Fulfilling the mandate of the expedition

by Cackling Moron

#5

Author's Note:

Opinions on stuff. I guess?

The rest of Arthur’s day passed in something of a blur, his mind sitting quite comfortably in a patch of fuzz while his body went through whatever motions were required. The pony workcrew was directed, equipment was maneuvered, a few bits and pieces were installed, progress towards their ultimate goal was made and everything went entirely according to plan. An unremarkable, productive day.

Arthur barely noticed that it had ended, only really floating back down to a proper awareness of his surroundings once he was back and sitting in the crawler, staring down at the table. Or, rather, at the new slice of the cake that he’d apparently got for himself entirely without noticing having done it.

“Huh,” he said.

He then ate some of it and felt not less confused, but less concerned about what an odd day he’d had. Cake, he was rapidly coming to learn, really took the edge off things.

Corin, he also noted, was sitting opposite, grinning. He decided to ignore this and just focused on the cake. Corin seemed fine with this and content to wait.

And so there she sat, still grinning at him but saying nothing.

“What?” Arthur asked eventually, unable to take it anymore.

“Did you see your ladyfriend again?” Corin asked. Arthur groaned, regretting having asked, cursing himself for not having seen this coming.

“Would you please not - please not call her that, please? It’s weird. She’s just - I don’t know. Friendly. A friendly local,” he said.

“They’re all friendly, Arthur, it’s kind of their thing. I think this ranks a step above though. I think someone liikkkess yoouuuu.”

“She doesn’t even know me,” Arthur said. This at least was undeniable.

“True. If she did she wouldn’t like you. I know you and I don’t like you,” Corin said nodding at this very fine point that Arthur had made. This would be low-key mockery. Arthur, used to this sort of thing, was unmoved.

“Hah,” he said with all the mirth of a damp towel.

“I like you, Arthur,” interjected ATC. Corin flapped a hand over her shoulder but kept her attention on Arthur.

“ATC doesn’t count, they’re a Governing Intelligence, they like all of us. I count,” she said, tapping a finger against her chest, all deadly seriousness.

Arthur groaned again, deeper this time, setting down his fork and resting his face in his hands. He would have got up to leave, but Corin was between him and the exit anyway, and he really didn’t have the energy to stand up in the first place.

“This is ridiculous,” he said into his hands.

“There was that guy who shacked up with one of the locals,” Corin pointed out.

“I heard.”

They’d all heard. He’d kept up working with the expedition for a little while after moving until the length of the trips started getting too long, at which point he’d turned in his notice. He lived here full time, apparently, doing something that varied depending on who you heard the story from.

Neither Corin nor Arthur had ever met the guy personally.

“What was his name again...something with a ‘J’ I think…” Corin said, scratching her chin in thought.

“I don’t know,” Arthur said.

“Think you’ll be following his fine example?” Corin asked.

Arthur’s face stayed in his hands, and his responses remained muffled.

“No,” he said.

“Aww, why not? I think it’d be cute!”

“Because she isn’t human.”

Arthur had given up on trying to undermine the subject completely by this now, seeing it as pointless, so was having to grapple with it on Corin’s terms. He wasn’t happy about it, either. Corin flicked him on the top of head and he gave out a muted ‘ow’ but otherwise didn’t move.

“Don’t be so close-minded!” Corin scolded.

Arthur removed his face from his hands at last and gave Corin a flat look. Then again, most of Arthur’s looks were flat, so a lot of the impact here was lost on her.

“Are you honestly, genuinely trying to get me to fuck a horse?” He asked.

“Not a horse, no, a person. And I don’t know how most your relationships go, Arthur, but typically there’s a gap between saying hello and fucking. Maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. No, you idiot. I’m just saying maybe a little affection, you know?”

“You keep calling me an idiot.”

Arthur didn’t really care much about that, it was just something he’d noticed. Corin hadn’t noticed, by contrast, and having it pointed out to her was something of a jolt.

“I do? Sorry, that’s mean. I just don’t get why you’re so against this. It’s good! She clearly likes you!”

“It’s weird,” Arthur mumbled, not really knowing how to articulate it beyond that. It was one of those things you take to be so obvious that, when someone asks you why, you’re not actually able to answer the question because you never actually thought about it all that much.

“We’re on a different planet. A different planet in a whole different universe. Like, however many universes down from our universe. One of the ones we went through had talking smoke. I think your standards of weird need some adjustment,” Corin said.

Arthur opened his mouth to respond to this one but realised that she actually had a point. Corin took advantage of the opening this created in the conversation to press onward.

“And, hey, remember, part of the point of the expedition was to make friends. You have a friend beating down your door! Figuratively speaking. You literally signed up for this,” she said.

Again, she had a point. That had literally been part of the signup clause, that of assisting humanity in making friends if the expedition happened to find any. Well, these were by far the friendliest friends they’d found so-far, so if it had to happen anywhere it might as well be here, Arthur supposed.

And while it was undeniable that the locals weren’t human it was equally undeniable that they were people.

Arthur was not in the business of thinking too deeply on these sorts of quandaries (he tended to think in straight lines with definite start and end points and then never move from the end point once he’d got there) but that certainly seemed a very important distinction to him. A horse couldn’t talk back to you, Baker’s Dozen could.

She could also smile, which served as a further point of difference, at least to Arthur. And bake. And ask nicely to try some of your lunch and then say thank you afterwards. And care about your wellbeing despite not knowing you personally. A lot of points of difference, really. They were rather starting to pile up, Arthur noticed.

He could almost feel his resolve weakening.

“She does seem nice…” He conceded.

“That’s the spirit! Take a punt! Go for it!” Corin said, triumph flooding her from top to bottom.

“I don’t know what that means,” Arthur said.

“Well, etymologically speaking ‘taking a punt’ means-” Corin started, smartarse that she was, but Arthur cut her off:

“No, I know what it means, I just don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Maybe just try talking to her. Properly, I mean. Try and make a date of it or something. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She could get to know me and she could realise what a horrible mistake she’s made in approaching me in the first place,” Arthur said. In his experience this was typically the way things happened. Corin winced.

“Yeesh, even I wouldn’t go that far. Cut yourself some slack, Arthur, you’re not that bad. Besides, it might work out, it might not - if you go out of your way to shut her off that’ll just make both of you miserable and neither of you will know either way. Do it, see what happens, maybe have fun, maybe not, keep on going anyway. Life continues. Mean, once we’re done with this they’ll probably move us along somewhere else anyway, right?”

Arthur hadn’t thought of that, at least not in detail. The possibility of what the expedition might have him do next was always looming, but it was nebulous - maybe they’d keep him on this level for the next phase of this power thing, maybe they’d take him along to some other one where they needed something doing.

If the worst came to the worst and Baker’s Dozen did get to know him and find him as repugnant an individual as he was certain he was, then all he had to do was keep his head down, forget it, and before too long he’d be somewhere where it wouldn’t matter anyway.

That wouldn’t be so bad.

“Right,” he said, eventually, nodding slowly and more to himself than to Corin, taking up his fork once more.

Comments

[TheStoveHater]

Opinions on stuff? Uuuuuuh 40k is cool

[Cackling Moron]

10182057
media.tenor.com/images/f71c37d9cb8037ea8baa725946d968b3/tenor.gif

PS You'd expect, given the enormous formative influence 40k had on me, I'd have written something about it, but not really.

Ah well.

[SIGAWESOME]

Arthur, Arthur, Arthur,...

Poor guy is so dense ATC probably had his bed repositioned so he could be repurposed as a radiation shield for the rest of the vehicle while he slept.

[Vaalintine]

Yeah, they're trying to force him to think and act the way they want him to. If they're goong to do that why not just shoot him with a mind control ray to go frolic with the ponies? When they keep on pushing him to do what he doesn't want to do it makes it seem faked and illegitimate when they succeed.