TITLE: A Friendly Chat Over Sparkys
AUTHOR: Michael J. Gallagher ( mikejoe@odyssey.net )
SYNOPSIS: A week before Dylan's birthday party in "It Makes a Lovely Light," Harper and Rommie share some Sparky Colas ("Ring of Fire" Spoilers!)
RECOMMENDED READING/FAN FIC SPOILER: The Ring of Fire
GENE RODDENBERRY'S ANDROMEDA is copyrighted by Tribune Entertainment. This unauthroized, non-commercial manuscript and its original characters of Valkyrie Brunhilde (aka Valkyrie or Val) and Shiva are copyrighted (C) 2001 by Michael J. Gallagher, all rights reserved. If you would like to use it, get my permission first
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"We Neitzscheans are fond of saying love is but a trick DNA plays to replicate itself, but we forget to mention that it is such an effective trick, sometimes, the DNA forgets what it is supposed to be doing."
-- Dylan Harper Anasazi, _The Evolving of the Rom-Kodiak Pride,_ CY 10,139
" .... so, now, a final X minus one week check list," Harper announced, perched on his stool in the _Andromeda Ascendant's_ machine shop and reading from a flexie. "Rev, you and Trance will make the cake."
"Yes," said the magog holy man, a living killing machine who had found peace of The Way.
"Just do not shed on it, Rev. Magog hairs are probably not _that_ tasty. And Trance, you will _not_ tell Dylan we are going to throw him a surprise party. As we have spent _two hours_ explaining, that defeats the purpose of a SURPRISE PARTY."
"Oh, all right," the purple-skinned girl said with a pout.
"Beka you will give him, uhhhhh .... "
"My present after the party," said Beka Valentine, the _Andromeda's_ blonde first officer as well as the captain of her own ship, the _Eureka Maru,_ smiling at Harper.
"And you will not tell _anybody_ what it is yet?"
"No. Sorry, 'Boss,' but you'll have to find out the hard way same as everyone else."
"If it has anything to do with hot women, get one for _my_ birthday, please. My beloved Rom Doll. When the time comes ...."
"I will let you override my emergency protocols," the _Andromeda's_ beautiful android avatar said, "because it's necessary for the 'gag.'" She seemed to gag on "gag."
"Correctomundo! And you are also going give back my favorite goggles and my lucky shirt, which looked so good on you, right?"
"No, Harper, I will not. They are _mine_ now."
"You're not wearing them, now."
"They are in my closet with the rest of my things, and that is where they will stay. I have returned all of your other belongings and renewed your access to the X-1's hangar. That should suffice."
"Harper, give it up," Beka advised. "You ain't gonna get a girl to part with something you left her in your will if she wants to keep it, period."
"And the fact that you are not dead is irrelevant," Rommie added, "although that can be rectified if you pursue this matter."
Harper sighed and looked at the flexie again. "Ok, check, check, check, check, work on it LATER when she's in a good mood, whenever that is. Tyr is not with us, but he will not compromise us, so we won't have to kill him. I believe that sums it up. This meeting of the Conspiracy to Throw Dylan Hunt the Mother of All Surprise Parties is hereby adjurned."
Beka, Rev, and Trance left, talking and further conspiring, as Harper spun on his stool and turned back to the small, palm-sized component he had to repair. He heard footsteps behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Rommie had lingered and was standing behind him.
"You need something, Doll Face?"
"I was going to ask you the same question, Harper."
"Hmmmmm ... I can think of some possibilities involving you, me, and that work bench over there."
She scowled at him; would he ever give up?
"I know, I know," Harper added. "No, I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for asking. See you later." He turned back to his work.
Rommie didn't budge.
"Are you sure, Harper? I'm here if you need to talk to me."
"I said I'M FINE. I'm not foaming at the mouth, I don't think I'm a teapot. Run along; daddy's working."
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"I said, NO. You haven't talked to anyone about what happened. You've even avoided Rev. But I know something is wrong. I know your voice, your body language, your brainwave patterns, I even know how frequently you make sexual overtures to me. They are all off. Something's eating at you. I'm here; I'm your friend. You can tell me."
"Well rehearsed."
"I mean it."
"Rommie ... look, that's really nice of you. Thank you, but I'm fine. There's nothing to talk about."
"There's something."
"You wanna talk about it after doing a turn on the bench?"
"No, of course not!"
"Then there's nothing to talk about." He bent closer over his work, trying to use his back to shut her out. He heard her pace back and forth. Then she plonked herself on the stool next to his.
"I'm not going away, Harper. You have to talk to _somebody._ The _Valkyrie Brunhilde_ violated you, brutalized you, and it can't not have had an impact on you. It was a traumatic experience. The _Shiva's_ old pilot is still in therapy, and he may not recover for months or years, if ever. You had to jump right back in to work here, and you may not have fully recovered. I know you haven't. We're all worried about you. You can't lock it up inside forever. I want to help."
"I DON'T NEED YOUR --- !" He cut himself off, calmed down. "I'm sorry, Rommie, but there's nothing to talk about! I don't remember anything that happened while I was on the _Valkyrie._ Just flashes, dreams, but hell, I've had nightmares before and I can handle them now. That's it, that's all, the end. Now, I'd like to be left alone."
"Harper ..... please, of all the times to be evasive, this is not one of them. Please tell me what's bothering you. It will stay between us if you wish."
"But you won't get horizontal with me."
"No .... think of something else."
"Something else .... ok." Harper smiled that evil smile of his at her. "Get a couple of Sparky Colas from the fridge and have one with me. You do that, and I'll tell you everything you need to know." He didn't believe for a second she'd go for it. Rommie _hated_ Sparky Cola, and was always getting on his case about how it wasn't nutricious, rotted his insides, and whatnot. The "fully functional" android had a digestive system (among other things not necessary for the performance of her official duties, courtesty of her creator, S. Z. Harper), and could drink it. But she wouldn't. Harper was certain of it.
"Have a Sparky with you, and you'll talk to me," Rommie said.
"Right," Harper answered.
"All right." She lighted from her stool and went 'round the corner to the far side of the machine shop. Harper heard the refrigerator he'd installed months ago open and close. Rommie came back with two cans of Sparky Cola and set them on the work counter. She opened both and popped back up onto her stool. Harper couldn't believe it.
"I'm not thristy," Harper said.
"You promised," Rommie replied.
"All right .... but you taste yours first."
"Ok. A toast?"
They touched cans.
"To the Commonwealth," Rommie said.
"The Commonwealth," Harper echoed. "Now, drink up."
"Ok, ok, be patient." Wrinkling her nose, Rommie brought the can to her lips and took a sip. She seemed to be critiquing it. "Not bad, really." She drank some more; Harper sampled his can.
"All right, Harper, I've met your conditions. Now. Talk to me."
He put his can back on the counter and turned away, back to his work. "I've renegged. Go away."
"No."
"Are we back to that again?"
"I'm not dropping this, and I'm not going away."
"Well, I can make you. Andromeda, engage privacy mode."
"Negative," the _Andromeda's_ voice, Rommie's voice, said from the air.
" _Andromeda Ascendant,_ this is your chief engineer, Seamus Zelazny Harper. Engage privacy mode and get your avatar out of here, NOW. That's an order."
"Order refused," the AI answered.
"You can't do that!"
"I can refuse any order if I have cause to believe it would be against the interests of this ship and this crew," the gorgeous android said. "And I'm of one mind on this. I will not leave this alone." She calmed down, became disconcertingly gentle. "I want to help you, Harper. I want to talk about this."
"I don't." He focused on his work with a This-Is-My-Last-Word finality.
Rommie sipped her Sparky. "All right. I'll talk. You may feel you're responsible for the things you did under the _Valkyrie's_ control. You're not. She drugged you and plugged wires into your brain and made you do what _she_ wanted, but I know that wasn't you. You're a good man, Seamus Harper, with a good heart. Ok, so you tick me off. You tick _everybody_ off, excepting maybe Rev. And you make as many messes as you clean up. But if Dylan or I had any doubts about the kind of person you are, about the kind of person you could be, you would not be aboard this ship. Don't blame yourself for Valkyrie's crimes. You did not commit them; she did."
"Andromeda .... " Harper slowly turned towards her, uncharacteristically dark in his manner. "Nice to see you apply your pop psychobabble database, but you don't know what the narf you're talking about!"
"Then you tell me."
"All right, you asked for it. Do you know anything about Earth?"
"My updated database shows it's not what it was in my day."
"It's not anything anymore. It's dead! You only stay there if you can't find a way to get off, or if you're some romantic numbskull waxing poetic about humanity's homeworld. And the only way to survive there, in the face of plagues and famines and Neitzschean slavers and magog hoardes is to be so mean, the only way to tell you from an uber is to check your forearms. Twice. The bigger a scumbag you are, the better your chances of surviving what the other scum throw at you, and I, Rom Doll, am a primo scumbag.
"When we met you, I thought that was all behind me. Hell ... I never told you this, but when I first came aboard, a little voice in my head said, 'Welcome Home.' It was like I was back, that I'd only been away for a bit and returned home, that I belonged here. That being Dylan's comic-relief-sidekick-and-handyman was what I was meant to be. Ok, so I don't get the girl, but them's the breaks if you're helping your friends fight the evil dooers and save the damsels in distress, all the while rebuilding the Commonwealth.
"But when I was with Valkyrie ..... I told you I have dreams about it. I dream I'm flying her into battle against you, Rommie. I've sworn I'd never hurt you, but when we fight you in my dream, I love it! It's the biggest rush of my entire life. And when I watch that recording of me telling off you and Dylan ..... there isn't anything I said there that I haven't thought. That's right, Rommie. Every time you look longingly at him, it ticks me off. But I keep my mouth shut. He's my Boss --- and a great boss, I like him, really --- and you're my friend. But that's just a mask, Rommie. It's a lie, it's 'evasive.' You say the _Valkyrie_ forced me to do that stuff, but maybe she didn't force me to do anything. Maybe she just pulled off the mask and let the real _me_ out. You want to know the real me, go into your mission logs and look at Val's captain. There's your Seamus Harper, the kind of person I am."
"You're afraid you'll become like that ..... "
"No, I AM like that. I always have been. I always will be. I've been hiding it, denying it, but now that it's out, I can't deny it anymore. I don't belong here. I never did.
"Soon as Dylan's birthday party is over, I'm going. I was going to wait to tell you, but you had to press me. Fine. You know ahead of everyone else. You can even tell Dylan; you'll both be relieved. That'll be your present for him. Just drop me off at the next drift; I'll bum some work on a frieghter or work the docks. Maybe I'll get a cookbook off Tyr and try my hand as a chef. You can find someone to replace me when I leave, or Tyr can take over for me; he pumps iron too much as it is. But you won't have S. Z. Harper trying to get in your pants anymore. Congratulations." He slugged down a sip of Sparky and fished more tools out of trays as he worked.
Rommie just sat there with her jaw half open, resting her can on her thigh.
"You little .... how could you ... " Rommie sprang off her stool and got in Harper's face. "YOU LITTLE PILE OF MAGOG CRAP! HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT LEAVING ME AFTER --- !" She pulled herself back, shaking. "Great, I've become like Val. That's three crazy relatives I can emulate."
She turned away from him, wandered to the other side of the machine shop, hugging herself -- and froze, stopping in her tracks. That was one of the few ways you could tell Rommie wasn't human, the way she could completely stop moving, not even twitching or fidgeting. She didn't do it very often, and that was probably why Harper had always forgot to do something about it.
Finally, she turned and faced him.
"All right, Harper. If you want to leave, leave. I'll tell Dylan after the party -- Beka's your problem -- and he and I will help you get packed and get situated somewhere .... on one condition. You have to answer some of my questions, now, or I make your leaving a nightmare."
Harper tried to shut her out with his back again. "Thanks for offering, but I'll tell Dylan myself. I can pack my own bags."
"And I can spin both of you around in so many circles, it'll make your fist solo slipstream flight look like a walk in the park; his being the captain won't change that. Answer my questions and I'll give you a 'Goodbye and Good Ridance' for the history books; clam up, and I'll make every moving nightmare you've ever had a reality."
"Okay ... what do you want to know?" He still kept looking at his work.
"You answer no matter what I ask you? Even if you don't want to?"
"Yes. Are we going to sign a contract?"
"Don't tempt me; I'm a Commonwealth paralegal."
"And here, I thought you were just a pretty face."
"All right, Harper ... Remember when we went to Castalea and they accused me of murdering their president? Remember how you were ready to sacrifice yourself to save me? First by offering to download my mind into your brain, and then by trying to confess to Dylan that you had programmed me to commit the murder?"
"Yeah."
"Why did you do it? Was it all part of your 'act,' another facet of your 'mask'?"
Some of Harper's angry resolve cracked a little.
"You know why I did it, Rommie," he said.
"I want to hear you say it. You agreed to answer."
Harper sighed. What the hell, she and Dylan were probably going to laugh about this later.
"Because I love you, Rommie. I've loved you ever since I first saw you. I know you don't want me, and I know I'll never, ever have you, but my feelings are still there. They'll never go away, no matter how much ..... if you got with Dylan right now in front of me, it would rip my heart out, but I'd still care."
"I know; that's why you're .... special. You say Tyr could take over for you, but he couldn't. No one could. Anyone else would just maintain me; you take care of me. Everything you do for me, even the stuff that gets me so mad I think I'm going to blow a fuse, even that little repair job in front of you now, you do because you love me. You'd even die for me. I know it, and I can't not be moved by it. I care a lot about you, too. No, I'll never .... think of you the way I think of Dylan, but then you don't appreciate how close we really are. What I want to know, now that we've established you care for me, is that part of the description of a 'scumbag'?"
"Well, if he were a stalker ..... "
"I've known of stalkers and I know you, Harper, and the two are not the same. What I'm trying to get across is what I said before --- that you are a good person at heart. The _Valkyrie_ may have dredged up what is worst about you, but I've seen a flash of what is best. You can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, but I see the good in you, see the potential you have. You could outshine Dylan someday if you'd only recognize those qualities in yourself and nurture them. I won't blow sunshine up your ass and tell you that would be easy. It'd be hard. But you can do it. I know you can, and .... and ... oh, narf it!"
She plopped back on her stool, facing the counter, and sipped some more of her soda.
"I'm not any better at this empathy crap than you are," she said. "If you want to leave, leave. I won't stop you. But I think it would be a mistake. That's all I have to say."
They sipped their Sparkys.
"Rommie?"
"Yeah, Harper?"
"Do you want me to stay?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I just do."
A final snap, and the component Harper had been working on was finished. Tired, he rubbed his eyes.
"Well, there's another little job done," he said. "Want me to go install it now?"
"No, you're tired," Rommie answered. "I'll do it."
Harper leaned back and held the component up in the air, stretching; one of Andromeda's gray, facelss robot bodies came over from another part of the machine shop and took it from him. Another robot grabbed a tool kit and left with the first one. Rommie and Harper drank some more from their cans of Sparky Cola; they were getting low, almost empty.
"Y'know, Rommie, I been thinkin' .... some of those frieghters that go through here, they're real grungey."
"Worse than your quarters, Harper?"
"Worse than the _Maru;_ flying death traps, some of them. And I can't think of any place in this sector I really would want to go. Maybe, I'll stick around a little while longer."
"Well, Dylan and I would be glad to have you with us, Mr. Harper. How much longer were you thinking of staying?"
"Dunno. Another few weeks, another month, another year ..... haven't thought about it. Should I?"
"Not if you don't want to."
"Ok; we'll just see how it goes."
"That sounds good to me."
Harper downed the last of his Sparky. "And if you would like to help celebrate my decision to stay on yonder work bench -- "
Rommie cut him off with a gentle slap.
"Sorry," he said.
"S'okay. Your come-on was only three-tenths of a second behind schedule." She downed the last of her soda. "You must be feeling better. Are you?"
"Yes. Thank you for .... being here."
"You're welcome."
"Goin' on your rounds now?"
"No, actually, I think I do need your services." Rommie put down the empty can and tapped her own stomach with her fist. "I think the carbon dioxide level has reached critical mass. You have to teach me how to belch."
THE END
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