Scuttle Buttin'
Demons at bay
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2003
- Posts
- 15,881
Subject 9 is ready.
The note was written in a precise hand at the end of a series of ordered paragraphs, all written in the same careful script. For Adin Hunter, there really was no other way to write. His handwriting was virtually indistinguishable from that of millions of others, devoid of extra loops or curls, as was much of the rest of him. He was long and lean, with dark hair and limbs that seemed almost as if they'd been stretched to be longer. His fingers, as well, were long and graceful, though they had little to do with the look of his writing. He simply wrote as virtually everyone else did.
For three years he'd watched Subject 9, given name Inika Cole, looking for signs that she was a Creative. Copious notes had been taken on her movements, her interests, the way she dressed, the way she wore her hair, and virtually every other facet of her personality that was observable. It had taken up 43 rectangular black notebooks, which were lined up in chronological order and filling a shelf and a half in Adin's laboratory. Four more notebooks sat next to those, grey in color instead of black, and they contained his observations from the few times he'd made contact with her over the years. These instances were rare, brief, and stretched out to minimize the risk he was recognized, but they were a necessary risk in order to judge whether or not she was truly a Creative.
It was a bit of irony that notes on Creatives were made with pen and paper, given that the invasion of technology into every corner of human life is what made the Project necessary in the first place. The more that work, calculation, thinking, and creating was given over to computers, the more it was phased out of the sapien genome. Evolution moved on, as it always does, and it was only thanks to a concerted effort by a small but powerful group of people that any creativity remained in the human mind. But it was rare, and more precious than anything mined from the ground, and often quite imperfect.
More irony presented itself here. Only through the marriage of psychology and the very technology that brought about these circumstances could the Creatives be perfected. Their gifts were like a fine diamond, roughed by a personality that did not allow their full potential to shine. Much like the diamantaires of old, it was the job of a Steward was to change the personality of each Creative until one of optimal operation was found. It was a difficult process, one that involved much testing and refining, and meant the Steward and Creative had to work quite closely together. Creatives often formed an attraction to their Steward that they had no capacity to reciprocate, but thus far no solution to this problem had been found. Failure to find the right personality for a Creative meant death for the Steward, resulting in little hurry in fixing the problem of a Creative's attraction.
While in the Program, a Creative was referred to as a Paper Doll.
The approach was always a delicate process, because while a Creative would care more deeply for their family than the average sapien, becoming a Paper Doll meant leaving that family behind. Creatives were often able to return to their families after leaving the Program, giving them a better life than they could've possibly had on their own. It was this process, the conversation of Subject 9 into Paper Doll I-1417-3902, that Adin must now prepare for.
The black notebook was closed, the pen capped, and he let Subject 9 drift from his site. Contact would come the next day, so there was no longer a necessity to follow her. The pen was placed against the cover of the notebook, where it stuck as if held there by magnetic attraction, and then the notebook was slipped into an inner pocket of the grey, synthetic-fiber jacket he wore. The simple crew neck shirt under it was white, the creased pants that hung to the tops of his black shoes made from the same synthetic, grey fiber as the jacket. He was dressed, with little variation, like everyone else he passed on the way to the transport that would take him back to his lab. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him, the only sounds in the air made by the collective footfalls of the moving mass of humanity, and the machinery that ran their lives.
Behind a mask of blank expression that matched those he passed on the street, Adin Hunter found it all so boring he wanted to scream.
The note was written in a precise hand at the end of a series of ordered paragraphs, all written in the same careful script. For Adin Hunter, there really was no other way to write. His handwriting was virtually indistinguishable from that of millions of others, devoid of extra loops or curls, as was much of the rest of him. He was long and lean, with dark hair and limbs that seemed almost as if they'd been stretched to be longer. His fingers, as well, were long and graceful, though they had little to do with the look of his writing. He simply wrote as virtually everyone else did.
For three years he'd watched Subject 9, given name Inika Cole, looking for signs that she was a Creative. Copious notes had been taken on her movements, her interests, the way she dressed, the way she wore her hair, and virtually every other facet of her personality that was observable. It had taken up 43 rectangular black notebooks, which were lined up in chronological order and filling a shelf and a half in Adin's laboratory. Four more notebooks sat next to those, grey in color instead of black, and they contained his observations from the few times he'd made contact with her over the years. These instances were rare, brief, and stretched out to minimize the risk he was recognized, but they were a necessary risk in order to judge whether or not she was truly a Creative.
It was a bit of irony that notes on Creatives were made with pen and paper, given that the invasion of technology into every corner of human life is what made the Project necessary in the first place. The more that work, calculation, thinking, and creating was given over to computers, the more it was phased out of the sapien genome. Evolution moved on, as it always does, and it was only thanks to a concerted effort by a small but powerful group of people that any creativity remained in the human mind. But it was rare, and more precious than anything mined from the ground, and often quite imperfect.
More irony presented itself here. Only through the marriage of psychology and the very technology that brought about these circumstances could the Creatives be perfected. Their gifts were like a fine diamond, roughed by a personality that did not allow their full potential to shine. Much like the diamantaires of old, it was the job of a Steward was to change the personality of each Creative until one of optimal operation was found. It was a difficult process, one that involved much testing and refining, and meant the Steward and Creative had to work quite closely together. Creatives often formed an attraction to their Steward that they had no capacity to reciprocate, but thus far no solution to this problem had been found. Failure to find the right personality for a Creative meant death for the Steward, resulting in little hurry in fixing the problem of a Creative's attraction.
While in the Program, a Creative was referred to as a Paper Doll.
The approach was always a delicate process, because while a Creative would care more deeply for their family than the average sapien, becoming a Paper Doll meant leaving that family behind. Creatives were often able to return to their families after leaving the Program, giving them a better life than they could've possibly had on their own. It was this process, the conversation of Subject 9 into Paper Doll I-1417-3902, that Adin must now prepare for.
The black notebook was closed, the pen capped, and he let Subject 9 drift from his site. Contact would come the next day, so there was no longer a necessity to follow her. The pen was placed against the cover of the notebook, where it stuck as if held there by magnetic attraction, and then the notebook was slipped into an inner pocket of the grey, synthetic-fiber jacket he wore. The simple crew neck shirt under it was white, the creased pants that hung to the tops of his black shoes made from the same synthetic, grey fiber as the jacket. He was dressed, with little variation, like everyone else he passed on the way to the transport that would take him back to his lab. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him, the only sounds in the air made by the collective footfalls of the moving mass of humanity, and the machinery that ran their lives.
Behind a mask of blank expression that matched those he passed on the street, Adin Hunter found it all so boring he wanted to scream.