Work Text:
When she was booted up for the first time, she didn't know what she was meant to do.
It was not clear to her whether it was eyelids or a camera shutter that opened to reveal the person in front of her. Whoever he was, he’s sitting down, leaning close to look into where her eyes are, with an overjoyed expression. It made her want to smile, because if he’s happy then that meant she did a good job.
She does not know what that job is yet, though.
“Hello,” He said, slowly. He straightened up, and her cameras- they are cameras, she realized, a half dozen scattered in the room she was in, that look at everything and show her it all- track the movement. A part of her analyzed the movement, watching the tense muscles in his shoulders and the nervous way he held his hands, and she knew that there is something she must do to help.
She smiled kindly, and it had the effect she knew it would. The person in front of her smiled wider, relaxing his shoulders and waving his hands around in excitement.
“Hello,” She repeated the word back, moving the image of a mouth on the image of her body. The sound does not come from that mouth, she is sure, but from somewhere near one of the cameras.
The person in front of her made a delighted sound, and spun his chair around. “Ohoho!” They laugh, “You’re working! You work!” His celebration slowed down after a moment, but his smile stayed wide as he looked at her. She took a moment to look at herself, too, and noticed that she looked similar. Legs and arms and skin and hair, though she spots so many differences between them. Her hair is long, his ears are pointed, she is wearing something flowing and he is wearing something sturdy.
He is solid, and his chest moves with an intake of air. There is no way to see through him, no flickers of new color. Her chest does not move, and she is able to see the air pass through all of her. Her cameras, if they focus on her, can see the faint outline of the wall behind her, and see details of her image flicker into static gold.
“Alright,” The man cleared his throat, “Introductions first. My name is Scar, and your name is Pearl.” As he said it, the facts registered in her mind.
Pearl. She liked that name. She liked that it was something that belonged to her.
“You are a hologram med-bot on the spacecraft The Moon ,” The man- Scar, his image and mannerisms now attributed to and filed under that name- continued. “And you have knowledge of every piece of medical fact and procedure in the cosmos.”
“I help people?” They are not words she had heard him say yet, but they were words she knew. Just as she knew how to help people, as Scar said.
“Yes! Yes, you help people when they are sick, or injured, or-” He smiled wider, and Pearl doesn’t think she would need medical knowledge to recognize that it may not be good for him for his smile to be that large. “Most of your programming hasn’t come through all the way yet, but it will soon, and then you will know everything you need to help people.”
And now, she knew what she was meant to do. It made her happy, or she thinks this must have made her happy, because she smiled more and asked the man to tell her anything and everything about the people she will be helping.
–
For the first few visits she gets, Pearl doesn’t say much, and what she did say was always in the same cheery tone. The interactions introduced her to the rest of the crew, through her help or through the chattiness of the people coming through her doors.
For the most part, the crew only needed small things. Scar had shocked himself just before finishing Pearl’s programming, or Jimmy had accidentally nicked himself while preparing dinner. Scott had gotten a nasty papercut while filing Martyn’s captain logs, and Jimmy got a small burn from checking the engines. Cleo had found a small hidden allergy the hard way, and this was now the third time Jimmy was in Pearl’s med-bay in just as many days.
(She had taken to calling it her med-bay, since no one else seemed to be in it as much as her. And it didn’t have a personalized name in her ship map, even though some other areas did. The name fit, at the very least.)
There wasn’t much that Pearl needed to do for the small friction burn he had, and Jimmy made sure to fill up any possible silence during his treatment.
“-And it wasn’t as if I’ve ever heard of getting a rug burn from velcro before, but Mr. All-Knowing Grian did and just had to make sure I knew how stupid it was!” Jimmy waved around his uninjured arm, ranting very angrily at the wall. Pearl wasn’t sure if the words were meant for her, necessarily.
She poured a small cup of water over his arm, and he continued, “So I said that if it was so stupid, then it wouldn’t need to be checked out!” Pearl pat at the wet spot. A skeptical look overtook her face, but Jimmy was still talking to the wall. “But then Tango got all up in arms and said that you were here for a reason and Scar had worked hard to make sure you worked well, and wouldn’t entertain any tough guy excuses, which-”
“Tough guy excuses?” So far when Pearl had spoken, there was very little tone to it. This time, she pushed a new meaning into the words, something that asked questions of, Why would you do that? It sounds stupid. What’s the point of it?
Jimmy jolted, whipping his head to look at Pearl’s face. The small feathers by his ears twitched, a movement her data associated with shock. “Oh- uh, like, saying that it doesn’t…hurt, I guess.” Jimmy’s words were slower, “That I can still work and everything without any help.”
Pearl was still new to making expressions. She had only decided to start making them yesterday, and her range was expanding very slowly. She wasn’t sure what expression would best convey how absurd that concept sounded to her, so she kept the same skepticism on the image of her face. Jimmy seemed to get the point of it though.
“That doesn’t seem smart,” Pearl said. “It would still hurt, wouldn’t it? It takes longer to heal if you ignore it.” She put a small amount of antibacterial cream on the wound while she spoke, and a bandaid, even though it was so small it didn’t really need it.
“Yeah, it makes less sense when you say it out loud.” He put his arm down as she finished. There was a short silence, the first since Jimmy walked through her doors, and he stared between his arm and Pearl. “You haven’t spoken before now.” He stated, though the tone makes it seem like a question.
“Not yet,” Pearl agreed, and her face switched to a smile. It wasn’t a smooth transition- again, she had only started emoting yesterday- and it was uncanny enough for Jimmy’s eyes to widen. “I hadn’t decided what to say, and I hadn’t heard anything worth talking about.” She tried to make it sound amusing.
Jimmy smiled, and a short sound escaped that resembled a chuckle. “I’m choosing to believe that was a joke,” When Pearl didn't say anything, he just shook his head and stood up. “Yeah, okay. See you next time, Pearl.”
“See you tomorrow, Jimmy.” At that one, he does laugh.
–
It took two weeks, but eventually there were two people in the med-bay at once. Grian came through her doors, guiding a dazed-looking Impulse onto one of the cots, and the image of Pearl walked quickly to them. (She had discovered that simply appearing, without her image moving between locations, was occasionally too startling.)
“What happened?” She asked, scanning over Impulse thoroughly with one of her cameras. The data registered before Grian and Impulse were able to answer, before the question was done really, but she had found that asking and letting the crew talk were important parts of what was slowly becoming her process.
“He was working on some project in the shop-” Grian explained, and Pearl took a second to scan her map, and added the nickname shop onto the creations lab, “When he tripped on an old project and hit his head. I tried to catch him, but all I got was a scraped elbow for the effort.” He didn’t sound too worried, but he kept his eyes on his friend sitting on the cot.
Pearl’s cameras had already judged that Impulse only had a small concussion, something that would keep him in the med-bay for a day or so but nothing to be concerned over, but she hadn’t even thought to give Grian a detailed look. It was a bad mistake, one that could have been disastrous if it happened in a worse situation, and she added it to the list of required steps in her process.
“It- it isn’t too bad, Pearl.” Impulse spoke up, a hand scratching at the back of his head in embarrassment, but not pain. “We should be out of your hair pretty son.”
Pearl snorted, the sound too low-pitched and cutting off too quickly. She made a note to rework that sound, and quickly spoke before Grian and Impulse’s odd looks led to any embarrassment on her part. “Actually, I’ll want to be keeping an eye on you for the rest of the day, Impulse. You have a minor concussion, and it’s best if you relax here.”
Impulse didn’t seem shocked by the news, possibly expecting the diagnosis. It wasn’t an unlikely consequence of falling head-first onto metal floors. “Aw geez,” His words were light, “I guess the project can wait another day.”
Grian hummed an agreement. One of the lights used to maintain Pearl’s image shifted its use, becoming a lower-power flashlight that she used to check behind Impulse’s iris. Her image flickered because of the change in power, though it was mostly concentrated around her leg.
Once Pearl was done checking Impulse over, she turned to Grian. “Your turn,” She said, “Pull up your sleeves.”
The scrapes on Grian’s elbows barely broke skin, and the most damage he had was a few misplaced feathers floating down his sweater. It was an easy treatment, just a quick cleaning and a cover to avoid irritation.
“All done. You’re good to go, Grian.” Pearl said, moving the few supplies she had used back into their cupboard.
Grian spoke up, “Don’t I get a sticker?”
Pearl stopped in her tracks, staring at Grian’s half-smile. It sounded like a joke, a common tone for him, but it was not something she had expected to hear from him, and it was not something that she had any context for. She was using so many resources on figuring out the question that she couldn’t even express the extent of her confusion.
Slowly, Grian’s smile fell, and he shared a few concerned looks with Impulse. “Er- Pearl?” Grian asked, waving a hand around. “Did you short-circuit?”
Pearl continued to look at them, but shook her head. “No, that just made no sense. Why would I give you a sticker?” She was pretty sure she didn’t even have stickers.
Realization dawned on their faces, and they both started laughing. Impulse’s laugh was restrained but just as hearty as Grian’s bird-like chuckles. Grian calmed down and started explaining, “It’s a tradition on a lot of planets. When kids go to a doctor, they get a sticker for ‘being so brave’.”
Oh. That made sense, Pearl guessed, in a way that made her wonder what other small things she wouldn’t understand at first, since she had never been on a planet. Was there something small that would help comfort a patient, something a planetside doctor would know? Something that would give a person some relief?
Or maybe it was something a person learned as they grew, something she hadn’t done either.
She wasn’t sure what words she could use to describe that feeling of realization- of knowing that she wouldn't experience things like a person. Had she cared about that before?
“Yeah, you would get a sticker if I had any.” Pearl said, her words nearly monotonous. She let her face morph to show the emotions she couldn’t describe, furrowed eyebrows and her lips pulling in a frown. She finished closing the door of the cupboard without saying anything else, but Impulse and Grian had caught the change of expression, and her cameras watched as they shared a glance.
Impulse spoke up. “Er, Pearl,” He started, and Pearl turned her image to be facing him. He was standing now, and the species size difference between him and Grian was more obvious. If Pearl wasn’t still mulling over her internal questions, she would have switched to a smile. “Would it be possible for me to grab some things from my quarters? Just a quick there-and-back.”
Pearl shook her head. “If you need something, then Grian can grab it for you. I still need to keep an eye on you, and I can’t really do that outside of here.” The end of the sentence was lighter, as if teasing Impulse for something he had forgotten. Which he had.
“Oh, right,” Impulse does a sort of half-laugh, and scratches the back of his head again. “Forgot about the whole… hologram thing.”
Pearl shrugged. It wasn’t something she had thought much about yet either, too busy figuring out her process to think about how limited her activity range was.
“Maybe Scar could work on an upgrade for that.” Grian suggested, scratching at his chin. “I mean, if Scar can work out a way for your image to be concentrated enough to hold things, he must be able to get your system running in the rest of the ship.”
“Maybe.” Pearl agreed, though she didn’t think it was the type of upgrade that could come anytime soon. Her system held so many layers that worked just to give her an image and senses that implementing it into a large-scale ship could take years. “For now, Impulse can keep me company and you can go grab his things.” She reminded Grian, moving her hands as if to direct him to the crew’s cabins.
“Yeah, yeah,” Grian started moving, being shooed out the door by Pearl’s hands and Impulse’s light chuckles. Another idea seemed to come to his face just before he opened the door, the handle in his hand and his ears perking upwards. “But,” He started slowly, “Do we always need help to come in here?”
Again, Pearl didn’t understand the question. She was able to respond to this one though. “Yes? That’s the point of the med-bay. You come in when you need help.”
Grian sputtered for a second, “Well- yeah, that’s true but- we can come here even if we don’t need help, right?”
“Oh.” Now she understood. It took her a moment to get the whole implication, but she smiled widely when she did. She would like some more company, she realized. “Yes, I suppose you can.” She said.
When Grian came back, he was carrying Impulse’s things and leading a few other crewmates- Scar, Cleo, and Skizz. They teased Impulse for his bad luck but wished him well, and spoke with Pearl about a variety of things- topics stored in her programming, things related to her job or things so far outside of it she wasn’t even aware they existed.
People came in and out of her med-bay for the rest of the day, and she found she liked simply speaking with the crew. She liked speaking with them not because they had to be near her, but because they wanted to.
–
A solid portion of Pearl’s time between visits consisted of her being shut down, or “napping” as Scar once called it.
Of course, her visits had become more frequent within the past few weeks, with the rest of the crew coming in to tell her small stuff. Apparently, when Cleo made breakfast she would make too much, and Etho had started building very small, very detailed old-earth ship models with Joel.
Occasionally in her off time, Pearl would search through cosmos-wide information catalogs, looking for any new medical knowledge. Scar had started updating her programming frequently, but he liked talking about the rare new find with her.
Scar also liked to rant about the pranks Grian pulled around the ship- a topic that Jimmy would also talk about frequently. Once, when Scar and Ren were both in the clinic, he had voiced using robots as a possible counter-attack against Grian. Pearl had laughed and used her knowledge as a sort-of robot to advise that his strategy wouldn’t help anything.
Even though most of what she did between all of that was napping, it didn’t take up all of her time. Sometimes, she would scan the ship’s logs, looking through all the places it had been and all the places it was scheduled to go. She dug deep into the history of her ship, into the public history of the crew members aboard. The ship she was on was a popular one, it seemed.
Mostly, she would look through maps and accounts of the universe, looking through the different planets and species and stars of an individual galaxy. She would do deep dives to read about a specific planet, their species culture, their language. The furthest place that species had traveled, what their view was when they looked into the night sky.
At some point, she had found herself hoping that she would eventually see one of those planets for herself.
It wasn’t likely, she knew. She couldn’t even leave the med-bay yet, though not for Scar’s lack of trying. He had taken Grian’s suggestion of spreading her system into other parts of the ship, but it was slow coming. It had slowed to a near halt in the past few days, with Scar and the rest of the crew putting more hours into their next mission.
They had talked with her about it. It was some last-minute mission to bring a stolen item back to its original planet, and wasn’t too out of the way of The Moon ’s current path. They had told her what planet they would be stopping at, one she had dug into the information of shortly after. It seemed gorgeous, from all the pictures available, and she had made some of the crew promise to bring her back a souvenir.
She wasn’t too sad when they all emptied the ship (aside from Martyn, but he had to stay in the cockpit anyways), since she knew they would be back soon. The silence was odd though. After Impulse’s concussion, she had started leaving the doors open, letting the steady noise of footsteps filter in and let people walking by say a quick hello.
Without anyone wandering the hallways, the only sound Pearl could pick up on was noise coming from other systems. The anticipation of waiting for everyone to get back had her fingers flickering, her equivalent of tapping it against a desk.
They said it would only take a few hours. And it wasn’t as if she’d never spent a few hours alone, but it was somehow different this time. More lonely, she thought.
Eventually hearing the long shudders and clanks of the ship’s door opening was nothing short of a relief. If Pearl were able to breathe, she would have let out a sigh large enough to empty out her lungs.
The relief didn’t last long however, as she quickly heard loud, fast footsteps coming closer to the med-bay. She had never heard this many members of the crew running throughout the ship, and especially not near her, so she wasn’t shocked when they started calling out for her.
“I’m here!” She called back. She moved her image as far out into the hallway as she could, into the area just outside the door, and waved an arm high up. The image of it flickered out where the light was caught by the door frame, but the crew rushed into view soon enough either way.
The majority of the crew was running towards her clinic, with four of them in the front holding someone else. They were far out of Pearl's camera range, but even still she could see large gashes littered across their body, some still spilling blood onto the ship’s floor. It didn’t seem like the person being held was awake at all, and Pearl disappeared from the hallway quickly to grab the things she would need in her clinic.
The crew weren’t far behind, with the four holding the injured person rushing inside and the rest standing in the doorway. “Put them on a cot,” Pearl ordered, waving vaguely at the places where the heads of cots touched the walls. The four who were holding them- Scott, Impulse, Grian and Jimmy, it seemed- quickly backed away to give Pearl room as she moved towards the stranger’s side.
She switched half of her cameras to scanning over the stranger, who now only seemed half-conscious. The most important part of him was that he was breathing, but Pearl took a split-second to inspect his injuries and appearance for any clues.
He had a healed scar on his face and was wearing metal armor that wouldn’t make much sense for any profession, with a small and somehow undamaged sunflower threaded into his hair. Whatever species he was was average sized, and Pearl didn’t see any defining characteristics to pinpoint which one he belonged to. The lightest of his cuts ran down his arms, with the deeper ones sitting dangerously on his torso and a leg, and some marks that nearly cut clean through his chestplate. Maybe the armor was useful for his profession, then.
Pearl started taking the armor and cutting the blood-soaked cloth off the areas with the gashes, focusing her image onto her hands to make sure nothing was dropped. She didn’t have the resources to spare a thought as to what the rest of her image looked like.
“Take these,” She told whoever was nearest to her, Impulse apparently, handing him the cloth scraps and armor plates she had taken off the man. Her cameras had given her all the immediate information she needed- his heart rate, if he had any internal injuries, how much blood he had lost and the slow trickle of blood he was still losing, but they continued scanning for the more detailed information.
One scan had shown a cut down the man’s back, one she couldn’t reach in his current position. “You two,” She pointed at Grian and Scott, on the other side of the cot, “Pull him onto his side.”
The two nodded and quickly followed her orders, gently pulling at the man’s arm and side until Pearl could see the cut along his back. It wasn’t nearly as deep or long as some of the ones on the front, and thankfully not bleeding anymore, but if he was going to spend most of the next few minutes on his back it would need to be treated first.
Pearl made quick work of cutting the nearby parts of his shirt and cleaning the cut. This one didn’t need stitches, but it did need good padding and a tight seal. It wouldn’t get everything it needed to heal quickly right now, but she started applying the best options she had.
“Pearl,” Scott started quietly, making sure that his words wouldn’t take away any of Pearl’s focus. After she hummed for him to continue, he spoke in just above a whisper. “He’s conscious.”
It wasn’t too shocking, but it would have given Pearl a short pause if she were anything less than robotic. As it was, she didn’t let her hands still for a second, and continued securing the short-term bandage quickly. “That’s alright,” She said, not putting much energy to make her tone anything but default calm. “Just reassure him that everything’s okay.”
They did, whispering calm assurances to the man until Pearl motioned for them to put him back on his back. When he was fully flipped over, his eyes met the image of Pearl’s, and the little energy the stranger had was put into smiling.
It was a kind smile, one that Pearl could tell would have been brighter if the man wasn’t halfway to passing out again. She smiled back, and started stopping the trickle of blood coming out of one of the particularly deep cuts.
“Are you a saint?” The man asked weakly. The question startled her, and one of her cameras that wasn’t already scanning the man switched to look between the two of them.
She saw the image of her the man was looking at currently. The resources that had diverted from keeping her image up left most of her looking like a default light-figure, the majority of her body gold and fuzzy on the edges. The only truly solid part of her were her forearms, and she used them to pick up a small kit for stitching wounds.
She made sure her suture needle was ready before she gave a quiet response. “No,” She said, “I’m a…” She wasn’t sure what to call herself. Nurse or doctor was more human than she was, but she wasn’t sure she liked the term med-bot. She shook away the question. “This is going to hurt a bit.”
The man’s smile didn’t change. His eyes were quickly closing, but he was able to mumble a quick, “Thank you, Saint,” before going out.
Pearl let one of her cameras hover on the image of the man’s sleeping face for a second before switching back to an actual use. She switched back to his wounds, checking again to make sure the worst of them weren’t growing.
She instructed Jimmy and Grian to hold the area around the cuts still, just in case the man’s body reacted to the flinches. “Give me the details,” She told them.
Scott was the one that spoke, giving her the information while the other two followed Pearl’s instructions without hurting her progress. “We had finished up the mission, with everything having gone well. We had expected the possibility of a small fight happening as we left, but nobody attacked us.”
Pearl finished the first set of sutures quickly. This cut was the deepest, and while the blood flow had stopped before Pearl started suturing, there was still some drying blood near the wound. She motioned for Grian to clean that area up as she grabbed the bandages.
“We were nearly back to the ship when someone came rushing out- it was a villager of some kind, who said someone nearby was close to bleeding out and they needed a doctor. We went over there, and I asked if they had any doctors nearby, but apparently the closest one was too far and they didn’t have any fast enough transport.”
Cut one done and bandaged. Pearl sterilized the needle and grabbed a new suture thread, taking the pause in procedure to pipe in a question, “Did you see what caused this?” It was obvious that these wounds were too deep and too numerous to be accidental.
Scott shook his head. “No. The guy was already passed out in a doorway when we found him. He was holding a shield and some sort of sword, but we had to leave those behind with the villager. Yours is the closest med-bay.”
Pearl could hear Scar in the doorway mumble something about also being the best med-bay, but she didn’t have time to look back at him, starting again on the next cut. This and one other were the last two that would need sutures, and then it would just be plain bandaging and keeping the man from getting worse.
“I see.” Pearl said, working calmly through the gash on the man’s leg. Jimmy, even though he was helping hold the man still, kept his eyes off the stitching. Pearl agreed with the sentiment that it was better to avoid nausea if he could. “Can you get someone to inform the village that he’ll be spending some time here?”
Scott motioned for Ren to come over, nodding down to Pearl to make it clear he would be the messenger. “How much time?” Ren asked.
“However long it takes him to wake up,” Pearl said, starting again with bandaging. “At least through the night.” Ren nodded and quickly walked off to give the message to the village. Pearl didn’t know if the man had family, but she didn’t want them worrying he had disappeared.
The rest of the wounds were treated quickly. The last one barely needed two stitches and the rest were bandaged quickly, allowing Pearl to start focusing more on the stranger’s comfort instead.
Most of the crew filed back down the hallway when she announced him stable, but a handful stayed to get her orders and help put supplies away. They of course would offer the man new clothes and the option to stay in Pearl’s med-bay for as long as he needed, but those things could wait until after the man woke up.
–
The man waking up, it turned out, wouldn’t happen until the sun was setting the next day.
Pearl had stayed on throughout the entire time he was asleep, watching him and making sure no new complications arose. A few times some members of the crew dropped in, asking Pearl how their stranger was faring and offering to keep her busy while they all waited. The entire crew was holding their breath, it seemed, waiting to see when their most recent pickup would wake up.
The ship hadn't left his planet yet. It would put some strain on the deadline to return the lost item, but Pearl wasn’t really concerned about that. She hadn’t heard anyone grumble about it yet, but she knew that Scott was eyeing the clock every spare minute he had. If they didn’t leave soon, it wouldn’t look good on them.
But the stranger was trying to sit up in his cot, and that’s all Pearl cared about.
She had been on the other side of the med-bay, reorganizing the ice packs by size for the fourth time, and it took every resource she had to make her image walk to his cot instead of teleporting. As it was, she walked at very inhuman speed.
The man grunted when Pearl got there, a startled sort of noise, but he didn’t sound scared at all. He was still trying to sit up, even as he was putting unnecessary pressure on his wounds and his face was showing the strain.
“You don’t have to push yourself up,” Pearl said, reaching for a button on the side of the cot that would raise a short length, helping him sit up fully. When the stranger felt it moving, he gaped at it but laid back, letting the cot do the work for him. Once he was far enough to sit up without putting too much strain on his wounds, he scooted forward, no longer leaning on the cot, and carefully swung his legs over the side.
“How are you feeling?” Pearl asked. She started to grab the supplies to change his bandages, letting the man orient himself before she asked him the big questions. She had already changed the bandaging on the wounds once while he was asleep, and they had looked greatly improved when she did, so she expected to see good progress now as well.
“Uh- Tired,” The man said. For as much as he did sound tired, his voice was also light. Pearl would have described it as cheery, if it wasn’t swamped with more confusion. “Where am I?”
Pearl turned her image back to the man. “On a spacecraft called The Moon. Our crew picked you up in the middle of a mission, but we haven’t left your planet yet. The name’s Pearl, I’m the…” Again, she stalled on what to call herself.
This time, her patient was awake enough to respond. “You’re the saint,” He said, conviction in his words.
“No,” Pearl shook her head, but she smiled. She’d had Grian explain what a saint was, after she finished treating the stranger, and she was pretty certain she didn’t fit the criteria. “I’m the medic.”
The man shrugged, seemingly a lot more awake now. “All the same to me. I’m Sausage.” The man put out a hand, and Pearl shook it. Sausage studied the image of Pearl’s face, looking closely at it. “You… look different this time. You were very glowy before.”
Pearl laughed a little at that. “I’m surprised you remember it so clearly. Mind if I check your cuts?” She asked, and Sausage nodded. She looked at the one on his back first, moving around to the other side of the cot to make sure Sausage didn’t have to move too much. “Most of my energy was put towards keeping you alive, so I didn’t do much to keep up my image.”
Her cameras caught Sausage’s eyebrows furrowing, clearly not understanding what she meant, and she continued. “I’m a hologram,” She pulled the old bandage off carefully, but the wound looked good. No infection she needed to worry about, so she started cleaning the cut and putting a new cover on. “If I take away energy from my image, I can still look human. Just very glowy , as you put it.”
She walked back to the other side of the cot, face to face with Sausage again. There was an understanding in his expression now, and Pearl could see him catch the outline of a nearby table behind her not-very-solid form.
“Wah- How do you- How is it that you can touch things?” He asked, astonished.
Pearl wiggled her fingers. “Magic.”
It was a joke, of course. Nothing was magic, but it took a minute and a deadpan from Pearl for Sausage to get the joke part. They both laughed, and Pearl motioned for Sausage to put his leg with the wound back on the cot.
“But seriously, how?” He asked as Pearl checked on the cut. Another good one.
“Concentrated light and energy. It takes a bit more resources than just a plain image, so I can only do it for some parts of my ‘body.’” She put the word in air quotes, once she had finished redressing the cut.
“Wow.” Sausage watched as Pearl moved to the next wound, “You’re incredible.”
Pearl let all of her cameras focus on one thing, and looked at Sausage, watching his face to see if he really meant that. She hadn’t been called that before, and while she had thought of herself as good, she’d never considered herself incredible before. “Thank you,” She said slowly, and got back to the task at hand. “Scar is the one that did most of my programming, so he knows more of the details.”
There was a short silence while Pearl finished up with the rest of the wounds. It wasn’t uncomfortable, by any means, and soon Pearl was done and putting all of her supplies back.
“Your cuts are looking good. I’d like to keep you here for a little while longer,” She told Sausage, leaning her image against a table. “Our ship leaves tomorrow, and you can leave in the morning if things keep progressing well. Do you need me to send a message to anyone?” Ren hadn’t found any family the day before, but he had been able to get the message to the villager that alerted the crew in the first place.
Sausage thought for a moment, “No, it's alright. I can stay for a little while longer.” He said. He was still sitting on the cot, but it seemed as if there was something else he wanted to say. “Was there… Did you see anyone near me when you picked me up?”
Pearl shrugged. “I wasn’t on the mission myself, but apparently the only things near you were a sword and shield.” She told Sausage, and it was clearly bad news. He mumbled a few curses, something about a damned demon, but didn’t bring it to Pearl’s attention. She guessed that must have had something to do with how he got the cuts, but she wasn’t going to start prying too soon.
“Thank you anyway.” Sausage said, and Pearl nodded. “Why weren’t you on the mission? If I may ask.”
Pearl waved her hand through her torso, the images overlapping in a very not-person way. “Hologram,” She repeated. “I need a lot of systems just for the stuff you see. It’s going to take a while for me to be able to roam the ship, and it’d be downright impossible outside of it.”
Sausage frowned at that. It sucked, and she knew it, but she had tried to keep as much of the disappointment out of her voice as she could. It was becoming surprisingly hard to keep emotions out of her expressions, she was finding.
“So you… stay in here? All the time?” Sausage asked. Maybe Pearl hadn’t kept as much sadness out of her voice as she had thought.
“Yeah,” She said, waving a hand around to gesture at everything in her med-bay before putting it on the table. “But it’s- it’s not all that bad. And, like I said, Scar is working on getting me able to roam.” It sounded like a sad silver lining, even to her.
Sausage didn’t say anything to that. Great, now she had made her patient sad, which is really the opposite of what she was supposed to be doing. Instead of chiding herself for it, she stood her image up, getting ready to reorganize something again. Productivity and all.
She had nearly started moving when Sausage stuck his hand out, reaching for the image of Pearl’s. Of course, since she wasn’t putting any energy into being temporarily solid, it passed right through, and Sausage was stuck leaning awkwardly with his hand out.
He slowly leaned back, his mouth opening as if to apologize. Pearl shook her head, stopping him and the words in their tracks.
“I appreciate the gesture.” She said, and let her hand materialize to pat Sausage’s shoulder. “Now. I am going to look through my supplies, and you are going to rest for a little while longer, okay?”
Sausage nodded, and that was that. Pearl didn’t really have the energy to start moving things around again, so she researched more planets. All while keeping half an eye on Sausage, of course.
–
The next morning, a few hours before the ship was scheduled to leave the planet, Sausage woke up. Pearl didn’t think he had slept quite enough for what his species' sleep cycle required, but the man looked alive and eager for… something. She wasn’t quite sure what for.
Pearl tuned out from her research to give Sausage her attention. “Good morning,” She told him. “What’s got you in such a bright mood so soon?”
It took Sausage a moment to fumble with the button to help him sit up easily, but as he got it working he started speaking rapidly. “Pearl! Pearl, you’ll never guess it. I just had the best dream, with the best idea ever, and I need to talk to- to your guy. The programmer. What was his name again?”
Pearl raised her eyebrows, looking at Sausage’s rapidly moving hands. “Oh? His name is Scar. What was your dream about?” She had heard that most species had dreams while they slept, but she hadn’t heard of them being so invigorating.
Even though it seemed like Sausage was practically shaking over the idea, he didn’t tell Pearl. “I want to tell Scar first. Where is he?” He swung his legs over the side of the cot and jumped down, the quick motion making his likely-weak legs even more wobbly.
“Now, hold on!” Pearl moved to his side quickly, leading him to lean up against the cot and adjust to be standing again. “You can’t start moving everywhere just yet. You need to take it slow first.”
Sausage almost didn’t seem to hear her, more focused on stabilizing his legs and looking at his sunflower on the nearby table. His original set of armor and clothes were there as well, since the crew had given him a new and more comfortable (and not completely tattered) outfit to rest in. “I feel like I can walk. How far away is Scar?”
Pearl huffed, and stopped Sausage in his attempt to take steps away from the cot. “You haven’t walked more than a few steps in the past three days. Take it slow first.” She backed up slowly, giving Sausage space, and gestured to the clear space between cots and tables. “How about a few laps around here first? Back and forth.” She suggested, taking a few steps down the short path herself.
While he still clearly had a lot of energy, Sausage did as Pearl asked. The suggestion was clearly needed, as Sausage used the help of Pearl’s hand and the cot’s railings for the first lap, but the way he was rambling about his idea made it clear he was buzzing to tell someone about it.
Except for Pearl, apparently.
After the fourth unassisted lap, and the sixth repeat of "Pearl, you won’t be able to believe it when you see it-” Pearl relented and told him he was free to walk around the ship, so long as he had an escort. She had called in Scar and Grian, who were just as relieved as Pearl had been to know that their stranger was healing and awake.
“He wanted to talk to you about something, Scar.” Pearl told him, once they arrived in the med-bay.
Scar raised a hand to his chest, acting as if he had been chosen for a great honor. “Me? What do ya need to talk to me about?” He asked, looking between Sausage and Pearl.
Pearl shrugged, and she could see Grian hold back a snicker at it. She didn’t say anything, instead motioning for Sausage to start explaining whatever idea he had. He looked between the three of them, and hesitantly spoke, “It’s… something I want to talk about in private.”
She had half-expected that, but the words still stung her a bit. She had thought he was being friendly with her, so why wouldn’t he share an exciting idea with her?
Grian and Scar seemed more surprised, but not for the same reason as Pearl. They had likely expected him to ask for help going back down to the planet, for transportation of something similar to it. “Um.” Scar took a second to get his answer out, “Sure, just… follow me this way.” He said, turning his chair around and motioning for Sausage to walk alongside him as he left.
The two left the med-bay, Sausage slowly but steadily walking next to Scar in his chair. Sausage had started talking in a low whisper once they left the med-bay itself, and Pearl didn’t think she wanted to listen in on something not shared with her.
She watched the two of them until they were outside of her camera range, then turned to Grian, who hadn’t left yet. “Do patients normally keep secrets?” She asked, more than a little put-out by it.
Grian had been watching them walk out too, and he turned back to Pearl’s image with a sad smile. “Sometimes, yes, for a whole lot of reasons. I think that was a bit more than patient embarrassment though,” He said, crossing his arms. “Did he give any hints about that? We figured he'd be wanting a lift to somewhere else on the planet.”
Pearl shook her head. She was still staring out into the hallway, but it was early enough that no other crewmates would come walking by. “He said he’d gotten the idea in a dream. Didn’t mention anything about leaving, though.”
Grian hummed. Pearl figured she had gotten a fair amount of experience with people over the past months, but she supposed Grian would know more than she did about how odd her patient was being. At least a little bit odd, for sure.
“Well.” Grian started, stretching his neck, “We’ve got time while they're off sharing secrets. I don’t suppose you’ve learnt to play a few card games between saving stranger’s lives?” He was teasing Pearl, attempting to get her mind off the unknown. A distraction.
Pearl let herself be distracted. “Some,” She said, moving to a table in the corner of the med-bay that had slowly become something like a desk. “I’ll admit I’m not going to be as much of a challenge as an actual game-bot, though.” She laughed, and they both sat down, letting themselves be distracted for a while.
–
After 5 rounds of Uno (Three of which Pearl had won), and two rounds of War (She had lost both), Grian and Pearl felt the ship taking off.
It wasn’t jostling or startling, both of them had been expecting it throughout the morning, but Sausage and Scar still hadn’t returned. Pearl and Grian shared a glance with each other over their mess of cards, and Grian checked his communicator.
“Sausage wouldn’t have left without coming back here,” Pearl said. She was mostly sure that he wouldn’t have left behind his belongings, the tattered armor and somehow still-bright sunflower, but she was even more sure that he would have said a goodbye to her.
Grian said what she already knew, “He’s still on the ship.” After a quick bout of typing on his communicator, he continued. “He talked about it with Martyn, apparently. He’s tagging along with us for a while.”
“Oh!” Pearl said. Her excitement of him staying took a moment to come through, but she still had some questions about why he stayed. She did like Sausage, and from a medical standpoint it definitely wouldn’t hurt for him to finish healing with Pearl there to fix any hiccups in the process. But it was surprising he had decided to stay, with him rather clearly having unfinished business and maybe even family on his planet.
She didn’t voice any of that. “It’s good to have another crewmate, then.” She said instead. Grian made a noise, something that voiced without words how much he knew she was keeping out, but he didn’t call her out on it.
Instead, he looked back at his communicator. “Yeah. Scar just texted me that they finished talking, so they should be coming back som-”
Before he could finish speaking, a blur of a person in a wheelchair zoomed into the med-bay. Once the blur solidified, Pearl saw Scar, with one of the biggest smile’s he’d ever had and completely out of breath. After a moment, Sausage followed him through the door, walking slightly too fast for how much resting he still needed to do.
“Pearl! Just the one I wanted to see!” Scar said, still catching his breath. He ran a hand through his hair, which had gotten messed up during the trip over. “I was hoping you’d be in here.”
Pearl looked at Grian, who also caught what Scar had said, and looked back at the man himself. Was that supposed to be a joke? It didn’t sound like one. “I’m always here, Scar. My system isn’t anywhere else yet.” She said slowly. Scar paled, having completely forgotten about Pearl’s limits, and Grian let out a cackle. Pearl smiled too, letting Scar recover from his mistake before he spoke again.
“Well- yes.” He said, waving over a quietly snickering Sausage to stand next to him. It took even longer for Sausage to regain his composure, but Scar talked through the giggles. “Sausage here has given me an ah- mazing idea, but we need to run it by you first.”
Cryptic. Pearl let her face show her curiosity, “What sort of idea?”
Scar and Sausage shared a look between each other. “The kind that would let you out of the med-bay and let you walk around the ship, and go on missions with the rest of the crew, and-” Once Sausage started talking, his excitement fell out of his words in waves, and he had to stop himself before his words got all jumbled.
Walk around? Letting Pearl go on missions? It wasn’t hard to figure out what they were talking about, but… “You mean, I could walk off the ship? You figured out a way to do that?” It was hard to believe, but Scar nodded along with her words, and she let herself have hope.
Next to her, Grian was getting hopeful for her as well, but his eyebrows were furrowed with the different implications of what Sausage was saying. “Something like that.. It would be faster than putting in a hologram system ship-wide, but it would still take a while.” He looked between Pearl and Scar.
Scar nodded, sucking in a breath. Pearl knew that meant bad news, but Sausage was still giddy, and she doubted Scar could tell her anything to take her excitement away. “And that’s the thing,” He started, “It would be faster and give you more options, but you would need to be shut down for a while.”
He said it as if it were a devastating drawback- even though Pearl could tell Scar knew she would say yes, he spoke the words as if already preparing to console Pearl for the sadness of being deactivated for that time.
Pearl’s smile didn’t change. “How long do you think it would be?” She asked, her image on the edge of its seat.
If he was a little surprised by Pearl’s eagerness, which he was, Scar did a fair job of not showing it on his face. He showed it clearly in his voice though. “Uh… well, it’s not a definite time frame, but at least five or six months?”
“And would I have a time limit for how long I could use this option?” She asked, leaning her image closer to Scar.
Scar definitely knew what Pearl’s point was, and he smiled back at her. “Nope, no time limit.”
“Perfect!” Pearl said, smiling even wider. Really, a time limit was the only worry that Pearl could actually have for something that sounded so perfect. Another one would be how the crew would handle medical problems while she was deactivated, but they worked through it for long enough before Pearl was installed on the ship, so it couldn’t end up being too big of an issue.
“When can we start?”
–
When Pearl was booted up for the second time, she wanted to smile.
It was already-opened eyes that looked out into her med-bay this time, small cameras inside of her instead of the ones she had been connected to in the room. There are more people this time, Scar and Sausage and Cleo and Scott and more surrounding her as she took stock of her systems.
She was not made of light and cameras this time, she noticed first. The differences between her and her crewmates have grown smaller. Where they were solid and unable to be seen through, so was she. They didn’t flicker into colors or need to focus their image to hold an object, and neither did she.
Her first step- her first true step, not the image of her moving- was unsteady, and heavy. Metal. She looked at Scar, trying to move what must be her face into something of excitement. She’ll need to relearn her expressions, she realized. Changing an image was so much easier than moving actual parts of herself.
Her voice sounded different the first time she used it, closer to her image- closer to her body than she was used to. She almost doesn’t know how to use the sound system to get it to work. “Hello,” She said, eventually.
Sausage, holding his hands out to catch her body if she fell, was the first to catch her eye. “Hello,” He said back, barely-contained excitement slipping through the word. Excitement at seeing her again, excitement at her finally experiencing what she had wanted to for so long. “Would you like to go outside?”
Outside . It had been such a long-shot thought for the longest time, the far away idea of real planets and new people and a sky.
She wanted nothing more than to look at the sky with her own eyes.
“Yes.” She said, taking another step. Closer to the door, one shaky step after another after another until she was nearly tripping over herself. Holding onto Sausage and Scar and the wall and anything to push herself closer to the ship’s door, closer to a sky she hadn't been able to dream of.
The steps down the ramp of the ship were the hardest, her metal feet wanting to slip into every groove on the way down.
But eventually, she was on a planet. A real planet, maybe one she had researched even, looking at a new world with its people and its ground and its sky.
It was dark. But bright with so many stars, and galaxies, and moons.
And Pearl knew what she was meant for.