2023-04-17: The Engineer's Calm

• Log: 2023-04-17: The Engineer's Calm
• Cast: Anser Vulpecula
• Where: Photon Power Lab - Anser's Temporary Bunk
• Date: U.C. 0097 04 17
• Summary: While repairing the Phenex, Anser Vulpecula saw something she couldn't explain. She excuses herself, and returns to her bunk. (CW: Panic Attack)

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Anser stands in the bathroom of the bed quarters that PPL was so gracious to lend to her. She's leaned firmly on her hands, panting hard, staring at herself in the mirror. Willing herself.

Calm down.

Fingernails scratching against the smooth metallic surface, lamenting that there's nothing to gouge into. To feel the texture of. How long has it been since she's even felt something as simple as another person's hand in her own? Sweetwater? That night, drunk, drinking in her scent, feeling every part of her as she distantly reminded herself: She'll be gone tomorrow morning. And she had been. They'd both known what that was. They'd both needed that, and nothing past it.

Now it felt like a distant memory, and for the first time in a long time, she's truly afraid. Not nervous. Not anxious. Afraid, and embarrassed about the fear. Embarrassed about her flight from the Phenex, from looking foolish and unprofessional in front of Koji. Even in front of the AGI - no. Rita. Irrational, but any perceived disapproval doesn't exactly feel great.

Calm down.

How often has this happened? How often has she lost her composure? Not often.

Yes. Think of all the days this hasn't happened. It's only natural that one would slip by. You haven't been sleeping, you know that. You haven't been eating well, you've been obsessing over the Psychoframe, just like always. Just like...

Just like Nanai had warned her not to. This sort of black box technology begs any researcher to unravel its mysteries, to implement fail-safes, to test its limits, to figure out each and every quirk, because knowing, truly knowing, might just be the key to unlocking something better. Something safer. Something more ethical. A reason.

My Reason.

But what was it, then? What was it?

Losing her mind? Or was something playing up in the Psychoframe? The Psycommu out of alignment. Brainwaves being projected, interfering with her own. It makes sense. It makes sense. It's exactly the sort of thing her psyche would dredge up. Her fears. Her trauma. A bit of what she imagined Shelby must have been going through too, to add to the mix. Or the girl that was once Rita - her memories, stirring it all together? The accumulation of all of those things? It's not scary. No, it's not scary. It's just a mystery, right? Another mystery to untangle. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be afraid of.

She can feel herself starting to unclench. The world starting to come into focus as she looks at her reflection in the mirror. A scared little girl, her raven hair mussed, the bruising circles of fatigue beneath her eyes threatening to match it. Yes. The very best person to speak authoritatively about atomic-level networked interfaces that she's only ever worked on in a lab.

Yes. There it is. The imposter syndrome. You really must be calming down.

She lights a cigarette. Puts it between her lips. Lights. Breathes. It's been a long time since she panicked like this. It used to come around more often, but since Axis Shock, anger has replaced it so handily, a fire in her stomach that never seems to go out. A betrayal that never seems to run out. Still. Her panic? It's not a bad record. What, like, one day out of every three hundred? Th--

"It's only one out of every thousand," She'd said, "In a city of a million people, that's maybe a thousand. It's not..."

Shut up.

Her nostrils flare, her stomach lurches all over again. The nausea comes rolling back, her hands go clammy and her face feels hot. She pounds her hand against the edge of the sink and takes a longer drag from her cigarette, staring at herself in the mirror. Seeing the wild look in her eyes. The exhaustion. The fear. Still there. Still there. Not now. Don't drag this out. Not now.

Calm down. Calm down.

"I mean, that's... what, zero point zero, zero, one? Something like that is almost just..."

She rips the cigarette from out of her lips and throws it sharply at the mirror. It bounces off the reflection of her hair with a smoldering spark of white and orange. "I. Know." There's venom in her voice. Not a scream though, or shout. More of a croak. How long has it been since she last screamed? Since she last broke down, and truly allowed herself to be vulnerable? Not even now.

I know. I know the fucking math. Like I could forget. You made sure I'd never forget.

"You'll be alright. I'm sure they're so very..."

Fuck you. She whispers. "Fuck you."

She looks down, and spits into the sink. Her stomach turns, and she looks away, peers back at her cigarette. She slides it into the sink. Briefly turns on the water. It hisses as it's extinguished, the smoke drowned by the water. Like the smoke was never there at all.

It wasn't, after all. It's calming, though, isn't it? Seeing it.

She's calm now. Yeah. Calm.

She kicks the doorway hard with her reinforced boot, her eyes flinching shut. "Get it together, Vulpecula. Go sleep."

Yeah. She'll sleep.

Oh, no.

You won't.

She knows.