text | un: m.cabrera

[naloxone]

[ turns out? space doesn't give a single fuck about your circadian rhythm. or maybe insomnia is just that attached to her that even the absence of a sun dictating her internal clock doesn't faze it, like an old friend you wish would just forget you already.

one night (?) late into the early hours (???) marta finds herself drifting out of the room she's come to assume will be hers for the indefinite future, passing through stark white walls with all the sterility of a hospital, but none of its familiar chaos.

she's still getting used to the earpiece. still getting used to hearing other people's voices in her head. she doesn't mean to add another in the void, but one of her own thoughts blares out too vividly as she stares out into an actual void: ]

—but where are the stars?

Comments

[naloxone]

[ do you know that feeling you get, right before you do something foolish? marta is getting a sense of it now, but it's distant enough (and that snap! distracting enough) that she doesn't pay it much mind.

instead, she turns down the other end of the hall she's in, winding her way towards the labs. ]

I should be there soon—

[ though, from the sounds of it, will there even be a lab left? ]

[lateness]

[ The lab is fine. Perfectly fireproof and everything.

And when Marta enters the space, she'll find that most of the room looks clean and orderly, each object in its rightful place. But take a few steps more and head over to the right and she'll start to notice how the table has gotten a little more cluttered, a little more chaotic. Newt's table joined with the Doctor's is a right mess, but the chaos has purpose! Each item has its own reason for being there.

A man in large dimmed goggles is situated on a stool behind what looks like a hunk of metal plates kept together with a mass of wiring that resembles colourful spaghetti. A spark lights up, along with a familiar snap! like earlier — and then the Doctor realizes he's got company, and puts his tools down. ]

Ah! Hello! From the network, I presume?

[naloxone]

I — yes. Marta.

[ had she said already? she can't even remember now.

the further marta walks into the lab, the more and more she thinks perhaps she had been mistaken about offering her help. while mccoy is more than within his right to have his side hobbies, of course, it'd been her foolishness to think what he was working on now had anything to do with his work.

still, she'd come too far. she may as well offer what she can.

but — first thing's first. ]

...What is that?

[lateness]

Marta! Brilliant. Lovely name, Marta. I'm the Doctor, as you'll probably have guessed — I am the only one here at the moment, so by process of elimination and all that, there's me.

[ He pulls his goggles away from his face and runs a hand through his coif of hair to get it back to its perfectly respectable looking state.

And then he waves. ]

Ah, this? This — this — well, I think it's supposed to be a sort of ice box ... thing. Only without the ice, just the cold. You know, for frozen pops and the like, once we get frozen pops and the like.

[ It definitely ... lacks a kind of elegance and may even resemble a couple of the hunks of metal currently in the kitchen. (Though it can be said that the ones in the kitchen have since taken on better appearances, due to one meddling fellow orber with far too many names to count.

The Doctor's still a bit huffy about that, truth be told.) ]

[naloxone]

[ there's something about the way he speaks that has marta feeling a little on edge. not necessarily in the negative sense, but in a way that has her feeling as if she were standing on a very thin wire, and his cadence is like the wind swaying it back and forth, back and forth. where harlan's dulcet tones had lulled her, this doctor's voice filled her with energy she didn't know she had. ]

I see... What was wrong with it?

[ he'd mentioned fixing, and of course now in hindsight marta can replay their conversation under a different lens and see where she had made her mistake. she can't say she's particularly handy, but at the very least she can help clean up around and after him. ]

[lateness]

[ He has that effect on people. You ... either get used to it, or you find yourself forever trying to parse the words behind the energy and getting left behind. ]

Oh, nothing yet, but we'll see once we get it into action, eh? Yes — you see, there's this complicated little compressor here, and we haven't got the right condenser coils, I've just been grabbing bits and bobs here and there, so it'll take just a bit of improvising here — ah. Ah! [ Exclaimed like a lightbulb's just gone off in his head. ] Oh, ooh — wait. Shut up. Yes.

[ He looks like he could take off in any given moment before he realizes that the only thing keeping his little icebox experiment together are his hands. He gestures with his chin (which, yes, some have said is a prominent feature for this face) for Marta to approach. ]

Right, Marta. It's a good thing you're here, can you hold this in place? I think I've got an idea.

[naloxone]

[ well, following directions she can definitely do. easy enough to find her place again when he reels her back in with a directive, stepping forward to replace his hands with hers.

though, it's only when she realizes she's stuck there doing this that she realizes... she's stuck there. ]

Wait—

[ don't get her wrong, doc, she trusts you're probably a very good doctor (maybe) but considering he just referred to his makeshift science experiment as grabbing bits and bobs... ]

This isn't going to explode on me, is it?

[lateness]

No, no, of course not. Well. [ Beat. ] It should be stable enough for now, anyway — just. No sudden movements, eh?

[ Is he serious? Is he being facetious? Who knows?

And then he's quickly dashing off to scramble through a nearby box of gadgets and gizmos, looking for the right something very, very specific. Something that will solve the internal bits, considering they aren't your regular internal bits but a sort of hybrid spacey-station-y assortment instead.

And he is determined to make this work. For ice pops. ]

Ah-hah! Found it! [ He holds a, well, coil-like tube of some kind in one hand, lifted up like he's won some kind of prize. ] Coily-woily. Suppose I'll need some clamps to keep that whole bit together too.

[naloxone]

[ marta makes sure to stay very, very still throughout it all, though her nerves have her fingers twitching with every second that passes by. by the time the doctor's returned, marta is so keyed up she can't even breathe out a sigh of relief.

but she definitely pauses to look at the item in his hand. ]

Isn't that a slinky?

[ it looks like a slinky. but maybe they've got other uses in space, who knows. ]

Clamps would be nice, though. Unless you plan on keeping me here the whole time.

[ ha ha. he wouldn't.

right? ]

[lateness]

It is not a slinky. I've got about five of those, I'd know. Well — had, on account of my not having a ship or a place to store things like slinkies.

[ He stretches it apart with his hands, then lets it retract, and while it does have a very slinky-like quality to it, the tube itself is much thicker. If it wasn't, it couldn't do what a coily-tubey is supposed to do. ]

Yes, yes, I'm looking! [ He comes back over to set the coil down, then hops back over to the Box Of Things in search for some clamps; all the better to relieve his unwilling assistant with! ] You're welcome to stay for as long as you like. You did say you'd help, eh?

[ But he pokes his head up from a pile of junkparts and offers her a smile. ]

Glad you're here. I was getting tired of talking to myself the whole time.