|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:26 pm
School:
They praised her with gold stars and smiling stickers, until the novelty wore off and it grew to be something unsettling in its abnormality.
They encouraged her to work on her social skills by playing with the other little boys and girls, and stopped asking when she humored them once.
They gave her worksheets in her own corner and stopped expecting verbal participation.
They advised her father to allow her to skip a grade, and she was hungry for accomplishments, so she did.
They sent her to a magnet school and assigned her to specialized projects in her fields of interest.
They provided a position on the Science Olympiad team, and she placed in everything she attempted, and she lost her position when she failed to respect the concept of a team.
They advised her father to allow her to skip a grade, and she was blinded by pride, so she did.
They put her in an advanced placement program to challenge her in her studies, which was not much of a challenge at all.
They awarded her the academic title of Valedictorian and quietly asked the Salutatorian to speak at their graduation.
They saw a girl who was afflicted with brilliance and something sickening that they did not know how to fix, so they kept her as busy as possible, until they could pass her off to the next administration and close her student file and never look back.
They had blood on their hands and were as guilty of her as she was, because they were not brave enough to speak about the dark things they saw, like she did.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 9:30 pm
Companionship:
“I have seen your resolve. Never forget that the only one you can trust is yourself.”
Mimsy wasn't sure why she remembered those words every time she put her fingers on the book. She could not seem to place where she had first heard them, but she clearly recalled someone saying them to her, assurances offered while she tried to swallow the bile that rose in her throat, an attempt to tame the anger and resentment and physical disgust for more beneficial means.
The memory might have been troubling to some, seemingly nefarious in its intentions. But Mimsy liked things that were beneficial, so she didn't question it, because the words and the book that reminded her were both too useful to so easily discard.
The book was an amazing discovery that she felt no need to publicly claim, because she never shared achievements that were this valuable. It came from the most surprising of places, buried in a waterlogged tomb, but it never felt surprising that it belonged with her.
It was her favorite, her absolute favorite, its status unquestionable for its seemingly infinite cache of information. It spoke of destruction in so many ways, and provided insight that she never could have gained in her lifetime. It soaked up all that she wrote on its pages, and she felt strangely like it knew who she was. It vaguely hinted at the purpose of a heart, as if they shared a 'joke' together. It knew, and it was never any different in spite of it.
She was a creature who habitually saw only the tiny pieces that everything was made of, and the only way to truly learned how something worked in that capacity was to destroy it so she could see what was hidden when it was whole.
In the end, you will always be alone, it liked to remind her, a soothing warning of the consequences of the actions that she found necessary for her goals, written sporadically in the margins. She read it in the voice that she remembered, because it seemed right.
She knew, and tried not to be any different in spite of it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:31 pm
Trust:
Allowing herself to trust someone was a distressing idea. The amount of vulnerability that was the inescapable result of trust was even worse than the weakness that was tied with caring for someone, which she viewed with condescension and superiority and distaste. If she refused to care, then she certainly refused to trust anyone but herself.
A day came that she found herself caring about someone as much as she was capable of caring. She denied what it was and placed it in its own category of exceptions, but it still peeled away a portion of her cold exterior, leaving raw flesh in its wake.
Time passed. Something bore into the exposed tissue. She bled until everything was shrouded in a lightheaded fog.
A day came that she found that she could no longer trust herself, because she was no longer comfortably certain that she was herself at all. The crisis of identity tore at her core foundation and curled around it, refusing to let her go. She replaced trust with doubt, and her theories ran wild with a desperate paranoia that never seemed to stop.
Time passed. The dizziness made her tired. Sleep made her someone else.
A day came that she found herself trusting someone, and she gave all of her trust at once, daring to plunge in without learning to swim. He took her hand and held her head above the water, and stayed with her until she learned to adapt to this new reality. He always did, despite the attempts at sabotage. She could never refute that she liked who she was when they worked together.
So Lucky was placed in his own category of exceptions, because he was a part of her, and she was supposed to trust herself. They shared flesh and blood and the labels of 'brother' and 'sister', and she could say with unwavering conviction that he was trustworthy and loyal, even to his detriment. She'd learned that when he hurt her, it was not intentional - his actions tended to be the fault of another party taking advantage of the sympathy and good in his heart, but she knew that she could fix it one day, if he couldn't fix it himself.
She smiled at her brother, showing too many teeth because she thought that was right, and curled her thin fingers around his hand. Her fingertips barely brushed against the edges of the scar, a perfect μ, a reminder she once left in case he ever felt like she wasn't with him. She leaned her head against his, smile fading to a look of satisfaction. The reminder might have been a bit unnecessary now, she thought.
Now they would always have each other.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 11:12 pm
Loss:
The other students asserted that Mimsy would grow up to be an astronaut so many times that she was not sure if they were teasing her or simply uncreative.
It was not a career that she thought much about - few were, after she set her focus on the Higgs Boson - but she found herself curious about the possibility, now that her high school career was coming to a close. This was the time to make a decision, should she find that her goals required an adjustment.
She skimmed the NASA Jobs website and tried to forgive its accessible language as she arranged points of importance in an itemized list. There were requirements that she had not planned for, but they were all understandable and achievable. She had never seriously considered this, but the door it opened was especially intriguing.
It could lead her to the stars.
The thought brought a small grin to one corner of her mouth and an ounce of hope to her heart, and she could not help daydreaming as she scrolled to the bottom to finish reading. Zero gravity, optimized food intake, months spent among the stars...
..physical and psychological screenings...
She held her breath as she clicked to download the sample overview, thumb tapping restlessly against the side of the mouse as she passed through each category. Calculation. Concentration. Communication. Perception. Self-Assessment.
Click.
Subcategories: Technical Skill, Interpersonal Skill, Mental Hea--
The screen went black as she kicked the power button on the computer tower. There was nothing else to see. She was clearly too intelligent for the occupation of astronaut, because she was smart enough to know which tests she couldn't ever manage to cheat on.
Mimsy never thought about being an astronaut again.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2014 12:15 am
Bully:
"Un-uh. Where're you goin'?"
Ten-year-old Mimsy was an easy target.
"Stop squirmin'. Hey. Hey. You're real ********' annoying, even for a nerd."
She was the type that existed at the bottom of the food chain, one of the quiet sorts who seemed like they would be too afraid of getting beat up to tattle. She was smaller than anyone else in her class, still waiting for the famed growth spurt of adolescence, frail and pale and awkward.
"You got that bullshit test we gotta turn in? Huh, suckup?"
As much as school interested her by providing her with knowledge and intellectual experience, she could not say that she liked it. There were 1,219 other students who attended this school with her. The preferential number of classmates was 0.
"C'mon, show me. I know you like math. You deaf? Yeah, whatever."
Through the laughter, he clutched her pigtails in one hand and turned her backpack upside down, spilling its contents at his feet. He found no test, because she had done it two weeks ago, and thirty cents, because she always skipped lunch, and he was dissatisfied.
"Know what? <********> you. I thought we could be friends, but nah. Not with you bein' such a worthless b***h."
He left her belongings on the floor as he began to pull her down the hallway by her braids, readily showing off his strength, and shoved her out the door into the cold February rain. The bell rang. He wedged a chair against the door handle to prevent her from coming back inside, and set off towards the gym to skip math class in the locker room.
She stood outside the only door on the first floor that was not in the front of the building, where the school's resource officers waited to scan their student I.D. Nobody was allowed into the school without identification, and hers was somewhere on the floor of the math hall.
As she stared through the rain, into the sliver of empty hallway visible through the little window on the door, she clenched her fists and shook as the rain soaked her clothing. None of the things she used to calm herself were working. Her mind was stuck on one uncomfortable fact.
This was how a human treated her when he thought that she was just a human too.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2014 1:16 am
Chaos:
The battlefield was like nothing she had ever experienced, because she was a scientist, not a soldier. It was an unfortunate reality to her that Deus required her to be both, and in the midst of multi-faction combat, she was holding up as well as anyone might have expected her to.
Fortune had favored her in the House, however, and she carried two sets of bandages in her pockets that she'd found on the ground. They were clearly bandages of some sort, and she needed bandages, but she was hesitant to use them when they had not been issued to her by a trustworthy source. She had two bandages, but they were as good as useless, because she could not assuredly say that they would not harm her.
Then the problem solved itself - she recognized her green-haired colleague nearby, and thought that he would make a very nice little green canary.
But she was a scientist, not a soldier, and she had no data that might have indicated that she should have waited just a moment longer to witness the effects of the tainted bandage that she silently wrapped around Lucky's arm. She had no way of knowing, as she argued with Robert about the benefits of healing herself, that she was killing herself instead.
When she finally looked up at him to point out the importance of clarity, she lost any that she had. Staring at him made her feel dizzy and strange, and made something in her head insistently whisper, over and over, for her to take his hand and go home with him.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, and chose to fight.
It was her best approximation of a suitable strategy, and her canary believed what she told him. She could not have known that the Insanity they were trying to combat was consuming them, or that it would turn them both to stone.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2014 1:39 am
Transformation:
Mimsy died that day.
She was sure of it. There was simply no other explanation. Despite experiencing the sensation of dying multiple times since that battle, it was the only instance where two of her remained in existence.
The memory was clear. She felt her muscles tighten, knew that her movements were becoming increasingly sluggish, and helplessly watched herself turn to stone.
Her thumb passed over the chipped piece of her bangs.
This was her. The real her. The one that she had to keep safe until she could be restored.
It was painful sometimes, to know that her existence would likely be terminated upon the original's return. Two of Mimsy would be a fun trick, until it wasn't anymore, and she knew any sense of competition between them would end badly.
But it was encouraging too, on occasion, when she thought of what she meant. If the original could return unharmed, then she could take chances that the first Mimsy would find too risky. She could have a second chance entirely. She could choose to ignore anything undesirable that happened to her after the date of her death, and only opt in to the positive, beneficial things, once the current Mimsy was gone.
She pressed her thumb against the broken edge, and silently promised that it was the only harm that would ever come to her, against her better judgment.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2014 4:08 am
Escape:
Few of the things that Mimsy considered hers were not considered generally expendable. It was an advantageous fact, considering the losses sustained from the fire, but not a fact that she paid any particular attention to.
Usually.
Recently, some safety concerns of those non-expendable things had become alarmingly apparent. She could not ignore the danger of allowing other people to look at and touch and kiss and claim her Robert or her Lucky, but she could not feasibly keep an eye on both of them at once, especially when she still intended to work on her other projects. Managing all of her tasks would become unbearably stressful if she failed to settle upon the correct solution.
After nine days of thought and deliberation and one brief supply run, she obtained two new possessions.
Or accessories for her two possessions, more accurately. They were tracking chips, which would allow her to monitor realtime information about both of them at once. If either of them found themselves in trouble, or strayed from a perimeter that she designated, or disappeared, she could find then and return them to where they belonged.
She was (mostly) honest with Robert, who agreed after she carefully explained it, breaking it down step-by-step until it all seemed as transparent and well-intentioned as it possible could. She praised him for his willingness and assured him that he had made the right choice, and even showed him what he looked like on the little monitor.
Convincing Lucky would be a challenge that she knew was impossible, so she circumvented it entirely. He didn't have to know. It was better if he didn't, so the information could be kept safe from Song. Thankfully, they shared a room, and she observed him sleeping enough to know when he was least likely to wake up.
Two dots had never made her more content. She smiled at the screen and ran her fingers over the image, proud of what she'd done.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:38 am
Dilemma:
The opportunity to change her surname was both unique and significant in its potential, and she found an understandable difficulty when she attempted to arrive at a solid conclusion. Another day had almost passed without a decision; as she reflected upon the entire process, she felt that she was not much closer to formulating her final answer.
As a result, her thoughts remained at the point where their lives intersected. She was stuck at the crossroads, supplied with a formality made of two significant spoken words and two names and a meaningful date in green crayon, paralyzed where she stood by her inability to choose.
Idling there had not begun to frustrate her yet. She could see so much information that seemed exclusive to this specific point, where the abstract of her project was tightly twined with pride, coiled possessively around the roots of normality that held this place together - roots grounded in reality as she remembered it.
Though she couldn't move forward right now, she could still explore the branching paths in her mind, collecting questions and observations like handfuls of wildflowers. There were so many intriguing things to think about, to wonder about, to hypothesize about, to solve. One lingered with a particular relevance in her thoughts, repeatedly returning and nudging her to address it.
If she had mistakenly exempted the step of marriage from her outline, had she missed anything else?
Was there another level of love that she needed to account for?
She opened her moleskine notebook and pulled a pen out of her hair, freeing stray strands from one taut braid with the hook on its cap, and lost herself in her memories as she scoured them for any hints of significant events that were typically present in a statistically average relationship. The words were mindlessly put onto the paper, as if the ink came directly from the well of her brain, and she didn't stop to read them until she had no more ideas.
With the steps organized in one neat, linear format, she began to move down the list with the same level of concentration used while proofing reports. She crossed off the accomplished items one by one, a pleased smile curling up at the corners of her mouth as she noted any non-essential steps that they'd easily skipped. It felt nice to be reminded of her innate ability to impressively excel at anything she chose to focus on, her grin wide and dripping with confidence as the tip of the pen touched the first letter of the last thing on the list--
The smile grew strained as her mouth hung agape, her body frozen with something worse than indecision, expression built with astonishment and bathed in a reflection of the hilarity that embodied the last words on that page.
A hoarse 'aah...' finally crawled out of her awestruck throat and settled on her tongue.
This was literally unbelievable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2014 9:59 am
Trouble:
This was a problem.
Deus Ex was overrun by an infestation of random events of varying sizes, all negative, that almost appeared to be dutifully working to restore the cosmic balance to an island full of terrible people who did terrible things.
Mimsy did not believe in that sort of karmic power, so she simply referred to these events as 'cruel coincidences', because that was what they were. They ranged from annoying to devastating, seemed to be unavoidable, and were never welcome in her house of cards that math and science built. Thankfully, there were still moments during her time here that could be considered 'good', and some 'neutral', and some 'exceptionally wonderful', proving that they were not doomed to experience only these bizarre denials of favorable outcomes.
They could still have a happy ending, as Svensyl liked to claim.
Of any that she had encountered to date, this had to be the worst. It might have been manageable if it had not called six months of progress and twenty-one months of data (and nothing else she'd willingly acknowledge) into question. It would not have been worrying if losing everything didn't suddenly seem like a very real possibility. The risks of this were now enormous, inviting consequences that she had not predicted, allowing danger to casually peruse her greatest vulnerabilities as it waited.
And all of this looming catastrophe was the fault of just one astoundingly ill-timed coincidence and one overlooked fact of human existence.
None of her specifically crafted formulas where she used to determine a projected result had any room to allow for this unfortunate new variable. The formulas rarely determined the actual result, despite being technically sound, but she always felt better when she tried. It was better than admitting that she was allowing herself to rely so heavily on someone who she could not predict with any amount of accuracy.
Obviously, she would just have to do this the hard way. Svensyl expressed his surprise at her readiness to address the problems with Robert. Mimsy corrected him immediately by explaining her real plan.
She was going to think about it extensively, determine the ratio of pros to cons, select the most preferable solutions by discarding obvious outliers, and decide upon her action by using little to no mathematics.
Svensyl made an exaggerated screeching noise that implied he was dying of shock.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
