Re: Journal of Sociology [S!6] - [Fulfilling Reserves...]
05-20-2012, 09:50 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.
Miss Blacklight appreciated her surroundings like wine. First, she looked everywhere. Her head, cocking in sure-glint circles at the floors and ceilings, at the buzzing lamps crackling light on the taupe walls. Taupe was calm, they said. Made for work drive.
The posters on the walls had been repurposed either into battle plans or riot shields, lines of tape dedicated which areas of computers were meant to tally resources or surviving employees, and which monitors were implosions waiting to happen. Someone had stacked the vending machine with letterbombs instead of kitkats, upon which someone else had attached a post-it note reading "you deserve to break today."
But she also smelled something. Sweat and blood, and panic, plenty of it. Her associée Sociologist had warned for a warzone, she did recall. Saltpetre. The air had an arid, hot taste to it, in part because someone had sabotaged the ceiling fans.
And then, she savored. The building she was in teemed with desires, its inhabitants huddled so closely together they appeared to her as blotches of remarkably simple, remarkably green thoughts. But it didn't stop there, even the walls and ceilings were crawling with stars and specks.
She considered the other contestants she was introduced to. The Sociologist was keeping her in place, but desiry is a fleeting skill, like breathing. Being unable to move left her unable to check her enemies' thoughts, and not being able to do that made her realise how terrible she had gotten at judging people by anything else but what she read in their minds. She figured that, were she to run into them, she would find out what they wanted of her before they even noticed her. She tried her best to remember who she was pitted against, but only got about three people from memory, which proved to be more than useless.
She tutted her wishes for a moment. About thirty floors up she heard an explosion. She looked around at every window (or all of them at once, who knows) trying to make a calculated decision which to lean out of. Then she guessed one at random and stuck to it. To her dismay, the window was either jammed or locked. Well, then.
gotta get out i got this got a chopper waiting for me twenty miles and i'm golden
She stuck a red jewel on the window and watched it meld into the glass. Before long the reinforced window was more of a reinforced suggestion. She toppled the glass, watching it pivot in the windowpane. She leaned all the way through, trying to get a good view of what just went on up there.
“Oh yes, the window. I forgot, that must be our most pressing concern, hm? What say you, John, were we to get back under cover? Matter of bullets, and all?”
From a few stories up debris came rattling down and several bodies flew out the window but that didn't really matter, someone else had noticed it as well and he was beautiful. In his head, all of his desires were blue, and the red thoughts were all over his body, he was like a rainbow of wishes or something, she'd never seen that before! She recognised the shabby-looking man staring up as one of the contestants, and immediately wanted to know more about him.
There was just the matter of getting up there. On the entire floor, Miss Blacklight didn't see any elevators, or at least working ones. Nothing, however, desiry couldn't solve.
annie annie? annie annie annie! annie annie? annie?
She plucked a bright orange gem from her hair, and simply dropped it on the floor. Like a missile it shot across and through the building, leaving an inky, cloudy map of Miss Blacklight's surroundings right in front of her. She tried to locate herself first, then John Doe, an approximate in any case, and the best way to get to him.
Well, that was odd. Following her map, Miss Blacklight pushed open a wall. As it said, narrow corridors led between the building's walls, tiny stairs leading to floors above. A scruffy janitor noticed her (who wouldn't) and addressed her oh so kindly.
“Ma'am,” he said in a brandy-voice, “the fuck are you doing here?”
Miss Blacklight smiled coyly. She could tell this man didn't quite care what she was doing here.
“Going up?”
-
“You're a rainbow!”
Ah. The quack. He was wondering when she would introduce herself. From a first glance, Alberich decided she seemed quite the lunatic.
However, Doctor von Wissenschaft remembered, the Sociologist had said empires had fallen to her art. Still, the man could but wonder what flavour of voodoo this woman employed.
“Aha, Miss uh, Backlight?” The mistake went lost on Miss Blacklight's uncharitably specific attention span.
“No wait, I mean... Your face is a rainbow!”
This... This could take a while. “Now, lass, do compose yourself. I'm faring better making sense as a...” Alberich considered that his affliction hadn't been properly called anything yet “...as much as you confuse me. Now tell me, girl, what's that about rainbows?”
Alberich loved listening to witch doctors. He was spiteful like that.
“Um, it's your desires. They make you look like a reverse sunset! It's really pretty.”
“Well, why's that now?” The sarcasm in Alberich's grin went unnoticed.
“Doctor,” she started, “do you know Aryuveda?”
“Familiar with the name, but not much more.”
we are gathered here today i remember when dad fuck it i can't do this i'm sorry dad so fucking sorry
Miss Blacklight took a murky blue wish from her sleeve. Cracking it open, she started drawing in the air with the wish-ink on her fingertips. First she drew a star, then a triangle inside it. The image was floating parallel between the two. She gave it a light whirl.
“Doctor, could you tell me what the five elements of life are?”
“Uh...” Alberich knew this very well, even though the pedant inside him insisted on looking for ponchos, but the scientist was still stuck on this magic trick she just pulled. He answered. “Fire, water, earth, air, and aether, correct?”
“Very much so!” Miss Blacklight gave the doctor a cordial smile, as a congratulations on being surprisingly cooperative about the idea of desiry and magic in its essence so far. “Everything in life is supposedly a ratio or composure of these five, where steam is two thirds water and a third fire, for example.”
“In Aryuveda people believe the body is made of three doshas, or three humors that go as follows: vitha is a force of impulsive action, which represents in desiry primal needs such as hunger or anger. It's associated with ether and partly air, and shows red.
“Kapha is calmth, which manifests itself in emotions, traumas, fears, tics, schedules, and so forth. It also includes your need to sleep and addictions, since you're not really born with that, so it's not really vitha. Kapha is partly water, and earth, and shows as blue.
“Lastly, pitha is best known as drive. It represents how serious you are about the desire in question, and can be applied to either of the two kinds of desires. The more thought you put into your desire, or the more pressing the need gets, the more determined you become to fulfill it which makes them show up brighter on my uh, desiry vision. That makes it associate with air, fire and water, and makes pure pitha theoretically white. Are you with me so far?”
Alberich had taken a seat in an office chair in the meantime. For what it was worth, this woman put a lot of thought into selling her trade to unwitting folks. He nodded sagely.
“I can tell I'm boring you. Not by desiry.” She smiled. He smiled too.
“Now, imagine a sixth element, void.” She drew a line from every end of the star, into a single point above it. “Everything isn't just a ratio of five elements anymore, it's now an amount of each of them. Something can be more fire or less fire than something else, and all of it that isn't fire is empty void. With that in mind, it means that desires can also be an amount vatha and an amount kapha. How much of the wish 'is not,' is pictured as black.
“This makes four colors: red, blue, white and black. Knowing that desires are inherently yellow, you can see how I got my dress to look so fancy, I'm sure?”
Alberich leaned in. He didn't speak at all. The doctor was still astonished that this girl was making so much sense after making so little sense.
“So you're saying, effectively, that you can read minds?”
“Read souls, actually! It's even stranger. For instance, yours! You're a special case, because for some reason all the blue is in your head, and all the red is in your body.”
Alright, maybe that was a good guess. Maybe she just read as much about John from what the Sociologist had said?
“You're a zombie?”
He's a zombie. His affliction hadn't been called much of anything, so hearing it so bluntly for the first time made him slightly gasp for air.
“Yes I am. I'm a zombie.”
Miss Blacklight appreciated her surroundings like wine. First, she looked everywhere. Her head, cocking in sure-glint circles at the floors and ceilings, at the buzzing lamps crackling light on the taupe walls. Taupe was calm, they said. Made for work drive.
The posters on the walls had been repurposed either into battle plans or riot shields, lines of tape dedicated which areas of computers were meant to tally resources or surviving employees, and which monitors were implosions waiting to happen. Someone had stacked the vending machine with letterbombs instead of kitkats, upon which someone else had attached a post-it note reading "you deserve to break today."
But she also smelled something. Sweat and blood, and panic, plenty of it. Her associée Sociologist had warned for a warzone, she did recall. Saltpetre. The air had an arid, hot taste to it, in part because someone had sabotaged the ceiling fans.
And then, she savored. The building she was in teemed with desires, its inhabitants huddled so closely together they appeared to her as blotches of remarkably simple, remarkably green thoughts. But it didn't stop there, even the walls and ceilings were crawling with stars and specks.
She considered the other contestants she was introduced to. The Sociologist was keeping her in place, but desiry is a fleeting skill, like breathing. Being unable to move left her unable to check her enemies' thoughts, and not being able to do that made her realise how terrible she had gotten at judging people by anything else but what she read in their minds. She figured that, were she to run into them, she would find out what they wanted of her before they even noticed her. She tried her best to remember who she was pitted against, but only got about three people from memory, which proved to be more than useless.
She tutted her wishes for a moment. About thirty floors up she heard an explosion. She looked around at every window (or all of them at once, who knows) trying to make a calculated decision which to lean out of. Then she guessed one at random and stuck to it. To her dismay, the window was either jammed or locked. Well, then.
gotta get out i got this got a chopper waiting for me twenty miles and i'm golden
She stuck a red jewel on the window and watched it meld into the glass. Before long the reinforced window was more of a reinforced suggestion. She toppled the glass, watching it pivot in the windowpane. She leaned all the way through, trying to get a good view of what just went on up there.
“Oh yes, the window. I forgot, that must be our most pressing concern, hm? What say you, John, were we to get back under cover? Matter of bullets, and all?”
From a few stories up debris came rattling down and several bodies flew out the window but that didn't really matter, someone else had noticed it as well and he was beautiful. In his head, all of his desires were blue, and the red thoughts were all over his body, he was like a rainbow of wishes or something, she'd never seen that before! She recognised the shabby-looking man staring up as one of the contestants, and immediately wanted to know more about him.
There was just the matter of getting up there. On the entire floor, Miss Blacklight didn't see any elevators, or at least working ones. Nothing, however, desiry couldn't solve.
annie annie? annie annie annie! annie annie? annie?
She plucked a bright orange gem from her hair, and simply dropped it on the floor. Like a missile it shot across and through the building, leaving an inky, cloudy map of Miss Blacklight's surroundings right in front of her. She tried to locate herself first, then John Doe, an approximate in any case, and the best way to get to him.
Well, that was odd. Following her map, Miss Blacklight pushed open a wall. As it said, narrow corridors led between the building's walls, tiny stairs leading to floors above. A scruffy janitor noticed her (who wouldn't) and addressed her oh so kindly.
“Ma'am,” he said in a brandy-voice, “the fuck are you doing here?”
Miss Blacklight smiled coyly. She could tell this man didn't quite care what she was doing here.
“Going up?”
-
“You're a rainbow!”
Ah. The quack. He was wondering when she would introduce herself. From a first glance, Alberich decided she seemed quite the lunatic.
However, Doctor von Wissenschaft remembered, the Sociologist had said empires had fallen to her art. Still, the man could but wonder what flavour of voodoo this woman employed.
“Aha, Miss uh, Backlight?” The mistake went lost on Miss Blacklight's uncharitably specific attention span.
“No wait, I mean... Your face is a rainbow!”
This... This could take a while. “Now, lass, do compose yourself. I'm faring better making sense as a...” Alberich considered that his affliction hadn't been properly called anything yet “...as much as you confuse me. Now tell me, girl, what's that about rainbows?”
Alberich loved listening to witch doctors. He was spiteful like that.
“Um, it's your desires. They make you look like a reverse sunset! It's really pretty.”
“Well, why's that now?” The sarcasm in Alberich's grin went unnoticed.
“Doctor,” she started, “do you know Aryuveda?”
“Familiar with the name, but not much more.”
we are gathered here today i remember when dad fuck it i can't do this i'm sorry dad so fucking sorry
Miss Blacklight took a murky blue wish from her sleeve. Cracking it open, she started drawing in the air with the wish-ink on her fingertips. First she drew a star, then a triangle inside it. The image was floating parallel between the two. She gave it a light whirl.
“Doctor, could you tell me what the five elements of life are?”
“Uh...” Alberich knew this very well, even though the pedant inside him insisted on looking for ponchos, but the scientist was still stuck on this magic trick she just pulled. He answered. “Fire, water, earth, air, and aether, correct?”
“Very much so!” Miss Blacklight gave the doctor a cordial smile, as a congratulations on being surprisingly cooperative about the idea of desiry and magic in its essence so far. “Everything in life is supposedly a ratio or composure of these five, where steam is two thirds water and a third fire, for example.”
“In Aryuveda people believe the body is made of three doshas, or three humors that go as follows: vitha is a force of impulsive action, which represents in desiry primal needs such as hunger or anger. It's associated with ether and partly air, and shows red.
“Kapha is calmth, which manifests itself in emotions, traumas, fears, tics, schedules, and so forth. It also includes your need to sleep and addictions, since you're not really born with that, so it's not really vitha. Kapha is partly water, and earth, and shows as blue.
“Lastly, pitha is best known as drive. It represents how serious you are about the desire in question, and can be applied to either of the two kinds of desires. The more thought you put into your desire, or the more pressing the need gets, the more determined you become to fulfill it which makes them show up brighter on my uh, desiry vision. That makes it associate with air, fire and water, and makes pure pitha theoretically white. Are you with me so far?”
Alberich had taken a seat in an office chair in the meantime. For what it was worth, this woman put a lot of thought into selling her trade to unwitting folks. He nodded sagely.
“I can tell I'm boring you. Not by desiry.” She smiled. He smiled too.
“Now, imagine a sixth element, void.” She drew a line from every end of the star, into a single point above it. “Everything isn't just a ratio of five elements anymore, it's now an amount of each of them. Something can be more fire or less fire than something else, and all of it that isn't fire is empty void. With that in mind, it means that desires can also be an amount vatha and an amount kapha. How much of the wish 'is not,' is pictured as black.
“This makes four colors: red, blue, white and black. Knowing that desires are inherently yellow, you can see how I got my dress to look so fancy, I'm sure?”
Alberich leaned in. He didn't speak at all. The doctor was still astonished that this girl was making so much sense after making so little sense.
“So you're saying, effectively, that you can read minds?”
“Read souls, actually! It's even stranger. For instance, yours! You're a special case, because for some reason all the blue is in your head, and all the red is in your body.”
Alright, maybe that was a good guess. Maybe she just read as much about John from what the Sociologist had said?
“You're a zombie?”
He's a zombie. His affliction hadn't been called much of anything, so hearing it so bluntly for the first time made him slightly gasp for air.
“Yes I am. I'm a zombie.”
quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur.