korka

speedpaint 🤙

originals (January 2026)

I almost prefer my hidden fortress down in the abandoned labs.  There, I had room to wander further than one endless circle around some tiny landing pod.  I didn’t have to deal with a confusing roommate.

I take another lap around the small space and think.  

Truthfully, I never want to see that ruined church again.  Everything about it made me feel so awfully alone.  Forgotten.  Here, I know I won’t be.  

As annoying as she is about ‘the company’ and whatever ‘business’ she claims to be doing, J will likely stay true to her word.  I don’t see her as the type to break a formal agreement.  She’ll be back for me, if no one else will.  

She’ll be back for her ship.  I just happen to be stuck inside it.  

My pacing comes to an abrupt halt.  I shake off the thought and try to reorient myself.  It’s just a dark passing thought, nothing more.  

BANG

I flinch, static scattering over me.  The door slams open as J tries to drag a large piece of metal into the ship.  Her fangs gleam in a grimace as she lugs it halfway inside before dropping it heavily, out of breath. 

Lifting a silent hand, I pick it up with my solver and move it inside.  J gives me a bewildered glance before sealing up the ship’s door.  <“What?”> I ask when she turns to stare at me yet again, <“I’m helping you.  That was our agreement.”> 

Her tail flicks up against her back and J straightens her posture.  “I don’t need help,” she tells me, a slight air of authority in her voice.  My solver vanishes.  <“Then why am I here?”>

J responds with a heavy silence. Reaching down to half a metal-plated plane wing she’d just dragged home, she digs her fingers into its side and rips a sheet of it straight off the skeletal piece — exposing its frame beneath. 

“To work on the technical stuff.  It’s out of my expertise,” she answers finally.  <“And you expect me to sit here until I’m needed?”>  J gives me a hard look, “I need this ship fixed, alright?  I’m in over my head; I don’t-  I- I don’t know what I’m doing with half of it and I don’t have the time to learn, so just do what I hired you to do.”

With my solver, I take out all the internal bits of the wing and bring them over to myself.  “Good,” J grumbles.  She turns and opens the ship’s door again.  

<“Where are you going now?”> I press, <“You just got here.”>  “I’m going hunting. I need food, though that may come as a shock to a ghost who doesn’t need to eat at all,” J snaps back. Dull anger starts to sizzle in my chest — she knows it’s only been.. about a month since I became like this.  Two months?

She’s acting like I’m a lost cause.  

<“I was alive not too long ago.  You were there.”>  I pace forward, unable to stop sparks of static from fizzling off my body.  J backs off, though she feigns boredom, reaching to close the door.  <“Did I do something to offend you?”> I spit before she can leave, <“You weren’t this hostile when you took me out of the labs.  It seems like every day I’m here you’ve done more to avoid me.”>

Her figure lurches to a stop just outside the doorway.  Moonlight glistens off her metallic arms and silvery hair from outside.  At my place behind her, I’m shielded just enough to see beyond the few walls I’m stuck within.  The sky is such a clear vivid black, spattered with stars like the carelessly stabbed holes someone poked in the lid of a container to trap a small creature within.  The disassembly drone stands quietly in the silent world, staring out at her captor.

I watch her brace herself with a hand on the ship’s side, turned away from me.  When she finally glances back, there are anxious tired marks glowing beneath her eyes. The static building angrily within me fades away. 

“You didn't do anything,” J tells me through a deep sigh.  “It’s just.. business.  My business.  Don’t worry about it.”

I let her go.

When J gets back from hunting, I pretend to be asleep.  I don’t need her questioning the job I’ve done with the engine.  While she was gone, I picked it apart and tried to rebuild it.  I only got a quarter of the way before giving up.  There were so many more pieces than I thought there would be, and the entire time I could only focus on how untrue my promise to fix the ship had been.  I hadn’t realized how much the disassembly drone depended on me for it.

I tense at the sound of J’s peg legs hitting the metal floor beside me, but I stay perfectly still.  It’s silent.  She’s close; what is she up to?  The phantom thunder of my heart rumbles louder in the form of static buzzing.  Something slips into me; I summon my solver to grab J’s arm, lurching upright.

The first thing I notice is the soft blanket crumpled on the floor.  It sits where my body should have been, right beneath my ghost.  Just above it stands J, frozen with her hands outstretched over me. She backs off hastily with an almost frightened look, struggling to find a place to put her hands that wouldn’t look awkward.  

“I uh-  Sorry for the interruption.  Go back to sleep.” Rushing away from me, she returns to a spot on the floor where she’d bent a piece of sheet metal into the vague shape of a drone chestplate.  

Why would she..?  Did she forget I’m just a ghost?

I slowly lay back down. The floor is freezing — just a layer of metal between me and the nasty weather outside.  The blanket helps very minimally, if at all.

I wait until J gets comfortable and goes back to work before teleporting beside her.  She startles, but I shrug it off and drag a piece of metal over, binding it to the piece she was working on and fixing its shape slightly.  J inhales sharply, and I wait to be berated for something, but she stays uncharacteristically quiet.

Glancing beside myself, I lock eyes with J.  I can’t read her expression entirely, but there’s recognition hidden in it.  <“I’m awake anyway,”> I tell her, <“I might as well help.”>  J nods, then turns back to her work — our work now.  “Thanks.”  It’s barely audible, but loud enough in the chillingly quiet space.  

She clears her throat, “You won’t be earning any overtime for this, I hope you know.”  I’m not sure what she means by that, but I know she’s thankful for the help, at least. <“That’s not why I’m doing it,”> I reply, <“This is for my body; I should help.”>  “R-Right.  Of course,” J nods.

I work in silence, J occasionally helps.  Mostly she just tells me what to do over my shoulder.  I tune her out.  I know what I’m doing, and I don’t think she even notices when I deviate from her instruction.  The only time she gives me any quiet is when she pauses to stifle a yawn with her arm.  I swear she just likes to hear herself talk.

Her voice is pleasant to listen to, though it might just be my loneliness that makes it seem pleasant.  It’s commanding at first, but as the hours slowly pass, it begins to soften. If only she’d say anything besides giving orders.

<“Is it true murder drones need to consume oil or they’ll die?”>

J chokes on her latest command.  “What?  Yes, it’s true, we overheat if we don’t.  Why do you ask?”  My solver briefly dissipates from the air.  The metal it’s holding clatters to the ground.  A very brief and jarring memory of my first desperate attempts to cool myself down dash through the forefront of my thoughts. 

When my solver first manifested itself in me, my insides broiled like someone had forced me to drink gasoline and swallow a flickering match. Desperate for relief, I’d snuck out of the bunker and tried to bury myself alive in the snow.  It only delayed the inevitable.  I managed to cool myself off for a measly little hour before I felt like I was burning again.  As I know now, the one thing that will cure overheating systems is oil.  Half my insides were taken as payment for that knowledge, vomited up in the bathtub.

Blinking hard, I force back the memories.  I admit I’m a sentimental drone, but I’d prefer to never think of that again.  I make myself talk before I’m asked if there’s something wrong.  There’s always been something wrong — since the day my parents were murdered in cold blood in front of me.

<“I thought it was just speculation.  Everyone knows murder drones seek out fresh oil because they like the taste.  They can sense it from several kilometers off.”>

In response, J makes a disapproving ‘hmph’ sound.  “Only that last part has any concrete fact in it whatsoever,” she corrects me.  “Personally, I hate the taste of oil.  It burns going down and has such a nasty aftertaste. But, like I said,” she sighs, “I either eat it, or overheat.  Trust me, you’d choose the former too.  Overheating is one of the worst pains I’ve ever had to deal with, and I’ve had to deal with a lot of death.  When you overheat-  Imagine someone cutting you open, only they do so by removing thin little layers to get to your core, and every few hours-”  

<“Enough!”> I yell, cutting her off with a summoned knife loosely thrust in her direction.  The flickering red of my open maw gleams against her polished screen and frightened golden-yellow eyes.  <“I know what overheating feels like.  I don’t need it to be explained to me.”>

Silence, then: “Right.  I forgot that infected drones overheat as well.”  J drums her fingers against the floor.  “Then.. you know it’s an awful feeling.”  <“Agreed.”>  “So, you drink oil too?” she questions me, glancing hesitantly down at the knife still hovering in the air.  I cast it aside.  <“Yes.  Though I haven’t had to since I became this,”> offhandedly, I gesture to my ghost form.

“How did you get it?” she asks, sounding genuinely interested, “I’ve been trying to find an alternate solution to hunting, lately.  I’ve been so busy working I don’t have the time to do it.  Humans used to store it often, but I can’t find anywhere they might’ve put it.  If you know a place, you must tell me.”

My brows furrow, I shake my head.  <“There isn’t another way to get oil.  I.. I drained bodies of it, and drank it with meals.  I’m not savage like you disassembly drones are, but I needed it, or I would’ve overheated to death.”> 

J’s mouth opens, her lips curling upward to reveal the long fangs in her murderous maw.  “I am not savage.  I wear a suit and tie, for company’s sake!  And you must be some degree of barbarous if you kill disassembly drones for oil!”

<“Huh?”>  “Don’t play dumb!  That’s your whole thing isn’t it?  Killing disassembly drones because we’re ‘savage monsters’?”  I think for a moment, genuinely confused.  I wish I was strong enough to have saved people from disassembly drones, but the only time I finally had my chance to, Uzi stopped me!  Well, I had my chance with J as well, but that’s.. different.  I chose to spare her.  <“I.. haven’t managed to fully kill a disassembly drone,”> I admit, <“The closest I got was nearly killing you.”>

J scrutinizes me, a hand running thoughtfully over her chin.  “You ate other workers?”  My knife brings itself to hover between us.  <“I drank their oil because I had to.  I killed them only when it was necessary.”>  Already I can feel my conscience try to correct me — reminding me I’ve killed people at will simply because I could, because the solver made it feel good.

The metal floor clatters, and I keep my weapon raised.  J stands and paces to the other end of the room before speaking, acting like she’s readying herself for sleep while putting distance between us before she speaks.  “Why do you hate disassembly drones so much, if you do the same?  Killing workers, drinking oil?”  

My gleaming knife launches itself at her head.  It slices off a lock of her hair, but misses her face.  J stumbles away from the place she was nearly hit, eyes hollow.  <“Because you work for the solver,”> I hiss, <“Because you massacre entire planets.  You are nothing like me.”>  J’s tail curls anxiously, “That’s.. I-”  <“Just go to bed,”> I grumble before she can think of an excuse, <“You were headed there anyway, right?”>

She glances at the ceiling, then back down at me.  Her wings extend and she hangs herself off the roof by her tail.  “For the record, I never wanted to kill anyone.”

The shield that makes up her wings blocks my knife from entering her neck.  <“I don’t believe you.”>  “Well it’s true,” the murder drone insists, “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not.  It’ll still be true.  I might’ve wanted to hurt a drone or two.  Sometimes severely.  Maybe even permanently incapacitate them.  But I’ve always been unsettled by death.  I do it for the compan-  I did it because I had no choice.  Because I ‘had to’.”  I glare up at her for using my own words against me, but she glares right back down at me.  “I’m a businesswoman, not a killer.”

That’s the last thing she says to me that night.  Maybe I do believe her — or at least that she believes herself — but it’s only because she’s so inept at fighting.  Clearly she enjoys bossing people around; the businesswoman part I have no problem believing.

I’ve watched her kill people, though.  All three murder drones killed without thought the night they broke into the bunker.  They mauled people like they were starving.  Before they spoke to one another I didn’t realize they could do anything but mimic laughter.  They were mindless machines made to kill and like killing.  

Yet, J is far from mindless.  Her voice is anything but animal.  When she speaks, you listen, no matter how begrudgingly.

What else have I been wrong about?

I abandon the work she’d given me and head to bed again.  A strange longing warmth seeps into my chest when I come across the blanket on the floor.  J somehow wanted me to have it.  As a ghost I can’t feel it, but…

Soundlessly, I drift over to my corpse and carefully drape the fluffed fabric over its wilted figure.  The phantom tickle of something invitingly soft brushes against me, followed by the recoil of static.  My body looks marginally less decrepit. Tucking myself in by the side of the blanket dropped atop my remains, I lay down and let my eyes fall closed.

J is gone by the time I wake up.  A clipboard rests beside my legs. The faint glimmer of a JCJenson-branded pen is tucked into the clamp.  The stationary clipped to it reads: ‘Out on another supply run, I’ll be back soon.  Start working on the engine while I’m gone.  We’ll have to work on your shift schedule when I get back.’ 

A groan builds in my throat.  I finish up my work from the day before instead — taking the slowest possible way I can in hopes she’ll find me doing something she’ll approve of upon her return.  Yet, hours pass and there’s still no sign of her.  Extending my solver, I grab her clipboard and reread the note.  She did say she’d be back soon, didn't she?  

I return to the ship’s monitors and scout the sky for any sign of J.  Barely anything even registers on the camera.  It’s a whiteout out there, now.  Heavy snowfall blurs the surrounding area into a haze of poorly-rendered pixels.  The blinding glare of the sunrise only worsens the quality.  I severely doubt J could find anything useful through all of that.  

Turning from the screen, I lean forward off the console to begin pacing again — my work finished.  Then, I fully process what I saw.

I turn back to the camera; it really is sunrise.  J won’t survive out there once the sun is up.  Even if she could, she loves her strict schedule over anything else.  She should be back by now.

A shriek like an arrow piercing the air wails through the storm.  The static coming off my limbs flares up and sparks anxiously, and I watch from the monitor as something falls from the sky and lands roughly against the street with a thunderous crackle.  The screen refuses to clear enough to show me anything useful, so against my better judgement, I summon my solver and throw open the ship’s door.

Immediately, the static is stripped from me.  As long as I’m in the ship I don’t blow away, but after sticking my head outside, there isn’t a single visible sign of me left.  

Through the heavy snowfall I finally spot her, laying on her side against the ice-slicked road.  One of her wings is bent backwards and snapped into a wrong angle, the other only exists as a stub — leaking oil.  It’s so cold that the liquid freezes over not long after leaving her body.

A pained yelp breaks through the barrier of gale-force wind.  J tries to stand, but collapses as light begins to bleed into the sky.  Everything brightens with a fiery orange glow as the sun rises fully above the horizon.  It’s still storming, but not even a blizzard as fierce as this can keep daylight from coming.  Its golden shine shimmers on the snow, gleaming dazzlingly against the disassembly drone’s smooth metal exterior.  Her torn wing beams with reflected light before bursting into flame.

<“J!”>  She doesn’t move.  I have to get her.  I thrust my hand towards her to try to grab her with my solver, but my arm doesn’t exist.  My hand isn’t there.  The wind tore everything away.

Cursing all the unlucky things to have happened, I rush outside.  I blow forward with the wind and grasp uselessly at the snow and ice beneath me.  As I near J, I try to tug at her arm to get her up, but I only fall through.  

I grasp at her waist to try to haul her upright, and in the same second, the shudder of my ghost adhering to my body ripples through me.  Only.. my corpse is nowhere in sight.  I still feel pain the same way I do when I’m in my body, though.  After weeks of dragging it towards the doorway of the underground ruins, I have little issue dragging it back to the ship.

It isn’t my body, though.  I can see.  A force not too dissimilar from the tug of my own corpse urges me to keep crawling forward.  I do, but it’s strange.  It feels like that awkward moment when someone tries to walk around me in the same direction that I try to dodge them — the both of us accidentally copying eachother’s movements for a second or two.  I can’t be bothered to worry about awkwardness, though.  I just need to get back to the ship.

Hauling myself through the doorway, I finally stumble inside.  However, the moment I do I feel control over not my body slipping away.  It- It’s there.  My body is still slumped against the wall right where it usually is.  

J’s cuffed arms reach out where I thought mine had been.  She drags the door closed then falls heavily against it, slowly sinking to the floor.  She kneels there, panting, while I begin to panic.

I’d attached myself — not to my own body — but to J’s body.  How did..?  She’s not dead.  She isn’t a corpse; how did I do that?  I try to tear myself out, but the tug of having a truly living body keeps me held firmly in place.  I hesitantly try stretching out a hand to summon my solver, but nothing happens.  J doesn’t move.

What.. did I do?  There’s no way out.

I can feel a frightened scream building in the front of my throat.  It’s only choked back when J slowly shifts from her spot crouched against the floor.  Groaning in pain, she sits up and glances around the room.  “Doll?  Are you here?”

Terrified, I think she can sense me somehow.  No, instead she gets up and searches the physical space for me.  J gasps, “Did she..?  Oh sweet corporate, I didn’t lock her outside did I?”  She races to the door, but flinches harshly backwards as the sun hits her and slams it closed with a snarl.

What do I do?  Do I say something?  Can I say something?

“What in the world?!”  I watch J back away from the screen to check out her reflection on its surface. Her normally yellow eyes are tinged red on their bottom half.  “Is my visor broken?  Why isn’t it healing?”  She turns around and searches her back.  Both of her wings are almost fully righted.  Only a few metal ‘feathers’ are still bent out of place.

Confused, J blinks and searches the empty room, then wanders over and stands before my corpse.  She bends down and hesitantly lifts the blanket off me.  “Hey, are you in here or someth-”  J’s entire body stiffens.  Very slowly, she lifts a hand to her face.  “Oh ffff-ourth quarter profits.”  

The disassembly drone rushes to look at her reflection again, lightly running a hand over the red part of her visor.  “Doll?!”  My stomach drops.  There’s no use staying silent now.  <“I-It’s me, yes.”>  

“Sonofa-!  What are you doing?!” she gasps, sounding just as terrified as I feel.  <“I don’t.. know?”>  A fraction of a second later, a force even more violent than my own teleportation expels me from her body.

I back off to the opposite side of the ship as J presses her back against the far wall.  “What- Why would you do that!?”  My ghost flickers and thrums wildly.  <“I.. didn’t know I could,”> I tell her quietly, still trying to wrap my head around being back in my ghost self again.  “You weren’t trying to control me or.. or attack me, were you?  That v-voids our deal, you know.”  Even scared stiff she still uses her dictionary of business terms.

<“I was trying to lift you up so I could bring you back to the ship.  I didn’t realize…”>  “You were saving me, then?” J questions anxiously.  <“Yes, I saw you fall while the sun was rising.  I didn’t know what else to do.”>  Her frightened panting slows to somewhat normal breaths as J scrutinizes me with her head turned to the side.  Her mouth opens and closes a few times, unsure what to say.  She runs her hands over her arms and glances at the monitor.  It’s completely day outside.  J dares to look over at me again.  

“Are you the reason I suddenly found the strength to crawl back here?  I thought it was an adrenaline rush or.. something.”  I shrug, <“I guess so?  I felt like I was dragging my own body here, but again, I- I really don’t know.”>

J very slowly peels herself off the wall.  I finally find my footing on the ship’s floor again, letting out a shuddering breath.  <“I’m glad you got me out, though.  I was starting to panic.  I didn’t think I could leave.”>

The disassembly drone nods absentmindedly, pressing a hand to the side of her temple as stress marks appear on her visor.  “Y-Yes, thank you for getting me out of the sun.  I wouldn’t have been able to move myself otherwise.”  

We awkwardly avoid eye contact.  I’d been in control of her body; she’d held my consciousness captive.  It all happened so suddenly it felt more like a memory out of a twisted nightmare rather than something real.

I venture closer to her.  J’s eyes, now back to their usual yellow, flicker upwards to watch me.  <“How did that happen?”> I ask, gesturing to the outside, <“You hurt your wings.”>

J grumbles and crosses her arms defensively.  “The storm came out of absolutely nowhere!  It blinded me and I was made to believe that my path ahead was clear.  In reality, there were several large buildings in my way.”  It takes me a moment to piece together what she meant.  <“You flew into the side of a building?”>  “I could have dodged it!” J adds quickly, “But the wind blew me backwards and I had no choice but to accept the loss with as much dignity as I could.”

We both stand there in silence for a long moment. I take a few breaths and even briefly possess and un-possess my body just to ensure myself that everything is back to the way it was.  J wanders over to the ship’s screen to double-check the color of her visor again.  After assuring herself everything’s alright, she turns backward and our eyes meet.  “For our mutual benefit, let’s never do that again,” she suggests, finally breaking the silence.  <“Yes, I’d like that, too.”>  

J clears her throat and juts her chin in my general direction.  “Are you alright?  I saw the wind tear you apart.  Is it.. painful?”  I shake my head, <“Just overwhelming.  It makes anything I do more difficult.”>

The pilot's seat rattles as J sits down heavily.  “I failed my mission. I found worker drone parts for your body, but I dropped everything when the storm blew me off course.  We’re back to nothing.”  Her last word is choked with emotion, though I’m not sure if it’s frustration or sorrow that she’s managing to speak through.

<“That’s fine,”> I shrug, <“The pieces will still be there tonight.”>  J looks up at me, her brows furrowing.  “But this will put us behind schedule a whole day!” the disassembly drone stresses, “There’s nothing we can do until the sun sets again, and by then we’ll have accomplished nothing!”  

I’m confused why she’s so worried about this.  Last I checked we weren’t under any sort of pressure for time.  <“I can wait an extra day.  I’ve waited this long, already,”> I tell her.  <“We’re not behind schedule; there isn’t a schedule at all.  Or did you make one?”>  It’s a rhetorical question, but J pauses to think as if she genuinely had made one.

“I.. I guess not,” she realizes quietly.  One of the pegs she has for a leg taps restlessly against the floor.  “Shouldn’t we be making efficient use of our time?  I thought you wanted a body?” <“I do, but like you said, there’s nothing for us to do until sunset.”>  I lean over to rest a hand on her shoulder, but it falls though.  J shudders violently at the feeling and I apologize under my breath.  

<“Can’t you just relax?”> I ask instead.  The disassembly drone scoffs.  “Being ‘relaxed’ is something only executives have the privilege to enjoy.  I’m content when I’m doing my job.  And I’m not doing my job.”  

This time, I spread my solver beneath my palm before resting my hand on her shoulder.  The thin barrier between us lets it sit there without issue.  J’s posture straightens, but she doesn’t flinch or shudder away from me.  <“Well, you can be on break, can’t you?”>

J shuffles out from beneath my touch, hunching over with her head turned away from me.  “I don’t want a break.”  <“I think you deserve one, though.”>

Her bouncing leg stops with a soft thud. Eyes wide, J looks back over her shoulder and scrutinizes my expression, checking to see if I’m being genuine.  The same disheartened expression from the night before falls across her face, and she looks up at me as if I’d told her someone she cared about had passed.

Surely she must want to rest after nearly dying. Not temporarily dying, to be pieced back together later, but actually dying to the sun.  Something’s stopping her, but I can’t imagine what.

Slowly, J’s hand reaches for mine.  Hers is shaking.  Her fingers fall short of grasping anything, though they brush through my arm.  

I can feel that tugging again.  It’s definitely coming from J’s body, not my own.  I guess I've never been close enough to her to feel it.  Slowly, solver at my palm, I reach for her hand.  J suddenly shifts to move closer and my arm slides right through her chest instead. I adhere to her suddenly — a magnet being drawn to a source of pure metal.  

“Did you do that?” her voice is a near growl.  <“No, I think it happens whenever I get too close.”>  Trying to reorient myself, I watch through J’s eyes as she turns around to look at her reflection, tinged red.  “I see,” she responds after a moment.  

In here, her restlessness is infectious.  At once the sensation of my throat going dry assaults me.  It feels like someone’s screaming at me to get back to work, but I can’t figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing.  If I had a core it would be pounding against my chest.  Then again, if I had a core I wouldn’t be in this situation at all.

I’m familiar with this feeling.  This torture of feeling the need to go somewhere, do something, protect myself, run.  Believing that if I fail I die.  I did fail.  I did die.

It had started the moment the bunker had been broken into by disassembly drones — when my classmates began to get attacked and I stood there and watched, too scared to move.  It ended the moment I’d died, when I realized all my hard work had been for nothing, and the precious information from the labs, the patch, all of it was destroyed.  I hadn’t saved anyone, not even myself.  No one came to look for me when I died.

I try to take a breath to calm myself, only to realize I can’t. <“J, are you going to let me out now?”> I ask, unwilling to directly ask her to let me go.  “What?” she looks back into the empty room, “Oh!  Yes, let me figure out-”  Suddenly, I’m shoved back into the air and relievedly drink it in.

I stand and fight off memories while J stares through me into nothing.  Her eyes flicker upwards at the sound of the breath I took heaving in my nonexistent lungs.  We hold eachother’s gaze for a very long time after that.  There’s a tension in the air, but it seems neither of us want to address it.  I really don’t feel like it needs to be addressed, and I nearly turn away, but J speaks as I shift.  

“Did you feel that, too?”  Her question is almost a whisper.  <“Feel what?”>  J’s eyes widen into rings for a moment before she blinks and plasters on a duller expression.  “Nothing.  Nevermind.”

I return to my corpse and take a seat on the floor.  J’s head is a terrible place.  I would say I feel sorry for her, but what does that say about my own headspace?  It wasn’t very far from mine too long ago.

J turns and pretends to work on the ship’s computer.  I can tell she has no clue what she’s doing.  She pulls up different charts and status checks and stares at them as if it’ll make her understand them if she looks at them long enough.

“You really didn’t feel anything earlier?” J asks me after a moment.  I shift uncomfortably as a few sparks fly off my ghost form.  <“I felt how it must feel to be you.  And it wasn’t pleasant.  Is that what you wanted to hear?”> 

The disassembly drone curls up her tail and glares at me.  “Feeling the way you do is horrible, too,” she tells me curtly, spinning around in the pilot’s seat so her back is turned to me.  <“What is that supposed to mean?”>  “Whatever you want it to,” she grumbles.

<“You aren’t even working on anything.  Turn back around.”>  A hiss rattles the metal room, “Excuse you?”  J stares dangerously at me over her shoulder.  

<“Why are you so angry with me all of a sudden?  You’re the one who wanted us to talk.”>  “Yes, because I didn’t think I’d be insulted,” she counters. <“You’re in your head every day; you should know it can’t have been pleasant for me.”>  J swivels her chair back around, eyes wild, claws outstretched.  “Because I’m such an awful person, being the disassembly drone I am?  Of course you found it unpleasant, you hate me!”  

The both of us are standing again, poised to fight.  However, her final statement causes me to falter.  <“I don’t hate you?”> “Yes you do. Don’t lie to me.” <“You’ve been.. shockingly kind to me this far.  I’m grateful for that.  I don’t hate you.”>  “You do hate me!” she insists, “You’ve been sick of me from the moment we met.”  <“Is that what you felt in my head?”>  J snarls, “I felt you being sad and scared and pathetically alone, that’s what I felt!”  

My ghost flares up like a fire doused in gasoline.  The static hum it emits echoes loudly in the small space, causing J to stumble backwards, spooked.  I aim my solver at her to enact some sort of vengeance for her words.  I lower my arm not long after.

She’s right.  I can’t hurt her for saying that; it’s the truth.

“Have you realized I’m right?” she asks me snidely.  The pit where my core should be gets a little deeper.  <“Yes.”>  J blinks, clearly not expecting that answer.  She runs a hand over her neck awkwardly.  “That wasn’t very professional of me, sorry.”  <“It’s alright,”> I sigh.  J shifts her weight from one stub leg to another, looking anywhere but me.  “What was my head like?  Besides being unpleasant."

<“Desperate, in a word,”> I tell her, <“Looking for things that aren’t even there.”>  When I speak, J’s whole expression just drops.  Her eyes hollow, staring blankly through me.  The canister on her tail hits the ground with a dull clink.  <“You were stressing so much it made me stressed with you. It’s like you want to work, but there’s nothing for you to do so you’re just.. doing anything for the sake of doing it.”>

It’s so quiet I can hear the creak of her fists clenching at her sides.  “I’d shoot you for that,” J tells me, “but you’re right.” < “Now you know how I feel,”> I agree.

She takes a long breath, then another.  Already she glances longingly at the door like she wants to run off into the storm again.

“Can I really afford a break right now?” J asks quietly.  I’m unsure if she’s asking herself or me, but I answer her regardless.  <“If you have to ask, the answer is yes.  Every time.  Take a break, come back to it later.”>

J rolls her eyes, “If I took a break every time I wanted, productivity would plummet!  That’s absurd!”  She gets up and snatches her clipboard off the ground.  “This is why I need to make you a decent schedule,” she tells me through a sigh.  J takes note of the chestplate I’d finished, scribbling something down and mumbling to herself.

With silent ghost steps, I pace up to her unnoticed and gently take her arm.  Hurried pen scratches come to a sudden halt; everything of hers stills.  <“Stop.  Just for an hour.  You can do other things besides work to take your mind off whatever it is you keep running away from.”>  J stiffens and I glimpse her jaw clenching, eyes lifting to stare dead ahead.  

“You think you know that just by being in my head for one minute?” she asks, voice on the edge of indignation and malice.  <“I know from my own experience,”> I tell her.  My distraction came in the shape of an insistent pink-eyed drone who never passed up on a chance to have a good time — who wouldn’t let me neglect the need for a night to take care of myself.

<“Is there anything you like to do that isn’t work?”>  “No.”  J answers immediately, as if trained on command.  However, her unblinking stare finally falters and her eyes drift down to the paper in her hands.  “I.. like to draw, I guess.”  She glances at me worriedly like that was some massive secret.  I nod, <“Want to do that for an hour?”>