Dan
A day or two passes after Elijah posts his manifesto on Ginger. No one responds; or at least - no one has responded yet, not on the sex line/secure server, anyway. Then, a text.
From Dan.
Saw your post. Let's talk. Date/time?
Elijah
He replies quickly enough, having become accustomed to Dan's phone number. The reply is near immediate; Elijah lives in a generation that is glued to their cell phones.
7:30/tonight? We can meet at my place if you want.
Dan
Roommate?
His response, a bit later.
This stuff is pretty confidential.
Elijah
Jenn's going on a date tonight. She shouldn't be back until well past midnight.
Dan
Addy?
Elijah
Elijah texts Dan the address to his apartment, and soon enough, they are well on their way to meeting up.
The building is old.
That's the first thing that one can say about the building. It was old. It was old and it came up while the city was growing. It was eaten when the city came up and urban sprawl decided to erect more impressive structures around it. The building had its own charm. brick, clear enough windows. Some interesting glass work, and no discernible modern conveniences. Elijah's apartment is situated above a florist's shop that had since seen better days. His landlord wasn't a particularly attentive sort, but he gave a discount so, for that, Elijah was grateful. These types of places only do business during two times of year- when people having weddings or having funerals. Denver hadn't seen nearly enough dead people to warrant a lot of foot traffic, but the shop was doing okay enough.
Getting to the front door wasn't difficult, and the door had most assuredly seen better days, just like the carpet in the hallway had. Once upon a time, someone had loved this place. Whatever happened, someone fell out of love with Floral and Hardy real damned quick once somewhere newer came along.
The silhouette of the place paid it more credence than it deserved. There were the telltale signs of someone who had just finished moving in. Flattened out boxes. Art leaning against the walls instead of hanging on it. He has a cheap IKEA coffee table and no television. The place seemed to have a fair bit going for it, though. The ceilings were high and somewhere nestled in the back under an extraneous balcony-like structure there was a tiny kitchen with a breakfast nook shoved under the stairs. In the back there was an actual, legitimate room and a bathroom. The floors were wood, and there was the indication that, once upon a time, there had been another room-like structure in the open living room-like area, but the exposed beam seemed to hint that it met an unfortunate end.
In the kitchen, there were a set of French doors leading to a balcony…
With a view of a wall.
Dan
Dan's pretty punctual. They agree to a time and the consor is a few minutes early, which gives him time to peruse the picture windows of Floral and Hardy and smirk a bit over the name. He finds the entrance easily enough and takes the stairs two at a time, boots solid on the old, dark stairwell."Nice place," he tells Elijah, when he is admitted, and there's no irony in that comment. Old and neglected as the building itself is, the high ceilings and other charms appeal to Dan's sense of structure and place more than any "updated" kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances ever would. He asks for a tour, if Elijah will give him one, and asks for a beer, if Elijah offers drinks, and he inspects the French doors and the balcony with a view of the wall, and tells Elijah it reminds him of Brooklyn.
That's all the small talk, though. They sit down, probably in the living room, and for a moment Dan looks as if he is at a loss for words.
"I'll be honest, Elijah. I don't really know where to start. With the specifics about your friend's Dad, or - well. Has anyone told you about the Ascension War?"
Elijah
He's proud of his apartment, and he does give a tour. his room is up the stairs in the loft area, it's more of a bed space than a bed room, but Elijah doesn't seem to mind. Jenn's room is around the corner, and there is the smell of marijuana and rosemary and chocolate there but mostly just rosemary and chocolate. Elijah has a nice balcony, even if it does look out over a wall, he seems to love the place all the same. Even if it did need renovations. A lot of renovations. Anything too drastic and Elijah and Jenn wouldn't be able to afford to live there. They've managed to maintain just enough to allow them to not be homeless.
Eventually, he does go back to the living room, offers Dan a beer and he's treated to something that's decent instead of the cheap stuff that Elijah drinks. Dan's a guest; you don't subject your quests to cheap beer unless they request it. Hospitality.
Has anyone told him about the Ascension War?
"Nobody has told me anything. Kalen said I'm not doing anything and that was final, Sid said they were bad news, and Grace said that the technocracy was really dangerous. I… I want to get why they're afraid, but the logic behind ignore this is trust me, I know better and… and I don't get it. There was a war?"
Dan
"There was a war."
Dan reaches up and scratches his beard and sets down his beer. He has a feeling this will be a long talk.
"Not many people around here were around for it. The priest probably. Jim. The long and short of it is: there was a war between the Traditions and the Technocrats for the path of human ascension.
"We lost. They won.
"Seriously, no one's told you that?"
Elijah
Had no one told him about the war?
Surely, someone must have mentioned it, and they had in fact mentioned it, but there was a difference between mentioning it (we lost the war, as Kalen said) and explaining what it was. Why it was important. Why he should be concerned beyond what people told him about the technocracy being bad news. In truth, nobody he'd spoken with had fought the war. No one saw what happen,d no one lost friends, save for Patience and she did not retail him with her horror stories.
Perhaps another time.
All Kalen had told him was no. All Sid said was to be careful. All Grace had done was be cautious- incredibly so.
"Nobody's told me about the war. Kalen mentioned a war but," he replied, "Kalen and I didn't… uh… really talk a lot about it."
Dan
"To be honest," Dan says, leaning back on the couch. Crossing his right leg over his left knee and - honestly - sighing a bit. "I'm not really sure where to start. I don't know how far to step back. I don't know that you've ever experienced the way the reality we share right now just sometimes bites back at you folks when you do something that is magickal enough that most people don't think things really should happen like that.
"But it goes back to that: how we think reality works. How we think it should work, and how the rest of the world thinks it works or should work.
"Mages are pretty fluid, you know. You impose your will on the world, you change it - and how you change it and how you channel your will depends on how you believe everything works. Pan prays and his prayers get answered. He believes that all of that fucking power comes from god - and so it does, it comes to him from god. Hermetics Name things. Everything has a thousand and one fucking names. Hawksley - you haven't met him, have you? - well, he goes by one name with mages, and another with the ordinary people he meets, the Sleepers.
"Sera - it's all sensation based for her. The intensity of feeling that pushes her to transcend the limits of her own skin. Other people find focus in yoga, or the martial arts. Or magic spells and wands, or other religious practices, old and new. I'm sure that there are people who make sacrifices - blood and spit, hair and skin. Lives perhaps.
"Magickal, all of it. Each belief system different, fluid and dynamic. Each one effective because its practitioner has opened his or her eyes and soul to understand that reality is a construct, whose stability depends on the collective and unconscious belief of billions of humans - belief made manifest, right? - that she can transcend by the work of her will.
"Just think about it for a moment though. All that goddamned fluidity is pretty scary if you believe in the orderly progress of rational thought. The forward-match of Western civilization. The rationality of scientific investagation.
"That fluidity is goddamned deviant. That's what they call you, by the way. The Technocrats. Reality Deviants."
Elijah
"Why can't they coexist? I mean,it very clearly doesn't have to be all scientific rational thought and orderly progress. If it weren't possible, people wouldn't be able to do it," he said. He tried to piece through it, following along and bless his little peacenik heart, he does not understand why there had to be any war, especially one that ended the way this one did. He doesn't know what happened, doesn't understand that there was a terrible aching awfulness in people's hearts and that the magical community was still licking its wounds years after the fact.
"So, if there was a war, and they won, and they're getting to shape how people see reality, is that why there's paradox?"
Curious. Confused.
Dan
"Think about it. Just - seriously - think about it. Science says that there is no magic and that the sun rises and sets not because there's a dude named Helios who gets up every morning and drives a burning chariot across the sky, but because there's a thing called a star and the star is burning and it isn't actually revolving around us, we're revolving around it.
"And if there ever was a dude named Helios driving a chariot across the sky - what happens to him when he loses the belief he needs to keep going. When he loses the belief that fuels him?
"And I don't think its fair to say that they're shaping how people see reality, necessarily. I think the way people see reality creates the strictures within which anyone has to work. And yeah they've got propaganda, but people are also embracing them - in part, because they do - or did - actually give a shit about the masses of humanity. Vaccines, antibiotics. Open heart surgery. They've saved a helluva lot of lives - why wouldn't Sleepers embrace that kind of magic - science - that anyone can do if they just Follow the Rules and embrace Order?
"The Technocrats, though. They went a step beyond that kind of propaganda. That sort of cold war for the hearts and minds of humanity and started actively hunting anyone who breaks the rules of that Order.
"You can see how it would be dangerous."
Elijah
Elijah, for his part, listens. Really listens to what it is that Dan has to say. Arguably, it's the first time that Elijah had listened whole heartedly to anything anyone had to say about this beyond what he had gleaned from Alicia. He listened, because Dan was engaging. Because Dan was talking and it made sense and-
And suddenly his stomach turned and there was this dawning horrible feeling that clearly washed over him. Miraculous that something could make him feel so stuck, but for all his knowledge Elijah didn't know what to do. Didn't know what to say.
So he didn't say anything, he only nodded.
Dan
Softly, Dan breathes out,
"You ever see that old movie, The Matrix?"
Elijah
"Oh my god, it's not actually like the matrix, is it?"
Elijah
[play it off like that movie didn't freak you out a little, Elijah]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Dan
"What, like the Sleepers are actively being manipulated to be the powersources of machines? But the level of control; the need to keep that control of the hearts and minds of the populace - to keep their version of the world stable, sure.
"And you and the people like you, the people who've woken up, the people who know that maybe the sun is a ball of incandescent gas and maybe it could also be a dude in a chariot are the rebels, the noise in the system, the variables.
"You can't really have a perfect and perfectly functioning system with free radicals echoing around, damaging all your perfectly logical cell walls, can you?"
Elijah
He managed to mask his discomfort with a scoff. Managed to mask the fact that there were concepts in the movie that, while he had been high, had nagged at him and made him feel a little like, maybe, reality wasn't so real and what if it was all a simulation and what if-what if-what if-
Exhale.
Yeah, he'd seen it. Covered it up with casual.
Elijah
He managed to mask his discomfort with a scoff. Managed to mask the fact that there were concepts in the movie that, while he had been high, had nagged at him and made him feel a little like, maybe, reality wasn't so real and what if it was all a simulation and what if-what if-what if- Exhale. Yeah, he'd seen it. Covered it up with casual but what Dan had to say next couldn't really be covered up by Elijah. He listens, and he nods, and that feeling of unease hasn't left him and the feeling hadn't subsided, and later he would marvel at how remarkable it was that something could make him feel so intensely, just a concept had his nerves aching, and he looked at Dan with trepidation, "what am I supposed to do for Alicia? I don't… I don't want to bring that down on anyone."
Elijah
He managed to mask his discomfort with a scoff. Managed to mask the fact that there were concepts in the movie that, while he had been high, had nagged at him and made him feel a little like, maybe, reality wasn't so real and what if it was all a simulation and what if-what if-what if-
Exhale.
Yeah, he'd seen it. Covered it up with casual but what Dan had to say next couldn't really be covered up by Elijah. He listens, and he nods, and that feeling of unease hasn't left him and the feeling hadn't subsided, and later he would marvel at how remarkable it was that something could make him feel so intensely, just a concept had his nerves aching, and he looked at Dan with trepidation, "what am I supposed to do for Alicia? I don't… I don't want to bring that down on anyone."
Dan
"Don't go haring off on some ill-advised adventure. Don't draw their attention, or their ire, to yourself or anyone else here. Your friend's father sounds like he was fucking powerful - if they could take him in, no on in Denver could challenge their power. And there's no way they would give him up.
"Not easily, and not without cost. Maybe the cost would be all of our lives.
"What do you do for Alicia? Help her feel safe. Help her mourn. Help her learn to live with loss - which is something, by the way, everyone has to learn.
"Be her friend. That's what you do for Alicia.
"You can't pursue this, Elijah. You've got to understand that. If they captured you, every mage you know - and maybe some you don't - would be in danger."
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