station72 | (no subject)

CHARACTERS: Sam and you
WHERE: The Bearings
WHEN: day 46
SUMMARY: After the b&e on Public Security, Sam's distraction efforts have been noticed...by the extranet.
WARNINGS: Memeloving shitposts.

[ So. It's...definitely not bright and early the day after the break-in, because some hosts were up way past their bedtimes. (Some hosts will deny up and down that bedtimes are a thing they should ever have to consider, because oh my God what do you think he is, six years old or something.)

But he's slept in, he's finally stumbled into the shower, and Sam has parked himself in the common room with the news on, a few extranet feeds up in front of him, and a bowl of something vaguely like Cinnamon Toast Crunch drowning in something vaguely like chocolate milk, because researching what everyone knows and what everyone thinks about their highly illegal activities is an important activity and working out that scroll button works up an appetite.

And then he stops in the middle of a bite, spoon still in his mouth and one eyebrow shooting up, as he takes a look at what's actually going on in one of those windows.

It's some badly captured footage of his light show from last night - a bright blue blur doing a few loops and barrel rolls, and some text in a loud, annoying font slapped on the bottom: YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THIS. Another one, this one just a still cap of the same: I DON'T KNOW, THEREFORE ALIENS. A few others, with text with varying degrees of ironically poor grammar... ]

-hmgd.

[ Right. That spoon was still in his mouth. He takes it out, swallows his mouth full of cereal, and tries that again: ]

Oh my God. I'm a meme.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She's never heard of it, but the galaxy's a big place. She's not about to get caught up in little details. Mara begins making a salad.]

And 'memes' are indigenous to the Sol System?

The word might be, I dunno about the concept? Like, stupid jokes spreading fast on the net isn't that weird a thing in most places, is it?

I stay off the holonet; it's mostly trash.

[She brings her disgustingly healthy lunch over so she can look over the boy's shoulder.]

How did you become one? Even you're not incompetent enough to become a joke that quickly.

Wow, I've never been so insulted by what technically counts as a compliment.

[ BUT ANYWAY. He points to the blue streak in the pictures. ]

Nobody can figure out what I am, so apparently everyone's decided I'm proof of an alien conspiracy to invade Concordia.

See? If you were really that incompetent, you wouldn't have realized it as a compliment.

[HILARIOUS JOKES WITH MARA JADE.]

Sam, you are proof of an alien conspiracy to invade Concordia.

Yeah, but that's why it's funny? Because then everyone else thinks the alien conspiracy theorists are totally wacko, nobody who's a rational thinker believes in that stuff, and they pass this stuff around just to laugh about how stupid these people are -

- but it turns out the wackos totally got it right for once.

[ It's funny on so many levels, see! ]

[Mara's expression shifts from suspicion to... approval? She grins, sharp.]

It's a double blind. I underestimated you, Sam. [Somehow, he managed to pick the costume that would suggest the perfect surprise.] If you get as good at chess as you were at that, you'll be unstoppable.

I'm working on it, I'm working on it.

[ Chess is definitely harder than being a rocket. ]