aphelion_rpg | She's so heavy

Fed up with the heat and the gravity shifts making work in the machine shop difficult, the Master strode into the control room and booted up ISES, pointedly leaving the door open for anyone who felt the need to try to stop him. He was in his exercise clothes, as it was too hot to comfortably be in anything else. As he waited for the computer to boot he pulled the Doctor's sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and twirled it in his fingers impatiently. Finally, he could do something interesting.

Robin happened by one of the doors to the control room, pausing as he spotted Cyril/the Master. "...What's the plan?" he asked, voice and expression neutral. He was dressed similarly to the Time Lord, and sweating.

He raised an eyebrow at Robin. "What, so you can stop me?" he asked incredulously.

Robin raised an eyebrow right back. "Or so I can help. Depends on what the plan is," he replied calmly.

"Ironically, it seems I'm doing the exact opposite of what people here expect of me." He gave the ISES icon a second, more irritated poke, wondering why it wasn't booting up. "Oh, very clever if one of you actually restricted my access to the computer," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Hello, and thank you for activating the Icelus Station Essential Systems User Interface. You may call me ISES. How may I be of assistance?" came the calm voice of Isis.

Robin raised both eyebrows mildly, then stepped into the room, walking over towards the computer. "If you'd like people to trust you, you might try being less secretive. And if you're still bent out of shape about us not wanting you to mess with the computer the other day... seriously, Cyril? We didn't even know what the problem was yet, for all we knew, messing with the computer could've made things worse. ...Although it seems you, at least, knew exactly what was going on, a fact that you failed to share with the class. Case in point." Robin leaned against the wall next to the console, crossing his arms. "...So. Tell me what the plan is."

"Yes, okay. 'Sorry everyone, sorry. That's my time ship, it just needs to settle in for another 72 years then this mess will be cleared right up!' I've seen far more of the human race than you have; it doesn't work that way. One of you would've been up there to knock it into open space in less than five klicks. The plan is for you to trust that I'm not going to do anything that's going to put everyone in more danger, because I'm..." he trailed off. I'm as trapped as you are. But I'm not telling you that. "I'm not stupid, and I'm not going to endanger my own well-being. You'll do well to remember that."

"Took you long enough," he said, flipping the screwdriver in his hand the right way around. "ISES, I need temporary manual control of the thrusters. We should at least improve the power situation while we work out a permanent solution," he added for Robin's benefit.

"Rotational thrusters controls are currently set to optimal default settings. Please confirm. You are requesting manual control of rotational thrusters?"

"Fine," Robin said. "You were trying to help. I believe you. Whatever modifications you were planning to make, you thought that they would improve the situation for all of us. But we all have a stake in this, and we all have minds of our own. We're not going to just jump into things without any information. And we're not going to let you do whatever you want without and explanation. You haven't earned that kind of trust. None of us have. We're all still strangers here."

"Very well," he said. There was little point in arguing with him about trust. There was a very easy way to fix that, and, yes, he was currently kicking himself for not taking the opportunity early on to just brainwash everyone. But sometimes that's just how the jammy dodger crumbles. "We can sort out the trust issues later. I know someone who'd be glad to help," he said without irony.

"Confirmed, ISES," he said, turning back to the computer. "Can you access data on the portables in the rec room?"

A window popped up on the screen, displaying the controls for the rotational thrusters as well as relevant data about the firing status and orientation of each thruster and the asteroid systems' rotational velocity, acceleration, and angle relative to the Sun on two planes. "Rotational thruster controls are now set to manual. ...I am currently unable to access any of the recreational computer's systems, including data stored on portable units. Power has been cut from the recreational computer in accordance with default power-saving settings."

"Right, not the easy way then, of course." After a quick glance over the settings he clicked his tongue discontentedly. "No wonder... ISES, are these the default or the most recent settings?" he asked, switching on the sonic screwdriver and then running it along the computer controls before kneeling briefly to peer at the underside of the control panel. He reached underneath, then stopped short and looked back at Robin, deciding that continuing on without involving him would end in more questions and more trouble. "Want to give me a hand? We're going to power on just the drive in my portable from here so we can load in better parameters. No point in wasting more power than necessary."

"The default setting for the rotational thrusters is 'off'. Rotational thrusters currently exhibit the status and orientation they exhibited at the moment controls were switched from automatic to manual."

Robin nodded, kneeling down next to the Master. "What do you need me to do?"

"Default orientation," he muttered, silently swearing to rewrite this arse of a computer if he had to sit down with craft paper and safety scissors and illustrate every last line of code to everyone else on the colony. It had given him the answer he needed, however.

"Here," he said, and handed the sonic screwdriver to Robin, indicating its controls and a spot on the underside of the console. "Hold down that bit there and aim it here. That'll enable a quick uplink between ISES and the portable drive. Got that?"

"Got it." Robin took the screwdriver from the Master, briefly glancing over it curiously before following his instructions. "What is this device? I've never seen anything like it."

"It's a sonic screwdriver," he said, standing back up to look at the controls. "The Doctor was kind enough to bring it here. ISES, you'll find you have access to the drive in portable 16. There are algorithms and coordinates saved in the file 'qrhf.rk', use them to augment the current thruster control program." He stood back and waited for the computer to confirm.

"Acknowledged. Incorporating new data."

"Sonic screwdriver? ...Huh." Once the computer had completed its data transfer, he straightened up a bit, giving the device a more thorough looking-over.

"There are better tools, but here I'll take what I can get." After a quick glance over at Robin to make sure he wasn't doing anything dangerous with the screwdriver, he made the changes he expected manually, then asked "ISES, can you update the thruster orientation display to reflect the new parameters?"

"Complying." The display window changed appropriately.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Robin agreed, idly turning the screwdriver over in his hands. "...So what are you doing here, exactly? Are you able to predict the rate and magnitude of the mass fluctuations to some extent?"

Satisfied with the changes, the Master said "ISES, you may resume automatic control of the thrusters."

"In a limited sense, yes." In truth, he'd had to limit the program to basic TARDIS growth theorems, wary of integrating some element of physics from his universe that would change the computer's understanding of the improbable balance of the two asteroids. "It should stabilize things until we finish the mass cancellation device."

"Complying. Automatic control resumed."

"...Is that it then?" Robin spun the screwdriver in his hands one more time, paused, then offered it back to the Master.

"That is that," he said with some small amount of satisfaction, taking the screwdriver back from Robin. "For now, at least."

((Ffff, see any reason to continue this thread?))

((I don't think it's going anywhere else at this point. Unless something explodes.))

She's so heavy

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