New fic: The cosmos owns our luck.
Title: The cosmos owns our luck.
Universe: The West Wing
Character/Pairing: Toby Ziegler, CJ Cregg
Rating: G
Spoilers: Set in an unspecified future, with general spoilers for the series.
Word Count: 1057
Beta: pellucid, who is letting me get away with more than usual. All errors are mine.
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters, even if I’m still hoping they might come to life.
Author’s Note/Summary: chaila43 asked for CJ and Toby, “there is no caring less,” based on Fix, by Alice Fulton, with attention paid to the political and the personal. This is my take.
***
There is a major earthquake off the coast of Indonesia. A tidal wave destroys businesses and homes, and CJ wonders if she should redirect some of her funding to the rebuilding efforts.
Toby writes, You can’t solve the world’s problems.
But she wants to try, wants to find a way to take $5 billion and make it $10 billion or $20. Pick up the women and children of Sulawesi and give them shelter, medicine, political stability. She’d settle for hope.
Toby writes, You’re doing important work.
Toby writes, P.S., There’s always microlending.
**
CJ is put on bed rest for the last two months of her pregnancy. There will be no travel to prospective development sites, no guest lectures at Berkeley. She is permitted to shower. Supervised.
Toby sends her an advance copy of his book.
He writes, For the few I have called friend.
He writes, Without significant investment, the infrastructure of the United States will face catastrophic collapse within twenty-five years.
The book will never sell, but CJ passes two days with the cadence of Toby’s words sounding in her head. She reads catastrophe and hears apostrophe and remembers a debate about swung dashes and tildes and currency controls in Spain.
**
She names her daughter Carrie, and when the girl is four months old, CJ gets on a plane to Nigeria so she can visit Chad to discuss the advantages for the government if they improve the population’s access to health services, sanitation, and education.
Most mothers go back to work after three months. Her daughter is in Danny’s loving care. Her daughter has her father’s eyes.
She dashes off an email because it is easier than shaking with tears at 45,000 feet.
Toby writes, You’re making the world a better place for her.
CJ thinks that’s a foolish platitude. The 777 has a lower carbon footprint than the 747, but it runs on fossil fuels. The roads she wants to build will encourage tourists and locals alike to drive cars through areas once inhabited exclusively by lions and giraffe. Donna periodically sends updates about the hole in the ozone, about melting glaciers, dying penguins.
She writes, You used to be a pessimist.
He writes, Now I have children.
CJ gets every concession she hoped for and some she hadn’t. She arrives home and holds the baby against her and explains that she leaves because helping people is important.
**
There is a pipeline explosion in the Bering Strait, and a skirmish over which government is most or more responsible. It had barely begun transferring natural gas from Siberia to the Alaskan coast and what had been heralded as a triumph of modern diplomacy and clever engineering has become an international disaster.
Toby writes, Thank God we don’t work there anymore.
Toby writes, We could have dedicated all that money to clean energy. What kind of idiots come up with these ideas?
CJ helped approve the project. The Russian ambassador had toasted her with very good wine.
She writes, but doesn’t send, a note about good intentions. She tells him instead that he’s growing strangely environmentally conscious in his old age.
**
Congress finds the funding to return men to the moon. The year is not 1969, but CJ turns on the television and pulls her daughter into her lap. Together, they watch something that doesn’t look much like a space shuttle hurl itself into the sunny Florida sky and beyond.
Her daughter, not yet ten, asks about why the government would pay so much to do something so impractical.
CJ doesn’t have an immediate answer. She says something about the thrill of discovery. Carrie asks, “How does that help people?” before hopping to the ground and walking away. CJ stares at the television until the channel cuts to commercial.
Toby writes, Kids these days!
Toby writes, Because if we can prove we can conquer space, we can believe it won’t conquer us.
**
Toby writes, Practicality is hardly a consideration when we seek knowledge. We push beyond the bounds of human capacity to learn, to enrich ourselves, to become more than we are. Seeking a cure for cancer is no greater or lesser a pursuit than seeking to understand the stars, at least not if knowledge is its own reward.
But we must acknowledge the cost of pushing beyond known limits. We find a cure and, in so doing, develop a pathogen. We erect a levee and, in so doing, fundamentally alter the shape of the shoreline. We eliminate fossil fuels and, in so doing, hinder the developing world’s ability to grow. We build roads across great tundra and, in so doing, forever change the migratory patterns of the few remaining great cats.
We send men to space. Sometimes they die.
We send men to space and, in so doing, we learn about the human body’s ability to withstand stress. We learn about a government’s response to conflict. We learn about integrity. We learn about crash webbing.
Carrie writes, Maybe I’ll go into space.
**
CJ calls Toby, late. Danny is asleep, their daughter awake in her room with a letter clutched in her hand.
“You should write a book,” she says.
“I did,” Toby replies. “It flopped.”
CJ rolls her eyes. “Because you were lecturing people on the importance of roads.”
“You feel very strongly about roads.”
“Yes,” CJ says. “But I do this because other people don’t know enough to care.”
“They would care if they read my book.”
“Write a book people will read,” CJ tells him.
“Not likely,” Toby says.
“People used to listen to your speeches.”
“Because I didn’t deliver them.”
She pauses. “You convinced my daughter in less than two hundred words to abandon her dreams of becoming a soccer star so she can take up astrophysics. If you care about educating people about roads, about space exploration, or about the goddamn apostrophe, you can do something about it.”
“And how do you propose I start?” he asks, clearly too tired to argue.
“Use your words,” CJ says. “They are no more or less beautiful if you direct them to our children. You’re not saying you care less if you speak in public libraries or college campuses or shitty bookstores.”
**
Toby writes, For CJ and Carrie.
Toby writes, Imagination begins with education.
CJ smiles.
***
Universe: The West Wing
Character/Pairing: Toby Ziegler, CJ Cregg
Rating: G
Spoilers: Set in an unspecified future, with general spoilers for the series.
Word Count: 1057
Beta: pellucid, who is letting me get away with more than usual. All errors are mine.
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters, even if I’m still hoping they might come to life.
Author’s Note/Summary: chaila43 asked for CJ and Toby, “there is no caring less,” based on Fix, by Alice Fulton, with attention paid to the political and the personal. This is my take.
***
There is a major earthquake off the coast of Indonesia. A tidal wave destroys businesses and homes, and CJ wonders if she should redirect some of her funding to the rebuilding efforts.
Toby writes, You can’t solve the world’s problems.
But she wants to try, wants to find a way to take $5 billion and make it $10 billion or $20. Pick up the women and children of Sulawesi and give them shelter, medicine, political stability. She’d settle for hope.
Toby writes, You’re doing important work.
Toby writes, P.S., There’s always microlending.
**
CJ is put on bed rest for the last two months of her pregnancy. There will be no travel to prospective development sites, no guest lectures at Berkeley. She is permitted to shower. Supervised.
Toby sends her an advance copy of his book.
He writes, For the few I have called friend.
He writes, Without significant investment, the infrastructure of the United States will face catastrophic collapse within twenty-five years.
The book will never sell, but CJ passes two days with the cadence of Toby’s words sounding in her head. She reads catastrophe and hears apostrophe and remembers a debate about swung dashes and tildes and currency controls in Spain.
**
She names her daughter Carrie, and when the girl is four months old, CJ gets on a plane to Nigeria so she can visit Chad to discuss the advantages for the government if they improve the population’s access to health services, sanitation, and education.
Most mothers go back to work after three months. Her daughter is in Danny’s loving care. Her daughter has her father’s eyes.
She dashes off an email because it is easier than shaking with tears at 45,000 feet.
Toby writes, You’re making the world a better place for her.
CJ thinks that’s a foolish platitude. The 777 has a lower carbon footprint than the 747, but it runs on fossil fuels. The roads she wants to build will encourage tourists and locals alike to drive cars through areas once inhabited exclusively by lions and giraffe. Donna periodically sends updates about the hole in the ozone, about melting glaciers, dying penguins.
She writes, You used to be a pessimist.
He writes, Now I have children.
CJ gets every concession she hoped for and some she hadn’t. She arrives home and holds the baby against her and explains that she leaves because helping people is important.
**
There is a pipeline explosion in the Bering Strait, and a skirmish over which government is most or more responsible. It had barely begun transferring natural gas from Siberia to the Alaskan coast and what had been heralded as a triumph of modern diplomacy and clever engineering has become an international disaster.
Toby writes, Thank God we don’t work there anymore.
Toby writes, We could have dedicated all that money to clean energy. What kind of idiots come up with these ideas?
CJ helped approve the project. The Russian ambassador had toasted her with very good wine.
She writes, but doesn’t send, a note about good intentions. She tells him instead that he’s growing strangely environmentally conscious in his old age.
**
Congress finds the funding to return men to the moon. The year is not 1969, but CJ turns on the television and pulls her daughter into her lap. Together, they watch something that doesn’t look much like a space shuttle hurl itself into the sunny Florida sky and beyond.
Her daughter, not yet ten, asks about why the government would pay so much to do something so impractical.
CJ doesn’t have an immediate answer. She says something about the thrill of discovery. Carrie asks, “How does that help people?” before hopping to the ground and walking away. CJ stares at the television until the channel cuts to commercial.
Toby writes, Kids these days!
Toby writes, Because if we can prove we can conquer space, we can believe it won’t conquer us.
**
Toby writes, Practicality is hardly a consideration when we seek knowledge. We push beyond the bounds of human capacity to learn, to enrich ourselves, to become more than we are. Seeking a cure for cancer is no greater or lesser a pursuit than seeking to understand the stars, at least not if knowledge is its own reward.
But we must acknowledge the cost of pushing beyond known limits. We find a cure and, in so doing, develop a pathogen. We erect a levee and, in so doing, fundamentally alter the shape of the shoreline. We eliminate fossil fuels and, in so doing, hinder the developing world’s ability to grow. We build roads across great tundra and, in so doing, forever change the migratory patterns of the few remaining great cats.
We send men to space. Sometimes they die.
We send men to space and, in so doing, we learn about the human body’s ability to withstand stress. We learn about a government’s response to conflict. We learn about integrity. We learn about crash webbing.
Carrie writes, Maybe I’ll go into space.
**
CJ calls Toby, late. Danny is asleep, their daughter awake in her room with a letter clutched in her hand.
“You should write a book,” she says.
“I did,” Toby replies. “It flopped.”
CJ rolls her eyes. “Because you were lecturing people on the importance of roads.”
“You feel very strongly about roads.”
“Yes,” CJ says. “But I do this because other people don’t know enough to care.”
“They would care if they read my book.”
“Write a book people will read,” CJ tells him.
“Not likely,” Toby says.
“People used to listen to your speeches.”
“Because I didn’t deliver them.”
She pauses. “You convinced my daughter in less than two hundred words to abandon her dreams of becoming a soccer star so she can take up astrophysics. If you care about educating people about roads, about space exploration, or about the goddamn apostrophe, you can do something about it.”
“And how do you propose I start?” he asks, clearly too tired to argue.
“Use your words,” CJ says. “They are no more or less beautiful if you direct them to our children. You’re not saying you care less if you speak in public libraries or college campuses or shitty bookstores.”
**
Toby writes, For CJ and Carrie.
Toby writes, Imagination begins with education.
CJ smiles.
***