Sime~Gen Roleplaying on IRC: Snake River Dam Scenario
Episode #44: Tea with Snake III (9/24/00)
Nick heads for the secluded clearing where he is meet Snake and collect the next week's supply of adulterated Tecton #3.
Nick views this task as something of a penance, for not managing to prevent Snake from drugging Arat in the first place.
Nick is wearing his new hat, which he likes very much, mostly because he allowed himself to believe that Arat was instrumental in giving it to him.
Nick is perhaps fortunate that he can't zlin Arat's real reaction to his birthday presents.
Nick spots a weasel... er, a semi-rogue channel... waiting ahead, and quickens his pace.
Wise Snake is leaning against a tree, picking her teeth with a piece of straw.
Wise Snake hasn't suddenly developed a fetish for cleanliness, she just saw someone doing it earlier and thought it looked fun.
Nick still half-expects the burst of warmth that he used to feel whenever he saw Snake, and misses it.
Wise Snake waits until Nick is nearly there, and then flicks the straw away.
Nick nods coolly to Snake.
Nick: Snake.
Wise Snake: Nick. [ironically]
Wise Snake plucks a small packet from somewhere on her person, and offers it to him.
Nick takes the packet and inspects it briefly.
Nick: Same dosage?
Wise Snake smiles. It is, of course, difficult to be sure with illegal sources.
Wise Snake: Should be.
Nick looks at the packet again, more dubiously.
Wise Snake: A little over won't hurt.
Wise Snake means, err on the side of using more.
Wise Snake: Just don't go crazy.
Nick is better acquainted with the vagaries of unofficial drug sources than most Tecton Donors.
Nick: I'll manage.
Nick intends to be cautious, as he has no desire to get Arat addicted to a higher dosage than he already is.
Nick wonders what Snake will do when the Tecton finds an alternative source of Xylexion.
Wise Snake pushes herself away from the tree, as their business is complete.
Nick wouldn't have hesitated to tell Snake about this possible disruption of her scheme a few months before, but that was before.
Nick is 75% Narosian, however, and has not completely escaped the tendency towards extraneous yakking that implies.
Nick: Snake, what will you do when your hold over Arat is gone?
Snake looks at Nick curiously.
Wise Snake: My hold over him can't be gone. He's my father.
Nick sighs.
Nick: That may mean less to him than you think. At least now.
Wise Snake: Think so?
Wise Snake is genuinely interested in Nick's opinion, although not because she has none of her own.
Nick: At one point, he felt he owed you the best future he could manage to arrange for you.
Nick: Now his sense of responsibility would probably extend to ensuring that you don't cause trouble for anyone else, the way you have for him.
Wise Snake smiles slightly, intrigued.
Wise Snake: And how would he do that?
Nick was rather impressed by Arat's initial reaction to learning what Snake had done, and perhaps takes it more seriously than Arat does, now.
Nick: How do you think? What is the only thing that could guarantee that you will never harm another person?
Nick: You've proved that imprisonment doesn't work, nor does freedom.
Nick is rather bitter about the failure of that last, since he'd had such hopes that it would allow his two channels to get along, thus easing his own life.
Wise Snake: Arat ought to have known that already. [observes]
Wise Snake: Having tried both himself.
Wise Snake thinks this is not about her, it is about Arat. That's how she's felt ever since she found out he was her father.
Nick shakes his head.
Nick: Arat has never known freedom.
Nick: Not even the sort you had, as a child in Bender Cove.
Wise Snake: He's had his chances.
Wise Snake: He could have been free in Capitol, but refused to seize what was his.
Wise Snake: He was a prisoner in those District buildings by his own choice.
Wise Snake snorts.
Nick: I don't think he's even capable of recognizing freedom, if it was offered to him.
Nick: But that doesn't change the fact that the Tecton is all he's ever had. His parents certainly never cared about him.
Nick: Not even the way Prunida cares about me.
Nick is perhaps stretching the definition of "care" to the breaking point, here.
Wise Snake looks puzzled; where did the bit about Arat never having had anything but the Tecton come from? Aside from out of the blue, that is.
see note 1
Notes:
1) This scene is continued in the next episode. [return]
Go on to Episode #45: Stranger Things Have Happened
Return to the Index of Episodes