milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There is a slightly violet deity by the fireplace.

Asar-Suti has coffee, and is reading a book.

It's still the one with the grey dustjacket.

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"Abs is a he and it's a psychiatric ward and you wouldn't be so sure about these things if you had to keep watching your friends die!" Guppy shouts, losing his temper.
"I can't help it if I'm not an expert on this alternate universe stuff. What am I supposed to think when I find out people are watching my life? I don't know what you're trying to do, whether you're trying to make me feel stupid, which I do, or what, but I and the people I care about are not immortal, and if there's something going on which significantly increases our chance of dying do you not think we might get the tiniest bit upset about it? I don't understand this Sooty. I have to make assumptions somewhere because I don't understand. Do you have any idea how scared I am?"

Guppy has to stop for breath. The anger has turned to fear in the course of a paragraph, leaving a freaked, frightened and vulnerable Guppy exposed to the world.

"That is how everybody would feel if they realised how fragile and ephemeral life is, and how thin the barriers of reality," Asar-Suti says, darkly. "Only most people never get there. Reality doesn't care whether you can deal with it. It deals with you. Tough luck. My strong Tynstar, my lovely Strahan, my dear clever Lochiel - they were all killed because some writing woman needed her Cheysuli heros to kill the occasional evil Ihlini. Your friends are killed because some teevee writers on another world decide to, or because the actors are given the sack for being drunk too often, or something like that. Don't try to wrap your mind round that. Keep to your own world. It is real. That is better for your brain."

"Wait a minute, you're saying we are being killed off by the writers? But Ray told me that I'd got it the wrong way around and that the writers have no influence, because otherwise I'd be abdicating responsibility for my own existance or something like that."

His mind flicks beyond words to masses of painful emotions; fear, anger, guilt and variations of them. He wants to express them, shout them out, tell Asar-Suti things that he can't possibly discuss with Abs or anyone on his world. He wants say that nothing allows him to believe this is possible; his faith, his life experience, for all that is now worth. He puts his head in his hands.
All that comes out is a tiny squeak.

'I think my brain broke.'

"In the world where you are fiction you are being killed off by the writers, yes," Asar-Suti says. "The writers write that because of intrinsic reasons. Like that bloody writer of ours probably wanted to show off bloody Keely as a strong woman when she let her kill my Strahan. But on your own world, it all happens because of intrinsic reasons to your own world - Keely killed Strahan because she could, and because he had raped her, entirely logical and real. Don't think about those worlds where you are fiction, I had people turn up here whom I knew as fiction, like Boromir or Sherlock Holmes! They are just as real, and they have no bloody cameras anywhere. It doesn't work like that, Guppy. Come out of it!"

He grips Guppy's shoulder and shakes him.

"Please don't hurt me!"

It's his natural reaction to being shaken, and it lasts just a second, but for a moment there is fear. Then he goes quiet.

"I think I understand now. Sorry Sooty."

The kitten is hiding under a cushion.

"Good!"

Asar-Suti digs out the kitten and sits down again.

Guppy feels distinctly silly. He scoops up the paperwork and fiddles with his hair.

"I best be getting back. It's quiet in Holby but we're a doctor down. The one who was stabbed is... not that good. Not dying, but still not good."

He holds his hand out for the kitten.

"Sorry for being silly. I'll stop looking for cameras. See you later."

Asar-Suti hands over the kitten, smiles, and watches Guppy go.

One less problem, eh?

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