![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynSome of you may have heard of the Two Lines Fanfiction Challenge before. This is how it works:
"The Two Lines Challenge assigns, literally, two lines from a song to a participant, who then writes a story based on those lyrics. This is not a songfic; the challenge lies in setting a mood, tone or theme based on those two lines alone. The challenge is multi-fandom."
I signed up some time ago, and got my lyrics, but only just managed to get the fic written today. The fandom is Ghostbusters; the setting is the 'verse of the Ghostbusters: Legion comic book, where Ray and Peter and Egon had a fourth partner in their scientific endeavors at Columbia University, a young man named Michael Draverhaven. I thought I'd go back to the beginning, after seeing the lines I was given. Said lines...
allow me some time to play with your mind
and you'll get there again and again
-janet jackson, if
Listen
A Two Lines Challenge Fic
Columbia University sent me a form six weeks ago asking me my preferences in a roommate. It might've been the first time anybody ever asked me what I wanted out of my life, even if it was only a token gesture. Mom said universities ignored the roommate preference forms. Dad... was Dad about it. "Put whatever you want, Mike" he said. "You'll be back here by midterms. New York will eat you alive." And that was that.
They argued about it that night but they always argued, every night, so I didn't make the mistake of assuming they cared.
Quiet, I checked off on the form. I got enough of noise at home. Studious, too- not that I cared, but the alternative was 'fond of parties'. Parties and I never got along; why should school be any different? The other boxes- well- Smoker or non? Late sleeper or early riser?- not very relevant. Non, I finally said. I was used to smoke- you had to be, if you lived with Madeline Draverhaven- but my books were starting to get angry about smelling like old tobacco. As for the other- Late sleeper. They probably wouldn't care much if I stayed up until Aldebaran reached its zenith before sitting down to read the rest of my books.
So that's what I told them. They gave me a room number and a name. I moved my books in by myself- not like I had much else to move in- and sat down to wait. I'm trying to figure out whether the scratch in the binding on the Spates Catalog was there before the move when the knock comes at the door. Go away, I think. "Yeah, it's open," I say.
The door creaks- oh, great, one of those. Whoever it is, is trying to be polite. Five dollars says they're cringing. That, or they're one of those disgustingly perky people they hire to act as RA's around here, and they're trying to get attention without intruding. I look over my shoulder-
Good God, he can't be more than fifteen... Skinny little thing, dark hair, big eyes. He looks like the kind of kid the jocks back in Rocky River High used to bounce off bathroom walls just because they could. If I dropped something heavy he'd probably jump out of his shoes. Probably someone's younger brother.
"Um, hi," he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stands in the doorway. "This is room four fifteen, right? Carman Hall?"
"That's what it says on the door."
"Oh, good," he says. And-
Whoa. Where'd the scared rabbit go? The kid's smiling like- like- damn, I don't know if anyone's ever smiled like that around me while they were alive...
"Whoa! You've got The Hunting of the Greene Lyon- I didn't even know that was published in this country! Do you have any of Newton's actual alchemical works or is it just as a reference? That's so cool-"
He's touching the books. He's touching the books. Those are mine, dammit, nobody touches those- "Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?"
And he jumps back from the bookshelf as if the volume of Tobin bit him. Which it might have. It hasn't been fed lately. "I'm sorry!" he yelps. "I just- I- I swear I wasn't going to-" Damn, his lip's wobbling. "I wasn't going to hurt them..."
"Maybe. But they might've hurt you." It's more than I should tell him, but there's this... kicked-puppy look to him. "These aren't the kind of books you can just take down and play with-"
"Excuse me," he says, holding up a finger. "I know how to treat old books properly. I wasn't going to play with them. I just wanted to see."
"Fine." If I can just get between him and the shelves, it'll be all right. He'll have to back off them. "But they're not yours, so don't-"
"Ray?" comes the voice from out in the hallway. "Did you find the room?"
The kid turns around and yells, "This is it, Dad," and my stomach goes Gordian, because the form from Columbia said my roommate's name was going to be Ray Stantz.
Do you have any idea what it's like to realize that it's three in the morning, that you've missed everything you planned for the few stargazing hours available in New York City, and that you really don't care?
To realize that you've been talking to someone- an actual, palpable, living, breathing, responsive someone- who hasn't once laughed in your face, or cringed at something you said?
His father didn't like me, I could tell. That's nothing new. I get that so often that I'm beyond caring about it any more. At least he was polite, which is more than I can say for most adults. I know what they think of me; sooner or later it always gets back to me, one way or another, even if I have to dig it out of their shadows. But Ray- he's different. He's just interested. In everything. Absolutely everything, he says- his father mentioned that his first collection of Fort was a ninth birthday gift.
He ought to be like all the others. He has no right not to be like the others.
He's talking to me. He's listening. He's looking at my books and he isn't backing away slowly or making contemptuous noises.
He doesn't know me. He's not afraid, though. I think he might actually want to know.
He's not afraid of me.
I can't let that get away.
"Oh, man," Ray says, stretching his arms over his head- I can hear popping even from this side of the room. "What time is it? I have class at eight..."
"Three, I'm afraid." Where did I put my schedule? "I don't think I have to be anywhere until ten..."
"Lucky." He rubs his face with both hands. "Does the cafeteria serve coffee? I'm gonna need it in the morning."
"What, you're going to actually try and sleep now?"
"Well, yeah," he says. "Is that bad?"
"You have to be in class at eight- whose class is it?"
"Um. Rossum's? Yeah. Introductory engineering-" I hear him yawn. "And then I've got Frontiers of Science back-to-back. No time for coffee, and I don't think I can eat enough sugar between periods to keep running all through the second class."
I should tell him we don't have periods in college, but- "You sound like you know what you're talking about. Do you stay up this late often?"
"Oh yeah." He smiles. "All the time. I get my best ideas after all the rational people've gone to sleep."
This may be the first time I've actually wanted to smile since leaving Cleveland. "Ray," I say, "I think you and I are going to get along just fine."
He's sitting on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest, sucking on the end of a pen and staring at the course listing for next semester. "Yo, Mike," he says without looking up. "Do you know anything about Professor Csordas?"
"The physicist?" I have to think for a minute as I hang up my jacket. "There's a rumor that he's actually a comp sci experimental android. I don't think anyone's ever seen him smile properly. Why?"
"Mmmnh... sorry, just trying to plot out what I need to study now if I'm gonna get into the Swansea program."
"Swansea?"
He nods. "Particle physics and cosmology degree. I haven't declared a major yet."
Particle physics... not a field I know at all, except for a few glimpses down the wrong corridors now and again. More math than I care to handle- not that I have anything against math, but I prefer mine in the form of gematria and runic computations.
Ray probably sees it on my face, because that's when he puts down the book. "Is something wrong?"
I shrug. "Should there be?"
"Well, yeah- you look like you smell something nasty."
"I always look like that."
"No, you don't. C'mon, Mike, what's up?"
"Sorry." The wall feels nice and solid behind my back; it hasn't tried to talk to me in a week, so I figure leaning on it is probably safe. "I don't think I could last through a class like that for more than two days, at the very most."
"Why not?" he asks, blinking as if I'd said i didn't think I could swallow water. "You're smart enough for it-"
That gets a 'stop' signal from me, and a rueful little smile. "Thank you, Ray, but- no. Definitely not. Physics is too solid for me."
"Particle physics, Mike, not the Newtonian stuff. We're talking the math that goes right into the absolutely fundamental structure of the universe here." He's grinning. I don't think he even knows he's doing it. It happens when he talks about something that interests him, which means that it happens a lot. "The kind of stuff you can learn that way-"
"Isn't the kind of stuff that I'm interested in learning," I have to tell him firmly. "Sorry."
"Well- why on Earth not?" he asks, all baffled and confused.
What do you tell someone like that? That you've tried to pay attention in the physical science classes before? That half of it is lies people tell themselves so that they can sleep at night, safe in the false knowledge that the world makes sense even if it's at a level they'll never understand? That the rest of it is averages and hypotheses and nothing but the consensus of scientists who think that calling it a law makes it so? The world is chaos, Ray. It's mystery all the way down. The scientists aren't going to understand it, not ever. Not as long as there are things whispering in the shadows between the solid places that don't follow their rules, seeping in wherever they can find a listening ear and a willing angle... He won't understand.
Or maybe he will... but not as he is now.
"There's... other things out there, Ray. Stuff that... well, the school doesn't-"
I don't have to finish the sentence. His eyes flick over to the bookshelf and back again.
"Yeah. That."
"You're... kind of at the wrong school if that's what you want to study," he says slowly. "You should've gone to Duke..."
There's a waver in his voice. I don't know if it's fear or not. It might be. God, I don't want it to be. Please, not now. Please.
"The Parapsychology Lab, you mean?" He nods. "That's not what I mean. I'm not going to spend my academic career putting ping-pong balls over people's eyeballs, or asking other students to guess what's on the card."
"Well," he says, "that's not all they study-"
"It's most of it. I want more. You know that."
He lets out a sigh. "Which is what I've been saying. Mike, if you really and truly want to understand-"
The desk is covered in tiny things made of wire and metal. They go ting! when my hands come down on it. "That's what I'm saying, Ray! I want to- do you?"
And now he's staring at me. No change of expression, no change of breath like he's going to speak, just staring-
I'm going to lose him. The only person who ever listened to me, who ever even tried.
There's a piece of wire with red insulation stuck to my palm as I stand away from the desk. I need a moment to breathe.
I. Will. Not. Lose. Him.
"Ray. Please. Listen to me. Don't- don't say anything. I need to- just listen to me, all right?"
He nods, slowly, like his head's not really sure it wants to stay in the same room as the rest of him.
"Say you discovered something- something incredible, something completely beyond anything that any of your professors or fellow students had ever known. Something that changed the whole world just by the fact that it existed. Something that lay completely outside all the known scientific boundaries and theories, so far out there that there was no way you could think of to explain it to anyone... but you knew, you absolutely, positively knew that it was real. And that it would change everything. Would you just let that go?"
"Mike, the whole point of the hard sciences is to go out there and discover that kind of stuff and make it knowable," he says.
"That's not enough, Ray. There's more to the world than that- to everything than that. Subatomic particles can't account for everything. Quantum functions aren't enough. Have the physicists accounted for intelligence yet? Seriously- have they come up with the equations that define sentience? Do they have a particle or a waveform yet that irrefutably represents consciousness?"
He starts to open his mouth, and then he stops. But I think he's still listening.
"I'm not talking about biological stuff here, Ray, I'm talking about the intelligences and entities that share this world with us that we don't see because we haven't got the capacity to even comprehend them. I know there are. I've-" heard them talking to one another. Sensed their presence. Felt the touch of something so alien I blacked out because my mind couldn't interface with it. "-seen enough evidence to know that I need more. I have to-" show them, show all of them, make it impossible to ignore- "prove it. I came to Columbia because I thought I could find the beginnings of the way to make my case here. The study of possible parallel planes of existence inhabited by nonhuman sentiences has to begin somewhere. I think they'll listen, if I can just find the way to prove that I know what I'm talking about and that it's worth studying."
"Is it?" Ray asks softly, but what I hear is, please tell me it is. So I do.
"It is. It'll change the world. Forever." I pause. "And that's more than any new equation for the decay of some new subatomic particle will ever do."
He flinches. It's got guilt to it, that gesture. He denied something without thinking about it, and he considers that a cardinal sin, I know he does. I can use that...
I say it quietly, so he has to lean in closer to hear me properly. "You can be part of that, you know," I tell him. "A big part of that. Can you imagine the looks on the faces of people like Csordas and Greksa when they see the proof of the existence of spirits laid out in their own language? You've been a scientist since you were a kid. You know how to take an idea and prove it in words they can't ignore."
Ray looks down, biting his bottom lip, not willing to say anything. I think he wants to, but he can't make himself do it yet.
"Think about it, Ray. Once the world was flat, and then we proved it wasn't, and everything changed. Once we knew that fire was the only proof against the night, and then we tamed electricity, and the darkness ran away. Right now, people out there know that the world is a simple, bounded place, all neat and fixed and solid and-" He hates this word. I've heard him say it as if it were a curse. "-mundane."
He jerks like a bass with a hook in its jaw.
"People can ignore the implications of a new particle, or of the topographical structure of the universe, but they can't ignore another world lying alongside their own," I say, fighting down the grin that's trying to get out. He's listening now. He can't not. "Think about that- that's all I ask. Just think about how much of a difference proving something like that would make. You could be part of that..."
I drop my hands, and the little red wire comes loose and falls to the desktop. Ray shivers at the microscopic sound, looking up.
Even though what comes out of his mouth is "I'll think about it, Mike," that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is, I need a few days to justify this to myself, but I'll get there. So I nod, and I thank him, and somehow we find our way back to ordinary topics of conversation from there.
He's coming with me now, whether he knows it or not.
I won't lose him.
"The Two Lines Challenge assigns, literally, two lines from a song to a participant, who then writes a story based on those lyrics. This is not a songfic; the challenge lies in setting a mood, tone or theme based on those two lines alone. The challenge is multi-fandom."
I signed up some time ago, and got my lyrics, but only just managed to get the fic written today. The fandom is Ghostbusters; the setting is the 'verse of the Ghostbusters: Legion comic book, where Ray and Peter and Egon had a fourth partner in their scientific endeavors at Columbia University, a young man named Michael Draverhaven. I thought I'd go back to the beginning, after seeing the lines I was given. Said lines...
allow me some time to play with your mind
and you'll get there again and again
-janet jackson, if
Listen
A Two Lines Challenge Fic
Columbia University sent me a form six weeks ago asking me my preferences in a roommate. It might've been the first time anybody ever asked me what I wanted out of my life, even if it was only a token gesture. Mom said universities ignored the roommate preference forms. Dad... was Dad about it. "Put whatever you want, Mike" he said. "You'll be back here by midterms. New York will eat you alive." And that was that.
They argued about it that night but they always argued, every night, so I didn't make the mistake of assuming they cared.
Quiet, I checked off on the form. I got enough of noise at home. Studious, too- not that I cared, but the alternative was 'fond of parties'. Parties and I never got along; why should school be any different? The other boxes- well- Smoker or non? Late sleeper or early riser?- not very relevant. Non, I finally said. I was used to smoke- you had to be, if you lived with Madeline Draverhaven- but my books were starting to get angry about smelling like old tobacco. As for the other- Late sleeper. They probably wouldn't care much if I stayed up until Aldebaran reached its zenith before sitting down to read the rest of my books.
So that's what I told them. They gave me a room number and a name. I moved my books in by myself- not like I had much else to move in- and sat down to wait. I'm trying to figure out whether the scratch in the binding on the Spates Catalog was there before the move when the knock comes at the door. Go away, I think. "Yeah, it's open," I say.
The door creaks- oh, great, one of those. Whoever it is, is trying to be polite. Five dollars says they're cringing. That, or they're one of those disgustingly perky people they hire to act as RA's around here, and they're trying to get attention without intruding. I look over my shoulder-
Good God, he can't be more than fifteen... Skinny little thing, dark hair, big eyes. He looks like the kind of kid the jocks back in Rocky River High used to bounce off bathroom walls just because they could. If I dropped something heavy he'd probably jump out of his shoes. Probably someone's younger brother.
"Um, hi," he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stands in the doorway. "This is room four fifteen, right? Carman Hall?"
"That's what it says on the door."
"Oh, good," he says. And-
Whoa. Where'd the scared rabbit go? The kid's smiling like- like- damn, I don't know if anyone's ever smiled like that around me while they were alive...
"Whoa! You've got The Hunting of the Greene Lyon- I didn't even know that was published in this country! Do you have any of Newton's actual alchemical works or is it just as a reference? That's so cool-"
He's touching the books. He's touching the books. Those are mine, dammit, nobody touches those- "Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?"
And he jumps back from the bookshelf as if the volume of Tobin bit him. Which it might have. It hasn't been fed lately. "I'm sorry!" he yelps. "I just- I- I swear I wasn't going to-" Damn, his lip's wobbling. "I wasn't going to hurt them..."
"Maybe. But they might've hurt you." It's more than I should tell him, but there's this... kicked-puppy look to him. "These aren't the kind of books you can just take down and play with-"
"Excuse me," he says, holding up a finger. "I know how to treat old books properly. I wasn't going to play with them. I just wanted to see."
"Fine." If I can just get between him and the shelves, it'll be all right. He'll have to back off them. "But they're not yours, so don't-"
"Ray?" comes the voice from out in the hallway. "Did you find the room?"
The kid turns around and yells, "This is it, Dad," and my stomach goes Gordian, because the form from Columbia said my roommate's name was going to be Ray Stantz.
Do you have any idea what it's like to realize that it's three in the morning, that you've missed everything you planned for the few stargazing hours available in New York City, and that you really don't care?
To realize that you've been talking to someone- an actual, palpable, living, breathing, responsive someone- who hasn't once laughed in your face, or cringed at something you said?
His father didn't like me, I could tell. That's nothing new. I get that so often that I'm beyond caring about it any more. At least he was polite, which is more than I can say for most adults. I know what they think of me; sooner or later it always gets back to me, one way or another, even if I have to dig it out of their shadows. But Ray- he's different. He's just interested. In everything. Absolutely everything, he says- his father mentioned that his first collection of Fort was a ninth birthday gift.
He ought to be like all the others. He has no right not to be like the others.
He's talking to me. He's listening. He's looking at my books and he isn't backing away slowly or making contemptuous noises.
He doesn't know me. He's not afraid, though. I think he might actually want to know.
He's not afraid of me.
I can't let that get away.
"Oh, man," Ray says, stretching his arms over his head- I can hear popping even from this side of the room. "What time is it? I have class at eight..."
"Three, I'm afraid." Where did I put my schedule? "I don't think I have to be anywhere until ten..."
"Lucky." He rubs his face with both hands. "Does the cafeteria serve coffee? I'm gonna need it in the morning."
"What, you're going to actually try and sleep now?"
"Well, yeah," he says. "Is that bad?"
"You have to be in class at eight- whose class is it?"
"Um. Rossum's? Yeah. Introductory engineering-" I hear him yawn. "And then I've got Frontiers of Science back-to-back. No time for coffee, and I don't think I can eat enough sugar between periods to keep running all through the second class."
I should tell him we don't have periods in college, but- "You sound like you know what you're talking about. Do you stay up this late often?"
"Oh yeah." He smiles. "All the time. I get my best ideas after all the rational people've gone to sleep."
This may be the first time I've actually wanted to smile since leaving Cleveland. "Ray," I say, "I think you and I are going to get along just fine."
He's sitting on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest, sucking on the end of a pen and staring at the course listing for next semester. "Yo, Mike," he says without looking up. "Do you know anything about Professor Csordas?"
"The physicist?" I have to think for a minute as I hang up my jacket. "There's a rumor that he's actually a comp sci experimental android. I don't think anyone's ever seen him smile properly. Why?"
"Mmmnh... sorry, just trying to plot out what I need to study now if I'm gonna get into the Swansea program."
"Swansea?"
He nods. "Particle physics and cosmology degree. I haven't declared a major yet."
Particle physics... not a field I know at all, except for a few glimpses down the wrong corridors now and again. More math than I care to handle- not that I have anything against math, but I prefer mine in the form of gematria and runic computations.
Ray probably sees it on my face, because that's when he puts down the book. "Is something wrong?"
I shrug. "Should there be?"
"Well, yeah- you look like you smell something nasty."
"I always look like that."
"No, you don't. C'mon, Mike, what's up?"
"Sorry." The wall feels nice and solid behind my back; it hasn't tried to talk to me in a week, so I figure leaning on it is probably safe. "I don't think I could last through a class like that for more than two days, at the very most."
"Why not?" he asks, blinking as if I'd said i didn't think I could swallow water. "You're smart enough for it-"
That gets a 'stop' signal from me, and a rueful little smile. "Thank you, Ray, but- no. Definitely not. Physics is too solid for me."
"Particle physics, Mike, not the Newtonian stuff. We're talking the math that goes right into the absolutely fundamental structure of the universe here." He's grinning. I don't think he even knows he's doing it. It happens when he talks about something that interests him, which means that it happens a lot. "The kind of stuff you can learn that way-"
"Isn't the kind of stuff that I'm interested in learning," I have to tell him firmly. "Sorry."
"Well- why on Earth not?" he asks, all baffled and confused.
What do you tell someone like that? That you've tried to pay attention in the physical science classes before? That half of it is lies people tell themselves so that they can sleep at night, safe in the false knowledge that the world makes sense even if it's at a level they'll never understand? That the rest of it is averages and hypotheses and nothing but the consensus of scientists who think that calling it a law makes it so? The world is chaos, Ray. It's mystery all the way down. The scientists aren't going to understand it, not ever. Not as long as there are things whispering in the shadows between the solid places that don't follow their rules, seeping in wherever they can find a listening ear and a willing angle... He won't understand.
Or maybe he will... but not as he is now.
"There's... other things out there, Ray. Stuff that... well, the school doesn't-"
I don't have to finish the sentence. His eyes flick over to the bookshelf and back again.
"Yeah. That."
"You're... kind of at the wrong school if that's what you want to study," he says slowly. "You should've gone to Duke..."
There's a waver in his voice. I don't know if it's fear or not. It might be. God, I don't want it to be. Please, not now. Please.
"The Parapsychology Lab, you mean?" He nods. "That's not what I mean. I'm not going to spend my academic career putting ping-pong balls over people's eyeballs, or asking other students to guess what's on the card."
"Well," he says, "that's not all they study-"
"It's most of it. I want more. You know that."
He lets out a sigh. "Which is what I've been saying. Mike, if you really and truly want to understand-"
The desk is covered in tiny things made of wire and metal. They go ting! when my hands come down on it. "That's what I'm saying, Ray! I want to- do you?"
And now he's staring at me. No change of expression, no change of breath like he's going to speak, just staring-
I'm going to lose him. The only person who ever listened to me, who ever even tried.
There's a piece of wire with red insulation stuck to my palm as I stand away from the desk. I need a moment to breathe.
I. Will. Not. Lose. Him.
"Ray. Please. Listen to me. Don't- don't say anything. I need to- just listen to me, all right?"
He nods, slowly, like his head's not really sure it wants to stay in the same room as the rest of him.
"Say you discovered something- something incredible, something completely beyond anything that any of your professors or fellow students had ever known. Something that changed the whole world just by the fact that it existed. Something that lay completely outside all the known scientific boundaries and theories, so far out there that there was no way you could think of to explain it to anyone... but you knew, you absolutely, positively knew that it was real. And that it would change everything. Would you just let that go?"
"Mike, the whole point of the hard sciences is to go out there and discover that kind of stuff and make it knowable," he says.
"That's not enough, Ray. There's more to the world than that- to everything than that. Subatomic particles can't account for everything. Quantum functions aren't enough. Have the physicists accounted for intelligence yet? Seriously- have they come up with the equations that define sentience? Do they have a particle or a waveform yet that irrefutably represents consciousness?"
He starts to open his mouth, and then he stops. But I think he's still listening.
"I'm not talking about biological stuff here, Ray, I'm talking about the intelligences and entities that share this world with us that we don't see because we haven't got the capacity to even comprehend them. I know there are. I've-" heard them talking to one another. Sensed their presence. Felt the touch of something so alien I blacked out because my mind couldn't interface with it. "-seen enough evidence to know that I need more. I have to-" show them, show all of them, make it impossible to ignore- "prove it. I came to Columbia because I thought I could find the beginnings of the way to make my case here. The study of possible parallel planes of existence inhabited by nonhuman sentiences has to begin somewhere. I think they'll listen, if I can just find the way to prove that I know what I'm talking about and that it's worth studying."
"Is it?" Ray asks softly, but what I hear is, please tell me it is. So I do.
"It is. It'll change the world. Forever." I pause. "And that's more than any new equation for the decay of some new subatomic particle will ever do."
He flinches. It's got guilt to it, that gesture. He denied something without thinking about it, and he considers that a cardinal sin, I know he does. I can use that...
I say it quietly, so he has to lean in closer to hear me properly. "You can be part of that, you know," I tell him. "A big part of that. Can you imagine the looks on the faces of people like Csordas and Greksa when they see the proof of the existence of spirits laid out in their own language? You've been a scientist since you were a kid. You know how to take an idea and prove it in words they can't ignore."
Ray looks down, biting his bottom lip, not willing to say anything. I think he wants to, but he can't make himself do it yet.
"Think about it, Ray. Once the world was flat, and then we proved it wasn't, and everything changed. Once we knew that fire was the only proof against the night, and then we tamed electricity, and the darkness ran away. Right now, people out there know that the world is a simple, bounded place, all neat and fixed and solid and-" He hates this word. I've heard him say it as if it were a curse. "-mundane."
He jerks like a bass with a hook in its jaw.
"People can ignore the implications of a new particle, or of the topographical structure of the universe, but they can't ignore another world lying alongside their own," I say, fighting down the grin that's trying to get out. He's listening now. He can't not. "Think about that- that's all I ask. Just think about how much of a difference proving something like that would make. You could be part of that..."
I drop my hands, and the little red wire comes loose and falls to the desktop. Ray shivers at the microscopic sound, looking up.
Even though what comes out of his mouth is "I'll think about it, Mike," that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is, I need a few days to justify this to myself, but I'll get there. So I nod, and I thank him, and somehow we find our way back to ordinary topics of conversation from there.
He's coming with me now, whether he knows it or not.
I won't lose him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 06:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 07:40 pm (UTC)It was a place full of beautiful ideas, incredible truths hidden right in the open just behind the next equation, if only I could bend my mind to meet them. The desire for that is one of the things I liked the most about being there, and it's nice to recapture it.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 12:46 pm (UTC)But yeah, I was fully aware of the really disturbing overtones from Mike's end of things. I'm pretty sure he'd deny them if he was confronted about it directly, but oh, yeah, they were there.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 02:33 pm (UTC)Gah. Gaaaaaah.
I GO SCRUB OUT MY BRAIN NOW. A LOT.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 03:37 pm (UTC)That bad?
*googles the lyrics*
*reads lyrics*
*shudders*
Pass the brain bleach!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 03:38 pm (UTC)Brrr. Just brrr.
Damn am I glad I listened to Shanelle and didn't google for the rest of the song until after I was done. (Although if I had, I probably would have found someone else to write the fic about.)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:47 pm (UTC)Wonderful, Cam! Love how you got right into his head and made yourself at home. Beautifully disturbing. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 09:44 am (UTC)Actually, he rather reminds me of me, with a significant Lovecraftian bent--somewhere between "Rocky River High School" and "runic calculations" I laughed and pointed.
Well done, as always!
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 12:39 pm (UTC)(The runic thing is a total coincidence. The only mention the character makes of runes in the comic refers to a Polynesian sacred design.)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 12:49 pm (UTC)I mean, I cheerfully talk about the native spirits of the Internet, I know I'm not right.
(The runic thing is a total coincidence. The only mention the character makes of runes in the comic refers to a Polynesian sacred design.)
Weeeeellll, if you take "rune" in a general sense of "mystery", that almost works, kinda-sorta.
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 12:58 pm (UTC)And yes, I plundered the Case anthropology department roster for his professor names, although Csordas doesn't seem to be with them any more.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 07:04 pm (UTC)