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The sharp sting of the sea-smelling air and the pale blaze of tall, stately buildings are all tied to an inextricable specter of aching, deadened grief. Compared to the remainder of him, however, that which is flooded in ice and splintering exhaustion and the twisting contracture of agonized muscle, it is utter relief. He has torn his mind away to skid into a set of memories apart - an attempt at some blissful temporary landscape of subconscious manufacture, shrouded in stifling heat and glittering, crisply defined white buildings and disorganized stacks of yet-to-be-graded exams and a worn desk surface dense with the academic disarray of messily-scrawled papers and too many textbooks.
The point at which rational paranoia approaches irrationality is too subjective, too skewed by recent experience, and intuiting the correct order has become a crushing, pressing torture of navigating the wreckage left to rot in his own head. He is aware and he is present, but -
But he knows what will happen when he wakes. What is waiting for him.
The same that has been waiting for him for days. Assuming it has been days.
Temporal sequencing was never, in the light of humor and cruelty and irony - his forte.
He looks out beyond the scope of his office, into the hall that should maintain the uniform white interior but instead cuts cleanly to a corridor, smooth and faintly oxidized gray lit in a haze of blues and yellows. He exits his office and steps almost directly into the vast, overarching space of Destiny’s gateroom, rippled light thrown from the shimmering pale blue of the open gate.
The old walkways of academia, threaded seamlessly and incomprehensibly throughout the Ancient ship that’s long since been lost.
An imperfect interface for an imperfect state of mind.
He is shivering from the abrupt temperature shift, stepping from the too-warm, too-heated offices of a college campus to the overwhelming coolness of a ship's interior.
He closes his eyes.
He prefers this. He does. It will be brief, it will be transient, it will be - unbearably disorganized, this fracturing, easily shattered hell of two contexts interleaved on a single plane. The plane that exists within his head, or whatever state of disrepair it has been left in. He won't be able to hold onto it once he wakes. Once they make him wake.
He'll lose it all again, because he won't be able to hold onto it. He won't be able to hold onto anything.
It's better that way.
The point at which rational paranoia approaches irrationality is too subjective, too skewed by recent experience, and intuiting the correct order has become a crushing, pressing torture of navigating the wreckage left to rot in his own head. He is aware and he is present, but -
But he knows what will happen when he wakes. What is waiting for him.
The same that has been waiting for him for days. Assuming it has been days.
Temporal sequencing was never, in the light of humor and cruelty and irony - his forte.
He looks out beyond the scope of his office, into the hall that should maintain the uniform white interior but instead cuts cleanly to a corridor, smooth and faintly oxidized gray lit in a haze of blues and yellows. He exits his office and steps almost directly into the vast, overarching space of Destiny’s gateroom, rippled light thrown from the shimmering pale blue of the open gate.
The old walkways of academia, threaded seamlessly and incomprehensibly throughout the Ancient ship that’s long since been lost.
An imperfect interface for an imperfect state of mind.
He is shivering from the abrupt temperature shift, stepping from the too-warm, too-heated offices of a college campus to the overwhelming coolness of a ship's interior.
He closes his eyes.
He prefers this. He does. It will be brief, it will be transient, it will be - unbearably disorganized, this fracturing, easily shattered hell of two contexts interleaved on a single plane. The plane that exists within his head, or whatever state of disrepair it has been left in. He won't be able to hold onto it once he wakes. Once they make him wake.
He'll lose it all again, because he won't be able to hold onto it. He won't be able to hold onto anything.
It's better that way.