.....I think I've fucked this up. Especially the previous scene.
It was supposed to be a total teamwork fail, rather than Mackie just randomly being a jerk.
Anika's big and excited about being the centre of attention with a real discovery, and sees it as her real chance to show what she can do and what she's learned, so she's more focused on what she can do alone. It's her chance, so she has to do it. Mackie, somewhat understandably gets frustrated and bored at being just a little bit ignored, so decides to act anyway - even though he can't see what Anika's actually doing. As far as he's aware, she's just staring at a screen waiting for it do something, so he decides to make it do something.
And Mackie just doesn't have the complete negative opinion of Madness that Anika has.... he sees it as a normal thing that happens to everyone - just getting so engrossed in a project that you're blind to whatever's beyond the project - and that sometimes when someone's in the madness place they need to be jolted out of it. He either doesn't understand the difference - or couldn't see the difference for where he was sitting. Anika, OTOH, has a very specific negative connotation and idea of what Madness is, born from her original creator being so blind from his technical success that he thought she was defective when she started fighting against him.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:"Anika," Mackie tried.
She ignored him, switching the intercom off with an angry huff. Her mind was buried deep in the underspace, finishing a few final uploads. In all likelyhood, Mackie had delayed understanding the Raven, and probably scared it off for good. Any chance of ever catching it in the wild vanished in a burst of childish insults. Lebia was out there with something special, but even 'something special' versus the vastness of space was a long shot.
All she had left was the data, and the echoes of what might've been. And reasonably quick instant messaging thanks to the interwave node built into the spin of the Hi-Streamer. Miyuri was on the other end of it. Along with sympathy
Aki-chan: "Mackie did what?"
Aki-chan: "If he was working for me, he wouldn't be working for me. You know what I mean."
Anika sucked on the tube of her pureed banana split, finding comfort in her anger.
Strawberry Cupcakes: "I know, but - he's family."
Aki-chan:"And family trumps everything else."
Aki-chan: "There's a saying that the Foglios have for this sort of occasion:"
Aki-chan: "Relatives are a gift from God, because you sure wouldn't pay for them."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "The worst part. He's not my family..."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "It's Jet that really lets him get away with things like this."
Aki-chan:"Owww...."
Aki-chan:"You going to stop by for sympathy desert?"
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "Sorry, but we're already delayed."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "On the way home?."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "I'll send the flight plan!"
Aki-chan: "Ooh, we'll keep a docking bay free"
She left her food-tube hanging in space while she confirmed her expected departure times from LBB. They'd planned for a two-night stay while the catgirls gathered performed their tests. The surprise came when the hanging tube tapped against her visor. She glanced around, looking for an explanation. It came moments later as a deepening whine from the engines pressed her back into her seat.
The navigation computer showed the Hi Streamer accelerating through 12%. She re-activated her intercom.
"Hey Mackie! What are you doing now?"
"You're not using the main arrays, so I thought I'd use the spare cooling capacity to make up the time we lost at Atalante," he answered, calmly.
"You could've warned me," she huffed, wiping a smear of banana-split-paste from her visor with the back of her glove.
"You didn't answer..."
"It's your own fault for blowing my big chance."
Definitely his fault for making her mad.
"That Stealth will be back," he assured her with a sick, smug certainty to his tone.
"What, you know who owns it?" she snarled caustically.
"It came back after we chased it and spiked it, so it's definitely interested in us enough to come back inspite of the threat," he answered again. She heard the smile on his lips and it incensed her. "We learned so much when he panicked, didn't we? And I'll bet the pilot in there will be hating every minute of his mission because that Stealth's going to be cold, cramped and utterly boring to fly all the way out and then he has to concentrate on not getting spotted the whole time. So if I keep pissing him off, he's going to get frustrated - the more frustrated he gets, the more likely he'll fuck up."
Simple. Smug.
"You could've told me!" She snapped at him.
"I tried three times. You were too deep in the madness place to care."
"I don't go to the madness place."
It was called Hack Mode.
"Takes a beetle to know a beetle.... You were deep in there."
"I am not a Mad." She stated.
"With the things I've seen you make computers do, that sounds like AC claiming she doesn't have big tits..."
He laughed. He actually laughed at her.
"I'm not Mad!" Anika snapped.
There was a big difference between the Madness Place and being deep in Hack Mode. Madness was obsession, it was pathological. Hack Mode was the opposite - a willing State of Zen where there was Nothing but the Problem, and the understanding of data and information merged with instictive wielding of Deep Magic to find the Solution. It was peaceful and creative, rather than blinkered and destructive.
Mads werre people who got lost in their mind. They get so deep into their projects that they forget everything, except for the goal at the end of the tunnel. Mads were always one step away from an atrocity, justified in the blind name of discovery and for the glory of the Project. Mad's flirted with Armageddon and Destruction. They blindly toyed with lives seeing only the promise of the thrill of discovery.
Hackers escaped and broke free, while Mads imprisoned and violated.
That had been the very first lesson of her life.
And she was riding in something a step away from a nuclear weapon, built by a larval Mad's obsession with speed. It made her skin prickle just to think about it. Her awesome technical work had been tainted by The Spark, sublty defiled by Madness.
"Fine," the voice on the other end of her intercom sighed. "If that's what you want to believe..."
Anika stewed. The topic on her mind, open to all for suggestion, was revenge. Some of the lurid suggestions coming from the Underspace brough a savage smirk to her lips.
"Aw man," Mackie's voice interrupted her again.
"What is it now?"
"This flightsuit is so uncomfortable...why couldn't we use a normal one?"
She could hear him shifting in his seat, even through the intercom.
"I don't have a problem," she declared, proudly. A little embarrasing maybe when walking around, but far more comfortable than the usual flightsuit and strap-down harness. And a lot less messing around when getting in and out since all the proper connectors just locked naturally into place, then unlocked with a single lever.
"There's one obvious difference between you and me..." the boy answered, confirming her suspicions.
"You can shift your core to another body if it bothers you that much."
He was an AI, after all - it wouldn't be too hard considering he'd already been moved from the KnightWing.
"Once was enough...." Mackie answered, with an uncomfortable shudder in his voice.
And that begged a question she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to. Instead, she nestled herself into the comfort of the Underspace, supporters already offering to 'adjust' Mackie's course assignments, or even his grades. A few Skids hanging on to the fringes of the list vied for her attention, offering even more devious options that whispered to the darker parts of her heart, even if she knew it'd be going too far.
She relayed what he'd said to the list, waiting for the response. And now, what really made her boil - he'd accused her of being the thing she hated most of all - as if it didn't mean a single thing. The first message came through with a chirp from the panel in front of her.
Visionaire: "Although he had a purile way of doing it, he might not be wrong - Logically, at least."
Visionaire: "The Raven is interested in you. Enough to follow you halfway to Ultima, after a mock attack."
Visionaire: "You flight plan is public and published."
Visionaire: "There's a high probability it will try to track you again on the way back in."
It stunned her. In green text on a black monitor screen was betrayal. Lebia's usual cool tones were clear even in text form. Abandoned, Anika slumped forward in her seat with a quiet whine from her throat.
Visionaire: "It's not just you on your own out there. Both of you are a team."
Visionaire: "Part of being on a team is being able to utilise all the skills of your team members. Use them to compliment your own."
And the the worst part of it? Divorced from all the emotion of the moment, Lebia was probably right too.
Okay so maybe, just maybe, she had gotten too hung up on what she could do herself with her cool new toy. Maybe she was enjoying being the real centre of attention for a change. But he didn't need to be such an insensitive, oblivious jerk about it either, did he? There was nothing left to do but count down the hours.
It was supposed to be a total teamwork fail, rather than Mackie just randomly being a jerk.
Anika's big and excited about being the centre of attention with a real discovery, and sees it as her real chance to show what she can do and what she's learned, so she's more focused on what she can do alone. It's her chance, so she has to do it. Mackie, somewhat understandably gets frustrated and bored at being just a little bit ignored, so decides to act anyway - even though he can't see what Anika's actually doing. As far as he's aware, she's just staring at a screen waiting for it do something, so he decides to make it do something.
And Mackie just doesn't have the complete negative opinion of Madness that Anika has.... he sees it as a normal thing that happens to everyone - just getting so engrossed in a project that you're blind to whatever's beyond the project - and that sometimes when someone's in the madness place they need to be jolted out of it. He either doesn't understand the difference - or couldn't see the difference for where he was sitting. Anika, OTOH, has a very specific negative connotation and idea of what Madness is, born from her original creator being so blind from his technical success that he thought she was defective when she started fighting against him.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?