mental link | day: 006

[shri]

[ Her options are at this point, are brood up how much she wants to kill Damon and Elena, or get on with work. She didn't do so well at brooding, though her mind is still so new, so sharp and edged and not kept inside of herself. But in this case, a fire trying to find new kindling to keep itself going. Her own impatience and frustration are evident. But when isn't she anyway - ]

( I was informed when I arrived that we need to be ... ascertaining particular pieces of information.

Have we begun such? If not, should we not begin planning to reconnoitre? )

[ She has already plans, but even so, if it's already been done - well, she's happy to be told if it means she doesn't have to go chasing her own tail. ]

( And does anyone know how to use these - light books - that has the time to show me? It keeps flashing at me and I cannot make it stop. I think it wants something. )

[ The data pad, she means the data pad, she's grouchy at it for not! giving her! the things! she wants! Being a grandma in space is a trial. ]

Comments

[ryohji]

[ if the symbiote conveys every part of his pleasant surprise, it wouldn't be enough. ]

( And your men, they must have accorded you a great deal of respect. Anything less would be an offense, I think. )

[shri]

[ That gets a laugh of genuine pleasure - her men. Her poor and starved, given new purpose, her Afgans, not of her home, but brave beside her, her ladies, fierce and all flashes of sharp toothed grace. A army full made of many types, all serving not even her, but her purpose. She cannot take compliments so well herself - but she loved her people, and to their affection, she could be boundlessly proud.

After all, what else could she do for so many dead? ]

( More than I could ever hope to deserve. They treated me well, and whatever grace I posses, ever came from them. )

[ryohji]

[ for a man who served so many different masters, this kind of humility found him almost extraterrestrial. (perhaps, he notes to himself, it technically was.) it didn't appear contrived or deliberate, because she'd reminisced of her people in the same tones that she'd requested for help with her datapad. just the same, by the time its individual intonations and inflections were summed up, it seemed to hint that whatever the occasion, she could find a way to inspire millions to her cause. ]

( Don't get me wrong. Respect is an emotion I've had little use for, and even less familiarity with. Where I'm from, power tends to corrupt. But I'm not surprised. )

[shri]

[ There's a longer discussion there, a harsher one - but just who she is, what she's done. How ruthless and unforgiving she can be. Her fire may sit now, quiet and sure, behind those fortress walls. ]

( Power usually does. Had my life been different, it might have done the same to me. But as it stood, I knew to whom I belong. )

[ There's an inflection there - they may be gone, her city burned to the ground, her home torn apart until the boots of unforgiving armies - but she will always belong to them. First, last and every day between. ]

[ryohji]

( I wish I could feel the same. )

[ only when the spark of red and gold brilliance mushrooms behind his optic nerve, an inferno of retribution, only when he could taste the smoke on his tongue, a reminder that fire was the greatest rite of purification, only then is he drawn to the back and forth of their telepathic conversation. how easy it was for him to rely on the symbiote, how much of it was ancillary to his original point, as much as it was fascinating.

cathaway's words come like chill in his bones. she had goals, didn't she? 'she knows where she belongs'. kaji wonders if in six months, in a year, whether she'll be so sure, or whether she'll have anything resembling a choice. ]

( Listen to me. I have something I'd like to tell you, in way of information. I'm afraid it doesn't have much to do with this mission. I think to think it's more important than that. But I can't tell you, like this. )

[ over the symbiote, he means. ]

( Will you let me see you? )

[shri]

( Of course. I am in my... rooms. Join me at your leisure. )

[ An open invitation, whenever he feels ready. She is happy for the company. Because in the end, isolation never truly suited her. Life had ever been full of people, as far as she was concerned. ]

[ryohji]

( Try to curb your anticipation. I'm not known for my punctuality. )

[ buoyant is how the teasing makes its return, but even it fails to mask the relief as kaji closes the link, almost too eagerly.

he feels like a migratory animal, using polarised light or the earth's magnetic field to travel many miles through unfamiliar territory en route. this is what it's like, making his way to the room she occupies, relying on little else but instinct, fortified by the very thing he so very loathes - the symbiote.

belying his warning, he comes in good time, feet halting at the right door. he doesn't bother knocking; he's realized by now that his mind will betray his arrival sooner than any noise will. a hand wraps around the doorknob, turning it just enough to poke his head in - ]

...Well, the name suits the face. And the face suits the title.

[shri]

[ And like she has been for all of her planning, she is sat on the floor, stretched out on the cushions she has arranged herself comfortably around. Her sewing in hand as she pulls the needle through material. Over and about itself in the looping stitches she draws to the full pattern. ]

And you sir, are a flatterer. You'll find no truck of that with me.

[ But even so, she beckons him, her hand lifting, curling lightly, for him to come and join her. ] Welcome.

[ryohji]

[ he'll take that as an invitation to shut the door behind him and get a better look. the woman appeared close to his own age - perhaps a few years older - and subtly built, but there was something steel to her aspect that suggested kaji would have won second prize in a direct collision. ]

It'll take more than that to discourage me, unfortunately. [ kaji lived, died, and lived once more a study in contrasts, and he is determined to continue this tradition: his tone says guilty as charged, but his head nods politely before he lowers himself down on a cushion across from her. he's used to taking his seat on cushions or pillows, though admittedly the ones he's most familiar with were decidedly more sparse. zabuton designers tended to the economical in all things.

for a long while he simply observes in silence. he'd come to relay an urgent matter, but it takes the backburner for the way she threads her pattern to completion. ]

A woman of many talents. [ this too, comes as no surprise. ] A hobby of yours?

[shri]

[ She keeps her stitches neat, even as she does not look at it to look at him. But as for a hobby - she laughs a little. Keeping her hand moving as she forms the delicate pattern of a bird in flight. Forming feathered swings that sweep out, pulled and hook by the thread that formed it.

If not for the scars that sit at the end of her sleeves on her beaten knuckles, perhaps she could be no more than a refined lady. One who spent her days in idle pursuits, polite creations that offended no one and sweetened with docility. ]

An expectation of position. [ She smoothes her fingers across her work to make sure it sits flat. ] And a young woman's instruction to keep her from twitching in boredom so often. My mother-in-law insisted that if I was going to fiddle when kept indoors so much, she would give my hands decent work.

[ryohji]

And decent work it is.

[ he understands, how even hobbies can be taken by necessity, how very few individuals are allowed the luxury of discovering themselves outside the relation with which they are created, applied, and maintained. what else is there to say?

he is quiet for a few beats more, devising the best prelude into what will prove a very stark change of tone. his face loses most - all - of its warm, faraway appreciation, eyes leaving her hands behind. ]

To why I'm here.

[ a study of contrasts indeed. ]

Back on the Station. Have you ever met a woman [ woman. kaji struggles to conceive of her that way, even though all appearances goes far to suggest it. alien, that didn't suit her either, not like it did some of the other hosts they share this unwelcome yoke. ] named Cathaway?

[shri]

[ There is a moment - quick, stiff, and drowned down in the years of practise, where it is no more that her fingers stop, the needle half way through the material. That says - yes. She knows. She knows that name best since she arrive. An unpalatable terror, an unwillingness to bend. Arm to throat, fingers to wrist. Fire against water: the no man's land between the two.

Yes, she knows Cathaway.

And she pulls the needle the rest of the way through. ]

The woman on the station. [ A flat confirmation, as her eyes stay on the material. ]

[ryohji]

[ communication consisted ninety three percent of nonverbal cues.

before the symbiote, that is. now, kaji would hazard its relevance has seen a demotion. ]

If you could call her that. [ kaji doesn't feel irresponsible coming to the unspoken conclusion of the nature of lakshmi and cathaway's previous meeting, and how it failed to impart any feelings of good will. it's for lack of precise adjectives to describe what, or who, cathaway exactly was that he will continue to refer to her in a manner than belies the ambigious gorgion knot of her mind. ] That woman's been there longer than you or I have been alive. That's plenty time for the symbiote to do good work on her mind. It's completely taken over.

[ what oddments that leak of his audience with the symbiote-cathaway, the one-or-thing, are more than enough for her to come to a general impression of what he means. ]

What better distraction than sending us away to meddle in the domestic affairs of a distant planet? I wonder.

[shri]

Has she just?

[ Light, mocking, a joke that is only funny to her - and isn't everything, in these years, these centuries.

And yes, that is no light matter at all, is it - ? and for it, her hand finally stops her sewing. She pulls herself up, her legs folding up under her, her arms coming to settle in her lap. Her face turning towards him, as she pushes back her veil from her hair and her hands settle into her lap. Back straight, her shoulders rolled back, her face turned up - her full attention give to him.

Go on then, sir, she's listening. ] But what would we be distracted from?

[ryohji]

Instrumentality.

[ instrumentality, singularity, hivemind, a rose by any other name... sounds just as horrifying. the word slips automatically, even as kaji is remotely aware lakshmi may not be in any position to understand it as he means it.

kaji continues, in the tone of someone who had beaten the clarification to death ad nauseum. this is what he'd devoted his entire life to understanding, after all. ]

Cathaway called it 'aggregate consciousness'. What makes you and I distinct, the symbiote will try to close the distance between us, until we lose what makes us individuals. When we become incorporated into the 'Nest', we won't know right from left. Our problems won't trouble us anymore, our goals won't motivate us. Ultimately we will become puppets for the symbiote, just like she is.

[ clinical and steely. a beat, and then - ] It... talked through her.

[shri]

[ She stays in the same spot, and if not for how she was - that flat open expression of absolute attention to what he says - the force of her own mind turned up on his. That, too, consumes. But only to fuel herself, her cause, her understanding. She might seem no more a woman at rest, paying attention leisurely. A practised pose of recline where she slow blinks, her mouth fixed to a line. But there could be no mistaking, even with her muddle perception she is taking stock fully of what he was saying to her. ]

I will never accept that. I belong to my people.

[ She is filled with many voices - long before this creature took up home in her soul. It would know its place if it wanted her compliance. ] I believe I spoke with... them, too.

[ A strange feeling, to speak to and too many - but she is a little familiar with it in the metaphorical sense, if never so literal before. ]

[ryohji]

[ acceptance. he thinks, if only it were so simple, if only instrumentality was to be accepted or refused, if choice had direct bearing on the direction of their lives, if mind over matter could protect them from the worst of it. in the conventional sense, anyway.

he is quiet for a moment, appraising the level of attention she contributes, her reply. ]

If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump out before you can kill it. But a frog that's placed in lukewarm water will fail to notice as he's slowly brought to a boil. That's what they call, 'creeping normality.'

[ he makes it all sound so inevitable, doesn't he? this is heavy stuff, coming so quickly that his point risks dismissal or underestimation. that's what clarke did with it, anyway. ] Distance between humans is healthy, after all. That's what I've decided, to keep from using the symbiote unless necessary. That's why I came here, to tell you in person.

[shri]

[ It's... nothing she understands in this form, not exactly. But as he speaks, she realises she knows just what he means.

It was no more than a snatched traveller off the road, first. Then a gopi girl herding her cattle at the edges of the field. A child that wandered too far off from the other of his class. A brahmin that had gone to pray at the river bank and it came in closer and closer from field to village to city, until it almost felt like it had always been this way. That people could be consumed and their flesh rendered and it just be the price of occupation until she had been worn down into such a place she could not escape that boiling water that had seared away the layers of skin -

- the heat then, is sudden, not of a cooking fire, or the light of oil lamps - this is the burning pyre, this is the Goddess Sita that puts herself to the flames. This is the woman of her home knowing what happens to all women who have to endure the fall of a city, throwing themselves into the flames as the heat grows and grows and grows. This is the screaming, the blood, the fear, that paints her. Padmavati would never let another have her body.

And she had done nothing less than burn herself alive before ever allowing it. In her hands she had sunk herself into an empire rather than give herself over and by those hands begun to rip.

There was only ever two choices, there would only ever be two choices. ]

No. [ The empty cavern of her mouth as it forms the word. Without true shape and yet the meaning entire meaning comes without mistake. ] That will never come to be, now that you have told me what is in that water.

[ She will wage war, even if it is in her own body, and if she cannot win, she will do what all good Queens do: she will never let herself be taken. ]