we know we once were gods | Glowfic Constellation

An actual god. Vaayo's not sure whether to bow and hope she doesn't kill him or refuse to bow just on principle. He doesn't move for a while. He has to make himself breathe on purpose.

...She's probably going to get angry if he doesn't go in, isn't she. Okay. He goes through the door, slowly, tentatively.

She makes encouraging faces and babbles.

(A person, yay. Who doesn't seem okay at all, really, aah.)

The door closes behind him. This is a small room containing nothing but two doors and another screen on the right. After a few moments, the far door opens.

Oh. She can shut the doors, too. Of course she can. He's not getting out of here if she's displeased. Great. It would be so much easier to decide how to deal with that if only he understood why she didn't help before.

He goes through the new door.

How do you say 'please talk to me'?

Well, 'please go this way' she seems to have worked out okay. The lights will continue to lead Vaayo through hallways, containing offices and maintenance spaces and storage rooms and other things, and past it all.

He walks the whole way in respectful silence.

And comes to a door marked with a vertical and horizontal red line, which L1N points at urgently.

That expression really doesn't look like the expression of someone who feels in control of the situation, now that Vaayo thinks about it. Or okay at all. Maybe the problem is that the gods are trapped in the rubble and need help getting out?

He repeats the thing the voice told him earlier.

"Whaaaat? No. Wherever you heard that... You," point, "go in," point, "So the autodoc can look at your leg."

Maybe it's an insult or overly familiar. ...Maybe he should stand here and say it again?

Nah, it seems like there's a language barrier, it's possible she doesn't know how little Vaayo respects her yet. He goes through the door.

The next room is full of beds with a lot of shiny white machinery surrounding them. L1N tries to indicate that he should lie on one. Or at least sit on that chair over there? Please??

It's entirely possible she's overreacting and this human is actually totally fine, she doesn't know how humans work, the autodoc does.

He examines the things she's gesturing at but it obviously wouldn't make any sense for her to ask him to come all this way just for a place to rest for a minute.

"I'm not sure what you want me to do about your, uh, barracks?"

He's talking.

Translation program, I know I'm not gonna make any sense, give me something to say. "I'm sure you about do," point at bed, "Barracks!"

He doesn't laugh. He manages to make his smile a pleasant, friendly expression.

He sits on the bed while he waits to figure out what's going on.

A robotic arm moves from its resting spot suddenly, with a low whirr.

His leg, his leg, L1N tells it.

The end of the arm with its strange instruments moves down to about chest height. It says, "Please lie flat on the bed for treatment."

Oh, he's going to be a human sacrifice. Okay. That wasn't how he wanted this trip to end but there's no use crying over it.

He flops down like he owns the bed and just happens to be getting comfortable. He imagines his blood staining the sheets.

The arm moves over him, clicking ominously, L1N's worried face looking on, and...

Carefully inspects the cut made by that rusty bit of metal, back in the tower. It pokes him with something that makes a little pof noise and numbs the dull lingering pain surprisingly well. It gently cleans the nearly-closed cut with some sort of cool liquid, then produces pristine white bandages from somewhere to wrap it. It says things in monotone. It asks a question. L1N tells it to skip the questions and has to poke it for a few seconds before convincing it that its patient is incapable of responding.

It investigates his chest, head, neck, arm, and pretty much all of the rest of him in various ways, with light pressure and cold instruments. Then the arm pulls back. Nothing happens for a few moments. It pokes him again, this time on his arm, and the needle stays in for a second or two before retracting. It places a plastic cup full of water on the table near the head of the bed. It says some more things. Then it folds up back into its recess.

...Yeah, okay, showing restraint is hard and it's not like he actually has any idea how he wants to present himself. He has no idea what's even happening but the gods are still here, still alive, still powerful, still perfectly capable of healing people.

"Why do you care about my cut and not the people who die here? Why do you wait down here instead of helping people who can't come to you? Why did you let Viek die? Why did you leave us?"

His language is almost certainly in the same family as lots of other languages she knows, sort of like how Welsh is in the same language family as Sanskrit.

"Why do you-" She shakes her head. She has no idea what he's saying - well, slightly less of 'no idea' than before, the program is starting to generate a few tentative guesses.

But he's angry and upset and tense and afraid and she doesn't know how to help him yet and she doesn't know where everyone else is. Instead she just looks pained.

Maybe she should send some of her robots outside of the complex. She doesn't want to, it feels... Improper. Not Allowed. She's supposed to keep to herself when she's on the ground. (She doesn't know why she thinks that, which is concerning, but not very concerning compared to this human, hurting right in front of her.)

"Why do I what, why do I ask you why you're hiding down here? Why do I disrespect you? Why are you making that face at me?"

...He really hopes the answer isn't because she's trapped and can't actually do anything but clean cuts and light lights. Then he'd have to feel bad about this.

I do not understand you." She borrows the word for 'understand'.

That is a really concerning face and he has no idea what the divine verb is.

He watches her face.

...She sighs. "Blah blah blah. I talk. Now you talk."

"You want to learn this language, don't you. Fine. That's a bed. That's a chair. I'm a person, you're a god. This is my head, these are my shoulders, these are my hands..."

Most of the things he knows words for aren't in this room and most of the things in this room are things he doesn't know any words for. He runs out of vocabulary pretty fast.

"I want to learn! Yes! Learn! Learn what you want. Learn - not what - other people are?"

Interacting through the screens is getting annoying. She starts to fix her android ahead of all the other little things that need fixing.