Nicholas Rush (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lottawork) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
applesaucedream2015-05-30 12:00 am
lottawork) wrote in applesaucedream2015-05-30 12:00 am
Entry tags:
x t+1 = kx t (1-x t) [closed]
“- you know, lead scientist of the Icarus Project?”
“Dr. Rush?”
“Yeah. You ever notice how he pretty much runs on a schedule that’s like, five minutes ahead of everyone else? And that’s why he’s so pissy all the goddamn time?”
“Pretty sure that's just - you know, man's got an ego. With the whole ninth chevron thing - ”
“Dr. Rush?”
“Yeah. You ever notice how he pretty much runs on a schedule that’s like, five minutes ahead of everyone else? And that’s why he’s so pissy all the goddamn time?”
“Pretty sure that's just - you know, man's got an ego. With the whole ninth chevron thing - ”
He would prefer it if there were a more expedient method of transferring caffeine from its cheap paper cup to his bloodstream, but he is confined by the typical human inefficiencies of snatching fleeting, scalding sips as he navigates homogenous gray halls with an angrily humming phone in hand, an untidy stack of files trapped precariously between elbow and hip, endeavoring to devote his concentration to responding to fucking Base-wide text alerts while caffeinating systematically and not allowing his files to come apart at the fucking seams and performing all three tasks flawlessly and contemporaneously.
The various Base personnel glide along in a streamlined blur as he weaves between them with crisp, purposeful strides, pinning his phone with a harried, impatient glower.
Senator Armstrong arrival ETA 0800Rush snorts and pockets the undesirable thing and with a series of brief, economical movements, transfers his mass of files from their unsteady position to his free hand as he enters the gateroom and, with a viciously satisfying slap of paper against metal, slams the disorganized bundle of files onto his desk.
A brief scan of the suitably startled personnel is considerably less satisfying. He scowls.
“Asadi,” he says shortly, “is where, exactly?”
“Um,” coughs Volker. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but - we’re here.”
Rush looks at him, subtly arching a brow.
Volker presses valiantly on with the rising intonation of unspoken expectation. “Like, your science team? Hand-picked from Earth's most qualified?”
“Thank you, Dr. Volker,” says Rush, still relentlessly scanning the room, breaking off the words with an icy precision. “And should I require incompetence I shall request it. But my question,” his tone hardens incrementally, his eyes flicking briefly to the hapless astrophysicist and away again in a manner that somehow approximates a nameless threat, “was regarding Asadi.”
“Right,” says Volker faintly. “She’s, um. She’s not here.”
“Yes, you’ve been very helpful,” he hisses, brushing past him to study the dark scrawl of dense calculations printed over the whiteboard, pushed back beside a colony of monitors. “So someone find her.”
no subject
She wonders if this is where Rush was before he came through the Rift. How long ago did this happen? Was he able to get back, did the experience change him into who he is now? Still a prick, but - a prick who at least somewhat considers others?
At his last word she swings around to frown at him. Destiny feels familiar somehow, or rather the confusion of why he'd ever use the word. Didn't he bring this up before? Maybe while they were - while they were in the TARDIS?
"Sentient... spaceship?" she ventures, that's what it was, wasn't it?
no subject
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he says, eyeing her over the top of the console, his scorn dark and smooth. "It predates Lantean technology. But our presence activated it. It knows we're here."
Most likely a response due to the activation of the 'gate itself. If they could manage to establish a secondary wormhole, potentially devise a way to dial other planets in hopes of recovering resources, their efforts to dial the ninth chevron may not entirely go to shite. What little knowledge of the ship he can access via the interface, however, has not been particularly promising in the way of power supply.
no subject
"So how soon can you find out where we are?" she says curtly, feeling in the pit of her stomach like it's gonna be bad, it has to be bad, and is he even gonna care, is this calm exterior he's projecting ever gonna falter? She doesn't know what to do with him when he's like this. Doesn't know what to do period.
no subject
He finds her question superfluous and therefore easily ignored.
The minutes elapse (or hours, possibly, though the measurement of time ultimately matters very little) and he is able to distinguish and execute on a visible heads-up display. The pale blue of a vertical holographic diagram depicts the Milky Way's swirled structure, indicating the ship's point of origin.
"The ship was launched from there." He studies the reconstructed galaxy, wholly focused, fiercely intent. "Thousands of years ago."
He wordlessly depresses one of the consoles buttons.
The point of origin begins to travel, leaping from galaxy to galaxy in a clear map of the innumerable, astronomical light years of distance between Destiny and Earth.
no subject
No. No. Noooo no no no.
"That's-" Her voice and her knees both wobble slightly. "Holy shit."
She staggers back against the wall, pressing a hand to her forehead. "How far is that actually," she rasps out.
no subject
His gaze flicks briefly up to scan the room with a faint sense of awe. Unmanned. Sent for what purpose. What purpose. The Ancients had a reason, a destination in mind, he is certain of it. But what purpose.
no subject
Her voice gives out. She feels like she is going to faint, and this is a fucking dream. Not really happening. It's okay. It's okay.
But this happened to him. To who knows how many.
And he's just standing there calm, composed, like nothing is happening.
Before she's really able to mark what she's doing she's come forward and seized him by the shirt, pulling him from the console, shaking him firmly. "How many people did you fucking strand out here, Rush?! And you just stand here like 'huh, fascinating', like this isn't your life? The fuck is wrong with you?!"
So she's sort of coming apart.
It's been a rough night's sleep.
no subject
How utterly, predictably disappointing.
"Get your hands off me," he snarls, shoving her brusquely away. The unpleasant sensation condenses around his spine with a hard chill, but it is not relevant or highly important in the context of what is worth his attention and so he may dismiss it. Rush glowers, narrow shoulders set in a taut, determined line. "Obviously you and I are the only survivors. It is not fucking ideal but this - these are the resources to which we have access. You either survive and assist me in discovering what the Ancients were willing to devote entire lifetimes to discover - "
He opens a clenched fist, one side of his mouth twisting unpleasantly.
"Or die here. And become utterly useless to me."
no subject
That would all be one thing. She'd have backed off, gone back to respecting his space, guarding it even.
But unfortunately.
"Fuck you," she snaps, and she slugs him across the face, gripping his shirt again to keep him from scrambling away. "Not ideal? This looks like a fucking death sentence to me. And you didn't even blink." She releases him roughly, aiming to send him sprawling.
no subject
For fuck's sake.
Rush has come to expect violence, though most primarily from military personnel. He recognizes the arc of the fist, the anticipatory winding back, and it streaks at him in a sparking, thudding crash of skin against skin. The hand fisted into the front of his shirt cuts the inevitable downward vector of his descent short, jarring him until the moment when Asadi releases him and that path of motion may resume and he smashes into the console, scrabbling to remain upright. Fingers hook around the cool metal of the console's edge in a stabilizing pull.
He recovers with a low, dangerous glare, dashing a wrist over the hot leak of blood from the lip split by his own teeth.
"I weighed the risks," he snaps out coldly. "I made the decision that was necessary. No one else would have."
Clearly, Asadi has no immediate plans to be useful to him.
She will need to be relegated to secondary objectives, unless she has outright plans to attempt murder or otherwise irreversibly incapacitate him, which he feels may be detrimental to progress. From a professional standpoint, her personal opinion on him matters very little unless she continues to physically act upon it.
This outcome is proving to be annoyingly likely.
no subject
"God," she mutters. "Fine, whatever, do what you need to do. Gotta wake up sometime."
As if the dream is fucking taking her up on that, the ship responds with a distant, ominous rumble, the floor shaking enough that she needs to steady herself on the wall. Fantastic.
"The fuck was that," she says, turning slowly back to Rush.
tw: physical trauma
"A problem," he says shortly. Deft manipulation of the console's interface alters the display to indicate the layout of the ship itself, patches of red flickering to indicate the various points of internal-external damage. Hull breaches, numerous, all due to a wavering shield level and a dangerously low fucking power supply - the process of dialing here doubtless drained whatever reserves the ship had at its disposal.
Low shielding, when traveling at supraliminal speeds, may exact enough stress upon Destiny for the ship to tear itself apart.
This is not the preferred output.
The groan of metal under pressure. The crackle of live wires. A veil of sparks spraying from ceiling to floor in a blazing spray.
His grasp tightens reflexively as the high-voltage jolt snaps through the console to the hands gripping it, momentarily welding skin to superheated metal before releasing it in an agonizing discharge.
Rush loses his ability to track current events for a few moments. He thinks, possibly, that his body arcs - certainly it impacts something, head cracking sickeningly against metal, and when he is next fully cognizant he is on the floor again, awareness suffused in the dull ring drilling itself through the center of his skull.
tw: blood, burning references
Things are getting worse, fast. Everything going wrong all around them at once, doesn't seem probable, doesn't seem like it should be happening, but maybe that's just it, maybe this is their way of waking up.
Rush is bleeding bad, his hands burned, a faint smell of scorched flesh in the air. No matter how much chaos bursts around them, none of it seems to touch her; she feels distant, like the whole thing is fading more and more into the background, leaving only Rush in focus. He blinks up at her, she's not sure if he can ever talk.
As angry as she still is it slides away in that moment, too familiar, too much like when she pulled him out of Gus' cell, when he - when he let it slip that he wanted her there. He's dying, abrupt, unceremonious, and painful, and he still thinks this is all real.
"It's okay," she says softly, and he might not like it but she can't just sit there, she reaches out and lifts him up partway, trying to cradle his head as best she can, ignoring the blood that'll be gone when she wakes. "It's okay. It's just a dream."
Another spray of sparks flares out behind her and she barely even feels it.
"You're okay," she says again, trying to get a fix on his eyes. "You'll be okay."
tw: gore, description of body-horror type stuff, DEATH
The sensation of fingers around the darkened mat that is his hair is not altogether one he finds he can react to he is overly preoccupied with the grating and shifting of ordinarily solid bone and so he has no response to it nor does he have a rebuttal for the insistence of an optimal outcome the outcome has already proven to be staunchly not optimal and it will continue to be as he is not a terribly enthusiastic supporter of outcomes in which he is dead and this should be readily apparent for obvious reasons.
His jaw feels fused shut. Perhaps that is an ancillary effect. He should not concern himself with it unnecessarily.
Events have established a clear direction and it is not the preferred direction but he finds he has little choice in the matter and prolonging his own awareness is at this point a detriment not a benefit and so he surrenders to the direction things seem to be heading toward much like one would surrender to gravity that inevitable pull to the molten center of the earth they are so far away from.