Don't Be Silly

Pushing Buttons

Eiffel was a talker. Honestly, he could talk about anything if only there were someone willing to listen. Back home, few people cared to listen to his ramblings. Minkowski and Hilbert cared even less. And he didn't even want to try with Lovelace...

Hera wasn't like the rest of them. She would happily listen to him all day, and call him crazy, but he didn't think her interest was forced. No, she had a natural curiosity about her that drew her towards him like a magnet. She often kept him company as he rambled to the empty abyss of space, unsure if there even were any "dear listeners" out there.

She liked listening to him talk. She's surprisingly learned quite a lot from him. About earth, mostly. She supposed it was natural to miss your home when you're so far away from it.

He liked telling her about the things he missed. She didn't quite understand why, as he always seemed melancholy after their talks. But he would speak with such fond excitement, so it must bring him some joy to express his longing.

Today, he was talking about the weather of all things.

"Yup, you really don't know what you have until it's cruelly stripped away from you. But I miss it all. Yes dear listeners, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss allergies! I miss the cottonwood in the spring, in all its shitty, fuzzy glory and I miss the fucking ragweed! I want to go outside and sneeze my ass off and squint at everything I look at because it's too damn bright and I forgot my sunglasses because it was supposed to be cloudy and it's sunny out of nowhere!"

"That... doesn't really sound fun."

"Yeah, well, it's not. But it's at least real," he lamented, fiddling with a knob that did nothing. Or if it did, he wasn't aware.

Hera's breath hitched, and she hoped she could mask it as just a glitch. That was odd. She felt that. It wasn't the first time she could "feel" in a sense. She was deeply connected to her electronic mechanisms and coding, and she would definitely feel if something damaged either. She has sensors all around the ship: in the walls the ceilings, the equipment, she even has a few exterior sensors along the sides and docking bays. She'd felt that odd tingle shoot through her wires on a few rare occasions, but it had always been fleeting. Minkowski pressing random buttons on the motherboard to see what they did, Eiffel fixing a dent too close to a sensor, Minkowski clicking and dragging the mouse across the screen... If she could, she would've shuddered at the thought. She tried to focus on what he was saying.

"And they're always right! I don't know how, but every damn time a patch sprouts up, it rains! Guess that's where they got the name though, right?"

"What?"

"The rain flowers," he clarified, tapping his fingers on some buttons. Truth be told, most of the buttons and dials in the coms room were for show, like the decorative smoke stack on the Titanic. The real controls were localized to a single panel, and she had always assumed they had no effect on her. Now, she was glitching out as she fought the urge to laugh.

"Right, right," she agreed, wishing he would just stop twisting that knob.

Of course, she could never be so lucky.

"I tell ya, there's nothing like a good thunderstorm, a rocking chair on an enclosed porch, a cigarette and a cold beer. I really mean it, that is paradise. You can take your sunny beaches with all that fucking sand, I'm a doom and gloom weather kinda guy. But don't get me wrong! I'd literally kill to be on a nice, secluded beach-" he rambled on wistfully, dreaming of all the places that were better than here. She was having trouble focusing when his other hand tapped the empty keyboard, all the while he still played with that fucking dial-