[She considers where to start, and decides to just go for it:]
So, the genetic condition I have. Had. It wasn't just bad luck, or not the way most people who get genetic disorders have bad luck. It was the side effect of a sequence put in my DNA to ensure infertility. I'm a clone, and uh, the cloning wasn't exactly sanctioned. So the people running the experiment didn't want to just unleash our genetic material into the population.
Yeah, that was, uh. Kind of my reaction. When I found out. You know, it's kind of wild, I've like ... told some people here. But they don't really have the context for it, you know? I can explain it, but it doesn't hit the same way.
But yeah. Unsanctioned human cloning in the 1980s. Most of us were either given to couples who thought they were just undergoing standard IVF, like my parents, or they were carried by surrogates and then adopted. These bastards had a whole thing about, like, shaping human evolution. And money, of course, can't forget the money.
[She laces her fingers behind her neck, almost absent.] We beat them. Some of my sisters and I. But not before a lot of clones died.
[ in thedas, so much about their realities seem fantastical. it's hard to explain the parts that mean more, when even the basics of their lives are far beyond the experiences of people here. ]
What the fuck is it, [ he asks, indignant on her behalf, clearly drawing on his own experience too, ] with the mad scientists and the wanting to shape evolution? Never mind who they kill along the way.
[ and, she's right, can't forget the money. but even as he shakes his head, he adds, ]
I'm glad you did. I know it doesn't make up for what you've lost, but at least you stopped them.
Yeah. And the cure, you know so. That's what I was doing before I came back. Or, I guess, what Cosima prime is still doing, maybe, if we want to get into what are rifters, actually, but. I was traveling to get the cure to my sisters around the world. So they'd all have a chance at a long, normal life. Or whatever counts as normal, anyway, but a lot of them aren't even aware they're clones and I don't know if knowing would help them now that the danger's passed.
[ maybe the clone reveal should seem stranger to him. it does, as a general concept; but not in how he thinks about the woman in front of him. he has eight parents, he doesn't have a lot of high ground on the topic of normal births. ]
They deserve the right to find out, [ he says after a moment, quieter after the outburst of a moment ago. ] What they do with the information is up to them. Besides, having a cure to offer them can't hurt.
My partner and I are sort of playing it by ear in different situations, [she confesses.] But we always leave them a way to contact us. If they have questions later, if something changes. I don't want them to feel alone, you know? Even if I can't be equally close to all 270 of them, just practically.
That'd make holidays hard, [ he agrees faux-seriously, and flashes her a brief smile.
270 of them. and that's not counting the ones who died. that might not even be counting the ones she already knew about. cosima's mad scientists didn't do things by halves, did they. ]
It has to be fucking strange to be back here after all of that.
[ they've talked, some, about the way she missed time here. but he has context now for the life she'd had in the meantime, the meaningful work she'd been doing. to be drawn back here in the middle of that is no small thing. ]
Yeah. Yeah. When I was first here, I'd only found out the truth ... wow, less than a year before? And I had no idea there were so many of us, I'd only met like... five?
[A quick mental list: Beth, Alison, Sarah, Katja, Helena. Rachel? It's hard now to remember who exactly she'd met or heard of but it was a much smaller pool.]
I'm glad, though. That the cure carried over. I spent a lot of my first time in Thedas feeling like I was taking up resources, given how often I was in the infirmary. Scheduled and unscheduled.
[ is the main reason he's glad her cure carried over. he'd feel the same way in her shoes, if he was reliant on local resources. at least aboard the roci, in his system, antioncocidals are part of any standard medbay inventory. he runs through them faster than most, but they aren't so difficult to get. here, he's barely even tried to find out if there's any kind of equivalent regimen. he doubts it, and he hasn't had to.
after a beat, he volunteers, ]
I was lethally irradiated a few years ago. [ so, you know. ] We dealt with the short-term damage then, but it turns out you can't walk that off without some help.
[ dryly, but not acerbic. he does know that; but also, he can understand the concern. it's why he shrugs, keeps his tone light. also because this memory, in particular, has lurked so close to the surface since the attack of the undead. right beneath his skin, bruising. ]
Some sick fucks had rigged up hard shelters to cook people with radiation instead of protect them. They were infecting people with something that feeds on radiation. [ lowly, bitter. ] I walked into one of those shelters at the wrong time.
[ he's glad for the change in subject. eros is always difficult to talk about; its shadow has loomed large over him more than usual lately, between his experiences at tantervale and with the recent undead. ]
Honestly? [ there's a pull at one side of his mouth, makes the smile as rueful as it is lopsided. ] It's just an injection port. Dispenses the anticancers slowly so I don't have to be taking doses every day. Without medicine, it wouldn't normally be doing anything.
[Her expression clears a little. It's still a heavy and important subject, but this is something she can hold onto. She'd expected it to be something way beyond her understanding, and possibly the details still are, but she can understand what the device is for now in a fairly intuitive way. It's a more advanced version of something, for her, that already exists.]
OK. Huh. Well, I don't want to mess with it if it's working but ... best guess. Sometimes when rifters come through the Fade, they get -- oh, hey, wait.
[She gets up and retrieves her iPhone from one of the drawers in her dresser. She sets it on the table and taps the screen. It doesn't light up or appear to respond in any way, except that it starts playing "The Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.]
[ he cants his head, but waits patiently as asked, much as he watches her curiously. the iphone is something both familiar and unfamiliar — not tech he specifically recognizes, but more like home than anything local to thedas. the shape and size reminds him of hand terminals, just rudimentary. ]
Huh.
[ he sits up so that he can lean closer to the table, eyebrows furrowed, as he looks at the device. the fact that it can still play pre-recorded music is much more than he would've expected. ]
That came with you from home?
[ a rhetorical question, really. of course it did. ]
At home it does a lot more than that: voice calls, data access, notes, photographs, all kinds of stuff. I kind of expected it to just be bricked when I got here but no, now it's a Shuffle throwback.
[She taps the screen again and it switches to a Bjork song.]
Obviously the stakes are way lower, but my theory is that the Fade is building the things we had on us when we dreamed, right? And things that don't have an analogue in Thedas ... sometimes we just get what the thing was physically like, but sometimes there's an impression of what it's for. Your port is critical to you being alive, so maybe there was a stronger sense of purpose for the Fade to work with. But this is ... it's way beyond my research, this is pure hypothesis, you know?
[ he nods as he listens, offers to the explanation of the device, ]
We have something like it at home.
[ he hadn't dreamed himself with his hand terminal, and so his hadn't arrived here with him. funny to think he might've had his music library, at least, if so. (not that he can fault cosima's taste in music.)
there's something a little creepy about the idea of the fade building things, making approximations of their belongings. mostly because of how it reminds him of the protomolecule, shredding spaceships and humans and their minds alike, carefully, to reconfigure and use them as building blocks. he'd put his theory of them being one and the same a long time ago, but the comparison right now is undeniable.
what he says aloud, though, is, ] Well, I appreciate the Fade trying to keep me alive.
[ then, more seriously, looking from the iphone to her, ]
I do know. But I think you might be onto something. It makes more sense than anything else I can think of.
The good news, such as it is, is that I've never heard of a Rifter dying of a condition they brought with them. I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible, we're a statistically insignificant sample size, but even so. I probably came closer than most, but in the absence of gene therapy, spirit healing kept me stable and mostly on my feet. I don't have a lot of good evidence that the Fade is capable of wanting anything in the way we mean it, but it seems like whatever mechanism brings us here tries to equip us as best it can.
I haven't heard that exact theory before, but it's ... interesting. It would explain some things, though. How sometimes clusters of people from the same place come through, or how sometimes you seem to have trends for certain skill sets. From what I heard, none of us started showing up until the Herald got killed. Maybe we're an elaborate plan B.
Wait, was that when there were all the wild dreams? That was right before I came back, I think. I missed that the Herald was there, though. How... was that?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[She considers where to start, and decides to just go for it:]
So, the genetic condition I have. Had. It wasn't just bad luck, or not the way most people who get genetic disorders have bad luck. It was the side effect of a sequence put in my DNA to ensure infertility. I'm a clone, and uh, the cloning wasn't exactly sanctioned. So the people running the experiment didn't want to just unleash our genetic material into the population.
[...so there's that.]
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a minute to deal with this. ]
You're a clone? [ what the fuck, man. ] Seriously?
[ he doesn't sound disbelieving, just. ]
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But yeah. Unsanctioned human cloning in the 1980s. Most of us were either given to couples who thought they were just undergoing standard IVF, like my parents, or they were carried by surrogates and then adopted. These bastards had a whole thing about, like, shaping human evolution. And money, of course, can't forget the money.
[She laces her fingers behind her neck, almost absent.] We beat them. Some of my sisters and I. But not before a lot of clones died.
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[ in thedas, so much about their realities seem fantastical. it's hard to explain the parts that mean more, when even the basics of their lives are far beyond the experiences of people here. ]
What the fuck is it, [ he asks, indignant on her behalf, clearly drawing on his own experience too, ] with the mad scientists and the wanting to shape evolution? Never mind who they kill along the way.
[ and, she's right, can't forget the money. but even as he shakes his head, he adds, ]
I'm glad you did. I know it doesn't make up for what you've lost, but at least you stopped them.
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Yeah. And the cure, you know so. That's what I was doing before I came back. Or, I guess, what Cosima prime is still doing, maybe, if we want to get into what are rifters, actually, but. I was traveling to get the cure to my sisters around the world. So they'd all have a chance at a long, normal life. Or whatever counts as normal, anyway, but a lot of them aren't even aware they're clones and I don't know if knowing would help them now that the danger's passed.
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They deserve the right to find out, [ he says after a moment, quieter after the outburst of a moment ago. ] What they do with the information is up to them. Besides, having a cure to offer them can't hurt.
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270 of them. and that's not counting the ones who died. that might not even be counting the ones she already knew about. cosima's mad scientists didn't do things by halves, did they. ]
It has to be fucking strange to be back here after all of that.
[ they've talked, some, about the way she missed time here. but he has context now for the life she'd had in the meantime, the meaningful work she'd been doing. to be drawn back here in the middle of that is no small thing. ]
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[A quick mental list: Beth, Alison, Sarah, Katja, Helena. Rachel? It's hard now to remember who exactly she'd met or heard of but it was a much smaller pool.]
I'm glad, though. That the cure carried over. I spent a lot of my first time in Thedas feeling like I was taking up resources, given how often I was in the infirmary. Scheduled and unscheduled.
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[ is the main reason he's glad her cure carried over. he'd feel the same way in her shoes, if he was reliant on local resources. at least aboard the roci, in his system, antioncocidals are part of any standard medbay inventory. he runs through them faster than most, but they aren't so difficult to get. here, he's barely even tried to find out if there's any kind of equivalent regimen. he doubts it, and he hasn't had to.
after a beat, he volunteers, ]
I was lethally irradiated a few years ago. [ so, you know. ] We dealt with the short-term damage then, but it turns out you can't walk that off without some help.
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[Of all the things he might need an implant for, that one hadn't crossed her mind.]
Radiation sickness is no joke. [He knows that, presumably.] Do you mind if I asked how it happened?
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[ dryly, but not acerbic. he does know that; but also, he can understand the concern. it's why he shrugs, keeps his tone light. also because this memory, in particular, has lurked so close to the surface since the attack of the undead. right beneath his skin, bruising. ]
Some sick fucks had rigged up hard shelters to cook people with radiation instead of protect them. They were infecting people with something that feeds on radiation. [ lowly, bitter. ] I walked into one of those shelters at the wrong time.
Thank you for your wild amounts of patience
[She takes that in, and finally says:]
So your implant. When it's not in Thedas, how does it work? I mean, I know you're not a doctor, broad strokes are fine.
<333
Honestly? [ there's a pull at one side of his mouth, makes the smile as rueful as it is lopsided. ] It's just an injection port. Dispenses the anticancers slowly so I don't have to be taking doses every day. Without medicine, it wouldn't normally be doing anything.
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OK. Huh. Well, I don't want to mess with it if it's working but ... best guess. Sometimes when rifters come through the Fade, they get -- oh, hey, wait.
[She gets up and retrieves her iPhone from one of the drawers in her dresser. She sets it on the table and taps the screen. It doesn't light up or appear to respond in any way, except that it starts playing "The Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.]
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Huh.
[ he sits up so that he can lean closer to the table, eyebrows furrowed, as he looks at the device. the fact that it can still play pre-recorded music is much more than he would've expected. ]
That came with you from home?
[ a rhetorical question, really. of course it did. ]
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At home it does a lot more than that: voice calls, data access, notes, photographs, all kinds of stuff. I kind of expected it to just be bricked when I got here but no, now it's a Shuffle throwback.
[She taps the screen again and it switches to a Bjork song.]
Obviously the stakes are way lower, but my theory is that the Fade is building the things we had on us when we dreamed, right? And things that don't have an analogue in Thedas ... sometimes we just get what the thing was physically like, but sometimes there's an impression of what it's for. Your port is critical to you being alive, so maybe there was a stronger sense of purpose for the Fade to work with. But this is ... it's way beyond my research, this is pure hypothesis, you know?
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We have something like it at home.
[ he hadn't dreamed himself with his hand terminal, and so his hadn't arrived here with him. funny to think he might've had his music library, at least, if so. (not that he can fault cosima's taste in music.)
there's something a little creepy about the idea of the fade building things, making approximations of their belongings. mostly because of how it reminds him of the protomolecule, shredding spaceships and humans and their minds alike, carefully, to reconfigure and use them as building blocks. he'd put his theory of them being one and the same a long time ago, but the comparison right now is undeniable.
what he says aloud, though, is, ] Well, I appreciate the Fade trying to keep me alive.
[ then, more seriously, looking from the iphone to her, ]
I do know. But I think you might be onto something. It makes more sense than anything else I can think of.
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Amos had a theory he told me once. He thought the Fade was bringing us here — and creating anchor-bearers — because it was trying to fix itself.
[ equipping rifters, such as it does, doesn't seem incompatible with that idea. ]
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[She takes a sip of wine.]
I haven't heard that exact theory before, but it's ... interesting. It would explain some things, though. How sometimes clusters of people from the same place come through, or how sometimes you seem to have trends for certain skill sets. From what I heard, none of us started showing up until the Herald got killed. Maybe we're an elaborate plan B.
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God, the Herald, [ he says instead, into a bigger swallow of wine. ] Did anyone tell you we met her ghost at the start of the year?
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[ i am sorry that you — so many of you — have suffered. that was not my wish. ]
She talked to us to make sure we understood the whole point of them.
[ if he sounds a little salty, well. still feels a bit like she could've done that in the first place. ]
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sticks a bow on this, y/n?