"No, it's not my fault!" I yelled, trying to make it very clear to the rabbity creature sitting across from me that I am not going to be blamed for this.
We were sitting at a smallish table, in the command room of that big flying saucer palace thing that prior to the interference of that rabbit-thing could have been called a home.
"If it's not your fault, then whose fault is it? Not mine, I wasn't anywhere near that giant glowy thing." he said, toying with a figurine on the table.
"It was the power core. It had at least three dozen warning signs on it!" I yelled, trying to make it clear that one of us had done something very, very stupid, and it wasn't me.
"Say, weren't you supposed to be monitoring the power core, making sure nothing like that happened? You even told me that you had to concentrate on it entirely." He pointed out, the signs of boredom not leaving his face, even for a moment.
"Bu.. I.... Erm-" I tried to explain, before he interjected with: "In fact, you said the same thing for everything that went wrong".
"Bru- uh.." He had me, I was supposed to have been watching everything, instead I had been distracted by an intriguing new usage of the cables that were trailing out of the back of my skull. Theoretically, they were supposed to connect me to the mainframe of the house, to allow for better monitoring and control. That had gone out the window the moment I had discovered that you could use these to access the internet.
"What?" He inquired, and I realized that I would either have to think of something, or tell him the truth. I gathered my considerable wits, and began to think of something. But I failed to think of anything, and I had to tell the truth or distract him somehow.
I looked around the room. To my back there was a wall, unremarkable save for the only door out. To my left and my right were the massive banks of consoles that in better times would have a mass of Martian citizens sitting in front of them. They curved inward, meeting up in front of me. They had a great window above them, cracked in places, and broken in others. I briefly considered trying to escape through it, but I still had scars from the last time I tried to escape through that window.
I had no choice. "Gah, I was using my cords to surf the internet." A rather simple way of putting it, that revealed nothing of what I was actually doing while being truthful. It was so sad that he had to ruin it by saying "What were you looking at that cou- oh."
So he still blamed me and I still blamed him, but that didn't do anything to change the facts of our predicament. A while passed before he asked "How much of this thing is missing?"
So I responded with "The entire rear section, including my bedroom, my computer banks, my collection of death rays and the ice maker. Not that it matters now, as once Aqizzar wakes up and sees what has happened, he'll have us executed! Or worse, given to Sofia."
We both shuddered at the thought. Once again, I looked at the window, and it suddenly occurred to me that exiting through it would be a terrible, terrible idea, as the gravity processor is located right in front of it, and the crash had made it somewhat less then stable. Having nothing else I could do, I asked him "How long do you think we have until he wakes up?"
"Maybe an hour, probably more knowing our luck. Tell me, why did you think that a lockdown that locks all doors and can only be turned off from the outside was a good idea?" He answered.
"It's not my fault that around the time I was programming it I discovered that these could access the internet." I said, indicating the cords that were not connected to anything in particular at the moment. With that, neither of us could think of anything to say for quite a while, until I spoke again, asking "Just how many dollars in damage do you think the crash did to his house?"
"Well, from what I could see and hear, it was probably at least half a billion, and that's if nothing else went wrong" He guessed.
"Ooooh crap. Why is his house so very expensive?" I said, with my hand over my eyes in an ancient gesture of worship to a little-known god of screw-ups whose name is lost in the mists of time.
"Well, he is the baron, after all." He responded, still sounding rather unconcerned with the consequences that were going to come down upon our heads soon. There was a reason for this, as I would discover much later to my anger and annoyance, but for now it made no sense.
As neither of us could think of anything to say, and the control room was sorely lacking in anything to do, I slept. This turned out to be a very bad idea, as I had been neglecting my sleep for a very long while. I slept through Aqizzar waking up, I slept through him hauling us off, I slept through the trial, the sentencing too, only waking up at the worst possible time in the worst possible place: Sofia's dungeon, right after she had been unable to get something she had wanted.
You see, I was sentenced to spend a week stuck with Sofia, with her being able to do anything that did not actually kill me. Right now it is important to note two things about cyborgs: 1. Viruses can do terrible, horrible things to them, and they don't usually leave any *Physical* damage, and 2. The implants have a terrible problem with them: removing them suddenly causes a burst of unimaginable agony. She had a lot of stress that week, and as I result I now no longer have memory of it, which is probably for the best. Well, at least it could have been worse, I don't know how, but it could have been worse.
The End.
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Topic: Ridiculous Tales of Bay Twelvery (Read 29245 times)