Chapter Text
Lena positioned everything checking it was set correctly.
“Ready R2?” she asked.
The drone made no response but Lena still smiled at it before she hit the power button. R2 lit up and the drone rose slowly to her head height. Lena glanced at her tablet to make sure it was working before smiling at the camera on the drone and began her first log.
“Hello everyone. So, as I'm sure you're all aware L Corp has been building it’s own space station using a combination of alien tech and human ingenuity. Now, one of the things about space stations and being able to let people use them, is that someone needs to be the first to test them. Well someone and some animals because we need to be sure.”
She stepped back a little. R2 followed.
“In order to fully test our new station we needed to send someone into space and… It turns out there’s only six people familiar enough with everything involved in this station to actually be able to fix any bugs that come up, potentially without any outside assistance, and only one of them was willing to risk their life to test it so…”
She stepped out the door to the viewing platform showing the earth below.
“Here I am!”
She smiled at R2.
“Yes, I’m in space. Actually in space. As in I got secretly flown in a rocket to this station. But I wasn’t alone. Would you like to meet the other passengers?”
She paused then glanced at her tablet.
“As I can’t actually hear you and it would be kind of pointless if you don’t… I’m just going to assume yes.”
She walked through the next set of doors into the first biome and smiled. The first section was specifically designed to mimic an open field and she knew it would have an impact when people saw it. The station itself was set up with several different biomes and levels that provided for the ones next to them and it was going remarkably well. Probably because she’d programmed the robots who tended the plants that set it up. She glanced down to see the comment feed had finally loaded and was filled with people losing their minds over the plants. She walked through into the next space which was the animal enclosures.
“So here’s the chickens. They were named, not by me, Honey, Lemon, and Satay. Very original of you Pete.”
She motioned to the chickens but R2 kept the camera focused on her. She sighed and took a step closer then turned R2 to show the chickens awkwardly walking around their new enclosure.
“I’m gonna have to do some bug fixes on you R2. By the way the camera is really a drone, or maybe a droid depending how we define it, called R2, and he follows me everywhere as a camera. I can of course turn him on and off because there are some things I do not want on camera. There are boundaries of what I’m willing to share, even for science.”
She turned and walked through to the next enclosure.
“So these are Nigerian Dwarf goats. They are Bridget, Jude, and Shazzer. Again I did not name them. And the lone masculine influence here, Darcy. I’m assuming their names are a reference but I can’t be sure. I’m sure someone will tell me if they are.”
She moved R2 to show the goats and pointed to Darcy who was the only all brown one. He apparently had not enjoyed the flight or disembarking and was screaming repeatedly at her. Lena ignored this. She was sure he’d settle down.
“Right, next up is the labs.”
She went through a set of doors to the next section which was the main living area, including dining and sleeping. She kept going pointing out each room as she passed and then unlocked the door to the main laboratory where she pointed to the large tank with a dozen rats all moving about in it.
“So these are the rats. Technically they were all individually named but well…” She sighed. “Look they’re all plain white lab rats so they’re collectively all going to be called Linguine because I cannot tell them apart Pete, there’s ten of them.”
She turned and walked back out and then went through to the next biosphere which was the main water filter and treatment zone with a large two to six foot deep pond full of fish, water grasses and covered in the algae that provided a lot of her fresh oxygen. Sitting on the grass by the water was a ginger cat. Lena smiled and sat next to the cat.
“So there’s fish in this pond, which is one of three water filtration setups on this station. This is the biggest and a major part of the connected ecosystem here that is making this whole place habitable for me and is also the provider of most of my fresh water. There’s also a special mushroom here but I’m not supposed to open that for a bit because spores, so you’ll have to wait to see it.”
Lena turned to the cat and reached out gently touching a paw.
“But this is my newest best friend, and first mate here I guess, everyone meet Ripley. Say hello to Earth Ripley.”
Lena turned R2 to show the cat. Ripley looked up briefly then went back to watching the fish. Lena smiled then sighed.
“So in case you haven’t worked it out I’ll be here for a whole year, alone. I’ll be doing a daily log because apparently that’s a thing I need to do for public interest so I guess…”
She sighed and looked around.
“Look if anything is going to make me go crazy it’ll be this. So everyone you got your wish, you have a front row seat to what will probably be a Luthor slowly going crazy. See y’all same time tomorrow.”
Lena gave the camera a final smile.
“End Livestream.”
She turned back to Ripley and gently tapped her paw again. Ripley turned to her and then flopped onto the grass and stretched, presenting her tummy.
“No way, I know that’s a trap,” Lena said with a smile as she put in her earpiece.
Ripley gave her a look then shifted so her head was over the edge of the pond to continue watching the fish below. Lena smiled and turned on her tablet again switching over to call Sam.
“Okay Sam, was I sufficiently good at acting normal to get public approval, or am I going to be playing whack a mole with the various home made missiles people shoot at me?”
She lay down next to Ripley.
“I don’t think there will be missiles…” Sam said. “Maybe a few nasty comments.”
“Well I figure as long as I manage to put pants on for the daily log, all the animals survive, and I don’t drown in a depression induced suicidal spiral over this somehow being the best solution to the number of people trying to kill me…” Lena drew a deep breath. She tried to add a little levity to her voice. “Then we should be good.”
Sam sighed.
“It sounds very dark when you say it like that.”
“Well it’s not like I can realistically rely on Supergirl to keep saving me.”
“I still can’t believe Kara and Supergirl get coffee in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not complaining. You have no idea how nice it is to be carried by-”
“Lena!”
“What?”
“The livestream is still going.”
“Oh shit,” she muttered. She looked at R2. “Sorry everyone apparently we’ve found our first major bug. Livestream off.”
She waited.
“Nope still going,” Sam said with a sigh.
“Livestream end. End livestream. Camera off.”
“Still going,” Sam said with a sigh.
Lena sighed.
“R2 Down.”
R2 switched off and fell to the grass. Ripley turned to look at the drone and then got up to go paw at it.
“You’re offline,” Sam said.
“Right so I have to turn it off off to end the livestream. That’s helpful. Well at least I have something else to do today then.”
Sam sighed as Lena got up grabbing the drone and heading back to the labs, followed by the now intrigued Ripley.
She put R2 on the desk and started running a diagnostic.
“Okay I’m going to try turning R2 back on and we can see if it’s just a turn it off and on again thing,” Sam said.
Lena pushed the button and R2 started up again.
“You’re back online.”
Lena sighed and rubbed her head.
“R2 down.”
The drone shut off.
It took three hours but Lena finally found the problem and it was stupid.
“Okay, so some idiot programmed R2 to only stream to the live feed on the website,” Lena said.
Sam sighed.
“How did they-”
“Because he was the guy we fired halfway through. Dan was supposed to go through all the code but he was only looking for something potentially dangerous so... It looks like R2 can only broadcast my life signs to you while also streaming video.”
Ripley decided to jump up on the workstation and meowed sadly at Lena. Lena absently patted her head.
“Okay what do you want to do?” Sam asked.
“There’s not much we can do from here. I’d need to take R2 apart and then completely reprogram him and that would take months and honestly I’m not sure if it would work completely. I’d have to create the programming again effectively from scratch.”
“So you’ll have to be live constantly?” Sam asked.
“In a way. He’s one of the key security measures here and my alert system. We put half the alarms through him because he’s supposed to always follow me. I can do some superficial tweaks but we made him pretty much tamper proof for a reason. I could probably make him patrol but whenever I’m doing something potentially dangerous I need him. He’s the up to the second record for all life sign data. So I’m kinda gonna have to put up with it. At least until you can send me the screwdrivers so I can crack him open and change his base programming.”
Sam sighed.
“Well I guess you’re going to be providing a lot of extra footage for the team to humanise you.”
Lena scoffed.
“There’s going to be endless hours of me sitting in a chair typing and reading things.”
Sam chuckled.
“Just to separate out I’ll change the daily log to this computer, to make it clearer what is R2 footage and what’s the official log,” Lena said.
Sam hummed her agreement.
“Is anyone even watching the feed?” Lena asked with a sigh.
Sam tapped a few keys as Lena picked up her cup of tea and took a sip.
“About three thousand people,” Sam said.
Lena scoffed.
“Well that’s not gonna last long.”
It took a little digging through some of the supply crates but Lena created a temporary stay option for R2 so she could go to the bathroom without a camera following her. That being a rope tied to R2 and then secured to the lab desk so he couldn’t follow.
“And they said I’d only ever have one use for shibari,” Lena muttered looking at the drone now bound by a chest harness as it flew back and forth tugging against the rope in an attempt to follow her.
She returned from the bathroom to find R2 on the floor with Ripley chewing on the camera.
“Shit!”
She quickly removed Ripley and R2 floated back up to the correct height. A diagnostic check and a few tests told her the microphone was now broken.
Lena looked at Ripley who was napping on the desk beside her.
“Well, I suppose I should thank you for that. I didn’t really want everyone being able to hear me walking around talking to myself.”
Ripley didn’t respond but Lena didn’t mind. She sat back in her chair and then looked at her to do list. Then sighing she got up. She had a lot of supplies to unpack before she could sleep. She sighed again as she stepped out of the labs and heard Darcy was still screaming.
That night, or rather what would be nine thirty if she was still in National City, she secured R2 to the kitchen table and gave the drone a fond pat. To prevent further issues she put Ripley in her bedroom before going to have a shower, grateful to be washing off the sweat from a day of moving around crates and equipment. She checked the stream numbers and saw that approximately four thousand people had watched her unpack boxes and pat a cat for six hours. She shook her head in disbelief and crawled into bed.
Ripley jumped onto the bed and curled up purring beside her. Lena smiled and scratched Ripley behind the ears before rolling over and hugging her pillow to get the first night of proper sleep she’d had in a long time.