•Character name: Mimsy Kercher •Link to journal: here! •Describe your character's personality in less than 30 words: This is going to take a whole week to think about. •Does your character have a ship/OTP? Yes; she managed to say <******** you to probability, and found the timeline where a desperate hypothesis that began in her childhood led to an ongoing relationship with Robert. She is very pleased with this status and their rate of progress. •Describe your character if they were a vegetable: Artichoke. Prickly, a little scary at a glance, somewhat intimidating to prepare, special focus placed on hearts. •What is your character's favourite music/song/piece? She is boring and doesn't listen to music. •What is your character's hobby, if they had spare time? Time travel. •Is your character more arts, science, or sports inclined? Science. •What type of personality traits does your character gravitate towards? Adoring, beneficial, loyal, naive, nonthreatening, obedient, skilled, subservient, trusting, willing. •What are your character's positive personality traits: (from here, alphabetical) Active, adaptable, aspiring, brilliant, capable, clever, confident, contemplative, curious, daring, decisive, dedicated, directed, disciplined, educated, efficient, eloquent, extraordinary, focused, forceful, freethinking, hardworking, idealistic, impressive, incisive, individualistic, intelligent, knowledgeable, leaderly, logical, methodical, meticulous, objective, observant, painstaking, passionate, perceptive, perfectionist, persuasive, precise, principled, protective, purposeful, rational, reflective, scholarly, scrupulous, serious, skillful, steadfast, systematic, thorough, well-read. •What are your character's netural traits?: Aggressive, ambitious, authoritarian, big-thinking, businesslike, busy, cerebral, competitive, complex, contradictory, deceptive, determined, dominating, dry, experimental, idiosyncratic, impersonal, intense, irreverent, omnipotent, preoccupied, proud, questioning, sarcastic, skeptical, stern, stubborn. •What are your character's personality flaws? Abrasive, abrupt, agonizing, amoral, apathetic, argumentative, arrogant, asocial, assertive, blunt, calculating, callous, cold, conceited, condemnatory, crazy, critical, cruel, cynical, deceitful, defensive, discourteous, dishonest, disloyal, dissolute, dissonant, domineering, egocentric, envious, extreme, fanatical, fearful, frightening, greedy, grim, hateful, haughty, hostile, impatient, impulsive, inconsiderate, indulgent, intolerant, loquacious, malicious, mechanical, messy, miserable, monstrous, morbid, narcissistic, neurotic, obsessive, opinionated, opportunistic, paranoid, Pharisaical, pompous, possessive, power-hungry, predatory, pretentious, reactionary, regretful, resentful, rigid, ruined, sadistic, scheming, scornful, selfish, strong-willed, tense, uncaring, uncooperative, unfriendly, unhealthy, unrestrained, unstable, vengeful, venomous, vindictive, weak, willful. •What is your character's favourite colour? She has never really had one, but has recently developed a preference for red. •Describe your character if they were in the opposite faction: A really creepy monster with an affinity for arachnids and mad science. Probably nonsensically crazy. •What would your character look like as the opposite gender OR 10 years into the future? Caelius obviously, both cases. •If your character was a Divison Leader how would they teach others? Murderously. She would be like one of the overly-strict professors who are hypercritical to freshmen in ways that make them want to drop out of school. •Who does your character look up to? Dr. H, Carl Sagan. •What is a great weakness of your character? It feels like a piece of her is missing, and she can be reckless and careless in her efforts to retain a sense of completion. Disruptions to her beliefs or perceptions can critically damage her stability. •What are their favourite foods? Her favorite food would be nourishment in pill form. •Favourite fashion style? Lab coat, comfortable clothing that can be worn as long/frequently as possible, galaxy print. •Favourite minipet? The Wormbreath Kaijuu that ate 'Sasha's favorite'. •If your character was in a fantasy novel who would they be? Apparently, she would be a sky elf alchemist who is so infatuated with a bard that she stalks him everywhere. •Describe your character as a mythical creature: As far as traditional mythical creatures go, a sphinx. Treacherous and merciless and deadly if you can't solve her riddle. •Describe your character as a Disney princess and/or Villain: Queen of Hearts duh. If she were her own, something kind of like Maleficent except her familiar would be a spider, and she'd kill the princess to eat her heart. •If your character could travel anywhere where would they go? CERN or space. •If your character could confess one great secret what would they confess? Her life has gone in unplanned directions, and her thoughts have gotten very messy and tangled up, so her big secret (excepting actual science itself) is:
The Higgs Boson, named after Peter Higgs, is an elementary particle that was proposed by a team of scientists in 1964. It is of detrimental importance to the Standard Model of particle physics, serving as the missing variable to problems of force and mass that are solved by its existence. The particle is so significant and incredibly elusive that the nickname of 'The Goddamn Particle' - 'God Particle' for more polite settings - caught on after the term was published in a book in 1993.
The theory of the Higgs Boson gained special attention in 2001 from 13-year-old Mimsy Kercher, who did not have a team of scientists, nor anyone to sit with at lunch, which may have been a contributing factor to why she spent every one of her thirty minute lunch periods consuming information instead of food. She found the idea of this particle both sound and intriguing, and knew right away, with unmatched certainty, why it hid so determinedly from those who sought it.
It was hiding in the darkness.
It was waiting in the shadows so a monster like her could be granted a key to the secrets of the universe, and it would be in her hands if she would just claim it as her own.
She wanted it. She wanted this particle like she had never wanted anything before. Its promise filled the emptiness in her heart so readily that she forgot about her own theory, filed away like the rest of the whimsical nonsensical 'science' she dreamt up in her childhood. What did it matter, anyway? Why would she need the love she was missing if she had so much more? It would validate more than her existence, but knowing that she had a purpose here would still be as important as the discovery itself.
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Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:43 pm
Defeat:
The particle was not hiding in the darkness.
It was waiting in the artificially lit tunnels of a hadron collider, which she would have occupied if she had not followed the assurances of potential, if she had not agreed to face the shadows in a different light. It greeted them all with magnificence that belonged to her.
Two months and four days after she opened her eyes within her world of promise, once she'd stepped into an opportunity she'd earned by killing the astrophysicist named Mildred Sigrid Kercher en route to CERN, the discovery of her boson was announced. The news spread as quickly as word of such a tremendous discovery should have. Her name was not among those responsible. Her name would never sit alongside the published theories of new physics or dark matter or supersymmetry or string theory. She was dead, without a purpose, without meaning, without a hypothesis to follow, and she was stuck in this purgatory with a voice in her head that would only laugh at her.
And it did.
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:49 pm
Rebirth:
One month after the announcement, an explosion in the labs jarred her back into a state of awareness that sleeplessness and malnutrition had persistently siphoned away. She recognized that she was in the facility of Deus Ex Machina, devoid of any credit related to finding the Higgs Boson, mechanically performing tasks that she could have completed in seventh grade. She had no purpose, no path to validation, no promise to fill that emptiness. What hope did she have now? Her intellect felt useless in this new world, and without school and studies and research, she was just a lost little girl with a kitchen knife, pretending she was as human as the rest of them.
Eventually, the smoke cleared, and the accident was properly contained, and the glass was removed, and the lab was functional again. They returned for another attempt at the assigned mixture and (presumably) sought the stability absent from their volatile state.
Mimsy found a new puzzle.
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Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:54 pm
Lost:
Half of her entire life was devoted to the path that would lead her to the boson. It wound through the long shadows cast by the setting sun, past trees still damp from morning dew, into a cold, stale darkness that never saw any light. This was where she would find it.
She'd doubled the stakes and bet her whole life on it.
It seemed so foreign, when she reminisced about the quest that had been so glorified in her mind. Why had she wanted it so badly all at once? What was so urgent back then? What made her feel the need to give up everything to change her direction? The actions almost seemed indicative of a panic, a frantic rush to leap into first place, scrambling to climb over someone who was closer than she was.
But the Higgs remained undiscovered, even now. There was no urgency. It was hers when she wanted it. Proof of the particle would just fall into her palm when she held out her hand. There was time. Everyone else was incompetent. Nobody knew what she knew. She had all of the secrets. She knew how to do anything.
With one exception.
The particle could wait for her. It had already waited lifetimes, patiently whispering reminders of its existence. There was just one last thing that she needed to accomplish. One piece of evidence that rhythmically called her name. She squeezed the hand that held hers - the hand that so readily pressed warmth and the promise of what was missing into her empty palm - and found comfort in her growing understanding. The Higgs could wait a little longer.
Then she'd have it all.
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 12:27 am
Unexpected:
A kiss and two small words that were abnormally heavy with momentous significance.
The question was almost reflexive: 'I do' what?, she meant to ask.
"I--" was all that came out, before she sucked the rest of the inquiry into her lungs with a gasp, part delight, part intrigue.
Mimsy was not the kind of girl that daydreamed for all of her life about moments like this, not the kind of girl who impatiently waited for such a thing to happen, not the kind of girl who even actively remembered that these things existed. But the pieces that she put together reminded her of its meaning, and it didn't seem important to wonder why she had failed to place it on her projected progression, despite its obvious state as the next logical step.
"I do too," she quietly said, reverent through her amusement. She knew that he already knew that, and had known it before he put crayon to paper. Knowing that fact had probably contributed to his desire to write it at all. She smiled her crooked smile instead of addressing any of it, because he could probably guess it anyway, and admired the certificate in silence.
It was all a reflection of formality, opposing the most traditional sense of the concept as directly as it could, all while leaving the core meaning intact.
It was the sort of thing that would be normal and correct in the world that one might find if they stepped through a mirror.
And that seemed right.
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 12:28 am
Treasure:
When she searched the small inventory of possessions that remained after the fire, she found only one undamaged frame. The glass was cloudy with dust, but it revealed its contents as she rubbed the sleeve of her coat over its surface.
The diploma for Mildred Sigrid Kercher's Master's degree. A symbol of pride. A signifier of knowledge that had once supplied the path to the answers of the universe.
She glanced between the diploma in its frame and the paper in her lap. This frame was for an accomplishment. An achievement. A feat of merit. There was no question, nor reason for debate. She scoffed at herself for even humoring the thought.
With care, she slid the paper between the pages of one of the surviving journals, and put it back in the box that it belonged in. With great satisfaction, she held the frame up to admire it once more.
Mildred Kercher and Robert Morris are together. 3.1.2014
Green crayon. Two names. Three words. A date.
A symbol of pride. A signifier of an achievement that would supply the path to the answers of her universe.
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 3:36 am
Inherit:
Days later, after the stirring of initial intrigue and inquiries had been quenched, her ravenous curiosity startled itself awake again and sunk its teeth into her mind.
She lowered the book that she had been eagerly reading, her stare distracted as she lost herself in fascination. The book was slowly closed onto her thumb as she worked through the thought, digging into it, taking it apart, considering each possible direction as objectively as she could. This new angle made something so dull seem interesting, irresistible for its promise of opportunity.
This was ultimately well outside of her field of knowledge, however, so she felt no shame in consulting someone who was more experienced on the subject.
"Is this the point at which someone in my position would typically consider accepting a new name or title?" She raised her eyebrows and tipped her head up to look at the expert, mulling over the idea. "What are the options, if so?"
When she was old enough to grasp the meaning of a name, she chose something more fitting for herself, better suited for her reality. It felt feasible to do it again. What remained was an indicator that she was the daughter of Caroline and Victor Kercher, first cousin of Clerise Wilson. And she didn't want - or need - any of that.
She was creating something better.
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 5:41 am
Learning:
[tw: graphic animal cruelty]
"Your actions today were irresponsible and inexcusably careless. This is unacceptable. I can't tolerate this behavior, and you shouldn't either, Mimsy; you are blatantly disregarding your own safety. Your safety is important. Do you understand?"
There was blood on her hands (arms, knees, dress, mouth), mud caked on her bare feet, and a mess of loose black hair in her face, sticky with sweat. She was eight, spurned and selfish and scientific, and she could sometimes find a balance among the three of them.
This was not one of those times.
Her nose scrunched up and she bit her lip, ignoring the revival of the coppery taste to think hard about her response. She wanted to tell him so many things. There was so much that she wanted to share with him. Things that made her feel proud inside, because she knew those things now.
Like:
The amount of pressure required to break a juvenile cat's legs (or dislocate them, at least) was not nearly as significant as she hypothesized. Fur was difficult to cut through, and was too messy when the blood was introduced. The blood of a cat was slightly warmer than human blood. The heart of a cat was not special at all, even when it was a pet. The rest of a cat was not particularly interesting, after learning everything in her anatomy books (like she was supposed to). It was not very satisfying to feel something die when it was so small and helpless, because it seemed too easy. In spite of her general lack of practice, she did a lot better this time!
With a short, decisive sigh, she settled on an answer.
"Yes, sir." She bowed her head and clasped her hands in front of her, awaiting further scolding. Her father studied her face in silence for several long minutes, then bent to place his hands on her shoulders, firmly directing her to face away from him.
"Do you understand why, or do you need to ask?" His voice was less harsh, but the stern edge remained. Even when his fingers gently passed through her hair, separating it into six equal portions with care, she knew he was still displeased with her.
There was only silence again. He patiently waited, braiding her hair in the deliberate motions that must have been habitual in its simplicity by now. They were just tight enough to be neat and orderly, but not so much that it hurt her scalp. She waited until he was almost finished, standing straight and respectful, and opened her mouth with an almost inaudible um.
"Why?" she asked, a fraught whisper.
It was a question that she would never stop asking.
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:14 am
Mercy:
Caroline only loved her for three and a half weeks, which was as long as she possibly could. It was better to stay in bed, locked in her room, away from the monster that she had created. Touching her was unpleasant and terrifying, because she felt an urgency to get rid of her before the abomination was strong enough to kill her first. When she looked at her, she felt panic and disgust, and knew that she had made a mistake.
Victor loved her for much longer, in comparison: four years and two months, which was as long as he possibly could. Initially, he loved his only daughter enough to make up for the void of affection that was his wife. Then the void of affection extended to him, and his wife admitted that it was the fault of their mistake as she pushed him away. When he looked at her, he felt disappointment and resentment, and knew that he was stuck with her, this child-shaped thing, who was already visibly broken.
He did not love her, but he would still teach her how to survive, because he felt responsible for that much. The girl needed so much help to sufficiently ground herself in an acceptable reality. One day, she would destroy herself, as was inevitable for a volatile explosive with a broken timer. One day, staying calm and together would no longer be an option. One day, the wrong wire would snap.
It was crucial to ensure that such an event was delayed for as long as he could manage. If he could not save her, he could still save himself.
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:15 am
Curse:
The girl was observant to an aggravating degree. She watched her mother when she halted her attempts to interact, and her father for every moment that he was home, but looked away any time someone looked at her. She scarcely spoke, favoring the intake of information instead. She did not smile or seek affection. She squirmed when she was touched or hugged. She never wanted to play or make friends. She hated sharing, and hid her drawings of bugs and stars under her bed. She was incessantly obsessive and fixated on the cosmos, and it was a struggle to get her to speak extensively about anything else. She could close her eyes and recite the constellations in her unsettling monotonous voice, but only when she wanted to, seemingly at random.
The girl was exhausting, and was not worth the energy, because she destroyed every ounce of love that simply existed around her.
The girl quickly learned that nothing would gain her mother's attention, no matter what she attempted. The attention that she did want had to come from her father, who changed a lot, she noted, through the time that she consciously watched him. There was something in his eyes that was entirely gone one day, and she diligently waited for it to come back.
It never did.
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:21 am
Training:
When she finally asked about the missing thing, years after it went away, she received no answer. In a desperate attempt to learn why, she asked her mother through the bedroom door, who screamed in fright and reminded her that she was a monster. Nineteen times.
"Am I a monster?" the girl asked her father, picking at her thumb as she waited for an answer again. It took so long for him to respond that she almost concluded he didn't intend to. He kneeled in front of her and put his hands on either side of her face, ensuring that she would not look away from him this time.
"Yes." There was a resigned certainty in his voice, and he sighed as he forced himself to stare into the eyes of what he had created. She stared back, and it felt a lot like she was looking at her own eyes: green, flecked with blue, surrounded by thick black lashes, dull and devoid of something that most everyone else seemed to have. Something that had to be important.
Something that kept the monster away, maybe.
"Yes, you are, princess." His thumbs pressed against her little jaw, and he clenched his teeth to stop himself from pushing harder. "But it's okay. It has to be, because there's nothing we can do about it. This won't go away."
Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked, and he didn't reprimand her for looking away when her eyes darted to an empty space past him.
"You can't change what you are, but you can learn how to pretend. If you want to listen, and promise to try, I'll tell you how people are supposed to act." He moved his hands from her face to rub his eyes with the heels of his palms. This was going to be a second full-time job. The resentment grew. "Then it wouldn't matter. If you don't let anyone see, and nobody notices, it would be just like you were like everyone else. You have to learn how to be as human as the rest of us. Can you do that? Will you try?"
Mimsy nodded, because she was afraid of the day when she learned why everyone who used that word made it sound like it meant something so unforgivably terrible.
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 6:28 pm
Candidate:
For a woman who lived to find answers to the endless deluge of questions in her mind, Svensyl was a death sentence.
The sword (or voice in her head, or cameo brooch, which opened into a mirror) had once been a Jabberwock, a creature that Mimsy had always categorized as entirely fictional. It was troubling to have to move them into reality in the first place, and he didn't make it easy to cope with the rest of the problems that trailed behind him.
She wondered what he meant when he claimed that she didn't know the meaning of her name, when it was a word clearly defined as 'miserable and flimsy'. She wondered why he was so insistent in presenting only nonsense to her when he was capable of communicating properly. She wondered why he wanted her to touch and kiss and love other people.
She wondered why he chose her, because the selection seemed more senseless than he could be. Other weapons, like Syntax, seemed much more appropriate for someone like her. Her coworkers spoke of bonds that strengthened over time, when theirs only appeared to diminish as far as she could tell, a result of their contrary existences.
Why did it have to be him?
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 6:32 pm
Hope:
(He saw it as soon as she peeked into the rabbit hole: someone just like him, buried beneath the tightly-wound flesh of a science-making woman. He knew that he could help her unravel to get to the someone that she really was, even if it took a long, long time. He could curl his sharp claws into her mind to unhook the connections of her perfectly-crafted web, one by one, fraying the silk threads to make them weak, until the spider had nowhere to go but down.
There was progress already.
She was--
--falling.
He could do this.
He could help.
And she could make him feel like he'd never lost anything at all.)
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 7:52 pm
Beginner:
It was reflexive.
There were fingers affectionately brushing her hair out of her face. It was reflexive. Pull back, make every inch of her body say no with rigidity and a wrinkled nose, push away until things felt safe again. It was reflexive, but it went against all of her intentions and all of her recent memories, and she had never fought herself this much.
I do not need to do this.
Her expression softened into something tentative and full of concentration.
I am not supposed to give the impression that touching me is not okay.
She cleared her throat and tried to smile.
I am not supposed to do this--
Svensyl began to speak, slow and steady and suppressed like a coiled up spring of mania, as if he had to build up for the sprint of speech that she knew was coming. He was too encouraging, too pushy, too blatant in his reminders of things she tried to bury in her mind. (Those were his favorite things. Like shiny little treasures.) He cooed at her and nudged her to think about how 'brumly exetastical' she was when she was soaked in her insanity, and didn't specify if he was referring to the proper noun or not. She was so lovely. She was so perfect. She was so unafraid of simple things, like kisses and laughter and babbling.
She was so free.
They were all attributes that she could never have unless she lost found herself by losing her mind.
"But I don't believe that. I believe you're nuts."
Panic flickered in her eyes, imperceptibly brief, as she heard those words.
"...no..." she whispered, a one world plea for a lost cause, and she didn't have to wonder why she wasn't even trying anymore.
