milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Jim has been rather enjoying spending weeks being moody and depressed in his suite, mainly because Sherlock's up there to make sure he's not actually all that moody and depressed. Bloody boyfriends, and their way of making life better. Jim would grump about that if he weren't pleased by it.

He's only in the bar now because his favourite distraction is asleep and anyway, they need food. Jim puts in a large order and, on a whim, asks for a current newspaper from their world. Bar provides an iPad with various headlines, and he scrolls through until he hits upon the news that NASA has discovered a solar system where life might have evolved.

He forgets about the food, and pretty much everything else for a while. Eventually he wanders over to the Window, still reading, and then just sits looking out at the explosions.

(The ice cream he bought will be melting all over the Bar at some point, so if anyone wants free food he's probably not going to object, or even notice.)

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"They're not telling us," Harman says. "Our scientists research them and come to a conclusion factoring in all known data points. What we don't know yet, we can't take into consideration. We constantly gain new knowledge, so the holographic picture our science paints of that entity or entities shifts constantly. That is how all science works -- focused on questions, not answers. In that, all science must always be only the newest state of error."

Pause.

"For example, we recently found out that they can regenerate individual vampires."

'You're telling me about science?'

Amusing.

'But again, can't all vampires do that to a certain degree? If you believe stories.'

"They can only be neutralised by wooden stakes -- or carbon bullets -- or sunlight," Harman says. "What we didn't know until recently is that the dark brown granules that remain when a vampire body explosively burned up will re-integrate into that same body once infused with the blood of another vampire."

'So how can you categorise that as a virus? That's not how viruses work.'

Mutation maybe, but only in the broadest sense.

"Because that is how it's transmitted," Harman says. "We have identified it, and can test for it. In other aspects, it works more like a slime mould."

A virus and a slime mould. This world sounds like it has very mixed science.

'And, what? You think they're trying to take over the world?'

They probably are. That's the way it always goes.

"Of course they are," Harman says. "Our theory is that they aim to prevent us from messing up their food source. We're in 1998, and even the vampires feel the millennial panic. For a long time, they'd been nothing but low-key parasites, very careful not to startle the host organism. We have watched them for centuries, and interfered where needed."

'You've known about them for centuries,' Jim says blankly, 'and haven't yet controlled them entirely, and they haven't actually tried to rise up against you?'

This is hardly the way of usual vampire stories, and they don't actually sound like they're doing much of anything at all. The vampires, that is.

"That is right," Harman says. "Like a good parasite, they tried to escape notice, and apart from a few localised outbreaks that have passed into folklore, it had worked for them -- and for us as well. If we learned anything from those outbreaks, it was that most human casualties were caused by humans when witch-hunt dynamics got out of control. We don't want that again with a population of nearly seven billion humans, and a few hundred vampires."

'Why not? It'd solve the population crisis, and would deprive your vampires of a food source so widespread they can afford to come out of hiding.'

Obviously.

"Because they are people, with souls, and every life and soul is precious," Harman says, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

'Well, that's certainly one way of looking at things,' he says mildly, polite but quite obviously thinking what total bullshit that is.

'But no doubt the vampires would make the same argument for themselves.'

"They don't," Harman says, mildly. "They argue mock-rationally, and pose as a persecuted minority, if challenged."

'But you don't believe them.'

A member of the Catholic church with stringent and unyielding views? SURELY NOT.

"No," Harman says. "Not if they are attempting to overthrow us at the same time."

'It's not as though humans aren't special snowflakes on one hand, and taking each other out on the other,' he points out.

'We're not any better.'

"We are," Harman says. "If I didn't believe that, my work would be pointless."

Jim looks at him, like really?

'How so?'

"In just the way you said -- we wouldn't be better," Harman says. "But we are. We have souls, a conscience, choices, altruism. Mind you, humanity did some pretty awful things in the course of history. But that doesn't take away our God-given freedom of choice. Which the Code Fives don't have."

'So you're telling me,' he says slowly, because he knows this is bullshit, 'that your vampires have no choice but to be all the things you describe. They cannot possibly display anything that you would be able to recognise as a human-level emotion?'

"Precisely," Harman says. "They only mimic it, in order to manipulate humans to their ends."

'So how do you know it isn't real?'

And now he just sounds amused.

'You make that judgement? You, personally?'

"We make it, from centuries of experience combined with current science," Harman says. "Much as we make any judgement, as an order."

Jim swirls his drink around his glass, for a long time.

'You know,' he says eventually, 'the Catholic Church has a long history of deciding how people are, and tarring everyone with the same brush.'

Forgive him if he's sceptical.

"Hence, the bit about science," Harman acknowledges.