( a quiet, lackluster answer. no elaboration either. enhanced person number four does not know though: what elan ceres wants him to do with that so-called information. that someone has tried to kill him, that someone will try again, that someone has before. present. future. past. what can four do with the information, what should he do? questions. no answers. four's i believe so hangs like a cat's cradle between them, not much space; no room for error.
the sound of elan ceres' nail against the floor falls like a physical weight into four's chest. it seems to not only be noise but a form of strange contact, a form of taste, a form of honesty he can't quite parse nor understand. objectively: nervous tic. subjectively: ...
as is his own habit, four swallows down his sigh into utter silence, and though he does not turn his head, he does close his eyes, trying to find an answer that elan ceres could probably outright give him if he felt like it. abruptly there's an absence: a hollow space where the odd adrenaline surge collapses out of him like a held breath. it has that odd effect being depleted sometimes does, makes his mind a fraction clearer, almost detached from himself. when he looks again, it is at the bed behind him. )
Should I dispose of it?
( there is no thought of 'mine' or 'don't'. four's shift from viewing it with unmanageable hurt and damning wordlessness to someone else's problem to be solved is invisible and sincere. if elan ceres tells him to get rid of it, he will. if elan ceres tells him not to get rid of it, he won't. if —
— ?
the person who he was before being remade by peil technologies learned early on how to be obedient, and that there were different ways to achieve this; not just by following direct commands but anticipating what might be perceived as ingratitude or like-minded behaviors. where enhanced person number four boxes and buries that dreaded word "want" without looking at it, sela looked at what he wanted and hoped to preserve and took his own quiet steps to achieve that, even if it often meant holding a little too close to the heart ways to be wanted by not being unwanted.
clink.
it occurs to him that there is a sense of expectation from elan ceres and it feels, now that he looks at it closer, feels it more finitely: very different than the collective expectation of peil. strange, given his role there; and not strange, given his role there. four ignores a sweep of dizziness, tethered to his neutral ground by an intersection of fulfilling his role and...something else. its shape eludes him and so too its name. this frenetic, uncontrolled anxiety like a trapped impulse before a fall.
and, somewhere at the foot of that cliff: a heartbeat that is his heartbeat.
oh.
i'm...worried?
not a thought he can pursue, and indeed he doesn't. but the throbbing in his skull worsens when he looks up again, gaze less focused but calm.
no subject
( a quiet, lackluster answer. no elaboration either. enhanced person number four does not know though: what elan ceres wants him to do with that so-called information. that someone has tried to kill him, that someone will try again, that someone has before. present. future. past. what can four do with the information, what should he do? questions. no answers. four's i believe so hangs like a cat's cradle between them, not much space; no room for error.
the sound of elan ceres' nail against the floor falls like a physical weight into four's chest. it seems to not only be noise but a form of strange contact, a form of taste, a form of honesty he can't quite parse nor understand. objectively: nervous tic. subjectively: ...
as is his own habit, four swallows down his sigh into utter silence, and though he does not turn his head, he does close his eyes, trying to find an answer that elan ceres could probably outright give him if he felt like it. abruptly there's an absence: a hollow space where the odd adrenaline surge collapses out of him like a held breath. it has that odd effect being depleted sometimes does, makes his mind a fraction clearer, almost detached from himself. when he looks again, it is at the bed behind him. )
Should I dispose of it?
( there is no thought of 'mine' or 'don't'. four's shift from viewing it with unmanageable hurt and damning wordlessness to someone else's problem to be solved is invisible and sincere. if elan ceres tells him to get rid of it, he will. if elan ceres tells him not to get rid of it, he won't. if —
— ?
the person who he was before being remade by peil technologies learned early on how to be obedient, and that there were different ways to achieve this; not just by following direct commands but anticipating what might be perceived as ingratitude or like-minded behaviors. where enhanced person number four boxes and buries that dreaded word "want" without looking at it, sela looked at what he wanted and hoped to preserve and took his own quiet steps to achieve that, even if it often meant holding a little too close to the heart ways to be wanted by not being unwanted.
clink.
it occurs to him that there is a sense of expectation from elan ceres and it feels, now that he looks at it closer, feels it more finitely: very different than the collective expectation of peil. strange, given his role there; and not strange, given his role there. four ignores a sweep of dizziness, tethered to his neutral ground by an intersection of fulfilling his role and...something else. its shape eludes him and so too its name. this frenetic, uncontrolled anxiety like a trapped impulse before a fall.
and, somewhere at the foot of that cliff: a heartbeat that is his heartbeat.
oh.
i'm...worried?
not a thought he can pursue, and indeed he doesn't. but the throbbing in his skull worsens when he looks up again, gaze less focused but calm.
unnaturally, carefully, too patiently. )