'He was the voice of refusal, resistance to the inevitability of death.'
[Murmured low beneath false breath, eyes lidded, he remembers perfectly the yellowing of those pages. Carl sitting at his table, grumbling absently about the latest rezoning of Detroit's suburban sprawl. What it would do to the people that lived there. How Elijah had been in the right when he got out— ]
'The way upward and the way downward is one and the same.'
[Simon shifts, and Markus watches without moving. That he wants to take the invitation, dig himself down into the silence, stop the grating of metal and plastic and slickness beneath his skin where damage still sings along his sensors, is an urge that even he can't deny. His heart feels empty. He can hear it, where the networked voices of his people have gone silent. Whether it's to distance or death, it's hard to say.
But that's the crux of it now.
Now, he thinks of that phrase heralded by Heller. Paints it into the boundaries of their situation, visible and locked in through numberless calculations. His focus sliding away from the two of them, drifting towards the bigger picture with each passing second. A plan is forming. An idea. A technicality.
The way upward and the way downward is one and the same.]
There's no such thing as a no-win scenario.
[Left hand tucked in against his side, Markus pulls away from that corner. Paces forward towards a wall that's only been half-marked with graffiti, picking through leftover paint cans and scraps of cloth.] All I need is a message.
no subject
[Murmured low beneath false breath, eyes lidded, he remembers perfectly the yellowing of those pages. Carl sitting at his table, grumbling absently about the latest rezoning of Detroit's suburban sprawl. What it would do to the people that lived there. How Elijah had been in the right when he got out— ]
'The way upward and the way downward is one and the same.'
[Simon shifts, and Markus watches without moving. That he wants to take the invitation, dig himself down into the silence, stop the grating of metal and plastic and slickness beneath his skin where damage still sings along his sensors, is an urge that even he can't deny. His heart feels empty. He can hear it, where the networked voices of his people have gone silent. Whether it's to distance or death, it's hard to say.
But that's the crux of it now.
Now, he thinks of that phrase heralded by Heller. Paints it into the boundaries of their situation, visible and locked in through numberless calculations. His focus sliding away from the two of them, drifting towards the bigger picture with each passing second. A plan is forming. An idea. A technicality.
The way upward and the way downward is one and the same.]
There's no such thing as a no-win scenario.
[Left hand tucked in against his side, Markus pulls away from that corner. Paces forward towards a wall that's only been half-marked with graffiti, picking through leftover paint cans and scraps of cloth.] All I need is a message.