Template:Featured Articles/13-2017
"Well, you could follow tradition and just surrender." He finished off his glass and toasted her with the one she'd passed over. "And then spend a decade sneaking around as a spy in the resistance. My great-grandfather, ah, one of them, my papa's grandather, was in a resistance cell. My papa said he never wanted to talk of it, and I never understood why well after I started working at Snow Valley." "Well, half a decade in any case. I used to work with some of the old OSS agents who coordinated resistance responses in Europe." "Why? I mean not to pry but I am going to pry, why are you still at it? You could disappear." Marie-Ange asked, cautiously. "Of all the people who could, you know you could and never be found, and stay out of any conflicts that are going to come up." "So could you. A young women with a pre-cognitive talent. I doubt you need your paycheck here to make ends meet if you point your mind to it. Or is it because, at my age, I should be calling it quits?" "I was curious, I suppose." Marie-Ange said. "It is, yes, a little bit your age but also that I still know very little about who you are. Many people retire after a long career just out of fatigue, so I wondered why you had not." Kevin paused, saying nothing until his drink was refreshed (more liberally than the bartender intended, but the implied threat to find him and cut off his ankles had made his pouring hand a little heavier. "You ever had a moment where to stop and for a second, you forgot yourself? Just for a moment, the identity that you've made for yourself gets hit with a sudden 'why' before things go back to normal?" "Mine was rather longer than a moment. Months in New Orleans. But perhaps yes, I understand." "Well, when I took a bullet through the back of the head watching the water on my dock, it changed everything. For years since then, my brain rebuilt itself through the experience of being dozens of people. Different lives, thoughts, beliefs. Those experiences are meshed why my life before then. So, in a world where I can be anything I want, how do I figure out who I am? Am I at the end of a life or at the beginning. This. Doing this. This at least I know, for now." Marie-Ange nodded. "I can see that. It is, ah, home ground for you, yes? You can do many of the same things even when the world has changed itself around you while you were feeding the fish." "It's a baseline, yes. I know who Kevin Sydney is and what he does. As opposed to letting that slip away." "And now you figure out who the rest of you is, because changing your spots does change the leopard, for you?" "We'll see about that. When you're drowning, you think about getting somewhere solid first, then plan what to do next." |
