The Ferengi Paradigm

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m_alex_icon.gif cardinal_icon.gif

Scene Title The Ferengi Paradigm
Synopsis Alex calls Cardinal, they discuss mutual interests, Alex informs Cardinal that he is not a charitable person.
Date July 17, 2010

Mas Mechanics

There is a large gate that surrounds the warehouse. A padlock normally on keeping them shut. Cracked and destroyed pavement surrounds the area. Just inside are a few abandoned cars and motorcycles. A garage door can be seen and is open, showing a 1967 black and red mustang. Various tools and machines can be seen in the place that point to this place being a auto shop at one point.

When you walk through the door from the garage there is a huge room filled with a few tables, couches and chairs. The windows have large, dark red curtains covering them. Candles sit all around the place, waiting to be lit.

Through another door, a makeshift kitchen can be found. With refrigerator, microwave, stove, and a table or two with some chairs.


After a long day of finding the right glass blowing place, and then making new molds and forming the base around Daphne's sneakers, Alex is just waiting for the glass to harden and is working on other projects while he waits for Cardinal.

He's sitting at a work bench with five reflective bronze, almost golden spheres, a few opened up with their complex clockwork insides showing. He's using very delicate tools, clicking this and that switch, blades popping open a few times, another with a seemingly retractable drill hanging out. God knows what he's making, but if they saw the Phantasm, they might have a good idea. He's in a pair of black dress pants, with the buttoned up white shirt of his suit with their sleeves rolled up and black leather gloves on. His mechanical left arm is visible, but he doesn't seem all that worried about it in the privacy of his own, or, whoever's workshop this is.

"This isn't your place." Isn't your place…

The words are spoken from the shadows, not as an observation but as an affirmation, as if the living darkness that is Richard Cardinal took some sort of umbrage to the man that's taken over the workshop. "I do hope that you aren't looting my friend's home, Alex…" The shadows make themselves known, a stretch of darkness that ermeges from the others in a slow pace across the wall across from the bench.

"Looting? I don't know what you think of my former selves, but I have better things to do than loot." Of course before Alex returned after his day with Daphne, he decided to bring a few of his robots. So Cardinal might start to notice little mechanical roaches, a mice here and there, and the occasional spider on the ceiling. "You should do the cautionary thing and not be in such a laser-vulnerable form. I like to see who I'm speaking to."

"You aren't much different than your others, I see… you always do think you know so much…" An echoing whisper of dark amusement from the shadow, fading along into the ambient shadows of the room once more, "…and it's nice to want things, Alex. But you're the one insisting to meet with me, after making a point of interrogating Liette as to how to kill me, and you're doing so after invading my friend's home… perhaps she isn't here right now, but it doesn't belong to you."

"What do you want?" A sharp question, ambient echoes making it hard to tell where he's speaking from.

"I didn't interrogate Liette, though thanks for reminding me that I need to take her back. She'll be vital for a few future inventions." Alex peeks up at the shadow a few times, but turns back to his work with those silvery reflective eyes. "Jack asked how to kill you as a cautionary measure, you're suspicious, well, most of you are suspicious. It's hard to trust you people. What are you, with those Ferries?" He makes no comment on home invasion, instead getting to the point as he picks one of those more complete spheres up, and starts winding the little knob on the back. "I want to know what you wanted to talk to me about the other night. And I hope you got my voice mail, or there might be an unfortunate person missing an arm."

"No, Alex. I'm not with the 'Ferries' as you put them… they are, occasionally, with me, however. I don't think I can stress enough that you won't be 'taking' Liette back, however, so I'd suggest that you just forget about that idea right where it lies. She's out of your reach." The shadow's out of sight, now, blended in with those already existing in the darksome workshop, his whispering and echoing voice drifting about lazily, "Any side effects of the retrovirus? I'm curious."

"None so far, though coming from a guy who got his entire arm blown off, it was the most painful experience of my entire life. As for Liette, nothing's out of my reach, she's just not a top priority yet." While his previous personalities did show a degree of knowing everything, Alex downright shows ego as he releases the knob, and two blurs of bronzed silver start flapping rapidly on both sides of the sphere. It stays in the air for a few seconds, then dips down to the bench due to the weight, and floats up slightly again. "Still a little off…"

"I'm impressed. Sheridan did her work well… at first I thought she was working with Advent, but it can't have been that, you would've started showing signs of deterioration already," Cardinal muses aloud, a thoughtful sound to his voice, "I'm no scientist, admittedly. I understand that you know where the facilities are?"

"Yes, and if I won't tell Veronica, I won't tell you. You can't give me what I want, in fact, the only thing that I think you have access to that I do want, is Liette." Alex snaps the sphere open, clearly made to break into two halves so it can be worked on, then starts adjusting things around what seem like little golden humming bird wings. "But if you have a better offer, I'm all ears. I'm not very inclined to betray the Doctor."

"Then I suppose that we don't have very much to talk about, do we, Alex?" A dry whisper from the shadows in the room, "You obviously aren't any more stable than Mortimer is. A pity."

"Not stable? I just have nothing to gain. I'm not Jack, I don't do things 'for fun'. Do you expect me to join one of the little Evolved revolutions running around this city out of the goodness of my heart? Do you think I'm afraid of the government like most of you are?" Alex snickers at the idea, then grabs another one of those little drill pieces and starts trying to attach it to his current ball, against some sort of spring mechanism. "Or maybe empathy for my 'fellow man'? I don't care what happens to the Evolved, once I solidify a position for myself and work out some sort of deal with the government, I'll have some nice resources for myself, and my freedom. Who gives a flying shit what happens to the rest of you?"

He doesn't seem very ashamed of his view on the whole situation, and still seems largely more concerned with his machine than anything else. "I can ensure the protection of anyone who matters, but everyone else has to pay the price, and that includes you. I get what I want, and I do what I'm asked. You've offered me nothing."

"And yet I have everything that I need from you, Alex."

The shadows slither in a brief mottling across the floor, and then are unseen once more.

"You do realize he's probably going to kill you now?" comes from the imaginary voice of Mortimer sitting on the bench.

"You should have split him in half when you had the chance." says the imaginary figure of Jack, grinning widely on the other side of the bench.

"You both worry too much. Those terrorists will blow themselves up before they start thinking about me. Besides, I have robots." Alex is very dismissive of the whole thing, but even his other halves have no idea what he's thinking. Instead of acknowledging them any further, he goes right back into his work.

Not too long after, somewhere not too near but not too far, Richard Cardinal speaks quietly into a cellular phone. "Raith, we have a problem… it's about Liette."


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