Mission Log 001

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

Who: Buzz Lightyear and Brainiac 5
What: The World's Greatest Superhero, now the World's Greatest New Hire, is getting an upgrade.
Where: the Lab
When: Immediately after Buzz's New Hire interview, where his memory was forcibly erased and his delusion of being a real space ranger was locked in by Jorgmund.
Warnings/Notes: Forced memory loss, manipulation and gaslighting.



The fact that this universe is populated exclusively by giants and that his flight capabilities are currently disabled is nothing that Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger(tm) is allowing to slow him down. They weed out the easily frustrated early in the academy. The giants of Jorgmund don't offer to carry him, and he doesn't ask, jogging along between his orientation team on the way to the labs. They also weed out those with poor constitutions early in the academy, and he arrives not winded at all.

"If anyone can figure your -" a snicker "jetpack's problems out, it's the green meanie here," one of the interviewers who discovered the toy's play-demo switch says, stopping by Brainiac 5's table.

Buzz notes the tone, and misunderstanding the snicker, frowns. This world's courtesy is obviously strained by their imminent crisis, but being rude to each other isn't going to hold their potential apocalypse off any longer than it already is. The interviewer reaches down to offer him a hand up, but Buzz ignores the hand, backing up to do a running jump against the wall, using the leverage to grab the diagonal bar that braces the leg of the table. He climbs, pulling himself hand over hand up the inclined bar, grabs the lip of the table and pulls himself up and on.

"Just because we're facing the end of the world is no reason to forego courtesy," he admonishes the interviewer, whose authority he's not sure of, and who he'd address the correction to anyway if he were yet advised on the ship's chain of command. Turning to the green-skinned lab tech, he salutes crisply. "Space Ranger Lightyear, reporting for repairs. It seems my jetpack, laser, and air monitors were disabled during entry into your atmosphere."

The interviewers barely manage to hold back their mocking laughter behind the action figure, who clearly has never actually had a real jetpack attached to his plastic form in his plastic life.

"You heard the Space Ranger," the second interviewer directs Brainy. "Make that laser happen."

The other interviewer fingerguns at Brainy, whispering "pew pew pew" under his breath.

Comments

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

The fear that relieves is so heavy Buzz has to breathe a few deep breaths not to overreact to it.

He can't thank Brainy enough. No really, he can't - not without alerting his handler to suspicion, and blowing their cover immediately.

He has to settle for a whispered "Thank you."

The relief is intense, but he's still consumed with so many other worries. He's going to have to maintain yet another masquerade, and if he doesn't, he won't be the only one on the chopping block for it. It's a secret mission in uncharted space.

It finally hits him that they are asking him to be a real Space Ranger, and he's getting the tools to do it. Of course this isn't Star Command - this is a pack of lunatics who thought it was a great idea to deliberately trap someone in a delusion and then give them a deadly weapon.

He doesn't have the space to really dive into that yet.

"They have a friend of mine. A cowboy ragdoll. Have you seen him?"

Where's Woody is the real thing he needs to focus on next.

[googledox]

"Ragdoll?" Really?

Brainy overlooks it for now. Perhaps it's another toy with an overly advanced AI, rigged with some kind of armature to have mobility.

"No," Brainy says, finishing up his work on the jet pack. "But if he was captured like you, they'll most likely consider him too much of an asset to kill him. Even immediate subversiveness is privy to shock punishment, not death. Beings with a small stature would offer them potential advantages as agents in the field."

It doesn't take long for him to finish the jetpack. He sets Buzz upright again.

"There. Alongside self-contained power sources, I've installed a gas monitor, radiation pager, a laser with cutting and stun settings, a functioning jetpack, and a small comms device."

He taps the arm that has a snap open lid.

"The interface is installed in your forearm." He raises his eyebrows. "I apologize for doing the work without genuine consent. Unfortunately, I don't see any way around it, if you're to maintain the guise of being under their control."

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

There's a determined set to Buzz's plastic jaw and real gratitude in his eyes as Brainy sets him upright again.

The handlers can mistake it for an emotional overreaction to the cool upgrades, but while it was always clear to anyone who cared to look that there is a person behind those flat doll eyes, now there's significantly more of one.

Buzz tamps down on that, saluting stiffly and announcing in a bombastic Space Ranger voice, "You are a credit to your labor union, Sage Technician! Star Command thanks you for your intellectual and surgical contribution!"

"Ugh, are you finally done?" asks the handler, taking out one airpod.

The handler glaces at Buzz as he attempts to look as vacant as possible, and manages a pretty good job of making his eyes point just slightly different ways.

[googledox]

"Yes, but I would like to take him to an area where it's safe for him to use the tech for a field test to see if any calibrations need to be made. The training area would suffice."

"Fine," says the handler. "You can bring him back if any new work needs to be done."

Brainy stands to go.

"Wait one second. Turn out your pockets," the handler says. Brainy rolls his eyes and does so. "Now hold out your arms."

The handler comes over and does a quick pat down that's fortunately not that obtrusive, just to make sure he hasn't sneaked any tools into his clothes.

"Okay, go ahead," he says, shadowing him as he leaves the lab.

Brainy holds out a hand for Buzz to hop on.

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

Since he doesn't know how to use the jetpack yet, Buzz jumps on.

"Great idea, viridian intellectual. I'm intrigued to see how your planet's tech compares to that of Star Command," he nearly yells, laying it on perhaps a smidge too thick because, as Bonnie's Room theater productions have proven, Buzz is not the greatest actor.

And also because, in the space left by the absence of his fear, it's starting to sink in that he has a real jetpack now.

[googledox]

The handler hovers until finally peeling off near the training area to go through one of the staff doors.

Brainy takes him into the empty training room and kneels, setting him down, staying there on the floor so they can talk.

"Were you properly apprised of our situation before they blocked your memory?"

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

Properly apprised? By people who immediately trapped him in a delusion?

"I highly doubt it. They left Woody and me in a room until we got up to find a way out, then zip tied me to a chair and shocked me until I couldn't stay inanimate. I didn't know I could feel anything that much!"

The intense pain and the intense horror coming back breaks his fake Ranger bearing and Buzz paces against the anxiety.

"They asked a series of inane questions and they must have had a polygraph of some kind."

Yes. A polygraph. (Occasionally when all the humans are away, the toys do watch a less-scary crime show or two.)

"The -" Buzz's anger breaks a little, as he remembers how they got his own design's flaw from his own mouth. "The last question - the only true answer lead them to that."

He points to his back, past the jetpack where his now nonfunctioning switch is hidden.

"I don't remember what happened between then and when I woke up on your table."

Reminded of the cameras that destroyed his and Woody's cover, he looks around the room. "Are they still watching us right now?"

[googledox]

"We believe the cameras in all New Hire areas have been rendered nonfunctional by a sympathetic AI who is as dissatisfied with having to serve Jorgmund as we are. The one that functioned enough to catch you on tape was likely functional because it was in one of the corporate areas."

He paused.

"Wait a moment, you tried to pretend you were inanimate? Ah, I see, you were trying to pretend you were a normal toy and hide that you had an AI."

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

Buzz blinks a few times.

"Oh you're giving my planet way too much credit."

Earth is fine and all but it's no fantastic technological wonderland.

"This is - this is sort of a first contact situation, isn't it?" Buzz half-laughs. It's kind of a joke. "Not that we havent contacted people before but we don't . . . talk to them." Maybe some of that anxiety hes feeling is - yup, it's the impulse to play inanimate, rising up stronger the longer he talks to a person. "Like we're doing now."

Not that he's ever known who made the Rules, but he sure is breaking a lot of them right now.

"I don't have an AI. The most advanced thing I had until I got on your table was an LED."

[googledox]

"Then how are you -" He stops, looking annoyed, because there are only so many options here. He sighs, and says flatly, "It's magic, isn't it."

It's the whimsy, you see. If a living toy didn't have AI, what other nonsense would give it life?

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

Buzz . . . shrugs.

What else can he say? "I never asked." Pause. "Not that I've ever spoken to anyone who could answer any of those kinds of questions."

As always, there's something more important to him right now.

"I have to find my friend. He can't be reset like I could, but who knows how they're torturing him right now?"

[googledox]

"Unless he attacks our captors, once he's released into the New Hire areas he won't be harmed. They only punish disobedience or attempts at insurrection. He's probably fine. Many of us have gone through their-" quotey fingers "'onboarding' process."

Brainy stands anyway.

"I can help you search for him. I have the areas that are open to us mentally mapped. That way you can search efficiently. I can explain our situation as we search."

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

"Attack? He's a rag doll."

Frankly, Buzz has fought Woody before. They only thing he really has going for him is a high pain tolerance.

Buzz is already on his feet, eager to go, but immediately remembers that its ... not going to convenient to keep up with someone Brainy's size.

Unless.

"Can you . . . Tell me how to use the jetpack first?"

[googledox]

Brainy points to his arm.

"The green button activates it. Sensors in your hands and forearms control direction and speed."

He takes several minutes to show him how the new equipment works.

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

There are at least a few minutes of careening comedically out of the room out of control before Buzz gets the hang of it.

But eventually, he does, and already this whole day has contained far too many emotions for his tiny plastic body to handle. Flying - actually flying, successfully, sustained, under his own power, makes him cry.

Not literal tears, but the emotion is so overwhelming that he has to take a few moments out, landing on the ground with a clatter as the jetpack flames give out.

"I'll be fine. I'll be fine," he insists, wiping nonexistent tears out of his eyes. "It's been a big day."

He really needs to find his buddy .... but hes also got to address something else. When Buzz has his composure under control again, he looks at Brainy seriously.

"I know I must have said some stupid things while I was out of it, but I know I'm not a superhero. Having a laser that actually works hasn't changed that."

He knows who he is. And it isn't who he thought, so vividly, that he was.

He's always going to have to deal with that hurting, to one degree or another.

"But I'm not going to forget this. And since you are a superhero -"

Hey, he said so, and Buzz doesn't even know this being's name yet, but he already trusts and respects him more than just about any being he has had the honor to meet.

"- I know you're going to tell me you didn't help me so I'd owe you. And if I did, I probably never would be able to pay all this back. But I'd be honored if I ever got the chance to be of any service to you one day. Sir."

He salutes Brainy, for the third time that day. But this time it's slower, more meaningful, fully sincere as a gesture of deference and respect.

[googledox]

There's a lot of context to be gained simply by the difference between his "demo" state and this. It seems as if there was once a time he didn't know he was a toy. Now, he does. The transition must've been jarring, even if it wasn't the transition of an AI gaining sentience and self-awareness.

Brainy doesn't want to even imagine what it would feel like if he were to find out his being a Legionnaire was a delusion.

Brainy reaches out a hand and gently pushes Buzz's hand back down again with a finger, not wanting him to feel he needs to salute.

"You may not currently be a superhero, but our circumstances are dire. Our fellow New Hires need our help and there are people in this world who have faced the apocalypse and deserve aid against the hardships facing them."

He tilts his head.

"I see it an investment. You can thank me by helping others with it as best as you can." He adds, "A large stature is not a pre-requisite for being a superhero, after all. The reason I can make tech in miniature is because a teammate of mine is from a species with the ability to shrink. She's done more acts of heroism while six inches tall than many will do in a lifetime."

Brainy stands up.

"Now, let's find your friend. He's likely concerned about you as well, and this place can be intimidating when you're alone."

[toinfinity_andbeyond]

The fact that he caved under torture and gave their captors valuable (to him) information has been weighing Buzz down even now that his most exploitable weakness is no longer a factor, but the fact that the first person he's (voluntarily) talked to is a superhero - who has invested in him -

Nothing was more unexpected when he began this day, but nothing could have lifted his spirits more.

It's a secret mission, in uncharted space!

It started poorly but he must - and he will rise to the occasion.

"You're right. He must be going out of his mind with worry."

That's not an insult. Buzz just knows Woody and his brand of muppet flailing to know it's probably true. With his newfound handle on his newfound ability to fly, Buzz lifts off and hovers only slightly unsteadily at Brainy's eye level.

"By the way, what's your moniker? Your superhero name."

[googledox]

"Brainiac 5, but my friends called me Brainy."

He smiles to make it very clear that Buzz can county himself as one.