. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[konstant]

K doesn't even know where to start with being told he's generous, he's kind; neither of these things are useful for a blade runner, and he would never claim them for himself, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't the least bit pleased about it. He is, and furthermore, he can see that Vrenille is telling the truth as he sees it.

He smiles, and watches the ray, too. "Mmhmm. There's another one further ahead you can touch, but its stinger does something, makes you impulsive," he offers, hands resting at the lip of the frame that's the only break in the glass. "It's peaceful, and alive, and beautiful here. I like it." Like he'd first found solace in Vrenille's garden, unlooked for and thus unexpected; he watches a pair of eels drift out of their coral caves, mouths open and gills working, and the way the fish around them change directions to avoid them like a carefully choreographed dance. "Thank you for coming here. With me."

[cryfrustration]

Surprise, K, your whole existence is no longer being measured on the grounds of its utility. You're no longer valued just as a piece of high-spec equipment that's considered "broken" if it goes beyond its assigned parameters.

Vrenille knows that all of that is new for him, that it will take more than a couple of months to adjust to it, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't hear it, shouldn't experience what it's like to be valued for the person that he is. It's ironic, he thinks, K's world setting off to make their perfect automaton for killing, retiring, following orders, and have managed instead to make someone who values life and peace and beauty so much, someone whose first concern is to harm no one, even if it means sacrificing himself to do it.

He has to laugh a little at the Tale of Two Rays though. "Ain't that Duplicity all over--full of life 'n possibilities till you round the corner and it sets you off doing some reckless, madcap shit you had no plans for doing when you woke up," he shakes his head. "I'm glad I'm getting to see this with you though--dunno when I'd have come otherwise." So the gratitude is mutual.

"I'm guessing that impulsive's not the thing you're looking to lean into to help with quota." Impulsive sounds more like the kind of thing K would mistrust in himself and want to avoid.

[konstant]

It is, of course; impulse is not something safe, not something acceptable, at least for him. He's seen some good results in others but it is, by and large, a human right. K smiles a bit, though it fades quickly, his feelings on the subject mixed - especially now that quota is coming up again.

He hasn't forgotten what sparked meeting in person, at least this time; he hadn't exactly been hoping Vrenille would, but it would have been alright with K if he had. If they didn't have to have this conversation at all, not with how he expects it will eventually go.

He nods down the tunnel; first thing's first. "The same place as the ray there are starfish, and they all do something if you touch 'em - anger, paranoia, calm. But there's a room past the touch tanks too. Jellyfish?" He hadn't known what they were before he saw them here, but he glances at Vrenille for any sign of recognition. Regardless: "They're - calming. And it feels kind of like it's better to be close, to be touching someone than not, at least for me. Like it would be worse to leave the room without doing... something... than to deal with whatever's keeping you from not. Whatever that something is."

In a place like Duplicity, it's probably obvious along what lines that something usually is. "It's been helpful. And - I think maybe it's been hurtful, too. But it's there."

[cryfrustration]

Vrenille is certainly familiar with jellyfish, but the remark makes his eyebrows rise, "Big ones?" Because when he thinks of jellyfish, the first thing he thinks of are as long as a man is tall, with trailing, stinging tentacles that extend much longer. That is...probably not what K's referring to, though even the ones that can hurt the worst can be hypnotically beautiful at a distance.

He can't help but be curious to see these tanks further in, but what K's telling him makes him reluctant to suggest it. If K does, that's fine, but Vrenille resolves that it's up to him to lead, especially where that last room is concerned. And even more so given what he says.

"Hurtful--to you? How?"

[konstant]

"No," he answers, though the fact Vrenille has to ask that alerts K to the possibility that there are such things as large jellyfish, and he glances over curiously as he holds his hand up. "About the size of my palm, and they're see through in the light, but in the dark they glow all kinds of colors." He's enamored, naturally.

And it's a much easier answer than the second one. His hand disappears into his pocket, the other following suit almost automatically. "Not to me. Well." He tips his head. "I was there with someone, and we - had a nice time. Nicer than before. Which made it harder on him when I warned him that my contract deadline is coming up."

[cryfrustration]

Vrenille mouths a little oh of understanding. He can imagine why K likes those. "Also probably safer than the big ones, which can sting you something fierce. They're partially see through too but kinda tinted, darker tentacles."

If only life could be just this--amassing lists of all the things K has never gotten to see before and then finding ways to show them to him. But alas, they have to think about things like quota and contracts.

He does a quick mental accounting of the time that's past since K's arrival. "Couple weeks now, is it?" He looks at him sidelong, fully aware that up until now, K hasn't even been willing to approach a conversation on the topic, at least not with him. "What're your thoughts there?"

[konstant]

K still doesn't want to approach this topic; he doesn't like that this city keeps forcing him to have it, doesn't like how he can be having a perfectly nice time at the aquarium with a friend and a perfectly easy conversation with that same friend and then this happens. He nods - yes, a couple weeks.

His eyes track the path of a large, flat, violet and pink fish as it swims along the glass in front of him, and maybe he just won't answer the second question. Maybe he doesn't have any thoughts on it at all.

Except he does, and when the fish is gone and he's watching a pair of crabs digging in the sand he says quietly, "Next week. And I'm not going to have one."

[cryfrustration]

Well that sure comes out sounding definitive. Vrenille's brow ticks up a notch. He's not shocked by K's resistance, far from it. That much practically comes off of him in waves--it has for a long time. Vrenille has to wonder, though, if he so much as entertained having a conversation with anyone about this before he decided.

It is late in the game now, of course, but he reckons there should be, at least, a non-zero number of conversations (and conversations, specifically with someone in the position to offer) on the table for him before he rains the city's laws down on his own head.

"I hope that's not down to lack of options," he says evenly. "'Cause if that's the reason, you 'n I can change that right now."

[konstant]

Most people barely even notice K, who is quiet by preference and capable of standing or sitting still for hours at a time if he's of a mind to; if they do, typically those same people get the mild side of him, which is also his preference. The LAPD keeps order, he'd been told over and over again by Joshi. He wants peace and he's content to go with whatever lets that happen, most of the time.

But every now and then there's this side of him too - and Vrenille has a knack for finding it, even K would admit. Something in his expression closes itself off; his eyes stay in the eel, but he's very aware of his position in relation to the other man's when he makes an offer that, all told, is not exactly surprising.

It still sends a shiver down K's spine, though there's no sign of that in his simple, concise answer of, "It's not."

[cryfrustration]

Vrenille genuinely doesn't go trying to seek out the points that will make K tense up like a touch-sensitive leaf. He does indeed seem to find them though, and he's getting used to the signs of when he's brushed up on something particularly sensitive.

His reaction to that now is the same as ever--he leaves it be. It's not the path to walk, that's the meaning he takes from K's tension. Too much, not this way, a different route. It's not down to a lack of options, and K does not want to hear him say more about it. So he doesn't. He doesn't cajole or try and argue the toss. No is no. It's at the very heart of personhood, being able to say no, and he knows that for K that hasn't been much of an option before now. That makes it, in Vrenille's estimation, something a bit like sacred ground.

He lifts his eyes to the water overhead, the motion of the light in it as a grouper, big and grey, crosses above them. "Y'know they're not going to let you just opt out 'n still walk free. You're okay with that?"

[konstant]

K still fully expects to be rolled right over like Vrenille's leaf; he has learned to brace exactly like this over a lifetime of being ignored and being used in spite of his preferences, to reserve the most blatant refusals for the most distasteful of denials. He still doesn't quite know what to think of it when Vrenille lets himself be turned aside.

K's eyes slide towards him though he doesn't turn his head; he's still watching the tank but also, now, watching the other man.

"I know," he says as simply. "But it's different from the injections. It's just me, in the cell until I'm not. That or they're hiding something." But he's not afraid of that. He's not unwilling to suffer that if he gets to do so on his own terms.

[cryfrustration]

"If that's all it is then I don't doubt you can wait 'em out." And this is wide of the topic maybe, but it occurs to him: "I don't even know--do replicants age? Do you have an...I dunno, a sunset date built in? Anyway, on will alone I don't doubt you could outlast the lot of 'em, still be sitting there when today's SIN guards are all old 'n gray."

However. "I dunno what they might do down the line if just locking you up doesn't sway you. I wouldn't put hiding something past 'em."

It makes him think of things that happened here years ago, things he supposes most people have forgotten now because the city has, overall, a very poor memory, perhaps by design. Maybe the most reliable thing about Duplicity is that it's hiding something.

[konstant]

"Some of us do, if the client requested it," he answers, an abbreviated answer, the relevant portions of it amongst a complicated history: "I don't know if I do."

He's already passed the four year mark, but he's a service model, so maybe it'll be eight.

"I understand. And if that happens, I'll reevaluate, but for now - I know what you've said about the contracts." His voice is so low he might be telling a secret to the grouper, though it doesn't care; it swims by, fins fanning delicately, mouth working in its own silent mutterings. "I just don't see how it can be true."

[cryfrustration]

Vrenille's voice is low too, but so that their words remain private, so nothing carries.

"You mean how they can be..." how does he want to phrase this, "fair? How they can be anything besides enslavement--ownership of one person by another?"

That's the rub here, isn't it? Reading between the lines, he thinks it must be, but he wants to hear how K will put it, how exactly it's framed for him.

[konstant]

Where is the place in the world you feel safest? Within.

K nods, and watches his own reflection in the glass doing the same; he almost leaves it there, lets that stand as its own answer. But if he's going to go to that extent to escape something he can't think his way around, he doesn't want to come off as just mulish, or childish. He has tried to talk himself around.

It's just he hadn't begun to feel steady until he made the decision to refuse to participate.

"It's like trying to imagine a color I've never seen based on someone else describing it. Or like being told go ahead, jump off this roof, I'll fly even though I never have before."

Did they keep you in a drawer when they were building you? Dark.

[cryfrustration]

"Leap of faith," he murmurs, thinking of Jacob and this mad thing he does, jumping from rooftops, sailing down, plummeting with arms outstretched, throwing himself into the safe landing that he can't possibly have seen from above.

Vrenille's never known how he knows, how he identifies the places he can jump from, but he does it, much the way he somehow seems to just see, just know: people in a building, their locations, their attitudes, friend or foe--his "eagle vision" he calls it.

So it's a little like that maybe: Vrenille can't see what Jacob can see; he'd doom himself leaping off a building. And that's what it's like for K as well. Vrenille can understand that.

"Maybe it's 'cause humans use contracts for so damn much," he offers, "even if we call 'em different names--bond, deal, bargain, pact, arrangement...shit even debt--they're all parts of the same thing. Maybe we're just more used to the double-speak." He casts K a sidelong look, not sure if this will make sense to him and not wanting it to be misunderstood.

"Sometimes I think there's not much that's more deceitful in this whole place than these contracts they got us all signing."

[konstant]

K is listening, even though he's not looking at Vrenille anymore; he's watching the patterns the light through the surface of the water cast onto the sand, onto the backs of the fish broader than they are tall, the wavering lattice work of interlaced halos, the soothing slide of refractory shadow in between.

He does understand the words, even thinks he understands the context, but then Vrenille calls the contracts deceitful and K breaks his number one rule from working cold cases: he lets it fall into the shape of what he's been expecting all along.

"How so?" he asks, a bit too promptly, openly wary - not of Vrenille's answer or honesty, but because this is what he was expecting all along.

[cryfrustration]

And yet maybe it won't be quite what he expects:

"Well when you think of the shape of this place, you got the Creator, who's obsessed with the idea of this 'deceit gene,' right? Wants to find someone without it, someone free of deceit. And he's a submissive y'know--got a contract same as anyone. So he drags all of our sorry asses into this city that says, first, fuck each other but do it by the numbers--our numbers. And then goes 'n tells us we gotta sign contracts if we wanna walk anything close to free." He's had years to think about this--for him, by now, it all feels quite clear.

"So what do we collectively do? We see a city that's damn well begging for deceit on all sides 'n we say 'Ha! Sure, we'll take your system 'n the letter of your law and we'll sign on these dotted lines, but jokes on you; we'll just live as we please in all your blindspots. You want us to trick you? Well shit, we can trick you.' It's deception all over. The law demands it. And the Creator's out there wringing his hands wondering why he can't find anyone free from deceit."

He shakes his head, laughing a little at the irony and the contradiction of it all, the vulgarity of this whole place.

[konstant]

It's a thought K has had, too. Irony and how this place encourages what it claims to denounce, what all the rhetoric lists in terms of condescension. And he had accepted it then: he lied to Joshi, he worked to deceive Luv and Deckard. He deserved to be here, wherever here is, whatever the explanation for this place is.

But this is different. He is in open defiance now of what he's been told he must do, but he's being as up front about it as the situation demands. He is being honest.

"I am trying not to be," he points out, but it's disingenuous; he knows he'll omit something if the consequences are severe enough for someone he cares about. "Why do you say the contracts the worst of it?"

[cryfrustration]

"Oh it's not on you," Vrenille waves it aside not to be dismissive but because there are certain things that, it deserves to be acknowledged, are bigger than anyone--things that are structural and systemic. K shouldn't feel he carries this one on his shoulders when he doesn't.

That's part of why Vrenille's pointing to the contracts as the worst, though also, this part is a little difficult for him to explain. He understands it when it sits in his own mind, but then as soon as he tries to say it aloud, it always seems to lose something. He tries though, to at least come close, to convey something to K of what he's realised in his time here.

"I think maybe it's 'cause the contracts, they're to do with the law here, right? And...well, it took me a long time to work this out 'cause I guess I'd always thought that the law and truth were on the same side together. I don't think that's it though. I think when it comes right down to it the law's probably one of the worst tools there is for getting to the truth. 'Cause the law doesn't care 'bout truth, it cares 'bout law."

He doesn't want K to misunderstand him here, so to clarify--"I'm not saying people who work for the law don't care 'bout truth. I'm not saying you don't. But the law itself?" He shakes his head. "That's something else. Truth is messy. Telling the truth? That's even more messy. And there's a lotta truths the law can't hear. I think...anytime you got something fixed that you're holding folks to the letter of, you're gonna miss half the truth by doing it. And then you got deceit built in. Two sides of a page, y'know?"