Upon Vestia: Chapter Thirty

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Skye nodded and smiled a little "It's a little scary though, when you only see your own kind then see a city with the others."

James grinned and followed her in. "Now anyone would mistake me for a gentleman."
The room was nicely organized and unpacked by now. The shelves were neat, the lights were bright but not painfully so. Somebody, probably Tori, had put up some cheerful artwork, as well as a small bin of toys for any younger patients to play with.

"This is wonderful." Dawn said as she looked around. "And you can be a gentleman, when you want to be."

James smiled. "I'm a gentleman! My brother will be so proud." He looked around, "Sadly, I can't take credit for much of this. It's mostly Tori and Kay who were working while you were gone. But it really does look pretty good, They did a good job finishing setting stuff up." He went to look at a print of a beach scene, where a pair of dragons were running through the surf together. "Aww, that one's cute."

Dawn looked at the painting and nodded "Very cute, and calming. Nice." She said with a smile. "I like what they did here."

Esk made a face. "I don't think i'm allowed therapy anymore. I almost broke the last one." He smirked, apparently this amused him. "of course, the poor woman had to deal with Kay as well so... she probably was fucked from the start. "

Ellie would totally head off with Matt and Shane to the holodeck to... experiment on Shane. Totally ethical experiments on her boyfriend, perfectly normal, yep.

~~
"Yep, they did a good job. I'm so glad things are coming together," James said. "We have a robot med bay nearby now, too. It's gonna be sweeet."

~~
Ethan smiled oddly. "I'm sure we could find you someone. At the Guild I talked to a few before I picked one. You should have seen the thousand yard stares on some of those guys, but they were still doing their job."

Esk rolled his eyes. "i'll pass." Yeah, he hated therapy. He was great at giving advice, not so good at talking about or acknowleding his own problems.

"As long as you don't start any suicidal antics, that's fine by me," Ethan said with a shrug. He wasn't a fan of people threatening to shoot themselves, he'd watched his owner actually carry out his threat when they were about to be captured by mirror Heny, and it had sucked. But short of that, Ethan care much what Esk said or thought. Free thought, and all that.

Esk snorted. "Nope, can't say i've ever been that desperate." He shook his head, looking genuinely serious "If there's one thing I can tell you Ethan, it's don't worry about me. I'm far more likely to die stupidly than I am to kill myself. That's way too much effort." He'd never actually much wanted to die, which considering how crappy much of his life had been might have surprised a lot of people. Oh he didn't much care about his existence, death didn't scare him, but the idea of actually ending it all just felt like way too much of a mess and far too melodramatic for his tastes.

Ethan nodded slowly. "Good. I don't think the people on this ship want anyone offing themselves, that'd be a waste of a useful person," he said, although there was definitely a flicker of relief in his eyes. "Turnover rate on this ship is high enough already, just with all the people moving off to the Guild or whatever."

"Not to mention it makes a fucking huge mess." Esk sounded like he spoke from experience there, but he shook his head.

---

Matt went with Ellie and Shane.

Ethan nodded in agreement. "Nobody wants to deal with that shit." He frowned at Esk's expression, guessing it meant Esk had had to do that cleanup for someone at some point. He didn't ask though, that was the sort of thing you didn't go asking people about.

"yet someone always has to. " Esk remarked dryly. "There's a lot of jobs out there nobody wants to do, but, if they don't get done, shit falls apart. That's life." He hefted up the book and dictionary.

"True enough," Ethan said. "I'll stick with running the library whenever I can, leave the nasty jobs to someone else." He was pretty sick of nasty jobs after everything he'd seen with Kaylr, he preferred peace and quiet when he could get it. "You know, I don't know much about psychology books, but I could try to track down some audiobooks on the topic if you want. or see if there are any available in Satare."

Esk hesitated, he didn't much like asking for help, but accepting an offer that would make something easier? It'd be stupid to say no right? Even if his pride insisted he should. He nodded. "that.. might actually be helpful." He conceded. He looked at Ethan. "So.. that means you don't think this is a dumb idea?"

Kooshie wrote:Ellie would totally head off with Matt and Shane to the holodeck to... experiment on Shane. Totally ethical experiments on her boyfriend, perfectly normal, yep.

~~
"Yep, they did a good job. I'm so glad things are coming together," James said. "We have a robot med bay nearby now, too. It's gonna be sweeet."

~~
Ethan smiled oddly. "I'm sure we could find you someone. At the Guild I talked to a few before I picked one. You should have seen the thousand yard stares on some of those guys, but they were still doing their job."

Shane followed Ellie and Matt, wondering what this sport thing would be like.

~~~
Dawn looked to him again and smiled. "Is it ready yet? Did you take the head position over it?" She asked excitedly.

"I'll see what I can find, then. If you have any specific types of books or authors you want, you can email me any specifics later," Ethan said with a nod. He might have a photographic memory, but some words and names were incredibly tricky to figure out how to spell even if you remembered the exact pronunciation, and he'd do better reading them.
He looked thoughtful at Esk's question. "It's pretty obvious half the crew need a shrink. And you're more perceptive than nearly anyone else here on this ship, and known for giving out advice that doesn't suck. So it sounds like a sensible idea to me. Might be hard to get anyone to actually come to you though," he added, "I mean, I'm fairly sure I'm the only one here who's ever voluntarily seen a therapist."

~~
They reached the holodeck. "Computer, play Dalmatian-ball!" Ellie shouted.

Amazingly, the computer understood and set up a standard soccer game.

~~
"It's mostly ready, yeah. I won't be running it, my job is here, as an organic medic," James said with a smile. "The other androids are figuring out who will run the robot med bay."

Esk snickered. "You might be right. But I could always petition to have it made uh.. compulsory or whatever. Like regular health checks." He smirked.

---

"Dalmatian ball?" Matt asked, he had no idea what a dalmatian even was.

Ethan snorted. "Get everyone worried enough about everyone else's mental health that they'll willingly vote for mandatory therapy? You really do have an entrepreneurial spirit." The thought of forcing all these brooding people to talk to Esk about their feelings amused him, okay?

~~
"It's a game with a spotted ball, just like the spotted dogs called dalmatians!" Ellie said brightly. "Isn't that great?"

Shane looked around the room as it became a soccer field. "Um...I don't know how to play thus." He said uncertainly.

~~
"You didn't want to run it? " Dawn asked curiously. "I do like that you want to stay with me, I am just curious."

Esk didn't really know what that meant but he shrugged. "Might do this lot some good, they're all wrecks."

----

"Spotted.. .dogs?" Matt asked. "you can get spotty ones?" Hey he wasn't that familiar with canines in general okay? they were a pretty new concept for him. The imperium didn't have dogs.

"It's easy! You just kick the ball at the basket thingy, and hopefully it goes in," Ellie told Shane. She was leaving out a LOT of major details, but she was pretty sure that was the important rule anyway. "And if the dude who guards the basket thingy stops you, you kick the ball in again." She nodded.
To Matt she added, "Yeah! Dogs come in like, every color. It's kind of amazing."

~~
"Nah," James said. "I've kinda gotten used to the organic med bays, blood doesn't gross me out like it used to. Oh, and the new robots need jobs more than I do. You won't get rid of me that easy," he teased.

~~
"We can hope, anyway. They do need something. Watching my other self mope around is... kind of stupid, and he'll probably only get worse with time," Ethan told Esk. Not that Ethan didn't mope too sometimes, but he usually did it in private, and didn't try to plaster a fake smile over it. So he was better that way, ha.

Shane looked at her then moved to pick up the ball. The holodeck had made him look like a player.

~~~
Dawn chuckled and shrugged, teasing him back. "Had to try."

The holographic players would attempt to play in a way fairly true to real soccer, although Shane wouldn't get in trouble for breaking any of the rules of the game. He could just try to do what Ellie said, and the holographic players would try to stop him.

Ellie was giggling, she was having too much fun with poor Shane already.

~~
"Maybe next time," James told Dawn cheerfully. "Wanna come see the robot med bay?"

Shane dodged the players for a minute before stopping and asking the computer for a tutorial of the game to play it instead.

~~~
Dawn nodded and chuckled. "That sounds fun, let's go. "

Matt looked a bit confused. Every colour?

---

Esk readjusted the weight of the rather heavy text book in his arms. "His problem is he wants to save everyone. He has a massive and crippling sense of duty but a whole lot of self doubt too. He wants to start a revolution but hates the thought of people getting hurt. It makes him hesitate, and when you freeze up like that, bad shit happens. " He shook his head. "He can detach, He can do what needs to be done, but I think that scares him. That he'll lose himself if he sinks too deep, and he might be right. " He studied Ethan for a moment. "Asher... fears the dark part of himself. That, cold, calculated logical side, without emotion who does things because someone has to. The thing is, as I said earlier, there's a lot of jobs out there people don't want to do, but someone has to anyway. Sometimes being able to detach isn't just helpful, it's necessary. Maybe if he can accept that, he'll stop moping so much. Guilt doesn't really achieve much."

The computer provided a very helpful tutorial, which explained the rules way better than Ellie had. Shane might actually have a chance at playing well now!

"Yesss, dogs come in every color," Ellie said smugly. "Yay for GMOs!"

~~
James led Dawn down the hall to the robot med bay. It wasn't very far away, so they didn't have to walk long.

Once they reached the room, James opened the door with a flourish. It was smaller than either organic med bay, but still had a couple beds for patients, shelves covered in a multitude of screwdrivers, glue bottles, packages of artificial skin, grease bottles, and a whole lot of little metal replacement parts.

The walls were lined with posters of fictional robots who were actually popular with androids, including characters like Bender from
Futurama, Data from Star Trek, and WALL-E. There were a couple potted plants sitting around, too.

Nobody else was there right now, they were still at the party.

"Nice, huh?" James said proudly.

~~
Ethan eyed Esk, not entirely sure what to think of that analysis. He didn't know Asher all that well, they reallly didn't talk all that much, but he had the oddest feeling Esk had just made a scarily accurate assessment of the guy.
"Fuck, I hope I'm not as open a book as Asher is," he said after a couple moments. He didn't want anyone explaining his thoughts in quite that much detail, yeesh."Hopefully that damn protest will shake him into order. Not that I care that much about him, but he has my face, and I don't like seeing those expressions on my face, it's annoying." After another moment he added, "I think a career in psychology will definitely work for you."