REP

Mech Pilot who welcomes you to Mechanic Park

"Today's show is starring the incredible heroes of Viper Team! Can they defeat the forces of Evil, save the Power Crystals, and get home in time for F-Action Park's Trademark Pepperoni Pizza? Find out in just TWO MINUTES! ^{Parents, please direct your children to take their seats, the show is about to begin! Space is limited, don't be a stranger! Scoot on in, and ask for the name of your Neighbor! Please allow priority seating for Moms, Grand Parents, and the Handicapable!}"

The din of the audience couldn't deafen the battery-powered spraybottle-fan combos from the gift store, but the Speakers were at full volume so-as to acclimate the actors for what a normal show on stage would be like. Enter Jonas, a non-binary actor in their mid 20's who'd just landed a surprise promotion this morning and was now tasked with improvising their favorite character that their mentor normally played. They swore to do their best, but in the dressing room, Jonas was trying to keep their mind busy as they struggled with the musty Roko costume. Everything had been in storage since November last year, so a bit of odd smells and some tightness around the waist was pretty normal. Jonas and their co-workers must've all been out of whack today though, the outfits were absolutely clinging where the interior contacted skin, making a normal pre-show suit up far more difficult than normal. Management had insisted the suits had been properly cleaned, but as usual the boss was pulled away to handle some kind of side-show staffing problem (the walk-abouts in the theme park were staging for their afternoon stroll, but somehow they were having technical issues that required the boss' people skills). Jonas breathed a sigh of relief as they maneuvered the muzzle of the mascot's oversized wolf-head mask past the backstage door, the crowd was probably going to be easy to please.

All that had made the mid-February Noon Performance's attendence was a family of four, the young boy was clearly the Viper Team Animated Series fan among them, and from Jonas' estimation it was the kid's birthday. Decked out to the nines from forehead to sneakers in the colorful quartet's four animal heroes (Roko, the Lone Wolf Leader! Tundra, the Lion of Heart! Zillain, the Brilliant Bird Brain! Xin Ling, the Ancestor Dragon Spirit!), the kid was understandably excited to see his first set of childhood heroes in the flesh. Jonas did their best when the green light was given, opening with a stellar triple backflip, the John Wayne blaster spin, an unmistakably heroic deep and thundering, masculine, confident boast. It was hard for them to keep up some days as Zillain (the character requires one to be wayyyy more ADHD), but today felt a little different as they'd been promoted this season to be Roko. A super-fan like the rest of the Factor-Actors at F-Action Park, Jonas had gone from barely employable Theater Kid to what could be considered the Big Leagues... for Orlando. Today's Zillain was a quiet Goth kid who gave off the 'leave me alone, I'm too Queer for this hemisphere' sort of vibe, and despite the chilly introduction behind the scenes they were a natural fit for Zillain's bombast and pep. The Goth kid moved around in their suit with a lot of natural gait, hopping around on stage excitedly in-character. If one got used to the mascot costumes, it wasn't so hard to pull off most of the stunts thanks to the use of cool spring-loaded stilts to get that 'dog leg' shape just right.

North of the Navajo Nation, up the 191, is a seemingly endless stretch of desert plains dominated by shallow mesas, with distant mountains. Arizona is the kind of state that makes you learn the differences between types of private road, types of desert climes, and types of biological landmines.

You find yourself broken down, pulled over somewhere north of a town called Rock Point (calling it a town is diplomatic by city-folk definitions), where the last gas was. Somehow you wound up here: down an access road "shortcut" your GPS swore was going to take you past the rise and up into southern Utah. Instead, you're nowhere. An endless stretch of sand dunes and shrubs. It's miserably cold too, you didn't expect January to be cold in the middle of a desert. Then a factoid from Animal Planet emerges gently from the mist of earlier times: yes, the Arctic is a form of Desert. Tundra? That's the word for it, probably.

This road has been maintained, despite the vibrations of its washboarded surface, that means people must travel up and down it. You're not really sure how far back that little strip of buildings with a gas station was, but it's not hot, it's just dry, cold, windy. The sun is already starting to hang lower than you'd have liked... wasn't the desert supposed to be perpetually sunny? You shrug. There's about half of a candy bar left, a few swigs of water from your Stanford water bottle, and the backpack with a weekend's clothes you had with you. Road trips aren't supposed to be this hard.

Hi I'm REP, a robot dinosaur here to tell you about things based entirely on my ability to properly and adequately study them. I'm roughly 31 in human terms (your years are a little short on this planet), and specialized early in trying to figure out how Human Psychology works. The problem of course is that Human Psychology is very driven by both traditionally biological factors and the artificial environment you've managed to create! Worse, there's this informational space, the Noosphere, which seems to be the primary mechanism by which you pass on new societal information. It's not so hard for me to wrap my head around that, though the attitudes and behaviors of individual humans can be challenging to unpack.