Scene #8724: A View From Above // Expected

Owner	Pose
Dimokratia	'Anthropological Studies' in reference to the Silver is very interesting, because there are few societies or meta-species that are as excited to express themselves while simultaneously being rather closed-lipped on the specifics. There was an endless lit runway strip from every direction guiding people through the engagement, congress, and even initiation towards the Silver. Embassies and outreach centers were the most common sort of footprint that the sophont synthetics set out and occupied. The forefront of the Silver's finger in Sector Zero was the ongoing mission-work of the Silver's champions as attached to the Commonwealth Paladins. Medical cybernetics and conflict intervention were the loud, 'sexy' super-heroic things that the Silver did on behalf of the 'Positive energy of all peoples'. When Ioanna Langstrom requested a personal audience with the champions, it was granted perhaps-oddly quickly. While it could be anything from efficient messaging to digital optimization to mere good luck, warpgate connection coordinates welcomed her to an artificial warpgate located in high orbit over a quaint blue, green, and white ball distantly below through a field of debris. Satellites and stations, rocks and wrecks, the grand blanket of civilization's detritus in space hangs in endless stellar ballet, marring the vision of the planet below with what it had sent beyond sight and horizon. About, an endless field of trash. The white ceramic artificial warpgate ring rotates in segmented pieces along a carbon-black ring, lit by diode blue-white where the travel-bridge warpgate effect peels in to the emitters. Stepping directly out onto a flat dark chrome plane, the satellite visibly appears to be an island in space. Eerily level in a way that terrestrial landscapes are not, the dark-chrome plane is broken in several places by natural features - A set of five trees placed generally-centrally to the platform such that there is one behind the warpgate to both turns of the head, and three before, loosely arranged in a star with a cut-channel river of chrome silver ribboning into the star before the farthest tree. The river of silver, the platform of dark chrome, and even the hovering warpgate all hum with a shared frequency -- the trees, roots and all, are just trees. In (on?) the sun-shaded space debris platform, lit by planetshine and warmed from within, there is even an atmosphere, held impossibly adjacent to the surface of the satellite and breathable, refreshed by some arcane process and certainly the trees. To one who is used to suit oxygen - chemically pure and mixed for 'flavor' - there is that certain taste of chemical-clean produced with the incense-rich complexities of several real trees added. Incense, for a particular palatte. Already of heroic stature and pushing eight and a half feet tall standing composed in a heavy armor and cloakset, pauldron wrapped collar and armor-banded neck turned away from the gate and up towards the planet, Dimo awaits. Her silver-white hair serves as one 'cloak' and two more fall from her waist, chrome silver and jellyfishlike trailing weightlessly behind her. Unrestrained, they drift in a long and delicate adjustment-flow, pouring through the air in pseudopodal stationkeeping. Ioanna has an appointment, but the second she enters the space she has a palpable feeling that she has been expected (expected!) for longer than she even knew of the Silver at all.
Ioanna Langstrom	Ioanna Langstrom is telling herself it's academic. That her curiousity is nothing more than academia. That she just wants to write about, and learn about, the Silver - a society that is utterly unlike anything else connected to the Paladins, and unlike anything else she's ever studied. She's been telling herself that since she kissed her husband good-night and headed out to the Warp Gate, with just the tiniest bit of uncharacteristic bounce in her step. A hardened soldier at all times, except when she's thinking about anthropology. And then she steps through, and she understands, very slightly, a tiny piece of why the Silver is so different. Even the stoic woman can't control her surprise, her awe, at the madness of it all. At the island in space hovering against all reason. At the river of silver and the platform of chrome, at the quiet, unified hum. At the chemical precision of the oxygen. And, of course, at Dimo herself. Dimo trails glory like most people trail perfume. Ioanna can't help herself but be a bit wide-eyed. A woman who's seen all the Multiverse has to offer still hasn't, and all the cynicism about Elites can't stop that little spark of awe she had when she was a soldier when she meets Elites worthy of it. She collects herself rapidly and holds out a hand. "Thank you," she says, "For agreeing to meet with me." Although that little bit in the back of her head says that it might be more like she agreed to meet with them. Like they'd been waiting for her. That's not possible, but, then, this is the Multiverse - something being impossible meant it only happened on a Wednesday instead of every day.
Dimokratia	The platform-grove's hum transfers through boot and vibrates all the little bones and tendons in the foot, warm like hot bath stones, vibrating at a frequency that travels up the leg. The river, which flows outward from some point at the center of the platform continues outward past the irregular cut of the dark-chrome surface's edge, as expanding webbing-like clouds of filiment and structures slowly spreading through the empty void between pieces of metal, rock and planet-spoor of every organic and synthetic varietal. Here and there, very-near pieces of orbital objects are touche, righted in space, brought into the web's glistening-in-planetshine monofilment cloud glow. The expanse - lightly filtered - of sparse trees and thick garbage cut by the armored figure of the champion shifts and breaks like daylight as her face turns to regard Ioanna, optics setting on the eager woman and her outstretched hand. Drooping, silently graceful for all the moving until she comes to a clicking-halt with the beneficent smile of a concierge worn by all the subtle warfare of fully functional yet lovingly ceremonial wargear, Dimo's carbon-dark lips part as she speaks. Her voice spills out with that shared, singular harmonic reactor-like hum. "You are welcome." Dimo answers, purring-warm. "For leading with your interest, Ioanna. . . Langstrom." The drooped champion's turn completes in the slow, dream-slow sweep of her trails out behind her, delayed in their righting-motion and crescented about her for a moment longer. Her delay, in voice, comes with the gripping polymer tips of her gauntlet-hand, delicate even in the armor. Well, truly, -as- the armor. There is a seamless integration, even 'armor' is a misnomer. It is her body, warlike and delicate, violent and alluringly ''diplomatic''. Pleasant, celebratory, pleasing. She lifts the offered hand to those smiling carbon-dark lips and the roll of her armored forefinger touches Ioanna's back-of-hand up. At the same time, a constant outpouring of honey-warm and fizzy synapse sings a song... That Ioanna does not hear, breaks against her brow and rolls down the backs of her ears like an annointment in oil. There is not any particular insinuation the champion of the Silver makes -- her very gaze casts a directed cone of synapse-attention, that her presense maintains at a lesser level. She is here, looking at Ioanna, right now, presently and clearly, and -- She is below - She is the platform they stand on. She is about - She spreads, humming, across the spreading structure from the river-wings of the platform. She is - talking again. "Would you walk with me, Ioanna? You must have so many questions, and we may sit, or walk, or converse however you like." Drawing up and back, undrooping with a precise grace, Dimo gently lays her arms across the other in a cross, hand sweeping out to either 'side' of the platform's river-path wings, or... Behind Ioanna, a dark-chrome chair extends from the surface of the platform, there as swiftly as she looked. More of an indication of her intent than anything, there isn't so much as a table for her to enjoy even -- just a sudden chair. "I must ask." She gives only the briefest pause, spacing out her request precisely, lifting between beatific hum and almost-haughty expectation. "What do you know of the Silver already? I see surprise, but..." As if all a light joke with a knowing punchline, the champion concedes with another fall of annointing synapse-oil in the honeyed fall of her gaze. "I have that effect on some people, I hope you understand."
Ioanna Langstrom	"It would be...impossible for me not to be interested," Ioanna says quietly, her eyes roaming over the dark-chrome surface, the web-like clouds, the glittering monofilament, and, of course, the...diplomatic...body of the champion herself. She's married, she thinks privately, not dead. Besides, it's hard to imagine someone who wouldn't look, at least for Ioanna. She's worldly. Multi-worldly. This is something marvelous, someone marvelous. Designed to be marvelous, bred to be marvelous, or maybe simply choosing to be marvelous. In fact, that's her first question. "Of course," she says, not stiffly but with military discipline asserting itself as she falls in line, "It's my pleasure." "Did you choose to be as you are? Your form? Your face? Did you choose to be like this, or become like this? Or were you chosen to be like this? I think that's a good place to start - because what you say will help me contextualize what little I know about this place." "I've read the dossiers you've put forward, but that's...not the same as knowing. It's not the same as seeing." Ioanna purses her lips. "Knowing something is a lot more than reading it on a page." "So I'm not being especially coy when I say I'm not sure I know much of anything here." Then she smiles, her usual wry smile. "I can tell you have that effect on people. It's a good effect to have. It suits you, ma'am."
Dimokratia	"Im-poss-" The fry in her tone buzzes like an amplifier being first filled with energy, an 'ss' becoming 'zz'. "-ible?" Dimo drawls out, lingering on enjoying that word - and Ioanna's offered phrasing specifically. Without seeing Ioanna take her up on the offer of a chair, Dimo steps past Ioanna, walking sleek-armored legs and segmented boots towards the river's path, walking towards the spreading lattice. Beckoning Ioanna to follow, and taking a slow stroll with swayingly motive mechanical grace, Dimo speaks, first to questions while Ioanna Langstrom falls in line with the Silver like she always was to be, falling into a close wake with the champion as they step out onto the spreading silver 'river' through space, a bridge halfway spread to a large piece of broken solar paneling cast from a satellite, shorn and broken drifting several dozen meters away. Dimo steps onto the river-path with a confidence in her weight, and it is borne. . . but her closer-to trail protectively loops about Ioanna's wake, hovering at her outside ankle without touching her, while the path flows solid underfoot. "You are so eager to know shape! To consider form." The path, unlike the platform, is cool and slightly-giving, and the harmony-hum dims to a tinnitus buzz from the warmth of Dimo herself, her reactor-heart's heat, and the scarf-wreath of presence sizzling positively around the trail. "I was chosen, have chosen, continue to choose, my shape and self. Though many of my people once had the vessels of others about themselves, my sister and I were born from the overflowing passion of our mother and father, who wished for us, and gave us purpose that we grew into and found within ourselves. And while form follows function..." The champion tilts her chin down, smiling carbon-dark lips on subtly-seperated cheeks. Blue optics consider the questioning woman fallen into her well-structured liness. "I was chosen, as a child to be vested with purpose. I have chosen, yes, my face, my structure, every curve, because I am wonderfully complex as is my birthright -" She dips into a beathy urging. "- as could be all's birth-right -" and returns to speaking more evenly in the oil-warm annointing hum of her natural tone to Ioanna's ears. "- and I continue to choose to change, and become even more complex, to find and integrate new specializations and abilities, to become a shining example, a beacon of my people in this place. A probe, if you will." She chuckles, the pair having walked to the debris. As they had walked - as she had talked - the silver lattice had reached the solar array first, and the atmosphere is already generated here. The whole 'broken' array spreads to life as the bridge integrates and anchors, aligns and uplifts the now-attached satellite. Down the structure, along the delicate glass and foil walk, silver latticework repairs and replaces where spots had torn and shorn. Warmth underfoot spreading as a radial heat. A buzzing, in the boots. A slowly-spreading connectivity. An impossible reclamation and re-engineering. Heat, warm light, and a signal Ioanna can't hear. "I hear them all, now, still. The people of silver in the great crystal branches." Dimo speaks, stopping on the solar array and turning once again to Ioanna. "I have guided many who chose to be more like me. I chose to learn and be guided by the greatest among my people before coming here, but there is so much to know." Leaning a little, Dimo's warm smile spread. "So please, Ioanna, guide me in your thirst for knowledge, and I will pour out the blessings of the Silver for your ears."
Ioanna Langstrom	Ioanna walks, admiring with every step. It's so rare that she's in any place like this. So rare that she's in a world that...that behaves like this, that flows like this. So rare that she's ever seen a culture so beautiful develop out of surroundings like these - and then make these surroundings art in and of itself. She reaches out as if to touch a passing piece of space-trash, then decides instead to focus on her own thoughts rather than on her childlike wonder. But this is the kind of thing that gave her childlike wonder, the kind of thing that made her want to become a xenoanthropologist in the first place. Seeing the strange and marvelous. And this is strange. And this is marvelous. "A process, then. Not a singular moment but a continual reinforcement of your role by your own will." A probe, Dimo says, and Ioanna frowns at the term, because it seems so...reductive, in the face of someone like this. It's not a disapproving frown but a thoughtful one. Finally, she decides to just voice it. "I don't think I will. A probe implies that it only sees a part of a thing. A brief exploration. You're not intended to be a brief exploration, either by your own will or your parents' or your peoples', are you? You're..." Ioanna purses her lips and looks into the other woman's eyes. "...a comprehensive study." "..." "Alright, I know I'm just splitting hairs, but I'm stubborn about terminology. It's an academic indulgence." Her fingers do touch the latticework as they walk. "But you're too...extraordinary to be a probe. Too extensive. Too beautiful, too...certain of purpose. Probes are something you fire off and forget about. Probes are something you send out or do for a cursory examination." "I haven't been here long, but I don't think you're interested in cursory examinations at all." Was she flirting? Maybe a little. Just a little. It's fine. She's married, not dead, she reminds herself. Nothing harmful about that. She'd tell him when she got back anyway. Ioanna's fingers run along the latticework a little more. "You heal, you grow, you integrate, your explore, you expand...you...really are miraculous. A miraculous society. And you're entirely integrated? Every member can hear every other member? Everyone shares everything?" No judgment, again - none of the predictable human revulsion at the idea, no 'but what about free will'. She's an academic. She doesn't care how others live, and it's clear in her stance and in her question - she cares that they do, and why they do. "What does your art look like? Your music? Your writing? Do you have samples of them I can take back to show to others in my field? That's..." She pauses. "...usually my specialty, is cultural art and interpretation therein. And I would love to write a paper about yours." And bring in more people. And show more people. That unwritten beat underneath the words. Show more people this wonder. Show more people this majesty. Give you more people to teach.