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championoftime

28 August 2011 @ 10:43 pm

[Log for Vasilia Aliena]

The Doctor was busily working in the TARDIS, ignoring the furry shape slinking along the floor behind him and trying to pull away a pair of pliers with all its might, when the strange urge overcame him that was hitting so many others simultaneously.

At first, dread hit with it. The last time he felt this way, the Time Lord flu struck him. It was the beginning of the couple of the worst two weeks in memory (yes, he hated it more than the death tolls for the simple fact that he hadn't known what was going on), but still he straightened himself out and staggered to the TARDIS door.

He left the Mongoose to slink around the console room, and headed out in the halls. He went in the direction that made him feel less like retching all over the floor, stopping occasionally to hold on his hat and catch his breath. He was nigh on exhausted when he reached Vasilia's door, knocking earnestly as he pulled out his fobwatch.

"What is this nonsense?" he muttered to himself.

[Private to Dallas | Text]

It seems that I'm going to be indisposed for the next few days. But if you need anything, I'll still find a way to be there.

How are you feeling now about what happened with David? [He saw that unfortunate start of a conversation in David's journal.

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championoftime: 7.2 - fidgety

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 02:24 am (UTC)

"Who, me?" Yes you, you dolt! "Oh I've been to Earth a time or two, but I'm actually a Time Lord. A Gallifreyan. But don't use me as the standard by which to measure my race. I've been very boisterously and adamantly declared a renegade."

That "R" got an extra special roll, and a raise of brows with a quick, childish smile as punctuation. But then, right back to casual and away from that bout of boyishness that argued with his visible age.

"Earthers won't have me either, to my disappointment. It seems that they abhor my fashion sense."

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 02:55 am (UTC)

"I-- am not particularly adherent to fashion trends. Your clothing covers you and in doing so is sufficient," she said stiffly, because she had no eye for fashion and this had been a subject of humor more than once; she would be sleeveless at home only because she enjoyed the freedom of movement. But here, she prioritized not being touched much higher.

She gave him a long wary look. "Count Dracula told me that your people knew a great deal about metaphysics. He advised me to address my questions to the one with the large scarf and teeth. Do you know him?"

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championoftime: 7.2 - investigating

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 03:00 am (UTC)

"Thank you! I thought so." Only the Doctor would take that bizarre conglomeration of words and consider them a compliment. But he looked faintly surprised at what she'd been told.

"He's me, actually. Me, but a few centuries earlier. When we die, my kind change personalities and appearance, but retain our core self and our memories."

He waves dismissively. "Chicken, egg, the chick has to happen somewhere en route, don't you think?"

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 03:03 am (UTC)

"Regeneration. The Lord President Rassilon mentioned it. I did not wish to further discuss it-- with him."

Because he was a pompous bore.

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championoftime: 7.2 - sneak?

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 03:18 am (UTC)

He knew a lot more about regeneration than he let on to Rassilon. The truth was, that he didn't want to help Narvin get his regenerations back. He didn't want to open up the gateway that the other Gallifreyans hadn't evolved into, and while he hoped someday those vicious forerunners of his people (that he swore was still reflected in the hate behind their eyes) would be able to possess the ability, they were very much not ready for it.

"I can tell you a bit. I'm afraid I'm not all that well informed."

Lies, lies, and more lies. But they're friendly lies? The sort meant to invite and comfort and not coldly deceive. On to the truths. "We've only thirteen of them. Any more is a risk to our physical and mental health. This is my seventh. They're more difficult to control if you die traumatic deaths."

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 03:22 am (UTC)

"What is their purpose?" Vasilia pressed. "Why a completely different face? Voice? Even taste in clothing?" As much was clear from the difference between the seventh and the one with the scarf. "Is it painful, death? Do you choose when? Why thirteen?"

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championoftime: 7.2 - do tell?

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 03:30 am (UTC)

"They keep us alive. It's not always a different face. My brother has managed to match his last few with some concentration. And some are chosen. Mine usually happen under traumatic conditions so there's no time to concentrate."

He's been just hovering thus far, and he looks for some surface that he can sit on that might be able to support his weight. If nothing else so he can get over this abysmal supervisory feeling.

"Thirteen simply because the regenerative materials start to degrade. Do remember, each of these regenerations ends up a personality living in the back of our mind. Each regeneration is imprinted on our time ship. So if we call upon more than thirteen, that's more personalities lurking. We have very vast intellects, but very delicately structured minds. It's a bit much emotional weight to bear for synapses meant for logistics."

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 03:32 am (UTC)

"Does the personality change as well? The aptitudes-?" She was asking a flurry of questions and she realized it only after the fact-- "there are chairs in the lab, please come with me." Her simulations had been forgotten.

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championoftime: 7.2 - so very perplexed

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 03:35 am (UTC)

"Hm? Oh! Yes. Lab." He turned in place while he was saying this, giving up his chair search and reaching up to hold his hat on, as if it may be whisked away by the motion of room departure. Dramatics and all that. He knew most of the people in the lab, so if any were there today, he doubted they would be all that opposed to his presence.

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 03:37 am (UTC)

Vasilia led him through the halls, striding as confidently as anyone a head taller, and pulled out two chairs almost without thinking as soon as they were in the lab and near the computer she usually used.

"Death. What is it like," she said, the walk having given her time to focus her mind.

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championoftime: 7.2 - always looking upwards

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 09:44 pm (UTC)

The Doctor toddled along behind her. Toddle toddle toddle. All the way up to the lab where he found a chair suitably capable of spinning, because if you were going to sit somewhere any amount of time a logical mind must be in possession of a chair that's ~fun~.

"Death?" While he started to turn from side to side. "Frightening. Painful. One mind blinks out. The next takes hold. You grapple against it, but your functions start to slip from your grasp like grains of salt that refuse to hold between your fingers."

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no_fastolfe: Robots and ambition

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 10:01 pm (UTC)

Vasilia went pale as he spoke: a little more so as she digested his words. She had expected a more whimsical answer, perhaps, and yet though that would have annoyed her, the frankness was somehow worse.

"Ah," she said quietly. Out of her tangle of questions, now so much less intriguing and more potentially horrific, one rose. "Is that the death experience for humans, as well? And--if there have been Time Lord inmates--did they die before arrival? I am told we all did. I do not remember dying."

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championoftime: 7.2 - mulling

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 10:23 pm (UTC)

"They were at least in a situation where imminent death was extremely possible. Some have gone and returned home and then back here, progressed further to their next point of possible death." He squirmed to a more comfortable position in his spinny chair.

"Omega did, before he came, as did Rassilon. My brother as well, I presume. The death experience for humans is quite similar." He remembered from the breach. From having Narvin fill him full of bullets, and then being left with a sense of utter shock.

"Except the next mind doesn't take hold. It just stops."

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no_fastolfe: Robots and ambition

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 11:03 pm (UTC)

Vasilia linked her hands limply in her lap. "If that is death, then why continue? Why suffer a dozen new instances knowing that the last is coming? Why struggle, why postpone?"

Why pride oneself on fifty decades when at the end was that ending--what use a legacy?

She had stumbled into the same morass that another woman had--it would have comforted her very little to know that Gladia Solaria too had realized this, had found herself seeing her years as only a long, meaningless diversion as she awaited the unknown.

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championoftime: 7.2 - sneaking with friends

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 11:08 pm (UTC)

"Some of us do choose to die. It's called a tombing. We simply decide to stop because there's nothing else to do? But why stop coming up with things to do?"

He makes a vague motion in the air, and dangles his arm over the arm of the chair. "What's the point in living if you don't spend it living? I live my life to the fullest. All the centuries of it."

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 11:18 pm (UTC)

"What can be done, then-- what task or diversion--that will matter, when three generations or ten are gone after you, and you are only a matter of record?" she asked-- as unnaturally subdued as if she had fallen ill again, after all.

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championoftime: 7.2 - tietug

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 11:25 pm (UTC)

"Sometimes I look forward to it, and sometimes I dread it. So long as I make a mark as me on the universe before I go."

Oh, and how he'd made a mark. In more than one way he shouldn't and was glad to have. "By that reasoning, what's the point in living in the first place?"

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 30th, 2011 11:29 pm (UTC)
A wild mortality appears

"Precisely," she said, simply, dully.

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championoftime: 7.2 - oh a gadget!

championoftime on August 30th, 2011 11:42 pm (UTC)

He raised a brow and leaned his head back slightly. Well, that was particularly odd.

"Haven't you done anything that brings you lasting enjoyment? Something that you can go back to time and time again?"

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 31st, 2011 12:03 am (UTC)

Vasilia turned in her chair, starting her terminal with a few listless taps; it booted to a prompt-- she was more comfortable with a command line than with the nannying graphic interfaces-- and a few strokes started her simulation program.

"I have," she said, watching the initial random population -- represented as a hundred-by-hundred grid of colored squares, of various brightness and hue to represent their default strategy and status-- start to shift and interact. "I have been a roboticist for twenty six decades, and I studied it for two decades before I was qualified for the title. It has brought me a great deal of joy. But; I had never considered an end to that work." She finally looked back at him, her interjection of pre-emptive argument perfunctory and without bite- "I am aware that it was a short sighted view. You hardly need to tell me."

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championoftime: 7.2 - pondering

championoftime on August 31st, 2011 12:42 am (UTC)

"Oh! I was thinking of putting some work into an android- a robot. It's difficult, because= Oh well, don't pay any mind to me. I've gotten side-tracked." He peels his eyes away from her simulation and tips his hat more forward on his head.

"Why is it a short-sighted view? Why is engaging in anything you love with a passion a short-sighted view? Investment and specialization means both excellence and sensitivity to the subject. To have that subject matter ripped away from you is as damaging as removing all the nesting materials from a bird's native region.

"It's not damning. They may adapt. But it's certain unpleasant, inconvenient, and practically painful in some cases."

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 31st, 2011 12:57 am (UTC)

She would have told him what a transparent ruse that was-- if she could only figure out what he would gain from it-- or if she was simply so beneath his notice that it simply had come to mind. Her face showed mingled temptation and confusion and wariness; she was so absorbed in trying to guess his motives that there was some delay before she understood what he had said-- a metaphorical processing lag between hearing and comprehending.

"But-- if I were returned to my estate tomorrow, and continued to design until the day I died, with all the success and acclaim that could be wished; would any of that ease the last moments? Be consolation as I lost my faculties? In the universe, what is gained by a hundred years of enjoyment? Even my work-" she would not admit aloud that she was not the great innovator that Fastolfe was, except in one accidental way that she dared not repeat. Some pride choked down the admission of her own insignificance, even as she felt it.

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championoftime: 7.2 - describing

championoftime on August 31st, 2011 01:11 am (UTC)

"Then your work is only insignificant as you make it? No matter what you feel about yourself, you know all that passion, all that creativity went into accomplishment. Will formed matter into shape and ingenuity gave that shape motion. It's a profound accomplishment that is in essence life continuing life." He sits up, cross-legged, and makes as if he's trying to clasp that life out of the air.

"Life, creativity, and genius gives the universe means to shape itself, and marks the passage of time. Those fleeting moments of unrest at the end take up only an insignificant portion or an otherwise potentially extremely meaningful existence."

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no_fastolfe

no_fastolfe on August 31st, 2011 01:26 am (UTC)

"Life--" She shook her head, her limp hair moving with it. "To what end-- besides that end. That last inescapable moment."

She had not considered it before, it was as simple as this. And she did not want to think about it-- it was frightening, and it made everything seem so purposeless.

"You mentioned a project. Was it your intention that I bargain something with you to be included-- or was it rhetorical? If the former-- if you do intend to create a programmatic intelligence-- I am willing to bargain," she said, a little more spirit in her voice.

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championoftime: 7.2 - chatting with Ace

championoftime on August 31st, 2011 01:30 am (UTC)

"What end would you like it to have?" It was a very bizarre question. He knew he didn't want to stop. He came here to avoid stopping, and at the same time to continue to be his own man.

He actually boggled a bit at her questioning of his intentions, not really knowing what to think of it.

"No, I was just wanting to discuss it. I like to talk about things. Most of my friends on board are mathematicians and engineers, and we like to talk about what we know and what we've seen." Science; always a good topic of conversation for the socially displaced.

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no_fastolfe on August 31st, 2011 01:33 am (UTC) Expand

championoftime on August 31st, 2011 02:16 pm (UTC) Expand

no_fastolfe on August 31st, 2011 03:09 pm (UTC)