SPACE STATIONS > The Libra

Of Robots and Insanity(Open)

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Anonymous:
Abarri sat on the ground, reading through the book her mother had given to her. It was so interesting! Man, she didn’t know she was this complicated! Now, if she could only learn how to build robots of her own….

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of five men in silver uniforms, with strange looking guns at their sides. The girl leapt to her feet, a look of concerned shock in her eyes. She turned to run towards the house, when one of the men drew his weapon and fired it at her.

She screamed as loud as she could, as her body filled with pain, and she fell to her knees. She tried to get back up, but nothing was responding. Her mind was filling with panic, and she started to scream for help, before she felt a hand cover her mouth and lift her up as if she was merely a rag doll.

No! This couldn’t be happening! She had to get away! But it was happening, and there was nothing she could do. Panicked tears filled her eyes, as she continued to try and scream, even though it was too muffled to do any good.

The man shoved her into a helicopter, and laid an EMP device on her neck. The next thing she knew she was in a strange box, with bars lining the farthest wall. It was not big enough to stand, but it was big enough to sit comfortably.

Of course, Abarri noticed none of this, or the fact that she was now wearing the same sort of uniform as the men who had captured her. She only saw the bars, and the fact that they held her in.

“Help! Mom!� were the words she screamed over and over, as she hurled herself against the bars again and again, for about ten minutes. She finally collapsed into a crying heap, leaning against the bars and hugging her arms to her chest.

“Nobody’s coming to save you,� one of the scientists finally said, a devilish smirk etched on his face. He strode over to the cage, and opened it up, grabbing the girl before she even had a chance to escape.

Abarri exploded with desperate flailing as he pulled her over to an examination table, and proceeded to strap her down. The other scientists gathered around, their eyes just as sadistic as the first scientist’s were.

“Please, let me go!� Abarri said as she struggled against the straps. “I want my Mommy! Please, just let me go home!�

“This is your home,� one of the scientists said, as he pulled a scalpel of a tray and proceeded to cut into Abarri’s artificial skin. The pain receptors caused her to scream in agony, but it was nothing compared to what happened next.

The man attached a device to the nerve endings of the newly exposed area, and pressed a button. The device was to see how her receptors responded to pain, and the only way to do that was to cause it.

She suddenly felt her whole body light up with pain such as she had never experienced before, and she begged the men to stop, to just let her go home. She continued to cry out to her mother, which made the scientists smirk even more.

“You are a robot,� one of them said. “You have no mother. You were built as a sick imitation of true life, and nobody is going to miss you. You are ours now, and you’d better get used to it.�

Finally, after what seemed like hours(because it was hours), the scientists finished their experiment, and dragged the whimpering girl back to her “room�. She backed away as far as she could, her eyes filled with oily tears.

“See you next time,� one of the scientists said with a laugh, before the group turned and left.

Abarri didn’t respond, but continued to cower in the cage.

“Mommy…�
-------------------------------
Dreams can tell us a lot of things, but sometimes all they are cruel nightmares. This is why Lana hated to sleep. But her body had been built to require it, and unfortunately dreams as well.

She looked around her surroundings, and the dream started to slowly fade back into her subconscious, and the present day began to assert itself. She was on a ship that was heading to Space Station Libra. She had never been there before, but she had heard that it was a nice…

Wait! Where was everybody going? It was then that she noticed that the crowd that had been sitting near her were all standing up and heading towards the door, which happened to be open, revealing the docking bay of Libra.

She quickly got up and latched onto the very end of the crowd, as they spilled out onto the station. They all started to fan out in multiple directions, leaving Lana to ponder just what she was going to do. Which way should she go? What exactly should she do here?

She didn’t have much time to think, because a group of station guards were suddenly upon her. Their faces were stoic, and looked more like robots than she ever had.

“You can’t have that here,� one of them said, pointing to the stun wand hanging around her waist. He held out his hand, and seemed to be waiting for her to hand it over to him.

Unfortunately for Lana, she did not do well with people in uniform stomping over to her. It reminded her way too much of the scientists who had ruined her life, and caused her to involuntarily back away from the men.

This, of course, made them believe she was ignoring their commands, and trying to walk away. One of the guards laid a hand on her shoulder, in a simple attempt to keep her from leaving. He was about to tell her again that she couldn’t leave until they had confiscated her weapon, but he never got the chance.

“Let go of me,� Lana screamed, her sudden outburst ringing out across the bay. She tried to pull away, which simply made the guard’s grip intensify. Now she was starting to panic in full force. She started to scream once again, this time even more shrilly than before.

The other guards moved in to try to calm her down, and were unprepared for the stun wand that was now in her right hand. She managed to hit one guard before the weapon was wrenched from her hands.

This made things a lot more serious. She was no longer some woman having a mental episode in the docking bay. She was now a woman who had injured a guard during a mental episode on the docking bay.

The guards swarmed over her, and managed to secure her hands behind her back with a high tech pair of handcuffs. They dragged the screaming woman to the elevators, eager to get her safely into the brig.

Lana’s perception was a bit skewed at the moment. She no longer saw the guards, but instead saw the scientists who had taken away her life once, and were about to do it again. She struggled as hard as she could to get away from the guards, terror seeping from every pour in her body.
-----------------------------
Placing Lana in a cell to calm her down might have been a good idea, except for the fact that she was terribly claustrophobic. She had finally realized what had happened, though. Now she had the worry of what the officials of the station would do to her, along with the terror of being in a small, enclosed space.

She shut her eyes to try to block out the walls that seemed to be closing in on her, but it really didn’t help. If she had a stomach, it would have been queasy at this point in time.

Anonymous:
Utari wore the typical white lab coat. It marked her as a scientist and prevented her from spilling too much on her usual clothes. She was a bit older than some of the others of the lab-- there were many interns, all of them children in her eyes. She struggled at times treating them as co-workers rather than children.

She was not a young woman, nor was she flawless. Her skin had grown softer, her eyes had creases, her scared hands spoke of a lifetime of working with them. She was sweet and motherly, but there was also a deep loneliness that never managed to leave her eyes completely, even when she was happy.

Today, she was supposed to be helping sort the new refugees into their quarters, help them get settled seeing as the other senior scientist of her particular department had pulled rank and flat out refused to deal with that many people. In her opinion, it was for the best. He was not a warm man, and the people that usually came into Lybia had had more than enough trauma without meeting the grumpy old coot.

Now what was that? "Keep moving, come along now, get yourselves signed in for housing. We'll get you a hot meal soon, come along" She urged, her voice amplified to be heard over the den of milling people as well as the shrieking girl. She'd have to see what that was about later. She well knew criminals could be any gender or species, but those screams had sounded more like terror than aggression to her. The guards were not known for their subtlety or their compassion. She'd been studying people and bioengineering for ages. People were everything to her. She relied on them much more than most scientists did. She was willing to be wounded over and over again, never giving up on people, finding the reward more than worth the risk.

Getting the group organized and passing off the actual signing in processes to the interns, she went in search of the head of the guards with every intention of getting to the bottom of things. Certainly if it was a threat, she wasn't going to meddle too much, but if it was a mentally disturbed patient, locking the individual in a dark cell was not going to help much at all.

Anonymous:
“Well, I see our favorite bleeding heart just couldn’t wait to stick her nose in things,� the head guard said, as he saw Utari coming up towards him. He was standing next to Lana’s cell, a look of cold disdain etched on his face.

“Do you know what this psycho did,� he asked, his words spilling out in a waterfall of ranting. “She freaked out when we tried to take her weapon away, and /stunned/ one of my guards! Then she screamed and carried on when we tried to subdue her. It took eight men just to get her down here. In my opinion, she should just rot down here. I have more important things to do than deal with some crazy with vampire eyes.�

He tapped a monitor on the wall, and a picture of the cell became visible, and the room was suddenly illuminated by an overhead light. Lana was still crouched down, her eyes shut to keep out the encroaching confines of her cell. When the light hit her face, Lana opened her eyes, eyes that were burning with absolute terror.

“As you can see, she’s perfectly fine,� he said as he studied the cell. “She isn’t even screaming anymore. So, why don’t you go away, and find someone else to bother? I think I can take care of one violent nutcase…�

He pressed the monitor, and the cell was once again blanketed by darkness. He crossed his arms, and waited for Utari to leave. He knew she probably wouldn’t, and would try to talk to the prisoner, but he could always dream, couldn’t he?
------------
For a few precious moments, the light made the room a little bit more tolerable. All too soon, it was shut off again, and the room seemed to shrink even further. Lana didn’t know how much longer she would be able to keep as calm as she was. She was inches away from screaming her head off, but she didn’t want to cause anymore of a scene than she already had.

Anonymous:
Utari looked at the guard with bored distaste. It was always the same. He always insisted the terrified refugee was perfectly fine, locked in the dark room without ever investigating the reason behind the attack. "You said she freaked out after your guards tried to take her weapon from her? Did they advance towards her before she panicked? How many were there?" It was a reasonable question. She suspected a larger than normal portion of the girls had been assaulted in some way or another, panicking when advanced on by a group of men was a reasonable response from someone who had been assaulted.

"What's her name? Where's she from? And leave her some light. There's no reason to get her imagination and fear all pumped up. That'll only make another fit of panic all the more likely when you finally do have to open the cell again." Honestly, why didn't these guards have to have a degree in human studies at least, though she would have preferred psychology be required. This was ridiculous. Locking young girls into dark dungeons. She wanted a closer look at this girl besides. There was something all too familiar about her, though she hadn't gotten a good look under the harsh light, grainy camera and curled up posture.

"If this is another of your harebrained, over-reactive busts, I'll have you put on report." She said firmly. She didn't go around threatening just because things weren't done her way. She felt there was an honest problem with the way the guards handled distraught refugees. There was no compassion. Of course she didn't think it was okay to attack and stun guards, but even at her age, having never been attacked by anyone physically, she suspected if she got off a shuttle in a new place and had a battalion of guards come stomping over to her, she might panic too.

Anonymous:
"We're not sure of her name," the guard said, his disdainful starting to show a bit of nervousness. "The ship records only show that she signed her name as Lana, with no last name. And you know that people only do something like that when their trying hid something...." He uncrossed his arms, and looked continued to try to justify his actions.

"Look, all we did was come up to her. We were in a group of six, but that's the number of guards I always have with me when coming up to a potential problem. I asked her to give up her weapon, and she started to leave! Well, I kept her from leaving, and she freaked out! My men tried to help me subdue her, and she had the nerve to stun one! We did what we had to do!"

The guard sighed, and pressed a button on the wall, causing light to flood into cell. "There, you want the criminal to have light, then she'll have light." A self satisfied smirk appeared on his face. "And if you want to see if we've overreacted, then why don't you just go in there and talk to her yourself." He pressed another button, and the door unlocked. "Just don't come crying to me when she attacks you..."
--------------------
The light flooded into the room once again, and Lana's panic subsided a little bit. The enclosed space was still pressing down on her, but now it wasn't as bad. She straightened up a bit, and tried to actually look around the room.

The sound of the door unlocking filled her with both panic, and hope. Were they going to let her out, or were the simply going to try and interrogate her or move her to an even smaller cell? She couldn't help but feel that it would be the latter.

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