truth_is_cold

079

[Private to Dylan | Audio]

I would like to discuss something with you. It relates to Harper, and what just happened to the ship. I've been reminded of it lately and I've been slightly distracted by spiders until now.

[Private to Toshiko | Audio]

I would like to ask you some questions about what happened with the ship. I'm curious about how it might share similarities to an incident that happened aboard the Andromeda.

[Private to Ben | Audio]

I need to speak to you about something. It has to do with Ladd. [Because he hates when the universe rewards bad behavior for some and tells others that they're only good dead.]

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Those spiders were pretty distracting.

Come to think of it, the whole thing does seem like something that Harper would have pulled. Not the torture prison cells and taking away amenities, but...the thoughtlessly joining with the ship.

Harper wouldn't have taken away the bar, and probably would have added a virtual reality strip club besides.

Want to talk over the network or in person?

Either. [Though being the social monkey that he is, he would prefer in person.]

I had wondered if those incidents had happened with you as well.

Which incidents? When he accidentally had super-knowledge downloaded into him? Or when he accidentally activated Andromeda's hidden personality and mission protocol and she nearly killed us? Or when he started accidentally shifting time when he built that Tesseract machine?

[Oh Harper. It's a good thing he's a damn good engineer, otherwise Dylan would be tempted to shoot him out of an escape pod and never let him touch Andromeda again.]

You're only a few doors down. I'll be there in a few. [Dylan is also a social monkey.]

[He's pacing in his room when Dylan shows up, finally giving himself time to think about it. He remembers mentioning to Toshiko that she didn't feel well.]

All of those things happened to me as well. [He says as he makes a turn to walk slowly around his desk, hands tucked primly behind his back.] I wouldn't have been able to change fate if it hadn't been for the Tesseract machine.

But Harper killed thousands of people when he did that to remove the Magog. His survival would end up saving millions more. But... if there had been a stable Commonwealth, Harper would have never been permitted to hold rank on a ship again.

[He looks at Dylan dryly.] Did you mention that we are familiar with what sort of dataport Toshiko has?

Alright.

...I don't know how helpful I can be. I wasn't aware of what had happened until it accelerated. Those last few days.

On a real High Guard ship, they probably wouldn't have let Harper so much as walk in the door.

[Dylan helps himself to a seat and watches Rhade pace.]

I haven't mentioned it. I'm not sure how familiar I am with it. I've seen it from a distance but... [He shrugs.] I don't know how similar it is to Harper's. I always assumed that it came from her universe.

Are you telling me that it didn't? [He has a feeling that that's where this is going.]

That is actually very telling.

I know you weren't exactly comfortable talking about Harper when I mentioned him before, but he's relevant. Similar incidents happened aboard the Andromeda when he was using his dataport. Not precisely similar, but he ended up with a vast amount of information transferred directly into his mind one time, and altered the directive of the ship another.

I've seen it up close. It's like the ones we're familiar with. [He finally does have a seat, too, beside of Dylan.]

Her and Harper were very close, when he was here.

It's fine. I don't mind talking about him.

What do you need to know?

Close, like...Harper finally got a woman to like him, close?

[Harper's personal life aside...]

So you think he might have made it for her?

You realize that would mean that this is all indirectly Harper's fault. [God damn it, Harper. If you were here right now, Dylan would make a point of giving you a Look. And advise you to just give your girlfriends chocolates next time, and not a brain-surgery dataport.]

There was not much notably public, but she does have a dataport, she did want to avoid discussing him once, and she is the sort of woman that might reciprocate his advances.

He at least played a role in knowing that they exist, but I wonder if he warned her of the dangers. He didn't necessarily like to admit his mistakes. Not to me, anyway.

[But he gives Dylan a look that says that he did make a lot of those mistakes.]

Edited 2013-04-11 09:58 (UTC)

After you realized, can you theorize or remember any point before specifically that might have been the catalyst and it escalated on its own? Or do you believe it was a progression, from you using it more than once changing it a bit more each time?

I don't know. I know that's not very helpful, I'm sorry.

I remember doing as thorough a job as I could with maintenance and monitoring on the day of the blackout, but nothing seemed unusual about it. I don't remember anything precipitating the power cut. Everything seemed so routine I couldn't have imagined it having anything to do with me, and then the Admiral's announcement...

After that, nothing much happened to me or the engine room between the initial blackout and...and what happened at the end. Every time something changed, nothing really registered wth me, until the 'Admiral' made his announcement about Warden deals.

It's helpful.

Did the ship put up any resistance when you were attempting to fix the damage? Or was it a relatively- not simple, but straightforward procedure once you realized what the source of the problem was?

If the ship has any consciousness of its own, I wasn't aware of it. There was no resistance.

Not to me, either. And brilliant as he is with machines, he's not very good at considering the consequences of things.

Like the Tesseract machine.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it slipped his mind to mention possible dangers or side effects

I am wondering how much we should tell them about the dataports and if it would do any good. I'm relatively certain that, though she was carrying a great amount of hatred that should be addressed, the actual attack on the ship was unintentional.

When did you start trying to undo the damage? As soon as you realized?

Whether it'll do any good or not, we should tell them what we know. It might not change anyone's decision, but at least they'll be better informed when they make it.

Or better informed before they attempt to lash out. I can say with some confidence being an inmate here with people you've wronged, even indirectly, is miserable. Especially if they won't allow you to make amends. She's here with an entire ship of people she's done this to.

[Dylan put his hand on his chin.]

I'll do what I can to protect her.

If there was some way we could reconcile people...

...but in some ways getting whole species to put aside differences is easier than this. Both sides have things they want, things that can be negotiated. I don't think Tosh has anything that the people she wronged might want. There's nothing to negotiate with and no incentive for them to forgive her.

All they want is for her to hurt as much as they did, to prove their will matters again. [There's a touch of frustration there, because he's angry too. He hates much of what she said.] Her opinions were one-sided, bitter, and ill-informed. She's never been an inmate here, and captivity here is completely different from captivity anywhere else because you're regularly stripped of yourself. [But she is... was... is his friend, he supposes. She is much like what Harper used to be to him.]

But she didn't mean to put those opinions inside of the ship. She didn't mean for them to hurt people. However, she's standing by those opinions and holding herself to them after the fact.

There were two individuals in the engine room that could confirm the story.

Maybe being an inmate is the best punishment for her, then. Make her learn empathy for the other side.

It sounds like she's not generally violent, but she reached a point where she saw only the worst in everything and everybody, including herself. And no one likes to think that someone's looking at you and seeing only the terrible. Even if she doesn't hurt anyone again, everyone knows that some part of her thinks we all deserve it.

Who were in the engine room at the time?

[He leans back and stretches his arm along the back of the couch.] Megamind and Ronald Sandoval. [They both should remember Megamind from that horrible breach- but Megamind's defenses have been excessively adamant.]

I think her punishment is currently appropriate. But I also think that people deserve to know what actually happened before there is another murder played over the network.

Murder played over the network.

I hope you're joking, but I'm pretty sure you're not.

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