Welcome to Gaia! ::

"I am not special," Ylaine said informatively. "The knowledge I possess is not unique to me, as you can find any piece of it written somewhere or published in a library or encyclopedia. Items not of public record should remain that way." She viewed her vast repository of knowledge as something that had been entrusted to her, worth protecting.

She then chose another tact, resolute in convincing Lindy that being special in some notable way was a Very Bad Idea. "Were I to make more use of the knowledge I possess, it could attract the attention of people and organizations who would not wish to use it responsibly, and who would be willing to take advantage of me to get it. I have no wish to become a target of such attentions. I am sure you could imagine what lengths certain governments would go to in order to possess the secrets of their enemies."

"What on earth would I want to do that for," Ylaine deadpanned. "Diseases are a form of population control and evolutionary selection. Without them, we would lose a degree of evolutionary imperative essential to the progression of a species." She was deadly serious, too, clearly unconcerned with the loss of life as a result of disease every day. Life mattered a great deal to Lindy, but to Ylaine it was nothing precious.

Ylaine knew a lot of things, but she was not a mind reader. She squinted at Lindy. It seemed rather unfair to say there was something missing and then not immediately reveal it. But she would play Lindy's little game in the vain hopes she could at the very least get out of this room and go somewhere else, preferably a very dull and dark place without school counsellors, and maybe with some food in it. Some place like her room at the hotel. There was a plate of leftovers in the minifridge. "What would that be?"

Ylaine's mouth fell open. She had no words. She simply had no words. By this woman's screwed-up logic, the key to happiness was to put Ylaine through even more unhappiness until somehow, magically, happiness appeared! "You live in a fairytale," Ylaine managed at last, still reeling from the total ridiculousness of this proposition. She knew the text books. She knew the psychology. No amount of schooling was ever going to make her care, couldn't Lindy see that?

But of course, this woman thought she was a child, just like everyone else, and children could learn. Ylaine's heart fell into her stomach and swirled around in the contents of her breakfast. "You're going to subject me to more time among those brats for no reason."

Ylaine rallied with her own descriptions of these classmates, slanted to the negative as strongly as Lindy's were to the positive. "Grayson Heathcliff has the creative thinking skills of a lamppost and couldn't solve a problem unless you showed him the solution very carefully, because if he missed a single step in the explanation he would be completely lost. Aurora is so naive she's going to marry her first boyfriend and never have her own life, nor is she able to conceive of anything beyond what will ultimately amount to a very unremarkable existence. Riley..." To be honest, they had never met, so Ylaine had nothing to say about her. "... Is not in my class and therefore cannot be used in your argument. Wisp Darnell could be tricked into giving up a kidney for no reason than if you just told her you needed one, and will be walked on her whole life by people who are not kind, and please consider it an act of graciousness that I have not already asked for a kidney, because given the chance I would rob that girl of both her kidneys just to prove my point." It didn't sound like a lie, either.

"Don't tell me that these children are something to aspire to, Ms. Naaktgeboren. They are not the shining examples of greatness you make them out to be. I have no desire to emulate them or become like them. I find them distasteful, almost as distasteful as your continued belief that I am one of them. I am never going to be one of your friendly, insipid, vapid students, nor do I have any desire to be. If I want to be miserably enlightened, that is my choice, just as much as they have the choice to be ignorantly happy, never knowing anything more than what they are told."

"So happy I could be of service," mocked Ylaine, taking the paper and stomping out. For all that she had her precious paper, she would never believe that her conversation with Lindy was anything more than a complete waste of time.