(watching the door)

[mechanicalswans]

Weyland would have you know he is not brooding.

He doesn't do that anymore. He doesn't need to; he's a happily married man with a viable plan for world destruction. No, what he is doing is simply leaning against the bar and watching the door, maybe studying it for the energies of transportation in the same way that they studied the window for the energies of destruction. He already knows how to make portals, but the energies here are different, that's all.

And he hasn't taken up smoking again to calm his nerves, either--no, he'd simply found some in his room, and is indulging in a bit of harmless nostalgia over a glass of Atlantean. Remembering his world the way it had been, and imagining how it will be once they've remade it.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that he hasn't seen Loki in a week now. He isn't doomed to spend all eternity wondering where his current wife has gone off to. For one thing, his world doesn't have eternity. For another... well. He'll think of something.

Distractions are welcome.

[open forever!]

Comments

[mechanicalswans]

"But some developments last for a very long time," he says. "Are they part of human nature, or... just patterns that people haven't gotten rid of?"

[destroy_restart]

"Nothing lasts forever, my dear boy," Tower says. "Nothing. Believe me. Anything lasting is basically an illusion, an attempt to freeze and fix a point in time. Even if it's the entire history of patriarchy."

[mechanicalswans]

"Of course," he says. "But what is part of human nature? Is there anything, or is it all just cultural?"

[destroy_restart]

"Loving and hating and wanting life to be better for your offspring than your own was," Tower says. "Learning, and storytelling, and being scared of the unknown."

[mechanicalswans]

"I'd add curiosity and loneliness," he says. "People do have a surprising malleability--maybe not that surprising, though. You can get them to treat almost any situation as normal, at least for a while."

[destroy_restart]

"And then it changes again," Tower nods. "But for a while, they'll live with bizarre customs, strange religions, and really weird oppression."

[mechanicalswans]

"I've made something of a study of it," he says. "I've taken people and put them into a sort of isolation--seen how they react to things. I can't really do that anymore."

[destroy_restart]

"No," Tower says. "Unfortunately, experiments on humans are considered unethical these days."

[mechanicalswans]

"Oh, it's not that," he says. "It's the fact that I can't take anybody back to my world anymore, and I can't very well study anyone here."

[destroy_restart]

"Your world already went kaboom?" Tower asks.

[mechanicalswans]

"No, but I don't have a door," he says. "My Serafina does, and that's where she is right now, from what I can tell--but I don't. And she doesn't like experimenting on people in that way."

[destroy_restart]

"She gets her mayhem elsewhere, huh?" Tower grins.

[mechanicalswans]

"She gets some here, too."

She does as she pleases. Who knows what her side projects are?

[destroy_restart]

"I take it it's in her nature?" Tower says.

[mechanicalswans]

"Always on the move, always doing something," he agrees. "Sometimes she builds up, sometimes she tears down. But there's always something."

[destroy_restart]

"As I said before, I'd love to meet her," Tower says.

[mechanicalswans]

"You may see her before I do, at this rate," he says. "But she'll be here. And you really can't miss her, when she is. I've never met a woman who could light up a room like she does."

[destroy_restart]

"Oh, I will know her by all that you told about her," Tower says.

[mechanicalswans]

"I don't doubt it," he says, and finishes his drink.

"I should probably get back to my work. It wouldn't do to have her think that I don't do anything but sit and wait for her..."

[destroy_restart]

Tower laughs. "Good luck, and I'll make sure to find her," he says.

[mechanicalswans]

"And you," he says. "Good luck with your work."

And with that he is off, heading back to the forge. He's still got a horse to finish, that it seems at this rate may never get done.