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trans_92011-07-29 01:59 am
zouichi.livejournal.com) wrote in trans_92011-07-29 01:59 am
Entry tags:
Back in black
The young woman who had looked after Zouichi and his siblings had taken it upon herself to instruct them in quite a few areas that were not strictly part of their curriculum -- areas regarded by many of the personnel at Toha Heavy Industries as impractical, even pointless.
Better that they should be taught one more way to kill an opponent without a sound, or log additional hours in test simulations.
But because it would have been disruptive and costly to switch instructors halfway, and because she was the daughter of a scientist of some importance to the project, she was allowed to continue with her eccentricities.
Some of the most peculiar of the lessons she insisted upon centered around an old Earth instrument, one that by the 31st century had become more of an amusing anachronism than anything else. Something you saw in old movies or read about in books, not something you kept in your house or paid to go listen to. It wasn't something he had time to practice, once he was released, but there seemed to be nothing but time here.
So Zouichi had found himself visiting the Sensoriums more often, not to destroy imaginary enemies in ever more creative ways, but to play -- mostly when he could reasonably be sure everyone else would be asleep, and therefore unlikely to come look for him. Today, however, he wasn't in the mood to bother waiting for people to turn in. There was one other oddity -- a bandage wrapped neatly about his forehead, half-covered by his bangs.
He shed his customary gloves, placing them on the surface of the polished black wood. Then he closed his eyes, placed his hands over the cool ivory keys, and began to play. Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1, a slow-paced, melancholy piece. He didn't know why, but playing it always made him remember the ocean. Or at least the simulated version of it; he'd never seen the real thing. The quiet ebb and flow of the tide, the breaking of each wave into sea foam upon the shore. The sea at early evening, perhaps, when all its visitors had gone home and the sun cast everything in long shadow.
Then, on a whim, he focused on summoning up an orchestral accompaniment: a crowd of black-clad musicians in which he might more easily blend in. Or maybe hide, if such a thing were possible on an open stage with a stern-faced conductor watching over all of them. For a moment, the musicians were still. Then, together, they began the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor, Op. 18. It was easy, once they began playing, to simply lose himself in the swells of sound. The dreamlike ebb and flow of the violins, the rich, deep murmur of the cellos, the brassy reports of the trumpets, the clear, concise flurry of the flutes. Fascinating, the way the sounds of so many different individuals could come together to create a coherent narrative.
It was too bad he'd never get a chance to play with the real thing.
Better that they should be taught one more way to kill an opponent without a sound, or log additional hours in test simulations.
But because it would have been disruptive and costly to switch instructors halfway, and because she was the daughter of a scientist of some importance to the project, she was allowed to continue with her eccentricities.
Some of the most peculiar of the lessons she insisted upon centered around an old Earth instrument, one that by the 31st century had become more of an amusing anachronism than anything else. Something you saw in old movies or read about in books, not something you kept in your house or paid to go listen to. It wasn't something he had time to practice, once he was released, but there seemed to be nothing but time here.
So Zouichi had found himself visiting the Sensoriums more often, not to destroy imaginary enemies in ever more creative ways, but to play -- mostly when he could reasonably be sure everyone else would be asleep, and therefore unlikely to come look for him. Today, however, he wasn't in the mood to bother waiting for people to turn in. There was one other oddity -- a bandage wrapped neatly about his forehead, half-covered by his bangs.
He shed his customary gloves, placing them on the surface of the polished black wood. Then he closed his eyes, placed his hands over the cool ivory keys, and began to play. Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1, a slow-paced, melancholy piece. He didn't know why, but playing it always made him remember the ocean. Or at least the simulated version of it; he'd never seen the real thing. The quiet ebb and flow of the tide, the breaking of each wave into sea foam upon the shore. The sea at early evening, perhaps, when all its visitors had gone home and the sun cast everything in long shadow.
Then, on a whim, he focused on summoning up an orchestral accompaniment: a crowd of black-clad musicians in which he might more easily blend in. Or maybe hide, if such a thing were possible on an open stage with a stern-faced conductor watching over all of them. For a moment, the musicians were still. Then, together, they began the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor, Op. 18. It was easy, once they began playing, to simply lose himself in the swells of sound. The dreamlike ebb and flow of the violins, the rich, deep murmur of the cellos, the brassy reports of the trumpets, the clear, concise flurry of the flutes. Fascinating, the way the sounds of so many different individuals could come together to create a coherent narrative.
It was too bad he'd never get a chance to play with the real thing.
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"Technically, I can play pretty much any instrument a human can. I just need to download an instructional file of the correct format. However, I learned how to play the piano the old-fashioned way. She insisted on it."
He paused. "...I like it, I guess. The sounds that it makes, the weight of the keys. It brings back memories. But I'm still not sure I understand what she wanted me to."
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"I can play it some," he said after that, somewhat nonchalantly. "I learned how to play it and a couple of other things. I really like pianos, though."
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He moved aside slightly, offering Jr. a seat. "You want to try?"
Zouichi would be rather interested to hear what Jr. might play.
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"Uhhh, I'm not sure what kinda stuff you have over at your version of Earth. I mean, if you've got stuff like Satie and Rachmaninoff, you're probably familiar with Chopin, right?" When he spoke, he played a short, quickly timed line to Nocturne (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnJzXgoMwVM) to emphasize the question somewhat.
"I'm not really too time-free to play a whole big load of stuff back home, but I do like the classics! I think really listening to these things is what I like more. It's why I started to learn anything in the first place."
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"The classics are nice. Not that there aren't things to like in more recent pieces." He raised an eyebrow at Jr. "So you're self-taught? Not bad."
He placed his fingers idly on the lower side of the keys, tapping out a few notes. "I wonder if anyone else on board plays anything. I've only played with my family members before." Then he turned back to Jr. "But you have a lot more free time now, right? What do you do with it all?"
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He shifted himself on the seat to get a little more comfortable - his leg still stinging every now and then so he didn't bother with hitting the pedal when he played. "I'm sure there are others who do. Probably just hard to run into them, since they might also be cases of 'oh, I didn't know you could play!' Which family members did you play with?" he asked after that. Jr. never recalled really hearing about any family from Zouichi.
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"The Asher? Is that a fightercraft, like the X-Wings? Or one of the mecha? And what exactly are you used to?" He tapped a finger thoughtfully on the top of the piano. "In any case, I guess that means we'll be seeing a lot more of each other, since you're in Security, too."
"I... technically, I guess we weren't blood-related," he admitted. "But we did grew up together. There were ten teams, so it was twenty of us altogether. "Fuyu and I were the oldest, so I played with her the most often. Although Nishu was pretty good, too."
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"Sounds like fun! What did they all play?"
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Zouichi made a face. "'Political dealings' sounds like talking. A lot of talking." And not in casual conversation, but soothing ambassadorial egos and dealing with a bunch of pointless posturing.
"Fuyu plays the piano, like me, although she also knows most other Earth instruments. I think Nishu might have liked the flute the best. And Gou...um. He had an interesting way of interpreting sheet music. Sort of... avante-garde, I guess."
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Jr. laughed after that. "Gaignun usually takes care of the talking. I'm talking more when it goes beyond words and into actions. Which it always does, no matter what."
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"You sound like you work well together. I hope Gaignun shows up here, too." He smiled. "Since so many of the missions require both."
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He smiled after that. A warm smile, but a nostalgic, maybe almost sad one. "Yeah, me too." Diplomacy-wise, Gaignun was a great help, what with his little suggestion powers when he spoke to others. "Or anyone else for that matter! But, hey. I'm pretty good at the diplomacy thing too. When I have to be."
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"Yeah, come to think of it, you did keep a pretty cool head throughout the negotiations. Such that they were." He sighed. "I'm just glad we're back on the ship."
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He hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "I am too." He didn't sound like he meant it, though.
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"You're still thinking of those people on the planet, aren't you? I do wish we could have stayed longer to help out."
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Jr. had many, many people he met in passing. And though many of them he might not see again because their meeting was by chance, he didn't use that as an excuse to not care about how he treated them. Or as a reason to shrug and not care about causing trouble or ruining lives just because he wouldn't return again.
"I just hope we did enough. It'd be nice to come back somehow, some day, to see how they're doing." Hopefully well enough, he would hope.
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"You mean 'not at all'?" Zouichi was thinking back to what a few of the crew members had to say about the subject of the clones. Zetta and Hit Girl, for instance, for whom somehow the ship's clones were more worth defending than those on the planet. And why? Because some of them had been fortunate enough to have been randomly plucked off their own planets?
He paused for a long moment. "It's up to them now," he said, finally. "We can't be there to figure things out for them. If things go well, hopefully what we did would have helped launch them on a better path."
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Of course, Jr.'s faith in theoreticals weren't very high, despite that. "But it just makes me wonder how really 'structured' this whole system we've got going really is. I mean, the ship, the mission, the GIA and the Daligig and the Ohm, isn't a lot of that still in the dark? What's gonna happen when it comes to light? You don't think we're not going to have to make the same kind of choices we had to make down there when that time comes? Sure we've got the whole we voted for the captain and the council and all that so we could feel like we have something supporting us..."
And this was a place where many people from many places came from. And in Jr.'s own universe, things could get crazy at even the slightest shake-up. "But when it comes down to it, it's just gonna fall in on itself when the time comes to really decide what we're meant to do and what we're going to do here."
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"I'm sure we will. We might even end up at odds with each other again." Actually, Zouichi thought that latter was incredibly likely. The crew came from vastly different backgrounds, and it was inevitable they'd argue on any moral quandary of substance. He was skeptical of the Council, anyway.
"It would help if we had more information about what the GIA was really up to. Or what the ship's purpose really is." He still had in mind Aibghalien's little experiment with the lore spells, which had failed to turn up information about the ship itself. "I don't really trust what we've been told, especially with all that we weren't told on this last mission."
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He didn't particularly like the Council either. As a whole, at any rate. Some of them seemed well-intentioned enough individually. "We're at odds all the time already, anyway. Let's just kill the Ohm! No, let's see if there's another way to stop them. I hate the GIA they don't tell us anything! Oh but we're still going along with whatever they're making us do. Maybe learning more would help a little, but I have a bad feeling it won't be by too much."
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"I do understand that the crew wanted to be sure that people wouldn't be judged by their past actions, but even violence that takes place on the ship often seems to go largely unpunished. The Azula incident, for instance; despite attacking someone aboard once she was released from the pods and the testimony of those familiar with her past actions, she was simply held for an interminable period of time before the Council simply released into the care of a Security officer."
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In fact, one or two of them had been openly mocked.
"I do hope that the psychiatric care she's receiving will help her."
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