. He glances briefly in your direction, already anticipating your angry shout of indignation — but you’re far too occupied with watching the progression of the storm to so much as glance in his direction.

The notebook’s contents are far more legible than he’d initially assumed. Most of the foreign characters seem to be either names or places, which makes it possible for him to pick out the main thread of most sentences.

Its first half consists of what looks like a ledger. Neatly organized columns with foreign characters and numbers that he hasn’t the slightest idea how to parse. When he flips past it, a slip of paper scrawled with the same strange, flowing text flutters from the pages and alights delicately into his lap. Arthur picks it up, and as he examines it, it occurs to him that he has no idea how to orient it.

Prior to this, he’d only ever seen Chinese characters painted on the roadside food stalls accompanying railroad workers on their long trek westwards. A strange, complex syllabary. He’d once read somewhere that each word of the language had its own unique character. A sort of pictograph that, when studied, relays its meaning to those who knew how to read it.

He scrutinizes the slip of paper in his hand, but finds himself unable to pick out even the vaguest of resemblances. The corner of the paper bears a square seal of red ink, inset with an intricate consortium of straight lines. Curiosity spent for the moment, Arthur slots the document back in place.

The rest of the notebook looks to be an odd mixture of field observations and long, ornate paragraphs about various landscapes. A few pressed wildflowers, field observations of city flora and fauna, crudely drawn animals reminiscent of the scattered petroglyphs he’s found carved in long-abandoned settlements. An earmarked passage describing the wetlands bordering St Denis, full of strikethroughs and hastily added phrases squeezed into the margins. Another describing what sounds like Cotorra Springs.

“The amber fields are dotted with sprigs of larkspurs and wild flax like blue-violet stars,” Arthur reads aloud.

You turn to face him so quickly that your wet hair arcs through the air like an ink-stained brush, scattering water droplets that sizzle and hiss when they fall into the fire. Wild-eyed as a spooked horse, but frozen into a horrified silence as he licks his finger and traces the rest of the line across the page, continuing, “And even further north, viridian-blue pools from which rise plumes of white smoke, the water still and clear as glass. Hills of black obsidian —”

You scramble towards him and, while clutching the blanket around your shoulders shut with one hand, slap the notebook out of his grip with the other. It lands perilously close to the fire, but you snatch it up without giving a second thought to the nearness of the flames.

“That’s private,” you hiss, hugging the notebook to your chest the way one might accidentally smother an infant.

“Thought it was fair turnaround, seein’ as you never extended that same courtesy to me,” he retorts.

The memory of that miserable morning after surfaces in him like a bloated corpse too persistent to stay hidden. His billfold emptied, ill-gotten gains vanished, and his journal speckled with smeared, bloodied thumbprints from beginning to end. Above a sketch of a mountain wildflower he’d drawn a question mark next to, the word “crocus ?” written in an angular, jagged scrawl.

“Yeah, because I thought you were going to die!” you argue back. “Figured you probably had your next of kin listed somewhere in there!”

Next of kin. The phrase pierces through like a stitch popped out of place, and Arthur nearly flinches. It’s an unintentional blow on your part, but nevertheless he deflects the only way he knows how. When bitten, bite back.

“Oh that’s real charitable, comin’ from the dope-peddler,” he jeers. “You save this compassion for everyone you fuck over, or just me?”

A clear and unguarded expression of hurt crosses your features. The same you’d worn when he’d had to pry his shotgun out of your hands. Forlorn, helpless as a wounded prey animal. But it passes quickly into a cold disdain, your head raised high again and your eyes hard as flint.

“Do you know,” you say quietly, lip curling with contempt. “I seriously considered cutting your throat when I finally realized who you were. I should have.”

Then you blink, forehead wrinkling as you sniff at the air. You glance at the fire, where his forgotten can of beans is beginning to burn.

Arthur curses. He hastily swipes one of his discarded riding gloves from the grass and pulls it on, then grabs the can and blows on its contents, fanning away its delicate wisp of black smoke.

You retreat to the far inner corner of the outcrop and frantically page through the notebook until you find the red-sealed paper sheafed inside. With a sigh of relief, you slump against the rough granite wall, the tense set of your shoulders loosening as though some secret string stretched taut through the frame of your body had suddenly been cut loose.

A sullen silence permeates the shelter, punctuated only by the grating scratch of metal as he scrapes burnt food off the edges of the can with a spoon.

“You forgot to mention that the whole place smells like shit,” Arthur says finally. He keeps his eyes on the can, attention focused squarely on the arduous task of excavating beans.

“What?”

“Cotorra Springs. Smells like week-old shit. Especially around the pools.”

The rustle of blankets. From the corner of his eye, he watches you tentatively scoot closer. “You’ve been there?” you ask. Your voice is still deeply reproachful, but touched with genuine curiosity.

“You haven’t?”

“No. I’ve just seen pictures. And notes from people who have.”

“Huh,” he says. He scrapes another carbonized mouthful from the can. “Could’ve fooled me, the way you wrote about it.”

You raise your eyebrows. “You think so?”

“Sure.

The corner of your mouth quirks upwards in a reluctant smile that unfolds like the breaking light of a clouded dawn. “Well, that’s… that’s good to know.”

“You writin’ a book or something?” he asks.

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” The smile wilts slightly, and you drop your gaze down to the notebook on your lap. “No. Just a favor for an old friend’s husband. The man fancies himself an explorer, but can barely string a sentence together. He’s paying me to pretty up his notes for him. Half of which I think are made up. There’s some bullshit in there about an enormous rainbow colored pond full of boiling water.”

Arthur laughs. “Naw, that bit’s true. I’ve seen it. It’s a hell of a thing.”

You seem skeptical. He doesn’t blame you. Even after having walked the rust-banded edge of that craterous spring himself, his memory of it still carries with it the preternatural awe of a place half-dreamed. He tells you about the slow gradation of color leading inwards from the rim. Ochre to cadmium, to turquoise, to a deep cerulean with the unreal brilliance of a painted ocean. Steam hanging like a pungent fog. Entire stretches of ground covered in a thick, boiling mud, bubbling ominous as something out of Dante’s Inferno. A constant gurgling of earth and water, as if he were treading upon some living thing in the midst of an infernal digestion.

Halfway through his description, you flip the notebook to a clean page and ask him for a pencil, then begin scribbling down his words with an unceasing, determined hand. This bemuses him. That anyone might find his drivel meaningful enough to commit to paper is a new experience altogether. It’s an odd feeling, but not at all an unpleasant one.

That is, until you begin peppering his narrative with so many questions that it takes the better part of an hour to accommodate them.

What kind of plants grew there?

“Bunch of disgusting slippery shit around the edge. Algae or something. Other than that, can’t think of a single thing that’d lay roots in boiling water and sulfur.”

Did the mud boil like roiling water, or was it more the viscosity of a slow simmering stew?

“More like wet cement, really.”

Were there animals?

“No. Nothing there for ‘em.”

Birds?

“Didn’t see any.”

Insects?

“A shit ton of gnats, but not much else.”

How wide were the prismatic bands around the crater? What was the geology like? Did the surrounding forest taper off gradually in the vicinity of the spring, or was the loss of vegetation sudden and absolute as a drawn border?

“Give me your notebook.” he says, having finally reached the point of exasperation. “Easier if I just draw it for you.”

To his faint surprise, you hand it over without hesitation. He sketches out what he’s able to recall, all the while acutely aware of the madness of the situation. Fucking illustrating an account of his own wanderings for the woman who robbed him while they both sit in varying states of undress. Scribbling out a messy landscape in the same notebook whose contents he’d derided just a little while ago. Focusing all his attention on Cotorra Springs so as to ward away the unfortunate possibility of another inopportune erection.

The mediocre drawing he finally manages to scratch out would have disappointed him under any other occasion. Instead, he feels a warm flood of relief at its conclusion. If this doesn’t shut you up, then nothing will.

Nothing will, it seems. To his immense chagrin, the drawing sparks another round of questions. After silently admiring his work just long enough to spark hope of your satiety, you ask him about the species of the trees. Had he explored the nearby forest? Were there flowers? What season had he visited in? Was the acrid smell of sulfur present even here?

“Look,” Arthur says wearily. “You clearly come from money. Why don’t you just hire someone out to take you sometime?”

You snort at the suggestion. The corner of your mouth lifts upwards into something that’s only nominally a smile, and more the type of grimace that accompanies an old wound. “The only two men I’d trust enough to take me out into the middle of nowhere are dead. And with the money I owe, I can’t… I can’t just… you know what?” you say abruptly. “It’s getting late and I’m fucking exhausted. I’m going to sleep.”

And with that, you tug the blanket tight around your shoulders and huddle against the ground like a felled shrimp. You lay with your back to him, the words left unsaid hanging over you both like an unripe fruit of a question.

Arthur fetches his bedroll and unfurls it close to the fire. A battered pillow emerges from the worn tarp as he spreads it flat. After a moment of contemplation, he picks up the pillow and tosses it in your direction. It hits you square on the head.

Immediately, you sit up and snarl at him. “What the fuck is wrong with — oh.” You pick up the pillow and grasp it tight, as if at any moment he might change his mind and demand it back. Your small “thank you” is puzzled and uncertain.

“I’m gonna put out the fire,” he says. “You try to slit my throat in the dark, I’ll wring your neck.”

But the threat comes out empty and toothless, and judging by the renewed sarcasm in your voice when you tell him you’ll keep it in mind, you seem fully aware of it.

Arthur douses the flames by kicking dirt over the embers, which glow dim and vermillion for minutes afterwards, fading slow to dull, crumbling ash when the heat finally bleeds out of them. The pleasant smell of smoke lingers inside the shelter for a good while longer, but even that dissipates eventually, leaving just petrichor and the crisp, clean scent of early autumn rain.

The worst of the storm has shifted westwards. Water drips in a steady stream from the outer edge of the overhang, churning the ground below to a soup of mud. The cloud cover is still dense, but it’s thinned enough that moonlight gleams through the feathery underbelly in a pale and spattered mottle. With it, he can make out the dim outline of your body, the rise and fall of your chest in a slow, steady rhythm he sorely doubts you’d have the patience to feign.

He lies awake there in the dark for a long while, shuffling through a jumble of discordant emotion. It’s as if the pieces of several sets of puzzles have been mixed together and jammed into an incomprehensible mess, so hopelessly and thoroughly muddled that he can no longer tell where one thing starts and another ends. He sorts his way through it until the rain weakens to a grey drizzle and the drip of rainwater turns from the unbroken stream of a faucet to a series of droplets beating out an abstruse morse code against the ground.

In the end, he’s only able to definitively place a single solid sentiment. Pity.

———

Couple notes:

Arthur's understanding of Chinese is incorrect, but aligns with the assumptions a lot of Western scholars during that time period had regarding it. There was a big tendency to treat it like Japanese, which despite using some of the same characters, uses a completely different structure.

Cotorra Springs seems to be based off Yellowstone. The big boiling rainbow spring is actually real: it's called the Grand Prismatic Spring and seriously does look like something out of a fever dream. Yellowstone also does smell like sulfur in some places, but it’s not so much like week old shit as it is the potent fart of someone who’s eaten far too many deviled eggs.

No algae grows in the spring. It's actually cyanobacteria, but there's no reason Arthur would know this. It does look pretty gross up close.

[talesfromsigil]

Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/74124/theseus/chapter/1346263/the-plan

Bit of a shorter chapter tonight. Aisling shows up and discusses where the crew is headed next. Honestly, I kinda wonder if I should rewrite this one, but it's time to publish so... here you go!

It didn't take much alcohol in my system before I started feeling better about being surrounded by unfamiliar bar patrons outside of my ship. I wouldn't say that I was comfortable, but alcohol certainly took the edge off and helped me loosen up more to the crew.

Not too long after, I spotted Aisling walk in the door, and upon seeing us in good spirits, her own shoulders dropped and a smile grew on her face. I raised my glass toward her and exclaimed "Captain!" The others took note of her as well and raised their glasses in kind to join me. This gave her a little laugh as she approached the table.

"Seems they got you to lighten up, huh?" She said as she sat down on the opposite end of the table from Ray and started to spread some papers around the table, pushing food aside "We still got a few days before Meryll's ready to take off again, and I got something to keep us busy for that too, but for now, let's talk our next job."

I had to wonder if it was normal to discuss tactics around a table in a public place like this while half the crew was getting drunk, but I had no objections.

"Please tell me it's not salvage again, that's left a sour taste in my mouth." Joel whined.

"It's not, but we're not out of that business in the future." Aisling warned, eliciting an annoyed grunt from Joel "First we got a supply drop. Tribals down on Earth requesting aid. They had a blight this year, won't survive winter on their own, so we're dropping rations, gonna sneak some medicine in there too. Skulls insisted."

We were doing... humanitarian work? I hadn't expected that. "Skulls?" I had to ask.

"One of the bigger gangs." Aisling explained "Good people, even if they are profit-mongers. This tribe's good with their farms and their taxes, ain't gonna leave them high and dry cause they had one bad harvest."

She'd said they were profiteers, but they actually took care of their people when things went wrong. Things really were different on the inner worlds.

"Sounds good. And the bounty?" Joel asked.

Aisling rolled her eyes and shuffled some of the papers around, showing a photo of several men "Exclisive contract. Group of three, been causing trouble with those same locals. Skulls would let them handle it on their own, but they crossed the line and nicked the last aid shipment. Been trying to sell it back to the tribals for extortion prices."

"Dead or alive?" Joel asked.

"Skulls want 'em alive for public execution." She replied casually. A public execution for theft seemed a bit overboard to me, but no one else was saying anything "We come to blows, though, shoot to kill. They'll give us partial payment for proof of kill, and I ain't risking any of you on some small-time idiots thinking they're too good for the rules."

"Any leads?" Mouse spoke up.

"Gonna have to talk to the locals, they move around a lot. Shouldn't be a hard job though." She leaned over and started gathering the papers up again. "Had to give the skulls a bit of a discount since we gotta sit in port for a bit, but the pay will be more than enough to make up for the last month."

I had to wonder my own role in this. Sure I'd be hauling the goods in my cargo hold, but would I be much use chasing thieves on the ground? "So... do I get like... a gun or something then? Never shot anyone before."

"Oh you will." Joel chuckled darkly.

"You have nine guns." Aisling declared. I hadn't taken much stock of my weapons systems, but that sounded about right. But she knew what I really meant. "You won't be joining us on the ground, Meryll. At least not for that portion of the job. Even in a small skirmish, the advantage of having aerial support and an evacuation plan can't be overstated. You and Doc will stay on board Theseus."

I was a little bit relieved to hear that. I wasn't sure if I could keep my nerve together surrounded by gunfire, never mind be effective in a real fight. But Theseus versus small arms fire was a different story altogether. "What about Mouse?" I asked.

"Mouse is ground support. We need the numbers on this one." Aisling explained. The boy didn't seem phased by this news, and just nodded along. "Don't give me that look. Kid knows how to shoot."

I had to shrug at her, not really having a good argument to oppose it. He did seem like he was far more capable than I wanted to give him credit for. In fact, I noted, nobody else even seemed to treat him like a kid. He was just another member of the crew to everyone else. Maybe it was time I stopped looking at him like he was too precious to let him be in danger.

"Sounds like we've got a plan." Ray nodded "So what are we doing while we're in port then?"

"Dock work." Aisling declared, eliciting a groan from the crew collectively "Unless you got something better to do?"

"Captain, not to object, but I am... not strong." I mentioned as I watched her rummage through her bag "No one's going to hire the girl who's got the strength of a particularly frail puppy to haul goods."

As if to answer me, Aisling pulled a circuitry blade from her bag and placed it on the table "That's because you'll be busy training." She pushed it toward me "Simulator system. Your piloting needs work, so you're going to be learning the basics, and you won't need to be in the core module to use it. It'll teach you how to maneuver in space and atmosphere, take off, land, act as a support gunship, and dogfight. Now, it's designed to work for a standard ship core, so it's probably not gonna play nice with you, but you'll still learn a lot from it."

As I took the blade in hand, I wondered if this would be at all similar to actually being in the ship. I really hoped it would. Looking down at my hip, I saw the enclosure cover wasn't screwed into place anymore, instead accessible by a sliding panel, so I wouldn't need tools to replace it. I popped it open and slid the blade in next to my personal one, like I would with any other modular machine at my old job, securing it into place and taking a deep breath as I felt the data stream exploring its new hardware. "Alright, what else?" I asked, looking up to see that Aisling had taken a mug of beer for herself and was chugging it down rapidly.

She let out a refreshed sigh and declared "For now, we drink and feast!" To which the others raised their glasses and smiled again.

It would be a long night.

[faithbooksfiber]

Inadvertent application of philosophy?

Was just reading about ship of Theseus (if you replaced an entire ship one piece at a time, is it the same ship or different one?) and realized we did that with our garage.

Our tiny lot had an old one-car garage on it. Rotten supports, whole sections of wall rotten out, leaky roof, full of junk from previous inhabitants. You could shake the whole thing by leaning on a corner. We wanted to knock it down, haul away the rotten stuff, and put up a new outbuilding. When we went to get the building permits, the township told us that due to new regulations since it was built, if we put up a new building, we could not put it in the same place; we’d have to move it six feet over away from the fence. This would move it off the concrete pad and too close to the house, so we’d also have to make it smaller. We asked, what if we just fix what’s there? Answer: that’s fine.

So we hauled away the junk it was filled with, put new walls up inside, just inside the old rotten walls, then pulled down the old walls. Salvaged most of the roof joists and put on a new roof. Replaced all the electrical wiring. Refurbished the inside, adding a wall; front half shop for tools and stuff, back finished into a nice room to use as a library.

There is very little original; it’s not even a garage anymore, but to the township, it’s the same building.