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 Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:10 pm
AMERICA JONES @******** dont be recklessHe was already outside H's office when he got the text. please dont be recklessWith Edith he preferred to meet her with the evidence of a hard day's work on him. With H he always maintained the polite fiction that he was in control of himself and by extension his own appearances. Even after H had seen him vomiting into a bucket or slumped numb and head-buzzing over a table, too stupid to talk, he'd always presented himself to him well-groomed, meticulous. So many of his interactions with the good doctor were marked, he realized, with lying to someone who already knew the truth. Lies were shed this time. He still smelled like sawdust and sweat and his hurriedly-gulped cigarette when he turned up, fidgeting and anxious, and hesitated outside the door before he let himself in after a brief knock, heeding H's stated open door policy. please dont be recklessHe'd promised her he wasn't. He'd said he was only talking. But he was aware, intensely aware, that talking to H was already doing something reckless.
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:17 am
There was no one at the desk, or rather, the doctor was was laid out on his couch, comfortable and seemingly at his leisure. A pair of reading glasses were perched on his nose, and the battered leather spine declared the object of his attention to be Idylls of the King in flaking gold print. Above him was a cage, lovely in its deceptive simplicity, and within were perched two birds, a startling red mark on both pale breasts.
"Yes, Mr. Thompson?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:35 am
A slightly hysterical pause, as he drew the inevitable mental connection between two bloodstained birds in a cage and a bloodstained bird on his hand and a room full of articulated skeletons, and it was not a particularly nice connection. Without asking he sank down in a chair, refusing to simply stand awkwardly while the doctor lolled around like a well-fed cat. "I have questions about--about what's been tested on the... the golems." A pause. "What's it like when they're exposed to insanity--and I heard talk of some antivirus or serum distributed during a recent mission. And also--" another hesitation "--given their... their illusion of sentience, do we know if they have a sort of core?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:44 am
The doctor turned the page, and after a minute filled with the quiet ticking of a watch, he asked, "Were you aware that they come to this world and write stories? Longer than we know, most likely. Sometimes they write two, one for us and another for their own kind. And they are, as far as we've been able to distill from testing, quite immune to insanity. They purge it."
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:53 am
He returned this with his own long, long pause. "Purge how?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:58 am
"Through their pores. It was briefly hoped that it would reveal a potential for cleansing, but they remain entirely useless on that front." Reaching behind him, the doctor grabbed a pen and began to write in the margins. "They are sentient, you know. Must you insist on keeping to the easy lies, my dear?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:00 am
He ignored this. "Do they have a core?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:01 am
"I believe so," and then the doctor looked up at the other man, smile beatific and smug.
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:03 am
Doing something he rarely did, he met the doctor's eye, level. "Which is?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:04 am
"The source from which they were formed."
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:06 am
The pause this time is very, very long indeed, and when it's broken it's with a dry little bark of a laugh. "The one ******** time Reid says anything approaching sense."
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:09 am
"William is a fool, but not at all stupid," the doctor commented mildly, returning his gaze to the book. "Was that all?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:14 am
Enough time passed for Taym to master the shaking of his voice, which was not fear but anger. "Why, if I am enlisted as a test subject, has this not been tested?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:20 am
"I am not in the habit of requesting people to die on behalf of my personal research." And the smile that accompanied this made it clear that key word was request. "Are you offering?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:24 am
"I do not consider it," he said, "your personal research."
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