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“Do you think I’ll ever be the person I want to be?”
“Mike, please stop calling us.”
Observer shut down the video feed. Leaving Mike alone on the satellite.
Well, not totally alone. Cambot was still there.
“What do you think Cambot?”
Cambot didn’t answer because they can’t talk.
Mike sighed and walked back to his room.
The one bad thing about being stuck in space is that he never had anyone to talk to about his problems when he was feeling down. Pearl and company would usually turn him down, Cambot couldn’t talk, G was always busy, he had no idea what had happened to Magic Voice as of late, and he was absolutely not going to talk to Crow or Servo about anything serious.
While Mike couldn’t talk about his problems, he could at least do something about them.
Mike pulled all his clothes out of his closet and threw them onto his bed. It was time to do some reinventing.
Because whenever Mike Nelson looked in the mirror, he hated what he saw.
A big doof who didn’t know the first thing about anything. A kid who made bad decisions and had to live with them as an adult. An absolute buffoon and a coward who was too afraid to follow his dreams and was now isolated from the rest of the world.
And the biggest, ugliest blemish of them all.
Not Joel.
Mike hardly knew the guy. He saw Joel maybe, a couple minutes tops? Yet Mike was still haunted by the idea that he was just “Joel, but not as quirky,” “a poor man’s Joel,” or “some rando they picked up off the street to replace Joel.”
He tried, for the longest time, being himself, or at times being himself but quirkier, but he couldn’t escape the labels the bots put on him. Then for a while he tried being Joel, which only made the bots resent him. Now he was going to be someone else entirely.
He knew he had to be someone funny and cool. Someone who the bots would like as much as, or even more than, they liked Joel.
Of course, Mike had seen plenty of movies like this where some kid dressed up like a punk, a jock, and so on, so he wouldn’t have any of that. He wanted something different, but still pretty normal. Unfortunately all he had on his bed were jumpsuits and old costumes. Mike sighed. This wasn’t going to work.
Then Mike came up with the brilliant idea to dye his hair. If he were a brunette or a redhead, he might be known as Mike Nelson the brunette or redhead, or something like that.
The next day, Mike asked Pearl for hair dye. Pearl agreed, and once Observer sent it up, he ran off to apply it, only realizing halfway through that the bottle he was given didn’t say what color it was. Mike shrugged it off; he’d surprise himself later.
And boy was he surprised.
Throughout the satellite, you could hear a blood curdling scream as Mike Nelson finally looked in a mirror and saw that the top of his head was lime green. Of course Mike should have expected something like this from Pearl but nevertheless, he was horrified, he felt like he was going to cry, and to make it worse, he soon heard a knock at the door.
“Mike, are you okay?”
“We heard you scream from across the satellite.”
Oh no. Servo and Crow. If they saw him like this, they’d laugh nonstop.
“Go away,” Mike whispered.
“Come on Mike,” Crow said. “If you shaved your nipples off, you’re gonna need medical attention sooner rather than later.”
“I didn’t-I didn’t shave my nipples off.”
“Well what did you do?” Servo asked.
“Well… I’ll show you,” Mike hesitantly responded, “but you have to promise not to laugh.”
“Mike, when have either Servo or myself ever laughed at you?” Crow asked, faux-offended.
Mike knew he was going to have to show the bots eventually. If he wore a hat, they would try to flip it off. So why not sooner rather than later. He opened the door and the bots were… unimpressed.
“You dyed your hair green?” Servo asked. “Honestly, I would have thought you’d be too-”
“Boring?” Crow interrupted.
“I was going to be nice and say straight-edge.”
“So why’d ya do it Mike?”
Mike explained to the bots about how Pearl sent him green hair dye and admitted that he kind of wanted to be someone else other than Mike Nelson. He was surprised the bots didn’t laugh at him or make fun. They actually understood where he was coming from!
“Haven’t you noticed Crow taking on personas from movies?” Servo asked. “He feels that way all the time! Of course I don’t because I’m perfect.”
Crow burst into laughter for the first time in that conversation and Servo flailed his arms at him, trying to hit him.
Mike smiled watching the two bots bicker. He still wanted to be someone else, but at least he felt a little bit of solidarity. He didn’t expect the bots to understand or even care at all, but they really did. He almost wanted to cry again, but he didn’t want to bring the bots down or anything.
Eventually Servo brought the conversation back on track. “So, Mike, are you planning to keep the green hair?”
Mike smiled. “Absolutely not.”