Nate, Marie-Ange, and a photocopier.

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

Its like Clue for the precog set. only not. Nathan and Marie-Ange discuss the plan to explain (ha) their precogntion (for as much of it as they understand, which is not at all much) before an upcoming post Nathan is about to make.



As it turned out, the art room had a photocopier buried in the back of the supply area. Marie-Ange supposed that Piotr might've shoved it into the giant walk-in closet in a fit of some kind of outrage. Or else he'd just never noticed it there. She wasn't sure. Either way, it hadn't been too terribly difficult to push it out into the room; it had been heavy, but then, channeled rage and irritation at Doug tackled that problem fairly well. The rest was just plugging the machine in and making sure it had paper and toner and would actually copy things.

As it turned out, it had both and copied fairly well. Which was good, because she intended to make a great many photocopies.

As the machine whirred and spat out black-and-white reproductions of her handwritten and drawn pages, she sat in a chair with her knees tucked under her and wrote in a notebook. A few crumpled pages were strewn on the floor underneath her, and every so often she would glance up, mutter, crumple another page and start again.

Nathan stopped in the doorway of the art room, watching Angie for a long moment. It hadn't been hard to track her down at all; the girl wasn't much for shielding on her best days, and this was probably one of her worst. He would have stood there watching her in silence for a few more moments, just to further gauge her state of mind, but another damned coughing fit hit, and he gripped the doorframe, trying to catch his breath.

Angie was looking up at him, red-eyed, by the time he managed to stop. "Sorry," he wheezed, a little unsteady on his feet as he came in. "Didn't mean to startle you."

Marie-Ange shook her head slowly and sighed. "I would have been startled no matter how you came in."  She shrugged and tried to smile, and didn't succeed much at all.  "At least I knew it was you. No one else sounds much like they are trying to cough up their lungs, and perhaps the lungs of everyone from the future..."  And she knew it was probably a painfully sad and pale attempt at humour, but it was far better than the alternative, which was fits of rage, or crying herself sick, having done those at least once each already.

Nathan came over and slid down beside her. "I'd give you a hug," he said, his voice still hoarse, "but I don't really think you need the flu on top of everything else you're dealing with at the moment. Although we could try, and I could just attempt not to breathe on you..."

"Would it be -very- wrong to want to get the flu so I can give it to the idiot?"  And that had definitely come out far, far more bitter and biting than Marie-Ange had wanted it to. She shook her head. "I ..  am trying very, very hard not to keep making comments like that. I am not doing very well."

Nathan was silent for a moment, then reached out and put an arm around her shoulders. She didn't try to pull away, but he could feel the unhappy tension in her posture, even if he hadn't been able to sense it. "It's just you and me, mi'saevra," he pointed out quietly. "You can make all the justifiably angry comments you want. Best to get them out, anyway...>"

"I..  just do not understand..."  Marie-Ange started - then leaned over into the hug, nearly clinging to Nathan.  "Why did he think ... he knows! He knows I can be wrong, he knows I do not understand..  .. I thought he knew. What made him think he had to do this -like- this?"  She said, voice cracking with the effort of holding back tears. 

"Because he doesn't really understand," Nathan said quietly, holding her. "Because he was smart enough to put some of the pieces together and interpret the symbols, but he's not us, Angie. We live it, and we still don't understand how it works. I have the Askani filling my brain with temporal theory every second day, and I'm still trying to sort out what of it can be applicable to you, or to me..."

"Maybe the Askani can shove temporal theory in Doug's head." Marie-Ange muttered into Nathan's shoulder.  "He deserves the headaches. Stupid arrogant idiot."  She looked up and sighed. "And I -gave- him that notebook, Nathan. Because I thought he might be able to help. Because if he could translate a language, I thought maybe he could translate what I was seeing.."

Nathan detached her gently and picked up a piece of the crumpled paper, turning it over to the unused side and smoothing it out. "Let me have your pen for a moment," he said. She handed it over, and he started to sketch one of the temporal geometry patterns the Askani had shown him. "You see this?" he asked as the diagram, a fairly simple set of spirals, started to emerge on the paper. "Layer upon layer, each one a slightly different variation on a given set of events." He started to add more, and the diagram became more complex. "Infinite variables, Angie. In anything but the simplest of situations, the variables are infinite. And this..." He drew a circle around one set of spirals. "One layer. The outer shell, if you want. And that's all Doug saw, all he acted on."

"Like the math-art at the university.."  Marie-Ange said quietly.  "There was a display. The closer in you get the more and more complex it gets, and .."  She really didn't understand more than -that- about it, but it at least sounded the same.  She frowned and sighed.  "I have not ... really been very helpful. I think everyone thinks that what I see is the only possibility. Manuel did, or does. I am -never- sure with him, and Doug, and... even I thought...  Doug was -in- a uniform. I thought it was so far away.. I thought..."

Nathan set the pen down and laid his hand over hers. "I think it's time we educated them a little, then, don't you?" he asked quietly. "They can't ever see it like we do. I don't think their brains are wired that way. But we can make them understand a little better than they do now."

Make anyone else understand? Marie-Ange almost laughed, it coming out as a soft hiccup.  "I barely understand it, Nathan. And..  we?"  She frowned up at him.  "If this means I have to learn temporal physics from people who are dead but not born yet, I think I am going to pass. I barely understand the regular kind of physics. "

Nathan shook his head. "No, I'm not going to give Manuel any more excuses to run around shrieking 'Ahhh! Brain-sucking parasites!'" Angie actually smiled a little, though it was a wobbly smile, at that. "I was thinking more along the lines of a post to the main journal. You and me. Precognition 101 for Dummies. We gives them some of the basics as we understand them, try to make them see that this is not an exact science... and, you know, threaten to maim the next person who tries any as stupid as what Doug did yesterday." He was silent for a long moment, debating with him. "And yeah... we. I haven't been entirely honest with you lately, Angie. About my precognition."

"Can we maim Doug a little too? Or at least make him memorize it until he says it in his sleep?"  Marie-Ange said.  "I think trying to explain would be a very, very good idea."  She paused and looked up at Nathan and his faintly guilty expression.  "I thought it burned out? Did it heal itself? -Can- it heal itself?"

"No maiming Doug," Nathan said, mock-severely. "So we'll try and come up with a post together. In words of small syllables so the temporally-challenged get us." He smiled a bit wryly. "Try 'almost' burned out. Ninety-five percent burned out, maybe. I get flashes, Angie, and the Askani claim that more might come back over the time. They didn't let me in on this until just recently, but apparently they've been sitting back cataloguing all the flashes."

The gentle admonishment against maiming Doug prodded a somewhat vague memory out of Marie-Ange and she grimaced.  "That.. um...  reminds me..  Nathan? I think I hit Dr. MacTaggart and I am very, very, very, very sorry." 

Nathan patted her hand. "She's already forgiven you," he said gently, speaking with some conviction. "And you certainly don't owe me an apology. You want to get started on that post now?"

"I am still going to apologize to her... "  Marie-Ange said, shaking her head. And she'd so hoped this whole thing had been a horrific nightmare when she'd woken up in the infirmary yesterday..  "I think so. I was trying to write down things earlier.."  She gestured at the floor and the balled-up paper scattered around her chair.  "I think I have been .. not unsure enough, maybe. I have only talked about the times when I saw things and then they happened and I did not understand. Not when I saw the wrong thing. "  She sighed and leaned back in the chair tiredly.  "I -hate- being wrong. But if ..  if I have to put myself out there and say I was wrong more often than I said before so that no one else decides to be an idiot... "

Nathan picked up the pen again. "Then let's give it a go," he suggested. "We might make more sense of it than you think. And hey, remember... I have a law degree." He grinned suddenly at her, then coughed. "Professional... when it comes to bullshitting..."

"As long as there is not much temporal physics, I think that I can make some sense."  Marie-Ange said tentatively. "I took Ms. Frost's speech class. We had bullshit in the core curriculum."  The expletive caused her to blush, just a touch, and an almost-smile touched her face.

"Precognition... for... Dummies," Nathan said as he scrawled it down. "Here we go."