shatterverse | (no subject)

So, Thrust thinks, this is a farm. Well, it's flat.

It's actually not impossible to keep a low profile if you're a big pink robot motorcycle, it's just tricky. It's particularly difficult when you're working on getting your refuelling station set up semi-permanently (Oliver had helped him move it somewhere out of the way, but Thrust is doing fiddly work, now, that he wouldn't trust to anyone else) and reliably running the way you want it to.

Really, being somewhere out of the way on the Cooper farm (at least Thrust hopes it's still the Cooper farm; he doesn't know where the territory ends) is only a marginal help. He is, after all, seven or eight feet of brightly-colored robot fiddling with a machine made out of part of a light pole with four rather small solar power panels, a pressure cooker, a toaster oven, and many other less recognizable small appliances securely welded to it. Further welded sections of light pole make up a sturdy square base. There are symbols carefully painted onto the pressure cooker-- one is pretty self-explanatory, even without the dialogue, but the other is a little more unusual. (Hey, it's technically a Vehicon refuelling station, even if it's a refuelling station in the same way a vending machine is a restaurant.)

Thrust fiddles with tubing and wiring and connections, now and then tossing a manipulatory-appendage full of organic matter (mostly grass, although with the occasional dirt clod) into the pressure cooker, then peering at the toaster oven before continuing to make adjustments.

He really wants just a vending machine, see, not a still.

The whole thing might look a little bit odd, to a passing human.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Alas and alack. Fortunately, and the narration is not making this up, Steve was on the brink of mentioning Gabriel anyway.

"I know someone who'd give his right arm to meet-- your station," he says, and then becomes fully and shamefully aware of how silly the wording is -- though in his defence it was going to be 'meet you' and changed at the last minute. Maybe humans have some kind of inbuilt sensitivity to racism where it doesn't actually apply, or something; the narration's not sure.

"... Another one?"

Thrust has met at least two people who've been very impressed with him and his refuelling station today-- not counting Steve, even-- and both of them scan as male.

He's not used to being so impressive.

Well, they're not used to transforming robots from space, so it all sort of evens out in the end.

"His name's Gabriel -- tall, dark, eyebrows -- he'd have fixed it in a second." Stevie doesn't mean to cast doubt on your own refuelling-station-building skills, Thrust; merely infer that Gabriel Is Awesome.

~~Hormone scans suggest that this male wishes to mate with the other male!~~

~~If Thrust knew there were ways to scan for hormones, he'd be glad he doesn't have them.~~

"Met a guy named Gabriel," Thrust admits. "He pointed out a couple things I'd missed. Can't help you on the physical description, though-- not til I know the locals better." This is an incredibly polite way of saying why is every member of your species some shade of brown, geez.

Beam. "If he knew, just like that--" a click of the fingers will here serve to represent the stunning result of centuries of human evolution "--that was him."

Beat.

"...unless it was the other one. From the different universe. The young one."

There's also the one from the future, but he wouldn't have introduced himself as Gabriel and in any case Steve finds it best not to think about him too much.

"... I can barely tell your species apart except by voice anyway," Thrust admits. "I dunno. I got stared at, he told me he knew how stuff worked, I said that was handy..." Thrust shrugs.

"Offered to give the schematics to a friend of his."

!!!

...okay, so it's not like he has tabs on whether the other Gabriel's friends (...does he have any?) are interested in the schematics of robot technology, but OH PLEASE SWEET LORD THAT HAS TO MEAN STEVE RIGHT?

"That could be me," he offers carefully.

"... You know, considering you build drones, could be," Thrust admits. "You ever go by 'Steve'?"

One syllable makes the difference between Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal. Thrust has no problem with short forms... once he knows they're short forms and not a whole other name.

"Yeah," says Steve, because when you've read as much science fiction as he has you learn to see the logic behind questions like that.

Also? He's grinning openly now. Like a loon. Or, well, more so than before.

"Then as soon as I figure out how to get some schematics out of here," he taped the side of his head, "And into a readable format, I owe you a set of plans," Thrust agreed. "I dunno what this place runs on, but it doesn't take too much jury-rigging to get anything to run on energon."

This is the part where Stephen starts thinking aloud. "Must be a printer somewhere we can rig. Or a fax or something. Electricity's still running here, so even if we found something out in the world we could bring it up and fiddle around-- do you have anything like--" he gestures vaguely with his hands "--a scart socket?"

Hey, it's a useful thing to know.

Well, that's a highly personal que--

Oh wait, Thrust is chuckling. "I don't even know what one is," he says. "We tend to use our optics for direct upload and download of that much stuff, it's faster. Don't suppose you know where to find anything like a lightstream-accessed data receptor? Usually look kinda like adjustable helmets."

"If I had the schematics I could make it," says Steve, with all the confidence of a guy who built machines to defy physics in his lunch break. "The problem comes when we'd need the receptor to access the schematics to build the receptor."

So in summary, it was a really pointless suggestion!

"I'll ask around-- someone from a different world and era might have one. Weirder things have happened."

"I could draft the schematics," Thrust admits, "It'd just take a while."

Particularly when you consider, say, the size of pencils as compared to Thrust's manipulatory appendages. One can almost hear the KRONCH slaggit not again.

"Now, paper and pencils we have."

Steve will make sure of it.

"And there's a whole world of bit parts to salvage in the meantime. ...Hope you don't mind a slightly Frankenstein data receptor?"

"I was thinkin' I'd just cut out the middlemech and get you the plans for the refuelling station," Thrust tells him, chuckling.

"...That, also, could work."

Aw, but then he only gets to construct one piece of robotechnology instead of two!

Yes, but it's the one where it working improperly could cause an explosion, as opposed to melting Thrust's processors through his optics. Thrust is used to explosions. "Be the easy part, anyway. The challengin' part'd be converting stuff to run on energon."

"Should be a cakewalk."

The narration admits that this is a cocky sentiment, but then again Stephen has good reason to believe that he can convert stuff, mainly because he frequently has.

The relative difficulty of energon-related matters versus fighter jets, though, remains to be seen.

"Somethin' to do," Thrust agrees, because at this point he hasn't also agreed to build comlinks for Mel and doesn't have Jetstorm around to bother. "Last longer than the fossil fuels everybody's usin', too." Especially with industry generally, uh.

Down.