Daria: Hunter - Mind over Plasma

"The human brain is a most unusual instrument of elegant and as yet unknown capacity."

-Stuart Seaton

Friday, September 4

2172 AD

"Oh, great," Jane said blearily.  "You're still here."

Trent looked up from his pad.  "Oh," he said.  "Hey, Janey."

Jane sighed and leaned up against the wall of her apartment's living room as she looked at the rat's nest her brother had made of the couch.  Several sheets - more than any single human could possibly need - were twisted around him in the form of a miniature hurricane with Trent in the center.  Several items of clothing in various states of disrepair and cleanliness (or lack thereof) were strewn about the nightstand, coffee table, entertainment center, and basically everything else in the room.

Trent himself was dressed in a pair of wrinkled boxers and a ratty t-shirt.  Jane was wearing much the same, but she had just woken up and was about to go change.  Trent had apparently been wearing the exact same thing since he'd moved in around three weeks ago.  As for wakefulness, he was perpetually caught at "asleep" or "just woke up", with little time spent in between.  What exactly he was wearing for either of those two states never seemed to concern him overmuch.

"Wanna hear the song I'm workin' on?"

Oh, boy, Jane thought, then said out loud, "Sure, why not.  Most of my brain cells aren't working this morning.  Might as well kill off the few that are as an object lesson to the rest."

He chuckled softly as he started pressing the pad's controls.  After a few moments, the apartment was filled with a series of sounds that were almost but not quite unlike music.  Trent's soft, scratchy voice drifted in and out, singing what were almost certainly scratch lyrics . . . though having been listening to her brother's songs for several years, Jane supposed the fact that they were complete gibberish didn't tell her much either way.  The song played out to an uninspired finish, but she had to admit that the overall piece showed a little bit of promise.

"It was okay," she said, "but I think it coulda used the sound of two cars in a mid-air collision falling five hundred meters to the ground."

Trent's eyebrow arched ever so slightly.  "You're right," he said.  "I shouldn't have taken that part out."

As Trent went back to his work, Jane tromped into the kitchen and dialed up a cup of black coffee.  After a few seconds of thought, she added just a dollop of whiskey to the mix and sniffed wafting aroma deeply.  The first gulp seared the top of her tongue and sent a jolt directly to her brain, waking up those cells that hadn't been permanently shut down by the cacophony that once again throbbed from the living room.

"Oh, sweet caffeine," Jane said quietly to her coffee mug, "paint my day a picture of a million points of light."  Taking a second healthy slurp, she picked the comm up from where it was inexplicably sitting on the kitchen counter amidst several empty food packets.  As she dialed, she resolved to once again teach Mr. Trent how to be Mr. Tidy.

"Hello?"

"Hey, amiga," Jane said into the comm.  "How's the arm?"

"Operating within acceptable parameters," replied Daria.  "Is this just a social call, or should I start searching for mostly clean clothes?"

"Hmm . . . you should probably put on some underwear at least.  I'm pretty sure the Pizza Palace has a strict 'no bra, no panties, no service' policy."

Daria snorted.  "I'll show 'em.  I'll wear everything but, and triple layers of that.  Meet up there in fifteen minutes?"

"Make it thirty," Jane said, slugging down the rest of her coffee.  "I'm going to see if I can rouse the lean, mean sleeping machine to join us."