Investigation. [ Severus is handling two plates, and Erik is quiet again for a beat while he does the math. There is a struggle concerning his sudden and overwhelming impulse to excuse himself mid-conversation in the more extended silence that follows.
Bizarre anxiety prickles tension into the back of his neck, rigging his shoulders into something almost taxidermied: an artificial representation of normalcy, too stiff in the spine.
[ Severus notices Erik's demeanor, but chooses to ignore it. Politeness, maybe. Both plates go on the island in the kitchen around which there are several stools. If Erik doesn't want to eat anything he doesn't have to, but it's there. (A charm, meanwhile, stows the rest of it.) ]
The truth is that there is something in this ship. [ Lowly, in his usual tone, but surely. ] They all saw it. Shepard and Javik remembered it. And it has punished them all by degrees.
[ It seems obvious (to Erik) that he is intended to complete the ritual of choosing a stool and sitting on it. He manages with minimal difficulty despite the rigid lack of give in his shoulders, sitting and even scooting in before he thinks to set the glasses down and twists the cork.
At this range, across the island, it’s easier to see that the side-effects of illness aren’t the only differences in his appearance. His neck has filled out behind his ears; the block of his jaw is squared off into a more robust edge. Grim lines create hard shapes between his brows and around his mouth, set around determination like concrete while he pours.
Space chardonnay is probably not an ideal accompaniment for eggplant canolis, but it’s what he has and his mind is elsewhere anyway. ]
[ Somewhere in Erik's brain is the information that linked kitchens with food prior to shambling into the one he's in now. Surely. ]
I'm aware. [ Wry. Severus has quit drinking, but he'll accept a glass and have some anyway; he doesn't feel like explaining. ] I've gotten you an encryption for it.
[ Already. ]
Something has happened to the people that went into the doors. More than is widely known, more than the memory loss. They're all having problems.
Edited (apparently i forgot how to words) 2014-09-19 07:46 (UTC)
For discussing it via the network without anyone prying. [ Severus's grip on this kind of technology is still tenuous, but he's long since decided he doesn't trust the network. One of many reasons he won't use the video function. ]
Losing themselves psychologically. Not needing to sleep. [ Much more detail than that, he's not certain of, but William's attempt into bringing it up is well remembered. Despite his temperament at the time. ] I believe it's only be the beginning. There's talk to be found on the network, and things Petrelli said to me about what happened to people who found those doors in the past. They weren't themselves anymore.
[ Realization is swift to sink in through the furrow of Erik’s brow, and slow for him to process any further than that. Of course they can be encrypted. Of course there are ways to eavesdrop.
When he zeroes back in on Severus, he has to catch up again, wineglass hardly touched within the wide cage of his fingers. ]
Something in their head.
[ After a stretch of silence, he sips and sets the glass aside to push at the edge of his plate instead, turning it around, and its canoli with it. ]
How do you destroy something that wants to be gazed upon, but cannot be found.
Mirrors and quiet movements. Hunting Medusa. [ Mostly metaphoric, but Merlin only knows what they'll have to do out there if they actually find it. ] I know you listened to Shepard's last public transmission. What did you think about it?
[ That answer seems to appease Severus. Weaved into conversation, he eats small forkfuls and never speaks with food in his mouth, precise table manners ingrained by the childhood fear of embarrassing himself in front of high society friends. ]
Either that, or they got so close it had no choice but to. The others-- they went in with wide eyes and exploratory hope. Lydia believed from the onset that she was hunting something.
If it has control over the way we move through the uncharted portions of the ship, why not force them off the trail. [ Erik still hasn’t eaten at all, having only just attracted a fork into his fingers after watching Severus do work on his own plate. He’s still in the earliest stages of prodding at the shell, attention split even between dealing with cannoli and dealing with a hostile sentience buried in the Tranquility’s bowels.
After a longer look, he picks up a knife as well. ]
[ Severus is a good cook, for the record. But he's still not going to bother Erik about it. Maybe there's a question waiting in the wings, but it isn't 'Did you forget how to use a fork.' ]
It may not have been able to focus on all those variables at once. [ The field ops it kept and mentally re-arranged, tormenting all of them who went in after, and shuffling Shepard and Javik off. ] But why lure us down there? Why give them back?
It only gave back the ones who don’t know what was done to them. [ Erik cuts as he speaks, stiff movement from the elbow. As if on cue, he has some minor trouble spearing the bit he’s sawed off on his fork.
From there on into his mouth, he chews with his mouth closed, still thinking, with very little in the way of outward reaction. ]
It may have been trying to take us as well. Slice your first catch up for bait to bring in a larger haul. [ He’s back to cutting off another piece, focus turned down to that end. He must like it, then. ] For those of us that escaped, the experience may have been harrowing enough to keep us from trying again.
Were you? Harrowed? [ Severus doesn't sound like he was-- like he doesn't believe Erik was, either. He doesn't think this place is capable of torturing him. Not anymore.
The others, though. Maybe. ]
It wanted us to go in the white doors. But we had to choose, apparently. Otherwise you'd think it'd have just knocked the lot of us in. There's magic like that-- contingent on will. I spoke about it with Shepard, before they went in for the last time.
[ Fork and knife and cannoli. Now that he’s started, Erik eats with the robotic sort of repetitive motion typically associated with soldiers, intent without the rush. Every muscle fiber in his skull can be seen working under the coarse grain of his beard. ]
Your science? [ Mutations. Which Severus thinks are probably natural; fixing whatever handicapped internal code caused muggles to cast off the ability to touch magic. Maybe someday they'll get back. ]
I have Shepard's notes. She saw the door, the first time out, but couldn't get to it. Even seeing it left a mark. She'd written it out- [ Severus makes a vague gesture, handwriting, repetitive. ] White door, white door. Over and over.
Everyone’s science. Consent, [ he says, ] influence, free will. [ Too much pressure sees the tines of his fork clinking sharp through eggplant to the plate underneath. White door, white door.
He looks a shade more grim when he grinds his way through the same bite. ]
[ One eyebrow lifts, but he doesn't comment. That sounds like ethics and contracts, instead of supernatural compulsion. Something to get into another time, perhaps. Shepard's notes are more pertinent. ]
I don't understand all of her shorthand. [ But, ] She strongly believed it to be an artificial intelligence.
[ Severus sits back, elbows perched on the edge of the island, twists his fingers in the air like spinning a ball, some construct of air. A neatly stacked selection of papers appears between his hands, and he takes it, flips through, then slides it over to Erik.
A reproduction, loose-leafed, unbound. He doesn't pass around the real one. ]
[ Snape creates papers from thin air, and Erik can’t help but eye him with trace suspicion before he reaches to take them.
‘Magic.’
He reads in silence after forking the last bite off his plate into his mouth, brow hooded low, then lower. He turns all the way to the fifth page only to go back to the first. ]
This is barely coherent, [ he observes, helpfully. ]
‘Adopt cat,’ [ Erik reads, eventually, and the way he says it makes it sound a lot like fuck. The way he turns the stack of papers back over to the start again sounds a bit like fuck also. It definitely sounds like humans, at the very least.
He picks up his wine glass and sips with more restraint than he feels capable of. Still, his fingers are light on the stem, around the bell. ]
Have we done any testing on the survivors who went through the door.
[ Severus just tilts his head. Maybe it's a look of 'Why is that the part you zeroed in on' or maybe it's 'One of my co-workers is regularly a cat'. Who knows.
'We' meanwhile. Mmhm. ]
It's an ongoing project. Fortunately one of the field operatives was training to be a doctor at home, he's overseeing it. As far as I'm aware there's been no results of note.
It's difficult to detect anomalies without a baseline.
[ And there’s certainly nothing of medical examination in Shepard’s notes at a glance. Erik is more interested in making short work of his chardonnay than he is pouring through it a second time. ]
How do you think your friends would feel about being medically examined before we leave.
[ Severus thinks of medical examinations sort of like a middle-class preacher's wife must think of witchcraft: weird and wrong and possibly fatal. It's not something he would have noticed a lack of - obviously. ]
You'd have to ask them. [ Lily, muggleborn, might. It's Claire he wonders about-- but he's already made her swear up and down not to go anywhere near that bloody door. ] I expect it's all coming up as 'non existent', like the manticore blood samples.
[ Erik will also have another glass, wrist rolled off at a fancier pour than is really necessary for eating at a kitchen island with a wizard on level 10 of a terrible spaceship. ]
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Bizarre anxiety prickles tension into the back of his neck, rigging his shoulders into something almost taxidermied: an artificial representation of normalcy, too stiff in the spine.
He says: ] The truth, [ without thinking. ]
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The truth is that there is something in this ship. [ Lowly, in his usual tone, but surely. ] They all saw it. Shepard and Javik remembered it. And it has punished them all by degrees.
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At this range, across the island, it’s easier to see that the side-effects of illness aren’t the only differences in his appearance. His neck has filled out behind his ears; the block of his jaw is squared off into a more robust edge. Grim lines create hard shapes between his brows and around his mouth, set around determination like concrete while he pours.
Space chardonnay is probably not an ideal accompaniment for eggplant canolis, but it’s what he has and his mind is elsewhere anyway. ]
We won’t be able to identify it without going in.
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I'm aware. [ Wry. Severus has quit drinking, but he'll accept a glass and have some anyway; he doesn't feel like explaining. ] I've gotten you an encryption for it.
[ Already. ]
Something has happened to the people that went into the doors. More than is widely known, more than the memory loss. They're all having problems.
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[ Erik squints as he sets the bottle aside.
He is considered to possess a genius level intellect by the highly qualified 70s doctors responsible for his assessment. ]
What sort of problems?
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Losing themselves psychologically. Not needing to sleep. [ Much more detail than that, he's not certain of, but William's attempt into bringing it up is well remembered. Despite his temperament at the time. ] I believe it's only be the beginning. There's talk to be found on the network, and things Petrelli said to me about what happened to people who found those doors in the past. They weren't themselves anymore.
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When he zeroes back in on Severus, he has to catch up again, wineglass hardly touched within the wide cage of his fingers. ]
Something in their head.
[ After a stretch of silence, he sips and sets the glass aside to push at the edge of his plate instead, turning it around, and its canoli with it. ]
How do you destroy something that wants to be gazed upon, but cannot be found.
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{ Erik tells the cannoli rather than look at Severus directly, speaking quietly when he does. Shepard was human, as far as he knew.
She also knew what she was doing.
Javik’s part still winds tension in behind his sternum when he thinks about it. ]
Do you think they provoked it into engaging them.
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Either that, or they got so close it had no choice but to. The others-- they went in with wide eyes and exploratory hope. Lydia believed from the onset that she was hunting something.
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After a longer look, he picks up a knife as well. ]
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It may not have been able to focus on all those variables at once. [ The field ops it kept and mentally re-arranged, tormenting all of them who went in after, and shuffling Shepard and Javik off. ] But why lure us down there? Why give them back?
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From there on into his mouth, he chews with his mouth closed, still thinking, with very little in the way of outward reaction. ]
It may have been trying to take us as well. Slice your first catch up for bait to bring in a larger haul. [ He’s back to cutting off another piece, focus turned down to that end. He must like it, then. ] For those of us that escaped, the experience may have been harrowing enough to keep us from trying again.
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The others, though. Maybe. ]
It wanted us to go in the white doors. But we had to choose, apparently. Otherwise you'd think it'd have just knocked the lot of us in. There's magic like that-- contingent on will. I spoke about it with Shepard, before they went in for the last time.
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[ Fork and knife and cannoli. Now that he’s started, Erik eats with the robotic sort of repetitive motion typically associated with soldiers, intent without the rush. Every muscle fiber in his skull can be seen working under the coarse grain of his beard. ]
Science as well, [ he says. ]
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I have Shepard's notes. She saw the door, the first time out, but couldn't get to it. Even seeing it left a mark. She'd written it out- [ Severus makes a vague gesture, handwriting, repetitive. ] White door, white door. Over and over.
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He looks a shade more grim when he grinds his way through the same bite. ]
What else did she write.
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I don't understand all of her shorthand. [ But, ] She strongly believed it to be an artificial intelligence.
[ Severus sits back, elbows perched on the edge of the island, twists his fingers in the air like spinning a ball, some construct of air. A neatly stacked selection of papers appears between his hands, and he takes it, flips through, then slides it over to Erik.
A reproduction, loose-leafed, unbound. He doesn't pass around the real one. ]
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‘Magic.’
He reads in silence after forking the last bite off his plate into his mouth, brow hooded low, then lower. He turns all the way to the fifth page only to go back to the first. ]
This is barely coherent, [ he observes, helpfully. ]
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I doubt she composed it with outside readers in mind.
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He picks up his wine glass and sips with more restraint than he feels capable of. Still, his fingers are light on the stem, around the bell. ]
Have we done any testing on the survivors who went through the door.
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'We' meanwhile. Mmhm. ]
It's an ongoing project. Fortunately one of the field operatives was training to be a doctor at home, he's overseeing it. As far as I'm aware there's been no results of note.
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[ And there’s certainly nothing of medical examination in Shepard’s notes at a glance. Erik is more interested in making short work of his chardonnay than he is pouring through it a second time. ]
How do you think your friends would feel about being medically examined before we leave.
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You'd have to ask them. [ Lily, muggleborn, might. It's Claire he wonders about-- but he's already made her swear up and down not to go anywhere near that bloody door. ] I expect it's all coming up as 'non existent', like the manticore blood samples.
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[ Erik will also have another glass, wrist rolled off at a fancier pour than is really necessary for eating at a kitchen island with a wizard on level 10 of a terrible spaceship. ]
Thank you for cooking.
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*principle ok on principle
on principal skinner
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