012 - Lemon Meringue

[deadly_ned]

Question.

Or, um. Query, if you will.


Why do we have the death toll?

Does it teach us anything? Don't go doing what you do or you'll get punished for it? And why a week's worth of suffering? Doesn't death make you suffer enough? I hear it can be painful.


Why just...not have a death toll? Can any, um.

Is there anyone else on board who can stop a death toll from happening?

Just.

Just curious.

[Strike visible to those with psychic powers]

Comments

[deadly_ned]

But you've seen magic done here.

[with_my_teacup]

I have. But the Barge doesn't look like magic to me. It looks like really advanced tech. More than the Time Lords have.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

Riddick, I can reverse the death toll. And I'm not a scientist.

I'm a magic Piemaker.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

I know -

[A faint pause where maybe a nickname was supposed to go, before he reminds himself that reining it in is going to be better for everyone in his life. Especially him.]

I know that. But I've seen science do things... the quasi-dead psychics on the Necro ship, the visions. The way my eyes work anymore. Some kind of multi-universal tear can fuck the boundaries of life and death, too.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

So is there a point where science and magic connect?

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

I don't know that. Not without knowing what magic actually is.

...is this about you, pieman? About how what you can do fits against with the barge can do?

[oops. Well, shit. Next time.]

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

I don't know what magic is either, so we're. Alike, in that respect.



Yes, you're right, it's very egocentric of me. I'm sorry.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

Did I say it was egoccentric.

I just wanted to know what conversation we were having, because that's been a problem for me lately.

Not with you specifically. With me generally.

[With everyone. So tired.]

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

I just wanted to know if there were people like me. A million universes, you'd think so, wouldn't you?


....What problem are you having?

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

Thinking I'm communicating with people, turns out we weren't communicating. That problem.

Maybe there are, keeping it close to their chest. What the Lord Marshal did, going to the Underverse and coming back a real irritating pseudo-precog, that's not what you can do exactly, but it's not... it ain't something you pick up in physics class, either.

Unless that's university level physics and I don't know it. Whole educated in the penal system thing has its drawbacks.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

Oh. That problem.

Yeeeah.

Yeah, that's a, um. A fairly common problem.


Which people?




You don't ever wish for someone like you, so you could compare notes and share experiences?

[Private] TW canon suicide

[with_my_teacup]

Family people. Other people. People in general. Kinda missing the ice planet, just me and the mammoths and sabercats.

I did wish I had someone like me when, when I was younger, still in government care. I sorta stopped. Around age 30 I started having hallucinations of a woman who said the Necromongers wiped out my whole planet. Then I met someone like me who wasn't a hallucination. He'd been brainwashed so long his only way out was to tell me to go kick some ass for him and go kill himself.

Doesn't mean I blame you for looking. You seem real... unhappy about how you operate, how your powers work.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

That's....terrible. That's a terrible thing for a person to hear.

But I understand about the not...understanding part. Sometimes it's. It's easier, being alone. Although I don't think easiness is the point.



I'm here on the Barge to get rid of them. Or...control them. Control them or get rid of them.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

What's terrible to hear, that the Furyan race fucked itself or that I'm bad at civilization?

Anyway.

I hope it works out for you, when you get your deal.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

Both. But, I, um. I don't think you're as terrible as you think you are when it comes to that.



I don't know. I don't know how it's going to turn out.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

I was pretty okay with not being able to form emotional connections until I could. Now I actually care about a few people and I actually mostly feel lonely. I'm not enjoying it.

So you can't hope? And I thought I was pessimistic.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

That's what happens. I was alone for twenty years. I can tell you that's what...happens.


I'm sorry. I do hope. I just also have extraneous experience.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

You're weirdly endearing when you're fatalistic.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

Well, you know how it is. You're around death so much you start...picking up a few excess philosophies until it all shuffles around in your brain into one big death soup.


But what you're feeling, that loneliness? I wouldn't discount that. That, it...it hurts. But I think it makes you feel more alive.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

Is that how it is? They just called me a sociopath. [Sort of teasing, in an awful way.]

Mostly I'm just exhausted. Spread out too thin. I don't feel real lively right now.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

You're not a sociopath. You just need a break.

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

Mostly I am, though. Just learned to intellectually consider other people as more than irritating scenery. It was probably a graduation condition.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

Have I been upgraded to irritating livestock?

[Private]

[with_my_teacup]

No. You got-- inside the circle of people I actually consider people. Probably after you started teaching me. I'm not sure what triggers it.

It's not a big circle.

[Private]

[deadly_ned]

It doesn't have to be. I have...three people in my life back home. Just the three.


And then I came to the Barge and that circle got a little bigger.