Welcome to the Machine [2430-2-1 Mon 9am]

[Sonya]

The images flickering across the screen made Sonya's heart pound in her chest. Her mouth fell open and her eyes grew wide. She had seen this before, this, television show. The music echoed in her ears, a distant memory suddenly racing back. “Royce Broussard.” She whispered. The name by which the stranger had addressed Blu was suddenly familiar to her. She could hear Paul's voice in her head now.

“Royce Broussard is the best engineer in the whole galaxy. Nobody's better than him, nobody at all. He's the greatest ever. And someday, I'm going to be just like him!” Then they would huddle together on that familiar rock, and Paul would press buttons on his padd, and the music would play, and the pictures would flash across the screen, and they would watch the magic of Royce Broussard play out across the screen. Her best friend's childhood hero. Her captain. Sonya stared from the kid on the screen to the man in front of her. How could they be the same person? “I don't believe it.”

[Blu]

Mai thought he was 'cute'. It was hard not to cringe. Sure, he was cute now, ten years old, with almost one full PHD under his belt. And then, in eight more years, he's a wreck, breaking down in public and weeping on camera as he finally loses control over himself. Not so cute then.

But it was Sonya's reaction that caught Blu off guard. He paused, glancing at the screen to make sure he was showing them the right thing. There he was, still Royce, still eternally young. Blu quickly looked away, as if the eInkr was the portrait of Dorian Grey and he was... that guy. Wait, maybe the other way around? Which one didn't age again?

"Um," Blu said, finally returning to his original thought, "I guess you don't have to, but it is me. I'm just. Smaller. And less..." He made a space-y hand gesture, then rubbed his face, "I was. I am a genius. I'm not boasting or trying to appear like I'm smarter than everyone else, it's just... I actually am smarter than most people here. I've always been able to think bigger than me. And when I was little, my parents thought it would be a good idea to make a show about me, so they could be famous."

That could have sounded bitter, but that's not how it came out. It came out sad. His parents had used him to get famous, and what hurt Blu most of all was that they had used him and never apologized. The six months he'd spent in rehab had been the worst of his life, simply because his parents never even visited him once, choosing to punish him by hiding away because he ruined their chances at being somebodies. It hurt more than Blu could ever explain, even to himself.

"That's partly how most people know me. And... and." He closed his eyes, trying to get a grip on himself. Blu centred himself, and with a shaking hand, he brought up the other video, "This is how everybody knows me." Blu finished, voice quavering, and pressed play. And on screen, Blu at seventeen had his very public meltdown, calling out every single authority figure in his life, and then finally collapsing on the front of the stage, sobbing into his hands. Blu closed his eyes, not wanting to see Mai and Sonya's reaction to Blu's greatest moment of shame.

[Mai]

Mai frowned as the new video played on the screen. It was an entirely different Blu than she thought she'd ever see, full of frailty and none of the uncaring confidence he'd exuded in the last few days since meeting him. How many people had seen this, she wondered. A handful? Hundreds?

"Oh Blu..." she reached out to touch his hand. "What happened there?" She hoped he would be willing to talk about it. Talking things out always helped her. This seemed long ago, though. Perhaps the scars were just too deep.

[Blu]

Blu didn’t even know where to begin. Mai’s hand helped stabilize his shifting thoughts, and he focused, “I-I liked to design low-impact buildings. I still do… but. They’re buildings you can put down anywhere, and they recycle everything and leave almost no impact on the environment. Humans can live anywhere without destroying where they live. That’s what I wanted to make.”

“But every time I’d finish drawing up my plans and I was ready to start prototyping, they’d cancel my project. And then someone else would start on that very same project, using plans that were mine. I… I tried to reason with them. I reminded myself that I was new to the company and that I couldn’t have it all immediately,” He brought both hands to his head, running them through his hair and making his already-disruly hair even more haphazard and large, “No matter how good my buildings were, no matter how hard I worked, I never got anywhere.”

“That was the last straw. I’d worked on this beautiful building… zero-impact. Everything was recycled, everything was made from renewable resources, it didn’t even need to rely on the outside environment for things like water or clean air. It was… I was so proud of it. And they canceled it and told me they couldn’t afford it, and I… I accepted it. I accepted it until they announced they were building zero-impact houses, a-and they put up my plans only they’d given them to someone else and…”

Blu went quiet. It was clear what had happened after that. A distraught teenaged Blu wept on stage while hundreds of flashes went off. His parents were nowhere to be seen, and it was security who finally came along and picked him up, carrying him off the stage and away from the crowds. Blu didn’t entirely know what happened after that, since the next clear memory he had was from two months later, when a doctor took Blu out of his room and made him sit in the asylum’s garden. It was the plants that had brought him back.

“I’m not that boy anymore,” Was what he said when he spoke again, taking off his glasses so he could wipe at his tearing up eyes. He held the thick frames in his fist, looking at Mai and Sonya without the glasses for the first time, “I don’t want to ever be him again. He was sad and lonely, and everybody knew him but nobody was his friend and… I don’t want to be that boy ever again.”

[Sonya]

To Paul, Royce had been a person, a hero. To Sonya, he had been a symbol, a representation of the dream she and Paul had had. She had once had full faith in that dream. But as the years had passed, though she had told herself she still believed, that some day she would make it, she couldn't help but feel deep down that she was kidding herself. Now, at last, her dream was being fulfilled. And by none other that Royce Broussard himself.

Yet Royce-- Blu, wasn't happy about it. He was shaking. He was crying. Sonya watched him dry his eyes with a sense of impending doom. For a moment, she was even angry at Blu. How dare he be sad? How dare he make her feel so helpless and sick inside? But a moment later she was ashamed of the feeling. She had hoped that she could leave these mental traps behind on Corus along with her physical ones, but the helplessness had followed her here. Now Blu was crying, and there was nothing she could do. She could barley even understand what was upsetting him. Sonya had spent the last nine years trying to be noticed, cared about, to have people adore her. Blu had spent an equal amount of time running from that.

There was one thing however, that she understood completely. Although it escaped her how such an emotion could be tied to popularity, the feeling of being friendless and alone was certainly nothing new to Sonya. That, she thought, was what Blu was really running from, not his fame. Finally, she said slowly, timidly, so faintly that she was almost afraid Blu wouldn't hear, “But you do have friends. You have me and Mai.”

[Blu]

He managed a smile at them, both of them, still wiping away at his face, “I know. I know I have you and I’m so happy I do. I’ve been so excited to have real friends, people who like me because I’m me, not because they saw me on the network or, or think I can make them famous,” Blu knew he couldn’t make them understand just how special and unique they were as far as friends went for someone like him, but he tried, he really tried. He put his glasses back on again, hiding his face, “I just… I was hoping you wouldn’t have to find out so soon. Everybody knows who I am. It was nice not being known, a-and me being the guy you knew, not the person I was on TV. I’m not him anymore. ”

There was the sound of a clearing throat. Blu looked behind him and found the server standing there, holding their plates, “So this would be a bad time to ask for an autograph, huh?” Blu put his head down on the table, sighing and nodding. The waiter put everyone else’s plates down, “You guys enjoy your meal. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

He headed off. Blu eyed up his veggie burger. He still felt like a nervous wreck and like he would burst into tears if anything else happened. And yet, all of this hadn’t made him any less hungry. His body had learned to cope with high levels of stress over the years, and had gotten to a point where Blu could still eat even when he felt miserable. This was because there had been entire years when he had been constantly stressed and miserable, and if his body hadn’t adapted, he would have starved to death.

Blu didn’t want to pick his head up, so instead, he brought the burger to him, holding it sideways and taking a bite. Gravity began to work on his burger and he had to quickly turn it the right way around before everything fell out of it. He chewed and swallowed, reflecting that at least the burger was delicious, “I’m sorry for all of this. I wanted your first day offworld to be really special.”