with the lights out it's less dangerous

[epyonrose]

It’s nights like these that Treize perversely thinks of Im Westen nichts Neues. He watches the screen before him, clicking lifelessly through display after display of data. It’s the same, all the same, and it will be for some time. In two weeks, there will be a strike on the L2 colony, but it will be settled quietly and with minimal violence.

Comments

[epyonrose]

"There was a revival of a much older romanticism era about seventy years ago," he says, of the decor. "I'm fond of it in any incarnation."

And of her dress, he says: "Of course. You look lovely. For the interested, you are a conservationist, and I met you some months ago on a survey of the lower hemisphere." And it's not like anyone else will be sharing the floor with them. He owns the place, after all.

The floor upstairs is a little differently designed, mostly open, with more high archways and less actual doors, accentuating the fact that he is usually here alone. In between his actual office and his bedroom is a sitting area, akin to a standard living room, framed by ceiling to floor windows. In the dark, they can see the lights of the far-off compound, little silhouettes of mobile suits, and of course, the stars.

It doesn't occur to Treize that she might not be familiar with mobile suits, so he merely approaches the window, eyes skyward. "Do you see that star, there?" he points up. "It's pinkish, and very bright? That's the L1 colony."

[mareprocellarum]

"Understood," she says, agreeably- glad to have that cover story sorted. Also rather glad that he didn't give her a nickname (James, for the love of Vatea, why).

Once upstairs, she notices the mobile suits in the dark, but is swiftly distracted by what he says - though she files some queries away for later - shifting her gaze up to that bright pink star. Pela doesn't quite touch the window, but she's close to it, and then turns to look at Treize with wide eyes and an amazed smile. Guileless, in her astonishment.

"There are people there? Really?" Of course, that's what he just said, they've discussed it before, and she processes it shortly, but it's a bit shocking for her to actually see! "It seems so close, somehow."

[epyonrose]

"Yes," he confirms, faintly amused. "Hundreds of thousands. They're on carefully maintained orbits, as to not disrupt gravity or meteor pathways in the galaxy. Different times of the year, we can see different colonies from the Earth. It actually is rather close, compared to a real star - it's less the reflection of the sun and more the lights from the colony itself that we're seeing."

[mareprocellarum]

"How long have they been there?" Pela is still sorting out what she thinks of space colonization - in a lot of ways it could be construed as very Technocratic, since (unbeknownst to her), that is something that they'd flip out over, but she understands why it happened, she thinks.

[epyonrose]

"That one in particular, nearly two hundred years. It was the first civilian station of its kind. Space colonization has been a massive achievement for mankind. We even changed our calendar over to reflect it; our years are now denoted by 'AC', after-colony."

And before that it was CE, and before that, AD, and before that, BC, the remnants of silly spiritualism and creationism blessedly falling away.

[mareprocellarum]

"So...generations of people are living there who have never seen the earth?" She's watching Treize with a thoughtful expression, now, conflicted by the very idea. It's necessary - that much is easy to comprehend - it just strikes her as sad.

[epyonrose]

"Yes."

It strikes him as sad, too, but they've spoken on the fact that he truly loves the Earth. Watching the stars, he says: "They have veritable atmosphere, and the ability to have parks, grass, lawns, lakes, even small things they'll call forests. L4, they say, is trying to grow a jungle. Some people, when they finally come home, here, they touch the ground and breathe the air and they weep - because it's all too much."

He pauses, an unreadable half-smile on his lips. "And some people... some people come to this planet and say they can't even tell the difference."

[mareprocellarum]

She exhales in a huff of something almost like rueful laughter, shaking her head.

"No ocean, though, yeah? Even if there were other planets they could occupy instead...you can't replicate this Earth. There's only one of her for each universe." Pela turns, touching Treize's arm in an absent, fond kind of way. "I think- some people just say 'good enough,' and leave it at that. Some people don't stop there."

Three guesses as to what kind of people are in this room, and the first two don't count.

[epyonrose]

He shifts in response to her touch, hand resting at the small of her back. "Colonies began because we destroyed this planet," he tells her. "It was over-populated to critical mass, and we were running out of resources. We could put people in space, recycling oxygen in closed circuits, recycling water melted down from ice in deep space. Millions of people died from starvation and vile poverty, and then we had the colonies. Earth was alleviated, and those with the money and the means poured it into her. But then even the people who remained... many of them couldn't afford to stay, because it became so expensive to live amongst such precious resources. So we had more colonies. And more. And now, two hundred years later... this is how we live. Lingering in the divide and watching each other, like stars."

[mareprocellarum]

A lot of this she has to take carefully and piece apart - for example the notion that there is ice in deep space, though she does recognize how it makes sense after some thought - but Pela learns quickly, and she catches up soon enough.

"Waiting for something." It can't stay like that. Not forever. "What do you think it will be like in two hundred more years?"

[epyonrose]

"I think that there will be many more colonies, and we'll have fully terraformed Mars," he says with a shrug, looking at her with an expression of 'c'est la vie'. "They are less expensive to maintain than the Earth, it will alleviate over-population - completely unique cultures have formed. We're too far gone now to ever come back from the stars. Men... humans... are unstoppable, in that way."

He looks back out at the sky, somewhat distant. "That's why I was troubled when you said your people hid from mankind. I don't like not knowing what's just there, just beyond. I don't enjoy the thought of missing so much of life."

[mareprocellarum]

She wonders what will happen in however many years if Mars is used up - what then? Another planet? But maybe they'll treat this one differently.

"Yes. I see what you mean. And I will admit a lot of us are- xenophobic might be the word. My generation grew up with hiding. When we used to show ourselves, hundreds of years ago, though, it...became too dangerous. They wanted to put us in exhibits, or kill us, or--the talk of the sailors' actions is still around today. We thought we could share the earth and avoid a genocide." She frowns, again noting the mobile suits out the window.

"When I was a child, they just said...mermaids and men aren't supposed to mix. Too different." Her tone is rueful, resigned- aware that even though she says that, here she is, on land, very much mingling with humans. "There's a law about talking to humans, letting them know we're here. Even if they're drowning by the dozens."

She glances down, watching the sight outside impassively from under her eyelashes now. "If we break it, we can be outcast."

There's a tacit admission there, by the way.

[epyonrose]

"No matter how terrible we are to what's different, we will always be the most vicious to ourselves," he murmurs, a bittersweet observation. "Alike in the worst of ways, because if we don't share blood, we can all merely bleed instead."

Treize catches her admission, just as he's beginning to catch her attention on the mobile suits. His hand on her back is perhaps comforting or supportive, but mostly it's just steady.

[mareprocellarum]

She slips a little closer, maybe appreciative of that sturdiness. Stormy as she is, and everything. She inclines her head, acknowledging what he has to say - his phrasing is, she is already learning, very Treize, and she recognizes the truth in what he has to say.

"It's the right law to have, these days, but who knows if it'll last?" She points out one of the mobile suits in the dark. "What are those?"

[epyonrose]

Sometimes the only way to properly describe Treize is that he's Treize; people may think he's too intense or dramatic to maintain whatever mysterious act this certainly must be, but he's like this all the time.

He doesn't go with her topic change instantly, giving things a respectful (in his mind) pause to simmer and fade away before he moves forward in something else - but it's still an effortless transition, when he does.

"I saw you staring," he says, tilting his head curiously. "I admit, I'm surprised - it's hard for me to imagine a world without mobile suits that isn't desperately ancient. Though I suppose technology could be evolving in different ways on different worlds."

[mareprocellarum]

"Staring," she repeats, a little trace of a laugh in her voice, "Yeah, I guess I was. We definitely don't have anything like it in my world that I've seen- people would be afraid. Even the humans, they only make films about things like those suits. Are they robotic, or are they controlled from inside?"