Work Text:
Danny had seen the writing on the wall when Handel was elected. He didn’t really feel like leaving, but he set up several safeguards so that he could protect the people around him, as well as having Tucker help set up a few fake identities he could enable in the future, it looked like he was going to be around for a long time. When the coup came, he quietly slipped into a new identity and continued his work, content to do his best to protect who he could.
He worked with Sam for several years, moving people who wanted to be moved and keeping his head down. It wasn’t particularly fun work, but it made his ghost half feel good, and since there wasn’t much progress in exploring space, he contented himself with protecting people.
As his friends slowly died, he considered going to live in the infinite realms full time. It would be nice not to have to work to blend in, to pretend to be someone he really wasn’t, but he still felt called to stay on earth. Something was telling him to stick around, so he kept helping people how he could, and waited for a sign of what was keeping him here.
It was almost a hundred years later that he finally got it. He’d contented himself with protecting people in the small scale, moving people to places they’d be safer and fomenting rebellion where he could. The discovery of the surge drive changed things. It made interstellar travel feasible, if not easy.
When the USE launched their probe project, Danny almost emigrated. He could have made himself a new identity, but it would be hard. It was easier to create one here, make it as appealing as possible to any possible probe project, and hope he got ‘coerced’ into participating.
His scheming worked out in spades, and he was recruited to the initial engineering team. Danny dived into the work eagerly. Even if he hadn’t worked in engineering in years, he’d kept up on developments, and 100+ years of experience really helped speed things along. Still, it was a few years until the ship was ready. Danny understood why it couldn’t be piloted by a person, and that he wouldn’t have been selected anyway, but as he saw the growing tension politically, he started considering his options for getting out of here anyway.
Ghost powers proved to be his solution. He could inhabit electronics when he was in ghost form, and use that to hitch a ride into orbit. Then, he could just fly into the hull and hunker down. He didn’t need to breath, and being out among the stars would make eating unnecessary too. He could hitch a ride to another star system, and see where the probe went from there. Maybe he’d even chat with the replicant, although that didn’t seem likely. From the few he’d talked to before, they tended to be single-minded, and he wasn’t good enough at software to try to remove the controls, as much as he’d like to.