maskormenacelogs

[His heart nearly skipped a beat, his pulse quickened pace. Chilton recognized him once he caught sight; Maeve's platonic companion, the one whose questionable history intertwined with the man in black. Precise, pristine, and curiously stagnate.

As if frozen in time, thought Chilton. How appropriate.

He wasted no time stepping quickly over that wet asphalt, veering onto the slick sidewalk. A stealthy shove, maneuvering a dawdling old man out of the way, his eyes intent only on Teddy Flood.]

You. [Chilton hadn't witnessed this face since he crawled away beneath screams and gunshot.] I know you.

[He whispered the words against Teddy's ear, his body heat radiated with urgency. Chilton was flustered blood and sharp adrenaline while Teddy was his pwn unflappable elegant design.]

[ The stillness is eerie, and so too is Teddy's breaking from it into motion. Slow going, on a delay, drawing in breath and executing a few blinks to clear his vision.

Whatever he'd been seeing just prior to shut down briefly haunts his expression.

Accounting for the past is overtaken by the present. There's a man near him -- too near for his liking -- and Teddy's hand lowers for his gun on reflex as he sways aside, the sound of cowboy boot heels scraping slick concrete. As far as exuberant wild west figures go, Teddy Flood is muted. Understated.

I know you, was what had been said, and it takes some calibration to recall. ]

The doctor. [ The man in black's gun pointed level for his head is a clear memory, but after that, things got messier. ]

Yes, the doctor. That is me. [A specific way to address him, and Chilton furrowed his brow with the slightest spectacle of concern. Two words after a drought of silence. A strange reaction, almost mechanical, and Chilton's invasion of personal space seemed to inflict little imposition, save for that twitch of boot, that gesture to his gun. Teddy just took it.

On-lookers paid mind only with their eyes; if Chilton himself wasn't part of the performance, then he was just some jackass testing the street performer's limits. Unsavory, perhaps, but not unusual. And the doctor was not invested in what they might presume.]

Did he do this to you?

[What Teddy was doing wasn't normal. Chilton took a step back only thing, only after a question of their mutual suffering had been drawn. His tongue was the only gun he had now.]

[ Teddy is a different kind of immune to the onlookers. Borderline oblivious as he stands stiffly still up until and even after Chilton cedes him some distance. The doctor has command of his attention in an easy sort of way, like Teddy had been hailed in the street as opposed to broken out of

whatever he'd been doing, standing so still. The hand hovered near his gun relaxes a fraction.

His look of labrodoric focus darkens. For a man who operates within confined enough storylines, there isn't room for ambiguity as to who the doctor, beset by bandits, must mean. ]

I'm still standin', ain't I, [ is some parts defensive, otherwise genuinely unsure about what the good doctor could be referring to. ] You oughta count your blessings, for getting out of that as clean as you did.

I have something of a talent for escape. [In the same way that a fox had a talent for slipping into thickets; a few scratches here and there wouldn't cripple the beast. Chilton now offered a wary smile, his composedly arch expression hiding a frantic grappling of events -- Flood wasn't responding in a manner Chilton expected of him. Snapped out of his trance, as if his brain had just short-circuited. Unapologetic of his prior demeanor.

Strange.]

I cannot say it is normal, you standing out here like this. I thought perhaps your brain had hemorrhaged. [He wasn't shying away from the detail.] Do you just not want to discuss it? No shame is reticence, Mr. Flood, at least not when that reticence is sensible. And there might be little sense in talking so publicly like this.

[Conversation. The crowd's interest thawed, no fisticuffs appeared to brew between these two men.]

Maybe you ought to come to my office? As a precaution?

[ Standing out here like this. His focus looks askance, searching backwards. He'd been walking, and then the rain had started up, and then what?

Then he'd been somewhere else.

And Chilton had materialised out of nowhere. His name summons back his attention, peering out at Chilton from the hazy shadow of hat brim. Talk of haemorrhaging and reticence gets the ghost of a crooked smile out of Teddy, uncertainty shadowed beneath. ]

Think you just caught me in a moment of rumination, doctor. Unless that's a sign of some malady, in your professional opinion.

[ Teddy takes a step away, to get out of the patter of rain or maybe to leave the doctor's concerns behind him. ]

It can be a symptom of a few disorders, actually. [Rumination could simply be a kind word for obsession, or over-thinking. Chilton felt obligated to find as many tangential possibilities as he clinically could.] I think you ought to come back with me. We can get you out of this weather, into a set of dry clothes. It wouldn't be hard.

[Nothing needed to be hard, his tone implied. Deceptively sanguine, the optimistic citrus in his voice a definable blood orange; pay no mind to the grotesque colloquialism, a fruit was a fruit. A hospital was a hospital.

It was all safe and bright and warm, he promised.]

Come with me.

[ Teddy stands and listens attentively, an air of resistance laced in uncertainty as he weighs his options -- because the doctor seems like the learned type, and clearly involved, one way or another, with the man Teddy has a mind to shoot down like a dog. (And just maybe there's some truth to the fact that when once he was, Teddy's not so sure of his own mind, these days.)

In Westworld, it's other people who have answers.

The last of his hesitation, though, evaporates when Chilton's suggestion and coaxing settles into a direct request. It's not a dramatic shift, but visible for those studying him with any degree of scrutiny. ]

Your office, [ he repeats, nods, ] is it far?

Edited (english language) 2017-02-20 09:28 (UTC)

Not far at all, no. Just a few blocks eastward, in fact.

[A bit more than a few blocks, but Chilton would hail a cab. At the very least, they needn't mess around with the intercity Porters -- Maurtia Falls was a convenient cityscape to discover Teddy Flood again. Chilton wasn't one to believe in fate, but he savored opportunity. Tongue pressed behind his front teeth, he smiled and patted Teddy on the shoulder nearest, the motion sly and undeterred.

Intended to imply trust.]

You could do with a towel.

[He would lead Teddy away from the bustle, the onlookers, the people with more than circuitry. Chilton would take Teddy into a yellow cab -- by hand if necessary -- and bring the young man into his bright hospital with its soaring marble arches. He would find Teddy a dry towel and a hot cup of coffee, and he would sit him right across from his own heavy desk.

Just like any kindly gentleman would.]

[ And Teddy would follow.

Inside, he takes his hat off, towel dragged negligently along the back of his neck, his face, gripping it in his hands. In the chair, his manner is not necessarily relaxed, knees apart and leaning forward. He ignores his gun, secured to a thigh, but hasn't forgotten it. The coffee is accepted with a rough hand spidered over the top of it, sipped from a little noisily in the gap his thumb and index finger makes.

Taking to these little acts of kindness is not unlike when your neighbour's dog has wandered his way into your backyard and given food and water, uncertain if he should be here, without particular reason not to be, in his little dog mind. ]

What'd he want with you?

I have given it thought, you know.

[Chilton watched the hatless Teddy Flood accept the coffee, the towel, watched him atmospherically dry in the central heating's basking glow. He didn't remove his sight from Teddy all this while, as every muscle impulse was a decision ripe for analysis.]

What he wanted with me. It almost seemed like -- [He frowned, eyes glancing away at last.] An audition. For entertainment purposes.

[A hard thing to swallow for a man of Chilton's perceived social standing. Perhaps that was precisely what made it fun for William.]

I was accessible.

[The word snapped his attention back to Teddy Flood.]

Just as you were, isn't that right? You tend to... Drift towards specific people. Would you agree with that, Mr. Flood?

[Powerful personalities, like Maeve. Flood took the shape and function of whatever held him, like any liquid in a crystal glass.]

[ The implications of what Chilton is saying of the man in black should mean more to Teddy than it does now, and maybe it'll mean something to him later -- for now, he's curious in a practical way about where these two men stand. If one can be used to bait the other, or simply give him information.

But the conversation turns. And he thinks of Maeve, too. Dolores, inevitably.

And Wyatt. ]

I might, [ he's forced to admit. ] But about the only thing that's got me drifting his way is settling our differences. He's a bad man, doctor. You'd do best to keep your distance.

Oh, Mr. Flood.

[Chilton pursed his lips, tilted his head a few degrees to the left. He found the guileless insistence somewhat endearing. Such wasn't a description that Chilton would usually devote to a man of Teddy's apparent age, but Chilton rationalized that his company was likely often the exception to the rule; why else would the man in black have engaged him?]

I cannot promise that avoiding that man is very likely. You see -- my business is bad men. My specialty. I treat the morally decayed.

[It was difficult, explaining the scientific nuances of modern mental health. Much easier to speak in a tongue that might make Teddy more comfortable, something more familiar.]

But in order to properly take care of him, I need to know what you are to that man. He seems quite taken with you, if you do not mind me saying.

[ It works well enough, that sideways shift in diction. A flicker of acknowledging comprehension in blue eyes, Teddy's reference points lurching somewhere between a man of medicine and a man of the cloth. Explains some things.

He drinks more coffee, and manages a grim, crooked smile, understated. ]

Me? Well, I intend to be his reckoning.

[ And die. Somewhere, deep down, maybe even faintly detectable in his utter absence of enthusiasm on the topic gunning someone down, is the unconscious knowledge he'll die, for all of what Stark and Ms Millay were able to do for his core coding. It's what he does.

Lose. ]

He killed the woman I love, doctor. And all she did to deserve it was spare his life.

Was that really all that provoked him? All the justification he needed to take her life?

[He didn't mute his skepticism; from what Chilton had learned of the man in black, from what sadism and smirking cruelty he had observed, the fellow wasn't chaotic for the sake of destruction. There was a meticulous, if perhaps obscured and obtuse, methodology at play. And the crime to spare his life... Suicidal determination and suicidal ideation were not one in the same, and their so-called Wyatt seemed most guilty of the former.

There was more to this, he thought.]

I am simply suggesting that... Well, you know him, don't you? More than I do. You've seen the degree of his obsessive tendencies.

[An organized psychopath. Chilton's favorite flavor.]

Just as you must know that whether or not you become his reckoning, well it won't hold the same water in this world. So many of us -- of imPorts, to clarify -- we come back from the dead.

[Not always. But often enough.]

He would just return to hurt someone else you cared about.

[ Dr Chilton makes the claim that Teddy knows this man, but more and more, Teddy gets the sense that maybe the doctor understands this man in ways the bounty hunter doesn't have the vocabulary for. A doctor who treats the morally decayed.

He's listening attentively, narrowing his eyes at this stalk of death not staying fixed.

There's humour in Teddy not being the brightest host that Westworld has on offer, but what he lacks in reflection and deduction and suspicion, there's a certain terrible propensity to wander between connective points of information, like a hunter following a trail. Chilton speaks of men and women coming back from the dead. He thinks of the horrifying half-lives of those under Wyatt's thrall. He thinks of the man in black prodding at him on the network (obsessive tendencies), dangling knowledge of Wyatt in front of him. The images of the natives' dream messengers that Maeve had scratched out for him on paper.

He thinks in loops that arc beyond the parameters of his storyline, straining. Ordinarily dismissed with the same muleish stubbornness that Chilton had called him on over the network that first time, he grasps after something that is not quite true.

Night time. His own gun warm in his hand, and the man in black turning back to him, raising his pistol. The shot gets him in the chest, a short stagger, before he buckles.

And in the time it takes to read this gratuitous meta, Theodore Flood is frozen in memory, his expression only a dim echo of the horrors he remembers more vividly. Of falling, and lying dead, except something still registering the sight of the man in black and Dolores disappearing through the barnyard doors. His fingers are just slack enough that the coffee cup falls from them, and distributes its contents onto Dr Chilton's nice floors. ]

Mr. Flood--? ... Theodore? Teddy!

[Chilton jolted upwards from his high-backed leather chair, slamming his palms down on his desk as he stared at Teddy Flood. For lack of better terminology, the man simply glitched. As if he were stuck in time, as if he were frozen. Just like he had appeared out in the street, beneath the onslaught of rain.

The wooden floor, stained with coffee and likely scratched by ceramic, would have to be tended to later. The visual metaphor of a broken cup didn't dazzle Frederick Chilton as it would have Hannibal Lecter, so the doctor's focus remained with Teddy's horrifying stagnation.

He's at Teddy's side, waving fingers before Teddy's face. He's reaching to hold down Teddy's arm as he spreads open one of the cowboy's eyelids for a better look at the pupil.]

Come back.

[He spoke it with a cooing, tender voice.]

Come back to me, Mr. Flood.

[A triggered memory, perhaps. Repressed trauma could often inflict catatonic symptoms, he rationalized. This Dolores, whoever she might be, her meaning to Teddy proved clear as day. Whatever had happened to her was something layered, something that Teddy did not want to address fully manifested, something godawful.

Something to pry apart.]

[ He's unresponsive to his name, hands on his arm, his face, but sort of automatically compliant. No tipping over, no dead weight. For all impressions of glitch and faulty mechanism, he's human down to the details of capillaries and unshaven grain shadowed on his face. His gaze is lifted to Frederick's face and blue eyes stare sightlessly through him.

Until they don't.

Focus finds eye contact, and his hand claps down on Chilton's forearm less like a grasp or something more aggressive, but a means of control, as if to steady the good doctor rather than himself. ]

He still needs hunting, [ he says, as if he didn't miss a beat in their conversation, let alone a minute and a half of catatonic silence.

But confusion sets in on the back of it, pushing up out of his chair and away from Dr Chilton. He looks down at the spill of coffee and broken shards like he has no idea how it got there or if he's in any way involved in the mess. ]

Before he can do more harm, [ is the next line. ]

Edited (more deet) 2017-02-26 07:36 (UTC)

You cannot be serious. [Chilton, still at the chair's side, watched Teddy evacuate a few paces away. He continued speaking as if there had been no eruption of silence, as if he hadn't looked like he just suffered some minor, muted stroke.

It was wrong. Every textbook notation of repressed trauma bypassed clauses like snapped out of it, no problem. This was wrong.]

Teddy. [The personal nickname, now slyly on Chilton's lips. His furrowed brow and narrowed gaze kept measure of his company's movements.] Why will he do more harm? Why did he hurt Dolores?

[A test for sympathy, the ability to think about the motivation of someone else. The ability to analyze it. Unlike empathy, which required an approximation of feeling it, or compassion, which demanded actions intended to minimize or eliminate suffering, sympathy was a simple thought experiment ennobled by a moral society.

All people were taught to at least mimic it.]

What do you think happened to him?

[ Why is just what Teddy asked him, and for all that his paraphrasing the man in black's reason back to Dr Chilton makes it sound like some sort of deflection-- well, it had felt true at the time. Now he ain't so sure, and stands in uncertain silence as he considers Chilton with a look this shy of reproach. ]

She was good. Lightness. Had a way of seein' the beauty in this world. [ He tips a nod to Chilton. ] Maybe a-- learned man such as yourself don't believe evil walks this earth, but I've seen it. And I see it him.

[ Maybe it is just that simple for Theodore Flood. ]

And if evil was done unto him, to twist him that way--

[ Maybe not. Far be it from him to empathise with the killer of the woman he loved, but there's more going on here than an execution will allow for, and a broader worldview that permits it. That much he can see. ]

You want 'im?

[Chilton had very nearly rolled his eyes at Flood's rhetoric, the binary construct of good and evil too circular a fit to pound into his triangular perspective. Chilton wanted complication, he wanted nuance, and he was offered a cowboy's grazing view of the world. But then Teddy asked something Chilton hadn't expected, and electricity sparked a refocusing.

His head snapped back to Theodore. His breathing shallowed.]

I do.

[More honesty than Chilton typically allowed himself. Teddy Flood just had that effect on people, perhaps.]

You are right, that he will keep hurting people. That's how he finds meaning for himself, he is searching. [But for what, Chilton couldn't know. Not yet.] I -- we -- cannot leave him to his own devices.

[Devilish little agonies, that's what the man wearing black had to offer the world.]

I need your help, Mr. Flood.

[ The shift from Dr Chilton implying that he could help Teddy into the reversal of that exchange sits much easier with Westworld's most diligent companion guide. Much like the rest of this world, it don't sit perfect, but it settles into a recognisable shape. A pattern.

A path.

His hand had wandered within his jacket, chasing after some ghostly impression of a wound to the heart, but the gesture turns into smoothing his waistcoat before moving to collect up his hat. ]

I'll help you, [ he says, ] so long as this man sees justice, whatever that looks like in this world.

[ One way or another. ]

Oh yes, absolutely. [Chilton waved his hand as if to disperse away any wafting concerns manifested.] He will get what's coming to him, I assure you.

[Of course, their definition of what's coming to the man in black might not quite align as neatly as railroad tracks would. There was some veering, a bit of twisting to be expect, and those were details that Chilton didn't want displayed and dissected; he had a larger vision to oversee.]

We will need you here. [Beneath the bright, luminescent lights and stowed safely behind soft walls. Chilton leaned against the edge of his own desk, crossing his legs at the ankles.] Tomorrow, I think. Once the paperwork is complete. You will be staying at my hospital, Mr. Flood.

The better that we stay close together, for planning. [A tilt of his head.] Conspiring against Wyatt.

[ The offer strikes him, momentarily, as odd, until it doesn't -- unsettled and prone to transience, having a place to hang his hat for the while isn't such an unkind offer, even if whether he'll take the doctor up on his offer is more negotiable than he imagines it is.

Objections go unvoiced, though, when that name comes into play, and he twitched look over is sharp as if Chilton had flicked a switch. ]

Wyatt, [ he repeats, flatly. ] That what he said his name was?

[ It would be just like his followers, to take on their master's moniker, and the news only cements the logic narrative playing out in synthetic synapses. ]

Edited (fuckin) 2017-02-27 07:33 (UTC)

Well -- yes, that is what he told me. When I asked him. [Chilton gave Flood a look, one that spoke of mathematical inequities; something wasn't adding up. Surely Theodore Flood, dogged bounty hunter with an apparent bone to pick, would know his prey's name?

Unless, Chilton reasoned, unless Wyatt was as he had suspected: an alias. A name picked out of nothing, brought from silence to life, just because the man in black wanted to dick around unfettered.

Chilton let it go.]

You must know him as something else. [A couple of pejoratives came to mind.] But regardless, we both have designs for him. Better that we pool our resources.

[He didn't clarify that he viewed Teddy as purely a resource, a pawn rather than a player.]

Where can I find you again? You will be the first in my inpatient wing, you understand, and I do not want to rush the legalities. Things are done here somewhat... Differently than back home.

[He had much more leeway in his little kingdom, back home.]

[ Hat reclaimed and resettled on his head, Teddy once again looks more firmly the part, a match for all his talk of reckonings and good women and evil men. There's only a wry smile when Chilton dismisses whatever it is Teddy calls the man in black instead -- a couple of pejoratives come to mind -- and a step back around from the chair he vacated. ]

I do best when on the trail, doctor, [ he says, dismissive of pressing concerns to settle in anywhere. ] I'll bring 'im in in due course. And if you see him, or if he gives you trouble, you know how to send word.

[ One technological conceit he's gotten used to. Funny, what becomes intuitive, even for a man like him. ]

But with all respect, we ain't finding him in here.

When on the trail.

[He licked at the words, his nose wrinkled. The saunter of his language, the references, the metaphor, it was all too... Perfect. Too coordinated. Chilton couldn't call claim to knowing many cowboys, but he was born into a world where men took their thematic devices very seriously. And yet he had known no serial killer nor mass murderer who worked a theme quite like Teddy Flood.

Even the "superheroes" and "supervillains" here, even Power Girl or the damn Monarch, they didn't take themselves that seriously.]

You are right, of course. [Chilton rose from his leaning against the desk, strolling towards the door -- before he stopped, held up a hand with his index finger pointed towards the ceiling.]

One thing -- When did you first meet him? What year was it? What day, the month?

[ Rolling on out, Teddy is nevertheless attentive to further questioning -- leaving behind shattered coffee mug and awkward silences without apology -- as he turns in the doorway to look back at the doctor.

And pauses over the questions you're not supposed to ask, a light flickering, going out for a brief second, before he says with a trace of bitter wit-- ]

Can't've been more than a month ago, now. The day I woke up here. The day Dolores died.

[ Which isn't an answer.

But Teddy deems it more than satisfactory, a bleak glance away on the tail end of this last syllable before he disappears from the mouth of the door with nary a further word. Still thinking in terms of distance, like a minute wasted is a minute behind, the sound of boot heels making a steady echo in his exit. ]

Edited 2017-02-28 06:30 (UTC)

But you do not know the specifics? The day, the month, the year. The name, the numbers -- you don't know.

[This wasn't right. Trauma demanded specifics; it alone was the argument of evolutionary memory decay, because if the human brain had to recall with perfection every horrific detail of every miserable experience, it would suffer into deterioration. It would predetermine behavioral disorders, with only a low statistical exception. But despite the benefit of an imperfect memory, human beings tended to hold onto details, even if those details were flawed they were present.

Human beings, he thought again. There was something familiar about how Teddy Flood processed -- or didn't, in this case.

Repression, Chilton counter-argued. But then again -- a blackout repression would spare him the event himself. No, no this wasn't manifested repression, this was interference.

This was programming.]

You're not...

[There were passingly personified Artificial Intelligences -- Chilton himself had dated one. But this...]

You are not who you think you are. Are you?

[Chilton's voice dropped to a whisper. Teddy Flood had suddenly quadrupled in value; there was little Chilton preferred more than influencing identity issues.]

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