Transference

[in_extremis]

WHO: Tony, Wesker?, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba, and the hospital
WHAT: Tony's doing his silly little task
WHEN: The week after this
WARNINGS: Tony continues to be miserable.


a. days 1-6
The first problem with Wesker's request was convincing a whole bunch of different people to reliably carry around some new thing on the off chance that they were caught off guard, far from help or shelter. Including children. Most people didn't even have a jack in their car. Building this mechanism into something they already carried, like their communications devices, would have been the best case scenario. The second problem with Wesker's request was that all electronic systems, including the communication devices and the network itself, were not reliable in these disaster scenarios. So much for small and portable.

Tony was going to do neither of those things. What Tony was going to do, was try not to be seen trundling around the city, sometimes dragging his wheeled cart behind him full of broken consoles, glass and steel. He looked terrible. A longer day did not make a week long enough to solve this fundamentally social problem, but if he didn't sleep and kept a careful balance of coffee and red fruit juice, he could buy himself a few more hours. It didn't really take that long, in the grand scheme of things, to erect a radio tower, after all.

These started to appear in a slow circle around the perimeters of the city first, wherever Tony could get the highest, even if that meant doing his best Spider-man (Link?) impression and scaling a building with long metal beams strapped to his back. The one that was hardest to ignore crowned the Whale Comb Sent Her, unavoidably in the middle of the city, assembled on site and bolted to the roof and trying vainly to stretch as tall as the structures around it. Inside, among some debris from some necessary remodelling work, a line of tiny bells hung along the wall, each with quickly scrawled co-ordinates and distances under them, directly onto the plaster.

The most difficult part, really, was the materials. This wasn't new technology, a crystal radio was something the Greeks had, Tony was pretty sure. It was never going to be a strong signal, but he could make that work in his favour--the closer the transmitting tower, the more bells it could ring. While he was scavenging for enough beams to erect his towers, he could be looking for something that would satisfy Wesker's request more closely.

b. day 7
He had one day left when he startled awake, not realizing he had been asleep, jerking up quickly enough that his back protested with a sharp pain where it had been contorted over the workbench. A day was plenty of time, he thought, when he found he still had a mouthful left of coffee in a nearby mug. He didn't even get up out of the seat, just found his loupe among the tools and went back to work.

It was hours later that he started to tell himself that maybe he had been counting wrong, and when Wesker had said a week, he meant starting from the next day, not from when he made his request. That would have been the fair thing.

It was when it was hard to see through the pain in his head, and the red-stained bottle was empty, that Tony thought Wesker might have been right, and he had never done any of this altruistically, and if he really wanted people safe and not just relying on him for safety he could have figured that out any time in the last 30 years. Hell, he'd had a whole week to dedicate to one, little problem. He'd had a few more than that to figure out how to make one rocket stable enough to break the atmosphere. He didn't even need a rocket, he could do what he had always done best; make a gun. Nothing had really stopped him from making one of those before, except now he had the perfect opportunity to use that natural impulse to help people. All of that explosive inspiration suddenly failed him.

It was when all of his scattered eyes around the city alerted that the sun had set that he was left staring down at a frustratingly small scrap, and had to accept that it wasn't getting finished. He pushed away from the workbench finally, every joint creaking in protest, struggling to straighten his back and blink through the pain behind his eyes as he stumbled away to the sink. While he washed his face, D.A.T.A. helpfully rallied to pack his meagre offering into his waiting jacket pocket. The water didn't really improve his face. Despite the hour, he slipped on his sunglasses after carefully fixing his hair in their reflection, and accepted the silk jacket from the robot with a muttered, "Thanks." He could have given a half-way convincing press conference, if the lighting was forgiving. He really only had one person to convince as he made his way to the hospital.

Comments

[deal_me_in]

Cayde ignored the sound, bracing for the follow-up like he'd heard a gun being loaded, half-relieved it didn't come. He ran a hand down Colonel's back, smoothing out feathers though she didn't quite pancake like a cat, but at least she seemed content.

"Hm," he considered as Tony offered the boat explanation. "Kind of like that I guess. But who knows. Maybe you'll actually perfect a metal body that doesn't need to worry about rebooting itself randomly, or clinging to strings of humanity just to keep sane. But then would you still be Tony in there, or an AI?"

[in_extremis]

At first, it sounded like the same question, except this time the 'or' made it an ultimatum. Maybe it was better to drown than to become someone that Cayde didn't know. Tony tossed a shoulder instead of answering, hands flitting over the tower to search for something else to focus on, because he thought Cayde of all people wouldn't have seen such a delineation between the mess of programming in some DNA and the neat lines of it written into code. "It's all affectation?" he asked instead. "And if you don't you'll be crazy?" Not only did that sound backwards, the commitment was definitely the insanity, Tony doubted any of Cayde's impulses were manufactured to feel more human. If they were, he made it look very natural.

[deal_me_in]

"It's...complicated," Cayde finally decided upon, shrugging as though this was a trivial matter.

"Waking up from being dead, I had absolutely no idea who I was supposed to be. Coming back, the Light does weird things, pulls memories that you had, fragments that should be lost, especially in Exos. They don't tell me everything. Most of what I got was from the letters I wrote to Ace. Little secrets, farewells and adventures. I'm not even sure which version of me started them, but I don't know who I would've been without them either.

"So I wouldn't say it's all affectation. Wouldn't say it's entirely honest either. I convinced myself of something's existence, built myself around that. Kinda funny, right?" He chuckled. "Backwards, even. All the stuff on the outside's real enough, so maybe that's what counts. That's who Cayde-Six is."

[in_extremis]

It sounded like the transition would have been smoother and more merciful without those fractured memories, if the Light wasn't allowing the ultimate mercy of death. It also wouldn't have left Cayde with something to hang onto so doggedly, so the Exo in front of Tony would have been a different person, vital parts gone and replaced with something else entirely. "I think maybe...everyone does that," Tony ventured carefully, clearly a new theory that he wasn't confident in, handled like it might be highly reactive. "They form an idea of who they want to be, and that can come from anywhere, and as long as they're hanging onto that and trying to be that person, that's ultimately who they are. Even if it feels fake. The choices that you make, the ones that have any impact, that's who you are." In that way, what Cayde was describing was a pretty human experience. What Tony was left doubting was that he even had those parts that he didn't choose, maybe that was why it was so easy to 'play it through'.

[deal_me_in]

The Exo laughed a little at that. It was true enough, wasn't it? Maybe just not to the degree that Guardians might. But they were always encouraged not to remember, not to dive down the rabbit holes after memories that came up unbidden. Exos had been expected to abandon their pasts well before the Collapse, before Ghosts and Guardians. They weren't who they used to be. But Cayde knew he was hardly the only one who wondered and wouldn't be surprised if others hoarded what memories they did manage to collect the way he did. They were his.

"We done here?" he asked abruptly, partially to shift topics from getting dangerously serious. Colonel ruffled her feathers and tucked her head as close to her body as she could, getting comfortable but Cayde imagined she was giving him a Look for keeping her out this long.

[in_extremis]

Cayde didn't seem upset per se, he did laugh, but maybe Tony's theory needed more work, something he hadn't heard properly in what Cayde was trying to tell him. There was a meaningful loss that Cayde was trying to warn him about, in the transformation that Tony coveted. So far, it didn't sound like anything Tony would miss. He dropped his head, like he was assessing very seriously where the tower had been fixed into place, and allowed, "Yeah, nothing you can help with," so Cayde could get his distance. "Maybe don't tell anyone you did this much, you know, in case. I'll make it up to you."

[deal_me_in]

That was just it, really. Loss. There was always loss. It wasn't just fights or memories, it was little things and big things. Of course the big things were the worst to deal with. And that was why Cayde would rather not. He backpedaled hard from dipping in too deep, even though he admitted right then even more than he ever tended to.

It gnawed at him, their conversation. Was he losing Tony too? The man was more withdrawn, more predisposed to do things on his own than call upon his favorite partner in crime. This place took away constantly. That was bound to eat at anyone. When would it take him, or Tony or Jon... Those times when he thought he'd lost them were bad enough.

The Exo gathered himself and tucked Colonel into the crook of his arm. "Only way you'll make it up to me is not to shut me out," he said with an easy quirk of his jaw. The smiles came easy, but at least he wasn't faking this one, not really. He started towards the roof's edge. "You know I get bored easily."