(fic) Just Communication (oneshot)
Just Communication
A Gundam Wing fanfiction written by Masamune Reforged
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the charactes and I make no money from this fanfiction.
Rating/Warning: All audiences.
Characters: ???, Relena, Heero
Setting/Type: In-series, gen fic, psychological
Words: 581 (SHORT!)
For gw_dark 's monthly theme, "Blast from the Future"
Author's Note: This is set in episode 46, the scene where Heero and Relena are on Libra and seek out Zechs to talk to him. What they find is... well, see if it makes any sense to you...
-Just Communication-
There was a gentle murmur of humming electricity. He was aware of lights around him, and then, almost dully so, of lesser illumination giving depth and form to objects in the circular room. There was a table, and he was seated in a chair. Two of the objects were humans.
He knew them and addressed them by name. The girl had two names, although one was a false identity that had been cast away. The boy had one name that was not his own. He himself, he learned, had two names. The boy called him one, the girl the other.
It was a bizarre realization that both of these names seemed to fit him perfectly well. Zechs Merquise. Milliardo Peacecraft. Did either of them mean anything? Did they give him some sort of valid reality? No and yes. The names themselves were simple strings. The affirmation of his existence was the first and only thing he had ever been given.
He spoke to the two humans, spoke of a place called Earth, things called colonies. As the words came forth from him they took on meanings. Myriad images accompanied the issuance of each new word. Words like 'war', names like 'Treize'. He challenged the boy, who pointed an object at him from time to time. He rebuked the girl. She had things called 'ideas' that were not quite data, yet were quantified with alarmingly brief phrases and letters. 'True peace' and 'evil'.
Strange things, these humans. At times the boy's face was a blank mask, as though he too was a product of a machine. Consistently, the girl would speak in a voice that wavered in pitch and treble, her frame would shake with rushes of what he knew were untouchable chemical reactions, anger, fear, and concrete phantoms, faith, love.
Stranger too, he himself. He spoke to them and they to him, yet he was not a part of any of this. He moved their 'souls' and could never graze their flesh. He was incapable of 'relating' to them and understood them perfectly. Words and visual input. Words and faux visual output. There was a word for this. It was the function he had been created to fulfill. That was what he was, nothing more. Yet, how strange it was, that he was a 'he', that he had awareness like this.
The boy noticed it first. He lowered the thing called a weapon and turned away. He spoke in a low voice to the girl. The boy's words were things that, strangely, seemed to be a part of him too, though he had never received the command to output them. The girl also turned away. He suddenly wished to draw her attention back to him.
He found himself speaking and meaning words that were still not his, and yet were. This was a strange thing. Strings and visuals. They were real, true bits of insignificant datum. Thus, he too was real. There was a word for what he was. Communication.
He told the girl, “Relena, I hope you survive.”
The girl did not seem to understand. She returned her gaze to him, spoke to him with a word wired with invisible edges and coded with immaterial electricity. He found that these things that certainly did not have any true substance to them affected something that could not possibly exist anywhere within him. He began to flicker. She acknowledged him still.
He noticed he was casting a shadow. Then it was gone.
-end 'Just Communication'
Author's Note: Actually written a week or so before, 'The Third Voice'. This grew out of one of the notes I took when I re-watched this episode. In the scene, Relena and Heero are speaking to a hologram of Zechs, and not Zechs himself. Yet, the hologram clearly casts a shadow (12:10, right before the commercial break). 'Advanced technology in Gundam Wing' is a trough that, honestly, holds little water, because it's such a painfully dated show. I really wanted to do something involving bonafide 'in series' technology that wasn't just mobile suits or space colonies. This is not only one of the few scenes were non-mech technology actually plays an impressively meaningful role, but it's probably the only one involving communication.
And, here I am, trying to type out an author's note to make sense of this because even I have no idea what this character is, or what real differences there are between it and myself. I'm also afraid nobody will understand any of this story without this note, yet I'm constantly too chicken-shit to frankly label things like this in a fic write-up or the notes before the actual fic... Seems I'm as lacking in intelligible communication as the series I write for!
The hologram also causes the chair to lurch when he 'stands', although it's either another gaffe or that the chair is part of the illusion itself..
A Gundam Wing fanfiction written by Masamune Reforged
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the charactes and I make no money from this fanfiction.
Rating/Warning: All audiences.
Characters: ???, Relena, Heero
Setting/Type: In-series, gen fic, psychological
Words: 581 (SHORT!)
For gw_dark 's monthly theme, "Blast from the Future"
Author's Note: This is set in episode 46, the scene where Heero and Relena are on Libra and seek out Zechs to talk to him. What they find is... well, see if it makes any sense to you...
-Just Communication-
There was a gentle murmur of humming electricity. He was aware of lights around him, and then, almost dully so, of lesser illumination giving depth and form to objects in the circular room. There was a table, and he was seated in a chair. Two of the objects were humans.
He knew them and addressed them by name. The girl had two names, although one was a false identity that had been cast away. The boy had one name that was not his own. He himself, he learned, had two names. The boy called him one, the girl the other.
It was a bizarre realization that both of these names seemed to fit him perfectly well. Zechs Merquise. Milliardo Peacecraft. Did either of them mean anything? Did they give him some sort of valid reality? No and yes. The names themselves were simple strings. The affirmation of his existence was the first and only thing he had ever been given.
He spoke to the two humans, spoke of a place called Earth, things called colonies. As the words came forth from him they took on meanings. Myriad images accompanied the issuance of each new word. Words like 'war', names like 'Treize'. He challenged the boy, who pointed an object at him from time to time. He rebuked the girl. She had things called 'ideas' that were not quite data, yet were quantified with alarmingly brief phrases and letters. 'True peace' and 'evil'.
Strange things, these humans. At times the boy's face was a blank mask, as though he too was a product of a machine. Consistently, the girl would speak in a voice that wavered in pitch and treble, her frame would shake with rushes of what he knew were untouchable chemical reactions, anger, fear, and concrete phantoms, faith, love.
Stranger too, he himself. He spoke to them and they to him, yet he was not a part of any of this. He moved their 'souls' and could never graze their flesh. He was incapable of 'relating' to them and understood them perfectly. Words and visual input. Words and faux visual output. There was a word for this. It was the function he had been created to fulfill. That was what he was, nothing more. Yet, how strange it was, that he was a 'he', that he had awareness like this.
The boy noticed it first. He lowered the thing called a weapon and turned away. He spoke in a low voice to the girl. The boy's words were things that, strangely, seemed to be a part of him too, though he had never received the command to output them. The girl also turned away. He suddenly wished to draw her attention back to him.
He found himself speaking and meaning words that were still not his, and yet were. This was a strange thing. Strings and visuals. They were real, true bits of insignificant datum. Thus, he too was real. There was a word for what he was. Communication.
He told the girl, “Relena, I hope you survive.”
The girl did not seem to understand. She returned her gaze to him, spoke to him with a word wired with invisible edges and coded with immaterial electricity. He found that these things that certainly did not have any true substance to them affected something that could not possibly exist anywhere within him. He began to flicker. She acknowledged him still.
He noticed he was casting a shadow. Then it was gone.
-end 'Just Communication'
Author's Note: Actually written a week or so before, 'The Third Voice'. This grew out of one of the notes I took when I re-watched this episode. In the scene, Relena and Heero are speaking to a hologram of Zechs, and not Zechs himself. Yet, the hologram clearly casts a shadow (12:10, right before the commercial break). 'Advanced technology in Gundam Wing' is a trough that, honestly, holds little water, because it's such a painfully dated show. I really wanted to do something involving bonafide 'in series' technology that wasn't just mobile suits or space colonies. This is not only one of the few scenes were non-mech technology actually plays an impressively meaningful role, but it's probably the only one involving communication.
And, here I am, trying to type out an author's note to make sense of this because even I have no idea what this character is, or what real differences there are between it and myself. I'm also afraid nobody will understand any of this story without this note, yet I'm constantly too chicken-shit to frankly label things like this in a fic write-up or the notes before the actual fic... Seems I'm as lacking in intelligible communication as the series I write for!
The hologram also causes the chair to lurch when he 'stands', although it's either another gaffe or that the chair is part of the illusion itself..