Aporias and everything. (Alaina)

[Anonymous]

It had been a long day, which, Liv supposed, had more to do with the uneasy fizz bobbing in his stomach than anything.  Anniversaries.  Fucking wonderful.  Work had been the usual, crunching the latest from the Libra-Edanith broadcasts, using binary to make naked pictures, because, really, why not?  He'd almost avoided thinking about what day, exactly, it had been.  Four years, really, already?  And to think he'd been fucking sad about it.  Oh, Hazzie.  He wouldn't say he'd really died.  Voice in your head and all that.  It's the little things we leave behind, boyo.

Liv keyed in the code to his apartment and stepped inside, listening to the faint hum of the terminal he'd left running.  Ah.  A hand went to the knobby bones along the back of his neck, massaging out the tension, and he went to get something to drink.  

He'd Connected today. And accessed some old files Hasdrubal had recorded, because you had to remember, hadn't you?  Anyway.  He slammed the refrigerator shut and wandered away with a milk carton, to take a seat in front of his terminal.  Any new message?  Hello, mom.  Ha.  She'd asked him about Sabela again, which Liv really couldn't fathom; the draw of tabloids on the contemporary mind.  Something from Iagon, asking him if he'd like to get together at their usual venue.  It still felt damned weird to be free.  Of course, free, right.  Just different avenues of power.  Power and pleasure and pain, pah.  

He took a final swig of milk, leaned back in his chair, and kicked off across the floor, twirling, to jettison it.  Swish, right in the trash.  Damn, Livvy, you are not entertaining in the least today.  He could visit Gabe or Blaine, but one didn't inflict the drag on the cheery ones.  

Knock on the door.  Liv blinked and bobbed his head upwards, then stood, smoothing his vest and fluffing his hair.  "Hey, hang on!"  He shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled over to press the button for the door.  "Come on in, sorry about the mess."  Not that he'd ever do anything about the piles of clothing lying around, but hey, manners.

[Anonymous]

I am slightly unnerved at the audacity of this one.

The voice of the Dragon brought a shiver to her spine. It wasn't anywhere near the warm and comforting sensation she'd come to expect, connecting at the end of a workday. Bryn didn't like it when Nomenere startled her like that - besides being singularly uncomfortable, it meant there was still more work to do.

"Who are you looking at?"

This one.

In her mind, hundreds of bits composed themselves into the picture of Livos Sulo, plucked from his file in the Citadel's personnel records. Then came the raw text files, dozens of posts from a handful of blogs rearranging into crystal-clear thoughts. An unwarranted interest in the Libra mission, almost a year gone now. His record for spending a little longer than average looking at the plaintext of Edani transmissions in CU18. His distaste for the connection the Dragons had to offer and the Pilots who chose it.

That last part stung, like Nomenere knew it would. Bryn disconnected and went to have a chat with Liv.

[center:gb11yfp6]...[/center:gb11yfp6]

"Hey, hang on," and a brief pause as Liv looked for the door buzzer, then, "...come on in, sorry about the mess."

He wasn't kidding - the man seemed to have emptied his entire wardrobe onto the floor. Kind of an expansive wardrobe, and more vests than one person could conceivably wear within one laundry cycle. He had one on right now. Bryn had been working on not raising eyebrows judgmentally in situations like this, but it was all she could do not to smirk.

Damn, where did she know him from? Livos Sulo. Alesku had said the name once. Okay, she'd waited long enough and now it was time to adopt the rank-pulling voice. Bryn had never liked that one.

"Livos, what will I do with you?"

The subversive blog posts had annoyed her Dragon, that was all. It was her responsibility to respond to "abuses of technical resources" like this one, but Bryn never really took that aspect of the position seriously. And none of the posts really bothered her except for the one about those Pilots, and that was for personal reasons.

She looked over at the guilty terminal, buzzing in the corner, then pointedly back to him.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything and that's... not a question you have to answer."

Bryn suddenly remembered why she knew Liv, immediately wondering what his experience had been with an overbearing, moralistic Alesku. He'd come up in a conversation with her former mentor in the simulation room - they'd been developing a standardized course for Network data structures and Alesku had said something about everyone having their oddities. Then he'd mentioned Liv.

Judging by first impressions alone, Livos didn't look like he got along with that sort of person at all. But he too had gone through the Alesku Mentor Experience, and Bryn was genuinely interested.

"I don't suppose you've spoken to Alesku much, Pilot Sulo? He likes rhetoric."

False doubt, to be specific.

[Anonymous]

Ah.  Bryn Farren.  Liv watched her askance.  He'd heard about her; of course, he tried to hear quite a lot about everyone.  One of the Macario disciples.  Network addict, but wasn't everyone?  No, she was the special one, who'd gotten a Dragon as a Candidate, that couldn't be healthy.  Sardonic. Tech division, so one for the team.  Cute, too, but that wasn't the matter at hand.

What will I do with you?  Oh, maybe it was the matter at hand.  Sure, she'd be talking about something less fun, but he had nothing to worry about.  Totally clean terminal this time, if not conscience.  Liv took a step back and opened his mouth to answer that one at length, but she shut him down.  Damn.  He moved aside and ushered her in, head tipped down, displaying a moment of false dolor.  His mouth twisted into a parody of petulance. Wouldn't even let him get in a decent double-entendre to kill the pain of whateverthefuck she might be here to examine.  

"Oh, Macky!" he said, flashing her a sudden grin and kicking aside a pile of haphazardly folded pants.  He ambled backwards into the room, playing with a button on the front of his vest.  "He thinks he likes rhetoric, but he hates it from me.  I think he really likes making points, you know, but not that kind."  He shook his head.  Okay, techie fucking division, here from Macario, it was probably the happy old thought police.  All because Al couldn't be bothered with him himself, hmph, he'd visited Blaine.  What didn't Liv have?  Blond hair and a hamster.

"He could only stand me for seven months, lovely old mentor.  Too much rhetoric for him, of the subdivision flirtatious innuendo, anyway, you wanted--something?  Rhetoric, maybe?"  

By the time he'd finished drawling out the last word, Liv had snapped into unusual seriousness, arms crossed over his chest.  He looked Bryn straight in the eye with something like equanimity.

[Anonymous]

"Anyway, you wanted--something? Rhetoric, maybe?"

Bryn wasn't sure whether this was Liv being cute or Liv being annoyed. From what she'd heard of him... and what she'd read in his blog... the question might well be a little of both. She shook her head and swept aside the strands of hair covering her Network port. This would be the part he wouldn't like. With a somewhat helpless shrug, Bryn looked away and took a few wading steps through the jumble of clothing towards Liv's desk.

"Nah, old man Macario gives me enough of that even now. I'm here on orders from my Dragon concerning those blog posts, about a week ago. Nomenere didn't like those."

Liv was being quirky as hell about the whole affair, but at least it wasn't the dark and creepy scheming so prevalent among her superiors. For that matter, he didn't seem the least bit bothered, no and Bryn almost laughed when he mentioned flirting with Alesku. Her, or their mentor probably hadn't taken that well. Livos seemed like an okay kid - she'd be honest with him.

"...anyway, he wants me to make a copy of the data on your terminal. Later he'll open it up and read your fortune."

After a brief pause, she advanced across the room to the computer and removed a tightly wrapped black cord from the front pocket of her dark gray jacket. With practiced ease, she slid one plug into the terminal's port and the other into her own interface. The world around her persisted for a few seconds as a still image, losing significance and eventually fading completely. Left with only sound and darkness, she took up a more comfortable position, cross-legged in Liv's chair.

"This'll take a minute or so. Anything you'd like the nice girl from tech support to know about, or are we just going to reminisce about good times with Alesku?"

Bryn set one hand down on the edge of the terminal briefly, a smile coming to her lips. She'd need to come back here sometime, and silently she hoped it would be in a less disciplinarian context.

[Anonymous]

Liv let his eyes dart up to meet Bryn's, then stepped back again, gesturing for her to do as she would.  She would anyway.  He leaned back against the edge of the desk while she settled herself in his chair.  One thumb and forefinger kept worrying a button on his shirtfront.  Maybe he had been a little glib recently.  A little too much of the best policy.  Thank the Gods he had wiped his terminal after that fiasco with Roman a few weeks back.  Liv loved attention, but this sort could be, well, terminal.  

He watched, head tilted to one side, as she plugged in, and fought down the urge to wince and hope.  Wince, at least in part, because he still found the action of plugging in a little disconcerting, sympathetically painful.  It did hurt him to Connect, though that might be particular to Falstaff.  

And there was nothing to hope for; but the impulse of guilt twitched just under his skin, like a tendon.  

"This'll take a minute or so. Anything you'd like the nice girl from tech support to know about, or are we just going to reminisce about good times with Alesku?"

She'd relaxed into the rhythm of banter instead of aggression.  Hey, great.  Small fucking blessings.  He waited, still watching her intently, as the expression on her face smoothed to blank emptiness.  His free hand tapped a steady rhythm against his desk.  

"The nice girl from tech support," he said at last, when she seemed to be coming out of her trance.  He let out a breath and leaned in toward her, turning on the flat honesty, the confidentiality.  Level with you.  "What an identity.  I like it, it's simple.  It sounds like the kind of person who would have good times with Alesku.  I envy him his certainty sometimes, don't you?"  She probably did, to judge from that note of apology he'd heard in her voice, and the just-doing-my-job tenor she had struck.  

Liv shifted, moving to set a hand on one of Bryn's shoulders; he slid it slowly along her back to the other side, and spoke quietly.  He tried to keep the note of slightly creepy insincerity, the one that crept in when he got tense, out of his voice.  Another relic of Hasdrubal, another kind of mask.  He enjoyed it a little too much sometimes, but someday he'd find a less disturbing flirting methodology.  "I don't have any confession to make, if that's what you're asking, Pilot Noble tech support girl.  Seriously?  My blog?  Bunch of ridiculous rambling, in my opinion, and attention-seeking, too.  By the way, sorry about all the terminal, uh, porn."  All this in the same very serious  diminishing whisper, leaning confidentially close.  He cracked a smile by the end, though.

[Anonymous]

"...Pilot Noble tech support girl."

The concept echoed in her head. It was an identity she'd like to be rid of. Used to be that she was uncomfortable in her class of Candidates, the odd one out with the port. Now one of the highest-level Network technicians, she had to worry about being a representative of the Man, as one of the new batch had said at some point... whatever that meant. New rank, more problems.

"Just a theory - I think Alesku prefers to sound confident whenever possible, even if he doesn't know the answer. How can you take a stance on something so broad as what freedom means? Nobody knows the answer. S'just different opinions, masked by the same Alesku-esque certainty. I don't envy him. Oh. Hahaha, someone didn't destroy the evidence-"

Singsong voice, brief smile, and the decision to point out a rather significant amount of porn on the terminal.

"There's even the secret Sabela sex tape, oh no! I hope this is weird shit - wait, that's supposed to be her? Pilot fetish? I dunno man, the lighting sucks, can't tell if it's really Sabela or some other chick. Okay, I am deleting this."

In her virtual view of the terminal, the whole folder vanished. Everything else went into a psychic signal, bound for Nomenere's vast processors and his eventual review.

"I'm not expecting a confession, though if you'd said anything..." she put an index finger to her lips, the empty expression giving way to a faint smile, "...no, my dragon isn't on a mad quest to take down your silly blog. I'll run it by someone nice in the propaganda machine... and... oh..."

Bryn felt a hand slide along her back and sat in silence for a moment, pressing her back against the chair. When the transfer completed, she disconnected from the terminal and slipped the Network cable back into her pocket. Liv's arm had somehow found its way over her shoulders, and Bryn offered him a vaguely amused smile, reaching over to trail her fingertips gently through his hair.

"...and they'll give you a better classification than you deserve. Hey, don't worry. You'll be fine."

[Anonymous]

Hand in the hair.  Hm, Liv considered hair-touching a real privilege.  Nonetheless, he stayed where he was, face caught in the remainder of a carefree smile.

Better than he deserved, and the reassurance--something he would have said in her place.  Cute.  "I am always fine," he said, catching her eye.  She had deleted his near-and-dear folder... nice of her.

At length, and carefully, he removed his arm from Bryn's back, straightened up, and grabbed for his second desk chair.  He seated himself and rolled back in close to the visiting Pilot, one elbow on his desk and one foot braced on the bottom rung of her chair.  He leaned in, confidential-like.  She seemed like an interesting person.  And she'd given him such a pretty coinage to play with.

Alesku-esque, Alesku-esque.  Really a good one.  Liv turned it over and over in his mouth like a piece of hard candy.  Bryn sounded--what was it?--sensible.  Ah yes.  Certainty and its funny old relationship to truth.  Until you got to truth and its funny old relationship to power, and then it all went to hell.  

"Now what'd you go and delete Sabela for?"  He kept speaking quietly and evenly, holding her attention. She'd recognize his level gaze as the kind of stare Alesku put on when he wanted to make a point.  All very Alesku-esque.  "I think... you're jealous. Yes, I am sure of it.  You in your subjectivism can't object to porn for some other reason.  Well, here's my certainty--power, to be specific, my intense seductive power."  Liv couldn't handle it; he ducked his head, stifling a laugh.  He came up covering his mouth with one hand, and removed it slowly, leaning in close again.  Like most of his jokes, it had a disturbing second meaning, but no one would notice. Happy anniversary, Haz, and the power of being wanted.  

"No, really, though."  He winked at Bryn, the gesture its own exaggerated mockery.

[Anonymous]

"Would I be jealous of you, alone with my terminal, the Dragons breathing down my neck? You have a better chance with Pilots than most of the Haviah population - you don't need Pilot porn, but because you're Livos Sulo, you have it anyway. I think you are overextending your analysis. I've spent enough time on the VCN to have a very neutral view of pornography. Alesku would say I'm a moral relativist; that's not the problem. I just feel that this would leave the Dragons with a poor impression of your personal taste. Honestly... a Sabela clip?"

Bryn rose from the chair, bracing herself against it and meeting his gaze for a few seconds before sinking into the distant mannerism she'd adopted while plugged into his terminal. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed in silence for a moment, that faint smile still there but her eyes blank. No doubt she was uploading the contents of Liv's hard drive, even as they spoke.

"...she looks drunk off her ass, too. Never attractive. Now that you've got that - uh, intense seductive power - a kid like you needs to have some standards, don't you think?"

Then again, maybe she'd already sent the data. Bryn continued to lean against the chair, occasionally laughing or wincing. Only a vague outline in the center of her fuzzy, still-life vision, Liv's chair was mostly a tactile sensory input now. Bryn could feel her fingertips pressing tightly into the molded plastic, giving the impression of leaning over a railing.

"Yeah, this looks fake. Never underestimate people with video cameras and a Pilot fetish - someday, even you won't be safe from them. I made a backup of the data pattern if you need it. Shit, now there's naked Sabela flesh in my head. That won't go away for years; I'll have flashbacks, no joke - hey, you're welcome to have the file back. I'll copy it."

She did. Hey, wouldn't want to deprive Liv of his files. That would be unprofessional.

"...but like I was saying, if you want some hot Pilot action, you're in a rather privileged position to get it. Not... position... that way, but you're one of us now, so go enjoy the sweet benefits of Citadelcest while you can. They'll assign you real work soon enough."

[Anonymous]

"Hey, come back."  Liv frowned at the vacant look on Bryn's face and reached forward to touch her on the tip of the nose.  Poke.  She wasn't allowed to split her attention with banter underway.  There ought to be rules, ha, ha.  His terminal still hummed out white noise.

He drew back, one foot still hooked in the rung of her chair, and shoved his own chair backward a little, trying for suave and removed, with just a hint of a judgmental smirk.  She'd done the you're Livos Sulo.  Triumph, notoriety.  Not exactly the kind he'd wanted, but all attention was good attention, and annoyance and porn were ever so much safer than, ya know, anything else.  He hated the zoned-out look they got, though; Pilots.  He'd always been able to tell when Alesku had a Calliope moment, but this one clearly went all sorts of places on her own.

And no, Liv, talking to yourself is much healthier.  Absolutely.  At least fucking Falstaff hadn't been making too many intrusions.

"First of all, I've got plenty of work, I am CU18, elite, unless there's something else you've got to tell me.  And you clearly spend too much time plugged in.  If that was an offer, Farren, I hope you've realized by now that the way to my heart--and cetera--ain't through my terminal."  He wagged his finger at her and sighed.

[Anonymous]

All in all, he wasn't a bad kid, just stupidly obvious about his beliefs. The direction of Liv's writing would have to change eventually or he'd cross the line one day and wake up in a lead room. Also, he'd have to be careful about the nose-poking. Could offend a Seeker.

Bryn felt Livos touch his finger to the tip of her nose, then send the rolling chair sliding back a few inches. She smirked, and still in the dreamworld of the Network, she took his hand gently in hers and moved it to the back of the chair, beside her shoulder.

Dimly, she heard him mention his elite role in CU18, one of the codebreaking teams. That unit, she remembered, had been charged with the daunting task of unraveling the various encryption methods used by her division's opposite number in Edanith. For a few seconds, she wondered whether it worked in reverse, and there was a Livos Sulo equivalent on Mars, carefully picking apart Bryn's own security. What a fucking rat race.

"I'm sorry, what?"

She disconnected the wireless link to Nomenere. Usually, severing the connection tended displease him - they had no other bond - but with the contents of Liv's hard drive, the Dragon had enough material to work with for now. Bryn would visit the Eyries later today to plug in, collect the results of his searches, and send them to one of the information control weirdos. Her pupils contracted, adjusting the bright lights of the room, Liv's own gaze coming into focus. Bryn drew her fingertips against the back of his hand, the bemused smile fading from her lips.

"Sorry. Connection's also work for me, and it puts me out like a light. Can't see anything while I'm insi- wait, are you suggesting that the way to my heart-and-cetera is through a terminal? You really don't think much of... er... Pilots with my habit, do you?"

[Anonymous]

Liv liked the ones who played games.  He found them more honest than the ones who pretended they didn't.  Bryn had followed him out into the realm of uncertain rules.  He slid his hand out from beneath her hers, then caught her fingers in his own, interlacing them, wrist flat against the back of the chair.  The physical proximity felt good, and flirtation made everything easier.  Among other things, it gave him a place to bundle all those little darting sparks of anger and wary attraction.  He watched her pupils expand and contract inside the scintillas of her irises.  

Day-um.  

"I thought that was the point, Bryn," he said, sitting quite still and watching her.  This close, he could feel her breath, and had to stop himself from glancing up at the port on her temple.  As a Candidate, no less; that sort of thing could take you over.  His own, well, hair today, gone tomorrow.  He kept it covered.  "But hey, I don't think much of anyone--but myself--so... I like my self.  I want to keep it. To be honest--"  His fingers flexed and tightened on hers.

"--I'm fucking scared of this Dragon business, okay?"    

Focusing for an instant, he sent her a cogent, quick mental snapshot of his feelings.  See?  If he didn't pull at the cord of some sort of emotion they'd just keep spinning out the easy stuff, which Liv considered far too easy.  Gabe would be proud, he was cooperating with authority and trying to make friends, and everything.  Oh... honesty.

[Anonymous]

"Nobody loves the Dragons, Liv. You want me to be brutally honest? Pilots are either fucking terrified or they're too stupid to notice their circumstances and deserve a ticket to TRIM. I imagine you find my tendencies a bit slavish, no?"

He sent her a psychic impression... an intense wave of bitter anxiety which left Bryn feeling nauseous. With her free hand, she brushed her loose hair back over the Network port. After a few seconds she spoke again, her tone soft and matter-of-fact.

"I don't think you realize that the connection isn't... well isn't only a pleasure draw. Nomenere tells me what to do all day, and your Dragon probably orders you around too. At the end of it all, you plug in and realize the paradox - Falstaff's your captor, but the Network's the only shred of freedom you'll ever get. Nearly universal access to information, raw and unfiltered, and you're turning it down? If I weren't up here in my ivory tower, I'd be one of the poor misinformed suckers outside. Better plug in, Liv - even if you don't like it."

A fairly scandalous opinion to have, as loyalist ones went. Then again, if Liv was subversive, he'd like it. Bryn felt her fingers slip into the spaces between his, and she glanced up to find two brown eyes looking back at her, coppery hair framing thin, bemused features. He was watching her carefully, maybe trying to see the thoughts behind her own outward expression.

Seductive power.

The words stuck in her mind, and she smiled, folding her fingertips over, tightening them against the back of his hand. Bryn could never tell when someone was attempting to read her, and she had the sudden amused idea that thought perception might be Liv's stand-in for charisma. Out of reflex, she checked her mental blocks, which were working silently and on their own like they always had. Nothing to fear, then.

"Seriously, Liv... if you're trying to look into my head right now for the sake of your intense seductive powers, you are the most telepathetic Pilot I have ever met."

[Anonymous]

Liv considered what she'd said.  She seemed sincere.  Of course, Alesku generally seemed sincere, too.  So did Roman.  That slight bend toward what might be the truth hid a potentially terrible snapback.  What he'd gathered of her so far, from comportment and actions and public comments... no, she wasn't one of them.  

Knowledge ain't power, kiddo.  It's what you do with it, and it's not what you've got, it's where you're standin.'  She'd bought into the Network, but the Network beat you, it beat you every time.  From her perspective that might feel like freedom.  But Liv saw it for a trap, a pit of false infinity.  Oh, even Hazzie wrestled with that one.  Liv had a suspicion he'd wanted to live forever, the poor bastard.  But Liv tried to to keep his self to himself: trust the evidence of his senses, and try and try to hold his brain together.  

Still--at least she saw it.  Something like anger tickled the back of his throat, and Liv let his eyes flick sideways.  Yeah, fuck that.  He'd plugged in, he'd felt it, he'd gotten the information, but there'd been Falstaff, too, and perfect freedom of thought it was not.  Ha, whatever that meant.  So maybe he kept to bouncing, truncated crypto-thought-jargon on purpose.  So maybe he liked aversion.  So what.  He looked back when she spoke again.  

"Seriously, Liv... if you're trying to look into my head right now for the sake of your intense seductive powers, you are the most telepathetic Pilot I have ever met."

He paused, tipped up his chin, and let himself smile.  First of all because he loved her portmanteaux.  Not that many people appreciated wordplay the way he did.  Second of all because she'd gotten it right--perspective-wise--and gotten him wrong.  Probably.

"I don't do that Marshland shit," he said, voice tipped up into humorous candor rather than anger,  his other hand coming up to touch her Network port: carefully, just the point of the finger.  "Trust me.  The seduction you feel is entirely my own," with a bit of a mocking lilt, "and possibly your sinking suspicion that you're wrong is a little--aphrodisiac?"  His eyebrows came down for a minute, pensively, and he tapped at her port.  "Don't ask me.  I'm just trusting the evidence of the senses--trying to be human--"