Binky
Both Feet on the Ground
You tried for a long time to walk. Yet it was all you could do to keep your balance. Eventually you had a Doctor from the Repair Centre look at you. There isn’t anything wrong with your body. They tell you that recent research suggests that this is probably due to a manufacturing error in your Heartdrive. No matter what parts you get installed, no matter how they are connected: your Heartdrive will never be able to correct use of them.
You will never walk.
But…
That doesn’t stop you going where you want to go.
You might not be able to go there by yourself. But you don’t have to. You never did. Alphapod will bring you wherever you want to go. It is a lot more difficult to get the crane around to be sure, but with Alphapod and the Valkyries help you can manage. And it is worth it, because for the first time you can really see.
And it is beautiful.
You see the oil baths, with their endless Onsen shenanigans.
You see the Cat Cove, where MANY CATS enjoy batting your Hook Block around.
You head up the space elevator, welded to the side and look down upon from ten thousand kilometers in the sky.
You see the world, and you can touch it. Who cares if you needed other Bots’ help to get there?
Guest Speaker
“Testing, testing… hello? Can you hear me? Okay, great! Thank you all for coming today and thank you for inviting me! I haven’t made a lot of speeches before, but I’ll do my best! Today, we’re celebrating the opening of the Sunken Ship Museum of Human and Robot History. It’s been eight months since we excavated the Lunasol and since then… wow, everyone’s done such a good job restoring it! Special thanks to Lunasol herself for the blueprints, of course!”
“I used to spend a lot of time thinking about humanity and the purposes they gave us. I know I’m not alone in that, either! So when I first launched the Lunasol Excavation Project, what I really wanted was to bring robotkind a place to gather and connect with each other over this part of our history, which for many of us is a really difficult and complicated thing to think about!”
“Before we open the Museum properly, I’d like us to take a moment to remember everyone who can’t be here today. This is the tenth anniversary of the funeral for humanity held by cii3-60, and… I think today more than ever, we should remember Captain Ruiz and the other human passengers who died aboard this ship, as well as cii3-60 whose idea of memorialising the humans sparked all of this.”
“With all of that in mind, it’s a huge honour for me to announce that the Museum is officially… open!”
- Binky, founder of the Lunasol Excavation Project and speaker at the opening of the Sunken Ship Museum.
Do You Love the Colour of The Sky?
Dragon is ecstatic that you've contacted her again, it seems that she was on the verge of disconnecting from Hardspace entirely seeing as her endeavours towards changing the colour of the sky haven't been too successful. Most bots don't even notice the sky, and no matter what greens or oranges she comes up with, from pastel pink to blueberry blue, it just never seems… right.
You both go about spitballing suggestions and you ask what you'd like to see. She puts on many fabulous displays, one after another you see sunsets bursting with fireworks, sparklers swirling around in the abyss of black night, beacons shine as the sun breaches the horizon in the mornings.
But you conclude that actually, the sky is still beautiful when left alone, when there are no flashes of green or white to highlight it, for it makes those colours all on its own if you just wait. Throughout the day you see it shift and slowly go across the entire spectrum, it's beautiful. Dragon laments to you that their creator and the creator's partner, who she was dedicated to, never got to see such a sky.
You think back to your run-ins with human technology, their voices, concerns and humanity and reassure Dragon that no, perhaps they did, perhaps they had been staring at the exact same sky you now look at.
Perhaps in their quest for advancement they had just… forgotten, how beautiful what you have could be.