earth/mars

[hello_dolly]

Bella's parents have trouble being married.

It's not any one thing, exactly, they aren't cheating on each other, they don't fight, they don't have screaming differences of opinion about how to bring up their child. There's just this itchy, fluttering regret about Renée, a certain tired wit's-end character to Charlie's demeanor around her. They are trying. They are trying so hard. Bella isn't sure if it's for her or out of a sense of duty to their vows or what. But they are still married.

When Bella is eleven, Charlie brings in an envelope with a Stark Industries logo on it, and says he didn't think it would come to anything, but he applied for a job, and they've unexpectedly offered him an interview, and he'll show up to it if Renée wants him to.

She asks where's the job and he says Mars and she squeals and hugs him harder than Bella's seen her do before. So of course he goes.

And a few weeks later, he's sitting, bewildered, with an offer in his hand, and they put the house on the market and start packing, and Renée's so happy, she gets to live on Mars, her baby girl (Bella is eleven entire years old, thank you very much) gets to grow up on another planet before almost anyone else, it's so exciting.

Bella isn't sure what to think about it, and all her notebooks are packed, but she supposes living on Mars is, at minimum, cool, even if she'll miss Angie and her other friends. And she can't really do anything about it, anyway.

The trip is weeks long - although not months; that's part of why they're willing to hire people like this, now - and boring, after the initial tour of the ship.

Bella is almost the only child on the entire colony. There are some teenagers - prodigy interns, and one person's seventeen-year-old son - and then there's her and that's almost it, except that Howard Stark himself, and his family, are living on the colony now for hands-on work with the ruins, and Howard Stark has a boy her age.

Bella sets out to meet this boy, if he's going to be her only potential playmate in her own age range for the foreseeable future.

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[toblameforit]

Howard Stark's boy is at Howard Stark's house, and he answers the door when she buzzes.

"Hi!" he says. "Wow, you're a kid, I thought we were out of those. Did you come in on the last ship? What's your name? I'm Tony. Do you like science?"

[hello_dolly]

"I came in on the last ship!" agrees Bella, pleased that he is so friendly. "I'm Bella and I think science is cool!"

[toblameforit]

"Science is cool," says Tony. "Let's be friends!"

[hello_dolly]

"Okay! What were you doing when I showed up?"

[toblameforit]

"I," says Tony, "was building a robot. Come see!"

[hello_dolly]

Bella is quite eager to come have a look at the robot.

[toblameforit]

It is not a very good robot right now. But it will be a better one when it has all of its parts!

[hello_dolly]

"Is it hard to get robot parts up here or did you bring lots?"

[toblameforit]

"I build 'em special," he says, "out of other stuff, that's why it's taking so long."

[hello_dolly]

"Can I help?"

[toblameforit]

"I dunno! Can you?"

[hello_dolly]

"You might have to teach me how," allows Bella. "I've never built a robot before unless you count pretend ones out of popsicle sticks."

[toblameforit]

"I don't really know how to teach stuff," he says. "But I guess I'm the best you've got. Sure, okay."

[hello_dolly]

"Well, how'd you learn it?" asks Bella, peering at the robot parts from a respectful distance.

[toblameforit]

"Some of it I had to have a grown-up teach me 'cause there's safety rules and stuff for working with hot metal, but for most of it, I just kind of played around with stuff. And read a lot of manuals."

[hello_dolly]

"That is what manuals are for," agrees Bella. "What is the robot going to do?"

[toblameforit]

"Roll around by itself without running into things," he says. "That doesn't really sound impressive unless you know a lot about robotics. Not running into things is hard, and it's the kind of hard that humans are way better at than computers."

[hello_dolly]

"I'm really bad at not running into things," giggles Bella. "I also trip a lot."

[toblameforit]

"Maybe I should make you a robot to ride around on!"

[hello_dolly]

"That would be awesome! Robot pony," giggles Bella. "Tripping hurts less here than it did on Earth. Because of lower gravity."

[toblameforit]

"That is true," says Tony. "I will totally build you a robot pony anyway."

[hello_dolly]

"Cool," declares Bella. "But first this thing. How do you teach it not to bump into stuff?"

[toblameforit]

Tony answers this question!

He is not, it turns out, a very good teacher. But it's possible to extract plenty of useful information from him by asking the right questions and steering him a little when he gets off course. And he really knows his stuff.

[hello_dolly]

Bella is good at figuring out what questions she wants asked, at least when she gets a few tries to calibrate. And it turns out robots are interesting! She makes herself useful.

[toblameforit]

Robots are so interesting.

One thing Tony is not very good at is remembering where he put stuff a minute ago. Maybe Bella can help him out in that area too!