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Author Topic: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]  (Read 927 times)

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Anonymous

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just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« on: June 16, 2009, 02:19:53 am »
[[13 years ago, Stage Two Candidates' History lesson]]

History at the ATC had never really been about its subject.  Hasdrubal, once he'd tested the waters for a few years, had come to use it as a platform for anything he liked.  Psychic testing, a careful exploration of the Candidates' minds.  The particular object lessons he wanted to teach, or dynamics amongst the kiddos to explore.  They'd learn about tactics, all right, but...

Aw, throw 'em a raw-marrow hint to gnaw over, why not?  The opening lectures could be fun.  Hasdrubal waited for the class to settle down.  He had one hand flat on his desk, and he leaned on it heavily, the other braced on his hip.  A glance around the room served less an evaluative than a performative purpose: he kept a mind's eye on them, but not all of them could feel that.  They'd see his stare.  There was such a thing as form, and form had more to do with function than anyone liked to think.

"Welcome to your history lesson," he said, straightening up at last.  He clicked the hologram projector on and dimmed the lights telekinetically, and up bobbed the moving image of an antique-looking Aedolian space fleet.  "Before we beginnn, I wish to enlighten the hell out of the all of you as to the objective of historical study."  He let a thought ripple over Dian, in the front row, who had not been paying attention.  She'd now be feeling the cold shock of I am not as smart as I think I am and am very insignificant, even worthless.  

Hasdrubal folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the desk, body half-submerged in the holographic projection.  Stars whirled gently about his head and shoulders.  Very carefully, he sunk into the current of the room.  Any group of people developed its synergies and its shared thoughts.  The Candidates all wound up tangled in each other's pulsating, fitful psychic impulses, emotional insecurities, and so on.  He liked to dabble in the currents, let certain impressions seep through.  Any good speaker did the same, on a minor sorta level.  At present he fostered a kind of melancholy foreboding, uncomfortably queasy.

"The purpose to anything we teach you he-ah," he said, into the quiet, "is to make you into real living things.  Most of you are not even partly alive, barely there, hanging onto bits...  There is just one thing that knowledge does..." He paused and smiled, because he wasn't going to elucidate further on that point.  That wasn't how people thought.  You could spell things out step-by-step, but that was no good.  The best thing to do was leave them bits as loosely-connected as possible and let them do as much thinking as they could, and they'd still never get it.  Because once you got them thinking there was no natural stopping point, and until they found something arbitrary--which Haz wasn't going to give them--they had only his own unknown arbitration.

It was fun.

"Y'see, Candees, history is a lesson in what never to do again.  Now, I hope you can all figyoour out your tactical analyses, so we will not talk about these.  If you cannnot, you're a fuckin' asshole.  But the learning objective is, ah, well, what is learning, anyway?  What someone tells you.  It's all what someone tells ya.  And that is why the thing to ask is never what, or why, but maybe how can I... there are twenty of you, ten of you will fail this course.  Today--"  He clicked off the hologram projector, and the galaxy spiraled down into nothingness.  "--Today, we will be taking a gandah at the declassified records of the gamma-eighteen conflict, if you are very good.  But first, does anyone have any questions?"
« Last Edit: July 03, 2009, 11:13:13 pm by Anonymous »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [Charlemangel]
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2009, 06:27:43 am »
Two years.  They kept him in the Academy for two years for this?  Most of the other candidates barely got a week to get ready for the ATC once their power was discovered.  He couldn't go immediately, like they did, but he was so sure that he would go once he turned thirteen.  When he turned thirteen, he was told that he would go 'later'.  They wanted him to be prepared.  Phil, Siran and the ever changing social worker were somehow able to keep him out of the ATC so he could work towards whatever prepared was.  Thirteen turned to fourteen and still, not yet, you're not ready.

Not ready for what?  He was a psychic, they couldn't keep him away from the ATC forever.  Not when they spent the last six years telling him that he was going to go through Pilot training and become one of the greatest assets Aedolis had.  He thought they needed a reminder, so there was a period where dishes would float around the table and anyone that didn't live in the house would hear 'voices'.

It didn't work.  They weren't any closer to deciding he was prepared.  Instead of upping the ante, Jory waited.  Fourteen came and he wasn't ready.  The frustration, being unable to figure out what they were waiting for, came to a rolling boil after a few months.  He snapped at Siran, at the younger students in the Academy, the interchangeable cleaning staff at the Aeglaeca's apartment; terrorized the numerous yappy dogs Siran was so fond of.  Then there was that Commander's kid who made an off hand remark about the Dragons not wanting Jory, because they had someone better in mind.  Jory tackled him.  Strangled him, but an instructor was nearby and they were both lit up for fighting.  Laps, push ups, pull ups, more laps.  It wore down his body, but mentally he could have had another go at that kid.

That incident didn't get him any closer to being ready for the ATC.

Fifteen came.  Jory would have locked himself in his room the entire day, if trying to avoid knowing that he was one year older and no closer to getting into Pilot training any time soon wasn't a ridiculous thought.  Showing off his talent didn't work and getting angry about it didn't have any effect, so Jory tried to be like he was at age twelve.  Without the pride in going to the ATC... as much as it stung, the other students were well aware that he was supposed to be there by now.  He couldn't lord over them with that.  It didn't matter, he had other reasons to be better than them.  Better social class, better grades, better things.

Then the time came.  Jory would have left immediately if the Pilot that came would have taken him.  Now, he wondered why he was so anxious to come here in the first place.  It was full of psychics (some with much better control of their power) all reduced to the same vermin status and in the same uniform taking classes about things he already knew.

Like this one.  History.  It must have been awful to go to a normal school in Haviah, they must have taught the students how to charge credits on their chip and the neighborhood train routes.  At least a Pilot was teaching this class.  If another military instructor tried to order him around he was going have to remind them why he was there.  That was he was more important than some grunt whose job it was to corral people between 'activities', like the ATC was a pleasure cruiser.

Jory leaned back in his seat, one foot propped on the bar under his desk's front legs and idly spun his pen around his fingers.  He kept eye contact with the Pilot, but kept his expression frozen in disinterest.  Not so easy when there was something crawling around his mind.  A few of the stronger candidates occasionally went on joyrides through the others' brains, but this felt too controlled to be one of them again.  Their romps only reminded him of how much practice he needed.  How much he would have preferred some instruction on being a psychic instead of hearing the same history over again.  Then the Pilot mentioned that they were going to turn them into real living beings and the queasy feeling he was trying to ignore vanished.  That was far more interesting than more history.

But the Pilot didn't complete that speech, he trailed off and continued on about history again.  Jory, not interested in boring old tactical analyses, teased the open end of that last bit to keep from dying of boredom.  The one thing knowledge did.  He looked at the other candidates, at their various reactions from hearing that half of them would fail.  Of all the ones that were shocked, there had to be one or two that knew they wouldn't get what the Pilot was talking about.  They had no power to save themselves.

Power.  

Sounded like the answer.  Knowledge makes a person powerful.  It was easy to see in this class.  Just hearing that they wouldn't make it through a class would be enough to wreck them.  Jory smirked, nearly dropping his pen when the Pilot asked for questions.  It didn't take long for one to cross his mind.

Jory set the pen down, raised his hand and waited to be acknowledged.  Once he was, Jory stood at a rest position.  Most of these other candidates, with all their power and street savvy, didn't have any idea that a subordinate was supposed to stand when they addressed a senior ranking personnel.  "Sir, why waste time on this small stuff?  Why not teach us something more relevant than unfurling the curtain on a mission that's already been spun to satisfaction?  The rest," a little sneer in the direction of his fellow candidates "should be able to follow along."
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [Charlemangel]
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2009, 10:31:20 pm »
There was always one, Ezekiel thought.  Always one overeager smart-aleck who believed he could answer correctly and win accolades.

As though the Pilot in charge of a history class were the one he ought to try to impress.  Ezekiel watched Jory carefully, crossing his ankles beneath his desk.  How shortsighted, he thought.  Scoring points cheaply, or trying to.  And with the craziest sonofabitch instructor they had, too.  Poor choice.  Still, this one had drive.  He might make it, once he'd gotten some of the arrogance beaten out of him.

Ezekiel had begun to think he should keep an eye on the ones with some intelligence and drive, but he wouldn't touch this unless it touched him first.  Not his problem, beating out arrogance.  Leave it to Pilot Hasdrubal, who would... do whatever he did.  Ezekiel was not sure what, exactly, that would be.  Anything from flattered megalomaniacal praise to denunciation.  The Pilot tended to leave Ezekiel alone, as he did many who minded their own business.  Ezekiel conjectured that he bored the flamboyant eccentric, and did not much care.  

He leaned back and ran his fingers  over the keyboard of the built-in terminal at his desk.  Some students used them to communicate during lessons, though it had been strictly disallowed.  They remained as a temptation for the idiots, and an excuse for punishment for the teachers who liked to test.  Ezekiel used his to pull up the specifications on the mission Pilot Hasdrubal had announced he would describe, as well as a transcription of what he was saying.  He still found it difficult to understand the Pilot's rambling, mispronounced distortions, his ears unused to the way his mouth mangled words and his eyes unable to decode his lips' movement.  And he liked to think he was neither stupid nor suicidal enough to attempt a psychic probe.  Instead he concentrated on taking care of his own mind, which was what one did in a class with Hasdrubal.

Mind your own business, look straight ahead, and never mind the weird emotional tugs you felt eddying around the room.  Gamma-eighteen.  He examined the specs, tilting his head to one side, expression set to mild.  Oh.  So that was why he'd chosen it for a lesson.  Friendly fire.  The gamma-eighteen conflict wasn't much studied, because it'd been an utter fiasco.  Fiasco, Ezekiel had heard, came from the doodle historians drew next to trouble passages, a picture of a bottle.  He wasn't sure why, but had picked it up in elementary school from an unusually widely-read teacher.  

Gamma-eighteen.  First someone had broken out of line and fired ahead, and then enemy shields had tossed him back and he'd shot down one of their own ships.  Friendly fire, and the whole formation had fragmented.  The fleet commodore had been disabled, and only three fighters made it back unscathed, one of them to stand for courtmartial and execution.  A cheerful lesson, Ezekiel guessed, for the newbies; they had a couple today, the latest batch of ex-gracies, still wet behind the ears.  Studying how things fell apart, what never to do again.  He examined the line-by-line account on his screen and decided the trouble had been the split second between that first shot and the commodore's order.  The trouble, in his opinion, had been the break in formation, and then another break in formation, like dominoes spilling down a field of stars.  Once one thing went wrong, they had been too quick to let more things go wrong.

He did a quick mental exercise.  What would Hasdrubal think the trouble had been?  Poor orders, poor command, probably, though one never knew.  After all, the older Pilot was not a commander himself.  What would the upstart--Ezekiel checked his terminal briefly--Jory Aeglaeca, think?  He would think whatever he thought Hasdrubal wanted him to think.  Ezekiel had become sensitive to that, the wanting-you-to-think dynamic, since he had begun to play it as a child, reading psychic currents off of his preschool teachers.  

Bad idea to play that game with an ATC instructor.  If Jory did think originally, he might blame it on... Ezekiel pondered.  Weakness of will in the commodore.  Lack of discipline in the insubordinate, whom he might consider nervy for firing before ordered.  Something quick, something easy.  Ezekiel himself was less willing to judge anyone on a character flaw.  Motivation came so much more quickly, and so much more primitively, than character.  Motivation came in compressed time, and on the battlefield all of the manipulation in the world meant just as little as the featherflick of chance.  

Thing about Pilot Hasdrubal's class that did unsettle Ezekiel: he still wasn't much good at sorting out which ideas came from him and which came from outside.  In Hasdrubal's class he found he wasn't good at all.

Hasdrubal had paused, looking amused, at Aeglaeca's quick response.  Then his face slid into jovial unreadability once again and he leaned back against his desk, rubbing his hands together, like a chef getting ready to flip dough.  

"Candidate Aeglaeca is quite right," Hasdrubal said at last, and his eyes flickered cheerily beneath their lids.  "The... small stuff.  Confidence.  Power.  Well done, Aeglaeca, that was... step one.  Unfortunately, the small simple stuff is all--"  His tongue tasted the words.  "--most of your classmates can understand.  It is indeed... unimportant.  Who can tell me what is important?  What might Jory Aeglaeca mean when he says... relevant?"  

Ezekiel hid an internal frown behind careful blankness and said nothing.  Hasdrubal had set Jory up, now, played to his ego.  Poor kid.  Screwed before he'd even begun; the class would now think of Jory's name with resentment, as a favorite, a pet.  Hasdrubal had also straight-out lied; Ezekiel could think of plenty of things useful about analyzing a concrete situation.

Oh, well.  He went back to his terminal and kept his lips zipped.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2009, 01:13:10 am by Anonymous »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #3 on: July 06, 2009, 06:09:40 am »
Don't smile.  He couldn't look like he was hanging on Pilot Hasdrubal's praise.  It was natural, this was what he deserved.  No need to get worked up over it.  He just gave the answer the Pilot wanted to hear, like usual.  As dull as it was to Jory, it must have been ten times worse for the Pilot.  Unless he liked history...

Jory held his breath, the Pilot's hissing tone sending a few chills up his spine.  Tensed, braced his shoulders, pressed his lips together and bent his knees a little to keep from locking them.  Then calmed at the emphasis in the next little bit of praise, the same emphasis as when he called the answer correct, shoulders relaxing and falling a little further down than he liked.  He didn't need to look around the room to know that the rest of the class was either watching the Pilot or watching him.  More would be watching the Pilot, he was sure, the Pilot could hold an audience.  Jory was too far back for most of them to see without craning their necks around and obviously staring, because the atmosphere in the room made him dizzy at first.  Terrible.  Even an animal could pick up on body language.  That wasn't what he needed spread around the various Candidate circles.

Now that he was standing the atmosphere was starting to get at him again.  Was it the Pilot's psionics?  Nerves?  Jory was sure he wasn't dehydrated so that couldn't be it.  He only felt it when he hadn't been eager to give his opinion, after the Pilot hinted that they would be learning more than just basic history facts.  

It was all too tempting to lock his knees to brace himself up.  Instead he sat back down once the Pilot addressed the class, slowly, head held high.  He couldn't answer again.  The rest of the class would have to start doing some thinking eventually.

The probe felt like a smack on the back of his head.  Jory gritted his teeth, curled his hands tight around his pen.  Bastard, how could anyone be that lazy?  Jory concentrated, trying to work up the walls the older Candidates and Pilots had around their minds.  This time he tried the same technique that let him talk in other people's minds.  Modified it just enough so it would stay around the edge of his head and maybe interfere with the other Candidate's probe.

It didn't.  The other Candidate lunged in and retreated a little less brusquely than they entered.  As it retreated, Jory was able to pick up the direction it was traveling in and glanced in that direction.  The culprit might have a shit-eating grin on his face or some sort of absurd victory gesture.

No.  He laughed.  Candidate Marco Jonatan, not one of the gracies that Jory came in with.  He was middle class, Jory remembered, outgoing, leader of a little clique of candidates that spent as much time as they could attached to the hip.  He got his ass kicked trying to muscle around another Candidate... Jory couldn't remember his name now, it was practically on the tip of his tongue but it wasn't something to focus on now.  Jonatan was laughing, one hand waving through the air for about a moment before he said: "Candidate Aeglaeca thinks we should be working on psionics.  It takes more than a few head tricks to make a Pilot - 'specially if they're little head tricks."

The pen was good plastic.  Otherwise it would have broken when Jory's hands tightened around it.  A few come backs danced around his head, but Jory kept quiet.  There wasn't much he could do to recover from that without speaking unbidden in class and causing a disruption if Jonatan had a retort for his.  Sweet as that could be, he'd only end up making himself look like an idiot when they were disciplined for it.  He could have his giggles now.  They wouldn't always be in class...  

Jory ignored him, kept his head up and twirled his pen around his fingers once they relaxed.  Military bearing, he'd vent after class if he didn't drop dead of boredom.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2009, 03:00:02 am »
"Psionics?  But you are my little twosies."  Hasdrubal pantomimed shock.  "And as everyone knows, we never touch psionics until stage four."  He grinned around at the class, leaning back against his desk.  He shifted, crossing his arms over his chest, and rubbed one hand up and down the opposite tricep.

"Except for you, Candee-date Jonatan... who am I kidding.  Extracurricular practice is such a tradition.  You are not special."  And they would all know--and all feel--that sense of utter expectabilitee.  Not special.  Everyone did it, everyone dabbled.

He unlocked his elbows and limbered his arms, swinging them back and forth.  Then he slapped flat palms against the side of his desk and pushed himself forward, one foot out.  Step, step, step.  He sauntered back past the first row of desks, touching Candidate Maralie lightly on the shoulder on his way.  He turned to peer at Candidate Shun's terminal.  Mhm.  

He swung, at last, to Jory, and put his hands on his shoulders, thumbs digging into the skin by his neck.  He shook him, half-massaging and half-possessive, and blanketed his mind in calm and protection.  

From his stance behind Jory, he looked at Jonatan, who stared back with the equanimitous gaze of a born braggart.  

"Today's win is tomorrow's loss, Marco darlin'.  You ain't fuh-fuh-fuh-fucking--special."

Jonatan jerked back in his seat like he'd been slapped, which indeed he had.  For Hasdrubal it was so much easier to dole out punishment telekinetically.  It took less effort.  It was less predictable, too.  It worked very well all around and he liked the technique.  Sometimes he thought he only used his body for appearances' sake.  Not that he was all that pretty.  

He leaned on Jory's shoulders just a little, smiling out at the class, eyes at half-mast.  

"Of course I cannot teach you all the many, many valuable lessons I have available because this is a history class and we are bound by such con-tin-gen-sees as lesson plannage and narrow-mindedness and so on, right, Jory?"  He ruffled the Candidate's hair, which sprung up in fluffy curls.  Haz was quite aware the gesture would bother him, but the rest of the class saw only affection.  

"... but Candidate Shun has actually taken it upon himself to attend to the lesson at hand and he has decided... yes, Candeedate?"

Ezekiel stared at him, frowning a little.  "Sorry, suh.  I didn' catch all of thah."  His speech, as always, was a little slurred in the vowels and hard on the g's and k's.  "I was looking a' the gamma conflict.  I had wondered what you make of it."  He glanced at Jonatan, who'd put a hand to the red mark on his face.  Ezekiel's expression remained quite blank.  

"Make of it."  Hasdrubal let his eyes glaze, disregarding Shun's answer, or, rather, using it only as a cipher.  It was all the use he got out of that one, bland predictability, and while he thought it might work very well for some it did not interest him.  

He leaned in over Jory's shoulder, fingers moving on his shoulders, and nodded so he'd catch it in the periphery of his vision.  "In fact we are all wondering what Jory Aeglaeca makes of it.  Pay attention, class, for we do favor the intelligent as well as the bold heeere."  He shook Jory back and forth and, smiling, opened his mind and let just a little bit of opinion tip into Aeglaeca's.  "Is it all right if we forego the study of history and do some psionics work ahead of schedule?  Discuss."
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2009, 06:59:27 am »
Ugggh... just give him a shovel already.  The least he could do was tone Jonatan before digging himself a hole to hide and fume in for a while.  Funny he still remembered that, toning.  One of his uncles, his blood uncles, used to describe hitting a person with a shovel like that.  He said that it would make a clear 'tong' sound against a skull that didn't immediately break.  Jory never saw him hit anything with a shovel, but it was something he took for truth as a child and it stuck around as truth now that he was older.  Now seemed like a good time.  If he could find a shovel.  Where was the bastard's psychic probe now?  He wouldn't even have to dig around to find this one, it was right there on top of his thoughts for anyone to pluck out.

The sense of sameness that yawned through his mind just annoyed Jory even more.  Of course he was practicing, how foolish would he look if he got to stage four and couldn't even keep another Candidate out of his mind.  He'd have more time for it too if he didn't have to go through these redundant classes.  At least Edani history or brain anatomy would be something new.  He tapped his pen against the end of the keyboard, slow and steady.  Tap-tap-tap-tap-

His shoulders would have jerked when Pilot Hasdrubal grabbed them.  They didn't shake, not obviously where the rest of the class would see, but the pen spasmed in his hand.  For a second or two, he thought he was going to be throttled.  For thinking they might do better with some psychic instruction, for not snapping back at Jonatan, for tapping his pen...

No, if he was going to be throttled he wouldn't be this calm.  He had better instincts than this.  If he was in danger he'd be ready to react.  So he wasn't in danger.

So why was he being... touched?  

He managed a hint of a smirk when Jonatan caught... it looked like he caught the back of someone's hand.  No one touched him.  With their body.  It had to have been the Pilot.  Who- gah!  Started messing with his hair!  Jory tilted his head, just a bit, just enough to make it look like he was nodding.

The damage was done though.  He'd have to go see if he could kill it later.  What he needed was a pair of good sharp scissors or a big electric razor, to snip it into something manageable or buzz it all off.  At the rate it was growing it would be in eyes and down his collar before he made it to Stage 3.  

Jory took a deep breath, focused, tried to pay attention to the lesson instead of agonizing about the state of his hair.  He wasn't interested in what the Candidate that was trying to learn about the lesson on his own thought about it.  It was good that he could take initiative instead of waiting for the Pilot to tell them to load the page, but Jory didn't care what he thought.  Not yet, not while he thought things like the gamma conflict were worth studying.  Maybe later, when he actually caught up to him.  He was interested in the Candidate's accent, it was different.  Not the lower class cant, or any other speech pattern he could recognize.  Could foreigners even be put into the Pilot program?  He raised his eyebrows, might have leaned in towards him if the Pilot wasn't holding onto his shoulders.  

Then the Pilot was leaning on him again, his fingers working his shoulders.  Massaging, Siran used to rub Phil's shoulders every night when he'd come back from work or wherever else he escaped to for the day.  It didn't bother Jory.  After those first few seconds of panic he'd been at ease.  That he should be nervous was only a faint afterthought under the calm.  The Pilot had to have his reasons for taking hold of his shoulders.  Not the same reason Siran had, definitely not.  It'd be an insult to compare them in any way past action.

Jory would have liked nothing better than to give up studying history and jump ahead to psionics.  Even basic starter psionics.  He couldn't say as much now.  Not with Jonatan digging it out of him and getting popped for saying it.  Whatever Jonatan did to anger the Pilot would be nothing if Jory said the exact same thing after he was prompted.

"Of course not.  We'll be ready for psionics training soon enough.  It's better to get it out of the way now while most of us can't hi-jack each others minds out of laziness or stupidity."

Jory tilted his head over to Jonatan for a second, grinning widely, returning to his only-awake-because-I-have-to-be bored look afterward.  Chew on that, bastard.  So he could poke into nearly any head in the room, only a lazy idiot would do that.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2009, 05:15:22 pm »
"Do you know why psionics are not important yet?" Hasdrubal said, smiling emptily out at the class.  "I will tell you what is important.  What is important.  In training of this sort.  Just.  One.  Thing."

He paused for just a moment, fingers kneading Jory's shoulder just a little too roughly for comfort, and then stepped back.  Candidate Shun's gaze followed him warily.  Jonatan boiled with anger, though he knew the emotion was irrational, and Hasdrubal offered him the edge of a grin.  Jory's mind, he saw with some disappointment, had caught itself on the familiar hooks and ledges of need.  Need for approval, acceptance, guidance, the need to be told he had it right.

Just one thing.  Not power, that wasn't the answer this time.  Maybe it was never the answer; abstracts were useless compared to specifics.  Hasdrubal liked to fuck with people who thought in abstracts.

"Habit," he said at last.  He took two steps forward and slammed his fist down on Jonatan's desk, bringing up his screen.  "Rest of you, pull up the gamma conflict specs.  Habit is the most important lesson you have to learn and the fuckin' hardest.   Your assignment for the rest of this class is to win the battle."

Almost casually, he seized Marco Jonatan by the hair and broke his nose with one elbow, then let him rock back against his seat.  

"Habit will trump pleasure and p-p-p-pain."  He brushed off the sleeve of his uniform and continued up to the front of the room, catching the eye of each student in turn as he did so, stepping sideways and backwards around the desks.  "Thinkin' ain't the lesson here.  Habit.  In a combat situation... the split-second of nothing but panic is the most personal moment you will ever get.  No  one gets so close to life as them who edge up on death."  He let himself drift off into contemplative posture, the slump of his shoulders and the set of his body almost maudlin.  He shook himself out of it, or parodied doing so.

"Habit.  It's all habit.  You got..."  He made a show of checking.  "Twenty minutes."  

Hasdrubal settled against the edge of his desk, arms crossed over his chest, pleased with the lesson thus far.  He didn't like to give instructions when he taught his lessons.  They would figure it out or they wouldn't.  The poor habit of doubt and hesitation had to go one way or another.  

Some thought he just liked to watch them squirm.

Maybe so.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2009, 06:51:41 am »
The sudden pressure of the Pilot's fingers in his shoulders made Jory wish that his upper body workout was yesterday instead of the day after tomorrow.  It made him wonder why no aspiring masseuse ever turned up psychic.  Jory leaned back in his chair when the Pilot stepped away, rolling his shoulders against it and spinning his pen around his fingers.

The corners of his lips turned up when he saw the look on Jonatan's face.  If they weren't in class Jonatan might have even come at him.  Maybe he'd still be angry enough to try it later on.  That would make Jory's day.  No one with any authority here would be in any particular hurry to stop them unless they were being disruptive.  

It seemed like there was no way he was going to escape gamma-eighteen today.  The hell did the Pilot mean by 'win the battle' though?  Were they supposed to explain what they would do to turn the operation around if they were there?  That didn't seem like something that would enforce good habits.  More hammering home what they weren't supposed to do in a conflict.  Jory leaned forward, clicked through the menus on his terminal until he found the specs.  His eyebrows raised when he saw the 'start' button.  Win the battle seemed a little clearer-

Shit!  Jory looked up when he heard the thud.  First he looked up at the Pilot, who was brushing his sleeve.  A quick glance down saw Jonatan slumped back in his chair, one hand clasped just under his nose and a few bright spots of red, some coming from a drip on the edge of a finger, scattered on the floor and his pants leg.  Then, since Pilot Hasdrubal was still talking, Jory looked back at him.  Anything to put as much space between himself and Gamma-eighteen as possible.

It didn't seem like Pilot Hasdrubal was going to ramble though.  Jory looked back at his terminal, tapped the end of his pen against the edge of the keyboard and checked his watch.  Sims never interested him as much as they did some of his peers, especially a computer-based one.  Making them seemed interesting, but playing them?  Far too sedentary for his tastes.  Jory huffed and clicked 'start', bringing up a little menu.

- Begin Gamma-Eighteen conflict Sim.
- Watch last Sim.
- Watch original Gamma-Eighteen conflict.
- Credits
- Exit

The credits were short enough.  A few names, most of them piggybacking on another part of the development.  He watched the original.  082 Comet pulled ahead and fired on the enemy line, which reflected off their shields and took out 040 Eagle.  089 Black Hole and 032 Cat were the first to break formation.  032 Cat fired, followed by 053 Griffin and 082 Comet.  All three volleys were reflected, taking out 082 Comet and clipping the wing and tail of the commodore's 080 Eclipse, sending it spinning around wildly.  The ships were scattered at this point, some halfhearted effort to keep from getting fragged.  Their individual shots weren't enough to disable the enemy shields and when they began firing ships fell left and right.  Finally 089 Black Hole retreated, 075 Cumulus, 038 Wolf and 043 Owl following.  075 Cumulus was shot down just before they were out of range.  The video ended with the three fighters racing off in the background and a clutter of metal scraps floating in the foreground.

089 Black Hole's captain was courtmartialed and executed.  038 Wolf and 043 Owl's captains were probably still scrubbing floors somewhere.

082 Comet was the biggest part of the problem.  The commodore could have had a perfect strategy to engage, but that ship breaking formation was the start of the end.  He must have been panicking too, since 032 Cat and 089 Black Hole broke rank so soon after.  They were both experienced captains, their commodore was around just long enough for people to think he wasn't completely fresh and new, 082 Comet in the same area.  All of them saw action before gamma-eighteen.    

Jory would have watched the video again, but they only had twenty minutes to finish this thing.  He selected 'Begin Gamma-eighteen conflict Sim', flipped through the pages of background material, read the controls and was put in control of 080 Eclipse.  At least it would be over quickly if he made the wrong decision.

There was an orders panel along with the other controls on the interface.  Jory opened it and spammed the orders enough to make a savage Midhavener that spoke in grunts and gestures understand them.  When they were in sight of the enemy, 082 Comet still broke free.  He rose out of his place, his thrusters brightened and Jory shot him.  082 Comet spun and hit 038 Wolf, the explosion nearly taking out 077 Cirrus.  Then 032 Cat wheeled around and shot him.

Mission failed.  The screen greyed and everything became as chaotic as it did in the original video.

Too early.  He had to let them see 082 Comet racing towards the enemy if taking him out was going to be effective.  Watching the replay showed that 082 Comet was practically still in formation when he was taken out.

Jory started again.  Let 082 Comet break free and start rushing the enemy line.  Jory shot 082 Comet, 032 Cat shot him.  Mission failed.  Jory blinked, surprised.  There must have been a bit of code for 032 Cat to always shoot him down if he shot any of the other ships.  Maybe if he could warn 082 Comet, 032 Cat wouldn't retaliate and they could go through the rest of the mission without any hassles.

Jory started again.  082 Comet raced ahead.  There was no warning button.  Jory slammed a few orders to maintain formation.  082 Comet fired, 040 Eagle was destroyed.  Jory shot down 032 Cat as he and 089 Black Hole broke formation.  089 Black Hole shot him down.  Mission failed.

Ten minutes left.  Jory was starting to think the Sim was set up the way the designers thought the battle would be won.  He just needed to figure out what they thought was the correct strategy.  He didn't recognize any of the developers and it didn't list any references for the work.  

Jory started again and read some of the other options nested in the orders panel as they were flying toward the enemy line.  This time when 082 Comet broke formation, he gave the order for the rest of squad to spread out and 082 Comet's reflected shot didn't hit anyone.  He gave another order to concentrate fire on one ship's shield and even 082 Comet followed.  The shield broke under the concentrated fire and the ship fell soon after.  The enemy line split into another formation and Jory gave the order to engage.  

This was going a lot better than his first tries.  He whirled around, shooting enemy ships and wheeling to avoid their own shots.  Then he missed one ship and his volley took out 043 Owl.  032 Cat wasn't even facing him, but it did an impossible, jerky turn and fired a shot that he couldn't avoid because his ship seemed to have frozen.  Mission Failed.

No friendly fire was allowed, even accidental fire.  It wasn't his fault stupid 043 Owl couldn't dodge as well as that enemy ship.  The real 043 Owl would have survived that.  Jory groaned, tapped his pen once, twice against the edge of the keyboard.  All he needed to do was get through that last bit without fragging anyone and he should be good.

Jory started again.  Made a little change this time, after the enemy line moved into their new formation, he ordered the squad to take out a few specific ships.  Some little ships that were out in front, just waiting to picked off.  Then he let them go and hung back at first, nearly getting killed by a fast little ship that broke from the enemy line to come after him.  This time 032 Cat saved him instead of killing him.  Jory tapped the ship with the end of his pen and whispered, "bang."  There was still time for the enemy to take down 032 Cat.  082 Comet was one of the first ships to be shot down.

The battle oozed on, and Jory started to study the enemy ships.  Trying to find which one their leader was in, so they would spiral out of control like his own ships did once he was killed.  While he was looking the enemy ships pulled back, Jory gave an order for the rest of his squad to stay put and shoot at the retreating ships.  They took down three and the rest just kept on going.

Jory waited.  The ships left his field of sight and kept on moving in the little radar in the corner of the screen.  When he was sure they were actually leaving and not wheeling around to flank them, Jory gave the order for his own ships to fall back.

A window popped up on the screen then.  Victory, followed by a few stats.  Ships remaining, enemy ships destroyed, enemy commodore killed, enemy commodore captured, no. enemies captured and overall rating.  He was flying back with a crew of dead men, 038 Wolf and 043 Owl were among the ships he lost but at least the enemy was coming back with a little more than a few dings and scrapes and shields with a little damage.  The enemy commodore had neither been killed or captured, none of the enemy had been captured.

His overall rating was 'C'.  Oh well, it was a sim anyway, it limited what he could really do.  Jory checked his watch.  Less than five minutes left, he didn't feel like trying again to see if he could capture any enemies.  What use were virtual enemies?  The assignment was just to win the battle anyway.  Any victory and most failures were better than what really happened on that mission.

Jory leaned back in his seat again, first looking over at Jonatan to see if his puddle got any bigger and then looking around at the rest of the class.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

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Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2009, 01:59:47 am »
All of four Candidates managed a pass rating.  Jory Aeglaeca was one of them. Marco Jonatan had come close; sometimes punishing them helped, and pain worked to create focus.  As he knew all too well.  Raised the stakes, anyway.  

When their time was up he lounged against the desk in his customary position, arms crossed, legs crossed at the knee.

"I'm very disappointed in all of you," he said, frowning.  "Almost.  All."  He glanced from Jonatan, who glared back at him, to Maralie, to Shun, and let his gaze linger on Jory Aeglaeca.  "Seems to me this class has a standout.  You should all feel fuckin' ashamed of yourselves.  Those who didn't pass, you're gonna run the sim until you do, that's your homework.  Those who did, you will get the key to the supplementary data files on the Gamma Conflict, and you'd better read up on it.  See, doin' good will only get you ahead, and fucking up puts you that much more behind."  He smiled.  "And both'll get you more work.  Now skedaddle.  Jory, you stay for a minute."

He watched the kid, and listened to the thoughts of the others in the room.  Marco Jonatan was poisonously angry.  That would be fun.  Some types of Candidate worked so much harder fueled on hatred... and Jory Aeglaeca would do so much better once he learned how things worked in the real world.  And what ego really meant.  

Once everyone else had filed out, he beckoned Jory up to the desk.  "Hey, kiddo."
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

  • Guest
Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #9 on: November 21, 2009, 04:35:24 am »
This is bullshit, Jory thought immediately after Pilot Hasdrubal told them he was disappointed, his eyes crossed and chin high.  They weren't supposed to be practicing their psionics so there was no way they could have read his mind and figured out what additional standards he had for-

Jory stopped thinking for a moment when Pilot Hasdrubal looked at him.  Was the Pilot reading his mind?  He had every right to think what he wanted, especially after that line was flung in his face.  Currently, he wasn't a mind reader, he could only do the best he could after hearing what was expected.  Especially with this new instructor, whose preferences Jory didn't know.  For less than a moment, he considered whether or not this was some sort of carrot on a stick to make the class salivate for some basic mind reading ability.  If any of them weren't before they stepped into this class, before even leaving stage one, they needed to do the government a favor and start rolling on the ground, gibbering and trying to bite ankles.  Jory tapped his pen against his keyboard and managed to keep from rolling his eyes when he heard that he had more reading to do about stupid Gamma.  There might be something new in the supplementary data... if they bothered releasing such information to Candidates.  Didn't seem likely.

Jory let himself slide down a little in his chair after he finished the sim, otherwise he might have been on his feet, maybe even taking a step toward the door, when Pilot Hasdrubal told him to stay.  What?  Jory tucked the pen into the cuff of his sleeve and stood up.

Maybe the Pilot was sure he knew enough about Gamma to get out of this class.  It was a tempting thought, but could it really happen?  Jory knew it was possible to skip Stages completely if you were considered knowledgeable enough.  Older Candidates talked about it, which might make it a complete lie.  Only, it made sense.  Why keep someone mired in what they already knew?  Though, for all he knew, that was nonsense and he was going to be... congratulated?  Lit up?  Lectured?  

When Pilot Hasdrubal beckoned, Jory approached his desk without hesitation, his expression as blank as he could manage.  One eyebrow was raised a little and his lips were pressed tight together.  "Sir?"  Jory assumed rest position, sliding his feet shoulder width apart and folding his arms behind him.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

Anonymous

  • Guest
Re: just one thing [OPEN to anyone around 13 years ago]
« Reply #10 on: November 21, 2009, 05:17:08 am »
Hasdrubal watched Jory while he stepped up toward  him between the desks.  He was all second-guesses and tentative ego.  He found it endearin' and shit, that kind of weakness.  That youth.  Jory wasn't stupid--he was smart--but he wasn't as smart as he thought he was, and he wasn't as confident as he ought to be.  

"Ah, Jory," he said.  He shifted against the desk, slouching a little, and motioned Jory out of his formal posture with the flap of one hand.  "Relax, kiddo, you're fine by me."

The relief and pleasure that should cause ought to be truly disproportional.  Of course, Jory was all independent and above that.  But who told him he was special?  Ah, yeah.  They'd done a number on this kid's ego, for sure.  Fuckin' idiots.  Anyone who needed to be told, what a weakness.

He was pretty, too, though not entirely to Haz's taste.  His eyes were startling.  Never mind for now.

"No special breaks, now."  Haz winked.  "Can't have the other Candidates takin' libertees, you know.  But I may as well step down from how I get when I lecture."  His tone shifted, became softer, his Lower-Caste drawl a little less pronounced.  "It's a pose."  He shrugged, moving his body against his desk again.  "But you're too smart for that shit, eh?  So tell me, what can I do for you, Jory."

Mental manipulation had to work slowly, but now, as he usually did, he gave it a psychic boost.  Nudged Jory's feelings into admiration.  Haz was good at projecting an idealized image of himself, and he began to do so, just a little, linking the way he spoke, moved, and looked, to points of admiration and authority and trust.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 pm by Guest »

 

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