Who: Sam (closed, narrative)
What: What Sam does when no one is around.
Where: P5
When: This evening.
Warnings: ...abuse of pigeons for the sake of science?



Sam had done his socializing. He'd met some people, talked to old friends, kept himself busy.

But just because he threw himself into old habits, tried to make them his primary occupation, didn't mean it worked all the way. He'd watched the Landlord tear everyone apart, and listened to the recording of the man supposedly dying in the restaurant more times than he would willingly admit to anyone who asked. Sitting at his computer, he clicked play. Watched the cursor slide, hit play again.

How did he do that?

He leaned back in his chair, rolling a small, brown glass bottle between his hands, eyes fixed on some invisible point. There were a lot of outlandish ways he could have created an aneurysm of course, but, barring magic, it was the science of it that was really interesting. A small dart from a distance, administering a blistering electrical charge? No, someone would have noticed. A drug in his food? Much more likely, though he had no idea what drug could cause a burst blood vessel in the brain. Something that thinned the blood, maybe...

He got up and stalked back into the living room, walked around books and instruments and talked to himself. "What are you doing what are you doing--"

He knew exactly what he was doing, and stood in front of the locked door at the back of the penthouse for a long moment. He reached for the doorknob, then dropped his hand.

Oh, to hell with it. He pulled the key where it hung around his neck, underneath his shirt where it was invisible to anyone he met, and he unlocked the door, stepping inside.

The first night after he'd moved in, he'd set himself to the project of reconstructing the machine like a mad thing. He'd done a lot of talking to himself while he worked, about how stupid this was, about how he was only asking for trouble, recreating the greatest temptation God had set before man since the apple hung, shiny and red, from the tree of knowledge within arm's reach of Eve.

This wasn't the dominion of God, though. It was just the opposite. This was science in the face of God.

Sam didn't know if he really believed there was a God. He liked to. He believed people had souls, because if they didn't, how could he explain what his machine did? Decaying flesh brought back to life even if the brain wasn't wholly intact. He'd done some work with pigeons before Jude had come along, and while their limited mental faculties seemed restored, almost none of their physical functioning was. And yet, the moved. They flew. They acted as if they were alive even though they had no real reason to. They lived and lived and lived even though they didn't eat, didn't metabolize. He had no way of explaining it, and when science reached the end of its capabilities, was magic or religion really so far out of the question?

He shied away from that possibility. He wasn't a magician. He wasn't even really a scientist, not as far as most people who knew him were concerned. He was a musician, and a rich eccentric, and if his uncle or anyone else ever found out how much time he'd spent in science classes instead of attending orchestra sessions, they would be appalled.

It hadn't been easy, maintaining his grades in the music program while doggedly working on his machine, the all-consuming obsession that plagued him underneath the surface of everything he did. He'd taken a languid approach to the music side of things, setting his sights on a degree in music theory. Easy, really, and after that, if he wanted, he could play in an orchestra. It would give him something to do. The doctorate that he'd mentioned to his friends came out of something else entirely. It came out of long discussions with the professors whose classes he'd sat in on, willing to waive preliminary requirements and put him on a fast track to get a masters and then a doctorate in Biology, Chemistry, Engineering--whichever aspect of his multi-faceted obsession he chose to focus on the most.

He was leaning over his machine, face turned to the side, pressed against the cool metal, listening. There was a thrum of electricity in the base. A pigeon in a cage off to the side cooed lightly, watching him. He watched it back, expression blank.

If he was smart, he would take a sledgehammer to this thing. He'd burned the blue prints a long time ago--he didn't need them. That was part of the problem, of course--even if he destroyed the device, he would still know exactly how to recreate it in his head. When he'd put it back together after moving in, he'd actually streamlined it, all the while telling himself he wasn't going to use it.

And he wasn't. That roadblock sitting in his way was much too strong. He thought of Jude, where she could be now. He always imagined her in the dress he'd put on her before leaving her in central park. It hadn't been a sexual thing, no matter how attracted to her he was--it had been like dressing a child, reverent and careful even though his fingers had been shaking, he was so scared.

No. He wouldn't use the device again. No matter how it tugged at him, no matter how deceptively beautiful it looked under the room's low lights, gleaming in the dim, all blue, silver, gunmetal and liquid shine around burn marks left by failed experiments. He wouldn't use it. He'd already done one horrible, reprehensible thing, the consequences of which he still didn't fully know.

But he could pull himself onto its bed, and lay on it, warming the metal under his body, pulled into a question mark. And he could sleep, better than he slept anywhere else. Sleep like the dead.