closed.

[zealouspeter]

Who: Shiroe and Daedalus.
When: Monday morning.
Where: Ye olde Diner.
Summary: There are ... a lot of things they need to talk on. Especially after the cherry blossoms.
Warnings: Anger and general unhappiness.

Comments

[zealouspeter]

Of course, of course. College - University - Hillsdale, and the second year was already going smoother than the first, if he had to say so; he didn't want to think on it, however, not with how he'd only lasted eight months in his 'real' world's school and yet was going onto a second year here. It was how things were, and he could accept that-- but while he'd thought he could just accept and move on before, now, that seemed... a bit shattered to pieces.

"No trouble. Textbooks get more and more expensive, though, I think." Daedalus had the bright cheer (night shift, too, never a break --) instead of Shiroe, for once; the Mu wasn't sulky so much as just rather dispassionate, speaking like a... well, a normal person. Since he had the tendency to be extremely pointed or verbose at all times, it maybe was a slightly startling difference. His eyes flitted upward, quick (make sure he's alright, make sure he's alright), then went back to his miniature pyramid of creamers. "How about you and work?"

They did have the bottle-outting to fall back on. The other topic was still hovering, however, like a fighter ship in the room, and as much as he wanted to relax in the diner, he just couldn't.

Time during Monday morning was alright to spend, though, wasn't it?

[gaveherwings]

"I heard there's a way to get electronic copies of academic texts for free." Daedalus mentions with a deliberately offhanded, one-shouldered shrug, glancing down at the neatly piled creamer stack. It was his way of saying he certainly wouldn't mind quietly condoning textbook pirating. Not with what they were charging for them.

On the surface he seems at the worst a little uneasy, but for all his breezy, focused list of things to preoccupy breakfast which pointedly don't include the events of last week, the doctor carries a restlessness, an unsettled feeling deeper with him. His glances are cautious too.

"Work's been...letting up a bit, to be fair." But every night the sirens sounded a little earlier, now the summer was ending, the dangerous dark hours lengthened, the time with which to do productive things grew shorter. Days felt hurried, instead of gradually relaxing, as they had in the spring, or June.

He missed Romdeau's clock, with its artificial sky and the lights that dimmed right on an even schedule, year round.

"They made a few breakthroughs with those fungi too, if you saw in the news." He mentions, pulling out his holobook and flipping it open quickly to the first report Skye's doctors had received from SERO's Disease Control Units, over the weekend. It featured a rendered model of the enlarged spores. "As it turns out, it's not really chemical hallucino- well, it is, but it's because of a sentient organism, exchanging information with the host nervous system, until the immune response sets in." His dark eyes look carefully at Shiroe though the transparent, slowly rotating fuzzy sphere. "I...thought that was interesting."

[zealouspeter]

"There's a lot of ways." Still with a bit of tightness, but he was trying his best to unravel, and it was somewhat working out. His smile was lopsided, forced, but, "I'm pretty sure half the people releasing those are SERO students. And they probably put trackers in them."

Plus, I hadn't thought you'd approve. But Daedalus had odd quirks, here and there - such as with that bottle-sending, something that had even been emphasized as illegal, and yet there hadn't been a single complaint. It'd been enjoyable, actually. A memory Shiroe would've liked to take a picture of and added to his album, possibly; if only there wasn't this new --

"Finally." The comment to the work part, and his lopsided smile was gone: now he was watching Daedalus the way he watched interesting people when he was sure they didn't know he was paying attention to them, with a clinical eye and potentially destructive ideas cropping up. Except the doctor was most certainly watching back, even when- especially when the hologram popped up, and Shiroe had to admit that he only paid half-attention to it. Not to say he wasn't interested - he was, in a rather personal way (it had been so incredibly humiliating, embarrassing beyond belief with all of the people who he only fuzzily recalled speaking with or prying into the minds of, and if Re-l didn't tell Daedalus anything, then neither would he), but it wasn't the metaphorical elephant in the room.

And, at his roots, Shiroe was still a child. He wasn't good at ignoring those so-called elephants, as much as he might have told himself it was better not to know.

A few words filtered in enough that he could muster up the curiousity enough to settle his eyes on the model, away from the doctor's. Sentient.

"... Was it taking physical data, or mental data? Can that be told through genetics like these?"

[gaveherwings]

"So download them onto something you don't mind being tracked? A public console, or something on campus." Daedalus shrugs easily with a small, flippant roll of his eyes, tsking. Because really, for a boy like Shiroe he'd have expected less of a flimsy excuse, with such a simple troubleshoot. "Then, provided reformatting's not to much of a pain, just copy the text into a new document."

He was much more liberal with sharing system cheats, ever since he and Shiroe had declared themselves 'heretics' last December. The bottles too, something both taboo, clandestine and meaningful, which was how he liked doing things best. (Much like his sex life had been this time last week. Funnily enough.)

Daedalus spins the diagram with a flick of his stylus, enlarging it. His eyes met Shiroe's directly through the faint wash of blue light. A cup of mint tea is slid onto the edge of the table, and the doctor slides it smoothly into the curl of his palm with a 'thank you', and without glancing aside at the waitress, who would be three paces away by the time he did.

"According to the report, they believe it was taking electronic, neural impulses, possibly translating them into something chemical. Do you know how things are communicated in ant colonies?" He smiled brightly- one of these days he was going to find himself a virtual ant colony program, like the favorite that he'd played with, as a child. "Hypothetically, it could work like that. A kind of shared, collective mind. Or, it could be using neural pulses as a source of energy."

[zealouspeter]

"Maybe I will." That still didn't get more than a wisp of a smile, but then, it didn't get more than those few words, either. Textbooks were beyond expensive, and stealing the content online would be simpler than going to the bookstore himself, but in truth, he didn't feel much inclination to do it. All of the 'textbooks' on the space station had been electronic -- the fact that this place still used real paper made out of real trees was a little tiny highlight of the city, especially when he could buy the textbooks used off of older students with half of a paragraph highlighted (interesting what bits of information they would pick: some of them would be completely off the mark of what the professor considered important) or a mysterious black stain in the very middle. These were little facets of what people here considered to be normal human life, and, true, while it was now normal to Shiroe, too, he couldn't completely forget his eight months of memory in the educational station. The weight of three books making his shoulders ache was frustrating at best, sometimes, but it was still different. It wasn't just a flimsy bit of technology.

Maybe he'd grab the online copies if only to see if the producer had scanned all of the text, and if they had, they'd included highlighted sentences or ripped corners, too.

He could understand Daedalus's love for his holopad, nonetheless. It was a very handy tool. It was part of the other's world-- maybe one of the few bits the doctor was very happy to have retained (maybe he would have liked an autoreiv, too, but Shiroe wasn't as sure on that, anymore).

But, lo, they were talking of a living mind. Shiroe took a second to blink, think, then, "Except we weren't allowed into the other creature's mind. Were they able to trace who was doing it?" Or what. Were the fungi all of one collective mind, or was someone planting them...? The first seemed terrifying, on a level that walking into the middle of a forest all alone, surrounded by giant trees and not an ounce of non-plant life (besides squirrels), was terrifying (and for the record, for someone who had never been in such a place before, it was terrifying). And, okay, now he had more than a little bit of interest, even if some part of him- like a child- was stubbornly refusing to let go of his reluctance in straying from that imaginary topic.

"I hadn't thought of a power to spread your mental awareness by spores. It's... new, I suppose."

[gaveherwings]

"Or perhaps the human mind simply couldn't begin to fathom processing the world as a spore colony might?" Daedalus suggested, still considering the implications himself. It would be like feeding a long string of binary input to a human mind in the same way an autoreiv was meant to accept the data...except a human mind couldn't handle a code like that, quickly nor as simply as a computer. The Cogito Virus, it was said, rearranged an autoreiv's function to give them a sentience closer to that of a human. Perhaps rewriting the way they saw the world- with an Ego, with themselves at the center of the universe.

Often, he wondered how terrifying those first moments would be. Why some of the infected had fallen to their knees, as if in petition, while others went beserk.

...why some humans heard the taste of peaches, while others emptied their stomachs of lunch, or went into a state of catatonic shock.

"At least, not in a matter which would make much sense to us." He reasons. That someone was behind it, that the world was a grander scheme or plot-

While Daedalus liked answers, he didn't suffer any delusion that it was so straightforward as a controller or an elaborate scheme, much like he didn't necessarily believe the Core obeyed the whims of a secret master.

Or perhaps he did, and had his fill of untouchable Proxies to deny it.

The mushrooms did disturb him too, when thinking about it like that.

"It might explain the hallucinations, and the strange symptoms- some reported experiencing something similar to Synesthesia." He paused, quizzing Shiroe with a smart grin across the table. "Do you know what that is?"

[zealouspeter]

"... That would make sense."

That was said actually rather quietly - Shiroe was scrambling quickly to get his memories of the day, but really, they were far too fuzzy; he did recall meeting certain people, certain overloads of thoughts and feelings-- if all of that was transferred to a sentient core, did it catch the others' knowledge, as well...?

It would be a terrifying thought, if Shiroe could remember if he'd heard anything that was important (normal lives weren't).

He blinked up at the sudden grin, quirking an eyebrow and pausing. "... A land of imaginary sensations?" And that was just how much better he was feeling (or maybe how much he'd come to instinctively respected the other, even now): he didn't immediately go to pry the information out of Daedalus. It was a good jump from even five months ago, he thought.

[gaveherwings]

"A fair guess." The doctor smiled, and there was always something that seemed very indulgent about letting someone guess, feel their way about an instinctive hypothesis, before revealing his own answer. He'd done that often with Re-l, when they were young, when there were things to teach her, or questions she came to him with.

He liked to see how far along someone might venture on their own, then supplying tools for the rest of the way. That felt fair. Stretching- though Shiroe's imagination outweighed his own by a hundredfold easily, Daedalus was certain, so he didn't really require to exercise.

Shiroe evidently hadn't scoured and committed to memory every single detail of the psychology texts that Daedalus had bought him earlier in the summer, but that was alright. He'd kept himself busy and constructive in other ways, probably.

"Synesthesia- it's not a land, it's a neurological condition, from greek roots: syn, meaning 'together', and aisthesis, meaning 'sensation'." Daedalus pauses for a moment, with a riddling smile, as if that clue should have been enough of an adequate hint, but then he continues on in happy edification. "It's when cognitive pathways open involuntarily, across two or more different senses. An association- sometimes with things as simple as color and corresponding numbers."

[zealouspeter]

"One of the more basic mental processes." That was an observation, not a fact: Shiroe was raising an eyebrow again, first at Daedalus and then at the table. "Something that would probably be really easy for an advanced alien to connect themselves to, as well. With just one association, they could have followed a pathway all the way to the very beginnings of your childhood memories."

And that could have been the crux of it, couldn't it have? He was jumping a few stops on this subject's train, that was true, but-- for all of the happiness over being able to quiz like this radiating from the doctor's direction, Shiroe's way of zeroing in and obsessing over anything that managed to get into his mind was back to becoming a joy-killer.

Something getting into his mind. Unconsciously, his frown deepened even more. Nothing should have been able to do that without his permission - nothing. Even if it was some kind of alien creature instead of a SERO operative.

But then... Why would it target newcomers? Was it trying to understand all of the worlds they came from? Or just compile data?

Or was it really like an ant hill, and every mushroom had simply been cataloging the weaknesses of the hosts they found...? That'd imply later evolution at the very least, though, which wasn't at all what he'd really thought a plant could be capable of.

[gaveherwings]

"I don't see what the point in that would be." The doctor shakes his head, with a slightly doubtful frown. "Things like memory, emotion, thought, complex things...the evidence did not exist yet to confirm that sort of behavior."

"But I do think it's interesting that something like this <>icould hold some degree of collective intelligence-" Daedalus squints, and he really does enjoy being able to turn over speculations with someone who will readily indulge his idle thoughts, and his deepening curiosity. Shiroe could usually be counted upon for that.

"Think about it." He sits back, staring off with a wondering fascination. "Aside from this contact at the cellular level, essentially rooting itself into the energy emissions of nerve endings, it has no other sensory organs to speak of for itself. But it could use input, transmitted neural signals from other living organisms and their specialized tissue instead as its eyes, ears, tools to take in the immediate surroundings. It's really quite clever, isn't it?"

"However, that does not mean it would necessarily be capable of coming to the same kind of understanding as we do."

[zealouspeter]

"It's clever." Shiroe was hedging, and he knew it. Still, he was now eying the other back with a bit of question, obviously sinking into a slightly contemplative mode. The reluctance was still there, yes, but -

"Even if it doesn't, that's a lot of information to get in one go. And even if it did get that information, as a fungus-- if it really is one- what would it do with it? Evolve along the patterns of what it sees as best? I suppose it's a natural parasite already, but..."

But there wasn't even much in the baseball field to be a parasite on, was it? Daedalus may have been fascinated with the fact that a plant-like creature was doing this in the first place, but Shiroe was zeroing in on the why. It would have been an excellent survival technique if there had been anything a mushroom could do with it. As it was, the best the things could hope for was maybe to release its seeds in the vague direction of what it had found out to be the best enviroment. Outside of that, Shiroe couldn't see an advantage. It wasn't as it if had legs or arms - and as for the greatness of having a hive mind, he could only think on what he had seen of Jomy's Mu-run planet. They had been as close to having a hive mind as sentient creatures could get, and it had helped tremendously if only because they hadn't the resources to make as good of technology as they should've.

Ah, but back to that earlier point.

"... How was it living in the baseball diamond, anyway? It's all sand and dirt there. Unless it feeds off the Core's radiation somehow-- now that would be an evolution."

[gaveherwings]

"The core's energy might be able to sustain it somehow. Or it could use the darkness, somehow (that's an even more dreadful thought)" he adds, with a little bit of a wince, before he shakes his head. "SERO's bio-research hasn't released anything on how it responds to radioactive exposure, or anything that duplicates the diamond's levels of energy...If they've ever even managed to get that far in observations."

Or perhaps it fed on something in the darkness. That was a thought too gruesome in implications to share, especially if it involved anything sentiment making contact with the mind of a mutation. He'd seen psychics show up at the ER in comas, or in a state of catatonia, because of brushing mental (or "spiritual") wavelengths too closely with a monster of the after-siren.

Another uncomfortable notion, worrying, considering the very boy seated across from him, who was a Mu prone to panic attacks. He hoped that Shiroe would learn to temper at least some of his curiosity, to prevent himself from ever stretching himself out into the dangerous territory of darkness exploration. For that danger alone, he hoped that the experience earlier in the summer, with his stolen heart, had some long-sticking impact. It was bad enough Re-l went out in it far too often, confident in her healing, and in her wings, and in testing her limitations.

At times, Daedalus truly resented all the built-in caveat of his namesake. It left him an overly protective young man, acutely aware of the loss associated with risks taken one step too far, and perhaps that had even been an intentional part of his making.

Daedalus has a love/hate relationship with boundaries. He likes to toe across them when no one's looking, but then it's concern that keeps him in restraint, and it's the inward struggle against that restraint that feeds his working momentum. It's much like a pressure cooker, churning a potentially dangerous amount of steam. That's why the regency always permitted him some liberties. Yet freedom from defined purpose doesn't suit him well either. When he lets go of his cares- because it's just too much, that's when his apathy grows sluggish to the point that people like Raul, people who know him well, will call him out on it. Hopefully. Most of the time.

Shiroe may catch his attention drifting into the usual fray of tangents, away from questions and mushrooms, and bound up in that sentimental stillness which is a lie, because it's nothing but restless on the inside, restless and fit to burst.

[zealouspeter]

“Daedalus.”

He did sense the difference; not only that, but he was willing to call the other on it - though it wasn’t with his usual amused look, or even with something that could be put close to ‘concerned.’ It was focused, instead, maybe even equal to being outright staring. It could be worth noting he'd never done something like that before, but times had changed.

(That month without a heart had led to some serious consequences: these days, instead of standing for the turbulent mentalities of his housemates, he'd actively try to influence them, mostly for the better; people who were angry enough to hurt, he would avoid and maybe sometimes mentally persuade others to do the same, as much as some may have gotten angry over the fact that he was invading their minds without permission (it would have happened anyway) -- a month without a heart and he was finally developing a sense of empathy.)

"... If it fed off the Darkness, it would have spread all over by now. And it probably would have only latched onto Darkness monsters, too. Unless it's some sort of Darkness agent." That last part-- was the first semi-ridiculous statement he'd given since they'd met up, but it was pointed; he didn't want Daedalus drifting into thoughts of Re-l or Raul, didn't want to catch glimpses of hospital calls or Romdaeu. He wasn't sure, however, if it was strictly because he wanted the doctor's full attention (right then, right there, Shiroe would say whole-heartedly that it wasn't) or just because... There had been enough of that.

Daedalus, Shiroe was convinced, needed an outlet that didn't involve Re-l, himself (well, maybe himself), work or. That blond.

The problem was, that cut down pretty much all of the outlets available. He'd have to get more creative in his thinking- or maybe it was just that the other needed to let go, but that meant something like a breakdown, and those were always messy; absently, instinctively, Shiroe started to try to mentally press a feeling of focus into the other, if only to help things keep calm--

- Wait, no. He was supposed to be stubborn, right then. Instantly, the musing expression on his face turned back into a half-scowl, eyes refocusing onto Daedalus's and mental probe boomeranging back with enough swiftness that it might just have been picked up by the other. This solemn business was obnoxious, the Mu childishly realized; but outright touching the topic still seemed beyond taboo. There was no way he could. None. And so, he continued with his increasingly displeased face and slow, slow poking at an overly syrupy piece of french toast.

[gaveherwings]

"Hm?" He lifts his head, feeling the sensation of a tug on his attention, deeper than simply using his name. For a hairsbreadth of a moment, Shiroe was nearly speaking to him adult to adult, and that caught his interest like a hooked fish.

"You're probably right." the doctor concedes, after brushing off concerns of losing those reckless people most precious to him, and settling his mind back on the mushrooms, the convenient conversation piece, around which so many periphery feelings and unspoken things seemed to orbit slowly, held off by the distraction of something concrete and topical. "Any sentient receiver which would have fed off of the darkness probably wouldn't have flourished from contact with it."

He watched Shiroe poke at his toast, and glanced down at his own menu. Diner food was so heavy with oily fat or carbohydrates, after a night on his feet. He thought briefly about Francis Bonnefoy, who seemed to think any limit on cooking with butter to be appalling.

"Went ahead and ordered without me, did you?" He ventured almost fondly across the table, with a quieter note of apology as Shiroe played with his saturated breakfast and looked quite unhappy. It sounded like an apology for so much more than that alone. "I didn't realize I was running so late."

He orders wheat toast with the smoked salmon that usually goes on bagels, and opts out of the cream cheese for a side of vanilla yogurt.

"Anyway, now that they're sampled in a controlled environment, they're likely to plumb the depths." He goes on idly, the subject matter turning flat. There was little point in speculating when someone else was doing all the research. Daedalus was still a bit sore for doing so much clinical work these days, so much care, which was draining with effort and rewarding with interpersonal gratitude, but it didn't hold the same keen excitement of research and development. Which could also be frustrating, when it dead ended, or worse when your funds were lopped off on the whim of higher powers desiring applicative results. All the same, he missed some of the lab environment. "So it's a matter of time, before SERO's a bit more clear on their function."

Then, again, again, a little wistfully- "It's a shame you're not taking bio this semester"

[zealouspeter]

That... the way Daedalus simply pulled himself back, went on talking- it was all the doctor's doing, and while they'd done such things before, here, it struck Shiroe. Maybe it was a part of him that had Daedalus down as one of those people he just Couldn't Lose, maybe it was just the hour; whatever it was, it made him sneak a glance up through his bangs like a hesitant teenager, finally feeling a bit of honest, deep appreciation. Not many others snapped into treating him like an adult. Not many ever treated him like an adult in the first place. Unwillingly, Shiroe couldn't help but ease up on his scowl.

"You weren't." It wasn't a grudging admission, finally; it wasn't even a particularly unhappy one. Then again, it wasn't happy, either. "I was just hungry, so I hurried her." That should've been said with a smile, but Shiroe was in the awkward in between place of getting back to rights and sticking to the stubborn unhappiness; he heard and understood that all-encompassing apology, but he didn't acknowledge it.

He did bite his lip, fork finally stilling against his plate. There would be a significant break between Daedalus's words and his reply, but it did eventually come.

(He didn't feel as angry now. If he examined how he felt, he could term it as more 'sad' and 'betrayed,' but anger was still his forte, and when applied to him, sadness was far more difficult to accept.)

"I wonder how far it's gotten already." Quietly- this wasn't so scientific, but -- "If it really is sentient, even in a controlled environment, it'll still be taking in information. They couldn't have destroyed all the mushrooms." And wasn't that a funny thing? What if these fungi continued to evolve? - And then, for that last comment, he gave a snort that wasn't quite amused but wasn't quite dismissive.

"Do you think they'd learn about the mushrooms? Not the first year students, but -" Wouldn't that have been funny. How many gas masks would he go through before one kept the spores completely out?

[gaveherwings]

So hungry he was out early. It made Daedalus smile, finding that particularly endearing, especially after well over a year of constantly having to remind Re-l not to skip morning meals. It was nice to have someone who'd sit and eat with him, even if it was syrup-soaked french toast and even if Shiroe insisted on playing with his food, pushing it it around on his plate.

"Go ahead and order more to take home with you" He offers generously to that, as if he hadn't spoiled him quite enough. Perhaps it was a bit of guilt over that elephant still in the room, as if the over-indulgence of feeding it might make it wander off. "Whatever you'd like."

For all he enjoyed scientific conversations, he could hold them with any of his colleagues, and none of them would be quite so imaginative on matters as he suspected that Shiroe was capable of...and yet he still assumed that the boy was always holding back a little- assumed, because it was true to his own nature to play his cards close to the table when under the scrutiny of someone older and possibility more experienced.

Now and then, it occurred to him that projecting exorbitant amounts of himself onto Shiroe was probably psychologically unhealthy. Not unhealthy enough to stop.

"If they truly are sentient, it's a question of ethical population management as well." He pointed out, remembering the extermination trucks that pulled up curbside not far from the Newcomer Clinic, the men in white coveralls, similar to the contamination suits worn by those who stepped out beyond the dome. "We're lucky the government hasn't given the same termination order to human immigrants."

He shrugs, as if to say 'You tell me.' After all, he had placed Shiroe on Hillsdale campus in part to be his eyes and ears. "Don't they teach things of current topical importance?" And then a gentle reminder, fond with pride- "(And you're second year, now)"