Open RP Hallway to the Ravenclaw Common Room

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

Mr. Universe walked out of the Sorting Room and into a hallway... a rather large hallway.  "Wow... I have no idea where I am going."  He looked around, quite lost and started walking to the right, hoping to run into someone who knew where things were.

He took notice of the decor, very fitting for a medieval-style castle.  Wide halls, suits of armor, moving paintings...  wait... what... moving paintings.  He stopped in front of a wall of paintings, trying to figure out what was making them move.

Comments

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

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.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla leaned forward, very slightly.

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

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

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."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

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.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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?"

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

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."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

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"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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?"

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

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.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

"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."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Earlier --? But you're not terribly old, are you?" Camilla's brows lowered in perplexity. "He was twenty-one. Well past what you'd call the formative years. The more entrenched a modus vivendi, the harder it is to break free from that mode, and this makes freedom all the more attractive. Isn't that a bit what you're talking about when you say you're outside your comfort zone? Wouldn't you rather the entire world be your comfort zone? To know you can do anything, anything you want without hesitation." Her lips curled in an odd little smile. It was not mocking, clearly, but it would be hard to tell what emotion did prompt it. One of those enigmatic smiles of hers. "Surely you're not in an uncomfortable situation now, are you? Having a drink with a friend, with me -- is that uncomfortable?"

When she spoke of fate and civilisation, it was as though Julian spoke through her. She'd put on his mantle more fully than even she imagined. "Artifice need not be useful to be beautiful. I don't really see a stigma inherent in artifice. That's what I meant, really; that I see no stigma inherent in the fact something may be artificial. To exist outside the tyranny of Nature, to transcend it -- it's a beautiful dream, in its own way. Mortal flesh cannot defy the inexorable rhythms of organic life, though we can if we so choose delay them. But what do you find puzzling about fate? A program, what you've programmed your robot to want or to do, is another name for fate. You can say that she is programmed to love, or you can say that she is fated to it. Fate allows as little choice; fate cannot be denied; fate is to mortal flesh as a program is to the inorganic flesh of your robot. That is not to say we do not carry the responsibility of navigating the choppy seas upon which Fate has cast us -- I don't mean to say that at all. Far from it." Camilla gave that one-shouldered shrug again, a mannerism the Macaulay twins shared. "I can't say I see a distinction between first love in general and the love that may occur at later points chronologically. What I see as interesting in your particular instance is that Lenore was never without you. She was always already yours. She did not live out some span of years in which she could formulate independent tastes, then meet you and find that you suited her. She came into existence and there you were."

(( modus vivendi: way of life/living. ))

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

"I'm twenty-nine, nearly thirty; still younger, but not young. But even if it is attractive to completely break out of my way of living, I can't really see myself doing so; being here among people, that's something I'm unused to enough for now." He smiled back, and said, just slightly self-mocking, "you see, it may not be uncomfortable for the average person, but for me, having a drink with an attractive woman, it's not exactly something I'm used to. Not exactly uncomfortable, but definitely not one of my normal interactions."

He nodded when she began talking about the beauty of artifice. "It's true that something artificial can be quite beautiful, even if so many people don't seem to see the fact that being real doesn't make anything inherently more attractive. I've always seen beauty in the artificial, not necessarily more beauty than in real things, but I don't make a distinction in my mind. Attractive things are pleasing, be they real or artificial; no need to distinguish the difference between the two." He gave her a questioning look. "But, though robots run on programs, people don't; I don't see how fate really applies to human beings when you put it that way. It makes little sense to me that human beings are subject to the same kind of programming that an android would be. It's unnerving to me to think that something has more power over my life and world than I do; it probably stems from the fact that I have so much power over the robots I create, I couldn't stand to think that anything would have as much power over me as I do over them when I create them. " His eyes widened in understanding and he responded, "oh! I see what you're saying now. Lenore didn't have any other choice than to love me. I created her to suit me, and for her to be likewise suited to me. She didn't have a choice, didn't have a chance to develop separately from me. I was just there for her from the second she came into being. That is true; but she seemed happy with me... but that could just be me reading too much into this. I want to think that she was happy, so I believe she was no matter what the truth is." He shook his head and look down and added, "looking back I can't really be sure."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla glossed over the compliment. Of course she was attractive; everyone thought so; it was an aesthetic judgement as close to objective as any matter of aesthetics could be. As for gender, it was really beside the point. She'd been the only woman in a social group of men for ages. She'd socialised more with women at Hogwarts than at any other time in her life. "If you do feel uncomfortable, I can go," she offered.

She toyed with her glass as he expounded on robots, programming, control. "The idea of fate displeases you because you don't want to believe yourself subject to programming. But isn't that what drives us all? If nothing else, we possess human instincts, whether or not we permit ourselves to express them -- whether or not, conversely, we have built such walls of self-control around ourselves that we can be permitted that expression. But, then, you don't like the idea that anything could control you in the way you control your robots. Do you enjoy the feeling of controlling them?"

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

Mr. Universe shook his head and quickly said, "No, of course not." This may have been a new situation for him, but it wasn't a problem for him; he was enjoying this time immensely. "Please stay if you want."

"I don't know if personality really qualifies as programming, instinct either. The thing is, if a robot violates its programming, then it is malfunctioning. If a human being does something out of the ordinary, they're just acting a little different than usual. Instinct is more of a suggestion than anything else, it doesn't define you as a person, it doesn't necessarily influence your actions" He shrugged, "I'm not saying it isn't a factor, I just think it's a very different degree of control than programming is." He looked a little offended, not overly so, but he wasn't comfortable with her last question. "Well, I don't like controlling them, I like interacting with them more than anything... the control isn't the goal, it's just a way to interact with beings in a controlled manner; wait, that isn't the right phrasing... it's a way to have social interaction with beings I know won't judge me, won't make me feel like I'm inferior" This was probably a hard realization for him, he looked a little pained by thinking about it.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla crossed her legs, settling in. No telltale sound of nylon swish -- it was summer; she didn't wear stockings in summer. "Hmmm. You wouldn't say you've seen humans malfunction? I think I've seen it. When they become erratic, unhinged -- then they're most truly dangerous. Like rabid animals. At least robots can be reprogrammed." She ran a slender finger around the rim of her glass, which seemed to have lost its appeal as a drink, and had become simply something to occupy her hands.

"Social interaction is a tricky thing. The trick is not to find persons who won't judge you, but to find persons whose judgement matters at all. So many people simply aren't worth one's time." She smiled, then, that golden smile of hers.

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

Mr. Universe looked up at Camilla and answered, "I suppose you're right there. Though I'm not sure that human beings can't be reprogrammed; I know someone who was reprogrammed; not in a good way... they did some work on her brain; it was horrible." He looked down at the floor, "There's something so awful about it, there's no reason to do something like that."

"Being social is tough...very tough. But people not being worth your time... it's really true. When you're around people who matter, who are interesting, who accept you as you are, and are really worth the time you spend with them, that makes it worth it." He looked up and smiled back brightly. "Interactions like this makes being social worth it."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

The notion of reprogramming Bunny appealed rather strongly to Camilla, actually. If there were a way to be certain it would work, not just make him worse than he'd already gotten ... Such were the thoughts well-hidden behind those candid clear gray eyes, that coolly serene face; and her smile didn't falter or flag for a second. Bright without warmth, radiant, the smile that sent her friends into rhapsodies or into quarrels: the smile that embodied the promise of that life they shared. (Beauty is terror, Julian had said. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it ... and if beauty is terror, then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?)

"You're absolutely right," she said. "Absolutely."

[the-mr-universe.livejournal.com]

Mr. Universe looked at Camilla, wondering a bit what she was thinking. So much of her seemed unknowable, she was so passionate, but often looked so cold, even as her smiles were so bright. He continued to smile at her, almost mesmerised by her beauty.

"I'm glad that you think so."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"I've always thought so," said Camilla, her voice low, as though sharing a particularly delicate confidence. "It doesn't do to really say it to people, of course, but those who understand ... well, that's different, isn't it? That's more important than trust, as we were saying earlier. It's a prerequisite to real friendship, this understanding. And, naturally, a prerequisite to real love. To be among equals -- there's nothing, nothing like it."