Log 0015 - [Voice]

[keeps_a_cool_head]

It is with considerable disappointment that I report the departure of Hiziki Gard.

A word to the Admiral: make certain the next warden you assign me is sustainable. Inconsistencies and lapses are a sign of disorganization within your operations.

[Private to Catra]

I trust you've recovered from your ordeal.

[Private to the Boy, Mira]

The Chair is ready for its initial testing.

[Spam for Crichton]

[Now unpaired, Scorpius feels at liberty to test a few less-than-savory parts of his growing arsenal in the battle for John's mind. He waits patiently in the hallway towards Crichton's room, working diligently on Francis' crossword puzzle. Most of the human references escape him, but he's been doing research. Slowly but surely he'll understand this perplexing species that overwhelms the Barge in sheer number]

Comments

Private;

[keeps_a_cool_head]

It may be difficult; someone else would need to operate the controls.

But I can go first, if you wish me to test it properly.

Re: Private;

[velocette]

[He nods slightly]

Show me how to use the controls. I pick up mechanics fast; I'll make sure I have it down.

Private;

[keeps_a_cool_head]

Come to my cabin and I will provide a demonstration.

Offline;

[velocette]

[ He shows up shortly after, as usual without so much as a 'good bye' before he signs off. He's almost-smiling, though.

God, but it is nice to be learning something new. ]

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[Standing alone in his minimalist room is Scorpius, leaning over a roughly-built console and configuring it with quiet focus. Wires lead in from the computer to a metal chair, set in the middle of the room. Placed in front of the chair is a reflective dish, displaying nothing]

Come in.

[velocette]

[ He examines everything, but touches nothing. ]

What should I expect will happen, if all goes the way it should?

[keeps_a_cool_head]

{Scorpius does not glance up, but steps slightly to the side to allow the Boy closer access to the project.]

What will happen is one of us will sit in the chair while the other remains here. The chair will begin to rotate slowly, and the machine that powers it will begin to map the neural patterns inside the subject's mind, displaying them in the center dish there.

It will be the other's job to track, locate, and monitor these memories as they flood in. Too slow, and all the chair will manage to extract is an excruciating headache. Too much too quickly and...the brain could liquify.

[velocette]

[He thinks this over maybe a little longer than he considers most things, which is saying a lot. But eventually he nods.]

Then being a monitor is just knowing the right buttons? [That sounds...easier than getting your brain liquefied.]

[keeps_a_cool_head]

Essentially. As well as knowing when to power back; this requires only to watch the other in the chair and check for excess levels of distress.

Do you feel reasonably confident?

[velocette]

[He looks at the chair a long moment, and then nods, as if he's become acquainted with it simply by staring.]

I'll be watching your vital signs, right? ...What's a normal range for you?

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[Scorpius is less than trusting about the Boy's ability, but...the chair must be tested, and he must give up a part of himself to do it. He edges over to the control dashboard, indicating levels]

I've marked them, here and here. However, if you sense I am going into shock, shut it off regardless.

[velocette]

I can do that.

[He says it with a little smile, maybe sensing hesitance, or maybe just poking fun at his own general distraction.]

Ready?

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[He in turn remains unconvinced by the smile, watching the Boy before crossing the room and seating himself in the chair. Scorpius pulls the headrest down to sit against his forehead, then gives a brief nod to the Boy]

When you are.

[velocette]

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

[He speaks as he sets to work, patiently double-checking himself before he presses the buttons. It makes a sort of sense, the layout of this chair.]

But I think you could probably go five minutes beyond that.

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[He closes his eyes, and allows the Boy to take over control of his mind.

The chair starts up with a familiar hum, and Scorpius can't keep the slight satisfied smile off his face. He had his doubts over whether the final product would actually work, despite his replicating everything to the best of his memory, which is acute. He's sat in the original plenty of times before as it was being built, having always had a knack for testing the unknown and risking his own life for his goals.

He feels the chair begin to move, and braces himself against the back of it, attempting to dissolve his resistances: relax, and the chair will do the work on its own. To pass the time, he meditates.

The shock comes half a minute later, just a jump to his cerebral cortex, nothing more. No images appear yet on the screen; the chair needs time to adjust and read the creature sitting in it. At each successive, longer drilling into his mind, Scorpius continues to press through the uncomfortable pressure building up, breathing heavily.

Soon, images begin to appear. Peacekeepers in uniform; a massive ship; the stars.]

[velocette]

[He is, despite appearances, very good at multi-tasking. He keeps his attention on making sure no sirens or whistles go off, but keeps an eye on the images. You'd have to be a stone not to be curious about Scorpius's mind.

He'd almost forgotten there was another world out there (another universe?) completely different from this one, or his own. Scorpius is one of the few things on the Barge that sticks to the Boy's mind more often than not; as a result he's come to view the Barge and the three people he can remember as reality, and everything else as separate. This is a reminder that maybe he's wrong to do that.

He itches to see more.]

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[The images pass by in rapid succession, out of order and in tight glimpses, at first. Memories of the Barge are indiscriminately mixed with memories of his own universe, so the patten of faces that flit by are equally mixed between humans, human-like aliens, and entirely alien creatures. At first, they come and go so quickly that determining recent past from long past is impossible.

Then, bit by bit, they begin to slow down.

John Crichton is predictably the first clear and present memory: he always seems to be lurking in the forefront of Scorpius' mind, but here on the viewer he is looking less healthy than he ever has on the Barge with burst blood vessels in his eyes, a thick sheen of sweat covering most of his forehead. Here, their positions are reversed. Scorpius is the jailer and Crichton is his prisoner, and they are in a military base. Crichton opens his mouth to speak, and just as quickly he's replaced by a trainee peacekeeper of indeterminate origin, and it's maybe thirty years prior and Scorpius is in military training for the first time. Human faces come and go quickly, all wearing the same suspicious, hostile expression, all in red and black, before settling at last on the strained expression of an older man with a goatee and a higher military rank, as Scorpius gets into a brawl with him and is clearly the stronger opponent but still holds back.

The images fade quickly away from people, and it's back, back even further. Anything coincidentally human-like now is gone, replaced by hostile alien worlds and creatures the likes of which have never been seen on the Barge. He's seventeen and sitting in a clinical office, listening to instructions given by an alien with a large domed head and a respirator mask, who is outfitting him with the trial run of his first coolant suit: a bulky thing with an external battery that must be dragged around. Scorpius is hot-tempered, demanding better results, scathing and impractical and always, always angry. The domed alien drifts off and is replaced by a terrifying creature with blue skin and spider-like appendages around her head, who is crowing about eating out Scorpius' eyes even as he's thirteen and raging, spitting mad and fighting to be free.

In the chair, Scorpius attempts to reign in, to keep himself together even as the Chair begins to press his mind apart, pushing the memories out, elongating them into longer and longer sequences. He shuts his eyes tightly, baring his fangs as the world fades off in the background and is replaced by only the constant, increasing thrum of pain]

[velocette]

[He's fascinated, and maybe dangerously so. He watches for a moment as flashes of light and shadow give way to solid shapes, and then to aliens, with technology he'll never hope to see at home, and features he would never have dreamed up on his own. Which is how he knows this has to be real.

He'd known Scorpius must have been a child once, but he couldn't picture it. He hadn't thought much about it, really, beyond wondering absently if Scorpius had sprung from a test-tube fully formed, like Athena cutting her way free from Zeus's forehead.

But this is no myth. Somehow, despite all his doubts, Scorpius has turned out to be real, after all. This has to be Scorpius's own mind--and judging by the grimace on his face, it's the truth, too. His hand hovers over the buttons that will stop this, but he doesn't press them yet.]

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[Tellingly, there's no one in the vast span of memories that resembles anything like what Scorpius is. He bucks abruptly in the chair, snarling out an indistinguishable slew of words as the Chair digs and digs at what's hidden. Without the necessary tools to properly direct the flow of memory, the Chair makes random, indistinct jumps through time, attempting to navigate vast recesses of data without rhyme or reason.

A dark, windowless chamber, listening to his own thoughts for the first time; the beginnings of learning to meditate - his death by heat exhaustion, lying on the ground of a Shadow Depository watching Crichton's retreating back - commanding his first medium-sized crew, some of whom can just barely hide their disdain - a single, grey cell with a deformed, badly dehydrated child locked inside, a lizard-like creature standing over and berating it for perceived genetic faults as it cries for water.

Wormholes.

He's alone when he spots his first one, barely an adolescent fleeing in a stolen ship with pursuers right behind. The ship is tiny and can't manage the speed his enemies have; around him, consoles blare warningly, echoing the noises the machine under the Boy's fingers begins to make.

This is the end. A last stand is traditional, isn't it? He pulls a pulse pistol out from under the pilot chair, reaching out with his other hand to stall the engines and conserve power. There are five right behind him: assuming they don't blast him out of the sky, he's got a slim chance to shoot the boarding party and take off again in the confusion. If they're Scarrans - the lizard-like creatures he knows intimately well - then his gun won't do much good in harming them. But he can't think of anything else; there hadn't been time to create back-up plans. All he knows is that he would rather face death than recapture.

And then his viewscreen floods with blue light.

Temporarily blinded, he drops back into his chair, squinting with his arm raised as he twists the ship around, attempting to find the source of the blast. A new weapon, perhaps?

But no; he manages to turn the ship around just in time to see enemy vessels #4 and #5 get sucked in after their companions, disappearing down a long, thin corridor to nowhere.

And just as quickly, the tunnel closes up again.

In the Chair, Scorpius begins to make audible noises of complaint; an alarming sound by anyone that naturally stoic. He swallows hard, repeatedly, struggling to keep himself in the moment. It only half works: now, each memory brought forth causes new and exponential pain that leaves him sweating and shaking with each successive breath]

[velocette]

[The Boy is renowned at home for his indifference to pain. He's no sadist, he doesn't enjoy others' suffering; but he has never been swayed by it or sympathetic to it, either. That's probably something that should have been shared beforehand, because he waits maybe a beat longer than another person would have, before he pulls the Chair's orders away from Scorpius's mind.

He watches Scorpius carefully, and all the while he can't stop wondering what colors were there in space. Surely they weren't all black and white the way he remembers stars seeming as a child. Surely the light Scorpius saw had to have some hue besides 'snow'? He had always thought that space must be beautiful. He remembers being a very small child and hearing man's first steps on the moon. It seems like child's play next to the things he just saw.]

Are you still with me?

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[Surprisingly, Scorpius is strangely all right with the Boy's commitment to seeing a project through. Pain will fade, but knowledge lasts forever: he finds himself grateful. That is, once he can think straight again.

The Chair slows down and eventually comes to a full stop, but Scorpius doesn't yet stir. His eyes remain closed until the Boy asks his question, at which point they open and take a brief second to find and focus on him.

He opens his mouth to speak, and finds he can't; not yet. So instead he nods, and begins to step out, steadying his gait with care.

Finally, he manages to speak after climbing to his feet]

...My thanks to you for a successful first test run.

[velocette]

[The Boy had moved to catch him if he fell, but he's glad when that's not necessary. He decides when Scorpius doesn't appear to be disoriented for long, that he can do this.]

Yeah. It was my pleasure, thanks for inviting me.

[Which is a polite way of expressing how utterly, entirely excited he is.]

I won't tell anyone what I saw, of course.

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[Once out of the chair, Scorpius recovers remarkably quickly. He's slightly subdued from the experience, but this could be owed to what's been seen instead of the physical pain brought with it. He turns back to the Boy, giving a small but satisfied grin.]

I know.

I should warn you: prolonged exposure is still risky. If we are to try it against you, we need to do it in ten to fifteen microt bursts: no more.

[velocette]

[He's hopeful that his own recovery will be as smooth, but it's a vague hope. Scorpius may not belong to any species, but he's very clearly a few steps ahead of a wiry, underfed street punk like the Boy, physically speaking.]

You've done micro bursts before? ...Though I guess if you haven't, it's not like you can practice on someone else first. It'll be all right.

[keeps_a_cool_head]

[Scorpius has found that in his experience, different people react to the chair differently. It's certainly far more painful when the machine suspects there is something to hide, but luckily this was not the case here.]

Minutes. More or less the same as microts.

I feel we have accomplished a great deal for today, if you should like to retire.