Team Angst: Sci-Fi
.
sorry about that; my bad.
.please know that if you have already rated the other fic I wrote for this ficathon, could you please re-take the poll to rate this one instead? thank you.
Title: Gears and Martyrs. (& at my lj)
Author: Keenir.
Pairing/Characters: Liz Warner, Amita Ramanujan, Marshall Penfield. past Liz Warner/Marshall Penfield, past Amita Ramanujan/Charlie Eppes.
Rating/Category: PG-13 Gen (pre-Het or post-Het)
Spoilers: none. (if you squint and hold it sideways, it might have a faint inkling of Chimera.
Summary: Amita helps Liz chase down Marshall, and then the alien shows up.
References:
- the Polgahana(sp) ritual, cited in the series 'Out of Egypt' hosted by Kara Cooney.
- the human computers in 'Miss Leavitt's Stars: the untold story of the woman who discovered how to measure the universe' by George Johnson.
~~~~~~~
'The tradition was a long time in passing. As recently as the early 1960s, Brookhaven National Laboratory hired Long Island housewives to pore over the tangled images of subatomic particles, looking for patterns that might foretell a new physics.' - Miss Leavitt's Stars.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The gearwork of the Place was immense, filling every wall. A generous gift for the Numericists; a crawsticking reminder of what the Windings had achieved: superiority.
Amita, a computer by profession, was standing at the lip of a basin, balloonfruit raised over her head and about to be slammed into the basin, when -
A youth knocked into her, unbalancing but not bowling her over.
Amita caught herself without dropping the balloonfruit, turning to look at the youth. Okay, not so much a youth, she revised, seeing the young man. "Hello?" she asked him.
He bolted, escaping into the crowd.
Not two steps behind him, coming up the same way the man had when he'd bumped into Amita, came a young woman.
Uh-oh Amita thought to herself, a thought she redoubled when the woman showed her a badge that said Liz Warner - the woman - was a police officer. "I'm sorry," Amita apologized.
Liz waved her off. You're not the first person who did something by accident, Liz knew. Even in a Place, a multi-tiered habitation full of gears and cogs and meshings everywhere, coincidence and chance and accidents still happened; only numericists claimed those were illusions.
But Amita wasn't so quickly set aside, keeping up with Liz even when she broke out into a run in pursuit of the man.
Admirable, Liz thought. "His name's Marshall Penfield," Liz said to Amita as they weaved and wefted through the throng of humanity. There were no Windings in sight, but that wasn't unusual. "He's a code-maker." Agreeing with Amita's expression, "No, its not illegal...but that was before he attempted assassination."
"Oh!"
Liz nodded, redoubling her pursuit.
Amita kept up easily.
The tattoos between the eyes and ears, the clothes, but mostly the particular looking Amita's eyes had, spelled it out to Liz: "You're a computer, aren't you?" Liz asked.
"Yeah," Amita said.
Reading peoples' voices was a talent Liz had refined over the long course of her work. "And you're rightly proud of how good you are at it. But someone you're close to, doesn't think so highly of it?"
Amita noddd. "Charlie, my boyfriend. He's a numericist." It wasn't illegal to be a stick in the mud...just awkward. Particularly with my job.
Owch. "I had friends like that," Liz sympathized. Refusing to abandon the notion that math explained everything. Though that ran head-on into an uncomfortable truth: the Windings had never discovered numbers or math, yet it had been the Windings who had conquered Earth.
"What happened?" Amita asked, curious. "I mean, if you don't mind talking about it."
"Life happened," Liz said. "And I believe we've just found Penfield."
"Can I help?" Amita asked. "Seeing as I'm the reason he got away from you."
"You can help, but that's not why."
^
Marshall Penfield patted himself on the back for his brilliance, positive that Li- that Warner would never find him in this laser tag arena. Too much noise and lights and jostling for her comfort, he knew. The playlaser guns were useless as weapons no matter how much he or anyone else amplified the laser - the Windings had altered its physics...one further snub of man, so felt many that Marshall planned alongside. But not the majority, not the sheep.
So many people, playing when they could be helping take victory back from the alien Windings. But they've bought into the comfort provided by clockwork ease. We would've built space stations and icemoon stations, if not for their interference.
"Penfield," Amita told him, startling him - I've been found? "Please don't move."
"Who are you?" Penfield asked.
"My name's Amita. It's okay."
Really? More 'I'm with the government and I'm here to help you' blather? "And if I don't hold still?" he asked her.
"Please don't."
"Don't you see? I'm helping. They just can't stand that."
"Can't stand what?" Amita asked, hoping this didn't turn into a clone of her arguments with Charlie.
"That I don't cower before them, that I don't accept all their provided answers as dogma, that I want humanity to work!"
Liz held back from taking him down - knowing if I do, Amita'll be left wondering if he was right and I just wanted to silence him - that's what I did wrong before, and I lost Marshall because of it.
"Then don't cower," Amita said. "And assassinating is part of cowering - you need to hide to do it."
"It had to be done. We won't be free until -"
"Their sense of martyrdom is stronger than ours, Marshall," Liz said, drawing his attention.
"They have to have a limit," Marshall said. "A point they won't accept losses beyond. Why else would they have sent you after me, Liz?"
Because I'm damn good at my job. "Why should they have a limit? No counting, remember?"
"They understand loss."
"We all do," Liz said.
And maybe he missed her, maybe he heard the loss and longing in her voice right there, maybe he was having second thoughts. Because he looked at her, opened his mouth, and was silent.
And then he fell to the ground, a balloonfruit shattering around him.
Amita and Liz came over to him, each lightly carefully placing the ball of one foot on Marshall's wrists. "You're under arrest," Liz said to him. Maybe we can get together again, when you're ready to behave.
He nodded to Liz, then glared at Amita.
"Your armor may've been stolen, but it didn't protect all of you," Amita said. I just hit the part that was vulnerable.
"Impossible," Penfield said. "Nobody could have seen something that small. How did you do that?" Marshall asked. "Really."
"I'm a computer," Amita said. It was a computer's greatest skill, to pick out the minutest differences and details of images and between scenes, to spot the barest glimpses required, to find flecks of fault and dirt. Many computers went on to be police and engineer-mechanics, like the legendary Betancourt-and-Galluski. "That's how I found you," Amita said. Finding waldos in a crowd was primary school work...and quite satisfying, she thought to herself.
They realized that the crowd was parting, to admit a Winding who creeped closer to the three of them.
Amita held her breath, having never been so close to one of the victors before, one of those who had lifted her ancestors out of the squalor of a gravity well.
On the Windings' own ancestral world, biology had resembled clockwork and steampunk, gears and pistons, more than the flippers and fingers and cells and organs of Earth. Some humans said that the Place itself was an ancient Winding.
The Winding here came up to where Marshall lay, spreading its sensoria wide to get as good a view of Penfield as possible.
Liz didn't say anything. Everything she knew, said that the Windings forgave often - it was why they had given humanity so many living spaces beyond the narrow envelope of Earth.
"You are forgiven your sin," the Winding told Marshall. And then it cleaved his head from his neck, gulping the human cranium down with ease as the floor absorbed the blood. Looking at Liz, the Winding said, "Your work is flawless. Rest. Enjoy a vacation," and it moved off, leaving them with the rest of the body.
Once the Winding was gone, Amita tried to lead Liz away, attempted to pull her aside and get her talking or something. But Liz was an immovable object.
They rarely do that, Liz thought to herself. Decapitate or eat. And she
Liz didn't want to leave, didn't want to move. Not now, anyways. Her heart was heavy, and her craw stuck in her throat. Marshall would never apologize and ask her to take him back, he would never again surprise her on her birthday, he would never sing in the shower.
Amita looked down at the corpse, and hoped Charlie never ended up like that, either.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty [or schmoopy] the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
sorry about that; my bad.
.please know that if you have already rated the other fic I wrote for this ficathon, could you please re-take the poll to rate this one instead? thank you.
Title: Gears and Martyrs. (& at my lj)
Author: Keenir.
Pairing/Characters: Liz Warner, Amita Ramanujan, Marshall Penfield. past Liz Warner/Marshall Penfield, past Amita Ramanujan/Charlie Eppes.
Rating/Category: PG-13 Gen (pre-Het or post-Het)
Spoilers: none. (if you squint and hold it sideways, it might have a faint inkling of Chimera.
Summary: Amita helps Liz chase down Marshall, and then the alien shows up.
References:
- the Polgahana(sp) ritual, cited in the series 'Out of Egypt' hosted by Kara Cooney.
- the human computers in 'Miss Leavitt's Stars: the untold story of the woman who discovered how to measure the universe' by George Johnson.
~~~~~~~
'The tradition was a long time in passing. As recently as the early 1960s, Brookhaven National Laboratory hired Long Island housewives to pore over the tangled images of subatomic particles, looking for patterns that might foretell a new physics.' - Miss Leavitt's Stars.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The gearwork of the Place was immense, filling every wall. A generous gift for the Numericists; a crawsticking reminder of what the Windings had achieved: superiority.
Amita, a computer by profession, was standing at the lip of a basin, balloonfruit raised over her head and about to be slammed into the basin, when -
A youth knocked into her, unbalancing but not bowling her over.
Amita caught herself without dropping the balloonfruit, turning to look at the youth. Okay, not so much a youth, she revised, seeing the young man. "Hello?" she asked him.
He bolted, escaping into the crowd.
Not two steps behind him, coming up the same way the man had when he'd bumped into Amita, came a young woman.
Uh-oh Amita thought to herself, a thought she redoubled when the woman showed her a badge that said Liz Warner - the woman - was a police officer. "I'm sorry," Amita apologized.
Liz waved her off. You're not the first person who did something by accident, Liz knew. Even in a Place, a multi-tiered habitation full of gears and cogs and meshings everywhere, coincidence and chance and accidents still happened; only numericists claimed those were illusions.
But Amita wasn't so quickly set aside, keeping up with Liz even when she broke out into a run in pursuit of the man.
Admirable, Liz thought. "His name's Marshall Penfield," Liz said to Amita as they weaved and wefted through the throng of humanity. There were no Windings in sight, but that wasn't unusual. "He's a code-maker." Agreeing with Amita's expression, "No, its not illegal...but that was before he attempted assassination."
"Oh!"
Liz nodded, redoubling her pursuit.
Amita kept up easily.
The tattoos between the eyes and ears, the clothes, but mostly the particular looking Amita's eyes had, spelled it out to Liz: "You're a computer, aren't you?" Liz asked.
"Yeah," Amita said.
Reading peoples' voices was a talent Liz had refined over the long course of her work. "And you're rightly proud of how good you are at it. But someone you're close to, doesn't think so highly of it?"
Amita noddd. "Charlie, my boyfriend. He's a numericist." It wasn't illegal to be a stick in the mud...just awkward. Particularly with my job.
Owch. "I had friends like that," Liz sympathized. Refusing to abandon the notion that math explained everything. Though that ran head-on into an uncomfortable truth: the Windings had never discovered numbers or math, yet it had been the Windings who had conquered Earth.
"What happened?" Amita asked, curious. "I mean, if you don't mind talking about it."
"Life happened," Liz said. "And I believe we've just found Penfield."
"Can I help?" Amita asked. "Seeing as I'm the reason he got away from you."
"You can help, but that's not why."
^
Marshall Penfield patted himself on the back for his brilliance, positive that Li- that Warner would never find him in this laser tag arena. Too much noise and lights and jostling for her comfort, he knew. The playlaser guns were useless as weapons no matter how much he or anyone else amplified the laser - the Windings had altered its physics...one further snub of man, so felt many that Marshall planned alongside. But not the majority, not the sheep.
So many people, playing when they could be helping take victory back from the alien Windings. But they've bought into the comfort provided by clockwork ease. We would've built space stations and icemoon stations, if not for their interference.
"Penfield," Amita told him, startling him - I've been found? "Please don't move."
"Who are you?" Penfield asked.
"My name's Amita. It's okay."
Really? More 'I'm with the government and I'm here to help you' blather? "And if I don't hold still?" he asked her.
"Please don't."
"Don't you see? I'm helping. They just can't stand that."
"Can't stand what?" Amita asked, hoping this didn't turn into a clone of her arguments with Charlie.
"That I don't cower before them, that I don't accept all their provided answers as dogma, that I want humanity to work!"
Liz held back from taking him down - knowing if I do, Amita'll be left wondering if he was right and I just wanted to silence him - that's what I did wrong before, and I lost Marshall because of it.
"Then don't cower," Amita said. "And assassinating is part of cowering - you need to hide to do it."
"It had to be done. We won't be free until -"
"Their sense of martyrdom is stronger than ours, Marshall," Liz said, drawing his attention.
"They have to have a limit," Marshall said. "A point they won't accept losses beyond. Why else would they have sent you after me, Liz?"
Because I'm damn good at my job. "Why should they have a limit? No counting, remember?"
"They understand loss."
"We all do," Liz said.
And maybe he missed her, maybe he heard the loss and longing in her voice right there, maybe he was having second thoughts. Because he looked at her, opened his mouth, and was silent.
And then he fell to the ground, a balloonfruit shattering around him.
Amita and Liz came over to him, each lightly carefully placing the ball of one foot on Marshall's wrists. "You're under arrest," Liz said to him. Maybe we can get together again, when you're ready to behave.
He nodded to Liz, then glared at Amita.
"Your armor may've been stolen, but it didn't protect all of you," Amita said. I just hit the part that was vulnerable.
"Impossible," Penfield said. "Nobody could have seen something that small. How did you do that?" Marshall asked. "Really."
"I'm a computer," Amita said. It was a computer's greatest skill, to pick out the minutest differences and details of images and between scenes, to spot the barest glimpses required, to find flecks of fault and dirt. Many computers went on to be police and engineer-mechanics, like the legendary Betancourt-and-Galluski. "That's how I found you," Amita said. Finding waldos in a crowd was primary school work...and quite satisfying, she thought to herself.
They realized that the crowd was parting, to admit a Winding who creeped closer to the three of them.
Amita held her breath, having never been so close to one of the victors before, one of those who had lifted her ancestors out of the squalor of a gravity well.
On the Windings' own ancestral world, biology had resembled clockwork and steampunk, gears and pistons, more than the flippers and fingers and cells and organs of Earth. Some humans said that the Place itself was an ancient Winding.
The Winding here came up to where Marshall lay, spreading its sensoria wide to get as good a view of Penfield as possible.
Liz didn't say anything. Everything she knew, said that the Windings forgave often - it was why they had given humanity so many living spaces beyond the narrow envelope of Earth.
"You are forgiven your sin," the Winding told Marshall. And then it cleaved his head from his neck, gulping the human cranium down with ease as the floor absorbed the blood. Looking at Liz, the Winding said, "Your work is flawless. Rest. Enjoy a vacation," and it moved off, leaving them with the rest of the body.
Once the Winding was gone, Amita tried to lead Liz away, attempted to pull her aside and get her talking or something. But Liz was an immovable object.
They rarely do that, Liz thought to herself. Decapitate or eat. And she
Liz didn't want to leave, didn't want to move. Not now, anyways. Her heart was heavy, and her craw stuck in her throat. Marshall would never apologize and ask her to take him back, he would never again surprise her on her birthday, he would never sing in the shower.
Amita looked down at the corpse, and hoped Charlie never ended up like that, either.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty [or schmoopy] the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!