Teddy & Tessa | Backdated to Sept 27
Sep. 27th, 2017 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainTeddy and Tessa meet in the library. Teddy is awkward, Tessa is patient, and a conversation gets deep.
Teddy liked being around people - he honestly did, especially when the vibe at Xavier's was so different from the way things had been at Gracechurch. Especially toward the end. Even so, there were still times when he needed to get away, find something a little lower-key than shooting hoops in the afternoon sun, or hanging out in the lounge trash-talking the Mario Kart crowd.
He hadn't pulled his sketchbook out of the bookshelf since he'd moved in, not for any length of time, and the guilt plus his urge to find something on the quieter side to do led him to the library this time, the book under his arm and a handful of sharpened pencils tucked in the thigh pocket of his pants. It wasn't as good as the train station for people watching, but at least he could guarantee no basketballs being bounced off his head while he doodled.
The library was emptier than he'd expected, but one of the computers was occupied. One of the other students, a tall, slim girl with short dark hair, was concentrating on her work and didn't seem to have noticed him. There was something interesting about her face, maybe the way the light hit it, or the line of her jaw. Something new.
Teddy settled himself down at a table partway across the room, and flipped the book to a clean page. Some basic figure sketches might get him back in the groove. A few quick and steady lines blocked out the shapes of the tables, the bookshelves in behind, a couple of sinuous curves to start the human shape in the center.
As had become fairly typical of her routine since learning the basics of personal computers and the internet from Kitty, Tessa's had elected to spend the leisure time she presently enjoyed working in the library. Streams of raw code threaded down the screen across multiple windows on the monitor before her, casting her olive skin in a peculiar, flickering light. Her slender fingertips darted from key to key in a regular, comforting staccato.
Still, despite the abundance of information now under her consideration, a portion of her multifaceted consciousness remained keyed to her environment--a necessary investment of attention, learned in another part of the world in an entirely different lifetime. As a result, she was aware of the comings and goings of her fellow students; when they entered, which volumes they elected to check out or simply browse through idly as they passed, and when they left again. Few lingered long. As public spaces in the Institute went, the library was typically quite private. She suspected that might change, when classes began in earnest.
One of the minds she detected, the faces she had glimpsed, seemed to have settled for an unusually protracted period, however. That was a curiosity of sufficient interest to draw a greater portion of the cyberpath's attention. When she looked toward him, she noted with a certain, reserved interest his posture, bent over a large notebook and scribbling intently into it with a pencil. The movements could not have indicated writing--at least, not in any of the half-dozen languages with which Tessa was familiar.
Her inquisitive nature thus provoked, she rose quietly from her chair and crossed the library, standing behind the other student in silence for a few moments and peering intently over his shoulder.
By the time Teddy was past construction lines and into filling out volume and shading, he was feeling a lot better about the whole attempt. The room was obviously not his focus in the sketch, basic cross-hatching and shadow standing in for detail on the furniture and walls. The girl, though -- he'd captured her pose pretty well, at least by his own judgement: the preternatural stillness with which she had been focusing on the screen, the precision in her posture, her fingers hovering over the keyboard partway through the act of typing. Maybe she was a dancer. Dancers had that same kind of perfect awareness of where their body was in space.
Teddy glanced up at her to catch another look, to get another sense of the way the light had been flickering across her face- but she wasn't there. He'd been so turned inward and focused that he hadn't even seen her leave. Which was the moment he caught her in his peripheral vision and just about came out of his own skin. "Jesus!" She was right behind him, peering over his shoulder at the sketch, and Teddy flushed red. Busted.
"Tessa," she corrected, in one of her rare displays of humor. It was likely to go unnoticed, as neither her inflection nor her features betrayed anything other than absolute seriousness. Her eyes flickered from the face of the blushing boy back to the sketch he had been working on where it now lay discarded, studying it in detail. "I apologize for startling you," Tessa continued at last. "However, I was curious. It is a very accurate likeness. You appear to have a talent for this activity." One that would still require some polishing before he could be accurately described as an expert, but his level of skill warranted positive comment, nevertheless.
"Oh. Um. Thank you," Teddy replied, half-consciously pulling the flush away from his cheeks. "I hope you don't mind that I was sketching you." She didn't look offended, but he still should probably have asked first. It was a lot less anonymous than doing thirty-second contours of old ladies and their shopping bags on the A-train. "You've got great lines - the way you were sitting, I mean. For a character study." She was utterly inscrutable as she watched him, and he stopped talking before he could say anything too dumb.
"I do not mind," she told him with a curt shake of her head. "Indeed, it is mildly flattering." Tessa studied his face--the fading blush of his cheeks, the abrupt halt of his words, the roiling self-consciousness of his surface thoughts. "I am a telepath," she said abruptly. "One used to a much more rustic mode of life. There is very little you could say, or think, that would cause me offense."
A telepath? Teddy's immediate reaction was worry over what she was picking up from him -- shit, he had so many things he didn't want anyone knowing. But then she must get that an awful lot from just about everyone she met. It would be terrible and probably not a little bit lonely to always be feeling that sudden wave of panic and mistrust right into your brain where you couldn't escape from it. He tried to settle his worry, in case it was making her uncomfortable.
"That's good to know," he tried again, this time much calmer. "Because I'm pretty good at sticking my foot in my mouth, especially when I'm trying not to." His smile quirked up, directed mostly at himself, and he set his sketchbook on the table, his posture unfolding to be a little more open, angled toward her. "Tessa?" he asked, just to confirm what he was pretty sure he'd heard. "I'm Teddy. Altman. And I'm glad you think it's-" (mildly? hunh.) "flattering. There's no art class on the timetable, so I'm trying to keep my hand in. As much as I can, anyway."
"Indeed," she replied cryptically, giving no indication his recent mental conflict had even registered with her Tessa cast her dark eyes upon the notebook, considering. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Teddy And your skills are not without merit; it would be a shame not to pursue them. If it would not be excessively forward, might I have that piece, or one like it? I have never had the opportunity to see myself as an object of study, and my living space is presently void of any meaningful decoration."
Teddy glanced down at the sketchbook again, his surprise clear, and every single mistake and scribbled-in line that he hadn't even considered worrying about a couple of minutes ago became glaring errors jumping off the page. "This? You don't want to put this up. It's just a warm-up sketch," he objected. "Not that I'm not flattered, obviously. But I can do better." I think. Of course, he could always- "If you're serious, and not just saying that, then I could do another one. More carefully."
The way she spoke was interesting, and he caught himself studying her face again. It didn't sound like a language barrier thing; her vocabulary was way more advanced than most. Maybe she was an android. That would be cool. But could androids be telepaths?
"I am almost always serious," she told him. "And I never speak merely for the sake of it. Precision is my overarching objective in all social interaction." Tessa watched Teddy watching her, one brow rising in detached curiosity, but she did not explicitly question it. Such interest was not atypical when initiating a conversation with a recent stranger, in her experience. And it was possible that he might be studying the details of her features for his proposed second attempt at capturing her likeness.
"If your preference is to produce another sketch, then I would not object to making myself available. Provided it would not inconvenience you unduly to re-create entirely a work you have almost finished."
"It wouldn't, not at all. I'd actually prefer it, if you're sure you'd like to model. Otherwise I'd just be noticing all the mistakes every time I saw it up." He was growing a little more comfortable with her forthrightness as the conversation continued, and he gave up the fight against his own nosiness. "When you say that precision is your objective - that's a very clinical sort of way to approach conversation, isn't it?"
She nodded, not remotely ruffled by the question; the assessment was not inaccurate, after all. "It is in my nature to evaluate each of my particular experiences clinically, with an emphasis on reason and utility. These traits tend to be reflected in my efforts at social interaction." Tessa considered, and added, "I can, I think, imitate the vernacular typical to our peer group with an acceptable verisimilitude, but it would add an element of duplicity to those interactions. I prefer to be as honest as rationally possible, when dealing with the other students here."
"I can see how that would make things easier but doesn't leave a lot of room for having fun with language, does it?" Teddy mused aloud. Hell, half his sense of humour depended on bad puns and nested references.
"It does not," Tessa agreed. "But my sense of humor is only rudimentary, at present. I am working to develop it with those I consider friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, but at present it seems to emphasize my usual tendencies rather than deviate from them."
He paused for a beat, realization kicking in, then he laughed. "You got me with that earlier, didn't you? Nice one. See, I bet you'd be deadly at word games and pun runs. Your deadpan is amazing."
"Thank you," she said, inclining her head with a small smile. The expression soon receded into impassivity again, however, and she gave Teddy a thoughtful look. "The praise is appreciated, of course, but I am not familiar with a 'pun run'. If you would explain, I would be most grateful."
"It's like-" he hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain running gags and cascades and all the ridiculous goofiness that came with bouncing off of someone else's jokes. Imagine you're trying to explain it to Commander Data. That idea kind of helped.
"Competitive wordplay," he tried that on and decided that it fit. "Usually spontaneous. One person starts by making a comment on something shared, and then someone else twists the words to make a joke, and then another person riffs off of that one again, and the end goal is to make a pun so bad that no-one can think of anything worse. Or - oh, I've got one."
Teddy pulled his legs up under hims to sit cross-legged in the chair, facing Tessa properly. "A correction chain. The goal is to keep the wrong answers going as long as possible without repeats. Like, I'd ask something innocuous. 'My mom's friend is starting an alpaca farm. What's an alpaca?"
"Say you wanted to tease me, instead of answering properly, you might say 'it's a city in Mexico.' Then someone else in the group would say 'No, no, that's Acapulco. He's talking about when your choir performs without instruments.' And then the reply to that would be 'no, that's acapella. He means Jane Fonda's character from the movie of the same name-' Except that's actually Barbarella," Teddy closed sheepishly, suddenly aware of how much he'd rambled on. "The more obscure references and linguistic similarities from one answer to the next, the better."
Despite not immediately understanding the appeal of such an exercise, Tessa appeared obviously interested in Teddy's explanation. "He means the Holy Roman Emperor who died in 1190," she ventured. "No, that's Barbarossa. In that vein? It seems that such a give-and-take would be much simpler in an online forum than as a face-to-face exchange."
"Yeah! you get it." And he shrugged at her follow-up question. "I guess. I used to play it with my mom on car trips. She's a realtor and she could always nail me with architecture terms."
"I see." Tessa could not relate to the experience in anything but the most abstract way, but filed the game away as a bonding-exercise Teddy had once performed with his mother. Such details were not without potential future usefulness. "I find our peer group strangely preoccupied with games of all kinds, whether on the computer, one of the consoles in the rec room, or set up on a board between two or more players. I have very little experience with such things, and have not assigned a very high priority to addressing that lack of familiarity. Perhaps I should reconsider, if I am to assimilate smoothly."
"Games are fun," Teddy shrugged, not really sure what else to say about it. "Board games are a good way to hang out with people, if that's what you're looking for... The only ones I've seen in the lounge are the old ones, though. Chess and parcheesi and stuff. If you really want to know what someone's like under stress, you want to go for something like Space Alert. Or Uno." He grinned brightly at that one. "Uno is where friendship goes to die."
"I admit, I have a passing curiosity regarding games of strategy," Tessa acknowledged. "And it does seem a good opportunity for passing one's leisure time with companionable recreation. I will attempt to set aside some time for it, in the future." She regarded Teddy gravely. "And I will remember your advice regarding the dire consequences of Uno." She did not have many friends, after all, and it would have been regrettable to lose one to a dispute over an idle pastime.
Now he wasn't sure if she was teasing him again or not, so skipping that part of the conversation seemed like a better bet. "If you're ever looking for an extra player for something, let me know. I'm usually up for gaming if it's on offer."
"I will keep that in mind." Nothing in her tone or expression suggested she was anything but deadly serious.
Was that a brush-off? Maybe, maybe not. The only way he'd ever know, he suspected, was if an invitation ever came. "Can I ask you a question?" Teddy replied impulsively. "The way you speak, your interest in precision and assimilation - has that got something to do with your telepathy? It's just that I've never met anyone quite like you."
"In a very particular sense, I suppose," she said. "Principally, my mutation deals with information processing and storage. My telepathy--which is quite minor, compared to some--is more of an adjunct to that primary attribute. Just another means of taking in data and experiencing the world. It also facilitates my interfacing with genetic structures."
He was doing alright up until the end of that. Teddy cocked his head, his brow furrowing. "Your which with the what, now?"
"Genes are the biological mechanism for storing and transmitting information," she explained. "With the application of telepathy, I can read these structures and ascertain a given individual's genetic potential."
"Reading chromosomes like computer files? That's really neat. It's Simon who has a similar power, right?" Teddy knew a little bit about that from Billy, and of course from Simon's forum post, but other than the general buzz around the situation and Billy going on about spirit twins, he was mildly fuzzy on the details. "Between the two of you, you could be curing cancer by the end of the decade." See, now that was the kind of thing powers should be used for. Helping people. What could shapeshifting do compared to something like curing all congenital disease?
"Precisely like that, yes," Tessa affirmed with a reserved nod. "As to the rest, I suppose that is one potential application of our abilities. Whether others would welcome such intervention is another question entirely. Many of the other students become anxious when they learn of the telepathic aspects of my gifts. Is it reasonable, therefore, not to assume baseline humans will have an even more extreme reaction? Assistance is difficult to render where trust is absent."
That was a sobering and entirely true thought. Teddy pulled his knee up against his chest and sank his chin down onto it. "And if they stay afraid of us, they'll never trust us." Images of Tamara's video and the footage of the protest flashed behind his eyes and he felt that same faint twist of worry and discomfort in his gut. "I guess that's where things like Warren's superheroing would come into play -- showing them that our powers can be helpful instead of scary."
"That is one potential means of achieving our objective," she said. "But any approach will require a considerable investment of time. The majority have legitimate cause for fear, and no single act will assuage it."
Teddy looked for any signs that she was winding him up again, but honestly, who could tell? "There's a positive thought," he replied glumly. "Still, lots of little acts can add up to big things eventually, right?"
"Eventually," she agreed. "If we are to achieve victory, it will be incrementally, with good will and trust won over time. There is no single decisive path. At least, not one that allows us to remain faithful to our ethics."
He digested that for a moment, then raised his head. "And what are your ethics, in this case?"
It was a direct question, to-the-point, and it deserved an equally direct answer. "There are means at our disposal that could artificially shift public opinion in our favor. The Professor, and now Jean, are both strong enough to sway the minds of those in power to support us, whatever their personal opinions might be. I lack their psionic influence, but my ability to parse and manipulate conventional forms of media should not be underestimated--I could conceivably shift the flow of information along paths more favorable to our cause, whether the facts would support such a modification or not. Or I could simply remove those who pose the most vocal obstacle to our advancement." It went without saying she could do so in such a way that mutants would be the last to be implicated, in such an event.
She shrugged. "We have made choices. I have made choices. It is the harder path, but also the more certain. A lie must be maintained, must be supported over and over again. But the truth supports itself."
It took him a second to work out what she was actually saying -- that if they wanted to, even the few mutants Xavier had already gathered could essentially wipe the slate clean and start their own mutant utopia without blinking -- and that was supremely chilling. That she followed that up with a confirmation that she had no intention of doing so was slightly more comforting.
So Teddy nodded, sobered by the easy admission of the kind of power already at hand to those who wanted to tap into it. "But there's no guarantee that anyone else outside these walls is going to play by the same rules. Doesn't that frighten you?"
Tessa's shoulders rose and fell in a gesture of indifference. "Fear is merely a failure in logic. There are only the facts, and how we choose to act in response to those facts. Yes, there are certainly mutants now at large in the world--influential humans, too--who will actively work to thwart peaceful coexistence. They may even seek to ignite a war between the species. We will monitor events and respond with appropriate force where and when necessary. This is part of the reason training is important, to those who wish to take an active role in shaping the future."
Teddy shivered at the word 'war,' but it was the natural extension of what he'd already suggested. "My dad was in the Army," he said, his thoughts turning inward. "I never knew him -- he died before I was born -- but from the things Mom's told me about him, I think he'd say the same sort of thing. About appropriate force, I mean. But to protect those who can't protect themselves, not to start a war."
Despite possessing no small firsthand experience with U.S. servicemen, Tessa declined to comment on the topic of Teddy's absent father. As a role model, he was more useful as an ideal; the realities of life in an active conflict zone could only tarnish such an image. Besides, it was not impossible the other teen's assessment was not entirely baseless. Perhaps. "War would be a sub-optimal outcome," she agreed instead. "A policy of containment and targeted, surgical action serves our objectives better. Particularly if paired with humanitarian efforts and selective acts of public service."
"Yeah, I think I'm more interested in the second half of that list." Teddy shook off the weird moment of not-really-memory and dropped his feet back to the floor. "I'm sorry -- I've been pestering you with questions when you were here to get work done."
She tilted her head inquisitively. "If your questions were an impediment to my work, I would have told you as much immediately. You are not 'pestering' me in any way. Indeed, I think this an equally productive use of my time. But if you wish to withdraw, I will not keep you."
Teddy blinked, then a smile appeared on his face, surprised and somewhat more heartfelt than his shyer, more careful grins from before. This isn't Gracechurch. I'm not the school pariah anymore. It was harder to remember than it should have been, so easy to fall back into old habits of making himself small.
"You have a way of making 'equally productive' sound like a major compliment. No, I'm good. I don't have anywhere else to be. Though if you don't mind-" Teddy reached for his sketchbook and flipped to a clean page, after the page full of awful doodles of Billy that never even got close to conveying his vitality. "I can draw while we talk, and I'd like to try another sketch. I think I can capture you a little better now."
"If you think so," Tessa said, smiling faintly. "Then by all means."
Teddy liked being around people - he honestly did, especially when the vibe at Xavier's was so different from the way things had been at Gracechurch. Especially toward the end. Even so, there were still times when he needed to get away, find something a little lower-key than shooting hoops in the afternoon sun, or hanging out in the lounge trash-talking the Mario Kart crowd.
He hadn't pulled his sketchbook out of the bookshelf since he'd moved in, not for any length of time, and the guilt plus his urge to find something on the quieter side to do led him to the library this time, the book under his arm and a handful of sharpened pencils tucked in the thigh pocket of his pants. It wasn't as good as the train station for people watching, but at least he could guarantee no basketballs being bounced off his head while he doodled.
The library was emptier than he'd expected, but one of the computers was occupied. One of the other students, a tall, slim girl with short dark hair, was concentrating on her work and didn't seem to have noticed him. There was something interesting about her face, maybe the way the light hit it, or the line of her jaw. Something new.
Teddy settled himself down at a table partway across the room, and flipped the book to a clean page. Some basic figure sketches might get him back in the groove. A few quick and steady lines blocked out the shapes of the tables, the bookshelves in behind, a couple of sinuous curves to start the human shape in the center.
As had become fairly typical of her routine since learning the basics of personal computers and the internet from Kitty, Tessa's had elected to spend the leisure time she presently enjoyed working in the library. Streams of raw code threaded down the screen across multiple windows on the monitor before her, casting her olive skin in a peculiar, flickering light. Her slender fingertips darted from key to key in a regular, comforting staccato.
Still, despite the abundance of information now under her consideration, a portion of her multifaceted consciousness remained keyed to her environment--a necessary investment of attention, learned in another part of the world in an entirely different lifetime. As a result, she was aware of the comings and goings of her fellow students; when they entered, which volumes they elected to check out or simply browse through idly as they passed, and when they left again. Few lingered long. As public spaces in the Institute went, the library was typically quite private. She suspected that might change, when classes began in earnest.
One of the minds she detected, the faces she had glimpsed, seemed to have settled for an unusually protracted period, however. That was a curiosity of sufficient interest to draw a greater portion of the cyberpath's attention. When she looked toward him, she noted with a certain, reserved interest his posture, bent over a large notebook and scribbling intently into it with a pencil. The movements could not have indicated writing--at least, not in any of the half-dozen languages with which Tessa was familiar.
Her inquisitive nature thus provoked, she rose quietly from her chair and crossed the library, standing behind the other student in silence for a few moments and peering intently over his shoulder.
By the time Teddy was past construction lines and into filling out volume and shading, he was feeling a lot better about the whole attempt. The room was obviously not his focus in the sketch, basic cross-hatching and shadow standing in for detail on the furniture and walls. The girl, though -- he'd captured her pose pretty well, at least by his own judgement: the preternatural stillness with which she had been focusing on the screen, the precision in her posture, her fingers hovering over the keyboard partway through the act of typing. Maybe she was a dancer. Dancers had that same kind of perfect awareness of where their body was in space.
Teddy glanced up at her to catch another look, to get another sense of the way the light had been flickering across her face- but she wasn't there. He'd been so turned inward and focused that he hadn't even seen her leave. Which was the moment he caught her in his peripheral vision and just about came out of his own skin. "Jesus!" She was right behind him, peering over his shoulder at the sketch, and Teddy flushed red. Busted.
"Tessa," she corrected, in one of her rare displays of humor. It was likely to go unnoticed, as neither her inflection nor her features betrayed anything other than absolute seriousness. Her eyes flickered from the face of the blushing boy back to the sketch he had been working on where it now lay discarded, studying it in detail. "I apologize for startling you," Tessa continued at last. "However, I was curious. It is a very accurate likeness. You appear to have a talent for this activity." One that would still require some polishing before he could be accurately described as an expert, but his level of skill warranted positive comment, nevertheless.
"Oh. Um. Thank you," Teddy replied, half-consciously pulling the flush away from his cheeks. "I hope you don't mind that I was sketching you." She didn't look offended, but he still should probably have asked first. It was a lot less anonymous than doing thirty-second contours of old ladies and their shopping bags on the A-train. "You've got great lines - the way you were sitting, I mean. For a character study." She was utterly inscrutable as she watched him, and he stopped talking before he could say anything too dumb.
"I do not mind," she told him with a curt shake of her head. "Indeed, it is mildly flattering." Tessa studied his face--the fading blush of his cheeks, the abrupt halt of his words, the roiling self-consciousness of his surface thoughts. "I am a telepath," she said abruptly. "One used to a much more rustic mode of life. There is very little you could say, or think, that would cause me offense."
A telepath? Teddy's immediate reaction was worry over what she was picking up from him -- shit, he had so many things he didn't want anyone knowing. But then she must get that an awful lot from just about everyone she met. It would be terrible and probably not a little bit lonely to always be feeling that sudden wave of panic and mistrust right into your brain where you couldn't escape from it. He tried to settle his worry, in case it was making her uncomfortable.
"That's good to know," he tried again, this time much calmer. "Because I'm pretty good at sticking my foot in my mouth, especially when I'm trying not to." His smile quirked up, directed mostly at himself, and he set his sketchbook on the table, his posture unfolding to be a little more open, angled toward her. "Tessa?" he asked, just to confirm what he was pretty sure he'd heard. "I'm Teddy. Altman. And I'm glad you think it's-" (mildly? hunh.) "flattering. There's no art class on the timetable, so I'm trying to keep my hand in. As much as I can, anyway."
"Indeed," she replied cryptically, giving no indication his recent mental conflict had even registered with her Tessa cast her dark eyes upon the notebook, considering. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Teddy And your skills are not without merit; it would be a shame not to pursue them. If it would not be excessively forward, might I have that piece, or one like it? I have never had the opportunity to see myself as an object of study, and my living space is presently void of any meaningful decoration."
Teddy glanced down at the sketchbook again, his surprise clear, and every single mistake and scribbled-in line that he hadn't even considered worrying about a couple of minutes ago became glaring errors jumping off the page. "This? You don't want to put this up. It's just a warm-up sketch," he objected. "Not that I'm not flattered, obviously. But I can do better." I think. Of course, he could always- "If you're serious, and not just saying that, then I could do another one. More carefully."
The way she spoke was interesting, and he caught himself studying her face again. It didn't sound like a language barrier thing; her vocabulary was way more advanced than most. Maybe she was an android. That would be cool. But could androids be telepaths?
"I am almost always serious," she told him. "And I never speak merely for the sake of it. Precision is my overarching objective in all social interaction." Tessa watched Teddy watching her, one brow rising in detached curiosity, but she did not explicitly question it. Such interest was not atypical when initiating a conversation with a recent stranger, in her experience. And it was possible that he might be studying the details of her features for his proposed second attempt at capturing her likeness.
"If your preference is to produce another sketch, then I would not object to making myself available. Provided it would not inconvenience you unduly to re-create entirely a work you have almost finished."
"It wouldn't, not at all. I'd actually prefer it, if you're sure you'd like to model. Otherwise I'd just be noticing all the mistakes every time I saw it up." He was growing a little more comfortable with her forthrightness as the conversation continued, and he gave up the fight against his own nosiness. "When you say that precision is your objective - that's a very clinical sort of way to approach conversation, isn't it?"
She nodded, not remotely ruffled by the question; the assessment was not inaccurate, after all. "It is in my nature to evaluate each of my particular experiences clinically, with an emphasis on reason and utility. These traits tend to be reflected in my efforts at social interaction." Tessa considered, and added, "I can, I think, imitate the vernacular typical to our peer group with an acceptable verisimilitude, but it would add an element of duplicity to those interactions. I prefer to be as honest as rationally possible, when dealing with the other students here."
"I can see how that would make things easier but doesn't leave a lot of room for having fun with language, does it?" Teddy mused aloud. Hell, half his sense of humour depended on bad puns and nested references.
"It does not," Tessa agreed. "But my sense of humor is only rudimentary, at present. I am working to develop it with those I consider friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, but at present it seems to emphasize my usual tendencies rather than deviate from them."
He paused for a beat, realization kicking in, then he laughed. "You got me with that earlier, didn't you? Nice one. See, I bet you'd be deadly at word games and pun runs. Your deadpan is amazing."
"Thank you," she said, inclining her head with a small smile. The expression soon receded into impassivity again, however, and she gave Teddy a thoughtful look. "The praise is appreciated, of course, but I am not familiar with a 'pun run'. If you would explain, I would be most grateful."
"It's like-" he hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain running gags and cascades and all the ridiculous goofiness that came with bouncing off of someone else's jokes. Imagine you're trying to explain it to Commander Data. That idea kind of helped.
"Competitive wordplay," he tried that on and decided that it fit. "Usually spontaneous. One person starts by making a comment on something shared, and then someone else twists the words to make a joke, and then another person riffs off of that one again, and the end goal is to make a pun so bad that no-one can think of anything worse. Or - oh, I've got one."
Teddy pulled his legs up under hims to sit cross-legged in the chair, facing Tessa properly. "A correction chain. The goal is to keep the wrong answers going as long as possible without repeats. Like, I'd ask something innocuous. 'My mom's friend is starting an alpaca farm. What's an alpaca?"
"Say you wanted to tease me, instead of answering properly, you might say 'it's a city in Mexico.' Then someone else in the group would say 'No, no, that's Acapulco. He's talking about when your choir performs without instruments.' And then the reply to that would be 'no, that's acapella. He means Jane Fonda's character from the movie of the same name-' Except that's actually Barbarella," Teddy closed sheepishly, suddenly aware of how much he'd rambled on. "The more obscure references and linguistic similarities from one answer to the next, the better."
Despite not immediately understanding the appeal of such an exercise, Tessa appeared obviously interested in Teddy's explanation. "He means the Holy Roman Emperor who died in 1190," she ventured. "No, that's Barbarossa. In that vein? It seems that such a give-and-take would be much simpler in an online forum than as a face-to-face exchange."
"Yeah! you get it." And he shrugged at her follow-up question. "I guess. I used to play it with my mom on car trips. She's a realtor and she could always nail me with architecture terms."
"I see." Tessa could not relate to the experience in anything but the most abstract way, but filed the game away as a bonding-exercise Teddy had once performed with his mother. Such details were not without potential future usefulness. "I find our peer group strangely preoccupied with games of all kinds, whether on the computer, one of the consoles in the rec room, or set up on a board between two or more players. I have very little experience with such things, and have not assigned a very high priority to addressing that lack of familiarity. Perhaps I should reconsider, if I am to assimilate smoothly."
"Games are fun," Teddy shrugged, not really sure what else to say about it. "Board games are a good way to hang out with people, if that's what you're looking for... The only ones I've seen in the lounge are the old ones, though. Chess and parcheesi and stuff. If you really want to know what someone's like under stress, you want to go for something like Space Alert. Or Uno." He grinned brightly at that one. "Uno is where friendship goes to die."
"I admit, I have a passing curiosity regarding games of strategy," Tessa acknowledged. "And it does seem a good opportunity for passing one's leisure time with companionable recreation. I will attempt to set aside some time for it, in the future." She regarded Teddy gravely. "And I will remember your advice regarding the dire consequences of Uno." She did not have many friends, after all, and it would have been regrettable to lose one to a dispute over an idle pastime.
Now he wasn't sure if she was teasing him again or not, so skipping that part of the conversation seemed like a better bet. "If you're ever looking for an extra player for something, let me know. I'm usually up for gaming if it's on offer."
"I will keep that in mind." Nothing in her tone or expression suggested she was anything but deadly serious.
Was that a brush-off? Maybe, maybe not. The only way he'd ever know, he suspected, was if an invitation ever came. "Can I ask you a question?" Teddy replied impulsively. "The way you speak, your interest in precision and assimilation - has that got something to do with your telepathy? It's just that I've never met anyone quite like you."
"In a very particular sense, I suppose," she said. "Principally, my mutation deals with information processing and storage. My telepathy--which is quite minor, compared to some--is more of an adjunct to that primary attribute. Just another means of taking in data and experiencing the world. It also facilitates my interfacing with genetic structures."
He was doing alright up until the end of that. Teddy cocked his head, his brow furrowing. "Your which with the what, now?"
"Genes are the biological mechanism for storing and transmitting information," she explained. "With the application of telepathy, I can read these structures and ascertain a given individual's genetic potential."
"Reading chromosomes like computer files? That's really neat. It's Simon who has a similar power, right?" Teddy knew a little bit about that from Billy, and of course from Simon's forum post, but other than the general buzz around the situation and Billy going on about spirit twins, he was mildly fuzzy on the details. "Between the two of you, you could be curing cancer by the end of the decade." See, now that was the kind of thing powers should be used for. Helping people. What could shapeshifting do compared to something like curing all congenital disease?
"Precisely like that, yes," Tessa affirmed with a reserved nod. "As to the rest, I suppose that is one potential application of our abilities. Whether others would welcome such intervention is another question entirely. Many of the other students become anxious when they learn of the telepathic aspects of my gifts. Is it reasonable, therefore, not to assume baseline humans will have an even more extreme reaction? Assistance is difficult to render where trust is absent."
That was a sobering and entirely true thought. Teddy pulled his knee up against his chest and sank his chin down onto it. "And if they stay afraid of us, they'll never trust us." Images of Tamara's video and the footage of the protest flashed behind his eyes and he felt that same faint twist of worry and discomfort in his gut. "I guess that's where things like Warren's superheroing would come into play -- showing them that our powers can be helpful instead of scary."
"That is one potential means of achieving our objective," she said. "But any approach will require a considerable investment of time. The majority have legitimate cause for fear, and no single act will assuage it."
Teddy looked for any signs that she was winding him up again, but honestly, who could tell? "There's a positive thought," he replied glumly. "Still, lots of little acts can add up to big things eventually, right?"
"Eventually," she agreed. "If we are to achieve victory, it will be incrementally, with good will and trust won over time. There is no single decisive path. At least, not one that allows us to remain faithful to our ethics."
He digested that for a moment, then raised his head. "And what are your ethics, in this case?"
It was a direct question, to-the-point, and it deserved an equally direct answer. "There are means at our disposal that could artificially shift public opinion in our favor. The Professor, and now Jean, are both strong enough to sway the minds of those in power to support us, whatever their personal opinions might be. I lack their psionic influence, but my ability to parse and manipulate conventional forms of media should not be underestimated--I could conceivably shift the flow of information along paths more favorable to our cause, whether the facts would support such a modification or not. Or I could simply remove those who pose the most vocal obstacle to our advancement." It went without saying she could do so in such a way that mutants would be the last to be implicated, in such an event.
She shrugged. "We have made choices. I have made choices. It is the harder path, but also the more certain. A lie must be maintained, must be supported over and over again. But the truth supports itself."
It took him a second to work out what she was actually saying -- that if they wanted to, even the few mutants Xavier had already gathered could essentially wipe the slate clean and start their own mutant utopia without blinking -- and that was supremely chilling. That she followed that up with a confirmation that she had no intention of doing so was slightly more comforting.
So Teddy nodded, sobered by the easy admission of the kind of power already at hand to those who wanted to tap into it. "But there's no guarantee that anyone else outside these walls is going to play by the same rules. Doesn't that frighten you?"
Tessa's shoulders rose and fell in a gesture of indifference. "Fear is merely a failure in logic. There are only the facts, and how we choose to act in response to those facts. Yes, there are certainly mutants now at large in the world--influential humans, too--who will actively work to thwart peaceful coexistence. They may even seek to ignite a war between the species. We will monitor events and respond with appropriate force where and when necessary. This is part of the reason training is important, to those who wish to take an active role in shaping the future."
Teddy shivered at the word 'war,' but it was the natural extension of what he'd already suggested. "My dad was in the Army," he said, his thoughts turning inward. "I never knew him -- he died before I was born -- but from the things Mom's told me about him, I think he'd say the same sort of thing. About appropriate force, I mean. But to protect those who can't protect themselves, not to start a war."
Despite possessing no small firsthand experience with U.S. servicemen, Tessa declined to comment on the topic of Teddy's absent father. As a role model, he was more useful as an ideal; the realities of life in an active conflict zone could only tarnish such an image. Besides, it was not impossible the other teen's assessment was not entirely baseless. Perhaps. "War would be a sub-optimal outcome," she agreed instead. "A policy of containment and targeted, surgical action serves our objectives better. Particularly if paired with humanitarian efforts and selective acts of public service."
"Yeah, I think I'm more interested in the second half of that list." Teddy shook off the weird moment of not-really-memory and dropped his feet back to the floor. "I'm sorry -- I've been pestering you with questions when you were here to get work done."
She tilted her head inquisitively. "If your questions were an impediment to my work, I would have told you as much immediately. You are not 'pestering' me in any way. Indeed, I think this an equally productive use of my time. But if you wish to withdraw, I will not keep you."
Teddy blinked, then a smile appeared on his face, surprised and somewhat more heartfelt than his shyer, more careful grins from before. This isn't Gracechurch. I'm not the school pariah anymore. It was harder to remember than it should have been, so easy to fall back into old habits of making himself small.
"You have a way of making 'equally productive' sound like a major compliment. No, I'm good. I don't have anywhere else to be. Though if you don't mind-" Teddy reached for his sketchbook and flipped to a clean page, after the page full of awful doodles of Billy that never even got close to conveying his vitality. "I can draw while we talk, and I'd like to try another sketch. I think I can capture you a little better now."
"If you think so," Tessa said, smiling faintly. "Then by all means."
