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 Posted: Thu May 28, 2015 7:20 am
The clone Jan was taken, his arms confiscated and while he wanted to ensure the creature was preserved as a living specimen (for now), he could only follow the techs so far before he was stopped. His access was limited and while he was a Runic master now, that wasnt worth spit to the grand scene of confidential clearance and division specifications to different sectors and research.
And the clone was taken, HIS clone, and as he watched it taken, the glimmer of possibility and proof he could touch, he knew he couldn't let it go. He had to find where it went.
He left, unwashed and un-ironed, straight to Dr. H. He had to go. She needed that clone. He needed that clone. What other door was there? She needed out and here it was bit his way was blocked by red tape and I'd beige force could open them, then a lot of Suns would be getting theater way. Seeing as that wasn't the case, other maneuvers were necessary - and Melvin didn't exaxtly feel he was the flexible type. Yet, he'd bend over backwards till he snapped in half of it was needed.
He swallowed hard, remembering the last encounter with Dr. H in the morgue. He had no god standing or reputation to aid him.
He knocked, flexing his fingers as he looked up and down the hall and back to the door.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2015 1:57 pm
The doctor's typical intonation of enter followed. The desk might seem a bit different this time, and none of the delicate bird skeletons remained peering from shelves and odd corners. There was, however, the sound of two birds cooing; a pair of pigeons in a cage, a brilliant scarlet mark across their chests. The doctor himself was sitting at the large glass window, gazing down toward the sparring grounds below, his back to Melvin.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2015 3:13 pm
Melvin entered and walked in, stopping short when he saw the Lead looking down through the large back window. Before, he had always happened upon the man in some state of paperwork shuffling or at his desk. It had been typical, professional, and brought the sense that this was business. Even in the morgue, Dr. H had been walking alongside with Dr. Stephen in some matter of important discussion. Instead, Dr. H seemed to be taking a moment to relax or if anything, analyze and judge. It felt like a personal moment, a moment to just take a breath, and he felt he was intruding upon something. A train of thought or some need to step away from his desk.
He debated to himself if that was good or bad. Good in that the man might be calmer, more at ease to listen than to ...say... stuff him into some compact space. He wasn't about to kid himself nowadays that the man was prone to logical, sane thoughts. The laundry list started to accumulate when Dr. H openly stated he would use people for whatever he wanted. It wasn't the mindset of a sane man to also think up that an appropriate punishment for a grave robber was to stuff them into a morgue cabinet, place his dissected girlfriend on top of them, and then shove a phone into her mouth with a warning. Something so elaborate had some thought to it, and it wasn't something the average person would come up with.
Melvin eyed the filing cabinets nearby and wondered if he would even fit.
Maybe if he hacked off a few pieces first.
Looking back, he tried to think that this might be bad. If he intruded on a need to be calm, a need to get away from some aggravation, then introducing himself into the mix was allowing himself to be a scapegoat to those emotions.
Just going to come back later when he is grinning?
I believe him grinning would be worse.
Taking a breath, he stepped in closer, between the desk and the door.
"Sir..." He started. He started and then paused. It was hard to phrase a request without sounding needy or demanding. Then again, he didn't want to request. He needed this - badly.
"I've brought a clone back to the Sahara." He said, stating simple fact to allow his mind to process. "I've brought a horsemen scout before too....but I'm more interested in the first."
Not just an interest. "I mean, I'm not just interested. This - this clone is important." All of them were in their capabilities. "I was skeptical they existed and went to find one."
He paused to look at the birds who started cooing, finally taking notice of them as he had set his attention to the doctor only. It was strange to see anything resembling a normal animal, and while minipets had their similarities, he made a point to remind himself they were nothing but test subjects. It felt a waste to give his emotions to some fake creature. He was momentarily sidetracked by the fact they were here at all, and that they looked normal. The cages they were in didn't seem to be Fear Cages, and for the most part, they just looked like birds. He wasn't particularly fond of pigeons. They were messy birds known for disease and filth, but after years without seeing a normal animal on the island (or normal looking as he was sure these were not normal birds), even he lowered his standards just a bit to at least appreciate their presence.
But the distraction was pushed aside to return to the man in the light of the window.
"I found proof." He found this other Jan. A Jan body. A body that could repair and move and react.
"I mean. Not that there wasn't for you. I'm sure you already know about clones." Taym told him, and if Taym knew, there must be some report somewhere about it. Seemed more if the man said there were more than just him. The techs also seemed to show no alarm in taking the clone away. It suggested a tired procedure that made him feel anxious in their knowledge and privilege.
He stood there, trying to keep himself from twisting his fingers and wishing he had done more public speaking in his life. He paused in hopes of hearing some confirmation about the clones. Anything at all. Anything that said he was at the right place.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2015 10:32 pm
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 5:12 am
What a talker.
No confirmation. Then again, it wasn't like he would just be gabby with anyone. They weren't friends, colleges, or at the same level of power. Being expected to be treated with anything other that curt acknowledgement of his existence probably was the best he could expect these days.
But it wasn't a dismissal. If anything, it just meant to get to his point instead of testing the theory that Dr. H was at the window to calm down.
He cycled through his head. He wanted this, needed this, but saying so hadn't done him any good before. Dr. H had said during their regrettable last encounter that he felt everyone was his. He could make use of everyone as long as he saw some benefit to keeping them around. The only question was, did Dr. H see him as worth the effort?
Well, you are alive.
I don't think that means much.
He certainly didn't feel like he was, but he had to make him seem as if he was. This was rather hard when he couldn't even convince himself. As it was, he was just trying to right a wrong. One that ultimately went down to the fact that he should be dead long ago.
"I want to know how I can get clearance to be in the division that does clone research. Or....whereever the clones are taken." He wasn't sure there even was a specific division for clones, but if a Lifer could make request for a space funding project to go to the moon during their meetings and get it, one had to have hope that things of greater importance might get needed attention. But who was to say they even needed more workers? He had no medical experience and had only taken a few semesters in college before he was sent to the island.
Melvin, you need to focus. He hadn't even said anything to put you down and here you are running off.
"I'll do whatever is needed." He said, voice started to pick up in pace. "I-I don't care if it's just washing beakers in that specialisation to start. I just can't go back to just carving rocks when I know we have clones. When I know they exist here. I can't let myself walk away from that."
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 9:05 am
"They are, my dear, my personal project. You'll have to do a much better job of explaining your intentions than this vague," the doctor gestured to Melvin. All of Melvin. "Come back as a man of science, Melvin." And here, the doctor's tone gentled and became pitying.
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 10:02 am
"Y-you just gestured to all of me." He said, shaken at the revelation that there was a project but it was Dr. H's project.
A man of science. A man of science. He could do that.
You barely qualify as a man. Saliva cackled at her own joke and Melvin's heart sank.
But his science wasn't fueled by simple interest. Dr. H wanted specifics, but the actual specifics could wind up causing danger to Jan further. If Dr. H knew the specifics, when even his best friend didn't believe them, then what would a man who disliked him and had the power to not only strangle him but make everyone involved suffer do.
He had to be careful to put all the danger on himself, but he was deathly afraid that once he said anything and put the cards on the table, it wouldn't be enough to win the game in his favor. Worse, that not only would he be dismissed, he would be forever barred from any chance of touching a clone again.
Palms warm and face cold, he tried again. "You have seen a lot more than I have. Years of what people probably kept saying was impossible, clones included - but more than that."
Still vague.
"Clones look like us, somehow we're captured to make them or something, they can work for us just as much as they work as false agents for the horsemen."
Too easy of a statement for anyone to make.
"Not as shields or even fake agents used against them or stronger golems or even basic regeneration." The clones kept going without stopping unless separated from their limbs. Imagine an army of that, but that wasn't what he wanted.
He wanted something specific.
Not vague.
He looked at Dr. H, looking for any glimmer of his character that might side with his feelings and intentions but couldn't make out anything. He never had been good at reading people. It was probably why he got hurt so often and caught off guard by them. Like Rep lying. Like Rin wanting to be with him. Like Jan hurting Horace and Horace being okay with that.
What did he know about people?
But he brought that on himself and what did it matter now? What did dead people need to understand?
This was what was important. The task she gave him.
"They... They can.. They can be doors." He said, gesturing his hands slowly with this statement. "For us." For everyone. For her. She said it herself. To find the way back. Fate brought Rin to him though Jan and now Fate showed him clones. It made sense.
"We already regenerate. We already heal. Just not enough. Not from the worst of it. Not after." They needed to be able to come back from the extremes. The places bodies like her's couldn't take.
They needed new bodies.
"Their bodies can." It wasn't hard to understand, and he hoped Dr. H saw what he meant.
Was it too vague? Did he push further?
He licked his cold lips and continued, feeling jittery while this close to it.
"We could make bodies anyone can use. Anyone without."
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 2:16 pm
"Oh, Melvin," H shook his head. and then turned to face Melvin, arms cross and face in shadow as the sun gave him an almost ethereal outline. " You magnificent ******** up. You have, it should be said, been one of the most pathetic hunters in this division since you got here. For years you simply make entitled demands rather than informed proposals, you try to play Frankenstein with minipets like a child pulling off insect wings under a magnifying glass. Even Robert Morris has proven more useful to the division than yourself. Consider that, Robert Morris. And then you lose your sanity and judgement, blatantly and to an obvious extreme." He had to pause, a touch of wonder in his voice. "The only skill you've ever shown me is the carving of rocks, and yet here you are. Dismissing your one actual skill and finally proposing something and what is it that you outline? The same foolish, ill considered, ********," the doctor's voice snapped coldly around the curse, "that killed Clarice Sinclair, nearly destroyed the world, and had her posthumously declared a traitor." Once again, the doctor gestured, "You are a ticking bomb of bad decisions, Melvin, and as entertaining as that is, allowing you near over a year of my own work is quite possibly the most frightening thing I've contemplated in a long time and I was once eaten by a tentacle monster the size of Rhode Island."
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 3:06 pm
Melvin listened as Dr. H casually and almost with some sort of calm delight, or maybe that was Melvin reading too much into things, tear him down piece by piece.
He was a ******** up. A magnificent one, above normal caliber. He had no grasp of science and only played in the labs. He was unqualified to be in the labs by that overview. A waste of materials working on wasting materials. Not a man. Not a man of science. A child.
Robert Morris, someone that Melvin rarely spoke with and didn't see as particularly educated, was above him. He wasn't even on the lowest rung of the intellectual totem pole. He wasn't even the foundation. He was some rock far underneath.
A rock.
He was only good for carving rocks. A prisoner chip-chipping away at stones because it was manual labor, of some skill, he could do. He had only done runic diving because it had been one of those rare tasks on the island that made him forget. It made him tired. It helped him sleep. It helped time pass. He liked having some proof that he used his time, produced something that was at least useful to others, in his hands each time.
And this hobby that basically kept him doing a monotonous task, numbed his mind, was what was seen as the best task for him – because his active mind on anything else was a disaster. Put the child in the corner to be occupied with something that couldn't hurt others or himself.
It wasn't any wonder that, with that outlook, Dr. H wouldn't want him on a project he had spent over a year working on. And here he was, asking to be let in on his project when he did none of the work. Anyone who ever did a high school science project in teams could spot the one child in school they didn't want to work with, and this time, it was him.
He felt a turning self-disgust bubble up inside, already festering inside of him but only inflated in those few seconds to extremes.
Maybe that was why he wasn't on any teams. Maybe that was why he was alone. He was the ******** up no one wanted to partner with in class.
... a ticking bomb of bad decisions.
But even he felt a foolish desire to defend his request. To better explain. Something better than the alternative of walking out that door to –
-to what? He had no other plans. The idea of standing in the hallway to process the 'what else do I do?' was too frightening in that moment, and when Jan woke up and he went to Rin, what would she think of him then?
She'll agree.
"I'm not her. I'm not like that. She went and did something without consent. I'm asking you. I'm…I'm begging you. I won't do anything without your permission. I promise. I'll do whatever it is that is required. I don't care what it is. You don't even have to be concerned with any minor degree of safety either." Not that he felt Dr. H did.
"You want to use people. Use me then! If I'm not good enough. Then…." He didn't know what to do. He was grasping at straws in the face of flat out rejection and he had no plan B to continue. The only alternative was to keep talking in hopes anything would spark the man's interest even if Melvin knew exactly nothing of what Dr. H was even
interested in!
"Then tell me what it is that is even valuable here because I don't even know."
He was shaking now, eyes looking to slightly raised hands as if trying to hold something that wasn't there and then looking back at his superior. "I was told I need to fix things. I can't ignore that. " He couldn't tell by who exactly. If he mentioned that that woman was in his dream in the morgue with Rin, his chances were gone.
"I owe her that."
lizbot LOL. When he hits the nail on the head, he does it.
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 3:23 pm
" Who told you that you needed to fix things, Melvin?" The doctor's voice was quiet, unemotional.
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 3:37 pm
He could hear his heart pounding painfully in his chest and he felt short of breath.
He stared back - frozen.
Tense.
Slowly, as if he was admitting to a teacher who had taught him a bad habit, he whispered. "...Rin."
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 3:43 pm
"And how is she telling you this?"
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 4:00 pm
Lowering his hands, he let his mind tick slowly, cautiously. The only thing that drove him to speak was that Dr. H had not dismissed him yet. It was because of that which gave him a morsel of hope he tried to restrain best could. It wasn't a yes, but the absence of a no gave him a small permission slip to speak.
He tried to catch his breath hoping that calming his nerves would help but he only felt more on edgy and placed his hands against his sides to keep them from shaking.
At no point did he look away from the other man, wanting to see the second any doubt passed by in order to help heir cause.
"First, in the morgue." He brought a hand to touch his own wrist where the scars from where he bled out were still visible. "After she left. Not when she was there."
"....and then ..."
He could see Jan podded in the dim glow of runic light. A sleeping hunter with a beauty inside.
"... She found someone to speak through."
He pressed his lips tight a moment as he swallowed down the rising fear in the pit of his stomach and a cold sense he might be betraying them.
Was he like Dr. H said and destroying everything with his own hands right now?
"She needs help."
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 4:39 pm
There was an easing of tension, and H reached up to pinch his nose with a soft, rueful laugh. "Ah, Weiman. From the dead cats of lonely geriatrics to the dead girlfriends of gullible hunters. I see. You're such a continuing embarrassment, Melvin. You may sit in on testing sessions for a little while to sate your curiosity, but I won't allow you to ruin my work with your misguided fumbling." He flapped a hand at the younger man, "For now, do go away."
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 4:58 pm
He didn't get the first part. The name was lost to him, but he vaguely remembered seeing it once. He just couldn't remember where, and he dismissed it as just being a coworker to Dr. H that Melvin probably saw on some clipboard or room plate.
What was important that, despite the insult, Melvin was given clearance. To watch on testing for however long he was permitted, and that was far better than what he was being given before. He grabbed what little he could get and treasured it. He made progress and now he could tell Rin the good news once she woke. He could tell her that he was working out a way to bring her home.
"T-Thank you." He managed, almost deflating as he spoke it and felt every part of him wanting to sink to the ground and take a deep breath.
"Thank you for this. I promise I won't screw up anything." He would do whatever he was instructed to do, and maybe, just maybe, show he wasn't a ticking time bomb.
Before he could push Dr. H's patience or make the man chance his mind, he left, heading out. It wasn't until he was down the hallway and around the corner that he leaned his back against the wall and covered his face with both hands, breaking into a mixture of a small laugh and a cry of joy.
It was going to be OK. It was going to be OK.
Everything was going to work out.
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