ataraxionlogs | a series of meetings

Entry tags:

a series of meetings

CHARACTERS: David, Charles 'Groovy Mutation' Xavier, Erik 'Buckethead' Lehnsherr, maybe others.
LOCATION: Base Camp's makeshift science station, the wreck of the Tranquility, maybe elsewhere.
WARNINGS: Just a little violence.
SUMMARY: David makes some friends. :)
NOTES: Catch-all, closed starters inside. Drop a line if you'd like to collide.

EXT. BASE CAMP – DAY

Having only very recently made the decision to join base camp, David has spoken to few of its residents, but the number of faces familiar to him is growing all the same. Familiar at close range, that is. After days of observation, he can already identify many of the camp's residents at a distance, albeit not by name—and given his scientific leanings, which have brought him often to the very tents David now approaches, Charles Xavier is one of these people.

He stops shy of the raised platforms, hands at his sides, and for a while just looks at all the equipment laid out before him, his eyes moving about with interest while his head turns in brief but smooth increments. With his perfect posture, neatly combed hair and unblemished skin, he radiates the impression that the Tranquility jumpsuit he wears would have been pressed free of wrinkles if only he had access to a proper iron and board. Even his boots have been attended to, the mud knocked from the soles, the uppers brushed clean.

The moment he sees a body move into view—the one he recognises, not so coincidentally—this tall, bright-eyed stranger turns his face toward it and waits, looking pleasantly expectant. It becomes clear before long that he hasn't been noticed, and so:

"Hello, there."

INT. TRANQUILITY WRECKAGE – DAY

Hours later, once again zipped into his streamlined excursion suit, David is still vaguely contemplating his meetings thus far while he examines a bag he's found. Standard-issue, nylon, still flattened from previously airtight storage. This will do. He slips his gloved fingers through a hole in the plastic packaging and tears it away.

What's left of the Tranquility medical bay is still frequented by bodies on the regular, and so much of what is useful has been taken, but not all eyes are equally discerning. Once he happened upon a nearly complete set of dentistry tools, his shopping list grew organically—now his latest find, what looks almost like a pen with a little lever, he treats with especial care by wrapping it in gauze, slipping it into a side pocket all its own. A box of fine needles joins it soon, and some long-handled cotton swabs, and several precious doses of anaesthetic. The beam of his flashlight appears, sweeps to a neighbouring area cast into shadow by damaged circuits, searches briefly before he prudently snuffs it again. If X-ray machines of even partial portability exist here he'd like to find one, but that isn't in the cards today. It's just as well, since on his way back to the exit climb he's already carrying an autoclave the size of a microwave oven. With one hand. Cradled in his other arm like a bouquet of roses is a canister of nitrous oxide, and the accompanying tubes and variously sized nasal masks fill the bag on his shoulder. (He saw oxygen back at base camp, otherwise that would have been first priority.)

Whatever it was that had driven him to excessive caution regarding those at camp, he's glad it has past. If one must be marooned on an alien world, company is preferable, he thinks. And then he stops, astonished, having just come face-to-face with a man of uncanny resemblance to... himself.

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"Charles, then."

There, first-name basis. Familiarity achieved. David receives his question with polite interest, slightly raised eyebrows and all. He has nowhere immediate to lean, himself, but doesn't seem to suffer any discomfort for it. (nor for the sustained eyeballing.)

"I served as mission attendant aboard a craft called the USCSS Prometheus. While the crew remained in hypersleep during our voyage, it was my duty to maintain ship systems, then to see to their needs once they awoke." He was not bored, nor was he lonely, or afraid, or even content. He simply was. Should Charles go snooping, in fact, he will find not a glimmer of emotion attached to any of those memories. No emotion at all. Even now he is relatively quiet inside; mostly there's a steady level of interest that pips whenever Charles speaks to him, like a Geiger counter passing across traces of an isotope.

"I can offer support wherever it's needed most." David 8 has valuable skills in manufacturing, finance, earth sciences and medicine, and—no. He flutters a blink, presses forth another natural smile. "Salvage to start, perhaps?"

Edited (one million edits just for you) 2015-10-08 19:49 (UTC)

This is all sounding compelling, if a little late, in that David might have been better at home on board the Tranquility than Camp Incredibly Statistically Unlikely, but so might most of them be. Charles listens patiently, and listens by way of habit, eager to soak up every point of difference with the man who shares his distinct face.

Charles' brow twinges at the inherent strangeness of memory. Photographs devoid of colour are less striking than memories devoid of emotion.

He has other justifications, even for the neutral grey emotional landscape depicted as they talk now. Some people have basic telepathic immunity, for whatever reason -- magic, brainwashing, and simple practice are all possibilities. But there is a way that David's brain works, fusing with recollection, that gives him away.

"You--"

He pauses. Considers. Reverses.

"Salvage to start. I think that would be very helpful. But can I ask you something personal? We can trade, if you like," is added, a little wry. He's definitely acted odder, out of the two of them.

That he has, but David doesn't mind. Curiosity prompts him to grant the request easily, even despite the conspicuous false start: "Certainly."

He may not answer the question if he doesn't like it, but Charles is absolutely free to ask, and David is keen to ask in return. In fact, he's already begun to think about it despite also thinking he should wait to see what the professor will ask him first—and his focus doesn't much suffer for it, either. He may be emotionally reserved, but his mind, the machine itself, is quick with energy.

There might have been a time when he'd wrenched the truth out like a loose tooth and held it up for display, along with the priers used to do it. These days, he knows better.

It's gentle nudge, really, when he asks; "What else were you?"

There are a lot of answers for that. Not just limited to a robot, certainly, and Charles doesn't look like he's going to press for a specific answer, beyond allowing room for one more try. There is curiousity in the cant of his head and a kindness about the rest of him.

His head tilts to the question. A line has appeared between his eyebrows. "Sir?" What more could he want to know? What more is relevant?

Unfortunately, he is not human. He will never grow old; he will never die. And yet, he is unable to appreciate these remarkable gifts, for that would require the one thing that David will never have: a soul. Digitally transmitted, the wizened face of Peter Weyland announces this to a room full of people, looking right at him.

But surely this Charles can't mean that. That would be an impossible feat of perception. Even if he watched David's dreams during the long sleep—though he can't remember dreaming—he wouldn't have asked, and certainly not so gently, as no human to date has been subtle in the desire to inform him of his inferiority. Why should they be? He can't feel it anyway.

Edited 2015-10-12 20:23 (UTC)

"A lot of us are more than just human, you know. Exceptional."

It's put out as enticement, like Charles will show him his if David did the same. Or: secrets can remain as they are. He hasn't talked to one of these before but there is nothing dangerous about the way David's mind works, not like James' had been, full of trip wires and traps of a different kind of programming.

He opts to keep talking. "Part of the reason we built back up the xenobiology department, for lack of a planet such as this to explore, is because so many of us have our differences. We were the aliens, I suppose, the ones who weren't native to this universe, and so we tried to help one another.

"You'll see, the more time you spend here."

That David takes a long moment to consider the idea mustn't come as a surprise; he's been still and quiet, and his smile has faded into thought, since Charles began his pitch. A community of exceptional beings. A lot of us, he said, but not all. It's a nice thought—and he might be pleased to know his mind is considered benign, so long as it's considered extraordinary, too. Recognition was all he ever wanted.

"Are you?" You, with your lesser stature and your average muscle mass and your propensity for startling. Kind eyes and a good guess alone will not convince him. "Exceptional?"

He did say they could trade.

"I can read minds," Charles says, ceding his hand, with only a beat of reflection. It's not everything he can do -- it doesn't encapsulate the way he can plunder memory, although so many people seem consider it the same thing anyway. It doesn't touch on mind control, remote communication, memory erasure.

But one thing at a time.

"And yours is different," he adds. Not a lie. Not quite. "You think differently. But really, I thought you might like to know we're a motley crew, out here, and you needn't be afraid of us." In one manner or another, anyway. He invites discretion with;

"But perhaps I should explain my reaction, from a moment ago."

At once he's awash in the significance of Xavier's admission; it holds him there in the strength of its current, floats equal unease and wonder to the surface of his thoughts. Validation creeps out too, like an eel from its hole, wishing it could travel back along the channel between their minds, if it really exists, and examine this man's true intentions with a careful eye. David is different, even encased in this common vessel of flesh and blood—a vessel which he both admires and resents.
He wants to believe Charles.

Please, he could answer. By all means, explain. Or he could shrug off this thread of polite conversation and abruptly veer off course: "What am I thinking now?"

Possibly if that wasn't the natural response of every third person he met, it would rankle. Or maybe it does, a little, and it shows ever so in the deepening of lines at the corners of Charles' eyes, or the irony sharpness in crooked, knowing smile. But only a little.

"Telepathy is impossible," he says. "But you're curious, all the same. You want to know what it means for you, that I can read your mind, but I'm probably not the one who's going to be able to answer that. Erik is a friend of mine, he looks almost exactly like you, which is something that happens, from time to time."

A beat, and; "Who's Weyland?"

"My creator."

A filament of thought snaps back to his first hours in the wreckage, where he chose to mince words in telling AJ, it belonged to my father—one free and instantaneous association among all the others. (His mind is indeed precise, and it is logical, but by no means are his thoughts purely linear.) And from there, back to Weyland: he is the closest thing to a son I will ever have. Looking impassively at blonde Meredith Vickers and her ferocious jealousy, her hatred, her hand gripping his throat. This chain of memories is easy to follow, but David isn't lost in them, he is right here and now, watching the eyes of Charles Xavier as though he might glimpse how his gift works—as though looking away for too long would break their connection.

"I used to watch their dreams," he says, low with undisguised awe. "I spoke to him while he slept," to Weyland, "but we could only do it with specialized equipment. This is... impossible." But the bright calm of his expression suggests he doesn't mind that, either.

Silence has plenty of time to settle before the mellow hush of his voice disturbs it again. "Who is he? Your friend."

Edited 2015-10-24 16:08 (UTC)

"Others tend to get up in arms about invasions of privacy," Charles says, with the sort of conversational tone of a man who is well used to it, by now, and is beyond apology. His eye contact is even, and his pupils are only a little smaller than they ought to be in discs of pale blue, quiet throughout David's words and quiet throughout his own silence, allowing ideas to settle and resolve, but speaks now, just as quietly. "I didn't mean to pry, for what it's worth. I can't all the way keep it out, like hearing a conversation you shouldn't. Curiousity can do the rest, and have you linger in the hallway."

And as for Erik--

"Someone from where I'm from, before here. We've been here for the better part of two years, now, almost. It's a phenomenon that happens-- rarely, I'd say, but it does happen, where two people from very different universes look almost entirely identical. Hence."

He shrugs, and pushes himself out of his lean. "I suspect your world is far more advanced than mine. I'm from 1973. Earth," he adds, on delayed instinct.

It's the very same instinct David will heed later while speaking with Jemma Simmons. Perhaps this is where he picks it up. In any case, he smiles faintly for it—just a little more obvious than the constant smile-like gleam in the creases of his expression.

"2094. Well spotted, sir." That comes with the smallest of nods. "The Prometheus left Earth in 2091."

The rest is still settling as sediment among his thoughts. Multiple universes, identical bodies—the odds of such a meeting are astronomical. What a wonderful place this is. He wonders if these people spend a lot of their time feeling terrified of their own powerlessness. These people, as though he isn't one of them. These people. You people. The dichotomy is still clear in his mind, etched there in acid.

"It must be difficult to hear so much."

If David keeps pushing the subject away from himself, it isn't for any secretive purpose—whether it's a remnant of his initial programming or otherwise, his interest is genuine.

These people do. Well spotted, David.

Charles keeps that to himself, mostly because it's cutting a little too close to the bone, and how frightening everything is, is really one of those things you have to find out for yourself, along with the realisation that you are one of 'these people' now. It's not a process he loves rushing.

"It can be," Charles states, allowing David to steer the conversation, but assisting in the tilt away from that specific weakness. "But I'd find it differently difficult, I think, hearing nothing at all." Spoken as hypothetical, and not practice. It seems like early days to be describing how he'd practically lost his mind. "My ability manifested at quite a young age."

David isn't wrong. The odds are astronomical.

And Charles can't help but ask-- "What was the expedition? Of the Prometheus."

That he can understand—struggling with an absence. This new form has given him much, but in other ways he feels cheated, rendered blunt in his thoughts. Occasional clumsiness, confusion. Fear. If he were given the opportunity to return to his former state, he would almost certainly not take it, but the decision might give him pause.
His next answer, on the other hand, does not:

"To discover the true origin of mankind." It sounds like an absurd pipe-dream when summed up so briefly, but there's no wry tint to the gentle warmth of his voice. (Well, no more than the usual amount.) "Project Prometheus itself was inspired by the work of two archaeologists, Doctors Charlie Holloway and Elizabeth Shaw." David hesitates at the sound of her name leaving his mouth for the first time in many weeks; Charles would have to be doing the telepathic equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting LA LA LA to miss the spike of comparatively strong emotion that comes with it. "They... found a map. Quite a few maps, spread across many disparate cultures, each with an identical message: an invitation. Mr Weyland's decision to accept this invitation was the catalyst for the project's inception." In other words, "He dreamt it, designed it, and funded it."

It sounds less like a report when he adds, "That was his way."

Charles doesn't immediately react to this first somewhat preposterous claim -- at least, nothing overstated. A subtle interest for what that means in the tip of his head, a deepening at the lines of his eyes in recognition of traces of irony.

They'd called him mad at the academy too, so who is he to judge.

"They suspected that the origin of mankind was extra-terrestrial in nature? Or influenced by an alien Prometheus, of kinds? Quite the ambitious undertaking. Your Weyland sounds very-- hopeful," he chooses. Because he would. His resting smile skews more deliberate and wry. "In my world, we've only just landed on the moon."

Hopeful. Yes. Weyland would both accept that descriptor and argue its inaccuracy, he thinks; hope sounds too much like wait and see, which the man was never inclined to do.
David wonders, too, if Charles picked that up just now, if it's ever annoying to be refuted, or if not knowing everything is at times a pleasant surprise. How often he finds a person's mind disappointing or disgusting—or irresistible. How deep has he gone? How deep can he go? Would he damage someone by going too far? Would he damage himself? How many memories does he carry now that aren't even his own?
From this continuing flurry of thoughts comes a conclusion: Charles must be a very patient person.

"Then you're well on your way," he says. "If our worlds follow similar paths, faster-than-light travel will be introduced in the early twenty-first century. Perhaps you'll live to see it." You, personally, not mankind on the whole. There's no doubt in his mind that mankind will survive—they're like a virus, frighteningly resilient.

You caught that too, didn't you? But he isn't dismayed by the lack of privacy; his awareness appears playful, like the invasion itself is a private joke they share.

"Maybe," Charles says, and his smile skews crooked, and a little challenging; "Maybe faster than that. The presence of mutants in my world and the very many ways in which they're exceptional could make for all sorts of interesting implications in how mankind might progress, technologically. Pragmatically. Not so unlike a virus."

Which is a terrible comparison to make, David, but Charles opts for obscurely hinting at having caught that rather than echoing it in David's mind. His face is full of subtle tells.

And he manages to keep 'dimly unsettled' on lockdown.

Oh, don't keep all that dim unsettlement to yourself, Charles. David enjoys thinking he has an effect on people—and it's this very fancy that broadens his smile when his thoughts are quoted back to him from another man's mouth.

"Perhaps. I hadn't thought of it that way." The presence of exceptional beings, he means. Clearly. But it makes sense, if only given humankind's propensity for piggybacking on the efforts of their betters, even and especially among their own kind. Those gifted will be exploited before long, surely, if it hasn't already begun—and he doubts very much that it hasn't. His own free will, his own humanity—such as it is—is an accident of space-time. Weyland would never have done it on purpose.
And the survivors have treated him like a person thus far because they don't know any better.
Most of them, anyway.

"Is that what you call yourselves? Mutants?" Or is that what they called you?

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