maskormenacelogs | Let's live it up

Entry tags:

Let's live it up

WHO: YOU.
WHERE: De Chima, VA.
WHEN: Saturday August 9th.
WHAT: Registration in motion... among other things.
WARNINGS: None anticipated; please let us know if this should be edited.

" The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook -- it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security. But I tell you the new frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. "
( from jfk's speech "the new frontier," 7/15/1960. )

While known for being surprisingly quiet compared to other bustling cities like Nonah, De Chima is loud and packed this weekend with news of the Swearing-In Ceremony being held at one of its lavish halls this evening. Spreading like wildfire, people from nearby cities show up at the hall in attendance, many there for the publicity or for the opportunity to meet an imPort themselves. There's no shortage of non-locals in the hall and one may even begin to wonder if just how many non-locals outnumber the De Chima residents who are attending the ceremony.

The hall is brimming with excitement, with members of City Hall having joined the party (but the Mayor had other business to attend to, sorry!) to public figures who've decided to make an appearance much to the surprise of the media who are present (as usual) at these events. Reggie Pressley, Swaggy-Swag McSwag, Bartolomeo Zoccarato, and London Marriott can be found around the hall, some being interviewed by the local media, getting their photographs taken, or giving out autographs to those who ask. Marriott in particular will be poking around imPorts for juicy gossip and other information. Other public figures who have made an appearance tonight are local businessmen and women from the city itself, scouting imPorts in the hopes some will take an interest in their work. While many are looking for imPorts to work in computer, research, and medical fields, there are many entry level jobs in data entry, paying slightly more than minimum wage. These business folk will be around till the end of the event, handing out their cards to anyone who takes an interest.

If anyone is paying close attention to the De Chima locals who are attending, or if they had been out exploring the city earlier, they will have noticed something... peculiar about many of them. Silky smooth hair, unblemished skin that almost radiates, straight, white teeth, perfect eyebrows, noses, jawlines... you name it. These people are good looking and they know it, but more importantly, you can be, too! There are various doctors in the hall, make beelines for identifiable imPorts, and they apparently haven't established what boundaries are. If they can, they will grab a hold of an imPort's arm, shoulder, or boldly go for the hips and babble about their appearances, offering their cards and pointing out any flaws (or perfections that can be improved) the imPort has. "I can help you with that," they'll say about crooked noses, scars, wrinkles, anyone with a little extra weight, etc. A few may forget they're here on business and flirt with the adult imPorts, taken in by good looks (or other appealing features). One particular doctor, Dr. Nic, a man with buoyant personality, will be trying to pass around as many of his business cards as he can.

There are long tables set up overflowing with all kinds of food and drink. Alcohol is served at a bar where ID is a must, so sorry to anyone under twenty-one! There's a space in the middle of the main room of the hall for dancing, where Swaggy-Swag McSwag will domineer unless someone wants to challenge him to a dance-off.

In one corner of the hall, a small crowd has gathered to watch local businessmen exhibit their latest invention: a roomba with musical capabilities! At the top of the room is a slot to fit portable music players and it has wi-fi capabilities, allowing it to connect to someone's music folder from their computers. Like many roombas of the current time, it displays low level intelligence, able to repeat a couple of basic phrases. It also purrs at some point, which results in the crowd glancing at one another with perplexed expressions.

Unsurprisingly, or perhaps surprisingly to imPorts, is stricter than usual tonight. Before entering the hall, security checks everyone's belongings at the door. Jackets are scanned, purses are checked, sometimes pockets are asked to be emptied. Security will ask this of everyone, so don't pick a fight at the door unless you want to be escorted off the premise! Inside the hall, there's a security guard or two at every doorway and roaming up and down the other hallways.

The event begins at 5PM and ends around midnight, but imPorts are free to linger. De Chima is also known for its rainy weather and today is no exception, unfortunately. It pours outside and will continue even late into the night, so imPorts better take care not to wet their nicely done hair or clothes!

( Please state your character's official status -- REGISTERED or UNSETTLED -- in the subject header of your thread. Please also read and state your character's official status at THIS post, considering not every character will post a starter thread!

Additionally, NPCs will not be NPC'd by a mod, but players are welcome to utilize them as they wish, provided it's within reasonable bounds. (Don't shank anyone!))

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Special Agent. Of the FBI. Chilton's warm smile dropped a degree or two, if only for a moment, as he considered that. He did, of course, have experience with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- and he would continue to have experiences with them, unbeknownst to him. But kicking up a fret over that matter would only prove detrimental to Chilton.

Scully's shift from medical doctor to special agent didn't go unnoticed by the image-conscious psychiatrist; it was indeed an uncommon path. The road less traveled. Monetarily, it appeared to be a demotion of sorts -- but the power inherent? That just shifted to a different kind of power. That rather interested Chilton, as he rationalized that even Hannibal might find the transition from doctor to FBI agent palatable. The man might even kill for the chance.

Literally.

No one could perceive Chilton's silent joke, so he nodded in a small, polite way. He wasn't normally so restrained -- but he wasn't normally in the company of someone appealing in this manner, either.

Two particular questions made it past his lips:

"What inspires a doctor to leave her patients for the Federal government? And -- why was the FBI looking for a doctor? I would assume forensic work, but..."

But he didn't know, and he didn't want to say those words.

"Why specialise in abnormal psychology?" Scully offers a small, wan smile. "It interested me. I wanted to do something none of my peers were doing and I wanted to make a difference doing it."

Whether or not she felt she managed that much is more or less made clear by her retrospective weariness. She's nostalgic for the days in which she had felt it possible to make a difference, before she'd known just exactly how the cards were stacked. Mulder's crusade has nearly killed them both dozens of times over. It took her sister, his father. Still they're hardly any closer to being able to offer something to the world at large than they had been when they'd started.

"And maybe I looked at all these people telling me I was going places and found I didn't like how much of a stake they had in where those places were." All of which she wouldn't normally willingly admit, least of all to a psychiatrist, but then it's not much of an admission at all. Most people, she suspects, have a rebellious streak, however it may ultimately manifest.

"I worked in violent crimes. Taught at Quantico. Pathologists are usually in demand." Not many doctors are willing to take the pay dock, or the chance. Again, the wan smile. Given the choice, she'd do it all again, but that doesn't mean she isn't entirely aware of what she's lost. "Really, though; why abnormal psychology?"

"I find the discipline invigorating."

That was the cultured answer, anyway, and one carefully constructed. In truth, he considered the abnormal mind far more unique than the atypical -- a sentiment that bespoke of his tendency to need to feel special, or superior. Chilton, a narcissist, had devoted his psychiatric career to achieving acclaim; and that was (of course) still a work in progress. A better progression than his original plan, however.

He had been a woeful attempt at a surgeon.

"And there are quite a lot of --" specimens "-- individuals here, who require a particular kind of therapy. It's really quite fortunate."

His abandoned the conversational tangent about himself when she delved deeper into her own perspective. Violent crimes always piqued his interest, in fact, he considered Scully's work to be relative to his own in such a regard. And that, in turn, provoke another sort of running narrative, one that embedded some sense of hope within his ribcage. Chilton was always looking for like-minded individuals.

Especially considering the ferocity he now faced, with Hannibal potentially running about.

"Don't you find it, ah, more invigorating? Violent crimes sometimes overlap with abnormal psychology." Of course, in his Baltimore, the statistics seemed more parallel than not. Chilton had noticed that such pattern was somewhat unique to his own world, and he wasn't about to make the misstep of broadstroked assumptions. "I so often feel consumed with my work."

-- The wince he exhibited was only after the fact.

Scully caught the wince. A part of her examined it, but only cursorily, and the sum it came to reach was a wry, God help me, I think I know what you mean.

She didn't, in truth. Not quite. Still, the impression is quite strong and she found herself surprisingly sympathetic. Perhaps not surprisingly, on reflection. He struck her as pompous, ambitious in a way she never had been, attracted to symbols of status either as stand-in for or indication of actual status, but she hadn't decided whether or not she disliked him yet and while the jury is out there was no harm in opting for the assumption that she wouldn't. It might not have been terribly safe, on the one hand, but on the other she was going to need all the allies she could gather to herself in this place.

Besides, he wasn't the only one who'd been hunted and haunted by cannibalistic serial killers. The dark humour in the poor choice of phrasing, however unconsciously, struck a vague chord.

"Fascinating, sure. I guess I have developed an eye for the abnormal." She could feel the desire to smile at her own little joke tugging at the corners of her mouth, but she humoured it in only the barest way. She wondered what this man would think of one of her more recent cases, a series of murders which had, in the end, been committed by a monster in the guise of a man, a creature with long, shark-like teeth and a tongue capable of punching holes in its victim's skulls. But she'd spoken to that not-quite-man's psychiatrist, and by all accounts his psychology had, by human standards, been quite normal. She glances down and away. The world would always be more complicated than that.

"But you're right when you say there's overlap. Psychological profiles help us catch killers as often as the evidence they leave behind." True of the oddest cases when approached by the best profilers only, in absolute truth, but when it did hold true the method was invaluable. Scully had worked with Mulder long enough to know that his talent for profiling had saved them in situations in which her demand for hard evidence couldn't have. She felt his absence strongly here. Surely he'd have had some insight about all of this that she simply couldn't muster.

"Invigorating, though— no, you're right." Much as she hated to admit it. "Up to a point. Up until somebody gets shot."

Up until you get abducted by aliens, she thought drily, or the military, or the government. And wouldn't saying that have made her an 'invigorating' case study? She rubbed the back of her neck self-consciously, fingertips ghosting over the barely-visible remnants of the scratches the dead man's fingernails had carved in her throat... it felt like just days ago, but it was a world away.

He smiled, when she alluded to her developed eye for the abnormal. He interpreted a sort of camaraderie in the turn of phrase, as if they alone were these two competent individuals simply thrust into greatness. They both lived in their worlds of unhinged, powerful individuals (although Chilton hadn't the idea to approximate exactly the abnormality that Scully encountered), and it was... Nice to talk shop in an intuitive manner, without engaging the specific context. The dangerous context. It was very nice, thought Chilton.

"Have you be around many shot people?" He smiled when he said it, hoping that his joke wasn't entirely in bad taste -- worst case scenario, she knew someone who had been lethally shot. But Chilton's impulse angled towards banter, and he hoped she would find the effort endearing. Upon that moment's reflection, Chilton engaged in a behavior that was statistically unlikely for a man of his narcissistic tendencies: he reconsidered his social priorities. Maybe making light of a dark situation, when he was thoroughly unaware of Scully's experiences, was not the surest of maneuvers to make.

"I've known people," he said, quickly. His face adopted a grave, vaguely embattled expression. "Who have been shot. And -- well, murdered in a multitude of manners, in fact."

He had heard about Beverly Katz, though the autopsy pictures of her spliced corpse had eluded him. He was gravely familiar with Abel Gideon -- who had been shot, yes, though that didn't kill him. Hannibal Lecter had, eventually, managed what a singular bullet could not.

"I'm used to serial killers who think they're artists," he said, quietly, seeking her approval, hoping for admiration. "How do yours behave?"

The first question earned a slight hesitation, a parting of the lips and a brief intake of breath as Scully considered how to respond. How many people had she herself shot over the course of her career? More than most field agents. More than she'd have liked, too. That in and of itself wasn't even beginning to count personal losses, which she could, if she were feeling spiteful, have addressed -- could have told him about Melissa, her sister, left lying in Scully's apartment with a bullet in her brain. She wasn't, though. Feeling spiteful. Not towards him.

"A handful. Some friends." Family. "I was shot myself not too long ago." And again before that, but she couldn't say she particularly felt like discussing the sordid and exceptionally long list of injuries sustained in the line of duty. She had the scars for reminders, and that was enough. She certainly doesn't want to admit to having shot her partner, either, even if it was to save him.

"Violent crimes," she added with a faint, wry smile, as though it were normal, as though any of the cases she investigated were normal.

"We get the artists, and the ones who kill compulsively. Ritualistic killers. None of them want to be caught." It wasn't at all true that that was how she was shot any of the times she has been, but for the moment she didn't mind implying as much. The truth was both stranger and more difficult to come to terms with.

"My last case, the killer tapped open the skulls of his victims to ingest their brains. He was seeing a therapist and attending a support group for what he claimed was an eating disorder." For her part, Scully wasn't quite grave. Serious, yes, and there was in her voice a note of distant concern, but she maintained the matter-of-fact tone and bearing of someone entirely accustomed to this sort of violence. "That's not art. It's hunger. An undeniable obsession."

A pause. "Too many of them are hungry."

She paused again, gaze turning searching. "I'm sorry. About the people you knew; it's never easy."

Hunger. Obsession. To many of them are hungry.

It was so familiar.

Each word penetrated Chilton's smooth veneer like its own bullet, provoking little flinches and twitches from his normally smarmy face. He looked away, hoping to disguise the siphoning of blood that he was so positive proved evident in his cheeks. It wasn't that this information was particularly unnerving, independent of its context; it was the fact that it could all happen again, in Heropa, because Hannibal Lecter was in Heropa. It was the fact that Chilton had once been fed and consequentially digested human tongue, it was the fact that Will Graham still didn't know about Lecter's true nature -- and Chilton was not ever going to volunteer that information. It was the reminder that something unfortunate was going to happen to him back home, in Baltimore, in his near future -- if Freddie Lounds was to be believed.

It was the web of coincidences and parallels between Dana Scully and Frederick Chilton, as he interpreted them.

"It isn't easy, no. Even today, I --" Chilton swallowed, cutting the sentence short. He hoped that Scully read his reactions as pained rather than panicked, he hoped that he wouldn't persuade her that he was weak and embittered and delicate. A furtive glance was shot her way, and Chilton adopted a beleaguered half-smile.

"May I get you a drink? I -- actually, I'm not sure there are any here, not anything substantial," he said, glancing around for signs of quality stuff in glasses. Chilton began to crave, and this room felt too hot. "The offer stands, you know, for -- for later, I mean."

It was pouring rain outside. That fact alone dampened his fantasy of their immediate escape.

In a sense, it was always hopeless. Scully was an investigator -- a bloodhound, to use a graceless but not wholly inaccurate term. She was trained to sniff out malaise, to spot the cracking of a façade. Chilton's discomfort was, that is to say, wholly evident to her trained eye, though she was no Will Graham: its underlying cause remained obscure. As she had no reason to suspect him of anything, she took it at face value. Pain wore a person away, left certain marks, certain grooves along which the mind travelled, inspired certain habits, certain involuntary responses. She was, that is, familiar with trauma, how it looked, what it tasted like.

It was not, in her mind, synonymous with weakness. He was rescued in spite of himself, plucked at least momentarily from the rough seas of that particular line of conversation with a sympathetic nod. No further questions asked.

"I wasn't planning on doing any drinking tonight, but thanks." She wasn't entirely certain how she felt about him yet as a person, or how much that mattered. It was too soon to tell, and therefore, despite his faint ridiculousness earlier, and the sense of self-importance he carried about him, too soon by far to write him off. On the contrary, there seemed to be... threads of commonality, and Scully wasn't stupid: she knew she'd need someone with whom to empathize.

"You know, I may take you up on that in future though. They've offered me a job as a pathologist. Who knows, maybe I'll need your expertise sometime." And even if some part of her suggested that she ought to hate herself for thinking it, if nothing else it would be a poor idea to turn down a potential business acquaintance.

"We'll call it a rain check, then?"

He smiled, amused at his own little joke. It seemed relevant, situationally appropriate. She hadn't said no, as he halfway expected she would -- while Chilton mired himself in his ow narcissistic ambitions, he nevertheless understood his strengths, and inversely, his weaknesses. He had been luckily with his relationships in Heropa, true, but the man had also suffered drier spells. There was a point when he could not compromise, and that point was a lot sooner for some than others.

He rationalized it as a sort of test: those who could humor his quirks (or bad behaviors) were redoubtable characters in their own rights, and thus worthy of his attention. That was the sort of self-enabling logic that fed from its own tail, forever feasting upon his ego to nourish his ego.

But besides all that (or rather, in addition to), Dana Scully was appealing. Chilton felt a warmth to his smile that he didn't have to marinate in sarcasm first; and it could be highly palatable, to feel a sincere human connection.

"I would happily offer my expertise," he said, loving the way she said expertise. Conversations about work flowed more easily from his throat. "Here's hoping that you find your work stimulating, here."

He considered engaging a caveat: but perhaps not as disturbing. However, that would draw back to his own prior uneasiness, wouldn't it?

"The government, especially through its Heropean ambassadors, appears to be very invested in our well-being."

It was a tacit, neutral thing to say -- but he was looking at Scully, seeking to observe her reaction in full.

"We're a poor investment if we can't keep useful. Of course they're invested in our well-being." That was darker than she'd meant it to be, more resigned, less trusting. It could have been the work; government work did that to a person, disillusioned them in particular ways. The FBI in particular, and what it opened up. Seeing the worst in people, the worst of which humanity was capable, instilled in one a certain paranoia, perhaps inevitably so. This wasn't that. This was the bitterness that came with seeing more than that -- seeing that standing against all this ugliness, human and otherwise, was little enough. Apathy, bureaucratic inefficiency, and the sort of red tape that originated in darker places. She was, that is to say, accustomed to being used.

"We're here to serve somebody else's purpose, Doctor Chilton; I wouldn't go so far as to be flattered." She inclined her chin at the room at large. "Clearly they'd like us to be. That's reason enough to refrain."

To be, in fact, the opposite. Scully couldn't say she was flattered. Perturbed, yes. Irritated, certainly. Upset, absolutely, but there was no point in entertaining that at the moment. One had to be distant, was all. Approach the affair with a certain amount of skepticism. Even then she wasn't completely certain they wouldn't manage to take her in. Sentiment and integrity made poor bedfellows in strange lands and she knew it, God how she knew it, but she wasn't at all ready to give up on them. Not yet. There had to be constants. Things that mattered, regardless of where they were happening.

"But it's better than the alternative. I'll shoot for stimulating." A wan smile. The truth did tend to be, one way or another.

He liked her. He liked how she didn't cringe before the darker truth, he liked that she didn't buy into his optimistic spin -- he liked that she had committed to a skeptical behavior. This trend that Scully exhibited, it seemed less like a mood and much more like a personality -- and Chilton very much liked that.

"I think it would be a statistical matter, then, that not all of us will be found useful," he said. But he wasn't referring to himself, and nor was he referring to Scully; they were both doctors, and insightful, and clearly capable of adaptation. And, moreover they likely quavered in that nebulous of a line between good citizen and systematic threat. It was wiser, thought Chilton, to ensure that people like himself and Dana were well-situated.

"And when those without purpose are determined, well, one wonders what they might be serving instead."

Grim and foreboding as his words might have been, his thoughts weren't soaking in the gloomy, sharp-toothed atmosphere; Chilton was much too busy thinking about how to introduce his personal phone number into Scully's possession.

"Power corrupts?" Scully quirked an eyebrow, glancing away to scan the crowd assessingly. "I haven't been here very long, Doctor Chilton, but I don't think I have to have been to guess that not everybody wants to toe the line, and they've given us every excuse not to."

There were plenty of excuses to play along, too, but someone just an inch more proud and an inch less practical than Scully might have opted to be less outwardly cooperative. "Giving people exceptional means to enforce their self-interest is never a good idea; I still can't work out what they're thinking."

She didn't, that was to say, trust her fellow imPorts any more than the government that brought them all here, when it came down to it -- she just happened to know where she was more apt to find allies and sympathizers, and to be capable of sympathizing herself. She was a rational creature, but a partial one, and needed human contact as much as anybody. That didn't necessitate trust, was all.

"Maybe it doesn't really matter how useful we make ourselves. Maybe we're just the big stick." Meaning they'd only have to be present, the implicit threat. She didn't like that idea any better than any of the other theories she'd been stewing over since her arrival.

"They must think they're treading quite softly, then."

His eyes remained on her, fostered into an ideal carve of concern. He agreed with her wariness, her foresight -- he really did -- but the more that he watched her mouth form words, and listened to those lips that formed such clarity, the more he wanted to discuss a much more mutual topic. He wasn't sure where to begin; Chilton was so accustomed to his own loneliness that the sparkling desire for company proved foreign in its language. But she was so perceptive, and so pretty. Smalltalk, intoning sentiment, proposing dark conspiracies -- that's what he had defaulted upon.

The psychiatrist took a deep breath, puffing out his chest. He felt the healed scar, months now corrosive with forever scabbing tissue, stretch with the bold breath.

Now or never, Doctor Chilton, he thought to himself.

He sometimes spoke to himself with the appropriate title.

"Can I give you a call?" He said, nearly rushing the words together in a string. Canigiveyou acall.

"In case -- ah, of. Emergency. Emergencies. Power corruptions."

Nice save, doctor.

"Or speaking loudly." Addressing that was easier than addressing the question, which earned a look, something cautious, askance. Scully wasn't in the market tonight for a lot of things, and that wasn't apt to be changing anytime soon, and calls, the exchange of cards and phone numbers, that not-quite-familiar dance, tended not infrequently to lead down alleys she hadn't been content to or even particularly interested in treading for some time now. It occurred to her as she thought it that she'd become so suspicious that even the idea of friendship had become foreign. Friendship in a normal sense, anyhow, the sort people cultivated and kept on the windowsill to glance at occasionally when it was convenient to do so, the sort of warm relationship that garnered mutual support and peace of mind but not, dear God no, not a shared mission into the unknown to search for answers, for the Truth with a capital T, and Mulder was the only one she trusted to halfway understand her anymore. Beyond that...

Beyond that, the idea of dating, settling down, meeting somebody had been more alien than any of Mulder's wildest theories for some time now. Even if it hadn't been, this would not be the time, nor the place, nor likely the person.

On the other hand, she was going to need someone to talk to. It had been a long time since she'd really managed even that, since communication had been something other than carefully unspoken, circumstantially addressed. Spare necessity.

"For your part," she tried, not without a hint of caution, but not unkindly either, "you're going to have to reach me for that rain check somehow."

Which seemed alright. Manageable. A start. And if you ever need to cut up a corpse or to have someone shot, I'm your girl seemed excessively morbid, given earlier conversation, and went unspoken.

"Do. By all means." I'd like to hit the ground running.

"I'll give you a call, then," he said, seizing upon that permission. His shoulders squared, his chin lifted -- clearing Chilton interpreted the invitation as a positive sign. His coiled body language eased into something more confident, something speaking with kinetic ease.

He wondered, before that glowing moment of self-declared victory could waver, if he ought to prolong the conversation. Was additional commentary necessary? Would Agent Dana Scully want to talk more about herself? Chilton made a steady bet on no, thinking that Dana had already discussed herself to the current willing limits. There was something so composed, so impenetrable in her posture to suggest as much.

"I hope to see you around. Soon," he said as he took his leave, all the while reining in his glee. One mustn't tip too many emotions at once.

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Let's live it up

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