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Joe Hills, thought to be Captain of the Tango Tek, though more of a doctor or a scientist than a Captain, has a very intertwined story with the ship’s quartermaster.
Joe’s obsession with immortality wasn’t from anything other than morbid curiosity at first. How much could you see of the universe when you’re unable to die? How much could you explore? He had only two people he was truly close enough with to lose, one who knew of his search for immortality. Pallas Cleo and Athena False were his two companions, though he had always been closer to Cleo.
Cleo had mentioned once that he was like the annoying brother she never had but had wanted when they were young. That’s when his search for immortality moved from a want to explore the universe and into wanting to do something with the person who had become a sister to him. A want to never lose one of the only people he could lose. A want to never lose either of them if he was lucky enough.
One day while staring at stars that Joe hoped to explore one day with Cleo by his side he asked them if they would want immortality if it was an option. Their reasoning that they’d need it to keep him in check brought a laugh to his lips and plans to his mind. He wouldn’t lose the only family he’s ever had.
Joe threw himself into his research, trying to find a way to cheat death.
He didn’t expect to enter the arena to see Cleo dying alone, False nowhere to be found. There was no medic. There was no one there but Cleo, dying.
Joe rushed to their side.
“Cleo. Cleo who did this? What happened? Who did this to you?”
Someone must have ambushed her it couldn’t have been-
“Athena”
The name left her bloodied lips as her lungs failed them.
Athena False.
The only person who ever seemed to spar against Cleo. The woman who both Cleo and Joe had trusted with their lives.
Their friend had injured Cleo and left her dying on the ground.
How long had they lay here dying slowly, their lungs failing them as they coughed up blood, doing all she could not to choke on it?
Joe begged for Cleo to stay alive, to keep their eyes open.
Cleo’s eyes slipped closed.
Joe wouldn’t lose her.
He couldn’t.
Joe did his best to pick up Cleo, carrying them to his home like she’d fallen asleep outside again while they were stargazing. He tried to ignore how laboured her breathing was. Tried to ignore how slow her breathing was getting.
They weren’t going to die. He wouldn’t let them.
Eternity they had said. They’d be with him for eternity to keep him in check. They can’t do that if they’re dead.
Joe sets Cleo on the bed that he uses for his experiments. He hates to think of them as one of his experiments, yet he would hate even more to cover her bed in blood as he works and he’s sure she’d get annoyed at him for doing such to his own bed.
Joe had been testing properties of metal, seeing how certain radiation and chemicals mixed in with the metal would react to the human body. He had gotten close but not quite there.
He didn’t have the time to experiment any longer.
Cleo was dying.
Cleo was dead.
Their chest no longer rose or fell.
Joe replaced her lungs with a metal pair.
It took him too long, far too long to replace her lungs with the metal ones.
Their skin was covered in blisters, blisters that seemed not to want to heal quite right, tinting parts of their skin green.
Then their eyes opened.
Their eyes opened and they were alive.
He had done it.
He had found a way to create immortality.
He had done it.
The secret to cheating death seemed to be greeting death. To fix whatever had killed the person to bring them back and keep them from Death’s embrace.
The pair left for the stars as quickly as they could.
The first planet they landed on after their escape had several interesting creatures, including a neat species of frog that Joe was inspecting, with gloves because Cleo insisted.
The frogs were small and quite friend shaped. Out of morbid curiosity Joe licked the frog in his hands.
The world went dark to the sound of Cleo calling him a dumbass.
Joe came back to the world to Cleo muttering about how he was a dumbass who they couldn’t leave unsupervised because like a toddler he decided to stick random shit in his mouth to see what would happen.
Cleo noticed he was awake before he could ask why his tongue felt heavy. He assumed it was because of the frog.
“You, Joe, are officially immortal because your dumbass decided to lick a poisonous frog.”
Joe looked at Cleo, sure his face looked similar to that of a chastised child with how they sighed.
“Don’t give me that look, you doomed yourself. I’m not spending eternity without you when you made sure that we would be stuck with one another.”
Joe smiled before speaking, getting used to the weight of his new tongue.
“Well this is one solution to my mortality problem.”
“You will never, in all eternity live down dying because you decided to lick a frog. I at least died fighting. You licked a frog.”
Cleo shook their head, though there was the hint of a smile on their lips. They at least found some amusement in the stupidity of how he met his mortal end.
“It wasn’t even a good tasting frog.”
“Did you even taste it? You died instantly.”
“No, that’s why it didn’t taste good, it didn’t taste.”
Cleo sighed again, this time pulling Joe into their arms. A mirror of how he had pulled them into his own arms once he had assured himself they weren’t dead.
“That was stupid. Don’t scare me like that again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”