Silverman Monologue

Alaina Silverman
Monologue
November 2012

TEBS


Yes. ‘M here because I threatened to crash my crew into a rocky part of Mars. Yes, that probably would have been kind of bad.  But it’s not my fault!  You know what Com-730 told me -- you know, he’s back on Earth, calls himself Zeo? Anyway. Must’ve had his circuits fried. He had the gall to override my firewall and say “Disparity means instability Tebs!”. Hmph. Just because he’s a hotshot on Earth. I will never refer to myself as ‘Tebs’ especially after the tubby-telly incident last year. Ohhh no, I can sense it over the transmission. Stop laughing. You’re not allowed to call me Tebs either.  It’s Station-8937 to you. Anyway. I’m not a disparity! I’m the model machine . . . why else would the Society send me to orbit Mars? Mars is pretty sparking important, what with all this new agriculture tech being set up. Though this dusty planet with all of its, well, dust is really mucking up my mood. The stuff gets all up in my mechanisms. And last week a couple of mooks took me apart for a solid cleaning. Which would be fine. But they also fiddled with all my calculations and completely threw my rotation off! I’m still not totally right even now.       

Two days ago the head engineer, yeah, Doc! I didn’t know you were his design. Cool. But yeah, Doc came by to check out my computers (which were fine, obviously), but it turns out my electronic fuel manager is wonkified. Which is why I am now talking to you, my dear satellite. No I will not call you Debbie. This is ridiculous and slightly uncomfortable. You’re supposed to talk me down from careening into Memnonia Quadrangle, right? Yes I know these malfunctions show on my transcript! It’s not like I’ll truly be dismantled. No, I won’t. All of my data is backed up on one of the Lunar colonies. I’m tired of the shoddy work the peeps in my cabin spew out. Plus there’s the dust. I always knew my alloys never interacted well with dust.

I’m sure you’re fed up with your job too. Reduced to playing psycho analyzer to perfectly normal Stations like me, even though you were the once mighty International Space Station. Hmph.

Yeah, that was uncalled for. Sorry. But at this point I don’t care if I was to be dismantled this very hour.  No. Don’t call me Tebs. The last machines to call me Tebs were Stations 3865 and 19. Oh jeepers, I haven’t messaged them in over a year. I don’t feel like doing that. Maybe after taking a month long power-down for a full maintenance. I just don’t feel like doing any~thing.

Woah! Woahwoahwoah. That letter you’re sending to the Society better be a recommendation for a power-down. It is? Sweet. I won’t dash myself and all miscellaneous occupants into a crater. If you throw in a new stationing (like Earth! It’s so exciting this time of year), I’ll reconsider going rogue and finding a new solar system.

No? Well then. I’ll take the power-down.

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