MERIDIAN
a theory-made-fic
Kay Willow
It'll only be another few moments before we dock at GIS. I suppose I should be nervous, or happy, or awed. Or anything really, but the only thing in my mind is a faint emptiness and a buzzing horde of questions without answer. What lies ahead of me? What is the weight of the things I've left behind? What kind of life will I find on GIS? Will I make new friends? Can anything replace the friends I've lost? Will I have time for new friends? What sort of work will I be doing anyway?
I'm going to be an Observer.
I have no idea what an Observer is. Neither does anybody else, although I've done the best job of inquiring I could, considering how nobody on the shuttle really wanted to speak to me. Many of them were noncombatant workers -- techies or engineers, the kind of person I always imagined myself becoming after I failed out of the GOA Pilot program -- and seemed to regard me as different, to be pushed away if I got too close, even when I tried to assert our similarities. Perhaps I look like a tourist or something, in my perfectly normal non-uniform overshirt and slacks, with my duffel bag and a laptop computer. Or maybe they know that only mere hours ago I was a Candidate, and consider me to be from a world that only peripherally connects to theirs. My mind can come up with a thousand possibilities.
I'm tired of thinking. I wish I could've just gone to sleep, but it's too late now, and Zero appears to have affected me with his insomnia. It's funny how people so often say that Zero is stupid or airheaded, but he's really far from it; he merely gets so deeply into whatever it is that he's thinking about at the moment that he can't help but be excited, and his excitement stops up his tongue and makes him trip over what he really wants to convey. When he manages to stop and calm himself and speak with reservation, he winds up with some truly inspirational and poetic things to say...
No. Don't think about Zero.>
I wonder what kind of reception I'll get there. I don't know what I'm doing, so I really have no expectations; if I were half as smart as they say I am, I'd be like Hiead and focus on the moment instead of having an anxiety attack about the future. Not that Hiead is particularly focused on the present either -- really, I suppose he's actually more capable of seeing the big picture in everything, so he always knows exactly where he is on his path. That's Hiead for you. He's ambitious and is constantly aware of how to achieve his goals, and nothing can ever get in his way when he wants...
No. Don't think about Hiead.>
GIS seems so tiny compared to GOA. It's like my world has shrunk all of a sudden, reduced now to this single ship, and yet at the same time it's expanded, because Azuma-kyokan said that as an Observer the fate of all humankind would be within my jurisdiction. It's an odd sensation, this new feeling of power. I don't know if I like it or not.
I know what the others would say. Yamagi would laugh at me and call me a wuss for not reveling in it, exploiting it, but he'd do the same if he had it in his hands. He's always been a hypocrite, Yamagi. Roose isn't like that -- he and I are very similar in our approach to power, which is more or less to leave it to the professionals and stay away unless absolutely necessary. That's why he refrained from ever using his EX. But I always knew, about him, and about Yamagi, and about everyone really, because that was my own EX...
Stop thinking about them.>
The announcement comes, pleasant male voice informing the passengers that luggage should be collected now because docking would begin momentarily. It's so odd; it feels like I have nothing at all to bring with me. I have almost no personal possessions, only a handful of clothes and a few books and my laptop and what few mementos are precious enough to cling to.
I don't even have my glasses anymore.
Saki has them now.
Don't think about Saki. Above all else, don't think about Saki.>
There are people waiting for me, scientists who watch me descend from the shuttle with respect in their eyes, and it makes me feel very distant from them. More people I should be able to relate to, more people I might have been like if not for the quirk of my EX. As it is, I can't look directly at any of them. They've deliberately put me on a pedestal and elevated me to some sort of superior being already. I can't bring myself to care enough to disillusion them, to make them treat me like an equal at the best. Let them idolize me.
I'm going to be an Observer.
Frustratingly enough, discreet inquiries get no revelations about that topic as they march me to my destination, giving me a fairly standard introductory speech. The scientists are only an escort, and refuse to say anything that I really want to know. They all insist that Doctor Rivould should be the one who gives me all the relevant information. One of them said, "Too many misconceptions are going around about what an Observer is already."
A seemingly innocent statement, but it doesn't fool my EX. I realize immediately that none of them know what an Observer is either.
It's all very, very interesting.
They take me to a sanitarization station -- pure paranoia, considering that I've just come from GOA, which has it's own decontamination unit and never would've approved me for Candidacy if I were a carrier for the virulent diseases sometimes common on the lower-budget colonies -- and leave me in the care of the workers there. Twenty minutes later I feel like a completely different person, fresh and clean and totally disoriented.
Where am I? What happened? How did I get here? Who are these people? When will I finally know these answers?
Where do I go now?
They take measurements and within minutes give me a new uniform. Of course. Uniforms are mandated everywhere, I see. You can abandon the monotony of Candidacy, and exist outside the system's ranks, but you can never escape the uniforms. No matter where you go and what you do, someone will follow you and insist that you wear a uniform so everybody knows where you are in the great food chain.
I will be one of only two people currently alive to wear this uniform. It's much too grand for someone like me; long black slacks and a thick, engulfing black-and-white tunic that goes over a bizarre tabard which down to my knees, sticking out far beyond the shirt itself. It seemed ridiculous when I put it on, just random pieces of fabric thrown together and called a uniform, but after I saw myself in the mirror it seemed like a dreadful mistake. It looked positively kingly, or something a wizard might wear as he sat by his king's side, playing the role of advisor and sage guide.
Doctor Kuro Rivould is an Observer.
Perhaps, in the end, that is what an Observer is. A wizard, a sage, a puppeteer; someone who pulls the strings from behind the scenes, manipulating others from a position of knowledge that he shares with no one.
But as I find my footsteps taking me up a curving flight of stairs, past a great tree that seems like it could not possibly thrive so well on GIS, I know that this isn't true. At its most simple, that is still an oversimplification of what an Observer is.
I must know. I must find out the meaning.>
As I told Zero, I have come here to find the "truth".
I will learn what an Observer is, what an Observer knows.>
And I'll make sure that we win.>
That YOU win.>
This is the only way I can help you. Zero, Hiead, Yamagi, Roose... This is the only way I could ever have helped you, even from the beginning. I was a fool not to realize it -- to deny it and run from it. Perhaps coming here meant that I would be alone and lost in a world without stable ground, but when I gain my ground, there will be nothing I can not do.>
I... have power in this way. Power that none of you will ever know.>
Because I'm not like you.>
Then I am there, passing through a door that glides open silently without needing my touch, entering a room, huge and hollow, lit only by the awe-inspiring glow of Zion beyond the enormous windows that stretch from floor to ceiling. Silhouetted against it is a wide-backed chair, and beside it is Teela Zain Elmes, First among the Goddesses, and in that chair sits Doctor Kuro Rivould.
My mentor. The man behind all of the Pilot program. An unknown and mysterious individual who is privy to all the secrets that no one else in the universe could know.
Teela is an intimidating figure, beautiful beyond comprehension and elegantly composed as she was painted a straight-backed shadow against Zion's brightness. She was an impossibility in the flesh, female with EO-type blood and EX -- more than one EX! -- things which defy all the known laws of the universe. And there she stands, proud and serene, hands clutching one of Kuro's between them.
And Kuro himself is far from what I had imagined him to be. Tall and lean, probably rangy at some unknown point in the past: but now, in his declining years, he is nearly skeletal, almost frighteningly so. His skin lined with the burden of tending to hundreds upon hundreds of hopes and dreams, with the weight of all humanity's survival; nearly the only thing about him that gives the lie to his seemingly world-weary and faded appearance is his eyes, brilliant sapphire blue that teem with wisdom and burn with intensity.
My eager mind absorbs every detail of them both with a fervor that doesn't show on my face. I can only gaze at them dispassionately, no expression or feeling crossing over into the flesh. I don't know what they make of me; I don't care.
They have no choice. No one else in the program has this EX, the ability to become an Observer -- whatever that means.
They need me.
I have power now, as I could never have as a Candidate.
When you are a Candidate, they can replace you. Even as a Pilot, you can be replaced.
Kuro does not stand to make a proper greeting, only turns to pin me with that enlightened blue gaze, and I know suddenly that he isn't going to tell me.
"Welcome. Welcome to GIS, Clay Cliff Fortran," he intones, his voice both deep and tired. "Welcome, and well met, to the battlefield at the end of history."
He won't tell me, because he expects me to find out for myself. After all...
"Welcome, Last Observer."
...I am an Observer.
~tsuzuku...~