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1. Sundry Sidney, omnipurpose android
Skip feels…warm?
Not unusual for the inside of a human brain, he knows, but this warmth is different. It doesn’t feel like the rushing, throbbing pulses of blood traveling up and around the brain stem; but it’s also definitely not the metallic heat of the screen he flew into when he was knocked out of Norm’s head.
It’s more internal, he thinks. Which is odd, because he doesn’t usually sense his own internal temperature apart from his host’s body. It also feels like his warmth, like he’s producing it or emitting it or something. Huh. Maybe he’s sick, or Norm is, or something. Maybe he’s imagining things. It’s happened before, he remembers, when everything was cold and dark and he was alone, hurtling through emptiness and alone alone alone in the void of space and cold and–
No. He’s here now. He’s here, and he’s surrounded by (Norm’s surrounded by?) the Gunner Channel, who for some inexplicable reason are squashed onto a couch and a scant few chairs in front of a very, very bright screen that explodes every now and again, usually before or after someone says family. It looks like a very warm setting, too, because those people keep sweating…he goes to put a hand to his (Norm’s?) head to double check if the heat is external.
It’s not. In fact, Norm’s (his?) forehead feels a little clammy, like maybe he’s not doing a good job of regulating his (Norm’s?) body’s internal temperature. Huh. That checks out, he guesses. Maybe he’s sucking the heat out of Norm’s body and into himself. Maybe he’s gathering so much heat to the brain stem that he’s gonna kill Norm and–
“Hey, Sid?”
“Yeah, Skip?”
“Am I dying?”
Sid makes the same face she did when he said thank you to her for the first time. Not a good sign, because it means that what he’s experiencing has probably never happened before.
“Well, Skip, I’m not honestly sure, because I think that as an organic life form you’re always sorta dying, you know? What with the life expectancy and all. But I also don’t know how brain slugs–” She cuts herself off, abashed, then says, “and I’m so sorry if this is rude, I really am, but I don’t rightly know how long brain slugs live or how they die, so I’m not sure I can be much help on that point.”
She’s looking at him with something like pity now, he thinks, and that confirms it. Sid wouldn’t tell him if he were bleeding out right this moment if she thought it would hurt his feelings. So either he’s dying, or he’s asked the wrong person.
He nods at her, once, smiles with a clack of teeth, and sprints off the couch down the hallway until he reaches his bunk, ignoring her concerned cry of “Skip?” as it echoes after him.
2. Riva (Deep Ocean Current that Carries You Exactly Where You Need to Go)
Skip feels warm. He’s a little less concerned about dying, now, alone with Riva at the helm of the Wurst. He’s always less concerned when he can see the stars.
“Riva?”
“Yes, Skipper?”
“Am I dying?”
They pause for a moment, considering, and he feels their cool psychic touch against the borders of his consciousness. He tries to avoid batting them away like a cat with a toy, because that (he knows now) is “very rude, actually, especially among predominantly psychic species, Skipper. It’s okay, though, I know you didn’t mean anything by it!”
Riva swims closer to the wall of their tank, facing him, with their head cocked to the side. “Well, Skipper,” they say, “I’m pretty sure that you are, but that’s okay! Because so am I, and so is Margaret, and Gunnie, and–” they cut themself off, frowning slightly. “To be fair, I’m not actually sure whether or not Sidney and Barry can die, Sid because she’s an android and Barry because, well. I’m pretty sure he’s unkillable. But as for the rest of us, yeah! Why?”
Skip considers this, tilting his head to mimic theirs. He’d gotten that far on his own, but it’s nice to have them confirm it. He nods, and says, “Right, but. Am I dying at a concerning rate? Or, like, worse than normal?”
Their eyes widen, and he feels them poking at the edges of his consciousness again, with a little more force this time. He thinks idly that it feels kind of similar but mostly different to when he had a gun pressed to his back at the Fantanimaland. They retreat from his mind pretty fast after that.
“Well, Captain, Skipper, I mean, I think you’re not? Or if you are, it’s not in a way I can notice, not without being a bit more invasive than I think either of us would be comfortable with, frankly. Honestly, I think that maybe you’d want to talk to Margaret about this, since she’s got the closest organic-inorganic ratio to you, since you both have human bodies and no cybernetic or mechanical parts. Or Sid, since she knows a little bit about everything. Or Gunnie, since he’s got a bit of medical knowledge, or. Well, maybe just not me, actually. But I am honored that you trusted me enough to ask!” They smile, hopeful and a little desperate.
Skip uncocks his head, clack-smiles back at them, and says “thank you,” since he knows that of the crew, they’re the one who pries the most when he gets too quiet too soon. He stares at them for a while, thinking about how it would feel to feel someone die if you were psychically linked with them when they did.
“Anything else I can help you with, Captain?”
Skip shakes himself like Aurora Nebbins does when she gets out of the water system. “No, Riva. Thank you.” He nods, turns, and walks away, then remembers that he’s actually supposed to be piloting a whole entire ship. He makes a turn back toward the pilot’s seat and sits down.
“That was a very sharp turn for a human body, Captain!”
“Yes.”
He looks into the starry, dark expanse in front of him, and thinks about how it would feel to be alive in a body that was dying. Probably a little like this, he remembers.
3. Margaret Encino, co-owner and CFO of the Wurst
Skip feels warm, but more than that he feels certain.
He’s not going to ask Margaret. He’s not. She’ll know, immediately. Either that he’s dying (that he’s killing Norm, that he’s gonna kill them all) or that it’s something else (that he’s faking, that he doesn’t actually know how to do anything but pilot, that he’s just a liability for this crew who are too stupid– no, Norm– fine, too silly to realize it.)
Anyway. Not Margaret. Maybe Barry. Barry will tell him straight out, probably.
4. Big Barry Syx, formerly of the Barry Battalion, currently of the Gunner Channel
Skip feels warm, both because he’s maybe dying, and because Barry puts off heat like a nuclear reactor and is currently hovering over him, concerned.
“Oh shit, Skip, you’re dying?! Dude, no, we can fix this, who shot you, I’m not seeing any– wait. Say that again?” Barry pauses his flustered pat-down of Skip and squints down at him.
Skip blinks. “Am I dying?” he repeats, slowly, in case he spoke too fast for Barry last time. (Rude, Norm.) Skip watches Barry physically reset, blink back, and burst into a blinding smile.
“Hell, no, man! Not that I can see anyway. You’re right as rain, and I’m telling you that on my honor as a Barry.” Barry continues beaming - proud, Skip thinks, that he could deliver such good news. “Unless you’re, like, dying tomorrow, tug-up-on-it-once-and-I’m-dead, like Plug. But I think he was saying that on purpose to confuse people, and you seem pretty serious, so. Probably that’s not super relevant here.”
That seems like sound logic, even from Barry (Norm.). And even if Barry can’t die, he’s certainly very familiar with seeing it and causing it for other people.
Clack-smile. “Thanks, Barry.”
“Anytime, Skip! I’ve got your back, man. That’s what Barrys do.”
Skip lays back down on his bunk as Barry leaves. Huh. He’s still warm, but he’s more used to it now, he thinks. (You gotta stay vigilant, kid, that’s how they get you. No, Norm. Fine, suit yourself. But don’t come crying to me when you get us killed.)
Skip rolls over in his bunk, faces the wall, and gropes desperately for sleep. It doesn’t come.
5. Gunthrie "Gunnie" Miggles-Rashbax, Ph.D., Ph.D., M.Sci.
Skip feels warm, and frustrated, and now a little desperate.
“Son.”
Gunnie jumps, putting a hand to his mechanical heart. “Jesus, da–Skip. You scared me! I thought we talked about the whole make-noise-when-you-walk-so-people-know-you’re-coming thing?”
Skip clacks his mouth shut. Shit. They did, and he forgot. Is it the higher cognitive functions that go first when you’re dying? Maybe. He should probably start making lists, just in case.
“Skip? You okay, man?”
“Yes. Well. No.”
“Okay, very helpful, can you give me literally any other information?” He’s got Gunnie’s full attention now. (See, you blew it– shut it, Norm.)
“I. Might probably be dying. I think.” Skip clacks his mouth shut again. That didn’t come out how he’d rehearsed it with himself last night.
Gunnie’s eyes widen. “Well shit, Skip, why didn’t you start with that? Dying of what? Wait, how do you know?”
(See, this was why he should’ve come to Gunnie first. At least the kid has some smarts –not helpful now, Norm, thank you.) “I think. That I’m experiencing symptoms of something. Death-related. Maybe.”
“Okay, great start, what symptoms?”
Clack. Skip hadn’t gotten any further than this. “Warm, I guess?”
Gunnie frowns. “Like you’re running a fever? You don’t seem feverish.”
“No, like–” Like sitting in front of the TV with strangers-friends-crew-family. Like trusting someone with your mind. Like knowing where your strengths are and are not. Like concern. Like relief. “Like when you’re sitting down, and suddenly you notice it’s warm.”
Gunnie looks more confused than worried, now. “Um, okay, Skip, not really sure what you mean there. Where do you feel warm when you, ah, sit down?”
“Myself.”
“Right, no, that’s–that’s not what I meant. I mean, where in your body?”
“Myself. ”
“Again, Skip, that’s–oh, wait, like your cerebroslug body, not the captain’s–your human body?”
Skip nods. Maybe Gunnie would know if he was dying. It would be sad, he thinks, to orphan his son when he only just became his father. Or less sad, since the connection wasn’t as strong?
“Skip, seriously. Do you want me to examine you? Like, hop out of the captain for a second and let me look at you?”
“NO. ”
Gunnie raises his hands, palms forward. “Okay, man, okay. Just putting it out there. There’s not a ton I can know about your body when it’s inside the Skipper’s head. Have you tried asking Riva, then? Brain stuff is sort of their thing.”
Skip sighs. “I did. Ask Riva. They said we’re all dying. Except for Sid. And Barry.”
“They said Barry was immortal? Shit, I am so behind on the literature on cloning– not the point, got it, got it. So they gave you the philosophical answer, then, huh?”
Skip nods. (You ever notice how much nodding you do, kid? You’re a goddamn bobblehead out here, and you don’t even have your own head, you use mine– not now, Norm, for fuck’s sake).
“But you think you’re like, physically dying, yeah?” Gunnie leans forward at his workbench, voice steadier and softer than Skip’s heard it in a while, maybe ever. “Well, we do all die. Organic life forms, I mean. So physically your cells are decaying and shit, though different species decay at different rates and–” he cuts himself off. “You know this. But what makes you think that you’re, um, suffering from acute, like, right-now-or-very-soon death?” Skip inhales, then clacks his mouth shut as Gunnie continues. “Yes, the warmth, but like. Is it uncomfortable heat? Pressure? Something else?”
Skip blinks, pauses. Huh. Is it uncomfortable? “It’s different. Unusual for me to feel warm in a way that’s not just from warm-blooded creatures.” But is it uncomfortable, or just new, he wonders. “Maybe not uncomfortable. But concerning. It’s never happened before.”
Gunnie nods along, making notes on a datapad. “Right, okay, that makes sense. Unexplained new phenomenon, alarm, yeah, for sure. Have you experienced anything else new or unusual recently? Especially something that started around the same time?”
Huh. Skip thinks, trying to remember things he wasn’t aware of at the times when he felt warm. “I was with the crew. Separate and together. I was warm. Not a fever or like Barry. Um.” He thinks harder. “There’s not really anything that stands out. Sorry.” He watches as Gunnie scrubs a hand over his head, nodding along and marking something down. Skip cranes his neck to try and read upside down, and realizes that Gunnie is writing numbers, not words. “Are you doing math right now? For real?”
“Yeah, man, helps me pay attention. Gotta have enough stimulation up in the old brain, you know?”
Skip does not know. “Yep.”
“And do you feel warm, like, all over, or just in one spot on your body? Does the captain’s body also feel warm when you do? How long does the warm feeling last?”
Skip blinks, opens his mouth, then clacks it shut again. Tries again. “All over. Sometimes. Varies.”
“Okay, would love to get more than one word answers here, Skip. I’m not trying to pry, I’m just trying to get enough info to help you think through this.”
Skip tries a third time. “There’s not. Cold. Like it’s gone. I’m warm, all over. Like on the couch.”
“On the cou– oh, like at movie nights?” Skip nods. “I mean it gets warm in there, yeah, but you already said it wasn’t your–the captain’s–your external body, so that shouldn’t impact it.” Gunnie taps his stylus against the datapad. “Okay, you mentioned not cold. When do you feel cold?”
Stars. Alone. Void. Moving fast, fast, faster through emptiness, alone, nothing but– “Space.”
“Man, we’re always in space. Work with me.”
Fair enough, Skip thinks. Out loud, he says, “Outside the ship. Space. Just in one body.”
“So when you’re not in a human body?”
“Yes. No. Not just. Sometimes in this body.” Skip casts about for an example. “Like when I’m in a room by myself. Or just with Aurora Nebbins. Or after Kublacaine.”
“Great, wonderful. Marvelous. So when you’re alone, then. Crashing after a high, or scared. Does that seem right?”
It does not seem right. Other people don’t impact his body’s temperature because he is inside a body, not on a body. Well, unless they shoot him with cold, cold COLD–
Skip shakes himself, but he’s been quiet too long, and Gunnie has started talking again.
“– and if not, man, that’s okay, you know? The ball is rolling up, and we can figure this out, yeah? And if I can’t then maybe Riva can, or Margaret can, because like I’m smart but damn that woman has something else going on in her brain and I don’t even–”
“Gunnie.” Skip says, interrupting, because Gunnie had said that that was okay to do when his ‘mouth was running away from him’ (which didn’t seem possible, given that it was one of the few organic parts of Gunnie’s body left, but Skip had been away from humans and mouths in general for so many cycles that maybe things had changed and he was out of date now. Dumbass. Hey, Skip. Skip. It’s an idiom. Mouth running away means like rambling on too much. Which that little egghead’s always does. Rude, Norm. But. Okay.) “It does not seem right. But. It also does not seem right for me to feel warm with no external input.”
Gunnie nods encouragingly and says, “Yeah, hey, Skip, for sure, you just. Um, you just gotta remember that, uh, and sorry if I’m overstepping I just, um.” He takes a deep breath, like he did before he did brain surgery on Skip. “You gotta remember that emotions count as external input, like, they’re not hot or cold or painful to touch, because they’re concepts, but when a human body – or any body, probably, even cybernetic ones, since my chest hurts when– nevermind. When a body processes emotions, it creates chemicals, and those interact with the nervous system, which then make your body feel ready to, like, fight or flee or whatever. Does that make more sense?”
Huh. It does. “It does,” Skip says. “Then I am. Experiencing emotions that make my body feel warm?”
“Yeah, man!” Gunnie says, seeming thrilled at this breakthrough. “So like, if we can identify those emotions then maybe we can find out why your body thinks you’re dying, because honestly you seem healthy and normal and shit. Or as healthy as the Captain ever was.”
Skip considers this. “How do I do that?”
“Oh, man, I’m not sure I’m qualified for that. Like none of my degrees are in brain sciences, and I went to therapy like, twice, for a couple nargons each time? And I was pretty bad at it, cause I was a kid and stuff, and I did some stupid shit. But anyway! Maybe ask like, Riva or Margaret, oh! Or maybe Sid is programmed with some therapy stuff as a companion droid, so her?”
Skip feels warmer, and warmer. And very overwhelmed. He clacks a smile at Gunnie, says “Thank you. Champ.” and gets the hell out of there.
+1. Margaret Encino, again. Co-owner and CFO of the Wurst.
Skip feels warm. He is in the kitchen on the Wurst, and he feels warm. Skip is also eating eggs, which are also warm.
Skip is eating eggs that are, according to the Princeps, “over easy.” He doesn’t know how they can be over easy, which is not a physical spot, or how they could be too easy, or if the existence of over easy eggs implies the existence of under easy and over difficult eggs. He is eating eggs, and feeling warm because of the eggs (and maybe because of dying? Or emotions? Or both?), and he is only a little startled when the whoosh of a door and the click of heels bring Margaret Encino into his line of sight. He becomes aware that there is some egg on his shirt, considers removing it, and decides quickly that this would subject him to even more scrutiny than he knows he is already under.
“Skip.”
“Margaret.”
She sits across from him, nods to the Princeps, and requests a matcha latte in her most recent gift from Sid, a (frankly ugly. Rude, Norm.) travel mug covered in bright colored shapes and black and white block letters that spell out Boss Ass Bitch. She turns to face Skip again, and he can feel it almost physically as she trains her gaze on him.
“So first of all, you’re not dying,” she says, and this really does startle Skip. She seems very certain, but even though Margaret is always right and almost always certain, he’s not really sure how she can possibly know. “And before you ask, the reason I know for sure you’re not dying is because literally everyone on this ship has scheduled emergency one-on-ones with me in the past few malton units to ask if you’re dying, and provided literally no evidence to support their concerns except the fact that you think you’re dying.”
Skip looks at his eggs. He wishes he were over easy. Or anything less difficult than dying, or understanding new emotions, or facing down Margaret Encino when she has a goal. He hears her sigh, and then she says, slightly less certainly, “Skip. If, and it’s a very very slim if, you were dying, we would figure it out. You know we would. Because we all care about you, despite your resemblance to that shitty man whose body you’re inhabiting.” (Hey! Watch your mouth, lady– Not. Now. Norm.). “But you’re not dying.”
Skip opens his mouth, looks up at her, clacks it shut. Breathes. “If I’m not dying, what is happening?”
She gives him a look that he recognizes as pity, but not the kind she levels at people whose life she’s about to uproot. “Skip, there’s not really a gentle way to say this. But this is just what living is. You feel weird, and not alone, and it seems so scary that maybe you wish you were alone again because you knew how to deal with that. But you just have to keep living.”
Skip considers this. The level of unease he is experiencing is increasing proportionally to the warmth he’s feeling, which seems to be proving her right. But, “Isn’t living supposed to not hurt?”
Margaret laughs, surprised, and shakes her head. “Whoooo, buddy, it very much is supposed to hurt. If it doesn’t, either you’re hurting someone else as much as you should be hurting, or you are hurting and you’re just lying to yourself.”
Huh. “So you’re supposed to do things that hurt, like deliberately looking up your, um, friend. On Reddit and tracking her life even though she’s with someone else now?”
Margaret scoffs, and says, “Skip, this is so not about me right now. This is about you. And living. And I think that when Norm was in charge, he was hurting the crew as much as he should have been hurting. And I– okay, fine, yes, I am lying to myself, and that’s fine and I can do whatever I want about it. But now you’re hurting a normal amount, and not lying to yourself, and it’s weird, but I promise you aren’t dying.”
They sit in silence together for a few moments after that, Skip looking at his eggs and Margaret sipping her matcha. Skip finally gets up the courage to flick the egg off his shirt.
“Okay, so. I’m not dying. But why am I warm? Gunnie said something about emotions and processing and chemicals that I sort of understood. But now I think that I did not actually understand at all.”
Margaret just looks at him over her matcha, steady and unrelenting. She doesn’t say anything, and Skip frowns as he tries to figure out what he should have already put together that she’s waiting for him to figure out. His head hurts, and he’s about to beg her to just put him out of his misery when he hears
(Kid. Hey. Skip, goddamnit.
Norm? What? I’m really busy right now.
Yeah, no shit. Listen, uh, I’m an asshole, we know that. But I maybe should’ve said something sooner about us not dying.
Okay?
Goddamnit. You’re just feeling– fuck, I hate this. And I need you to know that.
Um, okay. Sure.
They like you, kid.
Yes. I know that.
Right, no, like. They care about you.
Okay?
Fuck me, goddamnit. Take a fucking hint. You feel warm because you’re feeling loved, because these fool-ass idiots love you.)
“Oh. Okay.”
Margaret stops pretending to check her email. “Yeah, Skip?”
Skip swallows, and says, “Uh, I was talking to Norm, actually.”
Margaret’s eyebrows go higher than Skip has maybe ever seen. “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that you two– I mean, after the craniobolt that makes sense, but– Well. Good for you. Both of you.”
“Right on.”
“Did you figure it out, then?” She looks at him over the rim of her boss ass bitch travel mug of matcha, lips quirked at some internal joke.
“Um. Yes. Love?”
She grins. “You don’t sound really sure about that, Skip.”
Skip thinks for a second, feels Norm glare at him psychically, then says, “Hm. Yes. Okay. Love. Right on.”
Margaret drains the last of her matcha, pushes her chair back from the table, and says, “Right on, Skip. Fill ‘er up.”
Skip feels warm, and warmer still. He clack-smiles and mutters to himself (and Norm, goddammit), “Dyin’ tomorrow, it’s a pleasure.”