6. Bombay (open spam plus privates for Iris and Sylvanas)

[heisrisen]

[Open spam]

[He sits on the deck, legs crossed and feet bare, sketching endlessly. His hands will always be as deft as they were when he died, steady and inhumanly precise from years of minute neural surgery too revolutionary at the time for medical drones to have any programming for it. It's his mind that needs the toil, needs to entrain itself again by focusing on all the details his memory can supply. So he draws, cityscapes of thriving worlds, the landmarks of odd and extravagant cultures, nuanced portraits of steadfast servants and political challengers alike.

Sometimes, when he looks up, he gets a little lost in the deep blackness beyond the barge, eyes fading to the distance until the striped marmalade cat gamboling near him headbutts his elbow and yowls for attention. He stutters when it happens, then smiles and scratches Mel's ears, forcing himself to concentrate again in spite of the terrible pressure of darkness held above and around him by whatever invisible dam.]


[Spam for anyone who might be in the laboratory.]

[He investigates the various samples from Megamind's world with obvious fascination, alternating between gross morphological examination, pouring over gene sequences, and plugging the occasional piece of data onto a rough planetary ecology simulation program he hashed out on one of the terminals. He lapses into something like an academic fugue after a little while, lost to the world beyond the information he's processing, unaware of time passing.]


[Private to Iris]

We have some information prepared for you. Let us know where and when you'd like to meet.


[Spam for Sylvanas]

[He knocks on her door the day after the return from port.]

Special delivery for Lady Sylvanas.

Comments

[heisrisen]

[His polite smile widens, curiosity and simple delight.]

Well, it's certainly classical. Are you comfortable?

We may want you to hold the pose for a while.

[And if she's uncomfortable for other reasons, it's an opportunity to equivocate.]

[permutates]

I'm comfortable. But there's a kitten around, and I don't know if I'll want to sit still.

[Little bit of a mischievous look there. But it's true - she'll want to play with the cat.]

[heisrisen]

Doom us to sketches and motion studies, will he? Little rascal.

[He draws lightly, fluidly, catching the shape of her in a few clean lines. He reserves most of his time and attention for careful shading, trying to capture the particular quality of her scales with only pencil, trying to make her look precisely as inhuman as she does without the easy cue of color.]

How did you do that?

[It's a mild question, almost a professional sort of curiosity. Various nano-based garments could have achieved a similar effect, but he doesn't think that's what's at play here at all.]

[permutates]

[She's surprised it took him this long to ask.

She tips the cat onto his back, letting him grab at her hand and bite. He's gentle; it doesn't hurt.]

I can change how I look. The clothes were fake.

[heisrisen]

Yes, but how? It's not just light projection or subdermal dyes, it looks very tactile. But the shift pattern is very different from a nanosheath or an assembly cloud. It's not hardware at all, is it? It's part of you.

[permutates]

...yes. I think it might be a little bit like a bird fluffing up its feathers, but... on a smaller scale. And more of it. I don't really know, though.

[heisrisen]

[He wants, badly, to study her, to figure it out. He already has theories. But he thinks of her wariness when she approached, and decides not to push, not so soon.]

It's marvelous.

Are you from Earth?

[permutates]

One of them. I'm a mutant.

[heisrisen]

[He nods, even though it seems like a nonsense category to him, at least in comparison to what she showed him. All new traits are mutations at some point.]

We're from a planet called Ebran, though it was settled by descendants of descendants of Earth. And we're dead.

[Since biological status is apparently part of these introductions.]

[permutates]

Uh... are you...

...more than one person?

[Maybe an awkward question, but she's not really sure why he refers to himself as 'we'. At first, she thought he was talking about the kitten.]

[heisrisen]

No, it's the royal we.

[He says it completely casually, offhand as he carefully smudges the lead on the page with the edge of his thumb to get the smooth opacity of her yellow sclera right.]

[permutates]

You're a king?

[It's not all that hard to believe, actually. She says it like she's weighing it, not like she disbelieves it.]

[heisrisen]

Risen Emperor of the Eighty Worlds. Most of the Milky Way galaxy is settled, in our time; our Empire is one of the major coreward powers.

[There's nothing indignant or smug in the correction. King is just - inaccurate. The rest isn't bragging, merely providing political context, because he's aware that the name means nothing without it. His eyes flick up to appraise her again, then return to the drawing, pleased and focused.]

[permutates]

[Now that's surprising. Not that much more surprising than other things on the Barge, but still surprising.]

...wow.

[heisrisen]

[He accepts this with smooth aplomb, a small nod of acknowledgement. Not quite humble, but without the need to make a fuss over it.]

We're still a little stunned that we've actually been to Earth, or an Earth. It's not quite a myth in our time, but it may as well be.

[permutates]

Did your Earth have mutants? Do you even know?

[heisrisen]

It's difficult to be entirely certain. Mutants in the technical sense, any creature with a genetic change from the previous generation with a noticeable phenotype, yes of course. But someone who could do what you can do?

We highly doubt it.

[permutates]

Not many worlds do. Apparently.

[She picks the kitten up and rests it in her lap, rubbing under its chin to distract it from getting up and moving.]

[heisrisen]

There are a few splicelines now that can do something similar, but it's subdermal colors mostly, with modified chameleon or squid genes.

It would have been beyond the scientific abilities of Earth Prime for most of its history, and not nearly as impressive in any case.

[permutates]

Impressive. [This draws a faint smile.] Thank you.

[heisrisen]

You're welcome. But it's only the truth.

[permutates]

Well, it's not a truth too many people believe.

[heisrisen]

[He thinks about the way she said mutant, the intimations of identity politics.]

People can be very foolish about the categories they think people ought to fit into.

[permutates]

Mutant is a new category. No one knows about it. No one thinks that it's possible.