The Living condition

19

TRIPLE POST.....impulsive actions BAM!Anyways real quick i wanted to clear up confusion bc im seeing it. Mc's name is not carter (unless YOU want it to be), i understand the confusion because i worded it..WRONG. but no, unless you want their name to be carter, their name is not officially carter. Their FATHER's name, however, IS Carter. Hey if you want a song that reminds me of general vibes of the story, in my thought, is Not by Big Thief

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Over the years, it was common sense. You had..some vague idea of when your friend was hiding things–badly, on purpose. Like when she stands in her bedroom in front of you with a wide grin on her face, positively buzzing with excitement. She teeters back and forth on her toes, hiding something behind her back. When you'd tilted your head, trying to look behind her, she would bend her body to copy you

"What is it? What do you have?"

"Oh nothing! Nothing at all" Tessa beamed. "Okay! Okay-no, meet N"

"Tessa," you'd blanched, staring down at the little bald drone that stood next to her,staring at you. You honestly pity the state she finds the drones in,really. Better off than V, you think. No cracks in the visor, no obvious denting in plated metal, just...a torn-off arm that was still sparking and spilling oil onto the hardwood floor. "Tessa, your mom's gonna kill you."

"Well, she ain't caught me yet!" Tessa chirps "Come come, i also found parts,"

"Tess, I don't care how–you are not qualified to be–Tessa can you PLEASE listen–" You groaned, jogging after the girl as she led the little drone through the house by his functional hand, sneaking him straight for the library and down into the basement.

In recent months, the girl had cleaned out what was a cobweb-filled mess of an unused storage room, thrown things out without telling her parents, and made it into...well, you'd call it her lab, because it might as well had been. Tessa thought herself a right and proper engineer, no matter what you nor anyone else had to say about it. She sat N down in a brittle wooden chair while she went rifling through her things.

"....When did you get a blowtorch?" You mutter, staring down at the mess of a toolbox as Tessa tuts.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to."

"...Was it legal?"

"..not strictly." Tessa kept talking,louder before you could open your mouth to scold her for it. "Step back and stay back, this ought to get nasty!"

When the flames blew, you stepped backwards, watching the little drone while Tessa worked on him. You don't think this is maybe the best thing for her to be doing. The smell of burnt rubber and gas was nauseating, and god knows Tessa wasn't qualified to be working on the drone–

It was a temporary fix at best. A temporary fix that she most definitely intended to hide behind a little suit and tie or whatever it was she was going to dress the drone up in.

You can count on your hand, the number of times Tessa's experimental fixes on complicated machinery like a drone actually LASTED. Maybe twice, and it was dumb luck. Beginner's luck, or whatever it was called.

"Anyway, Meet N," Tessa chatters over the noise of her own tinkering. The little drone in question raised up his stable arm and offered a small wave back, weak smile on his face.

Hesitantly, you waved back at him.

—

Everything was blurry. The air you were breathing was stagnant, stale. You sat up and stared around you, hands braced against the snowy ground as you looked around yourself. You couldn't feel the cold of snow burning through your fingertips as well as before, though you supposed the mesh-like gloves helped in handling that.