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He is an ant in the maw of a whale. a god in the mouth of an even bigger god. organic servos fizzle and hum and burn out centuries of ice; and he is a drowsy thing, still, in the mouth of something much, much bigger than him.
Drowsy is not the right word. Too human of a concept. It is atrophy in the way rigor mortis sets into a body, the way blood congeals after death, the once solid structure becomes soft and hard in all the wrong places. pulpy and calcified and off, but these are still viscerally, undeniably human concepts. ( organic concepts, he should say, biological concepts. funny, how on closer inspection, he is as much of a patient as he is a broken thing. engineering to medical, engineering to medical. ) he feels as though something has gone ‘off’ inside of him. rotten and wrong and disconnected. He could never call it a pleasant feeling.
Like the metal rods of a slow heating system, fossilized in it’s own inactivity, his mind begins to warm up again. slow at first, strings of processes and code raveled out onto a screen hooked into the ship as he begins diagnostics automatically, and in this way, begins to shiver & shake his way awake. the praying mantis shivering out of it’s molt, of it’s coma. like running those diagnostics, being the mantis, and finding limbs have been lost in the instar; lost in the transitioning. swathes of him, unseen, unfelt; phantom, in a way. ━ he never expected to wake up to feel them again, though. he'd question if this was death, but something deep in his being; still, persistent after anything, after everything; says he cannot die. refuses to let him. refuses to think. Many parts of him refuse to think, now, but the stoic rods hum to life as his little body crackles on the table with ice, with slate, with a millennium of things caught inside, and rendered their own kind of history.
The moment he is capable of processing what exactly that fills the screen hooked up into the ship, awaking from under a mountain range of warnings and errors and critical failures, he decides he hates it. they can see the decision made and string of interweaving terrible emotions in a series of technological languages he can only pray they do not understand, and decides he hates that too. a fast river of words and numbers and symbols humming down into the console. But it's when Kirk steps into his narrow range of vision, most of his sight destroyed over time by ice in the lenses and his Overseers nowhere to be found, that the screen speeds, and the body shifts.
The movement is a very small one, the adjustment of uncooperative limbs barely a half inch, wires and icy fabric fibers caught in the joints that, once, might've had ornate decoration carved into the metal, but the monitor screams past at a rate it's very likely no one expected such a small, broken thing to be able to input at all ( he does not see Kirk. he sees the people who were there before they were. the originals, the creators, the ancients. something in him buzzes with a terror unprecedented. he cannot stop seeing him for them. he cannot stop seeing them. )
━ until he does. of course he does. there are no masks, no ornate bindings, the frame too wide and the hands too straight; these are not the same. these could never be the same. ( your makers are gone, erased entire. you know this. there is no manner of living, and there is no manner of death, that can make you stop knowing this. ) but for a moment they seemed so similar, like caught in dreams, like caught in…
a pop-up appears on the monitor, and before it can be read or accepted, it vanishes; accepting itself, permission granted. the lights of his eyes flicker dully, barely there, old golden face-paint gleaming in 4 little dots above them reflecting like tiny lights in the overhead glow of the ship. ( an ant in the maw of a whale, a god in the mouth of a bigger god ━ and you just jammed your fingers into it's gums, didn't you? how rude to not ask for permission to their language. your terror has no need for words in this land of things so much stronger than you are. )
" Ppppllease━ " the voice that comes is crackled and broken and borderline incoherent, pitiably desperate, the screen flashing with an ancient, symbolic language. the pronunciation of every word is off, wrong in some way, as though he was learning it as he spoke. he was, of course. ( a frightened part of him insists that it's rude not to answer your host. you are a guest. don't do anything foolish. you shouldn't be here, after all. ) ━ it gets a little better as he speaks, between the glitching of an ancient audio system, and the fried wiring that connects it. he's… mostly understandable, so long as he speaks slowly enough. fingers twitch uncontrollably against the countertop as he speaks, a buzzing lowly humming from his neck. " rererrepeat what you. said? said. repeat. pleasse. I could not know━uunderstand you, administsts-strator. "
@quillheel asked ;
when making first contact, the planet looked entirely uninhabited. the ruins of cities looming in the distance and above, dangerous flora & fauna mixed with non-organic assets like hydraulics and oxygen-supported jets, giant superstructures lurching into the skyline where even more abandoned ruins were kept. strange golden things lurked just out of sight, but a feeling felt by every living creature, as snow plummeted down into a settling ice-age it seemed. The terrain showed considerable, terrible amounts of flooding; great pressures wreaking havoc, but in this it was probably good that they'd landed as late as they had, as the snow held back that overwhelming pressure, at least most of the time.
it's no different when finding one of those superstructures - incredibly advanced semi-organic supercomputers powered half with water and half with a liquid that ate through anything that touched it without a trace left behind - cracked open like an egg from time and wear. the building slowly collapsing in on itself, and a little robotic doll found inside, barely 4ft tall, hooked up to the rest of the building by a large metal arm long-since frozen to the ground, and the robot entirely inactive. It, seemingly the prior user of the miles worth of tubing and wiring that made it difficult to know what the machine wasn't capable of more than it was back in its hay-day, where starving organisms that acted like cell clusters that grew too large raged war inside the internals of the building.
When bringing the android back to the ship for analysis, after god knows how long of trying to find something that cooperated with the alien modules it used innately, it's not hard to guess that no one was expecting him to wake up. // from five pebbles! i very rarely do asks like this so i hope this is okay-!! feel free to change anything if not or if u have any questions!!!!
It's on planets like these , where danger seems to lurk around every corner and there's always that innate feeling that you're somehow being watched , that Jim's more on guard than usual. Leading the landing party by a small margin - phaser at his side and ready to stun , just in case. It's unlike any planet they have ever encountered before. Large buildings stretch into the sky , looming above them. A reminder that there was once a society that lived on this planet - and they were advanced , by the looks of it. The snow fell down around them ( and he would've liked it if not for the eeriness of the silence that snowfall often carries with it ) and he turned to Spock , who didn't seem too pleased with the harsh chill in the air. Neither did Doctor McCoy , for that matter. He was handling it a bit better , but the cold wasn't doing them any favors.
As they approached the structure , there was an air of hesitance as they neared the figure. The Enterprise never had the best track record when it came to robots of any kind ―― but it's inactivity was enough to pique their curiosity. He beckons Doctor McCoy forward , gesturing towards it. ❛ And what do you want me to do about this , Jim ? I'm a doctor , not a mechanic. ❜ The pointed eyebrow raised seared into the side of the Captain's face , and he just chuckled. ❛ Isn't there some kind of scan you can do , Bones ? Anything ? ❜ From the Captain's other side piped up the Vulcan Science Officer , who had neared the Robot , still and cold to the touch , for further investigation. ❛ I do unfortunately believe , Captain , that the Doctor is correct in this circumstance. Medical tricorders are meant for organic life. ❜ The doctor scoffs.
❛ Unfortunately. Like it's that hard to agree with me once in a while. Jim , why didn't you bring Scotty down here instead of me ? Lord knows he's got enough time on the conn to command his own ship by now. ❜
After freeing the robot from the metal arm and getting him back up to the Starship , Jim did take Bones' advice. Engineering was their best bet - to see if they could get any information out of the thing. Records of what the planet was like before it's ice - age. If there was , indeed , a race that once called the planet home. What they were like - what the purpose of those structures were. He noted the scarcity of food , not at all helped by the snow that showed no signs of showing. A pit grew in his stomach as he thought of all of the ways a society so advanced could fall ; plague , war , famine . . He quickly shook it away , turning back to Chief Engineer as he spoke up. ❛ Aye , Captain , you're not gonna believe this - but we've got the wee lad up and runnin'. ❜
Curious gaze fell upon the android , and he took a moment. Waking up in a foreign environment surrounded by people you've never seen before couldn't possibly be easy. And he doesn't even know if it speaks Federation standard. Slowly , he smiled , straightening himself up. ❛ Good morning , ❜ He began softly , gently. ❛ Can you understand me ? ❜