md_donighal: (Aberrant Era)
2005-04-06 08:17 am

Behind you another runner is born...

As Strong Bad showed us, [livejournal.com profile] ultron_x is committing acts of MS Paint art inspired by the interests of the Sages of Chaos.

Here's what he did to me. )
md_donighal: (Aberrant Era)
2005-02-21 08:29 pm

End of a long absence

The nightmare hit him once he returned "home" from Milliways, the night after he saw the Dark Man with Moiraine Sedai. It was probably brought on by a combination of seeing Nyarlathotep and actually finishing his Amp Well.

He'd had that dream before, or one like it. Usually, there wasn't that much blood directly on his hands. It generally involved an alternate ending to the Earth Strike Ultimatum, one where he wasn't even as patient with the baseline masses as he'd been in actual history.

And it wasn't usually Max dying on him like that. It'd usually been someone close to him — Annabelle Newfield, Jeremiah Scripture, Shelby Eisenfaust — and they usually died in his arms to make the point, but never before, to the best of his recollection, had it been Maxwell Anderson Mercer. (He didn't rule out the possibility that he'd simply suppressed all memory of previous dreams where it'd been Max, but since it couldn't be tested, he deemed it irrelevant.)

He'd been awakened by the smoke detector, to find himself in a burning bed. He'd squelched the flames with a thought, of course, but it was still a humiliation, losing control of his powers like that.

Some time thereafter, he happened to run into young Tom Riddle, who was looking for happy memories of Dream. He provided a happier memory than Nightmare can cause, for whatever it might be worth.

He's been avoiding the bar since that night. Seeing into the mana-spectrum does not give him the ability to manipulate it, and he suspected that ability would be a prerequisite of Nightmare's defeat.

But he's decided it's time to face his fear. Or face its relief. Whichever.
md_donighal: (Divis Mal)
2004-11-29 06:26 pm

(no subject)

My stars and garters, I have been neglecting these questions, haven't I?

Describe the best 24 hours you ever had

Probably the time I persuaded dear Jeremiah to come with me to Ibiza. For one glorious day, the most aberrated of novas were the majority, unashamed of their tentacles and colored skin. For 1436.0667 minutes, it seemed the One Race was fulfilling its evolutionary destiny. For 86164 seconds (the actual length of a sidereal day), it looked to me like I was doing the right thing.

Who would you like to see get their final comeuppance? Who is it and just what would you do with them?

The person (and I use the word loosely) whom I would most like to see get her final comeuppance already got it, though I didn't get to see it. From what I heard, however, it was everything I could wish.

(I say "already got" although this happened in the 2040s of my own timeline. Remember that I traveled to this point on this timeline — this when, as one of my newest friends would put it — from what I estimate to have been 2122.)

Her real name doesn't matter. She was born in 1939, got her bachelor's degree at 15, and two doctorates (in political science and psychology) at 21. (Her doctoral dissertation was on "The Complex Interplay of Government, Media Representation of Government and the Observing Human Mind".) The Æon Society put her through college, so they were probably disappointed when, instead of coming directly to work for them as they requested, she spent five years with the NSA and roughly three decades drifting through the corporate world. (Unless, of course, she was networking for Æon in secret.)

Be that as it may, in 1998, Æon started up Project Utopia, to make novas the indentured servants of the baselines, building a "better world" (as defined by Æon) whether they wanted to or not. Within days of Utopia's debut, she signed on with its Internal Affairs division. She proposed Utopia's dirty-tricks department, Project Proteus, and was placed at its head under the only name we need to use for her — Director Thetis.

Her crimes and her punishment. )What do you have to be thankful for?

Milliways. I believe it was the bar at the end of the universe that drew me off my intended course, brought me to a world without novas, a world where I could learn to be human again. Certainly, I've made a great many friends at Milliways that I doubt I could have met anywhere else — Raphael, Angelo, Moiraine Sedai, the Flash, Ms. White, Strong Bad... most of them unusual in one way or another. It's a place where I can "be myself", whoever that is anymore. A place to retreat from the pressures of pretending to be just a human, and a place with people who've promised to do something about it if I become anything less.
md_donighal: (Aberrant Era)
2004-11-12 05:18 pm

(no subject)

What is the biggest lie you ever told? What were the consequences?

"I'm getting tired of this role. I am a visionary, a warrior and a lover of life, but unlike my father, I do not enjoy the role of teacher."

The fact that I didn't know I was lying is no excuse. )

Word count: 294
md_donighal: (your legacy is our future)
2004-11-05 01:42 pm

The last of the October questions

What makes you feel vulnerable and what makes you feel invulnerable, and why?

My powers make me feel invulnerable to most corporeal harm. I don't know if I can objectively say that feeling is entirely justified, but it's certainly justifiable to say the least. Barring a brawl with a pissed-off god (not impossible, if I have a few too many down at my local), I can survive most things.

My greatest vulnerability is probably my emotions. For so long, I tried to distance myself from them, tried to turn them off. Oh, I had passion, but that's not nearly the same thing. Now, living among baselines, living as a baseline for the first time in almost two centuries... they're back. And they scare me. I'm frightened of what I could do if I let myself go.

And in the face of an election which proves that the American people want to make me illegal for being gay, and probably would for being a nova as well, it would be so easy to let myself go.

What would you place in a personal ad if you were making one?

In my new timeline, I'd have to place it discreetly, or somewhere a safe distance from my current residence. "GWM, 34 but looking 24, seeks GM for companionship, discussions of the paranormal. Open mind a plus."

If I somehow wound up back in my own universe, it'd be more open about certain matters: "GMN, 104 but looking 24 and human, seeks same for companionship, apolitical discussion. No Upies, please."
md_donighal: (past)
2004-10-17 11:45 am

What happened the first time you got drunk?

As it happens, the answer to this question is also the answer to an earlier question I've been thinking about answering.

Warning: contains evidence that Dr. Primoris has arms. )
md_donighal: (Default)
2004-10-05 05:37 pm
md_donighal: (future)
2004-10-03 04:21 pm

Does heartache make you stronger?

It doesn't necessarily make you stronger or weaker, but it does inevitably show you and those around you how strong or weak you already are. What you do with that knowledge is your decision. The good [livejournal.com profile] sgt_preston said it quite nicely while I was working on this:

It might bring a person's inner strength out and make it visible, but only if it was there to begin with. All the heartache really does is bring everything to a point where you can't ignore it any more. If there's something in you that's enough to keep you going in spite of everything that's been laid on you, then you'll keep going.


And there was, and is, something in me that gives me a reason to live despite the fact that Max Mercer has never returned my love and probably never will. For a long time, it was my belief in the evolutionary destiny of novakind. But before that, it was much broader — the evolutionary destiny of all humankind ("mankind" as we used to put it, back in the days before political correctness).

I can't make them perfect. I can barely make myself perfect in more than a few aspects. But I can still improve myself, and help them improve themselves. We can't carry the un-Inspired to Utopia, no matter how hard Æon tried. But we can make the climb with them, and catch them when they fall.
md_donighal: (simpler times)
2004-10-01 02:26 pm

September catchup, in reverse chronological order

Who has had the most influence on your life?

Almost beyond question, Maxwell Anderson Mercer. I idolized him for years before I realized how I really felt about him. It was because I couldn't tell him how I felt that I spent so much time keeping all my other dreams at arm's length. (Yes, that's right; Divis Mal has arms.) If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have gone to London to see Hammersmith's demonstration, and Dr. Primoris (let alone Divis Mal) would never have existed, and I probably wouldn't be anyone you'd bother asking these questions of.

Do you consider yourself to be adventurous?

Not really, though I don't refuse an adventure when it offers the opportunity for me to learn something. I've always considered myself more of a scholar than a hero. I once told the movement that I don't enjoy the role of teacher, and that was true; I'd much rather learn than teach.

Mind you, I suppose any exploration of any real depth involves adventure, but the adventure isn't the point of the exploration, at least not to me.

Do you confront your problems head on, or ignore them until you have to do something? Do you procrastinate?

As a number of commentators have observed, that depends on the size of the problem. The bigger it is, the harder it becomes to face it.

Like telling another man you love him, always have loved him and always will, when you're fairly sure he doesn't and can't return that love, in an age when such love dared not speak its name anyway.

But, for someone as powerful as I am on the quantum level, most purely physical problems aren't very big. It's the mental problems that're the piss-cutters.

How do you handle disappointment?

As with handling problems, that depends on the nature and size of the disappointment. Let me give you an example.

My gods feed me blood and mangoes; your gods feed you Kool-Aid and white bread. )
md_donighal: (your legacy is our future)
2004-08-28 10:28 am
md_donighal: (the One Race)
2004-08-22 10:06 am

Values

What is the most important value you can pass onto [sic] your child?

In the conventional sense, I'm probably the wrong person to answer this, since I'm unlikely ever to become a father. (That I'm aware of, at least — I noticed Sophia Rousseau's resemblance to me. However, since I wasn't there to raise her, I doubt it matters for these purposes.)

But in a larger sense, all novas were my children. Every eximorph who erupted between March 23, 1998, and September 7, 2061, erupted because of my actions, after all.

For five years, I left them to their own devices, keeping an eye on those who seemed to be figuring it out. When Jeremiah told me the time was right, I appeared to them. I gave them a name. I gave them a purpose.

And I taught them the one value nova and baseline alike need most: knowledge of self. Figure out who you are, and who you want to be. If you aren't who you want to be, do your damnedest to become him or her.

(Privately.) I didn't consciously realize it until I came to this universe, but for much of my lifetime, my relationship to Æon was central to who I was — first as Dr. Primoris, devil's advocate in residence, then as Æon's nemesis. That, as much as anything, is the center of the problem — who am I without Æon in my life?
md_donighal: (Dr. Primoris)
2004-08-14 04:15 pm

The afterlife, sir?

In the 2004 Michael remembers, the Internet had largely given way to the OpNet. But you obviously can't have the OpNet without synthetic-eufiber opticables, and you can't have synthetic eufiber until scientists have a sample of the real thing to study, and they can't have such a sample if neither Anibál Buendia nor any nova like him ever erupts. QED.

But even without the OpNet, this world is becoming more wired. Broadband connections are becoming more and more affordable to the mythical "average man", and something they call "WiFi" has taken the place of wireless OpConnections. It's not as fast as the OpNet, but it's fast enough to make Michael think the OpNet was only an advancement, not an innovation.

Do you believe in an afterlife?

Scientifically speaking, there is no proof that consciousness survives after death. But from a purely thermodynamic standpoint, all that electrical (and telluric) energy has to go somewhere. If it doesn't go into some other plane of existence, it must stay in this universe and seek out a new nervous system to occupy.