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SATURN, EPISODE EIGHT - "we're parts of the same thing"/PLASTIC VS METAL II
Here we are again, at the last mission before the ending. Before Saturn tangos with Luna-Terra one last time, let's do the final comms and emails.
Day 8 comms:
quote:
I envy you a little bit.
Piloting is for girls, and jocks.
It's not my thing.
But I wish I was coming with you.
Sometimes. A very, very tiny bit.
mercury
we are very different
but I love you
we're parts of the same thing
we wanted the same things
and ill walk alongside you until we get them
Really? You're not leaving, possibly forever?
if im leaving, you're coming with me.
if I stay, ill bring you home
you know you cant rely on me for anything but you can count on me for this
i promise
I promise.
You promise with correct punctuation and capitalization?
So you know it's real.
What else can I do to pay you back?
So wholesome. 
Day 8 emails:
Just one today. Another reference to We Know The Devil's Scout program.
Now we're ready.
>LAUNCH
"100%"
"Frequency double checks, second turn."
"Stop and spin them again."
"From zero? Again? Where were they at?
"99.99999%, but it doesn't matter, they should be at 100%, so we're spinning them again."
"Mercury, if I go out and die it's not going to be because we didn't quintuple check every reactor pulse."
"Saturn, this time please, could you listen for once."
"No matter how USELESS I know that telling you this is, I know I say this over and over, but can you listen, seriously, tell me you're going to not be risky, THIS time."
"It's not a game anymore! This mission is different, it's not Ship-Self to Ship-Self. Those troops are real weapons from Earth, designed for threats that are real, not existential."
"They are perfectly capable of killing. They are designed for no other purpose."
"That's not going to even be an issue, though, because your orders are strictly to observe, and not get remotely close enough to engage. They won't leave stationary orbit around the near side of the Moon."
"They're Earth's insurance plan, and we can ignore them as soon as we make sure that's all they are doing."
"Don't joke about dying. That can happen. It won't if everything is perfect and you do exactly what you're supposed to."
"It finally matters this time, and you--"
"Mercury, please."
"I'm..."
"Well I'm actually really sorry Mercury. I didn't mean to make you worry."
"I mean, I didn't mean to make you really worry for real."
"I promise I'm not trying to die, okay? I promise, okay?"
"Making poor choices about who to kiss and what to do isn't the same thing. I listen to you when it's for real, okay?"
"I wouldn't cross the line. You're my friend. No one else..."
"No one else is worth you. You're the most important. We've been through too much."
"I wouldn't ever, ever, go back. Or throw everything we've got away."
"You know that, right? Sorry I'm acting like I forgot."
"Mercury? Hey, say something."
Note the ring, probably a wedding ring from Ganymede.
"Damn it, I was going to act like I tricked you."
"I was going to get to feel smug making you think everything was serious and I was going to lord it over you."
"Haha. Sorry about me. But I love you too, don't worry."
--
Last run we hid from the drone, this time we will destroy it.
Music - Electrotoxin
"A likely story, but please stay DOWN! It's closing in."
"Yep!!!! Aren't you itching to fight it?"
It's inevitability, gravity, law. Humans can be pretty unambiguous, which is why if you want something done precisely, you must teach it only a sliver of what humans know. If you want someone dead without complication, you need to remove nuance first.
"It doesn't have any kind of morality system or decision making process, it's very nondiscriminatory. Just gravity, and nothing else. It's a gun and not much else."
"So maybe you should stop harassing it so much?"
"It's annoying though. I want to bully it."
"I promised that I wouldn't tangle with something if it was really life or death."
"But now that I'm here, I'm too tempted. I just, absolutely want to tear it to pieces."
Welp, that promise didn’t last long. But hey, at least she remembered it? That’s character development!
"Completely destroy like it wants to destroy me. You ever feel like that? Even when you're terrified?"
"Especially then, but it's not worth fighting. Not at all, even a little. It's like fighting gravity, or a whole planet. What can you call "winning" against something like that? There are a million more."
"You can't have a real argument with something like that. They sent autonomous troops because they didn't want to have one in the first place."
"It just goes to show they really don't care what happens to space or anyone in it."
"Or they do, and they want this badly to believe they don't."
"You're going to hate this, but."
"There has to be a way, right?"
War has never been fought like that. Military technology is designed to narrow available resources in order to efficiently execute a single specific function. Giant robots have never been practical for war.
What is necessary is a single vector pointed in a certain inflexible fixed direction. The autonomous military unit may not look human, but it is human, a single uncomplicated human thought: "die."
"...I'm worried that telling you this will just encourage you, so I shouldn't. It feels like a bad idea."
"But they're not invincible or almighty against us, even if they're incredibly, overwhelmingly powerful. Especially here, in the liminal zones of the Moon, but not ever, not anywhere."
"Haha. It's nice to hear even you get mad about it."
"I understand the math. We're risking our lives and our personhood, and they're not. It's very one sided. Humans are cowards."
"And that makes me want to fight even more!"
"I'm saying, it's not worth it. The statement will be lost on Earth. They've got an endless number of drones."
"But you CAN destroy them, right? I'm not asking if there's a point. I don't care about that. I'm asking if we can. Let me know how you did it. Right? Because you have."
"You really don't know, Saturn."
"You really... you just don't."
"And you never will."
"You can wish and wish, and fight and fight."
"But Earth will never let us go. 9.8 m/s^2 is what we are bound to."
"We can't even scratch the surface."
"But... you are right. It was stupid, but when I was with Cradle's Graces, I destroyed one."
"Pluto made me promise to never risk my life over something like that again."
Saturn you are being a bad influence again! Now you’ve got Luna-Terra breaking promises too!
"That's a huge brag, but given all that, kind of a crazy thing to do. Why? Not that I think it doesn't rule."
"I was feeling the same way you were feeling. Pure spite. I'm not quite as bad anymore."
"At least I'm trying not to be."
"I know that feeling!"
"It's easy to bet your life when you don't care whether you lose it or not."
"It doubles the risk, and there's still no point."
"Is there really no point to it though?"
"Useless, okay, that's true. But not pointless."
"You are so clever, Luna-Terra, but you have outsmarted yourself. And now you're believing there is no meaning in fighting against that blind and unstoppable force."
"I definitely know what battles I want to fight."
Saturn's closing the distance, cheating distances. It reflexively attempts to close distance too, but its calculations seem to be constantly just off.
"Saturn! Come back! What did I say!"
"Were you listening to yourself? Aren't we doing this?"
"Are you gonna prove my point or what?"
"It's no big deal for you right? You've done it before, right? It'll be twice as easy now!"
"So don't make me fight it alone, that'll be fucked up."
"It'll be heroic if it's the two of us, so come on, enable me!"
"Don't you want me to not end up like you? Don't YOU want to not end up like you?"
It takes all the drama and expression out of fighting. The ultimate anticlimax. That's why true combat is ugly, arbitrary, horrifying, a struggle for power in absolute terms. Not a romance, like fighting in a perfect body can be.
"It's only, ONLY because you did something so stupid that I'm joining you."
A blue, elusive streak, unmistakable but impossible to pin down, follows Saturn.
"Ahahahaha! Liar! Fake! Hypocrite! You've never smiled as much before as you are right now!"
Their targeting is flawless and predictive, based on clear indentations made in space/time/Culture by gravity.
But Saturn just cheats. Every time, she changes the math. And every time, it adjusts to correct, and keeps getting smarter, and harder. Still, Saturn does the math better than it can.
Luna-Terra will die if she thinks to herself about what's happening for even a single second. So she doesn't. She verbs instead. Do this. Do that. Make it real. Make it happen. Don't think or blink.
Simply, impossibly, always be doing, always be being, don't get hit, and never die. Nothing like life or death to remind you that being alive is great, and in that state you can become infinitely capable of fighting tooth and nail no matter what.
When Mare Crisium's hard light slugs hit the unit's chassis, it miscalculates, dips in motion, but it's undeterred. It can endure much more than that.
Luna-Terra respects that, and fires twelve dozen more, as point blank as possible. No time for mercy, so increase the output, more than should be possible.
Defensive insulation keeps it protected from the String of Pearls' electrotoxins. All the String of Pearls can leave is a series of bleeding, oozing, hot pink pinpricks.
Nothing but scratches, until there are so many of them they aren't just scratches anymore. There's no limit to how mean she can get.
Saturn works her whole hand into its guts and comes out with a fistful.
Pull the guts out every which way, never show mercy, and never let go, until they've bathed in it head to toe. At the end, they don't even realize when the moment came that they were still alive, that they had won.
"No idea... how I did it alone."
"I feel incredible. Beyond satisfied! If I didn't feel almost dead, I'd be begging you to do that all over again."
"Ahahahahaha."
"I knew it'd just encourage you! Shows the good it did."
"You know, Luna-Terra. I'm fighting. No matter what. No matter who wins."
"I know the best I can hope for is half of what I want."
"I don't know if I can be that cool."
--
Next time, the epic conclusion to Saturn’s story, with the Celestial Mechanics ending!