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From:

cryfrustration

Hey man, mid-month check in. Two weeks since they slapped on this whole double quota garbage. [Which all sounds very businesslike and utilitarian, but then his expression and tone softens, more personal, concerned.]

How you been doing? [Not just with that, he seems to imply. With everything.]

From:

konstant

It was thoughtful of them to give further incentive for people in the
program to engage with each other.

Have you seen the aquarium?

From:

cryfrustration

[That wins a snort of laughter.] Super thoughtful, yup. That's LIES, always with all our best interests at heart, never an ulterior motive in sight.

I ain't been in yet, just gone by outside. Kinda weird choice for a place where all the local seem so scared of the sea, but-- [He shrugs. Maybe it's because they're so scared of the actual sea that an aquarium has its appeal.]

Have you been in? It's gotta be full of stuff you've never got to see before.

From:

konstant

Do humans find it particularly hard to avoid drowning? Several of the people I've spoken with regarding it have done so.

It's amazing. [There's been a faint, almost sharp note of wry sarcasm in his voice so far, but these two words are utterly sincere, before the wryness is back again:] And also comes with some emotional effects that make double quota a bit easier than it might otherwise be.

From:

cryfrustration

Without an aquabreather or something like it? Kinda, yeah. Do replicants...not find it hard to avoid drowning?

[Can you secretly breathe water or something, K? He's heard that line about "originally designed for environments humans couldn't survive in," but he doesn't know how far that goes.]

I'm gonna take that as the silver lining here. [Both how amazing he finds it and the part that makes double quota easier.] What, uh, flavor of emotional effects they got going in there?

Edited Date: 2022-09-15 10:37 am (UTC)

From:

konstant

My last retirement was via asphyxiation. It was underwater, but I don't know which actually worked. At the same time, I was able to swim back to shore even with extensive abdominal damage that turned out to be fatal.

[So fifty-fifty in his experience. As far as silver lining goes though:]

Irritability and anger, but also calm and arousal. Standards, I'm learning.

From:

cryfrustration

Well that's...a little confusing if I'm honest, but I'm gonna go with not near so easy as humans. Which stands to reason given everything you've said. [K is more robust than any ordinary human. This is something Vrenille simply accepts. K is probably more robust than any ordinary norn too. That's just how it is.]

They do like to stay on brand. [Because yes, those are very much standards.] Mix 'n match is better than lucky dip though, 'specially if you've learned what cause has what effect 'n can choose how you use it.

[There's a tacit question there--it sounds like K has worked that out and is (hopefully) using it to his advantage, but Vrenille isn't going to assume without confirmation.]

From:

konstant

What's confusing about it?

[He isn't trying to mislead Vrenille in any way, even if he doesn't like to think about Luv on top of everything else he must think about. They're quickly approaching his threshold for things he's willing to discuss over the devices, but he can answer that much, probably.

He reads the unspoken question - hope even, maybe - loud and clear even through the screens, even though there's no actual question spoken of in so many words.]

That would be what I'm angling towards, at least a bit, yes.

From:

cryfrustration

You're saying you drowned but then swam back to shore--died, er--were retired, and then died again?

I think maybe I'm just missing the story that connects the dots there. [Because those sure are some dots with some big ol' gaps between them, K.]

And if it's working then I'm glad. [But that's the question, isn't it, and at this point he's just going to come out and ask.] Is it working?

From:

konstant

Oh. No. I'm sorry.

I drowned another replicant, then I swam back to shore and - [Sigh, fine, if it's easier for Vrenille to put together with minimal context:] - died, and then I came here.

[Which is all easy to relay compared to the snag the last question represents. K's brow furrows faintly, and he visibly waffles for a moment.]

Some.

From:

cryfrustration

Oh right, ok, I'm following now. [He thinks.] This is the fight where you got all those injuries you had when you got here.

[He remembers the state that K was in well, he just hadn't known that drowning another replicant and nearly drowning himself had been a part of it all. He remembers the skeletal narrative that K told him though, at least enough to understand that whoever his fight was with, it would not have been someone the LAPD had sent him to retire. And if it was another blade runner they'd sent after him...well, he supposes that's possible, given that K would already have been classified as rogue. It doesn't quite seem to square with everything else he knows though--what was in K's nightmare and the way he spoke about it. He thinks that would have been subtly different.]

I wanna ask who they were, why they were set against you, but you don't gotta talk 'bout it if you don't wanna.

I do think we gotta talk 'bout quota though, numbers 'n shit. 'Cause there's could 'n then there's did, and LIES don't care if you're on the path trying to make it work.

From:

konstant

Yes.

[That is where he got the injuries, most of them anyway, that he'd had leftover when Vrenille first met him.]

We wanted different things, the other replicant and I.

[But no he doesn't want to talk about that, or about quota, on a network he knows is being watched. Old habits from a world where most people had never held a pencil but hacking a basic connection was common knowledge.]

Not here. I'll meet wherever you like, but not here.

From:

cryfrustration

[He wants to ask about that--the different things, yes, but more the want, because there's agency in want, and as he understands it, for most replicants that sort of agency isn't possible except as an extension of what their owner wants, which is hardly the same thing.

All of that he holds onto though. K wants to speak in person, and he's happy to accommodate.]

Take me to this aquarium then?

[He wouldn't care very much about seeing it on his own, but seeing it with K, learning about what he's discovered there? That he certainly cares about.]

From:

konstant

[The smile is immediate and audible.
He's fascinated by the aquarium and everything in it.]

I can meet you there in half an hour. In the lobby, by the tank wall.

[Which is exactly when and where he'll be.]

From:

cryfrustration

[Some guys--Vrenille swears, some guys it's worth it just to see them smile. K's in that category for him, especially since his smiles are so rare, something that feels special and precious, lighting up his own smile in answer.]

I'll see you there.

[And he does, taking in the space of the lobby when he arrives as he scans for K's distinctive silhouette across the room.]

"It's different than what I expected," he says by way of greeting as he steps up beside him.

From:

konstant

He might be a bit more difficult to spot than usual: he's crouched down beside the glass so he's on eye level with a cluster of brightly colored sea anemones, chin resting in his hand and his eyes following the graceful, slow swaying of the Easter egg tendrils in the current. It's almost like breathing, he thinks.

And then Vrenille is there and K tips a look up at him, lips quirking briefly before he turns back to the tank.

"What were you expecting?" he wonders.

From:

cryfrustration

He's so damn innocent, Vrenille thinks as he spots him, follows the line of his eyes. He's seen sylvari a bit like this, the newly awakened ones in the Grove so enchanted with the world, all its new experiences, simply looking and touching and smelling and tasting, drinking it in with wide-eyed wonder and wasting nothing. Just as Ventari teaches them to.

He waits for the greeting before crouching down at K's side. So innocent and this whole fucking place is gonna conspire to take that away from him.

"There's an aquarium in Divinity's Reach," he explains, "near the orrery outside the Queen's palace. It's open, bright. Almost a thoroughfare really. This feels a lot more quiet...intimate."

From:

konstant

"Someone told me there used to be places that let people swim with sea creatures - dolphins," he adds, remembering the name. He likes the sound of what Vrenille is describing and he likes the sound of getting to interact with something friendly and intelligent and wholly unlike humans.

Someone moves too quickly behind them and some of the coral around the anemones close and shrink like sentient things; K lifts a hand to touch two fingers to the glass, slowly, not to tap or scare them but so when they start to chance opening up again, he's already closer to them.

"This part is all just display. Public. Most of the effects I've noticed are deeper inside."

From:

cryfrustration

"Now that sounds like an earth thing," he says it fondly enough. Over time he's come to realise that there are things people come up with on earth that no one in tyria would ever think to do.

"If you wanted to swim with dolphins where I'm from, you'd probably just go swim in the sea. Or the harbour in Lion's Arch, there's some out there. I can see 'em sometimes from my bedroom window back home."

It's nice to think of, just a simple, quotidian memory of his life as it was, being where he felt he belonged, things happening in their natural way. Like the anemones, moving the way they move, pulling in, expanding out. He tries not to dwell on how it makes something twist inside of him--just homesickness, he knows. Here, that is what's quotidian.

"I think swimming with quaggan's probably more common where I'm from." A pause.

He doesn't want to rush K on when he's transfixed with what's right in front of him, so he waits until he looks up again before asking, "You wanna show me what-all's inside?"

From:

konstant

"What's a quaggan?" K asks.

He thinks of his own window at home, not so little in comparison to the room - half the wall, really - but forgettable in the grand scope of Los Angeles as a whole. Insignificant. He watched traffic and holo-ads and smog roll by, sometimes watched the windows across the street, one of millions, maybe even billions of snapshots of life, all facing buildings

He would feel an echoing pulse of homesickness if he weren't so entranced with what's in front of him, but he hears the unfamiliar word and looks up. At the question from Vrenille he nods, and draws his hand back so slowly, so carefully, the creatures in the tank don't withdraw again. Only then does he stand.

"The tunnel's over this way." He doesn't say it's his favorite, but it's there in his tone and the way he goes straight for it.

From:

cryfrustration

"They're sorta squat beluga-looking things. 'Bout yay high when they're on land," he holds a hand up around waist height, "but they live in the water. Got flippers 'n a big wide tail, 'n they say 'oooo' a lot."

As they walk, he does his best quaggan impression, an artificially low, slowed voice, sort of fitting if one can imagine what talking underwater would be like: "'Cooo, quaggan is pleased to see you. You would not like quaggan when quaggan is angry. But quaggan wants to live in peace.' They're gentle, friendly...sorta cute really, so long as you don't piss 'em off. But that doesn't happen much on account of how getting mad embarrasses 'em."

K, he thinks as they approach the tunnel, his mind looping back to the careful way he stood up so as not to trigger another reflexive retreat of the coral, would adore quaggans. Probably swim with their tadpoles for hours if you gave him an aquabreather and half the damn chance.

From:

konstant

K doesn't know what a beluga is either, but he does his best to picture it. He does in fact come to the conclusion about speech underwater, and it makes him smile. He's not sure if it's that there is so much in Vrenille's world that he'd like to see - a good chance; there's a lot in Duplicity, and there had even been things in Los Angeles he was still discovering - or merely how Vrenille describes them, how he bothered to notice the things he now tells K about, but he likes hearing about them. The impression makes him laugh, low and pleased.

"Sometimes I wish there had been more species capable of speech on Earth," he offers. Mostly he doesn't bother, or remembers how humans have treated the next closest thing to themselves even though they created them. But sometimes. "Why embarrassed? Do you know? Is it cultural, or did something happen?"

The entrance to the big reef tunnel is well marked, even if the walls on either side weren't constructed of floor to ceiling tanks giving just a glimpse of the teeming, darting, active life on the other side of the glass. They curve gracefully to the narrow passage through the exhibit, and this is where K slows - this is where he remembers that he's running a two out of three streak for encountering trauma in his friends, and he watches Vrenille for signs of the same when he sees that the water will be over them as well as close in on both sides.

From:

cryfrustration

Getting K to laugh is rare. At least it has been for Vrenille. Maybe others have heard it before, but he's hard pressed to think of a single other instance, and the feeling of it blooms warm in his chest.

He actually has an answer about quaggans as well, which is almost surprising to him--one of those stray bits of information he's learned about his own world in the years he's been with his guild. Before he left Ebonhawke, he wouldn't have known any of this.

"It's 'cause it changes 'em. Physically. They go kinda scaley 'n scarlet, like armored fish, grow big pointy teeth. They call it 'the rage,' and mostly they can't control it. They just destroy whatever's in their path. It's shameful in their culture, getting like that." Which, now that he's saying it aloud, all sounds like stuff K can probably relate to.

"Valuable allies though," he adds "the ones who could. There were one or two who joined the Pact, enraged pretty much all the time. They held the line out in the jungle, sometimes when no one else did. It's the sorta thing that makes me think...well, it probably ain't my place to say, but I think Earth'd probably better if there were some non-human races there.

"Humans on their own are assholes." He's not even mincing words about that. "I saw it in Ebonhawke. Shit, I was part of it in Ebonhawke. First time I met the members of my guild, I said awful things to 'em."

He doesn't elaborate on that though because they're entering the tunnel, and far from signs of trauma or discomfort, Vrenille is turning on the spot, his face upturned, grinning at the fish in the water overhead. "See now this is more like Divinity's Reach."

From:

konstant

It does sound familiar, and K is already watching him so he just raises an eyebrow instead. It sounds like they found a way to make it useful, though, and that interests him; he needs to think about it before he says anything though, and so he nods to acknowledge the information and then glances away to the tanks and a large school of small, flashing golden fish.

"I don't know if it was better with a non-human race," K points out mildly. "But I've always understood why humans are the way they are with us." And he, unlike the rebellion, isn't angry about it for the most part. It's not worth his energy.

When he sees the grin he tips his head in invitation and moves ahead more decisively, taking them to the first bend in the tunnel where it widens a bit to allow more room for observation - just in time for the largest shark in the tank to slide by overhead, serene and rhythmic in its serpentine swimming motion.

"This is where I like to stand," he says, stepping right up to the glass, though he does it again so carefully and slowly that the fish closest to the glass barely startle. His eyes track the creature swimming overhead, something like awe still in his eyes despite that he goes on to explain, "You can see most of the tank from here, and the shark swims by over and over again."

From:

cryfrustration

"That's 'cause you are real generous 'n real kind." A frank declaration as he slips into the bend of the tunnel, out of the way of anyone passing behind them.

No empty compliment here. Being able to feel some degree of empathy and patience even for those who treat you most harshly, most unfairly--that's a rare and precious skill. Anger would be justified, would be understandable. Knowing that and being able to let it go? Most people couldn't. It deserves to be acknowledged, like so much else about K that his world didn't bother to credit because it fell outside of their metrics for him.

He steps up to the glass too, turning backwards once he does, facing towards the tunnel, his head falling noiselessly back against the glass, so that he can both look up overhead, at the wide angle across from them, and also easily glance at K without needing to turn to do so.

A spotted eagle ray passes above them, its white underbelly seeming to almost brush the arched glass before it carries smoothly on its way, the shape of its mouth and gills seeming to smile down at them. "Looks like it's flying doesn't it?" He's seen rays before, but never quite like this, and he can't pretend it isn't captivating.