hh_mirror | Open RP Hallway to the Ravenclaw Common Room

While it may have been mentioned before, this was the first time he'd actually out and out said it to anyone. Mr. Universe nodded; "as far as I can tell. Actually, my friend is one of them. We both ended up dying before we showed up here, which I find extremely odd." He added, "well, it feels like a lot of time has passed both between then and now, but also since I came here, but that could be just because I'm in such a strange setting, and around people who are so different from what I'm used to." By which he actually meant being around people in general.

Sipping her martini, Camilla listened with unfeigned interest. "Was it a natural death?"

Mr. Universe visibly shook a little as he answered, obviously more than a little nervous about discussing this. "Not exactly; I was murdered actually, by a man with a sword. Not exactly a common weapon in my universe," he tried to joke, not managing very well.

Murder fazed Camilla not at all. In utter tranquility she took another drink of her martini. "What was it like?" she wanted to know.

Mr. Universe stared at her, obviously confused. "Um... what do you mean by that... being killed, being dead, I'll need you to be a bit more specific if I'm going to answer that." He really hoped he didn't have to answer; but would if pressed.

"Why, both," answered Camilla promptly, a bit surprised he should have asked for such a clarification.

"Well," Mr. Universe looked down at the floor. He said quietly, after a slightly awkward pause, "being killed was... painful mostly; but it wasn't a quick thing, it was a long agonizing thing... I had enough time to leave a message for some people, but it was hard... really hard..." he trailed off near the end, not really knowing what to say. He shook his head once, trying to clear it. "But being dead... I don't remember that at all. It was like I was dying in Lenore's lap one minute, and in the Sorting Room a few seconds later... I wish I remembered more," he looked up at Camilla, "that would probably have made the whole experience worthwhile."

Camilla offered a small reassuring smile. "Most people don't remember much of it," she said. "Of being dead, I mean. I'm rather curious as to what they do remember, when they do." She wondered whether he would drink now, and if so, whether he'd find a glass first.

Mr. Universe reached over the bar, and found a shot glass, opened the vodka, and poured himself a shot. He knocked it back quickly and responded, "I think it's probably just one of those things you're not meant to remember... you just kind of block it out in hopes of forgetting it happened..." He added, "but this is talking from my own death, which was trauma enough as it was. So I could be dead wrong," he finished, without realizing the possible pun there.

Camilla caught the pun, intended or not, and laughed quietly. "I'm sure I couldn't say, never having been dead."

Mr. Universe shrugged, "well, I don't plan on dying again anytime soon, so I'm hoping I'm not the one who ends up going back to find out." He poured another shot and downed it. He looked to the celing and said, "though it would be an interesting thing to send someone to find out..." He then shook his head and added, "no, I couldn't do that to anyone... not even for the pursuit of knowledge," he trailed off at the end and looked down and away.

Camilla leaned forward, very slightly.

"Why couldn't you?" Something unreadable in those gray eyes of hers.

Mr. Universe continued to look away and said in the same quiet unsure voice, "after knowing what being murdered was like, I couldn't even imagine putting someone through that experience." He looked up leaned in slightly as well, and said with just a slight break in his voice, "if you'd gone through what I did, you'd understand."

"I believe in Fate," Camilla said simply. "Do you?"

Mr. Universe sighed heavily, and answered slowly, "I'm not the kind to believe in fate. I would hate to think that I had no say in my final destiny..." He smiled, lips still tight, but clearly amused. "That might make me sound controlling, but it's true." Just as quickly as the smile came to his face, it faded, and he was instantly serious once more. "But just as I want to keep control of my life, I couldn't bear taking away the control of another... not for any reason I can think of." He poured another shot as he said this, but didn't drink it yet.

She tossed back her golden hair, then tossed back the last of her martini. "Control's a fearsome thing," she said. "The trick is not to maintain it but to be free of it. Haven't you ever wished to live without thinking?"

Mr. Universe looked at Camilla and said, "The thought of living without any control, without thinking is so alien to me; I can't see myself coping while having no say in the situation. And to live without thinking... it would be like denying myself completely. I think about everything I do, I can't be impulsive, that's not who I am, and I can't see myself becoming so. I won't relinquish control, because I don't trust anyone enough to be in control of me." He smiled wryly, "I suppose it comes from lack of human interaction."

Setting her glass aside on the bar, Camilla eyed her interlocutor curiously. "It's precisely the rigidity of self-control that makes us want to relinquish it. Trust -- well. That is a problem. To undergo a profound loss of control -- an encounter with the divine; a birth; a death -- to undertake such a thing in the presence of others, it's easy to believe them closer to you than they really are. Trust's so fragile. I'm afraid none of my friends trust one another," she said with a sigh, leaning her elbow on the bar, and her chin on her upturned hand, the entirety of it an angle surprisingly graceful. "But I would still say that to live without thinking is quite the opposite of self-denial. It's in the dissolution of those boundaries that one is most precisely and gloriously oneself."

She'd become more like Julian than she knew.

"Well, you may have a point there, about one wanting to be free of control... But without trusting the person you give your free will to, you can't really feel right about the situation you're in; so there is nothing good about it. So while in some cases, letting someone else make your decisions for you and having them be in control of your life may be a good thing for some, you'd have to trust another's decisions... it could lead to something less than desirable." After he finished this statement, Mr. Universe looked up and asked, "how do you and your friends not trust each other... isn't trust one of the most important bonds friends share?"

"Oh, one wouldn't give control to someone else," said Camilla, slightly taken aback. "Goodness, that would be awful. A reduplication of the misfortune in which one began, only to an even worse degree. Why would anyone want that? No one wants to be a slave; though certainly it's always best for people to know their place. No, I don't mean that at all. The idea is to become more free, not to become more bound; to become free even of the constraints of oneself, not to add another layer of constraint. May I?" She reached for the bottle and poured herself another drink.

As she poured, she was silent for a moment; then she said, "The most important bond friends share is love. It's eminently possible to love without trusting. What's more difficult is to interact under such conditions. It wears on the nerves. Do you consider your robots -- your love-bots -- to be your friends? Do you trust them?"

Mr. Universe looked at Camilla, highly confused. "Well, how exactly would one become more free then, by your ideas? I mean, either you are in control of yourself, or you let another be in control of you. There isn't any way to total freedom like you are suggesting, at least, not any way that I can see." He nodded, "oh, go right ahead." He looked at her intently while she finished her statement and answered, "I suppose that makes sense. Trust not being more important to a friendship than love; but still being quite beneficial to it." He added, after a moment of thought, "Well, the thing about robots is, you can always trust them; as long as you're the one who built and programed them. They act and react as they are built to. The specific interactions differ, but overall, they aren't human, their actions are always defined by their programming." He smiled and finished with, "not like humans who sometimes will act completely against their normal patterns of action and do something, for lack of a better word, crazy"

Camilla had to laugh, just a little; no malice in the sound, a sweet throaty chuckle. "You don't see it because you haven't been taught. It's quite all right. I had a wonderful teacher. He was a terrible man, but a wonderful teacher. You're talking about control as though it's always got to be maintained by someone, whether it's the self or another, but that isn't the point at all. The point is to shed that entire framework. To shed the necessity for control, the very possibility of control. 'To slip the surly bonds of earth,' as the poem goes; not a classical poem, that one, I can't remember for the life of me where it's from. Probably a Reader's Digest or something. You read the most awful things on trains." She shrugged, and laughed again. "Of course it's not a way one can live consistently. It's only a brief respite. Eventually you come back to yourself. But once you do, you're more free than you were."

Her drink, unmixed and unadorned, did not appeal to her very strongly, but she sipped at it anyway, because it was there and because it was a drink. "It's so funny to talk about these things here, or to talk about them at all anymore. I don't imagine it's possible really to justify anything to anyone; either one understands, or one doesn't, and that's all there really is to it. People fall into place as they're meant to do." She really did believe in fate, after all.

"Your robots, now -- you can trust them perfectly, as you've said, because you made them. You own them. And you've spoken of a robot whom you loved, and whom you believed to love you. But they weren't free, were they? You were their master. Is love truly possible between owner and owned?"

Mr. Universe smiled as she laughed, it was a very pleasant sound, not mocking as he would have believed it would be. He answered her, "well, I see what you mean; but to one who has never felt free of controlling influences, for someone who is so fixated on overthinking everything, the idea of being free of all influences is a completely impossible idea. But I can't se myself being truly uncontrolled even for a short time; the most I can do is step out of my comfort zone, as I'm doing now."

To her next statment, he replied, "it's odd to try and justify opinions like this, it's true, but very interesting; it's odd how by arguing your ideas, they can often change, no matter how strongly you believe in them. But it's still good to talk them out, just to see if they stand up to the arguments of others, no matter if they won't understand each others points at the end." He finally tossed back the shot in his hand.

When she asked about his robots, he grew a little quieter, he felt very strange talking about them; especially in this kind of discussion. He said simply, "well, I can't be sure of her love, but I truly did love her, I have no illusions about that. She had as much free will as you could program into her, but no matter what, she was still a program, her personality a construct. So, her love wasn't completely genuine, but she didn't start out loving me unconditionally, we had to grow together; there's no question about that. But I'm not sure if there can be a real answer to that... I suppose love could grow between the owner and owned, but it is simply more strained by the dynamics of the relationship. It would be hard to overcome the social boundaries between them, but I can't see why it would be impossible," he shrugged.

Camilla shook her head. The motion dislodged a wisp of pale hair she'd tucked behind her ear. Smoothing it back in place absently, she said, "The person I've known who's most wanted to live without thinking is also the most introspective person I think I've ever met. Everything he does is like chess: he's got it all planned out moves and moves ahead of the rest of us. -- But what do you mean, that you're stepping outside your comfort zone now? By being at Hogwarts? By being in a bar? It's not bad as bars go."

A bitten fingernail tapped an idle rhythm out against the base of the martini glass. "With your robots -- it's not so much the artificiality of them. So many things we take for granted are only artifice. Civilisation itself is artifice, don't you think? And a program, that's only another name for Fate. What I wonder is whether it's really love if someone's never known anything else. Anyone else. Conditionality aside." She'd stopped smoking long ago but her fingers itched for a cigarette. "Imprinting on the person one's first known ... is that really love? How much choice inheres in such an attachment?" As she mused, Camilla's voice was curiously light, curiously impersonal; devoid of judgement, certainly.

"It does make some sense that someone so completely ruled by thinking would want to live without thinking. But he was probably presented with the idea much earlier than I was, more used to the idea... I just can't seem to wrap my mind around the idea of living so totally in the moment." He shrugged and answered, "all of the above? They both involve having to interact with others, something I have no real experience with, the whole idea is out of the realm of comfortable situations for me."

Mr. Universe found himself completely mesmerised by Camilla's next speech; he shook his head and tried to analyze what she had said in order to respond. "Well, civilization may be an artifice, but it does have a point, it is a useful artifice. But a program as fate... I don't really see the analogy there, I'd appreciate it if you could explain that a bit more clearly." He swallowed hard and tried not to twitch and look away during his next comment. "I'm not really sure if it is love. I mean, an argument can be made that first love is usually more like infatuation. It's not like it's not love at all, it's just a different degree, too strong and more capricious in most cases." He took a slow breath and finished his statement, "but the attachment with Lenore; it's love in more than one form. She's my first love, and my wife, but she's also my creation... it's all kind of jumbled in my head now that I'm away from her." He sighed lightly and said, "the whole thing feels so strange now that I'm out of my home and talking with people, some of whom just don't understand at all."

Open RP Hallway to the Ravenclaw Common Room

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