#kepler.

STEVENSON: hey, me too, if it's anything

CONNORS: No seriously I'm about to put in my two weeks. This is fucking bullshit. This is bullshit, how are we supposed to do facial construction and personality building if the guy won't even find some input.

CONNORS: They put us and eight other people - three more than normal btw - on this gonk job like "gg ezpz dw about it" and it's been A YEAR

CONNORS: A YEAR

CONNORS: OF TRAILING THIS GUY TO HIS PSYCHOPATHICALLY CLEAN APARTMENT AND THEN TO THE GYM AND WORK AND BACK AGAIN. AND I'M SUPPOSED TO DESIGN THIS A SOULMATE? THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE AAAAART I LITERALLY

STEVENSON: ........connors

STEVENSON: it's been like seven months choom. relax, ok? we knew this was gonna be hard. the second they put Harris on the team we knew this was fucked, that guy only gets called when socmed is nonexistent. we don't know him yet but we will, okay? we still haven't tried the waitress at the after work spot he hits with those other freaks

CONNORS: NO!! WE HAVENT!! BECAUSE WE DONT KNOW WHAT KIND OF WOMAN HE LIKES BECAUSE HE FUCKING COLLATERAL-DAMAGE-MURDERED THE FIRST TWO TRIES

STEVENSON: sarah's not dead shes just.... fuck yeah idk if she's coming back from that one corp was talkin severance

STEVENSON: nah but really. those two were shots in the dark anyway, we just gotta nail it. remember that bartender he kept eyeing but never did anything with? the fuckin

CONNORS: Yes YES the short little blonde thing what about her

STEVENSON: so that's our physical blueprint, right?

CONNORS: If it were that easy, I'd already have a faceplate designed and a wardrobe picked out and skincare routine established. No, that's not our blueprint. He talks to hundreds of those a week - uninterested. Just fucking uninterested. What if he's not into women, what if—?

STEVENSON: HARD NO HARD NO HARD NO DO NOT SEND HIM A MAN, YOU WILL BLOW COVER. notes from coporate EXPRESSLY forbid this WAYYY too hot a topic

CONNORS: THIS IS WHY I WANT TO FUCKKNG QUIT FUCK

STEVENSON: oh my god choom. okay fine we'll switch recon shifts next week. he's got the weekly outing so we'll see about sending some piece of ass to the table. maybe get a group conversation going and see if we can't pull anything. wait till hes DRUNK though. oh that's an idea.

FOYER: oh bcuz ur so normal. didnt u stalk that one homicide detective for weeks cuz u thought she was ur soulmate XD

SHEPHERD: a.) she is just give it a minute and b.) foyer be serious choom, you seriously don't get the crawlies around him? what you sit next to him every friday for an IPA and suddenly he's real standup? did you not see him this morning? fuckin 4am and he's first outta the AV, all smiles

FOYER: first outta the AV. that whats got u? choom hes the SQUAD LEADER. fr? ITS JUST THE BAR UR NOT MARRYING HIM. OMG!!

SHEPHERD: foyer its not about the fucking AV listen to what i'm saying.

SHEPHERD: i've been saying this since i met him

SHEPHERD: it's not the fucking AV and it's not the smile and it's not the looks okay. trust me if that was the case i wouldn't do this shit anymore literally everyone's like that. i'd have to kick martens in the teeth before i do him if that was the case. i'm saying he's not fucking normal man

SHEPHERD: i'm saying he's built like a brick shithouse, like fucking smasher 2.0 in the making. you know what he's got chipped rn? the blades, the subdermals, the kiroshis, the sandy and wait there's more? no WAY we don't put him down later.

FOYER: ngl ur pissing me off. this just sounds like gradeschool jealousy, like mommy didn't wanna reinforce ur ACL for soccer b the other kids got theirs done. be srs. if u dont wanna go then dont go but were not just gonna tell him 2 get fuckd tn

FOYER: like fr this is gonk shit.

KEPLER: i wouldn't call them hallucinations. i'm not like those animals, seeing shit that's not there. i've got it. i can handle it.

DR. FLESSNER: but you said it was your wife you saw yesterday evening. before you killed three of your fellow officers, you told another one of your operators--

KEPLER: helene is dead. i didn't see her, i just thought... i thought the guy was using that image duplicator. the offshot of the optical camo. i didn't realize they were my squad members.

DR. FLESSNER: ...you didn't realize you were killing your fellow operators?

KEPLER: like i said. i assumed it was camo.

DR. FLESSNER: ...lieutenant, are you aware this is the second incident wherein you were unable to be sedated? while the first resulted in no friendly fire, this is a different situation entirely. i understand the recent death of your wife--

KEPLER: murder.

DR. FLESSNER: hm?

KEPLER: my wife was murdered.

DR. FLESSNER: i was told that's not-- why don't we regroup in an hour?

KEPLER ⋅𖥔⋅ 27, W ⋅𖥔⋅ EXTRACTION

trigger warnings: death, drugs

Your life is a segment of unexposed film, the idea of a picture before it blurs. In another life, in an ideal exposure, you'd be breaking ground on a new galaxy, hands thick with red sand; a cosmonaut of the highest degree. It's why you grew up with scientists scribbling notes about you through countless space sims, spared from exile aboveground with your biological parents because you were wired to perform under pressure, to detach from others without feeling — TO LET GO. When you're eighteen, you take off once and never again, ACorp's Ibis barely breaking the atmosphere before its experimental fuel source reaches a fatal temperature. ACorp's spin goes like this: you and your loving adoptive father, an ACorp exec and the first man to step foot on Mars, reached the ISS and jetted back in record time. Unfortunately, due to a weight error, your father sacrificed himself so you could live. Truthfully? You weighed out your survival margin if you waited for him to stabilize the main cabin and meet you back near the escape pod. It wasn't good enough. You made the call. So it goes. S Corp's buyout ends the space program. They slap you on the "Public Experience" team, pay you to race state-of-the-art hovercars through their streets under the thrum of of neon and the sour-milk-scent of human exertion. You keep yourself in constant motion, your movements startling and uneasy, throwing yourself under the club lights, drawing friends close only to cut them off when you know it'll hurt most. But you are happy, so happy. Hopped up on whatever poison you can snort up your nose. Shark-smile. When you're so fucked up you can't do anything but remain still, you wonder: are your birth parents thinking of you? And then you're back on your feet, thrashing through your life on a whim. Glimpses of all you could've been, confetti spinning into a void. You find out about Project Orpheus after your biological mother denies your hard-fought telegrammed request to meet her on your 27th birthday, and borrow data to slide into a program your brain isn't compatible with. You'll die, yes. But what's the fun in life, anyway, if you can't for once be the hero? If you can't for once in your life do the right fucking thing.

DYNAMICS

VOYAGER  ⋅𖥔⋅ NO, EMPTINESS IS NOT NOTHINGNESS. EMPTINESS IS A TYPE OF EXISTENCE.

You've been gaming together on a procedurally-generated space MMORPG where all the avatars are birds for 12+ years, and they only know you under the alias BluePenguino69. Still, you've explored hundreds of planets with them, built giant bases, have talked to them more frequently than anyone you actually know. Sometimes, you wonder what they look like, but real real life is a boundary you never cross. Better to keep things in a place where you can't ruin the groove you've got going, the feeling of safety through facelessness in your online world.

SYCORAX  ⋅𖥔⋅ EVERYTHING I LOVED WAS LOST, BUT NO AORTA COULD REPORT REGRET.

You're two sides of the same coin: you, the lucky one, them, a cautionary tale of being labelled a reckless coward, — a person who has killed. You know they hate you; have seen the file on what actually happened on the Ibis, how being sworn to keeping your secret seems to hurt like acid corroding their bones. You can't help but sidle up toward them, see their jaw clench and wonder how many prods it'll take to push them past their breaking point.

JUNO  ⋅𖥔⋅ WE CAN NEVER BE GODS, AFTER ALL, BUT WE CAN BECOME SOMETHING LESS THAN HUMAN WITH FRIGHTENING EASE.

You love their company the way flame loves its kindling, their surprising sore points, their mousetrap-quick mind, the way you gore each other like bulls pressing against each other. You bore easily of most people, but they enamor you again and again. Yes, you could stay in this silly cycle forever, your hand tracing their jaw, your tendons squelching between their teeth.

http://interesting-space.ru/post/106311292681