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9.4 KiB
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153 lines
9.4 KiB
HTML
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<title>The Homestuck Epilogues: Candy - Postscript</title>
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<div id='s41'></div>
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<div>
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<h1>Postscript</h1>
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<div class="o-story_text o_epilogue type-rg type-sm line-caption line-copy pad-x-0 pad-x-lg pad-b-lg">
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<p class="no-indent"><span class="opener type-hs-opener-rg type-hs-opener-sm">E</span>lsewhere,
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beyond the horizon...</p>
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<p>A spaceship tears across a starfield at warp speed. Each dot of
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distant light stretches to become a spear, hurtling in the opposite
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direction of the craft faster than any photon ever fired from its
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surface. The ship was brand-new when it departed from Earth C, and
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it doesn’t look a day older now, even though many hundreds of days
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have passed. It seems to be built to look somewhat like a shark, by
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a designer who wasn’t totally sure how many fins a shark hard, nor
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where exactly to stick them on the beast’s body.</p>
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<p>Inside, a hot iron smooths the fabric of an elaborate garment,
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releasing a gentle hiss of steam. At a glance, it looks like the
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top to a god tier costume. But it clearly isn’t standard issue.
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This one is more stylish, more ornate, more... anime? Sometimes one
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finds there simply isn’t another word that will do to describe some
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sick gear. The iron eases the wrinkles out of the icon emblazoned
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on its chest—a hot-pink heart, bisected vertically, hollow in one
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half. A shiny, graceful metal hand puts the iron down, removes the
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garment from the ironing board, and reaches for the pantaloons.</p>
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<p>She isn’t even sure how he gets these things so wrinkly. Perhaps
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it’s all the time he spends training in the hypergravity chamber,
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assuming they’ve got one of those onboard. Then again, there are
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times when he seems so high-strung, he could wrinkle a good anime
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costume sitting perfectly still in an armchair.</p>
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<p>She drapes the pantaloons over the board, then pauses to reach
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for the candy bowl nearby. She doesn’t actually need to eat
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anymore. The entire concept of eating has been upended for her.
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It’s not about sustenance, or even necessarily about enjoying
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certain flavors. It’s more about staying connected to a vestigial
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habit reminding her of the humanity she’s been forced to
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abandon.</p>
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<p>Not just any kind of candy would cut it. The sensors on her
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metal tongue are very particular. Weaker than taste buds and
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arranged differently. These would taste like some combination of
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battery acid and wasabi to a human tongue. But to her the flavor is
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mild, exotic, certainly worth snacking on to pass the time. Human
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teeth wouldn’t stand a chance of cracking these, but hers make
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short work of turning the candy into fine gravel. One of her more
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reckless shipmates chipped a tooth trying one, despite repeated
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warnings to stay away from the stuff.</p>
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<p>The iron hits a snag on the pantaloons, putting an awkward
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crease in the ridiculous, billowing fabric. She curses and puts the
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iron down. She decides “laundry day” is officially over. The guy
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can just wear a wrinkly pair of pants today for all she cares. It’s
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not like he has an audience, despite his best efforts to behave as
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if he did all the time. She doesn’t really enjoy doing laundry or
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ironing silly anime ensembles, and she considers herself nobody’s
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maid. It’s just that there hasn’t been much to do on this ship.</p>
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<p>It’s not like the old days of her long-range interstellar
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travels. That halcyon period riding a meteor across the abyss for
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years, with an atmosphere of camaraderie, feelings of optimism—a
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rewardingly transformative period in everyone’s young life. She
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guesses this is just what things feel like on a long journey when
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you’re older, and with a much smaller crew.</p>
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<p>She turns off the iron, then wanders off down a corridor. It’s
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nothing like the meteor in here. Bright, futuristic. Skaianet does
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build a lovely ship, she has to admit. She turns a corner, and her
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foot kicks something. It’s a stray ruby slipper. The other is about
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ten feet away, down the hall. No sign of their owner anywhere.
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She’d sigh, except she doesn’t breathe anymore. She doesn’t
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consider herself to be <em>her</em> maid either, but she reaches
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down to pick up the slippers nonetheless.</p>
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<p>She enters a room central to the ship, one that she visits now
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and then, possibly for sentimental reasons. Or maybe it’s just to
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creep herself out. Situated near the wall is something that looks
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like a rather elegantly designed iron lung. It’s mostly made of
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glass, with polished silver trim around the sides and base. There’s
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a digital monitor on the wall. She approaches and places her hands
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on the glass with a faint metal clink.</p>
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<p>She used to live in this body. She’s dressed in the same clothes
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she was wearing the day she slipped into the coma. A special tiara
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replaces her typical hairband, lined with blinking transmitters.
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The device beams her awareness directly into her current mechanical
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avatar. She presumes it utilizes the same technology that Jade’s
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grandfather once used to build a dreambot for her, which functioned
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similarly.</p>
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<p>She knows she’ll never be able to inhabit this sleeping body
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again. She honestly can’t decide whether that makes her feel sad or
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relieved. She ponders the future of her old body. Will it all work
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as planned? She has to believe it will. It is the only path to
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achieve permanence for these tenuous bodily accommodations.</p>
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<p>A jarring sound snaps her out of her reverie. It’s an alert,
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beeping urgently from the cockpit. The robot leaves her entombed
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living body and runs quickly through the winding corridors. She
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sits down at the helm and examines the monitor.</p>
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<p>A new planet is within sensor range. She studies the millions of
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statistics all pouring in at once. Her pupil-less eyes take them
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all in simultaneously, her head needing only to move a quarter inch
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from side to side to pan her vision across the data. It’s an
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M-Class planet. The right size, right age, right distance from the
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sun. There’s no advanced life yet. It’s exactly what they’ve been
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looking for all these years.</p>
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<p>Her heart doesn’t beat any faster, because its pace is regulated
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by an internal chip. She consciously accelerates it anyway. It’s
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been a long time since she’s had the occasion to feel exhilarated.
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She’s missed the sensation of the old flesh-ticker acting of its
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own accord.</p>
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<p>The thoughts in her powerful brain race. What will they name the
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planet? How long will it take for the ship to arrive? Once the new
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race has established an advanced enough civilization thousands of
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years from now, who will the lucky kids be? The ones who get the
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chance to play what will arguably be the most important session in
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the history of <em>Sburb</em>?</p>
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<p>She holds her thoughts. They can wait, and there’s much to
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discuss. She taps a button, and lowers her head a little closer to
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a mic on the panel.</p>
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<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
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<p class="rose">ROSEBOT: Dirk.</p>
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</div>
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<p class="no-indent">She supplies a courtesy pause, as if waiting
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for him to reply. He usually doesn’t.</p>
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<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
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<p class="rose">ROSEBOT: You’re going to want to come see this.</p>
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</div>
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<p class="no-indent">Enough time goes by that she begins to wonder
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if he’s asleep. But no. It’s just the irritated silence of a man
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who knows he isn’t currently dressed well enough to attend to
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something important.</p>
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<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
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<p class="dirk">DIRK: Are my fucking pantaloons ready yet?</p>
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</div>
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