Chapter Text
“-Taking care of business.”
“-Taking care of business.”
“-Taking care of business.”
“It’s all mine!”
“It’s all mine! I been-”
“Taking care of business.”
“Taking care of business.”
“Taking care of business.”
“And working overtime. Whoo!”
“And working overtime. Whoo!”
Laz hadn’t been able to memorize a single song yet, but this one had an easy chorus, so they were able to keep up, Solanum too. These trips were fun. Laz wondered how they’d ever gone out into the solar system as many times as they had without a buddy to mess around with.
Midzone looked… different. The snow receded and the green grass slowly disappeared as they drove deeper into this part of the Zone, replaced by strange reds and fluorescent blues. It was also generally swampier. It reminded them of the simulated world in the Stranger. Just significantly more alien... Somehow.
“Is this normal? The red and the glowing plants.”
“Hoooo, absolutely not. Nearly every plant on the planet is green. The stuff in here’s been messed with in one way or another by the Zone.”
“Red is… strange color for plants. Green is most useful color for… sun-food-process?”
“Photosynthesis?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Cooper raised his free hand in the air, “Who knows? Maybe these photosynthesize radiation, or they’re red because of the acid.”
“I agree! I will take sample when we stop.”
They pressed on towards junction D2. Driving past floating, glowing boulders that made the headlights flicker whenever they got close and large… bubbles that bounced and spat out acid when they hit the ground.
“Not a very hospitable place, you’d be hard pressed to find a good place to hunker down here. Francis got lucky.”
Laz could certainly see why, “Yeah, he ever tried leaving?”
“It’s difficult to move around anywhere in the Zone without protection. And very few people have protection they can wear that’s actually good enough for this place. We’re lucky that we’re packed into this shiny metal box here.”
“You think we’re gonna see any more of those ‘Giant Jacks?’”
Cooper froze in contemplation for a moment, but quickly eased back into his seat.
“... No, I think Cappy’s explosion was limited to the outer Zone, if that’s what even caused those things to appear, they could just be specific to urban areas. I barely ever see bunnies period, here in Midzone.”
That’s good at least. Still, if there was one thing that Laz was lucky to not have to experience in the loops, it was acid, most of the time, but here they were driving into a place that apparently necessitated wearing an anticorrosive poncho.
“... What are the ponchos for anyway?”
Cooper shrugged, “Acid, specifically the rain.”
“Rain is acid?!”
Solanum lurched forwards from her seat, it was the first time Laz had heard her yell unprompted.
“Only in discrete, singular storm cells. They’ll blow in, harass an area, and quickly shuffle out again. Most of it is still, relatively, normal rain. Still, it’s better to be prepared.”
The car rolled through an access road barricade, the lights switched to red. Red usually means "don't," so why was... oh.
“... The roads become unstable when we drive through?”
“Huh?”
“The lights on the barricades, they turn red.”
“Oh, yeah. The access roads are like a house of cards. There’s not much to get it to topple, except for us. You usually can’t go back the same way you came.”
Solanum started staring out the window, endlessly curious about the outside world. It was something Laz could anchor to, if all else failed.
“Is this ‘junction D2?’”
It was hard to tell, outside of the barricade, Laz wouldn't have really noticed, “Looks like it.”
"Yep, whatever’s giving the signal is coming from here. Lemme get Francis on the horn.”
Cooper started playing with the knobs on the radio.
“How do you get music out here? I don’t see you pack any of the tapes you put in the jukebox.”
Cooper kept at the knobs, trying to ease the static away, “That’s cause they’re still in the jukebox, except for one, but that's more of a good luck charm. Lots can go wrong out here in the Zone, and I’d rather not lose my music. So I have a couple players hooked up to different frequency transmitters. Takes a lot of power to get radio to work in here, if the Zone wasn’t here, you’d probably be able to hear my radio from anywhere on the planet.”
“All that for music?”
Cooper looked like he was getting frustrated, “Psssh, of course not. I needed to build a powerful scanner to be able to see into the Deep Zone, it came with the territory. Still, it wouldn’t make sense to brute force everything. Which is why it is currently eight different types of impossible to tune into the Midzone frequencies right now.”
He gave the radio a whack, the static disappeared.
“Figures. You’d be surprised how often that happens. Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine, Francis, come on back.”
“Oh, how’s it going, ‘Bandit.’”
“We’re in D2, any ideas on what we’re looking out for?”
“No idea, keep an eye out for anything strange. Well, everything’s strange so… Keep an eye out for anything normal? I’ve got no profiles on this waveform, but I’ll try to run a high-resolution scan and get an idea of where it is.”
“Any theories? Maybe it’s the Loch Ness Monster, or one of the boats from the Great Pileup! No! Something more elusive! A good car from 80’s Mopar…”
“It’s probably just a rogue signal relay caught in a recursive loop… Alright, scan’s complete, not particularly revealing, but I guess you’d have the best chances looking around the northeast corner. That’s all I got. Also, can Laz actually play the guitar or did you just pose them like that?”
Seriously? Can they play? “Come on. I grew up playing guitar.”
“... What are the chances two different species with two different cultures ended up developing the same instruments? Well I’ll leave you to it. Tell me what you find.”
“Alright. Cooper, out.”
“Francis, out.”
Cooper brought the car around to each of the stability anchors. It was still a bit frightening; Doing something that caused the very atmosphere to groan was probably not a good idea, but what did they know. He parked at a gas station, underneath some kind of roof to shield it from the rain while he was filling up. They made their way over to the northeast corner of the junction and started looking around. No such luck.
“Man, never really thought about how difficult it would be to find something you’re not even sure is there."
Yeah, don't even start with that.
"All we got to work off is a signal, which still may just be coming from a damaged detector by the way.”
Solanum quickly turned to look at Laz, “Mmm! Laz! Umm, signal… signal-scope device! Will that work?”
“Oh! Yeah! That just might work.”
Solanum had really been making great progress learning… English. She knew enough words to get a basic thought across, more complex ideas took more interpolation, but they had gone a full three hours without having to use the translator. That’s a new record! Laz couldn't help but feel a little warm inside every time they made a breakthrough.
Laz brought their signalscope out and turned it on. Sure enough, there was a signal behind them at a distance of 173 meters.
“Look at that! Signal’s right behind us! Good call, Sol.”
“Oh, great. Right on top of that hill. Hold on, let me turn us around.”
As Cooper brought the car about-face with a couple of reversed turns, Laz was able to line up the signal and actually hear it. It sounded like a- like a…
“Holy shit.”
“What? What is it?”
“The signal! It sounds exactly like the distress signals we’d use back home! There might actually be someone up there!”
Someone from home? That wasn't just unexpected... It was completely impossible! But... Laz and Sol were here... So... Could it really be possible?
“No shit? Seriously? All right, hold on, it’s gonna take some negotiation to claw up this hill.”
Laz crossed their fingers as the engine growled and every component of the car seemed to groan in protest. They slowly inched up the hill. Once they crested it, they looked out the window. Laz and Sol stared wordlessly. Cooper stared, confused. Laz would have recognized that shape anywhere; the white paint, the thruster banks, the large dish, the golden canopy, the haphazard bundle of tanks and electronics strapped to the back…
Laz snapped out of it, “That’s my ship!”
The Mk6 was just there, in front of them. There was a nasty gash in the earth leading to where it rested and one of its landing legs had given up. It sat on its side. It must have skidded to a stop, but-
“What? How? How did it get here?”
“I don’t know, I don’t have a single clue. When we flew it into the Eye it just sorta… disappeared from under us.”
The car crawled up to the beaten lander and they all got out. It was sparking, red lights flashed on the outside.
Laz struggled to find a thought of any kind with which to start. It wasn't very difficult for Solanum to beat them to it.
“How much time since universe-start?”
“There’s a bit of debate on that, but most astronomers would say about 13.7 billion years.”
There was no way it had been here for that long. Maybe it was because of the stuff here in the Zone? Maybe it was something to do with Cappy? Who knows! This place made absolutely no sense sometimes.
Laz cracked the hatch open, purple rings floated down from the inside.
“Well, uh... After you.”
Solanum went up first, then Cooper. He somehow managed to trip over himself while in mid air, while not touching the ground. He landed inside with an unceremonious thud. Laz went up after him.
“Little warning about the gravity stuff next- Woah, that’s… disorienting.”
The world outside hung at an angle compared to the floor of the ship, but gravity was still pulling them towards the floor.
“Nomaian gravity crystal, they generate a localized bubble of gravity and somewhat counteract regular gravity.”
Solanum turned back from inspecting each part of the ship, “Exciting! Laz, you must be very happy.”
They turned to the pilot’s seat, hull integrity readout was completely red, “Well yeah, but it’s in a bad way." Laz set themself on one thing, "We gotta fix it.”
Cooper whipped around from where he was in the cramped space, “Fix a whole rocket ship? We’ve been out here for a while, we don’t know when the Instability’s gonna roll through. And I’m not even sure the gateway can handle two crossings.”
“We have to at least try.”
“... Okay, lemme get to the car and hitch it to the side, I’ll tug it up on two legs so we can fix the broken one. We should be able to do the rest with some putty.”
Cooper tumbled back out of the hatch and hurried back to the car. He got to work running a cable from the car, to a tree, and to the ship. He handed Laz and Sol a couple cans of putty and ran the cable back to the tree.
Solanum coaxed the putty onto the problem areas, “Is nice to see something from… past here.”
She was speaking with a wistful, nostalgic tone. It was soft. Laz couldn't help but share her feelings.
“Yeah. At any rate, it’s good to have something to remember them.” Laz hurled a clump of putty onto the port hull, its crumples straightened out.
“Laz, I want to thank you… For saving me from… ummm… wandering moon. It has been nice spending this time with-”
A crackling spread over the hills in the distance.
WAA
WAA
WAA
Cooper rolled down a window and shouted from the car, “Ah shit we really gotta get going here!”
The sound sent shills down Laz's spine, “What was that?”
“Instability alarm, we’ve got five minutes. Tops.”
"Instability? Shit, we got it mostly patched up over here, how’s it going for you?”
“Hitches are hooked up, but it’s a fighter.”
The car’s wheels were kicking up soil, Cooper activated the spikes. The engine dropped to a low growl before shooting back up to an angry roar. The ship slowly started to lift off the broken leg.
“Hey that’s good! Keep going, keep going… Stop it there!”
The ship balanced precariously on the two remaining legs. The broken one hung uselessly from the left side.
Cooper got out of the car and leaned back in through the driver's side window, “Think you can keep tension in the line?”
BEEP BEEP
“Alright, good, we’ll be done soon.”
Cooper hurried over with an unimpressed look on his face.
“Really? Wood? For landing legs?”
“We used much metal for Ash Twin Project, not much left. Using metal for whole ship might be… bad idea.”
Cooper shrugged with a look that screamed "Alright, I'm done," and rushed back to the trunk of the car. He dragged a large piece of metal back over.
“Structural I-beam. I used to hang these off the front of the car when it was difficult to get enough material for a proper bumper. It should work fine for this.”
Coop and Sol held the beam in place while Laz strapped and clamped it down. They gave it a good kick and shove. It didn’t move an inch.
“That’s as good as you’re gonna get it. Especially out here.”
Laz gave it an appraising look, it looked like shit, “Yeah, it should hold.”
Cooper shouted back to the car “Alright, let it down slow.”
BEEP BEEP
The ship slowly tilted back over and the leg rested on the ground. It creaked and flexed, but it held up.
“We got a minute before the yellow’s on us. Does that thing have a radio transceiver?”
“Yeah, what frequency?”
“Tune it to 27.185 megahertz. I’m gonna pick a gateway in my car and you’re gonna fly towards it. Wait for me to get to the gateway. You’ve gotta come in low, the gateway doesn’t work at higher altitudes. I’ll drive in right after you.”
“And what if it doesn’t stay open?”
“That’s why Sol will be with you. I’ll hurry over to another access road and open a gateway in another junction if that’s the case. Now get moving.”
Cooper undid the cabling and rushed into his car. Laz and Sol packed into the ship.
Now, what the hell is a hertz?
Laz took a wild guess, maybe it was like a cycle? They tuned their radio to 27.185 anyway.
“--ea-k-r--ne-nine, Breaker one-nine, come on back, Starman.”
Oh, great. It works!
“I read you up here, just gotta get the engines started.”
Yellow wisps were licking at the canopy, the radiometer started wailing.
Please work…
Wrrrrrrrrrr-FWOOOOoooshh
The turbines spun up and the engines ignited with a roar. The ship shot off the ground. Good-old Mk6.
“Alright, we’re up! We’re ready!”
“Okay, I’m gonna go for a gateway to the west. You know what to look for. Opening… now.”
The car let off a burst of energy and a column of bright yellow appeared in front of them. The horizon glowed red.
“Good link… Alright, get moving!”
Laz brought the ship in just behind and above the car, just in case something went wrong. Solanum clutched the handholds next to the computer. The car looked so much smaller from up here, but seeing what Cooper had to do from an outside perspective? It was a wonder they didn’t have more bruises.
They were eventually overtaken by the Instability as they beared down on the gateway. Solanum seemed afraid.
“Alright we’re almost there, we’ll be fine in the low amplitude Instability for a time, but you don’t wanna stick around for the high amplitude front. Get in there!”
Laz brought the ship down into the gateway. Their vision went white and they burst through to the garage. They set the ship down by the side entrance. Cooper should have been right behind them…
“Cooper? Cooper, are you there?”
The car materialized in front of them and rolled into the garage.
Solanum eased up, “Phew.”