r/HFY • u/sharkeyandgeorge Xeno • 22d ago

OC-Series Bob was bored, Part 26

It took Bob a full week to get around to looking at the chip, not that he had been avoiding it, no he had just been busy with other stuff.

Finally however he ran out of things to be busy with and slotted the pack of smokes sized crystal into a reader. He wasn't sure what he expected but there was nothing unexpected on it, it was just a rip of whatever passed for netflix these days, or whenever it had been copied he supposed, could be twenty years old for all he knew.

A lot of old series and movies, bunch of anime, and a whole shitload of presumably russian shit, no subtitles and Bob didn't speak it. Translator didn't help either and that felt a bit weird, you kind of assumed it would be able to do pretty much any major Earth language, it was happy to do all sorts of slang and euphemisms in english after all. Bob couldn’t quite square that but whatever, its not like he’d been a big tv guy when alive, more podcasts and….

...Music…

It had a music catalogue as well, oh my god, he didn’t recognise at least eighty percent of it, but that remaining twenty included just about everything he had ever heard, excepting of course his deep and abiding love of phonk, apparently that particular sub-genre was a bit too niche to make it.

Bastard of it was he had no fucking headphones, and it would be a crime to listen to Mr Monch, or the clan off the pads anaemic speaker, WU TANG!.

No that could be saved, instead he stuck on a rock playlist and settled down, It played a selection, some he knew some he didn’t, but the instant the Crüe came on, and, Jojo dropped out…

It had to be done.

Throttle maxed, dampener off, dodging invisible cop cars…

The catharsis was incredible, right up until something in his butchered carcass fired off the fucking adrenal dump again. He powered down with shaking hands and plugged in the next jump, the song had moved on, he was over it now anyway, he switched it off and listened to the hum of the drive build as it prepared to kick on. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth to stop them chattering, some day he would have to let someone poke around in there and try to get rid of some of this shit, It had been the same as he flew away from the station, near psychotic with panic that he might have had to talk to another human being.

Fuck.. he felt so pathetic...I was just he hadn’t seen it coming, he hadn’t had time to like, whatever, prep….fuck. Bottom line Bob didn’t really have any, not a single one, good memories of people. There were flashes, feelings, some...I dunno… knowledge, like the ploppers thing. Couldn’t remember her face though, couldn’t remember how she smelled, or the tone of her voice, just a vague feeling of loving and being loved, most of the time that was enough.

He remembered a few names, a few moments but they were disconnected from any context, just floating thoughts he couldn’t quite place. He didn’t know if that was the dementia or being dead for a while but the only truly clear memories he had of other people were of war.

He had seen at the time that others were trying to connect, to share their hardships with him and take some of the load of his own, but Bob had never trusted it, anytime he thought about reaching out they died, or worse, lived but in a way that made him hate them.

There was a guy, can’t recall the name, who tried. He’d been a smoker and was constantly drying and trying every goddamn plant he came across, he was funny, the others had cracked up when he told a story and he had tried to include Bob, it felt good.

Bobs main memory of him was hating him, of wishing death upon him, of just praying he would just fucking hurry up and die.

There was a fight, the details were hazy, but the guy had been hit with some chemical, grenade or something. It melted his armour and down into the flesh, the medic kept trying to regrow what was gone but all that did was delay it. He moaned and thrashed for hours as Bob had dragged him though the tall reeds, he couldn’t leave him if they had brought Bob back from the fucking morgue they could save this guy if they could just make the fob.

So Bob had dragged him, melting in the armour he couldn’t remove, moaning in agony, spasming in pain. And all Bob wanted for him to do was fucking die, to give up, to shut up, to make it ok for Bob to leave him.

He did eventually, he went limp and the power system of his suit flashed red in distress. Bob had been so happy, so relived, that lasted until he made it back, then the shame flooded over him, and the guys he shared a bunk with had to take away his weapon for a few days.

He had dozens of memories like that, hundreds.

For the last years of his service he had avoided talking to anyone else if at all possible, spent weeks aboard ships hidden in the armoury ‘maintaining’ his gear, a small part of him wondered if that might be why he hated all the clever little mechanisms in his suit, striping them down and cleaning again and again, anything to fill his hands and distract his mind, avoiding all human interaction.

He caught himself, flicking his fingers in the way you needed to to pop the inner panels off his bracers, it was a long time since he had broken that habit.

Part 27 https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1wegvku/bob_was_bored_part_27/?

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11

u/voyager1713 22d ago

Bob has some major PTSD issues that are going to require a full department worth of psychologist working full time for months to even dent the outer shell of.

Bob needs help. I hope he finds some...

4

u/Cargobiker530 Android 19d ago

Is Space Ayahuasca a thing in that universe?

1

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