Netbug's Story Puppies

Netbug, that was beautiful. Keep going, i can’t wait to read your next one! :smiley:

Thanks! Wait no longer! ^^

WALL-E Spoilers

WALL-E
Tires
Fiction Rating K+
WALL-E/EVE

Shyness was his strong suit.

So there he stood, watching her, with a large pile of tires between them. Those tires were an incredibly sharp double edged sword. He was safe here, but she was on the other side. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be safe anymore. Putting aside the a occasions of getting caught in a dust storm, his current life was the safe one, and the more he watched her the more that life felt boring. But he wasn’t sure enough of that feeling to go up to her, because he didn’t completely understand it.

Was it not logical to try and preserve one’s self? Shouldn’t he stay safe as long and as often as possible? What would approaching her gain him? If WALL-E was anywhere close to a normal robot, he would have been asking himself those questions, or more likely following them without question, but WALL-E was not normal at all. Still, something held him back. Something made him afraid. She was just so… If he said the wrong thing… Hello Dolly! had not explained this emotion.

So logic was pushing him not to go up, emotion was pushing him not to go up, and yet he still couldn’t leave. Why? The only thing pushing him to go up to her was Hal, who he refused to listen to with a frantic shaking of his head. But the roach didn’t listen, and started crawling up towards her. WALL-E sunk deeper behind the tire.

And she fired.

He rose up, shocked. For a few seconds, and for the only time that would ever be recorded, he felt a tear about this emotion inside of him that kept him from leaving.

But, much to WALL-E’s relief, Hal was just fine. His pet came out of the crater and… she put the gun away. WALL-E became less tense as the tip of her arm transformed into four delicate, pretty looking fingers. She actually let Hal crawl up her arm, and seemed fascinated by him. Then the tear was sewn back together by her laugh, and it was a strong stitch. She didn’t have to laugh. She didn’t have to let him come up onto her, but she did. WALL-E didn’t quite understand, but he knew there was something special about that, and he started laughing too.

Oops.

He ran frantically from the blasts of the ion canon, but still the tug-of-war in his heart concerning going or staying wasn’t resolved. He’d run and run, but he refused to leave the area. He couldn’t leave her. He didn’t want to leave her. She was trying to kill him and he just wanted to be there and watch. So he kept hiding behind new piles of tires until they exploded, but soon there were no more piles to hide behind.

He could have run. He could have zig-zagged and possibly avoided being hit. He could have gotten as far away from there as possible and never have seen her again.

But he didn’t want to.

So he cubed up.

He couldn’t go up to her. Something inside him was afraid of that. He couldn’t go away. Everything inside him was afraid of that. Not even his faithful pet was able to solve the tug-of-war for him.

But she could, and she did, flying up to him and demanding he come out. He took the command almost immediately, and glanced up at her. A glance turned into a stare. She was so close to him. She looked so brave, strong, all the things he wished he had been when he was watching her from behind the tires. He took his pet back and simply kept staring at her, for the few words he knew wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He wasn’t able to put his mind together before she had left him there.

He simply sighed.

Excellent! That was a great part of the film, and i got more of it, even though i already knew what happened, it’s still great to read. Netbug, great work! :smiley:

cough coughmorecough

I don’t write much hurt/comfort these days, and WALL-E/EVE is a REALLY hard pairing to write it for, so apologies if this one isn’t very good. ^^;

Spoilers for WALL-E

WALL-E
New Generation
K
WALL-E/EVE

“Wow, look at the old garbage bot!”

“What, is he trying to help or something?”

“No way dude. They have bigger ones for that now. He’d have to be an idiot.”

“Wouldn’t shock me. It’s just a robot after all. They don’t think by themselves or feel or any of that stuff, remember.”

WALL-E did not like kids. At all. Since his only experience with them was the above conversation, could you really blame him?

Of course, they didn’t know any better. This many generations down the road, his story had become less of an “everybody knows” thing and more of a “get out your textbooks” thing. That didn’t make having a huge group of kids calling you a loser as if you couldn’t hear any nicer though. They didn’t even think he cared, which hurt the most. He cared. He cared about a lot of things. Why shouldn’t he have?

The garbage bot always came home the same way, quickly. Tired from his job, he’d rush home to spend some time with her. She was EVE, and she knew him like the back of her hand, so it took all of a second to notice something was wrong when her love came home practically dragging his treads.

“WALL-E?” she asked, flying up to him with a concerned look in her eyes.

He immediately pulled her close.

Robots don’t cry. They are not built to cry. There is no need for them to cry. And yet, EVE felt like one was crying on her right now. She picked him up and returned the hold, closing her eyes and stroking the back of his head a little bit while she hummed softly to calm him down and possibly ever cheer him up. In a strange way, she was also trying to cheer herself up with the embrace. The two of them might as well have been one person. If he was sad, chances were so was she. Simple as that.


“Iiiiiiideeee… Ideooo”

“Idiot?”

“Uh huh!”

“All?”

“No. Unnnfe… Feeeelllliii.”

“Unfeeling.”

“Uh huh.”

EVE scoffed at what WALL-E was telling her. She had half a mind to pull out her ion canon and find whoever had insulted him so much, but WALL-E had passed on a lot of his love for life to her, and she knew that they didn’t know any better. He had already told her they were young. Back when the Captain was alive, he had explained to both of them how humans had to learn as they went along, rather than being programmed. He continued to rant to her. She nodded and helped him with a word when he needed it.

But, even if they had known, maybe the ion canon wasn’t what WALL-E needed her to do right now. What they were doing… just sitting and talking about it… she watched him tell her the story of his day, and strangely he seemed to be happier now despite talking about unhappy things. Maybe all of life’s problems weren’t solved with an ion canon. Maybe all of life’s problems weren’t solved at all. Maybe relationships were sometimes as simple as just being there for him.

And being there for him was something she was happy to do anytime he needed it.

:cry: Poor WALL•E. Man, i’d give those kids a lesson. goes to TSS to find some swords

I think a history lesson would do them better. XD

WALL-E Spoilers
WALL-E
Crying
K+
WALL-E/EVE

He was gone.

That one statement took control of her mind when the pod exploded. He was gone. He was gone.

It was her fault.

He was gone. He was gone. She pulled back the first statement, suddenly finding it appealing. At least, it was more appealing than putting blame upon herself for it.

He was gone. He was gone. It was all her fault. Yank. He was gone.

But no matter how much EVE tried to pretend the second statement wasn’t inside of her, it was. Trying to believe something isn’t there didn’t make it any less real, and it was all her fault. It really was. She was the reason they had been anywhere near the life pods, she was the reason the plant was there, and somehow she was the reason he had went in to get it. Why he felt the need to do these things for her was something she didn’t understand, or did she? Did she understand it better than she wanted to admit? Was there a part of her that understood completely? Not the point. The point was he had went into the life pod for her, and that made it her fault.

So she cried. Tears rolled from her eyes in what her programming knew was a way to convey sadness and something else understood in a deeper sense than a fact. She broke down and cried to express how she felt.

At least, that was the dream of the moment.

But she couldn’t even do that.

What was she? She didn’t feel like a robot, and she knew she wasn’t a human. What was she supposed to be? Why was she blessed with the ability to feel pain in the first place? But contemplating God’s will felt incredibly silly when everything that you’d ever cared for in this world just exploded.

The five stages of grief are merely an outline. When one is going through them, there is always that main stage, but they will also feel hints of others. Despite all the feelings going through EVE’s mind right now, she was still in the stage of denial, and therefore she flew towards the inferno despite everything.

But she never saw the other stages.

Because he was back.

WALL-E Spoilers
WALL-E
An Old Earth Recipe
K
John/Mary

“You have got to try this!”

Mary stared at the small, brown square that her husband was holding in front of her, eyebrow raised. “Uh… What-”

“You know those cocoa beans that they started growing a while ago?” John asked quite enthusiastically.

“Yeah… and this looks nothing like those.”

“It’s crushed up and they added some milk and sugar to it.”

“Beans, milk, and sugar?”

“They found the recipe in some of the old Earth books.”

“John, I’m not sure.”

“Hey, I tried it and liked it. Do you trust me?” He gave her a smile, and it never failed to capture her. Of course she trusted him. More than anybody in the whole world. Was that even a question?

“…Okay, let me have it.” She put out a hand expectantly, and he instead put it directly in her mouth. She blinked and let it sit in her mouth.

There was a pause, but then Mary closed her eyes and smiled. It was the strangest thing she had ever tasted, and one of the best. It wasn’t like any of the other plants she had eaten, no matter how much they had been crushed or cooked or messed with. It took over her whole mouth, and yet she couldn’t figure out a word for it, so she simply asked him for the word. He happily told her and started explaining all the cool stuff that could be done with the old marvel. When he was done with the briefing, she thanked him with a hand hold and a peck on the cheek.

And that’s how John and Mary became two of the first people in 700 years to eat chocolate.

WALL-E Spoilers
WALL-E
Wrong
K

Robots and art did not mix, unless perhaps you were creating art about a robot, but the other way around? Creating a robot to do art? It simply wasn’t done. Even BuynLarge knew this, so they never created an art bot. Instead, they kept painting bots in the area of repairing scuffed walls.

At least, that was what they tried to do.

It all started with the wrong color. Blue, which didn’t match the white wall he was supposed to repair. It did not match. It was an error. And yet… it looked so right against that wall. It was appealing. The VN-GO unit that painted it on there found it appealing anyway. But this was even more wrong than the color he had painted. It was an opinion. He was not supposed to have an opinion. That was so very wrong of him.

“Wrong,” said the steward, cementing that fact, and the robot scrambled to paint over it in the right, white color. Being do dull versus the bright hue he had used by mistake, this took a few coats, but he did it and went on with his job.

But normality for something so wrong can only go so far. After his job, on his way back to his kiosk, he remembered the white wall and it’s moment of color. He looked around at the other white walls that seemed to cover the entire ship, and couldn’t help but wonder what they would look like with color on them. Te more he thought about seeing color in his world, the more it made him happy. Happy was an emotion. He was not supposed to have emotions. Emotions were wrong.

The entire next day was wrong. Grumbling about the blank walls was wrong. Imagining the different colors he could put on them was wrong. Painting stripes of color everywhere he went was wrong. Going of his line was wrong. So incredibly wrong. Leaving your line was crazy wrong. He heard “wrong” from the stewards so many times that day, and had so many warnings, until he found himself in a freeze way with that dreaded word thrown at him one last time before he entered the repair ward.

But then the left him there, and there were no stewards. There were no bots telling him it was wrong any more. The only bots around were just as wrong as he was.

So he painted. He pained his entire cell, flinging every color it had on all the walls and the floor. When it was done, he painted over it. Painting that one little square of ground made him happier than his directive ever had. He was born to paint, an not the way the world wanted him to, but in a greater way than that. But still, he wished he had more space to paint than a little square.

Then one day he heard the sound of an ion cannon hitting the front wall.

Wow, Netbug, keep it up with these “fan puppies”! That’s a lot of Wall-E fanfics! :astonished: They are all so wonderful, and such a fantastic way to express the robots’ feelings. Sorry I missed out on so much, I wanted to wait until I saw the movie. And now that I have, I’ve read all of the previous awesomely written Wall-E fics you made on this thread in one sitting. <img src=“{SMILIES_PATH}/grinandwink.gif” alt=“;-D” title="Grin and

Wink" /> So here I go with comments on a list.

Her Thorn: Not bad for one based on theory.

Cleaning: M-O is so cute; I could picture him doing that. It was so considerate for him to help resolve Wall-E and Eve’s fight.

Rising:: So full of feeling. I love how you put two different viewpoints about themselves and each other.

Crumble: That moment was so emotional for Eve’s thoughts. (It’s short stories like these that have so much meaning contained in them that they just capture me:)

Equality: Terrific take on Wall-E’s feelings. His dream to fly with Eve was beautifully described.

Umbrella: Heh heh, I can imagine that song in my head now. Anyway, who knew so much good feeling and love could be expressed under an umbrella?

Tires: Just from reading that, I instantly replayed that scene in my head. The words really captured that moment, and they could really make me picture it and Wall-E’s feelings of fear, struggle, shyness, and a little of love.

New Generation: Wow, I could feel Wall-E’s pain and Eve’s care. Your writing is just incredible. Those kids in the story really need to find something better to do. Poor Wall-E. Lucky Eve’s there for him.

Crying: Great rewrite of your Crumble story. Each sentence is strong enough to reel me into Eve’s sadness and regret, which you’ve expressed so profoundly.

An Old Earth Recipe: That’s a really good and light-hearted story of John and Mary (nice short break from my favorite robot couple) . Wow, 700 years and now the first couple to taste chocolate. I wonder if they’re any slimmer at this point than when they were on the Axiom.

Wrong: I never realized how much feeling could be in this minor character. It gave me pity for the unlucky thing, put into a prison just for developing an opinion.

Well, there you have it. My feedback for each of the Wall-E mini fanfics you’ve posted here. Overall, they were magnificent and I can’t wait to read more. You’ve got me hooked to them. You’re really talented at this. :wink:

Thank you! Man, I totally forgot to update this place. Time for more fic! ^^

Spoilers for WALL-E

WALL-E
Angel
K+
WALLEVE

“WALL-E?!”

As she held his crunched body close to her, the world around her was spinning. At least, it was as close to a world as the Axiom could be. It was the only world she had known for more than a few days. None of it mattered now. She barely even noticed it jerking around like mad as they tore through space. She just saw him in her arms.

What was he thinking?! So what if the holo-detector closed?! So what?! Why did he do it?! What was it to him if they never got back to Earth if he was dead?! What was it to him if she had a directive?! What was it to him if she was happy or sad or even existed?! What could he have possibly gained from all of this?!

He had followed her around like a puppy dog, no matter what got in his way. She never had figured out how on Axiom… no, how on Earth. She liked his world so much more than hers. She’d never figured out how on Earth he’d followed her back to the Axiom in the first place, much less why.

Well, not completely true. She now knew why he followed her here. He loved her. The real question was why he loved her so much. As she screamed to him, the images from the security camera cycled through her mind. He’d taken such good care of her, and kept her so safe, like she was some kind of angel. It didn’t matter how white her decor was or that she could fly or that her arms were a lot like wings; she felt nothing like an angel. If she were an angel, she’d be able to fix all of this in a heartbeat with the mighty healing powers God had given her. But she was just EVE, closer to Noah’s dove than any sort of angel, but she didn’t feel like a dove either.

He wasn’t responding to her call. She couldn’t take it. “WALL-E!” she screamed at her top volume. Still no answer. She kept calling while she held him close, as if that alone would keep him with her.

Everybody on the Lido Deck started towards the exit, and EVE finally snapped back into reality. They were on Earth. She had a directive to complete.

“Move!”

That really expanded the moment. :smiley: Really great job, keep it up. I loved EVE’s comparison of herself to an angel and to Noah’s dove. It was brilliant. I never realized how much the movie resembled in a way to Noah’s Ark.

Thanks. More where that came from. ^^

WALL-E (SPOILERS)
Define Weather
K

72 degrees and sunny. It was always that way on the Axiom. 72 degrees and sunny. That was supposed to be the perfect weather. It was supposed to make the world that was the Axiom the perfect place to live. For most people, this plan was an incredible success

Captain McCrea looked out the window of his bridge into that world, and for the first time realized how boring it was.

“Rain,” his computer had told him. “Also known as precipitation. A weather pattern during which droplets of water fall from clouds in the sky that they were formerly evaporated into.” The definition was accompanied by several pictures, including a few with humans in them. Most of those humans seemed displeased by the rain, and he couldn’t figure out why. The computer told him rain wasn’t usually toxic when he asked if it was. What was the problem?

It got him looking at more types of weather. Snow, wind, hail, humid, the list went on and on. The more he learned about Earth, the more alien it felt to him, and yet the more fascinating it sounded. As he looked out that window, he imagined the Lido Deck experiencing different kinds of weather. He imagined their faces upon seeing something so peculiar. But McCrea, being the logical fellow he was, having never really imagined much before, and not knowing of any weather modification system aboard the Axiom, moved the setting of his imagination to a place where the odd conditions made sense. The only option was Earth.

The imagination is a great source of dreams. He looked over at his shelves, at the globe and model of the Axiom there, and it got him dreaming more.

So he went over and picked them up.

WALL-E (SPOILERS)
Disposal
K+
WALLEVE

Garbage towered above her on all sides, threatening to bury her even more and allowing little light to slip through to her optics. She was so small compared to all of it, and now that her feelings were getting a grip on her, she realized how lonely and desolate it all was.

At that moment, EVE saw exactly what WALL-E’s life was like.

Wait… WALL-E!

“WALL-E!”

The room began to rumble. She tried again, more loudly this time.

“WALL-E!”

Then she was picked up in the garbage and the irony. But she kept calling out to him, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. Was she expecting him to save her? He didn’t look ready to play hero last time she was him. Did she want to save him? Well, of course she wanted to, but could she? Or maybe, she just wanted to hear his voice in all of this. Maybe, she just wanted to not be alone, and for him to be alive even for one more moment.

Maybe, she just wanted to know she was near him.

It turned out she was only a cube away.

She saw him there, so close and yet what felt like forever away in her current state. He said her name, or the name he called her anyway. That was fine. She was really starting to like that name more anyway for some reason. Maybe it was the voice behind it. That voice was calling to her, and she saw the owner of the voice that huge cube over from her. Now that she heard it, a part of her wished it hadn’t. It was still his voice, which made something inside of her dance like an idiot, but it was so weak. So incredibly weak, especially in comparison with the cheerful and optimistic voice he usually had when he said that name. The light in his voice being gone grabbed another part of her and stole the light from its very heart.

Yet, he was still calling it. The words behind the voice hadn’t changed a bit. Despite his condition, he was still calling out to her and reaching her way. Both parts of her, the dancing and the dark, refused to let that voice down.

In what would be considered a clear sign of a defective (not to mention insane) model to any diagnostic robot, she caught herself in her own explosion, blasting away all the debris around her and immediately zooming over to him. He didn’t look any better close up, and she worried about pulling him out. He looked so fragile, like he’d snap in half if she put even the smallest amount of pressure on him. She tried to work around him, removing the garbage holding him as she stroked him comfortingly. This actually seemed to be working.

Then the doors behind her shut, and she had to hold onto him for her life.

She prayed internally, and wouldn’t let go. She refused to let go. If she let go of him, he’d take her heart with him and she’d follow.

She wouldn’t let go.

Her prayers were answered by a small, cleaner bot keeping the door from closing.

She wouldn’t let go.

She grabbed onto him with her free hand.

She wouldn’t let go.

Soon, she and WALL-E fell to the floor, and the doors started opening back to relative safety.

She wouldn’t let go. Not now, not ever.

…Forgive me for this one fandom. XD

WALL-E (SPOILERS)
EVE’s Special Trait
K
Light WALLEVE

EVE was, to say the least, incredibly confused.

It was not even a week since they arrived on Earth, and already a large number of robots were somehow finding the time to follow EVE around constantly. It was a big piece of deja vu for obvious reasons, but it didn’t seem like the same reason WALL-E had followed her. Even so, it annoyed WALL-E to no end, if only because it annoyed EVE. There was also, of course, the little issue that he couldn’t get a single moment alone with EVE outside the truck. In the morning, they were in front of the home waiting, and would follow EVE till the end of the day.

This went on for days on end. At first, EVE would turn back and while a little, thinking that maybe they’d go away. Eventually, when it was clear this wasn’t working, she just started ignoring them. It was all she could do, seeing how she was trying to control her bad habit of pulling her cannon at everything.

Then it got to a week straight.

“What?!” EVE finally turned and asked. More deja vu. She screamed so loud that WALL-E himself cubed up a little. The following robots all gave her a confused look, as if they didn’t know what was weird. Seriously? “You! Following! Why?!”

The question seemed to click, and the bots beeped amongst themselves, trying to figure out how to respond. EVE crossed her arms, glaring impatiently. The group pushed a small robot up, apparently the representative.

“EVE… Shiny.”

There was a long silence throughout every robot in the squabble.

“…Serious?” EVE asked, dumbfounded.

All the following robots nodded.

She just stared at them for a moment, then her eyes returned to their annoyed look and she pointed her ion cannon at them. “Leave,” she commanded.

Would she actually shoot? They didn’t know. EVE wasn’t sure she knew at this point. She knew better, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t tempted. The little group didn’t want to sty and find out. They all scattered. WALL-E started to uncube more when EVE put the cannon away.

“Home,” she said, still annoyed, grabbing WALL-E’s hand and practically dragging him back to the truck.

WALL-E (SPOILERS)
Tracks
K
WALLEVE

For the first time, she noticed them.

Tracks in the dirt, going every which way that was possible for her little garbage bot.

She wondered how many were his. How long had he been so alone? How many of the tracks of his brothers had been completely eroded away? Were his the only ones left? Could all these track marks be from the WALL-E she knew, roaming by himself? Wasn’t he ever tired of it? Didn’t he ever complain? How could he keep those tracks so fresh, despite everything?

Or maybe that was what she loved about him.

Wow, that’s quite a few at once.

It took me a while to understand Eve’s Special Trait, but once I did, it became my favorite out of these four. :smiley:
Disposal was so intense, I could almost hear Eve in my head.
Great job! I’m impressed you can come up with so many.

Thanks! ^^

Just one tonight. Kinda getting back into the swing. This week’s been dry art wise on my part.

WALL-E
Compassion
K+
WALL-E/EVE
Guess what? Still spoilers!

The day that EVE asked about WALL-E’s 700 years alone, she realized he’d been waiting for that question to come up a while. Within moments, he was giving her a prepared abridged version of his story the best he could with his dialect. But by a few minutes in, she wondered why he’d ever wanted to tell her. Was it that important to him that she knew?

After all, and he sat next to her on a bench, he was throwing his heart on the ground in front of her. It was as if he was just now realizing how much it had hurt. She nodded and listened, nodded and listened, a compassionate look on her face as she held his hand.

Compassion.

It felt so fake right now.

Compassion was partly the act of feeling somebody’s pain. To feel somebody’s pain, you must have at least an imagined idea of what the pain was like. But this, the story WALL-E told her with one of the most serious looks she’d seen in a while from him, went beyond her imagination.

700 years.

700 years.

When he first started getting a sad look on his face, those two words hit her like a ton of bricks. But she just continued to listen, in a slight daze.

It didn’t take long for her to look ten times more devastated than he was by the story, and he noticed.

“…Evah?”

“WALL-E!”

She grabbed him, holding him tightly against her, eyes closed sadly as a spark passed between them.

“Evah?” he asked again.

Her reply was different this time, and quite simple.

“Stay.”

She had to try. She had to try and understand. She had to try and be compassionate for him. But to stand the pain, she was going to need him there. After all, he was the stronger of the two.

Aw, that’s a sweet story! Guess what? I can feel Eve’s pain feeling Wall-E’s pain!

WALL-E (Spoilers)
Space
K
Idea by Gojira007
WALLEVE if you squint/stand on your head.

Space.

That was the first word that came into EVE’s mind, hitting her even before her directive’s commands could. Space, and tons of it, awaited within her reach on this forlorn planet known as Earth.

The development center, the room where a Buy n Large robot first receives it’s programming, is quite different from the repair ward. Instead of having a jail cell likeness looming over it, the room is completely surrounded by windows. The inner windows looked into a tunnel of the Axiom, as if to scream “look at the great new robots we’re working on for you!” There were also the windows that looked out of the ship, into what would be complete darkness if not for the stars and the glow resonating from the massive star-liner. That was all EVE had known, being the first of a new set of EVE probes produced after humanity had long been away from Earth. EVE remembered receiving her programming in that room. There were so many times when EVE was being programmed, feeling bored out of her mind (though she didn’t understand that emotion, and simply thought it was a side effect of the programming work), that she’d look out one of those windows into the stars thoughtfully. It made her curious (though she didn’t understand curious either) to learn a little more about it. For outside of that little cramped world floating through the stars, there was what seemed like an infinitely vast new (better?) world. It was complete and utter nothingness, yet so appealing, putting a strange tingling sensation into her arms that doubled as her wings at the thought of being out in that world. Soon enough, she learned the word for it; space. Of course, when she downloaded this vocabulary file from the resource center, it came with a list of meanings, not limited to the one she related the word to. Space also meant any area that had nothing in it.

This dirty world in front of her now was space, and yet it wasn’t, and yet it was. The paradox spun her mind for a moment before logic kicked in. Even when she got over that, something felt wrong. This world and all its space just felt so utterly wasted, with nothing but junk for miles and miles. Beautiful junk, because there was so much space around it, but still junk. Nothing else was here as far as she knew. The setting of her reconnaissance hit something inside of her hard. For once, she understood the emotion. It was ambition. Her directive was practically taunting her with this land that was she was supposed to help start the recolonizing of.

Space.

The ship closed back up.

Space.

It launched back into space, to return in a week or so. She watched it go.

Space.

She looked at that word, still standing in front of her directive, and she realized she’d never get to the later unless she dealt with space first. Besides, it wasn’t like anybody could see her, and it’d only be a moment.

So she spun up into the air and flew. She went up and down and in circles every which way she could without losing sight of the place the ship had left her and therefore wanted her to start her search from. No big deal.

At least, she thought it was no big deal.

Space.

That word was going to change her life.

oh wonderful…straight to the heart.