Scene #7679: Meeting of Minds

Owner	Pose
Phasewalker	-Station Babylone, Social Quarter, Food Court- Station Babylone is the interstellar equivalant of a tourist trap. It orbits a gas giant that glows with a mysterious internal light, casting that light upon the internals of the station so that everything has the faintest shade of orange on it. At least those spots with external windows. The food court is one of those places. The lighting grants the room a morning glow that other space stations wouldn't. Ainkli is seated at a table with proper stools for his species, and is currently munching on some breakfast and sipping at a cup of juice. He waits for Persephone to arrive, the menu - a little plastic-like sheet with touchscreen capability - placed at a seat across from him in case she needs it. He has a computer tablet on the table in front of him that he's using to flip through recent news articles, his green eyes flicking over it as a finger swipes over the screen, and he occasionally stuffs something greasy and fried into his mouth with a metallic spork. The food court is sparsely populated. Most tourists don't seem to bother with it unless they absolutely need something to fill their bellies. The gas giant, it seems, goes through cycles of super-activity and it's currently dormant, so it isn't as fun to look at as the pamphlets suggest it is.
Persephone Kore	Even before Persephone comes into view, her presence can be felt. The psycho-gravitational pull of my heart, warm and soft, exerts a noticeable pressure on the surroundings. But you can forgive me for that, can't you? Ahaha. The few other people in the food court adopt more relaxed postures as Phony approaches, and their conversations become a little quieter; some of them briefly seem startled by the inexplicable feeling of gentleness and glance around for its source, but the aura itself makes it hard to be too concerned about things like that. A moment or two later, Persephone comes into view around a corner. She's dressed markedly differently than her elegant usual, probably fitting the fact that she just rolled out of bed. She's wearing a simple short-sleeved t-shirt and gray sweatpants this time that were probably pulled on in the last twenty minutes, plus an orange wool shawl hugged around her shoulders for warmth and a splash of color. I'd really almost feel embarrassed if it weren't so comfy! Even though she evidently just woke up, her hair and face are perfect. It's safe to assume that those are handled by her powers, but her wardrobe isn't. "Hey, AN," she says, once I'm close enough to not have to raise my voice. That's feel sort of rude, somehow! Maybe it's so sparse in here it feels like a library? A little wave precedes her sliding down onto a stool. "You sure know how to pick your quiet spots, huh?" That smile is as perfectly beatific as always. After flicking through the menu for a moment, she turns her head to the side, looking up at the gas giant meditatively. "You got your food already, so what do you recommend?"
Phasewalker	Ainkli lifts his head when he feels the passive presence of Persephone enter the food court. Even before the door hums closed behind her she would have a pair of radioactive green eyes on her, as he senses the active psychic aura like a cloud filling the room, and immediately identifies its source. He feels it flow around him, briefly faltered as if he were a stone before an overflowing river, the only thing in the room that provides any kind of blockade to the potent calm. He takes another bite of his food even as the calm seeps into him past his rudimentary psychic armor. "I recommend the fried gas-skimmer. It's pretty delicate and the flavor is very rich," he explains, and indicates the half-eaten fish-stick looking thing on his plate with his spork. He's got large portions because he's a big boy. He doesn't have questions yet. He'll leave the air open in case she wants to initiate, while he turns off his computer tablet and stores it back into the hammerspace tech he has implanted into his arms. (A stray thought drifts to the surface of a room a lot like this one. Here the survivors of a decades-old disaster mingle and eat but with an oppressive aura of despair lingering over the meal. Ainkli sits across from his parents: his mother, a green-scaled lizard-person much shorter than he, in a research station outfit, and his father, a stoic-looking fellow in a station security jumpsuit. It's a good memory.)
Persephone Kore	"Fried gas skimmer," she muses, then purses her lips in thought. "The portions are too big for me, but you're really enjoying yours." A little gesture towards the gas giant through the windows. "Do they catch those outside?" There's a quiet disembodied thunk from the touch-screen menu, pushing it a fraction of an inch across the table. Phony frowns at it before poking it with her finger instead: "Haha, I always forget you have to really touch these. It's the worst, isn't it?" She lets the companionable silence hang in the air for a moment or two after ordering her own gas skimmer. Sometimes it's nice, isn't it, not having anything to say? Just existing around other people. There's a kind of comfort to it. "I'm surprised you wanted to meet here," she finally says. "Instead of planetside somewhere. You've got a lot of memories of space stations, don't you? Good and bad. Always a little worse than better. Even so, do places like this still feel like home to you?"
Phasewalker	"I got a double order," Ainkli explains, and leaves the rest open for her to fill in the blanks. It's fairly obvious why he'd need more food, being... larger than the standard human(oid). And he's got more brain activity than normal as well, so, that contributes. He barks out a laugh when she uses telekinesis to press the touch-screen on her menu, because that's something he does sometimes as well. "I do that when I'm half-asleep, usually," he explains. Her mention of the location and why he chose it causes a pause in his chewing. He has to chew on that in more than one way, his eyes turning to look out the window because his mind wanders to the old days. He was rescued by the Concord in the early days of the Concord's existence, and has been a part of it since, but that life has always lingered like a monkey on his back. Even now ghosts of that experience flit through his mind. "It took a long time to make that place into a home," he explains, "And now that it's gone, salvaged, I keep coming back to places like this. Familiarity brings me comfort. The creak of struts, the hum of atmospherics, the way everything sounds just a little louder because the vibrations are trapped in the structure..." He takes another bite. "What was it like for you, at Sapient Heuristics?"
Persephone Kore	Phony responds to Phase's laughter with a deeper smile than usual- she's nearly always smiling, but there are grades. This one's sincere and rich, on the verge of laughter herself; her eyes are sunnily closed. "I guess I'm still half-asleep myself, ahaha." Her eyes stay closed as she rests her cheek in her hand to listen, leaning forward over the table. They open again only when she responds: "I'm glad that places like this can make you happy. They really are beautiful, aren't they? Earth is our cradle, but space stations are the most human places. The human part isn't the lips, but the lipstick; not the earlobes but the holes where the earrings go. Nothing here is natural, but every inch of it is on purpose." Her food arrives: a single portion of fried gas floater, but also a glass of chocolate milk. It's sort of childish, isn't it? But I still like the taste. She gives the waiter a real, sincere wave and smile before taking a sip of her drink. "Sapient Heuristics was always so kind to me. Even when I was an awkward, clumsy, stupid kid who didn't know who she was. It was always a project with a mission, but Dr. Carpathia did a good job of not making it feel that way. The kids and the staff always mingled together, so it felt like the proverbial village raising a child. You know?" A little pause. She straightens up, picking at her food with a spork and staring out the window again. "And then I got good at things, and everyone started depending on me. 'If you can't do it, nobody else can'. That changes the dynamic a little. But I still love them, even so. I could leave, but I don't want to. They'd be gutted if I did." She chews on some of the gas floater, and her expression brightens again. "How'd you get involved with the Concord, anyway? You never said! That isn't fair at all."
Phasewalker	'If you can't do it, nobody else can.' (Ainkli stares through the visor of a futuristic space suit at the exterior of the crashed station. His hands lift as foci for him to manipulate pieces of debris. Damage is slowly mended according to instructions by a mechanic spoken to him through his suit's comms. A feeling of purpose swells in him.) Ainkli smiles more earnestly at that. He seems to relate to it, and it warms him to hear someone would have a similar experience. He thinks on her questions for a minute, as his eyes linger on the chocolate milk, and he thinks about how that helps him frame his state of mind. She seems like she's clinging to her familiarity and trying to feel wanted. "The Concord rescued me. It was a coincidence, really. See, I was raised on a crashed space station, and that was my home for most of my life. It's only in the last few years that I've been able to see the greater universe- well, Multiverse." He glances out the window to the gas giant. "I clung to life with the survivors there since I was small enough to hug my mother's knee. I had to grow up very quickly. Everything was tense and starvation or asphyxiation could happen should a single thing go wrong." "I don't really enjoy talking about it directly. It reminds me of a lot of bad things I had to do to survive. Once the Concord picked us up, everyone went their separate ways, and I've put it behind me." (He hasn't. He's still in that place. It haunts him.) "I owe the Concord everything."
Persephone Kore	Persephone smiles, and it's just a little rueful- or at least as rueful as anyone can look with their cheeks full of fried alien meat. "You think about that a lot, don't you? About survival. About how, when really bad things happen, the world gets scraped down to its barest, ugliest laws. Who has food and who has a gun." She swallows, and her eyes shut again. Her eyebrows fall a little; her expression becomes more neutral. "I hate that the world gets to do things without our permission. I hate that it doesn't care about stories or identities or hopes. We've built all those things on top of it, but they can't hide its true shape forever." "I want to grab those ugly laws in my hands and change them. I want to make the world be the way that children know it ought to be. I want to make it ask my permission. ... Does that make any sense to you at all? Do you hate the world in the same way? Is that what makes you strong?" Her expression eases back to its natural smile a few moments later; her aura, formerly weakened by her more somber mood, swells back to its full intensity. "Our project started thirty years ago, but our biggest successes came in the last five. That's all becase of the Concord adopting us. So you could almost say they made me, ahaha. All of the Elites have been so nice to me, I really don't want to let them down!"
Phasewalker	That was a pretty astute summary of how he feels a lot of the time, and why a lot of his empathy eroded. His capacity for good has suffered a lot because of that... he can't conceive of doing good things just for the sake of doing them anymore, it's always an exchange of value. So, for Ainkli to hear her rail against reality's ugliness like that, it draws a look of curiosity out of him. He isn't sure how to process it because he doesn't actually hate reality as it stands... maybe he did once, but it's long since healed over as a strange scar. "No, I just want to be alive. To feel alive," he tells her. "To be free. I never want to be yoked by the gravity of a single, terrible place again. That sounds melodramatic, but it's why I learned to teleport. As a child I thought I might be able to escape just by willing myself to do it. I only learned about the limitations of my abilities later on." (His mother, a metapsion and an expert in these things, never discouraged this idea. If he were to truly be able to break the chains of a planetary body and teleport to other worlds at will she would be there to help him figure it out.) He uses telekinesis to float his plate up and twirl it above his hand, cleaned of everything on it in the midst of their conversation. "There's a question on my mind that's been there since I was little. Was reality like this in my sector before the Scream? Or did a psychic's dream change everything? Did all of those people die because someone tried to change the rules, and failed? Or perhaps... because they succeeded?" "Part of why I want you to help me when I go on missions in my sector is find answers to questions like that. Think you could help with that?"
Persephone Kore	"It's a shame you don't hate the world like that," Persephone responds cheerfully. "Or maybe, if I were less selfish, I'd say it's a good thing? Ahaha. It's healthy to accept things you can't change, but... if I believe in Sapient Heuristics' goals, I can't accept that." When he mentions learning to teleport, Phony smiles and rests her cheek on her hand again. Her spork drops to her plate with a soft clatter. "Children can do amazing things when they don't know it's impossible," she says. "When nobody tells them it's impossible. You know that, don't you?" Your mom... I bet she was a really wonderful person. She finishes her gas floater and her chocolate milk while Phase recounts his hypothesis, but holds eye contact the whole time. (It's funny how, even a foot shorter, she can still give the subjective impression that you're looking up at her.) "I hate the idea of that. That it might've been caused by someone trying to do good. People are always afraid of big changes, aren't they? They understand what they have to lose so much better than what they have to gain. Even if you offer them a world without hunger, or confinement, or death... they still find ways to be scared of it. Something that confirms that fear- I don't want it to be true." "... But, if someone tried to change the rules and messed up, then Sapient Heuristics needs to know so they can do it better. So I'm happy to help," she finishes with another eyes-closed smile. A playful little telekinetic nudge threatens to knock the plate out of his grasp, but if it does fall, she's ready to grab it before it hits the floor. Bad things aren't allowed to happen around me, after all!
Phasewalker	The plate goes 'tink!' and rotates as if gravity simply did not affect it, and yet it didn't move from that point in the air. Pivoting freely through space. "It'll be good to see you at the salvage mission."