I Wish I Had a Castle in the Sky ( OPEN )

[sidecars]

WHO: Everyone!
WHERE: All over America
WHEN: Nov. 14th-24th
WHAT: The Cosmic Cube is creating multiple realities for all the imPorts. Where are these "universes" coming from and who is wielding it? Are you strong enough to withstand the temptation of a new reality and thwart this misguided attempt at happiness?
WARNINGS: N/A

Hey, Davis! Did you move anything? I've got that Barnes kid's stuff logged. [ He has a digital tablet propped up on a clean, steel table full of plastic bags and baskets filled the different paraphernalia. It's rather reminiscent to an experience in the American security line at the airport. One such basket belongs to James Buchanan Barnes. ] Think something's missing. Says six item's logged, but only—Davis?

[ The man was right there a second ago, wasn't he? Looking around there's no signs John Davis had been there at all, except for in his memory. Shit, has he been talking to himself this whole time? Well, it isn't anything important. The string bean isn't going to miss one dumb little paperweight or whatever it was.

Little does he know just how powerful it is... ]


[ John spares no time or energy leaving Cap Canaveral. He doesn't even put up his cleaning cart before he's zipping through security at the blink of an eye. People've been calling him crazy for so long it's isolated him from the regular rhythm of society, but it's all been worth it for this chance. He will be a hero finally, just like the rest of the imPorts he idolizes. People will start to think twice about him and everyone else with powers. They will have the rights they need to protect this country and keep the Commies out.

This is the energy driving him to hold a dangerous item in his possession. He doesn't know a whole lot about it, only what he's gleaned from gossip rags and conspiracy theory websites. But it's worth the chance to find himself in prison, or worse. In the security of his lonely little apartment he holds the Cube in his hands as it pours out tremendous power. Without words it becomes in tune with his inner self and his wishes. It feeds off of it to create something more than itself. In his world imPorts will have just what they want, whatever it is, however contradictory.

But in truth, what good can come out of a thief too wrapped up in his own fantasies? That is no hero, and John cannot truly control the power he is playing with. As it feeds, the air around him turns hot—too hot to even breath. It's like the oxygen is burning up before it reaches his lungs. The world around him begins to fade as he holds on for dear life, but in the end his consciousness is snuffed out; a small sacrifice for a new world. ]

Comments

[raw]

Deep behind anything else he's thinking about at any given moment, Elliot has a near constant litany of _{shit shit shit shit} murmuring quieter than the sound blood makes when it rushes past the ears. But she grabs him — suddenly strong — and it ratchets up rapidly to a whining shriek, zero to sixty, _shit shit shit SHIT SHIT passing in an anxiety doppler effect before he can really hear her words.

He fires the gun: it's very easy to pull the trigger when he isn't trying to. It's loud, and the recoil ricochets through his whole body. The window on the other side of the room cracks quietly, racing spiderwebs barely a whisper in the shocking, smoking silence before the whole thing gives with a shattering crash. Glass falls several stories to the pavement below, glittering in reflected neon. No-one will even look up. Elliot's eyes are wide, his own pulse rabbit-fast, startled by his own action as much as anything else. Terrified, even. By both of them.

"Fuck," he exclaims, and drops the gun so he doesn't accidentally shoot it again. Probably this is a long way from the icy-bitter confrontation he imagined in his head. She's overpowered him in like, two seconds. But her words have an earnestness to them that he wants to close his eyes and cling to, something human that he can no longer see in her eyes.

[jalan]

He relinquishes the gun, and Daenerys looks at it in her hand, held wrong, but nevertheless in her possession. Slowly, she brings the weapon into both of her hands, considering it, before looking back up at him. Her hold never shifts into something more sinister, and she tips her head, listening to whether the bullet bit something softer than glass.

Nothing. Just the usual chaotic ambience of the city beyond.

"You're afraid," she says, redirecting her gaze back to him. "Imagine my fear when I discovered the same."

It's easy to refer to her own emotions as if she has them. But then, isn't that the ever present conversation when it comes to the synthezoids, and their ability to affect emotion, their ability to feel it, and the difference between a network of silicon information pathways and that of the organic matter lurking in a true human's skull. Daenerys would say that she dreams, and that when she dreams, it's sometimes of the future.

And of the past. The replicant modeled to be her brother. To be her controller. How she could never hurt him, even when the awful truth came to light, and so had someone else do the task in her stead.

"Elliot," she says, and this time, in spite of the way she uses her name like she's jerking reins, there's a vein of wobblier emotion running through it.

[raw]

A tight little breath. The thing about programs is that nothing is chance. Everything is predetermined, controlled. Something in her switched to add that wobble to her tone, to make her sound vulnerable, maybe even upset. If it was a conscious choice, then it was a manipulation. But don't humans also have daemons running in the background that they can't control, borne of past experience and personality and evolutionary psychology and genetics, little programs that they're unaware of and can't control but programs nonetheless. He's always sort of thought of everyone like they were really advanced computers.

"I'm not afraid of you," he explains, though maybe he is a little, because she's strong, and she has the gun now. If he believed in anything he would probably be praying. "But if you're not real, then what the hell is real?" And what was real, how much of everything she does and says is designed? Can she lie? If something makes her activate tear ducts because it seems situationally appropriate but she can't really experience the emotion of sadness, aren't those tears a lie?

God, this is fucked up. He can't think when she's standing this close, it's too uncanny valley. He takes a step back, rubs the short buzzed hair at the back of his head in agitation. "I can't do this. You're — I thought you were perfect." Perfect, or perfect for him? How deep does this go? Jesus. He's verging on hyperventilation now.

[jalan]

"If I'm not real, you've spent an awful lot of time gaining mastery over that which you consider false."

Computers. Virtual reality. Hacking. His machines, his code, his language. Her eyebrows twinge, her voice adopting a mildly ironic tone, although that tension hasn't left it. Without looking, then, with fast and ready fingers, she ejects the clip from the pistol in her hands, splitting an object that was one into two, and she turns aside to place them down, even as she maintains eye contact.

He thought she was perfect. There's a flicker of something subtle behind her expression, the easy return of emotional affect.

Elliot is backing away from her. He says he isn't afraid, but his breathing, quick and shallower, indicates to her otherwise. Or perhaps it isn't fear, but something like it, an overwhelming. In the past, placing her hands on him would have helped rein him in, but given givens--

Daenerys affords him his space.

"I thought you could help me," she counters. "And I still believe you can. I still believe you would."