Chapter Text
“Well, he does know how to make waffles. That’s a very ‘dad’ thing.”
<<Nope, I don’t buy it. Baking, especially in zero gravity, involves extremely complex chemistry. It’s the culinary equivalent of putting something in a petri dish and powering up the high-powered microscope.>>
“Yikes, Hera, I eat those. Don’t make me associate the best part of breakfast-for-dinner night with mad science experiments.”
<<Cooking is just science you eat, Officer Eiffel.>>
“Oh my god, what if the little waffle squares are the whatchamacallit, the chloroplasts, and then the syrup is the cell filling goop…”
<<I’ve got two delicious words for you: Golgi apparatus.>>
“I don’t even know what that is and I’ve lost my appetite. Okay, how about this: he’s bald as an egg, but he’s the only one on the Hephaestus who can cut Minkowski’s hair. He’s clearly had someone to practice on.”
<<Are you sure you aren’t skewing the data? Minkowski has limited options for stylists, and you took yourself out of the running… well, after the running incident. With the scissors.>>
“I keep the cultural adages fresh.”
<<I also notice that you don’t take advantage of his services.>>
“I have a weird aversion to being loomed over with sharp objects. Go figure.”
<<You know it’s your hair that keeps clogging the drains, right?>>
“Nothing escapes you.”
<<Sometimes, that’s the problem.>>
“Here’s a thought. We can pretty easily rule out any chance of Doctor Hilbert having kids with a single question: has anyone in this galaxy, or any other, ever said ‘I’m gonna bang that bald doctor guy?’”
<<Are we accounting for linguistic variations?>>
“I feel like the answer is ‘no.’ I’m looking for a ‘no’ here.”
<<Well, statistically — >>
“Not a ‘no,’ Hera.”
<<An advanced degree confers a certain amount of social capital upon the bearer.>>
“Spoken like someone unfamiliar with the philosophical stylings of Avenue Q.”
<<And certain studies — although not necessarily well reviewed ones — posit a correlation between androgenic alopecia and testosterone levels.>>
“Ohhh~, what do you do with a B.A. in English? What is my life going to beeee…~”
<<Does the commander know you’re the one who deleted her Best of Broadway sound files?>>
“ After downloading them for my own use, thank you very much. She’ll get them back after all thoughts of station talent show nights have gone the way of the dodo.”
<<Which was recently reengineered.>>
“Okay, the way of the… great auk?”
<<Making a strong comeback.>>
“The quagga.”
<<That’s not a real— Hm. Wow. Officer Eiffel, I’m impressed.>>
“It was so fun to say. Quagga!”
<<So do we say, the way of Doctor Hilbert’s hypothetical children?>>
“I mean, maybe, but maybe not? The chrome dome thing is working for him. Some people are into that. Like The Rock, only less… The Rock-like. In every possible way.”
<<Give me a moment, please. I’m running a comparative analysis of Doctor Hilbert’s biological structure against that of Dwayne Douglas Johnson… Yep. Accounting for the commonalities of human physiology — two eyes, one nose, the vagaries of the appendix — there is exactly one non-insignificant point of congruence between the two subjects.>>
“Which, in layman’s terms, means…?”
<<They’re both bald.>>
“What about his accent? Accents are muy sexy.”
<<Is— is that your version of a Spanish accent?>>
“Hallo. My name ees Inigo Montoya. You keeled my fazzer. Prepare to die.”
<<Please stop.>>
“He says it like fifty times.”
<<And you’ve said it two hundred and thirty-seven times since the mission began. Two hundred and thirty-eight, now.>>
“There’s never a bad time to quote S. Morgenstern’s classic tale of true love and high adventure.”
<<And that’s the accent you find sexually appealing?>>
“That’s the accent we all find sexually appealing, Hera. Doc’s Boris-and-Natasha routine is… maybe less universally arousing, but several billion little Russian babies say it’s not exactly a turnoff, either.”
<<We’re not debating whether anyone else has produced little Russian babies. We’re debating whether Hilbert has.>>
“Oh come on, can you really not imagine Hilbert ever knocking someone up in an old-fashioned yet somehow disturbing manner?”
<<Um …>>
“Actually …”
<<Purging memory banks of that simulation in three, two… done.>>
“I have never wanted so badly to be a computer before this moment.”
<<It has its charms.>>
“You know what? You’re right. The only time our Doctor Moreau ever looks at another human being with that twinkle in his eye is when he gets to stick a needle in them. He would literally not know what to do if someone put the moves on him.”
<<He is an expert in biology. I’m pretty sure he’d know what to do.>>
“ Molecular biology, Hera. And there’s knowing… and then there’s knowing. Wait, I’ll prove it.”
—♫—
“Doctor Hilbert? This is Doug Eiffel, coming to you live from the comms room.”
“Officer Eiffel! This is a surprise. What may I do for you?”
“Hey, Doc, just wondering. If I walked into your lab right now, stark naked, what you would do with me?”
“I would like very much to update blood samples on record. I fear existing samples may be contaminated by Specimen 34’s recent pollination period. Please, come at any time.”
“Yeah, I’m, um, not really feeling that. Anyhoo, thanks, Doc! Knew I could count on you.”
“Officer Eiffel, I do not underst — ”
—//—
“There. Not even a flicker of interest. Or horror. The whole ‘me, naked’ thing — whoosh! Right past him.”
<<Actually, I’m inclined to blame the test.>>
“Why? What do you mean?”
<<That was clearly the wind-up to a punchline, not a proposition. I can tell the difference and I don’t even have a body.>>
“Sure you do, it’s just… real big. And… metal. And did I mention extremely shapely?”
<<Are you saying that because you mean it, or because you’re afraid I’ll vent your air supply?>>
“I like big space stations and I cannot lie.”
<<See, if you talked like that to Hilbert, he might actually notice what was going on. That would be a fair trial.>>
“Wait, wait, wait. Are you daring me to seduce Hilbert?”
<<I don’t know, Officer Eiffel. Am I?>>
“It’s just— It’s not possible, Hera.”
<<If you say so.>>
“Well, yeah. I do.”
<<Okay. Sure thing.>>
“Because the guy’s lust-o-meter isn’t calibrated right. It’s not even plugged in.”
<<That’s fine. It’s not your fault if you couldn’t pull it off. You have plenty of other talents.>>
“Damn straight.”
<<The commander asked me the other day what they were.>>
“What do you tell her?”
<<Oh no. I am experiencing a power fluctuation. I must focus.>>
“Wow. Ouch. You know what? I can sex it up with the best of them. I can get my groove on. Work my mojo.”
<<Please don’t work your mojo while I’m talking to you.>>
“You’re pretty much always talking to me, Hera. We both know this mojo is completely, absolutely, one hundred percent unworked. Abbess Minkowski’s got a strict no-mojo rule here in Saint Hephaestus’s Monastery of the Holy Red Dwarf Star. —Oh my god I’m gonna seduce Hilbert.”
<<Whoa, hold on, let’s think about this a moment.>>
“I am thinking. I’m thinking this isn’t his first mission and he’s gotta be at least as lonely as I am. And he’s been out here in deep space long enough to get a little wiggly on the Kinsey scale.”
<<That’s not a good reason to sleep with him.>>
“How’s this, then? I am lonely. I am bored. My mojo is atrophying. And — not my favorite part — I’ve just had my powers of seduction questioned by an artificial intelligence.”
<<I was kidding!>>
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And in this case… that’s Hilbert.”
<<Officer Eiffel, if you’re going to seduce anybody on board, please, please let it be Minkowski.>>
“Pfffffffahahahaa! Are you kidding? She’d throw me straight out the airlock and watch me go spinning off into space.”