"Disappears there and reappears here. You wouldn't understand," he adds, annoyed. Damn it all. He'd been so close! If he'd started just a little earlier; if that girl...
No, that wasn't fair. He offered to answer her questions. He wasn't expecting them to cut the signal so quickly, and she couldn't have known either. But she just keeps prattling on! Mickey this, Mickey that... Caring about nothing so much as her own little meaningless life when the whole world was on the line!
And then... she surprises him. Again. She gets past it. Focuses on the problem. Asks questions -- important ones, this time. And, perhaps even more important, she sees what he doesn't see. He'd looked past it, through it, a dozen times or more since getting here. It just blended into the landscape, but she saw the transmitter where he saw only background.
So he takes off, and she follows him, and it suddenly feels good to be able to share this with someone again. This moment -- the chase, the hunt, closing in on the objective. When the pretense and the preamble is done and it's just the confrontation... that feeling that everyone should feel, and he's sharing it with her, and she's loving it. Her eyes light up, her expression beams. She squeezes his hand when he takes hers, and they just run.
She finds the access down below the transmitter, too -- sharp eyes, that one -- and they descend.
And there it is. The Nestene Consciousness. He takes a deep breath and addresses it, opening negotiations. The antiplastic is nestled in his pocket, but he hopes he won't have to use it. There's been enough unintentional victims of this war. There's no need for more.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-02-09 01:40 am (UTC)No, that wasn't fair. He offered to answer her questions. He wasn't expecting them to cut the signal so quickly, and she couldn't have known either. But she just keeps prattling on! Mickey this, Mickey that... Caring about nothing so much as her own little meaningless life when the whole world was on the line!
And then... she surprises him. Again. She gets past it. Focuses on the problem. Asks questions -- important ones, this time. And, perhaps even more important, she sees what he doesn't see. He'd looked past it, through it, a dozen times or more since getting here. It just blended into the landscape, but she saw the transmitter where he saw only background.
So he takes off, and she follows him, and it suddenly feels good to be able to share this with someone again. This moment -- the chase, the hunt, closing in on the objective. When the pretense and the preamble is done and it's just the confrontation... that feeling that everyone should feel, and he's sharing it with her, and she's loving it. Her eyes light up, her expression beams. She squeezes his hand when he takes hers, and they just run.
She finds the access down below the transmitter, too -- sharp eyes, that one -- and they descend.
And there it is. The Nestene Consciousness. He takes a deep breath and addresses it, opening negotiations. The antiplastic is nestled in his pocket, but he hopes he won't have to use it. There's been enough unintentional victims of this war. There's no need for more.