OCtober Bingo: Multilingual
OCtober Bingo: Multilingual
“Come here,” Glass signed.
Sprocket shifted forwards, sand sliding over and into his joints, tubes bending to follow the movement. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, hands folded in his lap. Opposite him, Glass kneeled in the sands.
The mid-morning sun fell through eir body, refracting and splitting through the glass, shining brilliantly on pieces of metal and bulbs of green liquid before falling onto Sprocket. It would be warm, if either of them had the skin to feel it.
(Natural heat was lost to Sprocket in the storm of his own whirring processors and grinding motors. He just had the vague impressions offered to him by an internal thermometer ticking up or down: 42.3°C.
He’d once asked Glass if ey could feel warmth, could feel the sun beating down on them.
Ey said it felt like life, which sounded very different from 42.3°C.)
Glass pressed eir palm against Sprocket’s chest, warping the way the light fell, and hummed three notes.
They slid together like the gradient of a sunset, each higher than the last. They sat somewhere in the middle of Glass’s vast spectrum of sound, a neutral sort of tone that shook around in Sprocket’s chest but didn’t quite stay there. He raised a hand from his lap to grab onto Glass’s forearm, fingers clinking into place. Another point of connection, without the leather of Sprocket’s vest separating them.
“Go again,” he said.
The same three notes played. Sprocket could feel the vibrations humming against his sensors, sound washing through him. It brushed over those parts of him designed only to detect pain, to alert to problems, gently passing by without alarm.
The sweeping rise in pitch felt whole in some way, complete. Someone with more musical knowledge than him, with more knowledge of the language Glass was trying to speak to him, could have had the right words to describe it. Sprocket had neither of those things, so all he had to offer was-
“It sounds nice. What does it mean?”
Glass nodded. Ey pulled eir hand away from his chest, and Sprocket followed suit, disengaging.
“It’s supposed to sound nice,” ey signed. “It means ‘to give comfort.’ We have many words like this, that represent concepts, that can be used in many different ways as long as the emotion is there.”
Those bulbs of liquid rolled around in Glass’s chest, occasionally colliding with each other to become one, other times clinging to the clear walls surrounding them. A pool of it splashed in eir head, right behind the pair of white, glowing eyes that watched Sprocket intently, making sure he understood. Glass continued.
“It means ‘it’s okay.’ It means ‘it’s alright.’ It means ‘it’s over.’ It means ‘I’m here.’ It means whatever it needs to mean.”
“And does it… work? Do you feel comforted by it?”
“Of course. That association has been well-established for me. The same will be true for you, eventually.”
Glass hummed the notes again. Ey nodded at him to do the same.
Sprocket took a moment to find the first pitch, letting it hum in his speaker before he climbed to the next, and then the next.
Glass tilted eir head at him. “You’re climbing stairs.”
“What?”
“When you move from one syllable to the next, you find in betweens and jump to them, instead of sliding up the scale. Here, try it with me.”
Ey reached out, pressing a hand against his chest, the globs of liquid in eir fingers twisting and reforming. Sprocket reached back, grabbing onto eir arm. The tubing that coiled loosely around him flexed and shifted, filled with that same blood.
Glass held the first note, leading the way for him to follow. Sprocket could hear the vibrations, could feel them thrumming in his veins of tubes, buzzing where cheers of metal met each other. The sound rattled discontentedly while he tried to find the right note, warping and grating until it fell into place.
Glass raised eir pitch, and Sprocket clumsily followed em up the scale, resting together at the three notes along their journey. When Glss nodded, Sprocket already knew what ey meant, and they starting over, and he led the charge.
They traded off like that several times, taking turns to find the right notes to play, each time getting closer to each other’s rhythm. Until the need ceased for a lead at all, and Sprocket and Glass spoke as one.
Liquid danced in Glass’s body, bulbs of it twisting in eir chest, all surrounded by singing glass.
Sprocket’s metal sang, carrying waves of sound. Gentle hands, not ones that poked or prodded, cupped his sensors, pressed against his vest.
They reached what Sprocket knew would be their final iteration and grew silent together, the last of the sound fading out of reach. Only when every last bit of it was gone, when Sprocket couldn’t possibly feel it, did Glass pull away. Sprocket’s hands fell into his lap.
“Like that,” ey signed.
“Thank you,” Sprocket responded. “I understand.”
@glacierruler
Another square down! I actually wrote this story a while back, it was one of the first things that went into my Deslotair notebook. Just some thoughts on the glass bot language and how we can communicate even when we're so different. Languages are very important to Glass (ey used to be a translator) so this was a really good prompt for em!
More Posts from Duck-in-the-universe and Others
Planet Deslotair is super cool, tell me more about Desmona if you want
-g
I'd love to!!
So Desmona grew up in a vitrel harvesting town called Sagal, where vitrel is pumped from the ground and then shipped off elsewhere so it can be properly processed. Processed vitrel is still pretty toxic, but it isn't nearly as reactive as the raw stuff. Desmona's dad worked for the harvesting company, and when she was 16 she got a job working there as well. Nothing super dangerous, she was just behind a desk helping with paperwork and whatnot, but she was on site a lot. She was actually really fascinated with how vitrel was moved and gathered, and wanted to study material sciences when she got older.
But before she got a chance to do any of that, there was an accident. A vitrel transport truck crashes, and Desmona is right on the scene. Her dad is the one to pull her out of the mess, contaminating himself in the process. He would later succumb to his wounds and die, she would not. She wakes up, and runs.
Desmona spends about a week out in the wilderness mostly by herself. She lives in the plains region, Deslotair’s finest, but it’s still hard to make do, to survive. She drinks from rivers and chews sweet grass into a pulp between her teeth. The pain under her skin settles, but the energy does not. Eventually, she finds a fallen ship, and starts to camp out there. She meets a vitrel dog, names him Tak, and sleeps a little easier. She meets two bots, fails to push them away, and sleeps through the night. The vitrel that lashes out from her skin can't hurt any of them.
Outside of the scavengers group, she's very shy and withdrawn. The armor helps contain the vitrel, but it also acts as a shield from the world. She's very aware that the mask makes her look strange and off-putting, and she leans into that as much as possible when interacting with new people. Once she does warm up to people though, she's really sweet. Has kind of a smart-ass sense of humor with Sprocket, and immediately becomes really close with Glass. They cook together, and ey teaches her sign language while Desmona tries to teach em to sew. It takes a while for the group to find their rhythm, but eventually the three of them (four with Tak) are inseparable.
Embroidery sketching! Working on another patch project right now, and since this one is a little more complicated than the black hole I finished a while ago, I thought I'd share my process for mapping out what I want to embroider. (The people that draw straight on the fabric are too brave to be me.)
To do this, I start by drawing out the design with paper and pencil, and then I pin it to the fabric I want to transfer it to and stab a bunch of holes. (I used the sharp end of a drawing compass, but you can use a pen or pencil or whatever your heart desires.) Then, I used a white gel pen to create dots where all the holes were.
This results in a MESS of little spots against the background, so hang onto your original template so you remember what you're doing. But from there it's just an extra-confusing game of connect the dots! I started with the biggest shapes first, and slowly our boy Sprocket started to emerge. Excited to actually embroider this one :)
OOO fun!
Planet Deslotair is a sci-fi western story I've been working on. It takes place on a mostly desert planet, covered in craters with nearly never-ending storms raging in the upper atmosphere. The craters crack the ground open to bring forth vitrel, a liquid power source that nearly everything on Deslotair runs on. The storms, meanwhile, make the planet a treacherous place to travel to and from, and many ships crash instead of successfully making the journey.
Scavengers, those who visit the ships and pick apart their corpses, provide a valuable service as they fight over the remains.
The story follows four main characters:
There's Sprocket, an ex-mining robot and mechanic who leads them. Glass, a glass bot that left eir cult-like upbringing to wander the sands. Desmona, a teenage girl caught in a vitrel harvesting accident that left her filled with wild, uncontrollable energy. And Alonze, an ex-bandit who just got out of jail, and is Sprocket's ex. (Kinda. It's complicated.)
It's very found family, just following the adventures of this group as they try to work together and protect each other. Very heavy lean into western aesthetics while bringing in a lot of sci fi. Sort of retro futurism at times? Asks a lot of questions about robots and outcasts and what it really means to be human.
I've been reworking the plot a bunch lately, so it's hard to say much more, but I have a lot of worldbuilding and character development on my hands!
ALRIGHT
I want to talk about my podcast, but my brain's being a bit rude today.
So we're going to a project share, to anyone who sees this feel free to participate.
This share can be about ANY projects, fanfic, fanart, or original that you want to just yap yap yap about.
Here's how it works: You reblog the post and talk about your project you're working on/thinking about/want to do/etc...
Then, you go up the reblog chain and find a project you're interested, and SEND ASKS to the person who made the info about the project!
I'll start: I'm writing a podcast, and it's about Glacie, and their coworkers, who work at the Meeting Point. The Meeting Point is a restaurant/shop located near the Mad Forest. Coming back from a pretty long break, due to their own unreality problems popping up, Glacie is warned that the forest grows hungry. After some incidents, Glacie's hallucinations start getting real bad, and they eventually venture forth into the Mad Forest.
"This is the land of the glass bots. We abandoned them, abandoned their lands, and instead of staying dead like they should have, they turned into walking memories."
And now, finally, Glass (ey/em), linguist, translator, and traveler of the desert.
Info:
First to join the group, joined Sprocket a while ago.
It was just the two of them for a very long time
Glass' main role on the team is as a protector (ey wields that spear well) and as a navigator
Before Sprocket, ey was a translator
Glass lived with other glass bots, and worked closely with their king
When humans needed to interact with the glass bots for any reason, Glass would act as a translator
Because Glass people speak in frequencies humans can't always hear and cannot learn to speak any other language, Glass learned sign language, which ey still uses to communicate now
Ey also became a kind of negotiator, learning how to translate what the King had to say into mannerisms and politeness that the humans would view favorably, and vice-versa
This regular involvement with humans grew Glass's fascination with human culture and languages, something not necessarily appreciated in the glass bot world
Of course it was Glass's job to understand these things, and ey was respected given eir high-ranking position, but ostracized as well
Eventually, this fascination with the outside world, resentment in eir own community, and disagreement with the King's rule drove Glass to leave and strike out on eir own
Soon after, ey met Sprocket, who offered em a job
Out of the group, those two are probably still the closest
They had a lot of time out in the desert to grow this bond, learning about each other, about each other's worlds
Glass is a very curious person, and often has many questions
Ey is very passionate about languages, and always eager to learn more, as well as teach people
Glass is an excellent teacher as well, eir patience makes em well-suited for it
Once Desmona joins the team and they have an actual human mouth to feed, ey also discovers a love of cooking!
1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice shows a Pioneer probe using the gravity of Jupiter to slingshot its way to the outer planets.
The decay of the mechanical.
My webcomic FACING THE SUN has a new update
Read on my website | Read on WEBTOON
Just a girl and her weird ass dog
I looove drawing my characters in my outfits, and I think this is absolutely smth Desmona would wear. Big, flowy pants enjoyer forever and always.
Sideblog for my personal projects, whether that's art, writing, oc stuff, inspo, or whatever! Yall can call me duck, i use they/them and ey/em pronouns Main blog: @duck-in-a-spaceship
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