o14. quasi closed.

[forgodssake]

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier + Caprica "Natasi" Six + Garrett Hawke; and others.
LOCATION: Probably there are trees.
WARNINGS: TBA.
SUMMARY: The sad story how we became lonely two legged creatures.
NOTES: A series of pre-planned threads and a general catch all for October, so please, if you want to do something, shout at me!

Comments

[corpse_soldier]

[ She is far from the only one who has chosen to live on the fringes, taking solace in solitude, returning for what she needs before disappearing back beneath the shaded cupolae of the forest; who knows precisely what proportion of those stranded here have chosen to exist in the outskirts rather than the grimy press of the camp-proper? One would have to take a census.

Just one of many things that need doing. To this and other ends, Etrepa Seven has taken to the liminal space, the in-between that marks the edge of the camp and the beginning of the beyond. Tracing an invisible boundary with perfectly measured strides, the ancillary defines the perimeter with each step. She doesn't seem to mind the rain and wind much either. Certainly it is not about to keep her from her self-assigned duties.

As she walks through the storm, Etrepa is not indulging in memory. Such an exercise is bound to send her spiraling towards a grim confrontation with her own reduction. What good would it do for her to recall the heady thrill of space combat, the feeling of power and grace that came from sliding out of her self-made gates in swift strokes, striking at her enemies with missiles and radiant heat before sliding seamlessly back into the insular nowhere of gatespace? It would only serve to make her present experience of coldness and wetness, concentrated as it now is into the singularity of her one remaining segment, that much more depressing.

So no, she's not about to get lost in her own thoughts. She is far more interested in rifling through the thoughts of others.

The gift has no ready explanation, no more than the blessings that fell from the sky so lately; no one she has met so far possesses the requisite implants that would allow her to draw the detailed biometric data that once functioned, with time and familiarity, as a kind of effective mind-reading. Yet when she reaches, she finds them laid out: the sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm, sometime dense and sometimes nebulous clouds of thought, run through with the occasional bright bolt of insight or recognition. It is not at all what once she could do, but it seems close enough that she does it with some sense of comfort, and absolutely no compunction.

If confronted over the reason for this psychic intrusion, Etrepa Seven would assert that she is simply assessing anyone who approaches for potential hostility. And as Caprica Six appears in her vision, looking - indeed - rather too well-kempt to be one of the more rugged jungle survivalists who occasionally acquiesce to the need for medical supplies or simply for company, the ancillary hones in on her with a mix of suspicion and curiosity that has everything to do with staying a few steps ahead of her own thoughts, whatever the outward justification.

What she discerns - once she closes to the necessary five meter range - is confusing and attention-grabbing. She catches only the tail end of the contemplation about creators, a thought that echoes her own potential musings enough to make her wonder if her own thoughts had simply caught up with her. As the bolt in the sky pairs with the bolt in her mind, Etrepa is spurred into action- or at least to address. ]

Do you have business in camp? [ she asks, in a voice that is just slightly more modulated than her 'natural' ancillary flatness; she's been practicing. If her tone were a spontaneous expression of her feelings, Etrepa Seven would sound wary. As it is, she replicates the tone of expectant authority common to every border guard who has not given up on sounding anything more than terrifically bored. ]

[xerampelinae]

[ As soon as approach is detected and the stranger speaks to her, her thoughts seem to close up like a fan, neat and precise and practiced, withdrawing from wander to a streamlined assessment of this one's stature and tone. And as it happens, wary is something Caprica Six picks up on via the same mechanism that Etrepa Seven perceives her thoughts. She stops and turns, a meaningful several centimetres taller so that she might look down the bridge of her nose at the face she's never seen before.

And she's good at remembering faces.

Her prize is bundled together and hard to identify, a package she grips in both hands and keeps tucked against her belly, but she doesn't glance down at it or offer it as explanation. ]

Expecting trouble? [ She has a lot of teeth, and they show slightly in a twitch of a mean smile. ] I didn't know Security was still in operation.

[corpse_soldier]

[ The presence of a package would set off interior alarms in even the most novice of border patrols. And Etrepa is no amateur. There's nothing overtly threatening about the uniformed person's posture, though she is conspicuously equipped with a sidearm that rests in a quick-draw holster on her upper thigh; her stance is certainly wider than it is narrow, suggesting stolidity, but remains a shade or two short of properly confrontational. ]

The previous organization has lost cohesion, [ is true and not worth denying - Etrepa couldn't so much as claim membership in that erstwhile entity. ] A reorganization is underway, [ is a gross exaggeration of her nearly one-woman (well, one-ancillary) quest to establish Justice, Propriety and - of course, always and ultimately - Benefit for the shanty-town the crash survivors call camp. But all achievements that are not merely accidental begin as pretensions. There is no need for Etrepa to undermine her own still-groundless authority. ]

Do you have business in camp, [ she reiterates, ] or any associates who are expecting you?

[xerampelinae]

[ Well that's good news, this first little part, although it doesn't display on Caprica's face, neutralised ever so by the next. Otherwise impassive, to provided explanations, to the rain spattering sideways under the force of the wind. It's all the same to her, anyway.

What are they gonna do, arrest her again? ]

I just came to see what you've all done with the place. [ She turns her slate-blue gaze away to reassess her surroundings. It's as dreary as one can expect, but there are little signs of respectable genius here and there -- the lights rigged around the perimeter, for instance, evidencing a power grid.

Still-- ]

Is it called anything? Or is it still 'camp'? [ Her teeth flash again. ] Like we're on vacation.

[corpse_soldier]

Not that I'm aware of. Nothing agreed-upon.

[ Names have been the last thing on Etrepa's sadly singular mind. Human beings have and give names. They are not Etrepa's province, she who has only lately had to treat her own designation as a name rather than a convenient organizational label derived from a metaphysical principle. ]

Consensus is difficult to achieve among such a diverse population. [ The statement implicitly critiques the uncivilized mess that makes up the settlement. For someone so vigilant about its protection, she doesn't think much of her charges. ] 'Camp' is functional.

[ She is ceaseless in her rifling of Caprica's thoughts, her suspicions heightened by her choice of phrasing. She is an outsider, clearly, self-styled if nothing else. But nothing in what Etrepa perceives suggests true alien-ness, in the sense of someone totally unconnected to the crash and its survivors. Instead, she senses alienation. And one must have been part-of in order to feel that way.

Reassured, if only up to a certain degree, Etrepa allows herself a brief editorial. ]

They do seem to be treating it like an extended holiday. No sense of urgency.

[ Intentional or not, this pronoun deployment serves as a kind of correction, refusing the inclusive 'you' Caprica attempts to entrap Etrepa within. Etrepa is not part of the camp's collective 'they', does not view herself as such. She is both to lofty and too low to qualify. ]

[xerampelinae]

You weren't there.

[ Caprica's attention pulls back to Etrepa, and it's a little like a light has flicked on behind her expression. Assessing deeper, singling the other woman out as an individual instead of an obstacle. That separating they, struggling out of Caprica's sense of division. ]

On the ship, before it crashed. Of course, it wasn't always exciting. [ She remembers: countless days spent in her own room, small and unremarkable and undecorated. Sometimes, she would lapse into a state of meditative idleness, and watch the wall for hours. (The deep, lonely hallways. Alienation born of a true, pervasive isolation. Her sense of self orbits beyond the rest of them.)

The memory seems to shift. Bars, not a wall, the same isolation, the concrete knowledge that they had forgotten her here. It didn't matter. She's just a cylon (not real, synthetic, toaster), after all. ]

But when it was, it was a nightmare. They're probably still enjoying the rain.

[ So is she, if pressed to admit it. Dirt and moving air and a sky. ]

I came for food.

[corpse_soldier]

[ Fair enough. The relief the would come from feeling genuine terrestrial gravity, of leaving the sterility and severity of a ship's quarters and decade rooms to carouse beneath an actual sky, is something Etrepa can remember seeing in her planet-born officers. Less so the station-dwellers, for whom going 'downwell' was an excursion rather than an analog homecoming.

But while she might understand it, Etrepa doesn't feel it herself. She was at home with feeling of vacuum against her hull- never on their ship, no, but she was a ship, and being aboard herself never seemed unpleasant for any of her segments. At best, she is indifferent to the joys of soil and precipitation. And she's no great fan of their collaborative work, the mud that squelches beneath her seventh segment's boots. ]

You are not managing on your own?

[ A patronizing but not unreasonable inference on Etrepa's part. There's edible biomass out there in the wilds, ready to be gathered and consumed if Caprica should so desire. She could very feasibly hunt and forage on her own, without bothering with vacation village. Etrepa does not even possess the gendered expectations that might render the model-lean and -lovely blonde somewhat absurd in survivalist mode. ]

Why not stay in the camp, if you are not self sufficient? If you are injured, or otherwise immobilized, you may not receive sufficiently timely assistance.

[ The explanation - or rather, an explanation - arrives by way of overheard thoughts. If Etrepa were the sort to show any sort of spontaneous expression, she'd look surprised. This person - no, not a person, not if what it thinks of itself is true, though definitions of personhood have proved looser out here than in Radch space - is a synthetic intelligence? Another intrusive scan, not of Caprica's mind but of her body, is forthcoming, as Etrepa strives to spot some implants she has missed, some sign of the artificial in what otherwise looks like an exemplary - if provincially pale - instance of human anatomy. ]

Are you afraid that you'd have no place? They are, many of them, not human themselves. [ Certainly not by Radchaai standards. Aatr's tits- they are none of them even civilized. Hardly in a position to judge. ]