paradisa | all-night laundromat blues (backdated to Monday morning)

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all-night laundromat blues (backdated to Monday morning)

[Monday morning finds the Doctor stepping out of the TARDIS to go and get the milk for his morning tea, journal tucked under his arm...

only, the moment he steps out, he's surprised to realize that he isn't parked in his own room, any longer, but the laundry room. as he turns to go back in and move the TARDIS back to where it belongs -- it dematerializes without him, leaving him standing there perplexed in his pajamas and slippers]

Oh, dear. ... What's that all about, then, old girl? You've never done that before ...

((OOC: Loss involvement start! Five will be trapped here with Joshua until Wednesday!))

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[ Resting his book in his lap. ]

Were they brainwashed?

In a way. Sort of. The entire place was a spacetime fabrication, brought about by a sophisticated means of technology called a Block Transfer Computation... one of my oldest enemies had constructed it as a trap for me and my companions.

So ... really, by the end of it, none of the people were completely real - all just figments. It was a pity, too - they really were lovely people.

You mean you were inside a computer? How is that possible? You'd have to shrink way down!

[ His knowledge of technology is so limited okay, he barely knows how to use a computer and cellphone. ]

Oh, nono. It -- you see, Block Transfer Computations work on a much larger scale, they effect the physics of reality itself. If one constructs something with a Block Transfer Computation, as long as the machine itself remains intact and the connection live, everything constructed is as real as you and I.

Once it's destroyed, however, it all folds in and collapses.

So it's like a dream that can kill you.

[he considers that, at length] A waking dream, yes. ... I do have to hand it to the Master in that regard ... creating a place that I thought would help me to heal, but in reality, was designed to obliterate me. He really does -- did -- have his moments of cleverness.

Waking dream. I have those a lot.

The Master is your arch-nemesis? That name sounds cliché and not intimidating at all.

Do you? ... Is it because of ... [he gestures vaguely to his forehead. DO THE HORNS DO THINGS TO YOUR BRAIN, BOY?]

Yeeeees, well, he chose it himself, I certainly tried to tell him it was ridiculous.

[ Joshua just raises an eyebrow at that question, not quite getting it. It's normal for him. Isn't it normal for everybody? Oh well everybody sucks. ]

That doesn't sound like a very convincing speech. I would have chosen the other side, too, if that was all you offered me.

[quietly] Believe me, it wasn't all I offered him. But I suppose by that point he was too far gone, too overwhelmed, to even consider it all rationally. .... Seeing all of time and space at once can do that to a soul.

Not something I would know about. Is seeing a lot supposed to drive you crazy?

If you see it all at once, the great vastness and complication and scope and grandeur and terror of it, stretching out before you and behind you to eternity, past the edges of possibility, infinite in its simultaneous knowledge and mystery ...

Then, yes, it's a rare person who neither runs from it, nor loses their mind.

[ Joshua doesn't respond, and really anyone could mistake his gaze for being blank, and void of any real thought. The way the rings glow in his eyes only makes it worse, like it's impossible for him to actually focus.

But he's actually paying attention, and contemplating, and understanding quite a bit in the way that it's explained. In fact, he understands so well that his gaze finally moves away, a sudden shift in glance and drawing back in his posture, and Joshua's once again looking back down to his book, quietly flipping another page. ]

[he thought you might understand it, Joshua. he continues, but softly, so that if Joshua chooses to ignore him, he can]

On my home planet, Gallifrey ... everyone is required, at the age of eight, to look into the Untempered Schism ... and see it.

[ He doesn't look up, his voice neutral. ]

That sounds cruel.

I hardly condone it ... but I do understand it, to a point. It's the only way they could conceive to truly help us grasp what it means to travel time. .... Though they could wait until people are a bit older.

What's the point? Do you get to change history?

It's ... complicated. We aren't allowed to cross or alter our own timelines, or certain fixed objects or events in time that are meant to happen ... but we can influence or affect things so that the places and times we visit change of their own volition, gradually.

[ Seeming to give up, he shuts the book with a loud clap. There's a silence, almost forced, but the corner of his lip tugs up a bit. There's a thrum of delight in his voice. ]

I was eleven when I got to see the universe differently.

Edited 2012-02-15 03:48 (UTC)

[he tilts his head at him, startled, but outwardly calm. he's caught somewhere between compassion and simple, plain understanding. if that's when Joshua was bestowed with whatever gave him his horns - or if it was the horns themselves ... no wonder he's so broken, so strange, so difficult to unravel. he'd hardly learned who he was to begin with, and all those pieces of potential were either warped, scattered to the wind, or stitched together oddly]

I see. ... I'm willing to guess you didn't see it by looking into a black hole.

No. This was handed to me, by someone actually worthy of being God if he wanted to. Much more suited to it than any kind sung about in churches these days.

I see. ... I take it by the way you say this that he didn't actually want to be...? [he sounds genuinely curious. it's rare that a person has that kind of potential and doesn't use it]

Not at all.

[ Most definitely not what Joshua meant, but he seems happy enough keeping him in the dark on that subject. ]

[he can guess well enough at what he could have meant, but really, it's clear he won't get a straight answer to the questions he wants to ask, so... what's the point?]

How did you meet?

One day, he showed up outside my window. He said... 'Do you desire power? Then take these. They're the horns of a demon that killed one-hundred of his own kind.'

[ Despite the words, Joshua repeats this sweetly, a memory engraved deeply on him; this isn't anything to hide. He knocks the book haphazardly off his lap, a flick of his wrist suddenly freezing it mid-air, pages appearing just about to flip open. ]

Chrono's horns... Offered by Aion. Mine now.

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cricketycricket - 2012-02-17 20:24 (UTC) - Expand

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ofhope - 2012-02-20 04:51 (UTC) - Expand

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