2022-02-03: Science Kills
- Log: Science Kills
- Cast: Anser Vulpecula, Nanai Miguel
- Where: Sweetwater Colony, Side 4
- Date: 2022-02-03
- Summary: Anser catches Nanai sleeping, but a conversation about science and society results in Nanai surprising Anser anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
With each passing revolution, the makeshift lab space is becoming less makeshift.
Smuggling in the smaller equipment and the less-specialized building materials is simple enough. The small detachment of Federation military stationed on Sweetwater rarely visit the closed-type section, and their habit of allowing the colony's rabble to construct as they please means those sorts of things can be walked in without much concern. The authorities save money and workhours by not getting involved in the drama of addressing needs, and in return they pay the price of allowing Nanai Miguel a new workspace.
It's not the worst moral tax. Nanai doesn't think so, at least. Then again, wouldn't she?
Equipment on the larger and more-specialized side is where the troubles arise. That's putting aside procurement and transport to the colony. With the closed-type's docking facility currently shut down -- it has been since the rebellion, except for a few scant emergencies -- anything that comes in must pass through the open-type's docks. That's precisely where authority control is the thickest. They may be disinterested, but they're not stupid, and clamping down there gives them the best return on their personnel investment.
Specialized equipment must either be disguised or disavowed. Disguising is risking. Discovery means potentially setting off an entire network of inquiry that could cause problems for far more people than just the lab effort. Nanai isn't willing to cause that kind of trouble for her own work's sake. Disavowing can work -- saying it's for something else, depending that the authorities will lose interest on its final resting place as soon as it's in the colony -- but such smuggling goes slowly. Moving at once too much equipment that follows a certain theme might give a motivated official enough suspicion to apply closer scrutiny.
That, too, is selfish. Nanai can wait. This isn't life or death.
Not immediately, anyway.
Under her civilian guise of Mesta Mesua, Nanai acts as one of the many semi-employed workers of the closed-type section. Sometimes she works as an engineer and repairwoman. Sometimes she helps treat people with psychological issues. Other times she's a glorified first-aid station and babysitter. Most often, she's the person other people come to see when they have a problem and don't know where to turn, and so she makes the proper connection for them.
At night cycles, she works in the lab. This means she doesn't sleep much.
Then again, when did she?
All of this is to say that Nanai Miguel is currently sprawled face-first into her sometimes-workbench, sometimes-desk, face buried in a pillow of scattered papers and outstretched hand perilously close to knocking a precariously placed file folder onto the floor.
It's a wonder anyone can sleep down here. The fluorescent lighting above is ugly, and the complete open floor plan makes the place prone to echo. At least it's gotten better recently -- there's sectional walls being brought in to partition the space. Not that this does anything for the chill or metallic tang in the air. Maybe her labcoat is warm.
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
It's a time where making end's meet isn't good enough, and that translates to everyone stretching themselves thin. In addition to her typical duties of keeping the suits ready to sortie at a moment's notice, she moonlights in many of the same circuits that Mesta Mesua does, but always under the umbrella of a separate employer. Best that they not be seen together, even if she was the barest of a smudge of a footnote in the history of Neo Zeon. Chances shouldn't be taken, and she doesn't take them.
Today, one of her odd-jobs had her utilizing Solstice to ferry supplies from point A to point B. The legality is questionable, but the small cargo space she has on her stripped-down racing frame is negligible. It usually amounts to a suitcase. A bag. A storage drive that would take longer to send over wire than via ship. This particular job required she make a delivery in civilian attire, and as such, she's out of her typical 'uniform' of a pilot suit or coveralls.
The amount of times she's been observed in the wild in civilian clothing can be counted on one hand, even after three years, only one in a more immediate orbit.
Yet, here she is, hair loose at her shoulderblades, bangs cropped out of her eyes messily, a thin hooded sweatshirt with a faded graphic of a fox clutching a goose's neck between its jaws, a pleated black skirt falls at her knees, legs mostly covered by tall socks. A discerning eye will notice the bulge of a thigh-holster beneath her skirt, but with the billowing fabric, the sidearm is just as easily missed.
The hum of the fluorescent bulbs is white noise unto itself, and as Anser picks her way toward Nanai, her footfalls are all but silent. She's seldom loud in anything that she does, when she's not embroiled in a project.
She peers at the sleeping woman, red eyes blinking owlishly. A puff of breath, and she seats herself in the chair across from the sprawl, watching for perhaps too many seconds before she blandly states, "Director - you'll catch cold if you don't sleep properly."
She's one to talk. The dark circles under her eyes are near ever-present.
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
Ships of questionable legality are common in the Frontier Side. It's not all sinister criminals and smugglers. Many people are just too poor to keep up with the law. That sure makes it easier for the smugglers to blend in, though.
Nanai doesn't wake at Anser's soft-footed approach. Not even a stir. There's enough loose office chairs around for Anser to drag over a favorite, and the desk -- by virtue of also being a workbench -- is large enough to host several occupants.
Signs of life. The tawny-haired woman's back rises and falls slowly and gently. There's a mug of cold coffee somewhere to her left. Too many seconds pass.
Then Anser speaks--
"Angela!"
--and Nanai bolts upright.
The director's wheeled chair drifts backward a few extra inches as its stunned occupant comes to terms with being awake. Her green eyes flutter until they settle, wide and uncomprehending, on Anser.
The tension bleeds off of Nanai's posture fraction by fraction. She settles back into her chair, folding her hands in her lap and composing her expression.
"Anser," she says, with a voice that was and is more suited for a leader.
A pause. There should be a follow-up to this. Nanai realizes this also, and eventually supplies one.
"What time is it? Is something the matter?"
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Not the reaction she was anticipating, nor the name she was expecting. Aside from a slight bit of startle at the raised voice, Anser appears more quizzical than cornered or otherwise upset. She lacks some of the traumas experienced by some members of their crew, and her composure is difficult to shake.
A tilt of her head slowly to the side, clearly perplexed about the outburst, but too polite - or perhaps too proper - to ask after it.
"A hair after 0200, ma'am."
Time has little meaning under artificial lights, especially in interior spaces. The secondary question earns a tentative shake of the small engineer's head.
"And no, nothing's the matter. I just came to see if there was anything I could help out with. Didn't expect anyone else to be here, this late. Early? It's a matter of perspective, I suppose." She murmurs, lifting a shoulder quietly.
Rising out of the chair, Anser moves along to where coffee is being kept warm. Wouldn't be a functioning lab without something to dispense caffeine. It's been kept on too long, and it's the cheap stuff that's got a scalding taste to it, but it's better than nothing. She fills herself a mug that's set nearby, and glances back over her shoulder at Nanai before filling a second mug without being asked to do so.
"...You're tired all the time. Even more than me. It's not exactly hard to see. You're running yourself ragged. You may have some of the others fooled, but... maybe they don't see you here as often as I do. Should I hang a sign that declares this desk your bunk?"
Her tone is chilly, but the fact that she's making small-talk at all is warmth. She pushes the mug across the desk, carving a path through the mountains of paperwork, taking the valleys carved by recently-sleeping arms.
"...You're no good to the people who follow you if you're dead on your feet or sick, you know."
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
"Mm," is the verbalized summation of Nanai's thoughts on the time. Maybe that's appropriate for something of such little meaning.
Nanai shows no hint of vacating her chair or touching whatever work she was hovering over at the workbench. Her pre-sleep activities thus remain a mystery for moment.
She offers a faint but noncommittal smile at Anser's mention of perspectives, and then watches the other woman go off in search of caffeine. When Anser glances back while speaking, she finds Nanai looking right back. Her gaze never leaves Anser's face, not even when a second (third?) cup of coffee comes unexpectedly into play.
No immediate comment. On Anser's return trip, Nanai looks back to the workbench-desk and lowers her head. The gesture might mean acknowledgment.
"Old habits," she says. "They're always waiting to be taken up anew."
Nanai uses her feet to pull herself forward, wheeling her office chair back into position alongside the desk. She slips one hand around the mug, pauses, considers, and then uses her other hand to slide a few folders into a better-secured position.
The director opens her mouth to speak again, but another hesitation takes her. She glances to the side for a transitory moment and then then returns her gaze to Anser.
"Point taken. I'll try to pace myself. Though, maybe you could join me. More sleep and fewer stimulants? It's an odd idea, but we might just revolutionize the scientific process."
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
The engineer cradles her mug of coffee in both hands, the heat insulated by a pair of fingerless knitted gloves. Fingertips slide gently across the porcelain vessel, sapping away some additional heat where she can find it. Small and slight as she is, it's little shock that the cold gets to her.
She shows no real aversion to being watched so intently. She's not a shrinking violet. If anything, her tendencies have ever been more a distance birthed by disinterest in social niceties than the ability to conduct them. She's often only willing to talk about business, unless she's being needled by Maddie - something that happens with increasing regularity.
"The difference is that I'm not carrying the weight of lives and scientific progress on my shoulders, Director. If I slip up on most days, someone might end up with a bad filtration system. You? The decisions you have to make, the people you have looking at you all the time - I think I'd crumple under that sort of weight." She meets Nanai's gaze levelly as she delivers this in a matter-of-fact tone.
"If you get the point, I won't belabor it. And yes, we could both do with more sleep and less coffee." She takes a long sip of coffee, leaning back to look blankly up at the lights above. "...A project for another day, when the tanks aren't already guttering away on fumes."
She sits upright again, and looks over her shoulder, "...It's coming together, piece by piece. Slower than we'd like, but... maybe this Alliance will give us the thrust we need to get moving in earnest."
She turns back. Quiet for a moment. Letting the conversation breathe. This is already further than she usually gets without mentioning particulars about calibrating the Suits, or specs for the latest improvements. As staunch as her support has been over the last three years, she remains almost entirely business.
Quiet little fox.
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
The weight of lives. Never mind the scientific process atop that. Nanai presses her lips thin. It's a mild sort of grimace, a gestured deference to the severity of the situation without much actual emotion put into it. Her gaze holds with Anser's for a time, and then her eyes drift down to look upon the coffee that's been brought to her.
It's an Anaheim Electronics mug. They have so many of these. The Rewloola had a crate in storage after a particularly enthusiastic visit from their client relations team.
When Anser shifts the topic to the lab, Nanai looks up to look with her. She takes her first, experimental sip of the coffee while still gazing in that direction. It's the tiniest sip, swiftly followed by a tactical retreat to blow on the hot surface. Even kept-warm coffee has some violence in it.
"Moving in earnest," she repeats. A moment's consideration. Then: "That's why everyone followed me. I would know the way."
Nanai stands. She keeps the full mug balanced with an experienced hand. She walks around the side of the workbench and a bit out into the open floor, facing the partition walls waiting to be assembled in what will one day become a clean room.
Atomic-scale manufacturing. That's what the psycho-frame needed. What it needs.
"I once thought I would live for this. I was an eager technocrat. I ran so many research teams. Why not a nation? But first came the military, and second never had its chance."
Nanai slides her free hand into one of the large pockets of her labcoat. She doesn't look back to Anser, but the question comes to her all the same.
"You put everything you owned into this. Into us. Do you have concerns about that 'moving in earnest' including militarization?"
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
It's easier to keep her seat, and she's already admitted to fatigue. There's little point in posturing to the contrary. She stays put, tracking Nanai's progress with that crimson eyes around recently re-dyed black hair, platinum roots gone from sight.
"We followed you because the alternative was to continuing a descent into madness. That you were the smartest person in the room was a happy second."
She thoughtfully gazes down in to her coffee for a moment, then takes a longer sip, observing the disquieting semi-translucent greasy layer atop the coffee and trying not to wrinkle her nose. She fails at that. She's a woman who's tasted the finer things in life, something which she soon has called out. She considers the question carefully, and then peers at Nanai from over the rim of the mug.
"...What was my alternative? Run back to Earth with my tail between my legs? Pretend that they wouldn't find an excuse to try me for anything that stuck? I'm not naive. I knew what I was signing up for when I defected. As much as any of us did."
She puffs a breath that shuffles her bangs and shakes her head. "...Militarization is the destiny of scientific progress, but I like to think that's not where it ends. One need look no further than flight. It began as answering the simple question of 'Can we?' then, it was weaponized in short order. But it didn't end as a weapon. I didn't shoot anyone to deliver an envelope, today. Science answers, then kills, then creates. Often in cycles."
She watches Nanai for a time, before adding, "...Yes. It bothers me. But when the progress we make changes the universe, will I mourn? I will not."
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
A soft scoff made invisible by Nanai's turned back. Either she disagrees with Anser's assessment of why people followed her, or she's amused at the other woman's candor. Maybe both.
The director keeps her attention downrange. She sips at the coffee, which now cools not only by her breath but also by the irresistible chill of the room. Anaheim mugs only do so much.
"I would have told you that you could still defect. Turn informant. The Federation opened its arms to people who took part in Operation British. But, it sounds like you're exactly where you want to be."
Nanai shakes her head. It's difficult to read from her back, but the short, brief movement makes it seem more like an attempt to clear her head than a display of negativity.
Another drink, and then Nanai turns back to Anser. She walks past the workbench and sets the mug down. Her hands busy with the little work of cleaning up the papers she's made untidy by sleeping dragonlike atop them.
"We never talked about why you 'signed up.' Not in detail. You're hardly the only earthnoid who fought with us, but what motivated you? Idealism?"
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Coffee isn't alcohol, and isn't as compelling a factor at getting the reticent to open up in an instant. Anser's eyes close, and stay that way for several seconds, as the siren song of closed eyelids proved to be difficult to resist at length. But her eyes unlid and she snorts in spite of herself, at the talk of informing.
"...No. I have no interest in returning. Not with the way things were. Doubly not with the way things are."
Her grip on her near-empty mug tightens, but the furrow in her brow is far from as menacing as she'd prefer. Her height and still-youthful features tend to make her look like a high-schooler sullenly moping over her midterm scores when she's being over-serious. The only thing that lends it any sort of credibility is knowing what she's been through, shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else who landed in Sweetwater, with minimal complaint. Save, perhaps, for the !chocolate rations.
That pensive look intensifies with no one to observe it, and she mumbles, "...Is that how you see me? Life would have been far less complicated for me if that's how Earth saw me. Spacenoid on Earth. Earthnoid in Space." She squints, misliking the contradiction and finding no humor in it.
"...No. Yes. Both. It would be a lie to say that I didn't want to believe Char's fantasy. I thought we might actually get there, before he squandered it." No small bitterness in her voice, there. It's the sharpest her tone has been in many months.
She tongues briefly at her teeth, and stand, abandoning her mug to join Nanai in straightening the workspace. She's not the head of the serpent, but she can still recognize which scales go where, so to speak. Busy hands make it easier to speak.
"I want to change things. And he was going to do that. And now? I think you're the person to do that. And if I can be even a footnote in the discoveries that people are calling 'magic', then..." She trails off, and turns her head to the side. The sentence changes trajectory in that pause, and her more measured tone finishes it, "...I'll be proud to have been there."
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
Nanai is quiet as she works. This offers Anser plenty of time to work her way through her musing and replies. The only reaction out of turn is a moment when Anser considers the dichotomy of her identity, which earns a pause and a glance from Nanai. Not even the talk of Char fazes her otherwise.
Papers stacked. Slid into folders. Folders stacked. Coffee finished. Both of her mugs -- old and new -- taken to the small kitchenette area to be washed out, which takes advantage of one of the water and sewer hookups against the basement's walls. Such luxury.
By the time Nanai returns to the table, everything looks orderly again. No one will ever know that the director recently drooled on the phenolic resin countertop.
In easy contrast, Nanai is somber now. The topic of 'magic' has that effect. Her gaze flicks to from the workbench to Anser when the other woman speaks of pride.
Nanai looks through people sometimes. Maybe that's not right. It's more like looking in. Somewhere else... but still here. How odd.
"...people who forge new paths leave chaos for everyone behind them. Few people who put that chaos to right are remembered for it. Sometimes I wonder who plays what role."
Something like normalcy comes over Nanai again, and she is once again present. She comes closer to the shorter woman, pushing in her abandoned chair as she goes.
"Anser, I've debated this, but I need to ask you to take on a burden. When the lab is finished -- I want to teach you how to make psycho-frame material."
Closer. Conversational distance. Real conversational distance, not the half-dozen-plus feet that two scientists give each other while sharing a lab. Nanai's eyes are sometimes so green as to seem impenetrable. Like stone. Hard and glittering.
"It can't exist only in the hands of those who grade it by combat performance. Do you agree?"
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
This time. They won't know that she drooled this time. There's simply no helping past transgressions. One could do worse than having Anser notice. She's far from the chattiest when it comes to interpersonal matters, and certainly no gossip unless directly asked for her opinion. What's a little bit of drool among coworkers?
Anser stays standing, her hands tucking quietly into her skirt pockets.
"I remember." She states, almost too-quickly in response to Nanai's musings. Anser being Anser, though, she doesn't extrapolate, which makes the sentence land with a thud. It's therefore easy for Nanai to breeze on to the next topic without needing to interrogate the statement.
At the talk of a burden, the diminutive woman straightens. She may have only been aboard a military vessel for a comparatively short while, but some things are just muscle memory. Before she even realizes it, she's slipping her hands from her pockets and tucking them behind her back. Straight-spined, and classically at-ease, her hands tucked behind her back. Ready to receive orders.
The form of that burden has her rapidly blinking. She'd been anticipating more of a... tangible burden, not the weight of knowledge. The considerable weight of considerable knowledge.
"...I agree. Thinking about how a thing might cause ruin is only ever the domain of those with a narrow imagination." That being said, something approaching unease comes over the young woman. Or excitement? Most find her difficult to read, but it's clear that it's something in between the two. Elation and dread.
"I'm... honored."
She doesn't look it. She looks like someone who's just been told they're ready to fly a plane without supervision. She knows the burden for what it is, and even if she aspired to it, she didn't expect it, that much is clear.
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
Nanai is one of those people who are blessed or cursed with a sense of professionalism to their every action. Some combination of her quiet canniness, the sureness of her bearing, her meticulous attention to detail, and a dozen other small influences all come together to encourage this useful aura.
Putting aside however Nanai feels about this talent, it often makes it difficult for others to tell what moment requires military precision and what moment can be experienced while slouching in an office chair. Possibly while spinning.
The only hint as to Nanai's thoughts on Anser's snapping-to is a slight softening of her expression. The corners of her lips turn up in the barest of smiles.
"I'm glad."
Then Anser is left to feel her emotions without the director's stony green gaze upon her. Nanai turns away to go to the end of the workbench that holds drawers, and from the top drawer she produces some of her personal effects. First comes a hair elastic, which she uses to to craft a bun.
"You don't need to commit now. We have much to discuss. What it does, what it's done, and... what I hope for it to do, I suppose. I won't only bore you with ideology. Considering what we've been through together, I trust you hope for -- in one way or another -- a future where all life can awaken to a better way of living."
A few hair pins and the bun is finished. Out next comes the glasses. She slips them onto her face, completing the thin barrier that stands between the psycommu researcher and the chief operations officer. Nanai looks back to Anser, glasses catching the fluorescents.
"It may be a cliche, but... the psycho-frame is my child. Even if I hope it will someday belong to everyone, I can't help but feel as a mother does. I hope you understand."
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Whatever shock or elation the young woman may be feeling doesn't color the rest of the conversation. She holds on to it, surely, but she's not so easily led around by the nose by her emotions, for better or for worse. It's proven both a useful ally in considering things from multiple angles, and a potent friendship repellant.
So it goes.
The brief touch on ideology has Anser quietly nodding.
"...It's hard to improve our quality of life as a species when there's no one left to improve it because of our ever-more-efficient methods of killing one another. Would that our minds improved as quickly as our technology. We still think in terms of slinging stones and swinging swords, yet we can kill on an unprecedented scale with the press of a button. The pull of a trigger," Neither her voice nor her posture waver, but something in her seems to sag as she continues, "The flip of a switch."
She's still holding to formalities. "I think it's in our nature to protect what we birth. To wish that it grows up strong, and healthy, and is given the best possible chance to thrive. It's a cliche," She acknowledges, "But an understandable one."
She pauses for a beat.
"Especially when your child can be used as an instrument of mass murder if improperly supervised."
A grudging look to the side.
"Though, I suppose that's true of any child."
Char.
<Pose Tracker> Nanai Miguel has posed.
Nanai shifts her posture to face Anser more fully. The reflection shifts off her glasses, revealing the chilled eyes underneath. Her fingertips brush the top of the workbench, and the cold that seeped into it from the room eagerly migrates to her skin.
No comment for the methods of murder. No comment for nature and thriving. No comment for anything, it seems. No comment at all.
Only that not-far-away look, looking beyond.
The room stretches into forever away from Nanai and beyond Anser. The darkness is only a veil, only a memory. There is light beyond. Light, if only she can remember it.
...it's too late for lectures, nanai...
Nanai stares through Anser. She takes steps forward. The low heels of her shoes echo into echo into echo into the stretching-eternity of the room that isn't a room.
...someone has to shoulder all the evils...
Nanai looks down into Anser's face. Nuclear engines fire, bathing them both in a red glow that fades into blinding white. She smiles a small smile, a polite smile by most people's metrics, a smile for uncertain moments but quiet ones also.
"Sometimes... the ones we hate the most are the ones most like ourselves."
Instead of explaining her out-of-place comment, Nanai looks up. She glances across the room as if she's just suddenly arrived here from someplace else, and her roving eye locks onto the stairs.
"I should walk home and try to sleep in my own bed. I hope you're about to do the same. The fabrication process will tire you out like nothing else."
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Anser is quite certain that she can understand what's going on in that stretching silence, that distant look. Reflection, certainly. Being lost in one's own thoughts is hardly an alien sensation to her. She doesn't know the half of it, in truth. She stays rooted in the cold laboratory, held politely with her back straight, regarding Nanai as if she's about to hand out further orders at any time.
She blinks in response to the out-of-left-field statement, but it does prompt her to look down and briefly nod her head, taking the absolutely wrong message away from it.
"...Humanity is ever out to destroy itself."
Eh, close enough.
She reaches reflexively for her front breast pocket where she typically keeps her handheld on her coveralls, but aborts the motion halfway through, the hand course-correcting to her skirt pocket. She regards the time, then nods firmly to Nanai, "Yes, Director. It shouldn't be an issue. I think the coffee tends to just bounce right off me, these days."
Partially because it's watery and greasy (why!?) coffee. About as strong as Shelby's social skills at a crowded party.
"I'll close up shop." By which she means elegantly powering down everything that needs powering down to save resources, and locking up shop.