Thread: [VforV] A Revolution Without Dancing

Today is my first day at the new facilities. When I indicated alarm at performing the tests on human subjects I was promptly informed that the participants were, every one of them, criminals murderers, rapists, pedophiles, the lowest of the low in the British prison system. I was shocked to see the numbers. Perhaps it??s due to the background I come from, but I did not expect to see so many. Most of them also appear shockingly normal. One of my colleagues expressed disbelief and was subsequently asked to leave the project. The rest of us are keeping our mouths shut. This is much too good of a chance to pass up in questioning the authorities, and these men and women will be able to serve the society they have wronged. Is that so bad? --- Love me love me love me?Say you do Nina Simone crooned softly from the old, reconstructed record player, the vinyl adding a warm static to her voice. The man in black humming along was much too young to have listened to the original thing, but he enjoyed it none-the-less, no matter how off-key he was. Outside of these walls, Ms. Simone had been silent for nearly a decade. In here, among the precarious stacks of books and the low lighting, she had an appreciative audience of exactly one. Let me fly away?With you?For my love is like?The wind? He turned, looking at himself carefully in the mirror while he let the music play without him being fully aware of it. He wasn??t young, wasn??t old. If anyone were to ask not that there was ever anyone around, he??d figure himself to be in his mid thirties. ?sfy this hungriness? Coffee-colored skin of the sort of shade he had vague memories about sipping from too sweet, too milky drinks in too full shops was marred by the whites of scars and burns, though his thin, angular face was mostly smooth. It made him wonder, sometimes, why they spared his face. Perhaps they hadn??t wanted to waste their energy on extra spite. Perhaps it was a means of identification, so he'd match somewhat the picture of the man he came in as. Hazel eyes stared back at him in the mirror, striking against the darker skin. Before putting the mask on, he reached up, tracing the line of his poorly healed nose. The face was always unfamiliar recognizable now after all these years, but he simply couldn??t connect it to himself. One day, he??d find the man it belonged to. Maybe. You...Touch me...I hear the sound? He still looked half starved, no matter how long he had been out of the camp. Some things never changed. The over-wide, haunted eyes and harsh angles would probably never go away. With a sigh, the man pulled on his mask, then looked up again. ?your kiss?My life begins? A bone-white face grinned back at him, eyes wrinkling with mirth over the theatrical blush, the only color now. His lips curled under the mask. Ah. If only he lacked certain ??color?? back in the day, he would have been safe, wouldn??t he? That??s what he figured they brought him in for, since it hadn??t taken much pattern recognition skills to realize everyone in charge was the proper, full-blooded British sort, and their victims, their subjects, weren??t. The radio he left on a timer coughed into activity, weak and old, the noise giving him the time as well as the cost of water coupons, the extra starch coupons this quarter all thanks to their mighty and compassionate government, of course, that they had extra rations this month, news of the weather, all of it vying for his attention under the music. ? creatures?.Of the wind? Along with those old coffee shops, he vaguely remembered a time when people didn??t need water coupons, but that was a whole life time ago. Before the record ended itself, he stood, removing the needle. He felt? Melancholic today, not the feeling he wanted. A poor song choice, then. ??A tragedy, Mr. Aristotle?? he said softly to somewhere out of the warm circle of light he was at the center of, voice hoarse,. Not from disuse he talked to himself often, after all. It was another thing, like the unrecognizable face and the deep eyes that the camp had given him, generous experience that it was. The man turned, taking in himself from the side. His figure, he noted, was even more slender from all the black. He was struck by the urge to rub his short, brown, curly hair, but he thought better of it, reaching, instead, for the long haired wig perched crookedly, almost jauntily on the philosopher??s bust. ??I??m afraid this looks better on me, old chap,? he said, pulling it on and repositioning it in the mirror like an actress getting ready for the stage. However, his mirror had tucked in its frame not notes from well-wishers, but snippets of poems, of chemicals, pictures of his victims and his objectives. ??Not that you can??t have it back when I??m done,? he added conversationally. ??Just need it a few nights, you see. I??ve got a play. Or something like it.? Good. Nothing of him showed. Not that it really ever did. Something similar to fear, but not quite, tightened his stomach. Nervousness, maybe, or the rush of adrenaline. Excitement. Never fear, but something close. Fear, after all, was something they took from him, in return for all they had given. He wanted things to go well, that was sure, and tonight was a difficult night, what with an explosion and an assassination on the itinerary. ??Break a leg,? he muttered to himself before slipping away into the darkness off stage.