Edwin Seabeck is a killer in potentia (elusive_control) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-07-05 14:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! narrative, edwin seabeck |
WHO: Edwin Seabeck with a featured guest via flashback
WHAT: Experimentation
WHEN: July 5th
WHERE: A good question.
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Log Complete
It took Edwin an hour to realise he wasn't dead, and it would have been longer if the sedative hadn't worn off. With his limbs finally light enough to move from the table he'd been placed on, he could lift two fingers to find his pulse on the side of his neck bleating away, if faster than he usually measured it to be. He tried his wrist too, just to double check. His mind then set onto the task of trying to figure out just how alive he was. His fingers mapped the skin he could reach - a bandaid on the inside of his left arm, the same jumpsuit he'd been wearing previously, the bruise on his jaw still tender from where a guard got in an 'accidental' swipe at him. And then, finally, they moved gingerly over his eyes. Which were still there. Edwin exhaled, dismissing the unfortunate thoughts that had cropped up involving unelective surgery and a specialty tool that looked like a cross between a shoehorn and a ladle. He seemed to be in one outwardly unaltered piece, which left him with the next, much more difficult to answer question: what the hell was going on? If this wasn't the dying spasms of his severed optic nerves, was this a location? If that was the case, than it was unlike any place Edwin had ever seen. The air was impossibly thick with a dense, almost humming cloud of energy and speckled with blurred clusters of bright and dim lights. Everything moved in a contained, frenetic sort of orbit around each other, oscillating individually so quickly he could only just percieve it in an intuitive sort of way. His eyes hurt, but not in the usual searing pain that emanated from deep within his skull. No, this was an ache that hovered at the front of his skull; an area usually built to survive the sort of pressure that could disintegrate steel. Edwin closed his eyes to rub at them, but that - remarkably - did little to change the scenery. No darkness fell. Just different patterns in the fog, different oscillations. He opened his eyes. No change. He attempted to cue up his powers. [waking motionless, paralysed to an unending cosmos, every sense afforded to him useless - no hope of rescue; is this death?] The brief recollection of not 5 minutes ago, though knife sharp in his mind, gave no change. He pulled his legs up to his chest and held them there, resting his chin on his knees. This must have been what Hunter had been talking about. Why he couldn't ever turn his powers off. Edwin felt nauseous with all the movement around him - there was just no abating it. Not his hands over his eyes, not the pillow behind him. Everything was lights and fog and unceasing oscillation. --- "I don't know why you thought this would be any different," Edwin stared sightlessly at the table of items. At least, what he was told was a table of items. He could feel the brittle thickness of glass slides and the cool smoothness of glass bottles sitting on the metal table, but what either contained was unknown. He folded his arms across the chest, thinking this must look quite defiant for someone who, by this point, was quite desperate to accommodate their request. "Edwin, it would behoove you to cooperate with us." He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table, only catching it with 3/4's of his hand and thereby making a less satisfying sound. "What do you think I've been trying to do for the last day and a half?!" he shouted irritably into the void. "Fog. Lights. Everything is shaking. I don't know how many more times - how many different times I have to repeat myself. This. Isn't. WORKING." "It's working fine." Edwin made a strangled sort of sound and covered his face with his hands. Rather than shout again, he took a deep breath and exhaled it out through his teeth. "Then we find ourselves, again, at an impasse," he said acidly as he slumped back in his chair. --- It was worse than a dark room. It was worse than the military bunker. It was worse now, while he waited for unconsciousness in the hollow room. It must have been night because there had been no researchers for hours and the last tray had slid under the door some time ago. The sounds of the intercom, of the glass items, of anything had disspated hours ago and left him running his fingertips over any surface he could find. Anything for the distraction. Tasteless food, a soundless room. All the surfaces were smooth and room-temperature. He suspected they were trying to funnel all his attention to his vision, eliminating the other senses to fortify the focus on the one he'd completely lost control of. If this were St. Andrews, if this were Max's doing, he'd feel uncomfortable but at least he'd feel cared for. At least he'd know that there was an end in sight. This could be the rest of his life. His fingertips worked along a corner of the room, pressing into the seam and running down. He had this whole room memorised now, his somewhat less-sharp memory still drawing a neat map of the layout in his mind. Every slight raising from a less than perfect wall patch job documented. Every imperfection in the concrete floor. He traced them again and again, hammering his mental map into clarity. For what purpose? None. All of his leverage was gone. He didn't expect a coup on his behalf. There could very well be only this. This maddening blindness. Sleep refused to claim him and so he told himself a bedtime story, the sound of his voice sharp in the silence. Scheherezade would have been proud. --- "Basically, what you're telling me is that reality is a spider web." "No. I'm telling you it's made of strings. Do keep up, Edwin." "Why do you have such a strong aversion to similes?" "They're imprecise. I can't explain it further if you're starting from such a poor base." "You're not going to be able to explain it anyway because you always descend into calculus. You really are a shit teacher." "You're a shit student!" "I'm a brilliant student. Reality is made of strings, meaning that there is one basic building block and it's merely the frequency of their motion that generates the different forces and particles. It's not an impenetrable concept! God, all I'm asking is that you leave the math out for once --" "Math is the language of the universe. I'm not going to break out hand puppets and put on a show because you haven't prepared yourself properly." "Maybe you should just speak louder and point." "[...] You're comparing yourself to an immigrant." "Good catch there, Einstein. Punch a hole through that simile." "A math immigrant. [...] No, that's a pretty good one." "Thank you. Let's try this again then, shall we?" "Fine. Membranes, or branes as they're stupidly called, are then the result of--" "Where are the hand puppets?" "Wha-" "I'm pretty sure I'd understand it better if it was coming from a sock with googly eyes tacked on." --- Edwin bolted upright as the memory, along with his sleep, ended. He suddenly knew what he'd been seeing. Just in time, as he took in the familiar surroundings of the solitary cell in all of their washed-out visual glory and noted the dull ache deep in his skull, for him to be back to normal. He might have been disappointed if he wasn't so bloody relieved. |