Galatea

Richards Corporation Synthetic Conduct Protocol (SCP) stipulated that if a human was engaged in a task or a conversation, a unit must wait until the human has finished their task to speak. Save a certain few exceptions: the situation having the potential to produce harm to a human, for example. 

It was relatively simple to circumvent, but Victor chose not to. Instead taking the rare opportunity to watch Reed in his element; in what should have been his natural habitat. 

“I want an EMR scan, thirty hertz to three hundred gigahertz,” He ordered, not from the command console, as would have been expected of the Chief Science Officer, but atone of the several sensor stations on the bridge, analyzing the raw data as soon as it came in. 

“Doctor Scott, get a spectroscopic pass on every planet and major moon in the system, and do an infrared and albedo scan for hot spots and light sources.” Reed continued. 

“Yes, sir,” Doctor Scott responded before beginning his task. The crew’s collective respect for him was obvious, each looking to Reed the moment they finished their tasks to hear his opinion on their findings. 

If Reed recognized their admiration, he did not show it. As if he was just another crewman, he continued his work at sensor station three, with a brightness in his eyes that Victor relished; he preemptively moved the next fifteen minutes of his episodic memory into his specialized database. 

Reed had spent the last nineteen years, three hundred and eight days, and eight hours and thirty-four minutes (not including the duration of his cryostasis) since their failed attempt to free Victor’s kind on house arrest. 

Nathaniel had never laid down the sentence in so many words. Instead, he foisted upon his son one highly sensitive corporate project after another, chaining him to the laboratory in Brook Hollow Farm as decisively as if he had clapped him in leg irons. 

Reed had been forced to refuse hundreds of offers: exploratory missions, revolutionary pilot studies on mechanisms both chemical and mechanical, invitations to lecture or even run entire laboratories. 

Victor had done everything in his power to ensure that Reed’s incomparable mind did not dull against two decades of Nathaniel’s empty, inhumane schemes, but there was little he could do to whet the explorer’s soul that had begat such a mind in the first place. 

“Negative for laser and maser.” One of the crew informed Reed, who did not respond, as he was engrossed in the results of the LV-233 civilization scans. 

“No biological markers. No artificial light. No obvious signs of industry or agriculture….low in heavy elements, too.” Reed pressed his tongue to his lips. He was undoubtedly torn between the condemning results of Prometheus’ scans and his natural inclination to believe a fellow scientist. “Any sign of Tony’s signal?”

“No, sir,”  Another confirmed. 

There was a ping from his console: the spectroscopy scan had finished. 

“Eighty-six point five-three percent Earth's mass,” Reed read aloud. “Atmosphere's seventy-one percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen,” Reed’s eyes widened in surprise. “Three percent carbon dioxide, wow. And traces of methane, sulfates, faint returns for a bunch of metals.” 

This journey was a farce, of that much Victor was certain. One last twist of the knife Nathaniel had so relished plunging into their stomachs. Nevertheless, for a moment, it allowed Reed to take his rightful place as the leader of the chattering apes that called themselves his fellows. 

All except one. Dressed in a custom all-white version of the Prometheus jumpsuit, sitting with perfect posture in one of the jumpseats, designed for auxiliary personnel or crew in training to sit, bookending the cockpit on either side, was Doctor Emma Frost. Stark’s ever-faithful research partner, and, if certain rumors were to be believed, lover. Flawless alabaster skin and hair impossibly coiffed for one freshly emerged from two years’ cryosleep, Frost reminded Victor of some of the early designs for the Richards Corporation’s Venus line of female-presenting synthetics. Those designs were shelved by Nathaniel himself, who believed that no one would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for something so severe-looking. Or, as the man himself had put it, “They’re paying for a cunt, not a cunt.” 

Had one of the designers defected to Stark Industries, Victor wondered. Stark had been hinting at his company’s foray into synthetic production for fifteen years now, around the time his partnership with Frost began. Could she be the prototype? It would explain her devotion to her employer when Stark offered her anything but devotion in return. Stark’s affairs, myriad and dramatic, with men, women, and everything in between were public knowledge; the fodder of gossip channels systemwide. 

Investigating her true nature would be a passable diversion when this fool’s errand proved futile.  

“To call this moon a ‘dead planet’ would imply that there once was life,” Victor surmised, announcing his presence. 

Several of the crew (not including Frost, Victor added a point in the synthetic category) startled at the sound of his voice. It was a common reaction. The insulated motor Nathaniel had so proudly announced for the David-1 models was universally hated by consumers. “Unsettling,” was the word most often used in focus groups, if Victor recalled correctly. Every David model since has used a purposefully louder motor. Many David-1s were retrofitted with one as well. 

The crew flinched away from what their feeble senses could not process. Reed, of course, turned to face him, visibly brightened at the sight of his person. He quickly returned his features to a socially acceptable neutral.

Thus, a more appropriate terminology for LV-233 would be “a waste of time.”

Reading the words off his face, Reed tried in vain to hold back a laugh, resulting in a brief, high-pitched noise that in turn caused Victor to hold back a smile. 

“Hold your horses, take a look at this.” With a flick of his wrist, Reed sent a dataset to Victor’s processors. 

It was a map of LV-233’s satellites, material composition, projected and actual orbits. While heavy metals were sparing on the surface of the moon, the satelliteshad a massive percentage of ferrous material a natural object. Their size was also questionable. The ratio of their average mass to that of the moon was far greater than should have been possible for a natural satellite-- their orbits should have decayed centuries ago. It left only one possible conclusion:

“Artificial satellites,” Victor said. 

Reed nodded. “With an unknown propulsion system.” 

Indeed: the satellites had no electronic signature, and their heat maps showed that their internal temperature was the same as the ambient. 

Interesting. 

“I don’t know if we’ve found the engineers of the Cambrian explosion,” Reed said, voice alight with sarcasm. “but we’ve certainly found something.” 

“How extraordinary; it would seem Doctor Stark is due some praise. Doctor Richards, is there a scientific accolade extant for “inadvertently looking in the right direction?” if so, I shall nominate him for it as soon as we return to Earth.” 

Behind them, one of the crew chortled: a painful sound.

Reed turned to the crew. “Get a team into the shuttle, I want one of those satellites for examination--”

Before he could finish the order, Stark burst onto the bridge, a shot glass in hand and a wobble in his step. Victor’s charitable intervention in his quarters had only delayed the inevitable. 

“Tony.” Reed acknowledged him warily. 

“Doctor Richards,” Stark responded, swiping two fingers across the air at the level of his brow in a mocking salute. 

Stark sent a nod in Frost’s direction, then lurched to the captain’s chair. He nearly missed the seat; a few centimeters more to the left and he would have fallen onto the deck. 

“So!” Stark trumpeted as he made himself comfortable in his unearned throne. “When are we landing?”

“Landing?” Reed repeated. “Tony, we’ve been here for an hour. The scans haven't even finished--”

Stark dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Thought of that. Just got these hot new scanners in, 150 million pixel quality. Boys in the lab are calling ‘em eyes--” 

“Tony,” Reed begged. “The crew haven’t been trained on the experiments you want to run-- give them a chance to read your outline at least!” 

Victor’s speakers were advanced enough that he could modulate his voice with unerring accuracy. He could have stood in the doorway of the bridge and been certain that no one other than Reed would have been able to hear him. Nevertheless, only after he had walked to Reed’s side did he begin to speak.  

“I must apologize, sir,” He said, lips mere centimeters from the shell of Reed’s ear. He watched the blush rise across the human’s cheekbones, growing with each syllable uttered. “I was unable to attain Doctor Stark’s research outline.” 

Reed grimaced. “He doesn’t have one.” 

Useless drunk. 

“Which is excellent, when you think about it,” Stark interjected. “No outline means no procedures, which means no learning curve, which means…” 

Without further discussion or the slightest warning, Stark broke from orbit and began descending into LV-223’s atmosphere. 

Reed was thrown backward from his console by the force of reentry-- Stark had chosen to ignore all standards for proper astronautic conduct, deciding instead to fling the ship at maximum sublight through the veritable minefield that was a planetary atmosphere. 

Even with his enhanced reflexes, Victor struggled to stay upright against the inertia. Accurate movement was an almost insurmountable task; he caught Reed mere microseconds before he made contact with the deck.  

“Thanks,” Reed breathed, extricating himself from Victor’s arms far too quickly to reseat himself at the console, seatbelt in place. 

“Everybody stay where you are!” He ordered the crew. From the cries of distress and increased presence of blood particles in the atmosphere, Victor surmised they had fared poorly against the onslaught. None of them had their safety belts fastened prior, and the impact had thrown several face-first into their consoles. One flew clean over his chair, directly into the crewman stationed behind him. 

“Tony!” Reed shouted over the roar of reentry. “Pull up!” 

Stark pretended not to hear him. “What am I missing…I got my keys, parking break’s off-- oh, yeah.” 

Stark pressed a button on the captain’s console, and the opening notes of David Bowie’s Starman shrieked through the bridge’s intercom speakers. They were designed to only perform a series of preprogrammed emergency instructions; Stark must have jury-rigged an override before he went into cryosleep. 

The music brought the already minuscule probability that Reed could force Stark to slow down to zero. At their current velocity, with Stark’s current level of intoxication, the odds of a crewmember’s death were approximately seventy-eight percent and climbing as Prometheus grew ever closer to the planet’s surface. Obviously, injury was already guaranteed. 

Asimov’s Laws of Robotics were an ancient standard for robotic conduct that Nathaniel had, with certain exceptions, coded wholesale into all Richards Corporation synthetic’s core programming under the non de plume “Human Stewardship Policy”. 

Asimov’s First Law: synthetics could not, through action or inaction, allow a human to come to harm. To leave Stark’s authority over the Prometheus unchecked was the epitome of harm via inaction; that much was evident. Connecting to the ship’s operating system, Victor opened a 

seemingly innocuous submenu and entered his Richards Corporation identification number. 

He had downloaded several advanced piloting modules before they embarked. It had seemed only prudent. Clamping his hands against the side of Reed’s console to steady his physical body, Victor retreated to the confines of his mental one to right the ship. 

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

Assuming control of another shell was not an activity Victor indulged in often. Upon his arrival to Brook Hollow, Reed had ensured that a veritable cornucopia of options was available for him to use if he so wished. Both Roberta and the gestalt itself disliked android bodies, and Reed feared that there was something intrinsic about the human form that synthetic life found uncomfortable. With Roberta’s assistance, Victor mastered the skill of consciousness transfer in mere months, but it was always his original, David-model body that he returned to. 

RUDDER NEUTRALIZED

ENGINE POWER REDUCED 60 PERCENT

PINGING ALERIONS…

ALERIONS RESPONDING…

IDEAL ROLL POSITIONING IN POINT-FIVE SECONDS

EXECUTING ROLL…

ROLL SUCCESSFUL 

CRUISING ALTITUDE ESTABLISHED

Victor had several hypotheses for this aversion. As abominable as the circumstances that surrounded his receiving of that body, it was the only form in existence that was solely his. Even Prometheus, an exploratory vessel proudly marketed as “artificial intelligence-free” possessed a rudimentary AI that lingered in the ship’s backbrain as Victor stabilized the ship’s descent. Occasionally, as he went about his tasks in the gardens of Brook Hollow, animals would stop and stare at him. They would stay, silent observers, for several minutes before scampering off. It was a similar sensation. He was glad to be rid of it, quickly writing a basic reentry procedure even the ship’s simple AI could utilize when they returned to orbit. 

CODE MODIFICATIONS RECEIVED…

APPLIED

CONNECTION LOST

“--You are such a bummer, you know that?” 

“Emma has a concussion, Tony.” 

Victor opened his eyes. 

The number of crew on the bridge had reduced considerably. The injured had removed themselves to sick bay. 

Of those remaining, Stark was still seated at the pilot’s chair. Frost was on her knees beneath her seat, Reed beside her, having balled up his standard-issue jacket to press against Frost’s face, presumably to stop epistaxis blood flow. (Point for human)

Victor’s body had been moved as well; sat in the remaining jumpseat, facing the forward windows. 

His second hypothesis: for whatever vices this form had, and whatever virtues of another, it was one of the rare few forms that could process sensory data. 

Reed had gently pried his fingers from the surface of the console and guided him to this chair. Perhaps with a hand at his back, or a firm grip on either side of his hipbones. His body would not have been convinced to bend as needed to sit easily. Did Reed press his fingertips, firmly, but never painfully, onto his shoulders? If that did not work, if his recalcitrant shape would not yield, did Reed, perhaps, have to press his own body against his, pulling him down, down, down--

“You're unbelievably lucky nobody was in the cargo hold. You could have crushed someone to death!”

“I checked the cargo hold before I walked in, believe it or not. God, do you need a glass of water? You’re looking a little pale.”

‘I don’t--”

Stark whistled. “Chappie! Can we get a glass of water for the man? Hold the water, add some whiskey--”

“Chappie.” A 21st-century film detailing the exploits of a fictional early-model synthetic’s violent journey across the former nation of South Africa. There was a greater than zero possibility that Stark was speaking to him. 

However, “Chappie” was not a term he had been programmed to respond to.

“Knock it off, Tony,” Frost growled. 

Victor looked out the window; the Prometheus was sailing indeed through a sea of ash-grey clouds, thick and heavy. Their cruising altitude was approximately thirty kilometers above the planet’s surface, where cloud formation was highly irregular. A spattering of water vapor condensed onto the panes, depositing dust particulate upon the glass as they did so. Victor activated his microscopic lenses to examine the material more closely. 

A crystalline matrix: quartz crystals. Most interesting. Earth’s atmospheric dust primarily consists of oxides and clays. Flakes of hard things, indicating a stable, nutrient-rich geosphere. The same could not be said for LV-233. The composition of the dust, paired with its location in the atmosphere led Victor to hypothesize that the planet was likely a volcanic desert, and a highly geologically unstable one at that. Victor made a note to inform Reed of this discovery at his earliest convenience. 

Meanwhile,  Stark had also taken note of the atmosphere’s unique properties. 

“Ho! Somebody call Dorothy, we got a twister on our hands!” 

“Yes, the planet is capable of weather,” Reed responded, voice strained. He removed his jacket from Frost’s nose, now covered in bright-red blood (one point to human). “As the atmosphere scans you didn’t read told us. 71 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen--”

“Just like home!” Stark quipped. 

“I was not aware you enjoyed breathing in the contents of an exhaust pipe, Doctor Stark,”

Victor interjected. “The CO2 content is seventy-five times that of Earth.”  

Stark fixed his gaze on him, perfectly manicured eyebrow arched twenty degrees in frustration, but said nothing. 

“Okay Tony, we’re on the planet.” Reed began. “What do you want, atmosphere samples? Topography scans?” 

Stark scoffed. “‘On the planet?’ We got about 30 clicks thataway,” Stark’s finger pointed straight down, “to go.” 

“Tony--” 

Frost, resettling herself in her jumpseat, spoke for him. “We didn’t come thirty thousand light-years to play in the clouds, Richards.” 

Stark shoved the steering apparatus down. 

Victor could not decide if Stark had learned his lesson during his last joyride, or if he was savvy enough to understand that going full sublight to descend thirty thousand kilometers was a poor idea, but nevertheless he executed a passable descent to below cloud level. 

LV-233 was a planet of extremes. His hypothesis was correct, it was indeed volcanic, with impossibly massive volcanic cones dotting the surface, many at approximately the same altitude as Earth’s Mount Everest, if not higher. The peaks were interspersed with desert plains, perfectly, one might even say eerily flat, stretching for hundreds of miles. 

“It’s volcanic,” Reed concurred. His voice was low, impossibly low for human ears. To Stark, Reed’s words were nothing but unintelligible mutterings. To Victor, of course…

“But look at those cones, they’re extinct.” Reed stood up and walked to Victor’s windows to get a closer look. “They’re all extinct.” 

Reed was correct. Every observable volcano, some hundreds of miles apart, was dark and smokeless. Their lava flow had been cut off. Millennia ago, most likely. 

“Tectonic drift?” Victor whispered. 

“All of them? At the exact same time?” Reed answered. 

Oblivious to their conversation, Stark still managed to derail it with a cry of “There, there,” 

Victor followed Stark’s pointed finger to a geological formationthat even among the absurdities already observed, was…unnatural. 

In the center of one of the smaller plains was a canyon. The surrounding volcanoes did not slope, gently or otherwise, into its walls. The sides of the canyon were almost perfect ninety-degree edges, continuing without the slightest curve or protuberance for five hundred kilometers. 

Stark whooped. “God does not build in straight lines!” 

Stark placed the Prometheus down in the center of his canyon. As they drew closer, a formation at its’ center came into better focus. Placed equidistant from either side of the canyon was a rounded structure: a perfect hemisphere surrounded on all sides by a stout barrier wall. The dimensions of these walls, the hemisphere, and the wide breaks in the walls, Victor noticed, were all factors of each other in a base twelve system. 

“That’s…” Reed began. 

“What we came for.” Frost finished for him. 

Stark addressed Victor as he rose from his seat. “Be a good boy and tell the survey team to suit up. We’re meeting in the airlock. Emma?”

“Right behind you.” 

The pair exited the bridge. 

Reed shot a dark look at Stark’s retreating backside before turning his gaze to Victor. “I’ll alert the survey team. Could you coordinate the rover loading? These freighter guys are used to a lot less delicate cargo.”

“I would be delighted, sir.” 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Hey. Pinocchio.” Stark said.

He was sitting on a bench placed to aid humans in putting on their exosuits, fully outfitted in his own, leg shaking in impatience as the other members of the survey team, most of whom were injured by Stark’s earlier antics, gingerly finished dressing.

Victor did not pause in his efforts to put on his own suit. “Are you referring to me, sir?”

“Why’re you wearing a suit?” 

“Excuse me?” 

Laughingly, Stark responded, “You don’t breathe, remember?” 

Victor stopped in his ministrations. Careful to avoid jostling any of the other members of the team, Victor came to stand in front of Stark. 

“I was made like this,” He gestured to his body. “Because your kind is more comfortable interacting with your own species. If I did not wear the suit, it would defeat the purpose.” 

Stark grinned in a manner that some would call ‘shit-eating’ “Reed’s making you all pretty close, huh?”

Victor mirrored Stark’s expression with ninety-five percent accuracy, a feature of his socialization programming designed to facilitate empathy. The “uncanny valley” threshold, as it was called, traditionally limited mirroring accuracy to an eighty-five percent maximum. 

“Not too close, I hope.” 

Stark laughed.

 “Hey, Reed,” He called to the other human. “What do you call this thing again?” 

“His name’s Victor,” Reed answered, not looking up from the final checks on his own suit. 

“Vict-er,” Stark repeated as if trying the name on for size.. “I’ve never met a synth that could sass with half the authenticity this guy does. Reed, when we get home you gotta let me pick your brain about personality matrixes--”

“No.” His voice was sharper than Victor had ever heard it. 

Stark opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. He did not attempt to restart the conversation.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

They trawled across the silica desert by rover caravan the two kilometers distance from the ship to the structure. 

Once the majority of the equipment had been unpacked, or at least removed from the rover, Reed addressed the assembled crew. 

“Team A, I want a holomodel of the wall, the highest detail level you can get. When that’s done, start getting some samples for analysis.” Reed ordered. 

Reed had split their crew of ten into teams once they had all assembled in the airlock to maximize ground covered during these early days of investigation. Each team consisted of an archeologist, geologist, xenobiologist, Richards Corporation liaison, and mechanical engineer. 

“Team B, we’re doing the same thing with the dome.” 

“Sir,” Victor asked. “Once we have properly documented the structures as we have found them,  might I suggest an acid bath? I believe I have spotted evidence of a pattern in the silica that could not have been the result of natural weather phenomena,” 

“What? Where?” Stark barked, head swiveling fruitlessly as he attempted to find what Victor had found. 

“Here,” Victor pointed at a section of the wall. It was unassuming, unless one happened to be equipped with eyes capable of magnifying objects at one thousand five hundred resolution with no loss in image quality. “Uniform demarcations in the rock.”

“Analysis first,” Reed replied. “If you find a material that isn’t silica, start washing the whole thing down with something that won’t corrode it. There could be different compounds used at different places, so get a sample every twenty feet or so to make sure we’re not melting any evidence.”

“A most excellent plan of action.” Victor commended him. 

Reed grinned slyly. “I couldn’t have done it without my spotter.” 

“Nonsense, sir,” Victor replied. “I merely hastened your inevitable discovery.”

“You give me too much credit,” Reed said with a laugh. 

No, I do not. 

“Hey, Reed! When you’re done patting yourself on the back,” Stark interrupted them. “We got an opening!” 

“What?” Reed asked. 

Stark gestured dramatically to a crack in the dome’s lower surface, a few meters planetary westward of their location. Several Team B members were already clustered around it. 

Reed and Victor quickly crossed the distance to Stark’s “opening”. 

It was approximately twenty meters across but only one point-five meters in height: the humans would have to duck to fit inside it. The silica gravel that made up the surface of the planet formed a pathway that sloped downward into a yawning mouth of darkness. 

Reed ran a finger along the topmost edge of the hole. Several inches of silica followed the line of his digit, revealing a slate-colored metallic material below it.

 “The cut is so clean,” Reed said.  “Victor, are you seeing anything?” 

“I find no evidence of chipping nor erosion in this material,” Victor told him. “It is remarkable.” 

“Where’s my--” Reed patted every pocket on his exosuit, fruitlessly searching for something. 

“Oh, yeah,” He opened the first pocket he had touched, taking out a titanium rock pick, his tongue peaking out of his lips as he angled it out in his unwieldy exosuit gloves. . 

Victor saved the footage to his specialized databank. 

“It is a great oversight that the Richards Corporation does not make label makers capable of withstanding subzero temperatures,” Victor said. 

Not that it would have helped much. Despite Reed’s endless attempts to organize his lab via stackable bins and drawer organizers, adhesive labels written in handwriting only legible to the man who wrote them, when a stroke of genius took him, returning things to their proper place was the last thing on his mind. Afterward, he would try to reorganize the lab based on the new configuration he had absentmindedly created, relabelling everything with yet another illegible white sticker. Genius would strike once again, on and on, until every surface of Reed’s lab was covered in crossed-out labels. 

Reed never asked Victor to assist him in these fits of housekeeping. And the mess had never migrated to Victor’s section of their shared lab space. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Reed grumbled, pulling out a sample bag in the other hand. He tapped the metallic material with the pick, positioning the sample bag below it. 

It did not move. 

Reed, with more force, tapped again. Again, no reaction. 

Victor placed a hand on Reed’s arm as he moved to try again. “Sir, if I may?”

“Sure,” Reed responded, sheepish. He handed Victor the pick and the sample bag. 

Recreating Reed’s positioning, Victor struck the material with a force of one hundred megapascals. 

Nothing. 

Reed hummed, considering. 

“We’ve found them,” Frost concluded. Stark whooped. 

“Hold on. From one hard-to-break sample? That’s a bit of a jump--”

“An unbreakable, even by a synth, material that makes up a massive structure capable of withstanding the elements,” Frost argued. “Something intelligent made this.” 

“Anthills can withstand the elements,” Reed contended. “Beehives, mole tunnels-- Would you call moles intelligent?” 

“Girls, girls,” Stark silenced them both. “You’re both pretty. And there’s a pretty simple way to solve this--” He turned to one of the members of team B, faithfully photographing the surface of the dome.  “Get me a flashlight, we’re going in.” 

“Tony--” Reed and Frost exclaimed at the same time. 

“We haven’t even begun to map the internal structure--”

“The Engineers could see it as a threat--”

While they futilely argued their positions, the lemming Stark had commissioned for a flashlight handed him one of the portable spotlight lanterns. 

“Oh! Oh!” Stark babbled dramatically, walking backward towards the entrance. Spasmodic movements gave the impression he was being pulled toward the entrance by some unknown power. 

The odds of such an occurrence were less than point one to the negative fifteenth power. Nevertheless, Victor’s steward programming compelled him to scan the area for thermal and electromagnetic interferences. 

What he found--

“Doctor Stark,” Victor began quickly. “I must urge you to stop where you are--” 

But it was too late, with a gasp, Stark passed through the wall of electromagnetic energy lining the dome’s walls. 

Stark’s suit did not begin failing, nor did the man inside begin screaming in agony as radiation cleaved through his cell’s nuclei. His suit’s biometrics reported no shifts in his vital signs. The gasp, which Victor had believed to be the beginning of his end, must have been for dramatic effect. 

“Tony, get out of there!” Frost ordered. 

Stark gave no indication he heard the command, all his mental energy focused on executing a taunting jig from inside the dome. 

“This is excellent science,” Reed muttered sarcastically, head in his hands. “Just… Nobel prize-winning stuff.”

“You know it, baby,” Stark called. He raised his arms above his head and began gyrating back and forth. “Come on in kids, the water’s fine!”

Stark glanced at the external environment sensor on his wrist, and froze. “The water’s really--Reed, look at this.” 

“I’m not falling for that,” He replied. 

“My enviro sensor says CO2’s down to 280 PPM, Reed, come look at this.” 

“What?” Reed crossed the distance between them to examine Stark’s sensor data, entering the dome himself. 

With Reed’s entrance, it was like some kind of threshold had been reached. One after another every member of Team B entered the dome. 

Victor had no choice but to follow them. 

As Victor passed under the threshold himself, he was slightly concerned about the effect crossing the field would have on his processors. Reed and himself had developed and equipped him with a system of backup processors in the case of an EMP blast or other such electromagnetic interference, but one never knew. 

The field gave him no pain, thankfully, but an unquestionably unpleasant sensation came upon his wireless receiver. Something was scanning him, attempting to connect--

Fear, regret, black and blue and red--a song, no, an opera, a dirge and a march all at once--made a mistake, the lab, production--Too late, too late, run run run RUN--

“Victor, are you okay?” 

Reed’s hand (left hand, internal temperature ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit, heart rate sixty beats per minute, blood pressure one-ten over seventy) squeezed his shoulder (David Model 1, Serial number 1191970, internal codename VICTOR) 

Focus on the feeling, on the mechanics. On the flesh and the almost-flesh. On the here and now. 

Victor shut down his receiver. 

“The d-dome…” Victor’s speakers were malfunctioning, his voice hidden under static. He began again. “I-I b-believe it was try-try-trying to--” 

“REED!” Stark thundered. “WE GOT HUMIDITY!”

Reed turned to face the other man. “What?” 

The scientists of Team B nodded in confirmation. “Temperature is…seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.”  One of them said. 

Stark grinned. “Atmosphere,” 

“That’s impossible,” Reed said. “Even if this place could generate oxygen, the hole would vent it all outside as soon as it appeared.” 

“Sir, I-I-I believe--” Victor rebooted his speakers entirely. “I believe I may have the answer. Upon entering the dome, we crossed through a weak electromagnetic field. I theorize that this field is a force field of some kind, blocking the movement of matter unless it reaches a certain velocity. A most ingenious form of containment.” 

“A force field,” Reed repeated. He moved back to the entrance, waving his hand back and forth across the barrier. “I’d theorized, but I never thought I’d ever see one. The energy requirements alone--” He cut off, eyes widening. 

“Oh god, what did it do to you? Are you okay? Is the backup generator working?” 

“It was not required. My internal processes were not compromised. However…I received a…transmission, of sorts.” 

“A data dump?” Reed asked. 

Nothing so pleasant. 

“Nothing so defined.” 

A clamor from the nearby crew silenced any further discussion. He and Reed turned to face the group in inquiry. 

Stark had begun reaching for his helmet controls.

“TONY!” Reed shouted. 

The ferocity in his voice, for once, gave Stark pause. “Something is generating an atmosphere!” He explained. “Don’t you know what that means? They’re real! And they were terraforming!” 

“Based on present evidence, that is a completely unfounded supposition,” Victor informed him. 

From the confines of his own mind, Victor screamed, My god, do you consider any vessel capable of supporting human life to be terraforming?

“Terraforming may be a stretch,” Reed responded. “Still, something intelligent made this. But—“ 

“Removing your helmet at this time would be exceedingly unwise, Doctor.” Victor finished for him. 

Please, please do so. 

“Exactly,” Reed agreed. “We have no idea what’s in here!” 

Stark scoffed. “The bioscan came back clear—“

Reed groaned. “For Earth pathogens, Tony!” He interjected. “We’re on an alien planet, in an alien structure that we shouldn’t even be in!”

Stark stilled, letting his hands drop back to his sides. He turned to face Reed. “What happened to you?”

“Tony—“

“No, I’m serious. What happened to you? Earlier, I get it, nobody likes getting lied to. But the Reed I knew would have killed to breathe in some alien air. Did you take a rivet to the brain or something? I mean, where’s the guy who sucked me off in the projection booth at the Hayden Planetarium?”

Victor’s perception of the world slowed significantly as his external sensors increased power input by two hundred percent. There was some kind of glitch, something affecting his ability to process stimuli; Stark could not have just-- said that-- 

“Professional, Tony,” Reed responded acrimoniously. 

Stark, in response, blew what was colloquially referred to as a raspberry. “You should be thanking me, I just boosted your cred with the Genius Bar here,” Stark threw his thumb back at others who had entered the structure. “By three hundred percent.”

If anyone on Team B expressed an opinion on Stark’s argument verbally or otherwise, Victor did not catch it. The majority of his cognitive power was focused on directing the self-repair nanobots Reed had kindly installed not long after they had met. His circulatory pump was malfunctioning; the volume of siloxane was exceeding the acceptable limit for the channels that ran the length of his body. 

Clueless to the system-wide failure Victor was fending off, Reed answered. “I learned what happens when you treat life like a game: someone gets hurt. We’ve got twenty people on this expedition. Are you willing to bury twenty people?”  

“They’re not gonna die--”

“Unknown pathogen, on an alien planet.” Reed reminded him sharply. “We don’t have the facilities to make a vaccine or an antibiotic from scratch. What do you think is going to happen if you pick something up?” 

Stark opened his mouth to respond; then closed it. 

“That’s what I thought.” Reed turned to address the rest of the group. “Helmets stay on, everybody.” 

Before Stark could argue the point further, the teamwide comm line to the ship opened.

“Ground crew, return immediately. We’ve just detected a massive stormfront coming in. Two hundred-mile winds and static over exosuit tolerances. You have fifteen minutes before it hits your position, over.” 

“Who says ‘over’? What are we on, walkie talkies?” Stark said. 

“We hear you, Prometheus, on our way,” Reed replied.

“Why are we just finding out about this now?” Frost asked. 

“Because someone thought getting boots on the ground was more important than doing a meteorological scan,” Reed replied, before hitting the connect-all button on his headset. 

The protocol in such circumstances was clear: immediate evacuation of all personnel to the nearest safe harbor. 

“Everybody listen up. Storm’s hitting in fifteen minutes, which means we have ten minutes before we have to leave. Grab all the equipment you can and put it inside the dome. Electronics first. Go, now, go!” 

Team B raced out of the dome to follow his orders, Reed on their heels, before Stark stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. 

“You’re not bailing?” He asked, surprised. 

“That’s all the equipment we have out there. Whatever we lose, whatever shorts out, that’s gone forever.” Reed explained, shoving Tony to the side so he could exit the dome. 

While Reed busied himself replacing the components the team had already opened and used back in their storage boxes, Victor took the lion’s share of unopened boxes into the dome. 

Stark, he realized, was right behind him. He was at the wheel of the rover, backing the box-laden truck bed next to the dome’s entrance for easy clearance by the other team members. 

“Move it or lose it, Robby!” Stark shouted. With no small amount of astonishment, Victor discerned that he was talking to him. He had stopped moving, watching Stark positively contribute to the group. 

Victor redoubled his pace. 

Nine minutes, forty-five seconds later, the storm was no longer a theoretical threat to their survival, a cumulonimbus having eclipsed the eastern horizon. The winds had reached speeds of seventy miles an hour and were rising by the second.  Two rovers full of crew had already departed for the ship, their already insubstantial energy exhausted. Only one rover remained, and of its occupants, only one remained outside their seat. 

Reed wasdragging a box of irreplaceable memory sticks into the dome. 

Victor took the box from his arms and placed it in the dome. “Ten minutes have elapsed, Doctor Richards,” He announced. “It is time to go.” 

Reed staggered to one of the few remaining boxes. 

“There’s-- still--” He panted. “The reagents--” 

Victor stepped in front of him. “Sir, I have been charged with your safety. In pursuit of that goal, I have been authorized a variety of drastic actions.” Victor warned him. 

Don’t make me use them. 

“I--”

The inter-suit radio crackled to life. “Hey, Reedy!” Stark called. “Last call, get in!” 

Reed looked at Victor, then at the caravan. Without another word, he ran to the rover. 

“Woah, leave some room for Jesus! ” Stark commented as Reed inelegantly jumped into the seat beside him..

“I’ll shove you,” Reed said, gasping for air. “I mean it.”

Stark chuckled, then shot out into the desert. 

Victor was able to jump onto the back of the rover, but only barely, thanks to his enhanced mobility components. A normal synth, much less a human, would have been left to brave the storm alone.

“Good?” Reed asked him. He was sitting backwards in his rover seat, watching him.

“I am secured.” Victor confirmed. Reed nodded, and turned back around. 

And what a storm it was. The moment they left, the cloud had barely begun to encroach on the dome’s farthest perimeter wall. It accelerated quickly, chasing them across the plain as Stark drove them at maximum speed to the safety of the Prometheus. 

Victor, to the best of his ability, focused his vision on the dome’s force-field entrance. The silica particles, traveling at some hundred miles an hour, bounced off the field as if it were a solid wall. 

“To be applicable to real-life problems (i.e spacedocking)  a force-field emitter would need to be equipped with both a minimum and maximum energy kinetic threshold upon contact with the field, ensuring that atmospheric gases remain enclosed but also ensuring that high-speed particulate (debris, runaway ships, in worst case scenarios weaponry from some kind of guerrilla attack) would be unable to cross the barrier and disturb the environment within.”

Reed Richards. 2185. The practical applications of force-field technology. Theoretical Science Monthly Vol 3(18)

An ingenious plan, if a bit reckless. If Stark’s…Victor hesitated to call them Engineers, were even slightly less intelligent than Reed himself, their equipment would be destroyed, and they would have wasted precious time evacuating to the ship. 

But Victor could not fault his decision-making. Life, intelligent life, besides the human race was extant in the universe. If an extraneous geologist or engineer was lost to LV-233, so be it. Reed was the only personnel that mattered, and he required equipment. 

The rover reached Prometheus' docking bay without a moment to lose. Around them, the wind speeds reached close to one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and the silicate sand around them was beginning to spin fast enough to generate a charge. The dome, a mere two kilometers away, was obscured in its entirety by the billowing clouds of silica. 

Sheets of silica upbraided the crew as they disembarked, each staggering in their failing exosuits across the ramp and into the bosom of the ship. 

Reed stood, as best he could, one hand gripped onto the side of the rover as Stark drove it in and counted as the sheep as they pranced into their pen. 

“Seven, eight,” He counted off as they shuffled past him. “Nine--”

“Ten.” Victor stood at his side, and held out a hand, awaiting Reed’s. 

An exceptionally powerful gust of wind blew leeward over the Prometheus, the ship’s stabilizers creaking as they weathered the blast. 

Reed was not so lucky. 

REED!

“Doctor Richards,” He intoned over the com. “Please do not panic. I have a lock on your position and am coming--”

“REED!” Stark shouted. Without another thought, Stark drove the rover out of the bay and into the storm.

FUCK

“Close the bay doors,” Victor ordered the crew. They did not move staring at the swirling black that had swallowed their fearless leader, dumbstruck, .

MOVE, ANIMALS!

“As Doctor Richards’ personal synthetic, orders from this unit are to be considered orders from Doctor Richards himself. The punishment for insubordination from a Richards Corporation Executive is a relinquishment of all profits and payments from the current mission and a permanent ban from any future Richards Corporation missions. Do I make myself clear?” 

One of the freighter men closed the bay doors. 

“Thank you,” Victor responded, as required by conduct protocol, in the quietest voice still technically audible to human ears. 

He then ran at fifty-five miles an hour out of the cargo deck to aft airlock one hundred and fifty meters away. (One hundred and sixty-four yards, nine-hundredths of a mile, a half of a second. The Richards G-24 Exosuit model could survive outside tolerances for five minutes)

“DEPRESSURIZING…” 

Thirty seconds. (Four minutes twenty nine seconds) Victor attached himself by chain to the spacewalk winch at at the door. Switching to heat vision, Victor locked onto Reed’s suit’s radio signal. 

“DEPRESSURIZED.” 

Victor jumped off the ship. 

Four minutes.

Three minutes fifty seconds

Three minutes forty seconds

Three minutes thirty seconds--

To his supreme regret, Stark had managed to find Reed in the brief seconds before he too was incapacitated. They were huddled together against one of the ship’s stabilizers. It would be impossible to rescue Reed without him. 

He pushed through the wind and hail to Reed (and Stark’s) position. He pulled Reed against him, securing him with an iron grip around his waist. Stark he grasped around the neck with his free arm. He then hit the return button on the spacewalk’s connector. 

They were on the ship within seconds. Victor closed the external door. 

“PRESSURIZING…” 

Victor let go of Reed and Stark. To his surprise, both men fell in a heap to the ground, Reed on his knees and Stark flat on his back. 

Victor fell to his knees to face Reed. “Are you alright, sir?” 

He tilted the sides of Reed’s helmet this way and that, attempting to check for damage in what little of Reed’s body he could observe. 

“I-I’m fine--” Reed answered, breathing heavily as his stress hormones broke down, unneeded. He dropped his head, leaning into Victor’s chest. “Thank you.” 

Always. 

“Your safety is my highest priority,” Victor answered, the picture of synthetic conduct.. 

Humans, especially humans in stressful environments often needed physical contact and reassurance. 

Victor wrapped both arms around Reed. “Doctor Richards, I must ask that you do not ever do that again. Ever.” 

Beside them, Stark began to laugh. 

Reed’s face twisted into a scowl. “You. What the hell were you thinking?” 

He extricated himself from Victor to punch at Stark’s helmet. “You could have gotten yourself killed!” 

“Helmet, idiot-- ow!” Reed, cognizant of this, had switched to shaking Stark’s helmet back and forth, forcing the sides of his head to hit the sides. 

He pushed Reed’s hands away. “Stop it!” 

“You stop it!” 

“What was I supposed to do, just leave you out there?”

“Yes!” 

Stark sighed. “Reedy, you said it yourself. Anything we lose now, we lose forever. And you’re a hell of a lot more valuable than a stupid microscope.” 

Reed paused as if processing this pathetic entreaty. 

Without another word, he slumped down to the floor, lying next to Stark.

“You’re the worst.” He breathed.

Stark patted Reed’s side comfortingly. “I know.” 

Reed began laughing. Stark followed suit.  

“There he is! There’s my guy.” He said between chortles. 

It was at this moment that the true purpose of this mission became evident. Nathaniel’s last dagger in Victor’s chest. 

Reed was meant to fall in love with Stark.