driftfleet | (no subject)

We don't have a lot of upgrades here, but I'll take you through the kitchen and bridge. I find the differences between the ships kind of interesting anyway. We have a lab now too.

I'll admit yours is the first other one I've been to.

I've been on the Blameless to see Logan's ship and the Tourist to see Kara. I thought they'd all be more uniform.

Maybe they've changed more as time passes. [Through upgrades, and personal touches.]

The personal touch can make things more palatable.

Probably. No lab when I came on board. Then we get a lab tech and suddenly there's a lab.

I've always gone back and forth on the personal touch thing. [Her room was pretty free of them as he might have noticed.] I had a lot for awhile in the prison.

Really. That would give people incentive to have one of each type of augment on board, if they all come with similar benefits. [And how does that benefit Atroma? If the augment types were all controlled on separate signals, perhaps...]

Yes, but you were there for a year. There's a natural accumulation that comes with staying somewhere for a long time. [Provided it's possible. Between the camps and his own prison cell, he'd never owned much.] In some circumstances, at least.

It would, but I haven't heard anyone recruiting for transfers or maybe that's more of a one-on-one wooing situation. [She's not sure how it benefits the Atroma either. Maybe it's strictly utilitarian. They need them to be able to operate the vessels, so they make them capable of it and that's all? Not that the augment's uses end there. She's sure of that.]

There was a lot to accumulate. Everything was free and plentiful. [Not like home. Oh, sure, things were free in the sense that it was all there for the taking unless someone else had taken it first.] But I didn't always like the idea of feeling...settled.

I know our ship hasn't had a communications person since before I arrived. [What benefits a communications augment gives a ship is something he doesn't know.

That dislike of feeling settled he can understand. It was something he'd reacted against more than once, in Kyriakos at least.] Were you ever told that you were intended to be released? Was that part of the system?

We had two and lost them both, so I can tell you we lack some scanning and radar tech we used to have. [Which maybe she wouldn't have even been aware of with so short a stay if not for being the pilot.]

No. It was life imprisonment. I was intent on getting the others out though.

The idea of life imprisonment does make things feel more permanent.

It does. I'm not sure I ever believed it fully, but I rarely thought I'd be gone anytime soon. [So it was stable enough in that sense.] What about you? The theory was you'd get your memories back and head home?

[He hums an affirmative, tracing a finger down the wall of the corridor.] The theory, and the practice. The pieces of our soul were returned as mirror shards. Once you put the last piece into your mirror, it repaired itself and you were thrown a party. No one ever left without finishing their mirror.

[Some would still disappear, of course. Confined to the soul pods or the clocktower mirrors when their souls became too weak. Spirited off by Echoes. But they never left.]

That sounds...symbolic. [She glances over to him as they make their way onto the bridge.] How close was your mirror?

It wasn't symbolic so much as literal. Those mirrors were your souls.

[And ultimately, they were all the same, no matter how damaged or dark he might have thought his own was. Letting his hand drop, he sighs.] I wasn't close, I finished it. That meant our world was restored and we could return to it.

[She imagines he must feel something like she does with all the starting over in different multi-dimensional traps and even at home.] I don't think we ever get the happily-ever-after or even the rest-in-peace. It's just one battle after another. [She sounds a little too weary of it for someone still so young.]

[It's enough to bring him to a halt.] You're right. Life isn't a fairytale, where things tie up and nothing ever happens again after a battle is won. [There's always another fight.]

But that doesn't mean there's nothing else to life.

[Yes, bring the wisdom, young!Erik. She could use some. Or just a break from being the leader in her life story. Not that she's actually willing to turn that over to someone she barely knows but there's some desire for it that she hasn't quite admitted to herself. Being part of the team was never easy, but compared to losing her students or fighting a losing battle against wardens at the prison it was easier.]

You're right. There's also kale-bacon. [She's a menace to her own wants.]