(no subject)

[derien]

Stole this one from littleredhead...


You will be smothered under a rug. You're a little
anti-social, and may want to start gaining new
social skills by making prank phone calls.


What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
brought to you by Quizilla

Supposedly, using Semagic, I should be able to break my friends page up into two pages or more so that I don't see everyone on the same page. I can't figure it out and am starting to feel frustrated and headachy. Probably some tea would be a good idea. I'm a little tired. I got about 5 hours sleep after dancing late last night with lemondropgirl and Eor, and then today I spent some time with xmuskrat, littleredhead and B. (who's LJ name I don't yet know - ETA: B would be groundctrl.) walking around the Old Port Festival. Fried dough was obtained, and it was good.;) It's cool, overcast and windy, and we were lightly rained upon for a while, but it was quite pleasant nonetheless, and the company was fun.:)

I'm very stuck on the Red Dwarf: Parallel Universe story I've been working on... I think I'll post what I have done so far and invite commentary - and probably disaster, as I tend to not finish things, especially after I've opened the field to commentary. (Oh, and rowantree, I borrowed one of your names, though I spelled it phonetically in hopes people would pronounce it correctly, is that okay?)

Title: WIP - working title, "Changes"
Warnings: Preslash, hopefully heading toward slash.
Summary so far: Red Dwarf Parallel Universe. The twins, Jim and Bexley Lister, have just recently come to live with their mother, Deb Lister. They accidentally insult Arlene Rimmer, causing a rift between her and Deb.
Rating so far: PG

Somewhere in deep space a ship the size of a city wanders aimlessly, piloted by an AI whose warrantee ran out three million years ago. She broadcasts on all channels a looped message in a monotonous voice: "Mayday. This is a distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. Over a thousand crew members died in a radiation leak three million years ago. The remaining crew: Deb Lister; Jim and Bexley Lister, Deb's twin sons; Arlene Rimmer, a hologram simulation of her dead bunkmate; and a humanoid creature that evolved from Deb's dog. Message ends."

Laughter echoed in the corridor, along which a lean woman in a sharply creased uniform paced, her hands clasped behind her back. This was Arlene Rimmer, and her face had an expression of annoyance which seemed permanently set there. It was not her laughter. The laughter came from beyond a door, which she now approached. Obedient to the programming which required ships systems to model behavior as if she were a flesh-and-blood human, the door slid open for her. Yellowness flew at her face and Rimmer twisted sideways in an instinctive desperate attempt to avoid whatever it was. With her hands behind her back she was completely off-balance, and would certainly have pulled muscles and bruised herself falling if she'd had a meat body. She did not appreciate that small favor, because the ship's systems automatically modeled what should happen with her momentum, and she fell, awkwardly, to a momentary gasping silence followed by hysterical boyish giggling.

She came up sputtering with anger. Jim and Bexley's room looked as though tins of vari-colored paint had exploded in all directions, including on the two slender boys who were leaning on each other doubled up with laughter. Arlene's sputter included a variety of references to Space Corps Directives that forbade the painting of private quarters with bright colors, and continued with commentary about their intelligence and their parentage.

This sobered the boys somewhat, and Jim shouted "Smeg off!" as he started for the door.

"We'll paint our room how we want!" Bexley added, and followed his brother. Neither slowed nor attempted to avoid Arlene at all, but walked right through her. Her paroxysm of anger only increased; she went speechless, then chased after them. She thudded (simulatedly) through the door of the room which she shared with Deb Lister moments behind the boys, who were talking over each other completely unintelligibly. Deb was sitting up in the top bunk, wincing as if she were hung over (as she most likely was) and waving her hands. "Stop, stop!" she muttered, and finally shouted, "SHUT UP!"

Everyone paused. She threw back the blankets and clambered down the ladder, then stood scrubbing at her face. She was wearing tank-top, boxers and socks.

"You." Lister pointed at Jim. "Try to explain exactly what happened, slow-ly and clear-ly. And don't either of you touch anything."

"We were just painting our room. Just trying to brighten the place up a bit, y'know? And she walks in completely unannounced and uninvited, into our private space. And she got what she deserved if you ask me!"

"Right. What. Happened. You're turn." She pointed at Arlene.

"They were making a huge racket, you couldn't hear yourself think in the hall. I approached the door of their room with the intention of requesting that they quiet down. The door opened automatically and I received a faceful of paint."

"And then she began to verbally abuse us," Jim interjected.

"Did I ask you to speak?" Deb snapped. "Oh sme-heg - I sound just like my mother! I can't believe this is happening to me! Hilly, can I get an instant replay of what happened?"

"Yeh, sure," the ship's AI answered, "Hang on a mo'... OK, accessing now."

The entire scene played, from inside the twin's room - they had buckets of paint and appeared to be using brushes almost as ladles, scooping out paint, tossing and splattering it, obviously having a great time, when Arlene walked in. For a moment Deb smiled, too, as the paint went through Rimmer. But when Arlene began her tirade and got personal about it, her face went stony with rage. "Hilly, pause it! Rimmer, you are such an incredible smeghead! Just when I start thinking maybe you're not such a bad sort you impress me with new heights of arseholeness. You don't talk to kids that way, and you most especially don't talk to kids of MINE that way!"

"But but but - they started it! Look what they did!"

"It was obviously an accident!"

"But look what they did next! Play the recording, Hill!"

"Pause the recording, Hill! You can't use what they did next as an excuse for what you already did. Honestly, Rimmer, what - "

"But they walked through me! These brats are hooligans, they need discipline! Like my mother gave me - a good beating every night whether we'd been caught at anything or not, because chances were we'd done something to deserve it."

"Oh, Rimmer - get out of my sight. Go!"

Arlene stood and gaped at Deb for a moment, then shot back, "Fine! Fine, I'm going! But not because you told me to. I'm leaving because I'm sick to death of your bleeding heart laissez-fair attitude toward parenting. Give them a few beatings to toughen them up, that's what I say. Don't come running to me when the ungrateful wretches murder you for your pension check!"

"Rimmer, for godsake, there'll be no pension checks here, we're in deep space for godsake. Will you get the smeg out of my room!"

"Your room is it my lassie? It was our room. But not anymore. I know when I'm not wanted. Goodbye!" Arlene stormed out the door.

Lister stood with her jaw hanging open, wondering what all that could mean, then turned to look at Jim and Bexley and saw by their raised eyebrows and sly smiles that they were thinking exactly what she'd have thought at their age. "Oh, please, don't even... that's too horrible to even contemplate."

"Did we say anything?" Bexley asked archly.

"Not us, not a thing," Jim added.

"Ah, smeg." She sat back on the bottom bunk - Arlene's bunk. "You walked through her? That's just really rude, you know? Dead people don't like being reminded that they're dead." Then her lip twitched. "That was pretty funny with the paint, though. The look on her face - !"

"We've got to get back to painting our room before the paint goes dry in the tins. And don't worry," Bexley supplied, "everything that might be hurt by paint has been masked off with plastic."

"I knew you guys weren't dumb," Deb responded. The twins waved as they bounced out the door. Deb flopped back on the bunk with a groan.

Immediately she jumped up with a strangled noise and went to the sink to wash her face and hands. She stripped off her shirt, sprayed some deodorant in her armpits, and dug through the pile of clothes at the foot of her bunk sniffing each until she found one which she was satisfied with. A pair of cargo pants was also found at the foot of the bunk. She lifted each foot up into the small sink, washed it under the faucet, dried it with the same towel she'd just used on her face, and powdered each down before putting her socks and boots on. She did not rinse the powder off the sink.

Snatching up a skateboard, she clamped a headset on. "Hilly, could you pipe me some mellow two-tone, please?" Immediately she winced and snatched the headset off again. "That's mellow??"

"Sorry," Hilly responded, sounding not particularly sorry.

"Is that your way of telling me that you disapprove of hangovers?"

"It's not my fault you've got a hangover."

"You're passive-aggressive is what you are." She clamped the headset back on, after dialing the volume down. "Better, thanks. Where's Dog?"

"Last I could tell he was in the aft section, level 8, but he's gone into one of the dead zones. I have more dead zones every day. I think its mice."

"Right, we've got to repair the wire damage and see if we can get rid of these mice." Deb dropped the skateboard and stepped onto it, kicking off and gliding into the hall, where teenage boy's squeals resounded once again. "Hilly, if they request any TV, could you dig up a docu-drama about holograms or something?"

"Right. I've got one narrated by a simulation of Jaynah Burke. She did a series on sims, holograms and disembodied AIs, quite fascinating, really. The sims really have the best of both worlds because they're patterned after the look and sound of a person who never had a recording done, but powered by an artificial intelligence which may be quite adaptable, depending on it's programming. The sims of Sherlock Holmes which were maintained by Scotland Yard were a huge draw to tourism and actually solved some cases."

"That sounds fascinating, Hilly. I'll want to watch that one myself when I get a chance. Could you keep an eye out for Dog in case he comes back into an area that's got live monitoring?"

"Sure."



I found that having Dog instead of Cat gave a different slant to my thinking on the situation.

Comments

[tronella.livejournal.com]

Liking it so far, although you've got a 'you're' that should be a 'your'.

[laurenthemself]

Tronny's right, in both cases :-)

[derien.livejournal.com]

Scanning through quickly I couldn't locate it - where does it occure? (It's been years since I actually had an English class, but I always feel pretty confident about my rules of thumb... problem is, in English rules are made to be broken.)

Re:

[tronella.livejournal.com]

Um... ::searches::

""Right. What. Happened. You're turn." She pointed at Arlene."

There.

[derien.livejournal.com]

damn, thank you, I couldn't see that.