Freedom Can Be Confusing

[2nd-dii2ciiple.livejournal.com]

Characters: 2nd_dii2ciiple & whoever would like to talk to him!
Setting: Room 2-08 and surrounding areas
Format: Any!
Summary: He's... not quite sure what to make of this
Warnings: slightly broken troll ahoy



The first thing he noticed when he woke was that he was not where he was supposed to be. There was no sign of his control block, or the biowires that should have connected him to his ship. The constant ticking of the computer in the back of his mind was gone as well - he wasn't connected to anything at all.

Panic tried to encroach as his conditioning insisted that he needed to get back to where he belonged right the fuck now, but he fought it off. He hadn't brought himself here, so it wasn't his fault he was disobeying. And flailing around in blind panic wasn't going to get him back to his station any faster.

Besides, if he was very lucky, this might be his opportunity to finally break free of his punishment of slavery. He'd almost lost hope that this moment would ever come.

The distress of finding himself dressed in plain white without even the tiniest indication of his symbol was enough to distract him long enough to read the letters and scout the tiny room. Thankfully a cursory search was more than enough to reveal the clean change of clothes waiting for him in an otherwise empty trunk, and he changed quickly.

Not a single hole for the biowire connectors. No sign of his hated helmet. He felt more like the Ψiioniic than the Helmsman, for the first time in nearly a sweep. Although he couldn't remove the collar, and he assumed the blue colour meant he was now owned by a blue-blood of that shade. It was actually a fairly ingenious method of identification. The problem was that he had no idea who it was, or where to find his new master.

Or, for that matter, why the Condesce would have suddenly decided to sell her most powerful Helmsman.

Time to find out what was going on.

Outside the room he found himself in a corridor full of doors just like the one he'd come out of. He turned to look back at his door, and saw a list of names, presumably the occupants. His was the last.

Right above it was a name he'd thought he would never see again. The Signless.

Just the sight of it was enough to send his panic rushing back in on him, intensified by the forbidden name. He reeled against the wall, staring in shock and disbelief. It couldn't be him. The Signless was dead.

And a part of Ψiioniic had died with him.

Comments

[2nd-dii2ciiple.livejournal.com]

"It will get better, if I can jutht stick it out," Ψiioniic agreed. "I... escaped onthe before, and managed to break my conditioning. I thpent three sweeps free, following a troll who believed that we weren't meant to be enthlaved. Of course," he added with grim humour, "That meanth when they captured me again, they made the conditioning twice as strong. Tho it won't be as easy this time. But it is possible."

All the more so if what the sign on the door said was true and Signless was really alive.

"Before... I like computerth," he offered, thinking back on his adolescence. "I'm a damned good hacker. And games, I write - wrote - computer games."

[lethechained.livejournal.com]

She nodded, starting to smile; so she'd been right. However, the smile never reached fruition in the face of the rest of that thought. Belatedly, to his assertion that it was possible, "...Right." This was followed by a more conscious attempt at a smile. He could probably do with some encouragement, couldn't he?

"Computers?" Huh. "I've never played a game on one, but I've... been around some before." And in one. She'd done some hacking herself, but that was through an entirely different method than the average hacking, and there was no way she could have done it in a normal situation. She decided against mentioning it, at least for now; that was not a can of worms she wanted to open. "They are pretty interesting. There are some computers here. I don't know how useful they'll be, but they might be worth a look."

[2nd-dii2ciiple.livejournal.com]

The way her smile kept faltering worried him a little, but she seemed to be trying hard to be cheerful. He smiled back at her, just as uncertain, but trying hard to respond in kind. She was being so nice, he wanted he to know he appreciated it.

"Computerth just... make sense, to me," he confessed. "They're logical, they always give you the thame answer, and they do what you want them to if you know how to tell them to do it. Not like people. People are tho hard to predict, and even harder to understand. What about you? What do you do for fun?"

[lethechained.livejournal.com]

His own attempt at a smile encouraged hers as well as encouraged it to be more encouraging. It was a vicious cycle, but in a good way?

"I know what you mean. A heart is so much more complicated than data is." She knew someone who'd learned that one the hard way. "...Me? I..." She tilted her head one way, and then the other. "I think I like to draw." It was the answer she usually gave, anyway. "Other than that, I... don't really know." It was obvious she was still thinking about it, and the evidence only piled up when she added suddenly, "I guess I like seeing new places and people, too" She'd never gotten the chance to, before, and being surrounded by others who could and did on a regular basis certainly nurtured that interest.