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

[itstopped]

Why have a death toll, or why have death at all?

[deadly_ned]

Death I understand. There has to be a balance to life. Symmetry. Symmetrical...poetry. And you need to be able to keep firemen employed.

But what does the death toll balance?

[itstopped]

But this isn't death. There's no balance. [He's already talked about this with you, Ned. :| ] If it's all a... what did you call it, a reset button? Why not just make us unkillable?

[deadly_ned]

No. It's not death. I'm struggling to, um. To wrap my head around the arbitrary business of the week after. The death part I'm not...too concerned about.


It's like when you're a kid and you're told the stove is hot but you touch it anyway because you're curious. You burn yourself and you learn to stay away from danger. We...learn, from danger. No one could graduate if we didn't have risk.

[with_my_teacup]

Figured it was a side affect of whatever tech the admiral has that brings us back. Like grav sickness; no 'why', just happens.

[deadly_ned]

Science? Science brings us back from the dead?

[itstopped]

Then you just answered your own question. It wouldn't be a lesson if it wasn't at least frakking unpleasant.

[with_my_teacup]

I kind of assume, yeah. Some upsettingly advanced level of tech, but still tech. And however it puts our bodies back, twists time, whatever it does-- hurts.

[deadly_ned]

But why a week? Why not three days, or a month? Who decides when death tolls start and end?

[deadly_ned]

So you don't think it's magic that does it.

[with_my_teacup]

Mmmmnope.

[deadly_ned]

But you come from a world without magic.

[with_my_teacup]

Yeah. Maybe. Still don't know what the fuck is up with Elementals, but there's probably a scientific explanation.

[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.