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The two Emtai capsules have pride of place in the center of the makerspace. One of them is fully assembled, gleaming brightly under the lights, its screens and readouts all humming cheerfully and reporting fully operational. The other is strewn about the room like it exploded without actual damage to its constituent parts. Most are labelled, some are not. In the middle of it all, wearing a set of work coveralls, is Amos.
Amos is a big man but a compact man. He's only about 5'10" tall, but it's almost all muscle. And he's handsome as hell, in that brooding north African kind of way. The silk scarf tied about his neck is a decidedly anachronistic bit of flair that clashes with his dirty hands and coveralls, but the way his eye socket grips that monocle, it's very genuinely worn.
He's humming to himself while polishing a plate of perfected metal.
Diamond enters the Makerspace just as she set her new-ish sophis bracelet around her wrist, a simple construction, mostly using magic and materials that contains a bit of stored potentia. A blue turtleneck sweater, a light black scarf and a pair of loose slacks and heels that clicks on the floor. She stops to pay attention to the dismantled Emtai capsule and examine a smaller part, after rolling up her sleeves and then sets it back down carefully.
"Do you prefer your former name or the new one you picked?" Kay finally speaks up, hoping not to disturb or startle Amos in the midst of his work. "Is now a good time?"
"I prefer my old one, thanks," Amos answers with a broad, white, rakish grin. That grin has won him many favors in life, no doubt. His accent is very odd. It's very much Philadelphia. And it's also very clearly tinged with a distinctly French lilt to the vowels. There are a thousand shades of the 'Philadelphia immigrant' accent. This is a very specific one.
"What about you? Wait-- I will guess." He tosses the towel he's holding over his shoulder and sets the panel piece back down onto the work table. "You prefer your old one, too. You have an honest face." He says this as though paying her a high compliment. "But all the same, what may I call you?"
"I quite like being called Kay, it's more honest to who I turned out to be. It's short for Kayla." Kay smiles, leaning against the nearby table. "My Fancy name would be Diamond, if you ever need it." they offer quietly.
"I'm pleased to meet you in better circumstances, Amos." Kay offers a handshake. "Though I admit I'm not sure you remember the same circumstances that me and others do."
"Enchanted," he assures her as he accepts her hand, not being so awkward as to resort to actual employment of French. But he does bow slightly over her hand as he shakes it. Just a hair.
"I think you might be surprised by what we remember. There's definitely a fever dream quality to much of it, but also much of it is just... hiding in the back of my mind. Waiting to leap out with knowledge I don't quite know how I possess. Ethos is hypothesizing that ... maybe when we pulled our souls and minds out of..." He trails off and then ticks his head at the still working cabinet. No. To the Consciousness Module plugged in to its head.
"That perhaps it pulled the rest out, too. It's not there, in any case. The digital part of that digital-human consciousness? It's gone, too. Just an empty jar with a dog brain, now." He finally releases her hand, aware he'd been holding it rather longer than socially polite.
"Sorry. But. Yes. Anyway. I remember the flight and the fight in a way I can't explain to you. Because it doesn't involve sight or sound or vision or smell or taste or touch, just awareness and reaction, impulse and response. Or, on a more basic level, input and output. I remember it the way a machine remembers. And I can't translate that. Not. Directly. Maybe to Mark-- probably to Mark. But it's incredibly alienating."
Kay listens to what he's saying, barely noticing the hand shake lasting longer, her mind wandering slightly as the man speaks. They hear and understand the word Amos is speaking fully, but the images and thoughts they conjure momentarily draws her attention elsewhere, for a brief moment.
"Processing and translating information, memories from wildly different point of experiences is a transformation process that's rather difficult to communicate in a way that others might understand." A short pause. "Like a flower that holds the key to the memories of a dead person."
"If you remember anything at all from then, I offer my apologies to you for the strenuous ... moments and the initial distrust."
"Er," Amos temporizes for a moment, trying to put her trailing comment into a meaningful context. At last, he thinks he understands. Or is just being polite. "Yes! A bit like that. I imagine." Amos's grin becomes a simple smile, and he nods his head just a touch, turning away to look back to the work on his table.
The apology is brushed off with a small shrug. "People keep telling me that everything happened the way it did because it had to. There is some great war going on, and I'm caught up in it, and in fact have been drafted into it by one side. Because another side did it to me first. But I am free now?" He gives her a dubious side-eye squint. He's calling bullshit on that one.
"I am a smart enough chappie, miss, to know when I am a pawn in someone else's game. Right now I am trying to decide if I feel it's worth winning, before I consent to go on fighting it." (edited)
"Yeah, I can feel you on the pawn thing. The whole event surrounding this..." They gesture around to the many different parts strewn about the room, to the Emtai capsule and to them both. "The way it ended leaves me feeling like a piece on a big game too"
"So, freedom feels like a strange thing to claim in the moment, no matter how one would look at it." Kay rolls her shoulder. "Just because I happen to agree with the side that did it... does not fill me with joy."
"So here's my reasoning, then," Amos confides to Kay, taking a half step closer to her, but turning his body out so that the closing of distance is companionable rather than intimate. Sharing a secret. "If all of this happened because it had to happen, that doesn't mean I don't have the ability to decide what to do now. It just means everything brought me to this choice. True, this decision may be foregone, too. But it needn't be necessarily. And if I, in the here and now, decide that none of this is worth it? I can walk away. And anyone who says I can't can stop insisting to me that everything I've done-- or has happened to me --has been because it had to happen. So. That is what I am doing. Deciding."
He nods his head once, adds a wink to it for good measure. "I have so much to talk about. But I don't know where to start. Ethos and Charlie, they've been helping me focus by asking me questions that help them put me and all of this into context. They're nice young men, and they don't push me. If you want to do as they have done and simply ask me questions you need answered and accepting no for an answer? We can do that. Might go easier with a drink in my hand, admittedly."
Kay nods and looks back toward another area of the lodge. "I know where a few good bottles are."
"If anyone tries to stop you from walking away, if that's what you chose to do, I will build roads they can't follow for you to walk away on." Kay says with a rare intensity to her intent. "And then probably join you on them for a while."
They shake their heads there. "I need to speak with Charlie and Ethos more." a soft sigh follows. "I do have quite a few questions and I imagine you might too, so." A small gesture toward deeper into the lodge. "What kind of drink do you prefer by the way? So I know which bottles to abscond with ?"
"My father was a cognac man, so of course I prefer Tennessee Whiskey." Amos says this with another of his wide, ask-for-nothing-get-the-world grins, and crosses over to the sink to begin scrubbing up his hands. "I think he might have liked what you had going on, here. Though he was Muslim, he had a dim view of French colonialism. So much so he decided to join an escadrille. Because that will show them, right? Win their wars for them?" His head shakes with a laugh, "It was a different time."
Washed up, he unzippers his coveralls and their boot sides and slips out of them. Beneath it all, he'd been wearing a white dress shirt and gray slacks. The matching jacket he fetches from a hanger near the door and slips into without fanfare, tucking his scarf in to serve as something of a cravat.
The monocle stays.
He holds the door open for her, "After you."
Kay laughs, walking through the offered door, fetching the bottle of whiskey that resemble as closely the one being described to her from the reserve, before coming back in. Using her time spent in bars and celebration, not that long ago in her life to prepare the drinks for them both. Luckily that doesn't seem to count as 'cooking' since nothing catches fire on the spot.
"My parents immigrated from Ethiopia/Eritrea, were practicing jews... unfortunately, I did not get to know them much, they passed when I was really young." She relates the story of her own parent as she finalize the drinks. "I'd like to think they were no fan of colonialism either."
She offers him the requested drink, as they survey the seating options available to them. "I got adopted by a family that's pretty close to the people that runs this place too."
"The children of an Algerian Muslim and Eritrean Jews meet for drinks in the basement of a Native American Lodge. What's the punchline, I wonder." Amos takes up his glass and toasts his company with it before knocking back the whole glass. He reaches for the bottle and pours himself a second pair of fingers. This one for sipping, apparently. "Mom was from Osage." He specifies, "Avenue." Pointing off towards Philadelphia proper, more or less.
He finally pops out the monocle, tucking it into his breast pocket on his jacket. "So. What would you like to know?" He scoops up the bottle, finds himself a comfortable looking chair, and settles into it.
"I don't know, I'm looking forward to finding out what it is." Kay says, referring to the punchline.
"Hmm, I think I know where to start." Kay takes a short drink, uncertain how to even ask. "I heard you shaped your soul into the legacy I formed." They said "And I don't remember teaching you or showing you the special book I made about it and thus..." she leans forward "I'm really curious how that happened? Or if it really happened at all. I have hypotheses and ideas, but that's getting ahead of myself."
He stares at her in silence for a good long while before deciding to set his glass aside and just uncap the bottle and put that in his lap, instead. He toasts her with that, too, before just taking a rip right from the rim. It's going to be that kind of night, apparently.
"I think you're getting ahead of yourself in more ways than one. The answer is, of course, that you did teach it to me." Only he holds up his empty hand and pinches thumb and forefinger together, giving the universal sign for 'small'. "Just not you." (edited)
Kay sets her now-empty drink aside and focuses on Amos for just a moment, trying to get a read on him a little bit. "Well, that's certainly a more interesting method than an alternate time-line me."
A roll of her shoulder, clearly there's an element of discomfort here as she struggles with her mind wandering again somewhere else
"I think maybe you should be the one asking questions, then."
"That's part of the problem. I am not sure what questions to ask. I know what I saw, and I know what happened to me. Of a sort. But I can't explain it to anyone who can't speak... Who can't think like how Mary, and myself, and Mark think." Amos nips the bottle again and leans forward in his seat a bit.
"Understand, sometimes it was just really, really fun. Set aside being trapped inside a metal box. Insensate. Sometimes, when you're flying between planets, or climbing the Spire Perilous, or wading through primal seas? You experience something that the body can't. And it's actually better. And then sometimes. Sometimes you're ferrying cargo between planets, or visiting a distant star. And it's just you in the box and the silence. A series of numbers ticking down while another ticks up. For centuries. And all of that is stuck inside my mind now. Along with the service manual of those accursed contraptions. Which I shudder to admit to you I am strangely drawn to climb back into and hide inside of."
"I was instructed to take the girl to the shores of Stygia. A specific place in the shores of Stygia. And to do what she asked of me. And I did that. Eventually, the spores took and a great... It was like a cross between a mushroom and a brassica. Began to grow. I had my body by then, or at least I don't remember wearing the Emtai." He pauses to pinch his forehead, "I don't remember getting my body, exactly. I just remmeber seeing the tree-- this giant, massive tree. It wasn't really a tree, though. I knew it was all tied together. The girl, the tree, the old woman, the young woman, you, the fungus. Mary. Me. Mark. It all made a whole lot of sense at the time, but I'll be damned if I can make sense of it now."
Another shake of the head, "We were supposed to spread. To Stygia. That was the point. There was no way for life to get into Stygia except for it to die. But not life. The idea of creation. Of. Possibility."
"It's why Mary was sent to Arcadia, I'm certain. They're trying to propogate to the other realms. And the how of it, the why of it, that all made sense. Then. And doesn't now. I mean. To an extent our involvement does, I suppose. To a degree. But not... Mary. Not Mark. Not where we go from here. Not what I'm supposed to do. I have a lot of information, a lot of facts, unimaginable banks of data locked away in my head, and just no context of how to apply it properly. It's just a firehose."
It's not unusual to see plants just kind of ... everywhere all over the Lodge.
It is, however, unusual to see plants which turn their leaves like they were photographed in time-lapse, following people as they move. A dark green, glossy vine clambering up one of the walls turns its leaves and little white flowers toward the pair, and then... stretches?
The vine's ragged leaves smooth out, changing shape from ragged, toothy things to soft, elongated things, sort of like the tail ends of a silk scarf.
Kayla goes quiet for a moment, struggling to conceal the storm of rumbling emotions that dances in their stomach as they listens and understand, pieces, of what Amos is speaking to her about. Ultimately it's easy to see that Kay's mood sours considerably as a result, though the storm brewing inside of them subside for the moment.
"There are ways we can experience what you did, or at least a fraction of it. There are ways for you and Mary, maybe Mark eventually, to learn how to communicate these feelings, sensation, data packets. Or for others to reach into your mind and see for themselves, if you let them." Kay offers quietly.
Their attention shift around for a brief moment, narrowing their gaze about. They notice, maybe, the white flowers aimed at them. They tilt their head, uncertain if they remember the plant being there before.
"Mary and Mark have already figured it out," Amos informs Kay with a small shrug of his shoulders. "I can't do it yet, but I'm going to learn how. That's probably the most alienating part of it all, not being able to communicate like I used to be able to. It wasn't so bad when we were all together, you know? Some of those people were pretty funny. Good company to be stuck in forever with." He does admit, "Not all. But most." A pause, and then he continues, "Anyway. Mark and Mary have it sorted, so you may want to talk to them about it. About how they've sorted it out. But apparently Mary's ... happy. So." He shrugs his shoulders. Love is love, you know? Who is he to judge.
The plant moving isn't even questioned. The US had a black president. Plants stretch now. Why not.
This is definitely a New Plant, it wasn't here the last time Kay walked through this room. It slowly stretches itself down the wall, a shudder of Unseen Senses crawling up the spines of both Awakened. Well, probably all three, but Fox knows it's her, anyway. Once some of the plant touches the floor, the smooth-leafed plant sort of just... lets go and slumps onto the floor. Halfway through its little collapsing from the wall onto the floor, it becomes a small red fox with black socks and brilliant yellow-green eyes. Then the fox stretches, instead.
A woman's voice with no immediate source opines, "I like when I can do that with my cadre. Being in the same network. You can think by inference or emotion and it's easier to not be misunderstood. Leta thinks in memes." And then the fox pap pap pap over to Kay and flop down on the floor as if all of this is super normal.
The transformation from plant to fox seems to bring an air of understanding to Kay's expression. "That is Little Fox, they were there when we went into the dream realm." Kay reaches down toward Fox from their seat, a quiet offer for scritches by presentation of Kay's fingers for inspection (it smells mostly like soap, grapes and various object they've touched coming here).
"I can teach you a few things about Mind magic, I think Fox could too." A brief pause. "Forces might help if the data is in some shape that require a computer to process, but I don't know much about that one."
"What kind of food do you prefer, by the way?" She asks Amos, a bit out of the blue.
"The kind I didn't have a hand in cooking," Amos answers with a renewal of the grin that lets him get away with far too much but probably not cooking, sorry. "Momma cooked good home cooking, though. Lots of chicken and pork, corn bread, hashed potatoes. The Army food barely qualified as such. And forgive me, I've had a bit of a hiatus from meals since. So." To his credit, the chatting with a fox woman bit doesn't even phase him in the least. He just ticks a wave to her.
"Yeah, I remember you. You were the one Samantha was carrying about." There's a broad grin there at genuinely remembering something from that part of his life. And then there's the thousand yard stare that follows some realization or other. He sighs, consults the bottle, and has another drink.
Fox pap pap Kay's hand gently with one paw. "You didn't tell me you were Jewish," the voice comments, a gentle remonstration in her tone. As if it is essential for Fox to know such things. She sniffs the offered hand after gently batting at it with her black paw, and then thunks her head against those fingers. Yes, thank, scritch ears. This gets followed by a big, toothy yawn. YAAAAAAAAAAAWN.
"Mmmhm," she agrees, wrapping her fluffy tail around herself, and then she pauses when he stares, sighs, consults the bottle. Pap pap pap sproing. One must occasionally leave scritches behind in order to hop up onto a chair's arm and stare with large, soulful canid eyes at someone having A Tough Moment. Fox carefully reaches out one delicate paw and pats at the air near Amos' bicep, the gesture without immediate touch.
Kay smiles a little bit there. "It's a complicated situation from my point of view. My parents were but they passed away before I could learn anything from them about it. Then there was a christian church-related orphanage." She shrugs "It feels very, very weird and off for me to claim i'm part of something I know almost nothing about." A brief pause "I wasn't hiding it from you, I assumed you knew from hanging with Aaron."
"Yeah that's an important quality to food, not made by yourself." Their attention turns to Amos. "Then you might be happy meeting with Heather and Maddy. Maddy owns a mystical diner and Heather is my cadremate and can probably outcook Julia Childe in her sleep."
"That sounds promising," Amos allows with a smile Kay's way, though his heart is very much not invested in the small talk. He's doing the polite social conversation thing at the moment. The fox pawing at the air on his chair arm is stared at for a moment. He decides to reach over for his glass of Jim Beam that he'd set down in favor of the bottle thereof, and holds it up to the fox to see if she'd like some.
"What else would you know about?"
She sniffs at the glass and then sticks out her tiny pink tongue to lap at it once, twice. It is impolite to refuse something you would otherwise drink just because you're currently a tiny lil fox. Or so goes the logic of one Revontulet. Once she's had the fox equivalent of three shots, she curls up and loafs on the arm of the chair. "No, Aaron doesn't tell people anything that isn't their immediate business. And you are Jewish, whether you choose to actively be part of the community. It's a thing that you get to claim and return to. You're not the first Jewish kid to end up in a Christian orphanage. There's a reason that after the Shoah, Jewish men used to go to orphanages and ask to see the kids, and then start saying the Shema to see who finished it. Stealing our babies is a time-honored Christian tradition." All of that coming from an apparently sedate-looking fox loafed up on the arm of a chair, watching Amos.
"Do you want to have someone or someones teach you how to be able to be in a link with people again? Will that help you?" Fox enquires, her Forces-generated voice just sort of chilling out in the air. "Like... there's a lot of stuff we can learn together, I'm very good with devices, but mostly I want to know how we can help you right now. I know that... " A pause. "So. My theory. Is that you had the same kind of Awakening that I had. One that changes the world around you. That's part of why you're confused by some stuff, at least I think that's part of why. It's weird, right? It feels like the universe is purposefully fucking with you. So right now really what I want is to know how we can help you feel -- " she looks for a word, her triangular ears swiveling, nose wrinkling, before it smooths out again. "... normal? Stable? Like the world isn't arguing with your memory?"
That's a lot of words to pop out of the air next to a Fox. So she yawns and yips quietly. lil loaf time. (edited)
Kay nods to what Fox said, both to herself and to Amos. "That sounds like a great question yeah." She smiles and takes a deep breath for a brief moment. "I'd love to have this conversation later, Fox." Kay makes a heart with their hands. (brb rq)
"We don't die. When our Emtais are destroyed. It's unpleasant, but it's not fatal. They wouldn't have thought too much about two former military volunteering to risk unpleasantness to help a nice old lady finish her walk. But we didn't come back. And our pods are missing. Do they even remember us? Or are they terrified, wondering if they're starting to pick apart the squadron, too." Amos's answer to Fox doesn't really sound like an answer, unless you know how to listen like a selfless person. "I need to know if my desire to get a message to them is going to be counterproductive. Will I just be confusing them, or putting their minds at ease? And then, yeah. I want what Mary and Mark have. Apparently she's more powerful than me right out the gate. Which-- whatever. I don't care about that, really. I need to be able to speak what's in my head, so I can start to make sense of it. There's so much in me I just can't... reach. A memory of a memory. The awareness I can't remember something. Only it's... millions of them. Billions. Trillions, maybe. I don't know."
The fox listens. While loafed thoroughly, it's possible to tell she's paying careful attention, her ears perked, her eyes fixed on his face. Her head even tips to the side just a little bit. Yeah, it's cute, and in part, that might be on purpose. Cute animals disarm people, often, anyway. "We can work on figuring that out. Whether you can get a message to them without hurting them. I have to say that I don't know -- I would immediately think they might not remember you, and I'm sorry to say that part out loud, but, it's possible -- but then again, normally I should not remember, either. But I do. So clearly there is Something going on, you know? There's a possibility there." Her tail twitches just a bit. "I can help you, with Mind. And like... there are people who can help you get what's in your head out."
Questions and thoughts dances and almost live on Kay's lips, but she decides to kill them, deciding to trust Amos has already considered the possibilities already, at least for the moment. "My offer of help is still on the table, if you want to do something in regard to what's stored away in your mind."
Kay serves herself another glass and drinks it all in one go anyway, wincing hard at the effect and burn it leaves on her tongue. "Whatever other questions I have can wait."
"I'll take you both up on that, I think. At least while I decide if I'm going to be sticking around with you all or not." With that, Amos sets his bottle and glass aside and rises to his feet, mindful of where Fox is curled up. "I should get back. Ethos has been using the work to distract Charlie from Balm's loss. If I don't have more work for them come Monday, it may start out as a rather rough week for everyone." Amos offers an apologetic smile to both and a polite, "Do excuse me, ladies." And then he's heading out.
"Hey, Fox, I really want to have the talk with you later about earlier and about other stuff too, but I need some time to cool down." She speaks calmly as she approaches the door. "Thanks for showing up, thank you."
While everyone else leaves, Fox rolls herself into the chair and burps sedately. "Okay," the voice agrees.
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