trans_9 | Hang a Shining Star from the Highest Bough [Open]

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Hang a Shining Star from the Highest Bough [Open]

"Pues no pueda andar, ya mi esposa amada," Eva sings aloud inside an empty church, a strange conglomeration between the one she visited as a child and the one she dragged her son and husband to as an adult. She lifts up her hand and puts her middle finger and thumb together.

Snap, Macy's, 1990. Blank faces bustling around, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas blaring over speakers installed in the ceiling, tinsel and red plastic ornaments in the corners of the building. Some man dressed as Santa has a kid on his lap.

"From now on, our troubles will be miles away." Eva joins in with the radio. What with the holidays coming around for a lot of the Earth crew mates, caroling has given her compulsions an acceptable outlet. People are far less likely to comment on someone singing a Christmas carol than someone talking to themselves incessantly or humming snatches of classical music to themselves.

The Sensoriums truly are a wonderful thing, and she's been in them for well over an hour now, testing what they can do. She's gone back into memories and conjured ideal vacation spots and parades. She hasn't drawn up anyone she knew, but as she gets more confident she requests more crowds, and started up the habit of clicking her fingers for each transition.

"Here we are, in olden days, in golden days of yore…"

Snap, their empty living room, 1989. A stocking full of candy and action figures lies in front of her on the table. Eva looks around, at the parts she knows are hers and the parts she doesn't remember, the parts Stacy must have made up.

"Oh, God, this is exactly as depressing as I thought it'd be."

Snap, and the room is gone, and she's standing inside a stop-motion world of clay while Hermey and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer seek out fame and fortune.

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"Kids? Was there a specific reason they chose kids?" The idea obviously rankles, her, especially when he mentions the complications. She wonders for a moment if he can see her 'shadow' or if she has one, given her regular turmoil. "What's it like to eat negative emotion?"

Alex shrugged again, "I think i-it had something ta do w-with whatever they were d-doing working better on k-kids, but I'm not sure." He continues staring at the ground as he talks. "Eating emotions... w-well, you feel it y-yourself first. You haveta push p-past it though, s-sorta try to ignore it, but not qu-quite. I-it's a strange s-sensation, b-but I suppose it's a lot like that phrase, 's-swallow your anger,' o-or sorrow, or fear, o-or whatever."

(( She's survived a variety of long-term traumatic events, so enduring but contained paranoia, rage, sorrow and identity issues. Inanimate shadow maybe? ))

"Government experiment or private sector?" she asks, then follows his gaze to the ground. "That sounds like a blast," she says dryly. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I was just prying. It seems like the common thread on Stacy is to have had something unpleasant to talk about."

((That sounds about right to me. Animate shadows cripple day-to-day functions pretty severely most of the time. You ))

"G-government," he answered without hesitation. Looking up a bit he takes note of her words and the inanimate shadow around her, just lingering.

"I r-really don't mind," he said with a smile, "honestly, it's b-been a relief to be able ta explain things w-without worrying about being overheard b-by the wrong person an' g-getting p-punished for it."

"Well, I'm glad I'm not just salting open wounds or anything like that. I'm imagining that the people who'd punish you were initially involved in the project? How much control did they have over your life?" She has a concerned look that belies that she's also worried about what said punishments would have been.

"I-I guess i-it depends on y-your idea of c-control. So long as y-you showed up for the t-tests, s-so long as you seemed ta k-keep your head d-down, they l-left you alone, but y-you c-couldn't talk about what was going on in the l-labs." He sighed heavily before going on, "I-it ended up in l-lots of rumours an' stories. P-people would learn w-who was in the Program. There w-was a lot of p-prejudice against Shadow Eaters, though g-government m-makes sure we get jobs. They w-want us in s-society, c-can't be in society without a proper job."

He smiled a bit and looked up at Eva, "But, w-we were careful, m-my friends an' I. We were workin' ta ch-change things, and we w-were makin' progress. They w-were starting to suspect, I think, b-but we k-kept slipping by."

Eva has, after years of lost autonomy, her own opinions about control and why a little infringement is unacceptably smothering, but she keeps it to herself. Still, she sees the parallels with her own life. "In my own world, before I was taken, I was working on a unemployment non-discrimination bill for a class of people. When the nothlits didn't have jobs, it just perpetuated a cycle of isolationism. They didn't want to fit in with humans and humans didn't want them to, the more they saw the nothlits protecting their culture."

Granted, the humans had more than a few reasons to not be friendly with the nothlits, invasion and enslavement included.

She smiles back. She has a healthy respect and admiration for fighting a system from within. "And that was when Stacy took you?"

He nodded, "I g-guess it doesn' matter m-much any more though, what we w-were doing. S-so long as they're safe- my friends- I don' mind n-not having my world any more."

After a beat he asked, "Wh-what's a nothlit?"

She shrugs. "I don't entirely believe our worlds were destroyed. It just seems too anticlimatic. I refuse to believe all our work was for nothing."

"We had a war on our world, and due to the nature of the invaders, they wanted to take us as host bodies. As an alternative, we let them morph and trap themselves in new forms so they wouldn't have to pretend enslaving us was justified. The trapped Yeerks are nothlits." She keeps her tone carefully controlled, so as not to sound victimized. She was one of those slaves for many years.

He pressed his lips together, "That r-really doesn't sound l-like a great c-compromise..." With a sigh he added, "I s-suppose war's like th-that though."

After a moment he looked up at her and smiled, "But you s-said 'our work'. Wh-where you working ta ch-change things too?"

She shakes her head. "They get what they want - mobile bodies suited to their intellect - and we get what we want - not to be violated and manipulated in every way they see fit. The problem mainly lies in integrating them."

She nods. "I meant 'our' as in yours, mine and everyone else's on the ship, but yes. I worked for the state government as an advisor on Yeerk affairs, since I was pretty intimately familiar. We were starting to see a dip in hate crimes right before Stacy took me."

Alex would be totally heart broken for her if he knew the full story. He still looks pretty upset by the fact that there were still people made to be used by the Yeerks, but he forces another smile. "That's g-good at least! Hate c-crimes weren't too much of an i-issue for us, s-since Shadow Eaters t-tended to stick t-together, an' p-people w-were afraid. N-not ta m-mention, e-eating a shadow c-can m-make a person l-lose interest i-in attacking you." Not that he had much experience with eating stronger shadows on his own before he had arrived on the ship.

"Aside from eating shadows, what's there to fear?" She asks, genuinely curious. This is entirely new to her.

"Well, if we e-eat stronger shadows, th-then we c-can start ta get powers, and w-well, 'c-course p-people a-are gonna use 'em ta protect t-themselves. M-mainly though p-people just don't know what we c-can do, and what we aren't able to do, s-so they're j-just scared." He shrugged, un-perturbed by the question. Judgemental questions generally came with small shadows, and she wasn't showing any new ones.

"Fear of the unknown." She nods. "I suppose the mystique might be useful in other ways, too? But I also imagine a lot of people want to poke and prod you, within the project and not. At the end of the war I couldn't go twenty feet without someone asking me for a brain scan. What, really, was the goal of the experiment?"

Alex rolled his eyes, which was probably the most relaxed expression he's given so far. "Oh, urgh, i-if I didn' haveta see another needle it c-couldn' c-come too soon. I-I don' even know wh-what exactly they wanted. Something o-obviously with these p-powers."

He rubbed his arm a bit nervously and continued with a resigned tone, "'S much as I h-hate tests, still working with that vampire I mentioned. A-at least with him, he's nice. Doesn' take a-advantage of me, hasn't been using me for any of his own e-experiments. He's... m-more of... a friend, r-really. He's helping me figure out wh-what they did ta me. Maybe after I k-know that, I'll have a b-better idea of why."

She reaches gently to touch the bit of the arm he's rubbing - an attempt to be comforting, if a meager one. "It's a terrible thing not to know your own body, or what's been done to it. A terrible thing to be used for the gain of others."

He jumps a bit at the touch, but then gives her a reassuring smile as if to say he really didn't mind. "Ah, y-yeah, n-not being able ta t-trust yourself... It c-can be rough. But you j-just gotta do the best you c-can, right?"

"Naturally. Can't take that sort of thing lying down. But that's the beauty of the human spirit, isn't it? Even when our hands are bound we have teeth."

He gave a nervous laugh and scratched at the back of his head. "W-well, I dunno i-if I'm that g-good with the t-teeth thing, b-but, I guess I have my moments too, being human an' all."

"Metaphorical teeth." She clicks her teeth together to emphasize the point. "A Yeerk once told me that humans are fascinating because of how often and how persistently they'll take on stronger forces, even in the face of defeat. I guess it's something fairly peculiar to us, though I've seen Hork-Bajir do the same thing, so who knows."

"I know, b-but I'm s-still not great at takin' on s-stronger forces... Except, I g-guess, when I'm behind a c-computer." He continues staring at his feet as he walks, smiling awkwardly. "I guess, w-with all the people on the sh-ship doing j-jus' that, it mustn' be that strange. Since n-not everyone's human an' all, r-right?"

"A hacker?" She grins. "My husband's a computer engineer. During the war he helped secure weapons for us using his technological voodoo. I've never understood it but it's certainly useful."

Her son helped too, but she's leaving Marco out of this, if only because the more he can pass a normal kid caught up in greater events, the better.

He ran his hand through his hair again. "Ah, y-yeah, I'd g-get us b-building access, hi-j-jacked systems for information, made a f-few credentials, b-but it was the others that r-really made things work."

He had been among the best in his own world- which was part of how he remained anonymous- but here, "h-here, I feel like I'm n-not exactly u-useful, since everything on the ship's s-so advanced."

"Surely once you've learned it once, you can learn a new version? Or does that sound completely ignorant? I can only use Yeerk technology from osmosis and I never bothered to learn anything else."

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If it's a completely constant thing she'd always have a shadow. There's more info in the journal.

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... they haven't introduced themselves have they? XD

They did upthread, I thought.

Oh, they did! Sorry!

Re: Oh, they did! Sorry!

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