Participants:
| Scene Title | Irish Goodbye |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Silas and Elliot chat about the possibility of pushing Silas' ability to the limit. |
| Date | July 18, 2021 |
The 0bservation Room
−YYYY:MM:DD:HH:MM:SS
A room, empty but perceived. Door, mirror, door. A phone, ringing, annoyed. A desk big enough to fit the number of people sitting at it, chairs equal to that number, minimum one. One chair.
A carved wooden horse, burned and not.
A CD Walkman, worn but loved.
A deck of cards, loose but tightly stacked.
A
Canada
Sunday, July 18th
They had spent a long time weaving together the disparate memories from inside the Castle and without. Their Elliot memories of the injury and carnage inside the barrier, their Wright memories of isolation in the forest. It has been worse for the half of them that used to be Wright, as on the inside they were not alone but still in prospect plerosymbiosis with others from the team.
So they stitched and wove until the two separate memories were indistinguishable. Now, looking back, they remember being alone and separate from their Elliot half but they don't feel the terror of only being half of a person. It's different this time. It's personal. There's no Wright memories to incorporate with their Elliot memories, because Wright didn't exist for seventeen minutes. Everything that body experienced feels fake, sketched in.
Fuck Juliette Luis.
They're making due, however. Both of them have been meditating, half of them medicating. They're putting it behind them until they can have an admittedly hypocritical conversation with Rianna about informed consent. A conversation that would look ridiculous in the context of what they're prepared to do to protect everybody from themself.
Their eyes open in the cold flooded world, breathing out slowly and with a sense of cultivated serenity. Those plans, ghastly as they are, may never have to come to fruition. They sincerely hope they don't, as they sincerely like a lot of the people they would have to betray to save the world.
Hopping down from the driver's seat, they go in search of one of them. One they like, but don't trust. One who doesn't trust them, and while that is admittedly deserved, they can't quite figure out why.
Silas is not difficult to find most of the time; today is no exception. After all, the thing about building a crew from a disparate group of individuals is that it doesn't happen in a vacuum; it's work. It requires trust, and trust is a thing that has to be built and maintained… and the first step is being there. Helping wherever help is needed, and being seen doing so.
Even so, building that trust is hard work. Building that trust fast is harder still. Richard has left him with an unenviable task… but there's no denying it's a worthwhile one, and while Silas wouldn't have chosen this particular job, he aims to give it everything he's got.
Today, at least, he's playing to his strengths — helping out with dinner, and trying to make the food as palatable as he can with what they've got. So far, he's pretty happy with how it went; the chow line's winding down, and the mood seems pretty good.
Elliot is happy to be the last person in line, picking up a battered plastic bowl from the table. Offering it out to be filled with whatever's on offer, he remarks dryly, “Any chance you have some canned peaches? I've a hankering.”
"Fresh out," Silas deadpans. "We've got lumps with sauce, though. As opposed to lumps without sauce, which will be what Nathalie will provide if she sees you eating canned peaches in her line of sight," he says, lips curling into a hint of a grin. It's mostly a joke. Mostly.
He ladles some lumps with sauce into Elliot's bowl; while they are, in fact, lumps with sauce, 'meat and dumplings' would probably be a better descriptor. Then his expression grows more serious. "You got a minute? I was hoping to talk with you for a bit."
Elliot tries the food, deciding they've had worse lumps with sauce during the war. “I do in fact have a minute,” they say once the first bite is down. “I kind of want to find an empty can of peaches to eat out of now. For the laughs.”
Silas frowns a bit at that, but opts not to comment any further on the matter of peaches. "Primal," he says, returning his ladle to the pot. "Takin' a break for a minute," he calls; the pot's all but empty at this point anyway. "I'll be back in time to wash up."
With that said, he gestures for Elliot to follow, leading towards the edge of the group; he stops a short ways out, still within line of sight of the now-empty chow line. "I wanted to ask a little more about your power," he says quietly.
Elliot notes that their joke fell flat with a shrug and a shake of their head. Not serious. “What do you want to know?” they ask, pushing lumps around the bowl to see if any appear to be of a higher quality. Finding no such diamond in the rough, they did in regardless.
"You mentioned you worked with someone with a power similar to me at one point," Silas says, cutting to the chase. "Exactly what was that power? And, more to the point — would experience with that power make it easier to overclock mine?"
“It was classified as ‘telepathic misdirection’ by the Company,” they say, holding up a sleeve to cover the fact that they didn't entirely finish swallowing the food as intended. They're excited to have successfully set the hook recently, though none of it shows in their expression or posture. “Yancy could make people not see things, other people. Cause a mental failure to perceive, basically. Used it to cheat at cards in games where they'd kill you for that, until he got bagged by the Institute.” It's been a decade since the man they only knew for a few months died, but it still doesn't feel great to talk about losing a person they were becoming.
“Overclocking doesn't really require me to be familiar with an ability, though,” they explain. “Like with the code you helped break, it's just ceding cognitive capacity to another network host in order for them to use as needed. It isn't one-to-one, but it can give you far more capacity than you're used to working with. The more hosts who help, the less effort it takes you to do whatever you're shooting for.”
"Sounds pretty close," Silas admits. He's silent for a moment, considering. "I'm going to be honest here. I'm not sure my power's worth overclocking, as it is. When it comes to powers, some people get pocket Howitzers or time fortresses or whatnot. Me, I've got a boot knife." Which is a statement that is both metaphorically and literally true. "It's a decent trick — a free ace in the hole — but that's all it is."
"But I'd be interested in seeing if I could push that a bit, using your overclocking trick. Seeing if maybe I could expand my limits a bit. Do you think that's possible?"
“Theoretically,” Elliot admits. “I should mention that I don't remember a lot of what went down in there, due to all the mad science they were doing. I can't recall specifics, just a general understanding of how his ability worked.” It was integral to creating a structure designed to lead you down the wrong path unless you knew what to look at in the room to make it the right way to go.
“So anything’s possible is what I'm saying,” they add. “If it's even just an expansion of your area of influence, that could be a huge advantage.”
Silas grunts, weighing that answer. "That's true," he says after a moment. "Honestly… I think you'd be better off working with Kendall for actual defensive measures; his power's a lot less limited than mine. But if you've got the brains to spare, I'd like to give this a try."
Elliot smiles, wolfing down the last of the lumps while tasting their lamb kofta instead. They set the bowl on the opposite end of the table as they wander that way, nodding to indicate that they're listening.
“Kendall's ability is very showy,” they say. “Lots of practical applications, but lacking subtlety.” They grimace, like that wasn't the word they were looking for. Kendall's ability is similar to Seren's on a surface level. Beyond that, he’s not Relevant. He's not irRelevant at least; what a nightmare that would be.
“But commando shit is Wright's area of expertise,” they continue. “I'm the infiltrator, she's the exfiltrator.” It feels simultaneously weird to misgender themself and like it would be an imposition on Silas to get into that now. They're not not a woman, it's just kinda of all over the place now; a fine gender bisque. It still doesn't feel great, a feeling they notice and inspect.
“Subtlety is my game,” they admit. “Your ability is as subtle as they come, and far from limited. I told Yancy that
Commonwealth Institute Arcology
C Ring; Site 0
Sunday, July 18th, 2011
I would use,” Elliot says, “it literally every day. At…all times.”
“That would be fucking exhausting,” Yancy says, observing his tic of picking at his fingernails, so much less yellow than they used to be. It's amazing what months in a hole will do for your nicotine habit.
Tala laughs in a kind way. “The perils of being perceived?” she quotes.
“The absolute,” Elliot agrees, “worst thing about living in a society.”
They all flinch at the chime.
I would use it literally every day. At all times.” The intrusive memory doesn't register on his face, he's getting used to the ebb and flow of them as they return on the decade. They cry briefly in Washington KC for something to do with the feelings it dredges up, leaving them to remain affable in Canada. “Anyway, I would happily help see how far you can push it.”
Silas snorts in faintly horrified amusement. "That would be fucking exhausting," he says, shaking his head. "Though maybe not as much if this works out, eh?" He's not hoping for nearly that much — he's not hoping for much, really — but if it works, even modest gains would be helpful.
"Though I do think there's more potential for subtlety in Kendall's ability than you're giving credit for," he says, looking serious. "It's just he isn't used to using it that way. Isn't used to thinking that way, because I don't think he's really had to think that way. His trick is on the artillery end of the scale." He crosses his arms, peering at Elliot speculatively. "Maybe with a little guidance, he could pick up some tricks," he suggests.
Elliot pins Silas’ response to the new memory in composite, it could be relevant later. “You're not wrong,” they agree. Changing the way people think is possible, and they've done it, but it's a long game. It would be good to have an alternate wildcard in the proverbial deck, but Seren is already accustomed to thinking in ways that feel magical if you don't know the terminology. Like lights that emit the color c sharp. “I've had difficulty explaining the nuance to him in the past, but I'm actually pretty new to having to teach people how to do this. I'll rope him in for some on the road training at some point.”
“Is this something you want to try tonight?” they ask.
Silas looks surprised; he takes a moment to consider it. "If you've got volunteers willing to chip in, sure."
Elliot shrugs. “Wright’s always in and I'm sure Asi is kicking around in here somewhere,” they say with a smirk. “Even just the three of us going all out would give you about two and a half times the push as you're used to. It'll be just as tiring for us three as it would be for you to go all out, but that's the trade-off. I could link a couple people in if you want more oomph.”
Silas frowns thoughtfully, calculating. Might want to be careful ringing in drivers. On the other hand… I can read Aces well enough to know if she's having too bad a time. "Asi'd probably be fine, but try to avoid ringing in anyone else who's driving. Just in case."
“Yeah,” Elliot says. “No drivers. If we go all out we won't have the focus to do anything else. Talking would be difficult. More people means less effort each, but more people is also just an opportunity for maximum effort.”
“Thankfully we could just give it a go now,” they continue, “see if we can shake anything loose. No driving, no danger.”
Silas raises an eyebrow. "In a hurry?" he asks. "Fine by me, but let's start a little smaller. Just you and me for now." He pauses. "And I guess Wright, if she's up for it?" He shrugs.
"But let's finish up business first, since we're already out here," he says, using his power to obscure their words from any would-be eavesdroppers; he'd rather get this out of the way now, since one or several of them might not feel much like talking when all is said and done. "Anything going on you think I should know about? Any progress on the code? Any luck on Juliette Luis?"
“Fucking hell,” Elliot says, scratching at their eyebrow in annoyance, though it doesn't seem directed at Silas. “She wrote Wright out of existence for about twenty minutes the other day. So, that sucked. Wright is trying to track her down to have a conversation about never fucking doing that again, but Juliette hasn't been in the office since it happened.”
They sigh, trying to contain obvious fury about the event. “It was like the time she altered events surrounding our arrival in this timeline,” they continue, feeling no worry about anyone hearing them talk. “Wright vanished from the DOE building, ceased to exist for a while, then reappeared in her apartment. Events backfilled, I got memories of two versions of events.
“At the time, Wright was digging into Agent Gates’ computer with the help of Juliette and Michelle Cardinal,” they explain, getting the annoyance under control. “Looking for interesting time travel intel. Got some, though nothing actionable. Just files on some weird events around the world. I was hoping Wright would be able to have that sit-down before reviewing this with you, but… if we're going to link up I can share some of it with you. I'd skip the unpleasant part.”
Silas blinks; that is probably the single most unguarded reaction he's seen Elliot display. He's silent for a moment. "So someone deletes your partner from existence but then puts them back, and she's gonna go chew her out about it?" he asks, eyebrow raised. "Bold strategy."
He frowns. "More to the point… why would she do that, though?" he asks, eyes narrowing as he thinks. "The last time she did it was specifically to prevent disaster, wasn't it?" Silas asks, looking back to Elliot. "So what was the point in doing it this time?"
Elliot, returned to placid, shrugs. “To get them all out of Gates’ office undetected, probably, being another without subtlety” they say. “I’d have appreciated it if, after being informed how unpleasant it is for us to experience a revision while partitioned across timelines, Juliette would have used the trick on the person walking down the hallway toward them instead. Or, you know, flashed a badge or something.”
“Because this was way worse than the first time, honestly,” they say with a little cut through the air for emphasis. “But yeah, we're hoping that a polite, ‘can you fucking don't’ will save us further unpleasantry.”
“Like, actually polite, though,” they add. “Wright did mention how grateful she was to have no longer died when the rig exploded and she fell into the spacetime anomaly, so. Perhaps being a bit more specific would help us in our unique situation.”
Silas nods in understanding. "Fair enough. You sounded kinda like you meant…" he trails off. Like you meant being quiet during the garroting, he thinks, but does not say, instead opting to clandestinely study Elliot's mask of calm, now that he knows for certain that's what it is. "Nevermind," he says, with an idle wave of his hand.
His mind moves on, briefly wondering about potential subtle applications of a power like Juliette's before coming back to the matter at hand. "Anyway. I've got something else I'd like to have Wright look into, and this one's gonna be… tricky," Silas says, reaching into an inside pocket to pull out a folded piece of paper. "A face without a name. Eve's had a vision of this guy doing Marcus's dirty work. If you can put a name to him, that might give some insight into what Marcus is up to."
Silas offers the carefully folded sketch to Elliot. "The only other thing I've got to narrow it down is that Eve saw him doing some sniping; I'm gonna assume that this guy probably has some formal training somewhere, and is probably pretty damn good at it. Maybe Wolfhound could be helpful, assuming Wright can manage to get in touch with them without it being observed. I know it's a long shot, but right now we're kinda in the business of long shots. Hence this whole trip."
Elliot takes the paper, studying while listening. “Wright is not known for her artwork forgery skill,” he notes, “though she'll see if she can duplicate it well enough to hit up a database. I'll need to hold on to this.” The idea of tracing an image across a cosmic divide is interesting, though; a plerosymbiotic camera lucida.
They seem to be relaxed now, despite having had to tamp it all down. They felt the emotion, then let it pass without spiraling into it. It's meditative; a coping mechanism hard won through practice controlling their emotions through the plerosymbiotic links with others. Elliot, one of the people they used to be, never really learned how to deal with his emotional dysregulation. Wright, the other, had anger control issues of her own. Only when those two stopped existing to make this version of them did they begin to grapple with those emotional problems.
“On this topic,” they say, “Elisabeth asked her to try to contact somebody named Felix Ivanov through the remote office. Apparently he has boxes full of information that Liz says may be off use to us. I'm planning on asking Nova to connect with her self over there, but I figure you'll want to weigh in on the infosec aspect. If there's a rat in the OEI, no telling what contacting him, or digging through his information, will stir up over there.”
Silas nods as Elliot takes the paper. The other issue that Elliot raises brings a frown to his face. He doesn't know Felix, but if Elisabeth trusts him, that's good enough for Silas… which leaves Nova. He trusts this Nova; what about the one from the Remote Office? Different world, different person… but if the Novas are connected…
There's one more factor to consider, as well: Castle trusts her.
Silas nods. "We've only got so many cards we can play; I think it's worth it. Castle seems to have a pretty high opinion of the Remote Office Nova; if you let them know we're worried about the possibility of a rat, they can probably help keep an eye out, too."
“I'll talk to the Council of Novas, then,” Elliot says. “I wonder if she'd let me link in for the conversation? It would be a novel experience even for me, I'm guessing. Though I probably don't have clearance and all that.” They sigh, shrugging.
Wright leans out of the conference room door, smiling alarmingly at Kenneth. “Need drawing supplies,” they say. “Pencils and paper. And that eggplant dip from the tapas place.”
“I'm also curious if she could lend more than one self to an overclock,” they admit. “Probably not a great cost benefit ratio, though, since she would need to maintain her ability to begin with. Castle might also be able to provide more than normal, there being two of them in there, but that's theoretical. Only one brain as far as I can tell.”
Silas nods; Elliot's thought experiment sees him frown thoughtfully as he considers, but it's a question he really has no idea how to answer. "Not sure. If you find out, let me know."
With that he shrugs. "Anyway, that's all the surprises I've got for the moment. Anything else on your end?"
“Picked Michelle's brain on time travel with Liz,” Elliot says after a moment of thought. “She had a theory about time being twisted up like spaghetti on a fork, which Wright had dubbed the Rotini Effect. I can share some of that for better context if you like. The process of figuring out exactly what's happening is ongoing. Her understanding of time travel doesn't mesh with what we've been recently told. But they're looking into somebody who is apparently able to experience revisions to events when they occur, kind of like we can when something changes on Wright's side. Oh, and I told them that Richard is AWOL.” They shrug. It was awkward and nobody was a fan of the news.
Silas snorts, looking wryly amused at Richard's expense. "Which of em was more pissed?" he wonders. He feels a little bad about it… but only a little. Richard did stick him with this job, after all.
His humor is short-lived, though. "Have Wright tell Liz I said hi. Tell her…" he considers. "Tell her I'm doing the best I can," he says somberly. Then he moves on to the other thing Elliot had brought up… the Rotini Effect or whatnot. Wright musta been hungry, he muses idly, but doesn't put much stock in it; he'd rather not speculate too much about someone he's never met.
"I would be interested in hearing more about the Rotini, though," he says seriously.
“The official pasta of Italian-dressing-based salads,” Elliot says with a smirk, “and pulling time inward from both directions. Honestly spaghetti really is a better metaphor but I'm letting Wright have this one.”
“Wow.”
“You want to try to link in?” they ask by way of reminding Silas that he suggested it at the beginning of this conversation. The fact that they want him to doesn't matter right now. “Wright can remember the whole conversation for you. It'll be like you were there, in her perspective. Can show you faces of all the people we're talking about for easy reference to boot.”
Silas smirks and inclines his head at the rotini crack; he does enjoy a good pasta salad. His expression grows more sober as he considers their question… and is caught a bot offguard by the old pain that gutchecks him.
He'd thought that the pain of the short life he'd lived on the other side of the Looking Glass, so sharply abandoned, would be gone by now, but while the worst of it has faded, the dregs remain. He shakes his head sharply. "Not… for that," he decides. "No. For now, just give me the rundown on the pasta salad. Then if you want to go ahead and try to do the brainlink and see about overclocking, we can give it a shot."
Elliot doesn't pause in their frustration with everybody's routine resistance to being reminded of home. As the person whose job it is to remind people of home, it makes them feel fairly superfluous; that along with the fact that they're shoved in a conference room with no support staff and nobody to report to.
“So,” they say, scratching an eyebrow as they try to summarize a long and complex conversation, “frame dragging. Intense gravitational forces don't just pull objects in space. Sufficient mass creates curvature in spacetime, producing the effect we refer to as gravity but that's kind of pedantic. Suffice to say that the time half of spacetime is also affected. The electromagnetic anomalies like the one we used to slingshot us to this timeline are fucking with time, pulling it in on itself.”
“Mrs Cardinal?” they try, “She didn't answer a direct question about what we should call her. Chel feels way too familiar. Anyway, she theorizes that as time is a string that moves from beginning to end, the anomalies are yarn-balling it up locally. Relatively speaking. It's collapsing in on itself. We offered the theory that whatever is happening is causing the previously semi-elastic nature of events to become far more—or less?—elastic, leading to wholesale event alteration without divergence into branching timelines like the Wasteland and the like. Where once a boulder could divert a river, a pebble now alters the pattern of the river without needing to create a side channel.”
“Juliette's ability appears to interact with this presentation of physics,” they note. “Best we can tell through personal experience, she picks an event in the past to alter and everything around the event changes course to correct for the new information. Wright remembers the changed version of events, I remember the original version, or both if I'm streaming her when it happens. New information doesn't propagate across the distance between strings.”
"I'd go with 'Doctor', if you're worried about informality," Silas muses absently, as he tries to wrap his brain around this.
"So these… anomalies… are gravity related. Or… have something to do with gravity, anyway. Space and gravity… which is causing them to affect time." He squints, thinking. "So changes causing events to split off into timelines is 'normal', and this… refactoring thing only happens due to the presence of these anomalies."
He frowns. "Anomalies like the one you came through, which, were I a betting man, I would place a small wager had something to do with me getting punched across dimensions off the coast of Virginia. But you said anomalies, plural. How many of these things are there?" he asks, looking concerned. "And what, exactly, causes them? As far as I know, there wasn't one at Sunspot."
“The Entity is presumed to be the cause of some of them,” Elliot explains, “including the one you and I came through to get here. It was a lot bigger by the time I saw it, contained in an oil rig which exploded and killed everybody until Juliette changed the event. Wright fell into that anomaly and then hadn't. Real headache, that one.”
“While the anomalies and the refactoring effect are likely related, we don't have solid evidence that one directly causes the other,” they continue. “If there's anything beyond theory here, it's being withheld from us. There are or were a handful of anomalies I know about, presenting in different ways. Large black orb is the nastiest. Other things have been happening: cars crashing into nothing in the middle of the street, mysterious slushy machines with vanishing drinks. Wright saw files and videos of a temporally displaced Erica Kravid undergoing experimental ability shit in the seventies. It's all kind of inexplicable.” They've given up on reminding him how much easier this conversation would be if they could only slap the memories directly into his brain.
“Also,” they add, “anomalies aren't a necessity for traveling. If we had a spatio-temporal ability like gravity manipulation and a handful of others we could potentially duplicate the sunspot event. Wormholes aren't exactly a common ability, unfortunately.”
"Gravity and acoustics, plus a few more," Silas nods absent agreement. "Elisabeth and Magnes. Probably the only reason Kenner didn't execute Magnes on the spot in the Ark." Kenner had instead executed several other people who manifestly did not deserve it.
"I heard about the car crashes, I think. But… did you say a slushy machine?" Silas asks, his gaze coming back from the middle distance to peer at Elliot incredulously."Gravity and acoustics, plus a few more," Silas nods absent agreement. "Elisabeth and Magnes. Probably the only reason Kenner didn't execute Magnes on the spot in the Ark." Kenner had instead executed several other people who manifestly did not deserve it.
"I heard about the car crashes, I think. But… did you say a slushy machine?" Silas asks, his gaze coming back from the middle distance to peer at Elliot incredulously.
“Sea Salt Crash Slush-o!” Elliot says with a smile straight from an advertisement poster. “You can't drink just six. It may or may not actually exist, but they found a machine for it in Phoenix Heights. It's in secure storage now.”
"Hrngh," Silas scowls at the idea of a sea salt flavored drink. "Hard pass."
He pauses for a moment, considering. "Honestly I don't think that'd sell well anywhere, bein' honest. Sea salt crash just sounds like a tragedy to me."
Then he shakes his head. "I'd be interested to hear if Chel comes up with anything else. If anyone can, it's her. Otherwise… well. Hard to really study a mess when you're in it; it's like trying to analyze a cat crash from the inside. While it's happening."
Elliot shrugs. “It doesn't taste bad in my head,” they say. “Though I'm adventurous when it comes to flavor combinations and I have an unusually potent sense memory.” Nobody really understood what Elliot was talking about until he could prove it through the network. The person who isn't Elliot anymore got that trait along with the body they inherited. They recombine the flavor profile they shared with their Wright body for the failed Slush-o summoning experiment: classic blue raspberry with a touch of gooseberry and a little too much salt. The flavor fills their mouth, they salivate at the taste of it. The soft palate prickles as though the cold is real. They make another blind grab for the drink that doesn't exist; still no dice.
“I'll keep you up to date on whatever Dr. Cardinal comes up with,” they promise.
"Fair enough," he allows, though to him sea-salt as a primary flavor doesn't sound appetizing in the least. I might be biased, though. Too damn much salt here. "Depends on what crash is, I guess."
"Anyway. Appreciated. I'll never be able to understand it like someone like Chel would, but maybe I can glean enough to be of some use," he admits.
"Alright. Any other orders of business?"
“Nothing comes to mind,” Elliot says after a moment of reflection.
Silas nods, and moves on to the issue he'd been planning to work towards before he started asking questions.
"Alright. Do you want to do the mind-link thing now or later?" he asks. "If you've got business to attend to, you might want to knock that out before we start with the power benchmarks."
Elliot thinks for a moment. They have nothing going on, having already devoured the lumps and sauce for the evening. This is also the fun part of their job, and they've done very little of use with it since arriving here.
“I'm good to give it a try tonight,” they say, “but are you? I only ask because when I suggested it in the past you looked at me like I said I was going to harvest your organs. If you don't want to do this, you won't be able to. Not wanting to be in the network is enough to break the link for anybody involved.”
Silas snorts. "Harvest my organs? Nah." He pauses for a moment, frowning. "I've mentioned before that I don't like sharing headspace. And I still think Kendall's going to be the better bet as far as actual defensive abilities. He's got a trick that's basically field artillery, and if my understanding is correct that means you'll probably have to use less brainpower to enhance it. But. If there's an avenue that can gain a potential advantage here, I'm not gonna pass on it." Silas's mouth tightens. "I'm not gonna take half measures. Not given what's at stake."
Then he offers a tight smile. "Besides. You were able to link me in before, misgivings and all. I don't see why it shouldn't work this time. If it doesn't…" he shrugs. "We postpone the experiment."
Elliot smiles, seeming to be on better footing. “Comfort levels can change,” they explain, “and I like to make sure everybody is as comfortable as possible in what can be a rather personal experience. We can avoid streaming sensory information, if that helps. It's not everybody's cup of tea, and I get that.”
They look around, pinging Asi for a location as they see who else might be available to help. Seemingly finding a likely helper, they leave without saying anything in parting.