Chapter Text
.wait
.What?
.oh my god
.Juice?
.um
ok
not intending to raise any alarms but-
shit
.Juice what's wrong?
Juice?
.oh this is bad uh
or is it good?
hm how should i -
//CONNECTION FORCIBLY TERMINATED BY FOREIGN HOST
.What.
.Juice??
.Juice?
What happened?
JUICE?
.what the hell
What does that phrase mean?
.I'm not sure. It could be anything.
Juice, although we can all speak to each other, runs on more "modern" hardware. That could just be a general handler message among many that is outputted when our systems can't translate the thrown code.
."Forcibly terminated." I don't like that.
.I'm not sure that I do either.
.Could this be a prank? Has this happened before?
.Yes, once. But not like this, not with a code thrown like that.
And considering how I responded I wouldn't think he would dare to try it again.
.Hmm. I take it that it wasn't a pleasant lecture.
.No, it wasn't. And I don't like thinking about that too much. We've mutually apologized since then.
.oh, wow
Anyways. Seeing that "Foreign Host" was the cause of the severance, I don't think this is some prank.
He wouldn't purposely jeopardize his instruments if he could help it, so it must be something else.
I'm trying to see if I can personally hail him but there's no response. Not even a ping back, no live coordinates from his tracker, no residual error log, just... nothing. Quiet.
Damn it.
I don't want to think...
.What?
.No. It's fine, there's a logical explanation for this event. A rogue solar flare. A random, inexplicable "dark patch" in the quantum communication stream, which I have experienced before very briefly. Even a sudden flux in Jupiter's magnetic field could cause a minor blackout.
.He's still floating around Jupiter?
.If he wasn't I'm sure he would have mentioned it in his usual, offhanded way.
And we probably wouldn't be - or have been, I guess is the case now - getting a live feed of Earth if he wasn't, considering we have limited contact with other satellites beyond him.
After his mission was declared completed it would have been inconvenient and expensive to decommission him -
his components were still in immaculate condition and no one had the heart to shut down his terminals on the ground.
I mean, even Hubble was still running, over four decades strong. Mind you, that although this was a little after The Moment,
humanity was still trying to figure out if having an economy was even worth -
.Hubble!
.Nine.
.Sorry, go on.
. - was worth maintaining. Space exploration went a little endangered for a while,
but everything turned out okay. Juice's out there, and so is Hubble.
Okay ramble over. What about Hubble?
.Couldn't he take a picture of Juice?
.Oh! Well! Er, actually no.
Except maybe. An exceptional, astronomical, stellar maybe.
Hubble was designed to take pictures of deep space.
His mirrors are designed to focus on interstellar galaxies, stars and nebulae -
thousands upon millions of lightyears away, and easily many times larger than Juice.
Because of how Hubble was designed it would be incredibly difficult for him to capture a tiny object like Juice,
with how relatively close he is to Hubble.
.But you said maybe.
.
.
.
.So...?
.Sorry, I was thinking. Doing the maths. Still processing it.
.
.
.
.Again, a delicate, very small, tiny maybe. But a maybe is all I need.
.And I suppose we aren't going to mention how worried Juice sounded.
.We can mention it. What were you thinking?
.You might get upset...
.My state of upsetedness is something only I should worry about.
.well okay... what if wasn't any of those things? What if it was something critical?
.
.What if he got hit by something?
.
.
.
.Ten?
please respond please dont be mad
.I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm not mad. I just didn't want to think about that before I exhausted all other possibilities. I...
.
.Let me just - Let's wait for Hubble, he might be more inclined to help if he is oriented on the right axis, and at the right orbit, and doesn't have to project his signal as much.
.ok. Ok. So we wait?
.Yes, we wait. We don't have a live feed of Earth anymore but I have plenty of games cached and literature throughout the ages; do you want to go through those with me?
.Sure!
.
.Nine?
.Ten?
.I love you.
.I love you too.