Scene #8028: Control Group: 1

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	This particular region is where the spooky oceanic isles of location-based night and day, filled with faeries, spirits, ghosts, monsters, and hard highlanders of the shadowed lands, give way to a single towering islet. A soccer field's worth of green space is available at the very top, far above the crashing waves, on the very precipice where night geographically gives way to dawn. Lilian's experimental runework is everywhere --the same as on Luna-- surrounding a softly sparkling spire of starlight that arches high and far away from the islet's edge, and vanishes off into the night sky. A rainbow marks the spot on the edge of dawn, though it's already much easier to find by everything else going on. Namely, the knockoff Norse gods forgot to show up. The entities Lilian has made contact with by altering time to force the bridge to appear every day instead of every full moon are actually, it seems, enterprising spacemen. The blinking lights of spaceships in geosynchronous orbit hover far above, pestered by the burning lights of atmospheric craft . . .' The spacemen have gone from the islet here, the major delivery having already exchanged hands for the day and been taken away by a coalition of faeries and shadow people. Lilian is left with just the mossy boundary markers, already overgrown in vines that have to be tripped back with a knife, and the podunk excuse for a 'lounge', made up of half a dozen zeerust hover-sofas surrounding a campfire and flanked by carved oaken tables and solar-powered coolers. It is, put before, 'a permanent beer and smores spot by the sea'. It's hardly the most auspicious place to call to see people, but for whatever reason, Lilian felt that it had to be Secundus, and not Sapient Heuristics.
Persephone Kore	"I don't like it." "You don't like it? Because of the ghosts?" "N- no! I love ghosts! I love horror movies, actually!" "Mmmhmm." "It's the sky. It looks red and angry." "Dylan, that's a sunset." "Yeah and it's weird!!" "Oh, isn't it a sunrise, actually?" "How do you know if it's rising? We don't have a compass." "Oh, haha, I asked it. That's all." Persephone's warm presence is felt long before their amiable bickering comes into earshot. When they emerge into view, she and Dylan are holding hands; Marc stands off a bit to the side, fidgeting with his cuff as he walks. "Lily-R! There you are. This is so cute! Haha, I really love the sofas." "Yeah, right? We should get some like that. Hey, Miss Priss." Marc doesn't verbally greet her, but does the Boy Nod of Acknowledgement. Before sitting down, Dylan snags a beer- two beers actually- and tosses one at Persephone, who effortlessly catches it and gravitates it into her hand. Marc sits down with his legs elegantly crossed at the knee. Dylan man-spreads. Phony offers Lilian an embarrassingly smothering hug before sitting down next to her, and across from the two Phonyettes. "So." "So!" "I'm quite curious what it is you meant to discuss. That you trusted all of us to hear it, but chose not to discuss it at Sapient Heuristics, implies..." "You felt like it could be distressing, didn't you?" "Yes. That."
Lilian Rook	"It's a sunrise." Lilian speaks up, back still to the three for a moment. She's very focused on shaving away an extrusion of flowering vine where it's covering up a wayglyph whilst trying not to cause the whole thing to shift its weight distribution and cover up others. "You get a feeling for them, once you've seen enough. You can just tell." Snipping away the last greenery she needs, Lilian stands up straight, makes an appreciate noise at her handwork, tumbles a single-edged black knife between her fingers, and then sheaths it in one of her reagent holsters, the belt looking slightly out of place when simply slung a little loose over a knee length pleated skirt and thick tights instead of her combat skin. The way she wipes away a couple of drops of sweat above her eyes is, instantly, an indicator that she hasn't done any kind of 'time-stopping' for a while, and probably won't be; otherwise those little tics of human inelegance wouldn't appear. "And what's wrong with the colour red? You live in a candy apple red space sation." she huffs. "You like them? Really? I just picked them out of hold when one of the groups stopping by here was a hair short on their end, so that I could get a break from hearing fifty men in space suits whining about long days and their distaste for gravity every time. I might be able to swing another couple, but couldn't you make any old antiquated sofa float if you wanted?" Dylan has no trouble settling in, and finds the beer coolers are also stock with ingredients for making hotdogs, grilled, cheese, bacon, smores, and stews (as well as a lot of tang, for some reason). Sensing a like spirit in Marc, Lilian motions for him to wait just a moment, finds one cooler at the end of the ring, punches in a six digit code, and reveals her secret stash of merlot and dark chocolate. A glass is offered, once she starts pouring her own. She nearly seats herself with an air of effortless grace, before being smothered by Persephone instead. Lilian does her very best to try and act dignified about it, but it sort of looks like a tired and grumpy cat being lifted up. The hoverhand phase stills lasts too long. Once she has room to breathe and a seat of her own, Lilian listens to the obvious round of questions, taking a stately sip of her wine and keeping the glass in her hand, and then freezes subtly when Persephone and Marc catch it in one. Her eyes remain stoically focused on some non-existent point in the direction of the horizon, and her mouth remains firmly shut, for longer than she seems to notice has passed. Then, Lilian sighs, tips back the glass, and slams the whole thing in one go, before pouring out another.
Lilian Rook	"You could have at least pretended not to notice." Lilian groans quietly. "Don't worry. It's not that dire. If it were really something so grave that involved all of you, I wouldn't secret it away from Carpathia. It's . . ." Lilian makes a little noise in the back of her throat, and then closes her eyes. Her brow twitches with effort of concentration, which is especially strange because she's been able to relay her thoughts by lightly imposing them so little effort that she could do it automatically and unthinkingly before. Ever since she decided she wanted to try working on something to fit in at Sapient Heuristics better. It's like her usual impression --the way it feels to be in her presence like this-- is set against the quiet undertones of a clicking geiger counter. A subtle reminder of an invisible poison somewhere close by, its singular inclusion tinting every other aspect of the experience with breathless tension. "It's me. I'm the distress." A long, tense second passes, where that psychic warning crackle gets faster, louder, and then it drains away like a long sigh. That's when Lilian feels good enough to open her eyes again. "You probably know already that I've agreed to permanent lodging on the station, and to enroll in the program part time, even if I've been reluctant to go from anything but signing the papers as of late. However, certain events have raised the notion that it may be possible for me to do much more for the project than simply being an incomprehensible study sample. So of course I can't tell Carpathia just yet. I felt that, first and foremost, it should be you three --the ones who won't change-- to decide whether I should mention it at all." The psychic swell is like an actinic burn rising in the throat as panicked bile. It goes down a second later. "Agents of the Watch, operating without my knowledge in my 'home town', turned over something they found in the process. To me. Because despite being bastards, they believed it should be mine. It's data that I've been working on picking apart and putting into practice. Data which I'm beginning to dread may be very, very relevant to the project after all, even though it shouldn't be." She looks at Phony. The way she does is familiar. "Ten years of Matthew's private study, apparently."
Persephone Kore	"Ah, thank you kindly," Marc replies as he daintily accepts the merlot. He even swirls it around the glass a little bit before taking a sip. "Hey, what's the deal? Gimme some too!" "No. Drink your beer and like it." "Hmph." Persephone tries to keep an arm around Lilian's shoulders. If that isn't allowed, she'll at least insist on holding hands so that she can squeeze Lilian's comfortingly when they get to the hard parts. The rising tension visibly gets to Marc and Dylan both. Dylan clutches her beer white-knuckled, leans forward a bit in her chair. Marc leans back, setting his glass down and folding his hands with an anxious energy. Phony doesn't succumb to it, but she responds to it, taking a breath- in, hold for five, out- and touching Lilian's arm gently. I'm here. It'll be okay. I promise, Lily-R. "'The ones who won't change'. How do you mean?" "Dread it being relevant... how?" Phony is the only one who immediately understands. "Matthew... your father. Right. This is what we talked about earlier, isn't it? That you were scared that the Concord would make Carpathia cooperate with him, if that information meant something to us." "Your dad?!" "Dylan, shush." A soothing little hand-squeeze follows. "And I said that'd never happen. We'd never work with him. They can't make us. If they tried, we'd leave. Do you remember?"
Lilian Rook	It's certainly all too familiar a feeling for Persephone now, in the sense that once was certainly more than enough. It isn't clear whether Lilian is doing better at controlling it this time, or simply feeling this subject matter less intensely; it's not the same as 'lowering her guard', so she can't express something that she herself isn't sure of. Either is better than nothing. Her fingers grip white-knuckle tight at the pendant over her collarbone. Her shoulders tense up in the curl of Persephone's arm. "Yeah. Him." Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. "Per--" A hitch, where Lilian realizes she's already stiffening up and trying to distance herself through formality. ". . . Phony knows enough. I don't know if she's shared anything. It's . . . It's not unusual that he'd have his own private data. Studying and experimenting with power, refining and recording it, adding it to the archives and pushing the bar forwards, is classically firmly within the primary duties of the head of the family. We all sort of . . . have a bit of an obligation. To work on our own things, and add them back into the pool. That's how a single lineage gets so powerful. That's why older is considered better. So I'm not at all shocked. Even I have my own personal pursuits, when it comes to magic and . . ." Lilian grimaces. "But it was separate from his work. They stumbled on it by chance, because he hid it somewhere boring. The data he was studying was about me. I was never able to explain it, or write it down in a way anyone understood, and whenever they tried to examine it, nobody could sense the magic --we all just assumed it disappeared inside the time it was used-- so . . ." She shakes her head. "No. No, I also hid things. And lied to him. And he knows, I'm sure, just not about what. Not how much. He can't ask and he can't prove it. And he isn't willing to wait. The program is old. He started it when I was a teenager. After . . . No, that's not important." "Of course it's a total dead end; you can't explain away what I do with even the cleverest magic; it simply isn't physically possible. But . . . well, he was never a mediocre man. The theorem hasn't given him what he wants, but it's given him a few things. And when I look at it, I can just . . . plug in the things I understand, that nobody else does, and see how to apply it." She points to the runes. On closer exhamination, they are neither Ogham nor Futhorc, but slightly confusing clusters of geometrically overlapping silhouettes. "I've been working on it more, since Luna. You can't manipulate time with runes. Sacred geometry is inherent to space, and the motion of time precludes a regular design being maintained within its axis. I think I can . . ." Lilian's mouth remains open for several seconds of silence as she runs out of words, struggles, and fails to find more. "That 'alien idea'. How did they share it with you at first? Phony simply . . . beams it into people's brains, I suppose. But they had to start somewhere. They had to make you understand with tangible means first, right?"
Persephone Kore	Dylan and Marc raptly listen. Dylan has her sympathetic, receptive look, hunched forward and eyebrows raised. Marc has his keen-eyed attentiveness, understated but steady. Phony already knows most of the story, but she listens too, if mainly to comfort. The idea that he really will never crack it gets a little, relaxed sigh out of Persephone. Relief? No; never in doubt quite enough to be 'relief'. But it's soothing nonetheless. "The research doesn't mean anything to him," she says slowly, at the end. "But it makes sense to you. It can't touch the heart, but it can graze the edges. And that's still in 'your territory' enough to make sense of it. Did I understand you right?" Dylan gets up to examine one of the runes more closely; she traces it with her fingers, stares at it as if to pry out a secret or three. "This feels like... hey, Phony. You remember that carousel I have? The one that goes around, and it's got the outline of the galloping horse, and because of the mirrors it looks like it's moving?" "Yeah. I know what you mean. Haha, you're really smart sometimes, Dylan." "Thanks. Wait, 'sometimes'?!" Marc clears his throat after taking another refined sip of merlot. "The seeding process is somewhat complex. Jungian-Newtonian physics models suggest the mindstates that must be induced- fuzzily, but it gives us something. Then, computer-generated stimuli intended to generate the correct understandings." "It's like a magic eye puzzle. It doesn't make any sense until it does. Puzzles to solve, and the solutions lead you closer to something real, step by step." "What is it exactly that you're hoping to accomplish, Lilian Rook?"
Lilian Rook	"It means a lot to him." Lilian replies to Phony by automatic reflex. It's tense and bitter. "No, no I know what you meant. I'm sorry. You're right. As long as he doesn't find out anything about Sapient Heuristics . . ." She draws in a deep, sharp breath. "Well, I'm doing my best to make certain of that." Neither Dylan nor Marc were there that day at the Rook Estate, nor were they there in Persephone's room when she'd asked an innocent question, and so for that reason it's them that Lilian fixes with that uncomfortably intense stare. Even emitting the signal beam of mental cherenkov glow that she is, the sense remains that she is intentionally, and carefully, blocking something behind it with a lot of lead, the palpable impression leaking around the edges and through the seams. "You mean it. Don't you? That even if . . . even if he could just show up one day and make the whole project succeed, you wouldn't . . . you Wouldn't." A breath. "It's impossibly selfish for me to ask that. It's not as if he'd just lie to you. He's not the devil. It'd be perfectly reasonable. If that were ever to come to pass, it's very much plausible that trillions of lives might be affected by it. Things that could have been changed so much sooner, that weren't. They'd . . . I'd . . . but . . ." Lilian squeezes Persephone's hand. "But I want to believe that I count. 'Nobody left behind'." She exhales all at once. Now she finally has time and headspace to be surprised at Dylan. "That's . . . remarkably perceptive. For a girl who carries a baseball bat around, at least." Lilian laughs shakily. "Science is the process of describing things that are real. An improbably dedicated scientist can collect enough data to eventually work fully around the shape of the thing that must be described, but I suppose it has to be someone like us who can derive what's within it. I comprehend already, what the theorem is trying to describe in those scientific terms, so from my perspective, it's simply angles I hadn't considered. Extensions and extrapolations." Of course she listens to Marc. She was the one who asked the question. Lilian is not known to tune out or talk over someone when they have the information she went through all the effort of deciding to actually request out loud. Something about the way he says it causes a gear to click a few teeth forward in her head. It doesn't take her long to reply. "I can't ever be like Persephone. Never in a million years will I be able to wish for everyone else to have what I do. But I'm a good artist. A great one, actually. I know how to persuade words and lines into making someone see what I see. So, if possible, I'd like to see if I can take what I've already solved and write it down as a problem. Like these 'runes'. Because I think that's the only way I'll ever know for sure, if . . ." "Well. A lot of things."
Persephone Kore	"We Wouldn't," Persephone says, and it carries the full gravitas of her authority with it. She squeezes Lilian's hand tightly, looking right into her eyes. "It's not just a motto, you know. It's necessary. More necessary than anything anyone could give us." "The poison tree bears poison fruit," Marc elaborates. One can tell he's a little emotional, even though it doesn't reach his voice; he can't quite make eye contact. "It's in the name of Who Walks Away, even. A utopia founded on a sin... who could believe in that sincerely enough to wish it true?" "Definitely not her." "You do 'count'," Phony says. She smiles sort of helplessly, but her tone is serious. "You count more, because of all those things. Not less." 'Those things' could mean anything. It probably means everything. "I perceive lots of things," Dylan grumps, but she's not feeling cheeky enough to bully Lilian about it. A moment later, she looks up from her examination of the runes and proves herself right: "You want to share it. The idea of it. Not with everyone, forever, but with... someone, for a little while? Or maybe just let them understand?" "Thank you. The 'Lilian' of a year ago... do you think she would have done that? I'm not so sure. Haha, you really have grown a lot. Like always, I'm impressed." She takes a second to wrap both her arms around Lilian's shoulders again and pull her into a gentle side-hug, obnoxiously affectionate, but still decent at defusing tension. Marc levitates some marshmallows over the fire, no skewers needed. When the first one's done, he assembles a perfect smore and silently passes it over to Lilian. It's got some of that dark chocolate on it; normally the dark chocolate wouldn't melt at all from the heat of the marshmallow, but he's worked some trick on it, and just this once it tastes as perfect as you'd hope it would. "Can we help?" he says, succinct and crisp.
Lilian Rook	The reassurance --their reassurance-- for once in what feels like a hundred years, appears to actually work. To matter. There are a thousand ways Lilian could continue to spin out from here, and none of them come true. Instead, she releases an incalculable burden of tension, anticipated and unrealized both, all in one slow breath, and then slumps on Persephone's shoulder. "I'm . . . I'm glad to hear that. More than I realized I would be. It feels . . . different than how I imagined." Lilian shudders. The geiger crackle dims to a faint, intermittent pop. "Even the name, huh? You three really are just too perfect. It's frightening. Phony insists she isn't, but I think it's only because they split it up a little between you." An uneasy smile. A nervous attempt at a laugh. "You do, Dylan. You just try very hard to pretend you don't. Like someone else I know, but with her head on straight." A beat. "With her head on the right way." There it is. The tiny brow lift and the little quirk of the lips. "I don't know if I'd call it sharing. I've never been good at that. But I'd like . . ." Lilian stumbles verbally, then seizes on something simple. "I want someone to see. I want someone else to see what I see, and then I want to know what happens next. Does that make sense?" She laughs in that way of squirming deflection when Persephone asks. "The Lilian of a year ago had it together a lot better than I do right now. Don't be too hard on her." Lilian beholds a smore. She takes it with all the charged hesitance of someone who expects it might be running an electrical current. Taking one ginger bite, she freezes up for a second, and then quickly rubs the back of her sleeve over her eyes while she tries to finish chewing, coughing ever so lightly when she swallows. "If you really want to. But maybe not too much. Otherwise I'll start feeling like I haven't earned the room again. Hah." "I may need to borrow the chambers, though, if I'm really going to try drawing a picture of time."