Magic Under Construction: SHN Thing
Nov. 15th, 2010 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinStarted:11/15/2010 (10:45 p.m.)
Status:In progress (updated 11/16/2010 12:30 PM)
Word Count: ~1200.
Um, hi.
My name is Claire Clevenger and this is the first week of year zero. The world began yesterday. It ended, too. Or the old one did. I lack the language to really describe what happened, but I'm going to try. I want for there to be a record. Most people have no idea what happened. Even the ones who were involved... well, I mean, the world ended. Everybody was involved with that. Everybody was affected. But those who were there, at ground zero. Those who did it. Those who tried to stop it. Those who undid it, as best as they could. Most of them have forgotten.
When I say "a record"... I'm not writing this down. I'm not crazy. Not that crazy. I'm just thinking this, and trying to make it interesting. You see, I have this theory, about alternate realities... okay, it doesn't fit the most rigorous definition of "theory", but I have this hunch that comes from listening to my moms' ex-girlfriend and her sisters, and from various other things, and my hunches? They're better than most people's theories. They're better than most people's facts.
So I think the odds are pretty good that someone's going to be reading this.
Someone will know, besides me and the few whose senses are able to transcend this reality.
Let me back up and tell you a little bit about myself. I'm not a superhero. I'm not a U.S. citizen. Not technically. I wasn't born on U.S soil. I'm not the child of a citizen. But then I wasn't born anywhere and I'm not the child of anybody, so... yeah. There you go.
That had all crossed my mind more than once. I mean, it crossed it several dozen times in the space of the second that I first learned I was a clone. It might have crossed it a bunch more but there was a lot to take in at that moment. I didn't like dwell on it or anything I mean it popped into my head the way things do sometimes but it was more like an odd abstract thing than anything else. I never really thought it might occur to anyone else or that it could ever matter in any way.
The woman who made me, who gave me my DNA, is Cassandra Clevenger. She's a Double Darkwell. A mad scientist. I was her proof of concept, her beta test. She wanted to see what happened if she doubled up her Darkwell traits so she engineered me. If I came out awesome, she'd go back and introduce the same changes into her own genome. But the side effects of a couple of extra-extra Darkwells in one person caused her to regard me as a failure.
The thing is, I did end up a bit cleverer than her, more clever than she'd expected. I got away. I got adopted... well, taken in. They couldn't legally adopt me... by Athena and Minerva Wisdom, a pair of superheroes. I think of them as my moms. It's not a gay thing. Well, they are both gay. But they're not a couple. They're not doing it. I mean, they're a bit into each other but they have this big hang-up about what people will think, because of their mom and... well, that's going a bit too far back.
So I'm not a superhero but I'm like kind of a sidekick. I'm also one of the smartest people on the planet. Sort of. My brain... no one was really meant to have two Darkwell traits, as far as I can tell. I have four. So there are some glitches. The side effects I mentioned.
One Darkwell trait is enough to make for some seriously sketchy people.
Two is enough to produce people like Dr. Clevenger or Rhyme.
Four? Four's just asking for trouble, trust me.
So, anyway, I was sort of at the periphery of a lot of important things that happened in the last year. A lot of the most important bits I didn't put together until after the fact, but I'm not sure that anybody else would have been in the right place to see them or capable of putting them together at all.
Sometimes things just snap together for me in a way that's blindingly obvious. That can be literal, with me. My brain lights up so hard and fast that my optical processing goes a bit fuzzy. You know that thing about only using ten percent of your brain? It's not true. The brain's the giant energy hog of the body. It's possibly one of the most efficient organs ever devised by evolution. It has to be. The thing is that most of it is doing stuff other than thinking. It might be true that less than ten percent of the brain's functioning is devoted to what we'd consider conscious thought, but that kind of gets bogged down in definitions. My brain? Occasionally goes off on a tangent and starts grabbing processing power from other places that kind of need it. If I get too clever, I might briefly forget how my limbs work, or how to see, or breathe.
It never lasts long. There seems to be a sort of safety net involved, like a circuit breaker that trips if something's going seriously wrong, but it kind of sucks when it's happening.
The longest episode I've had in the last year was when I saw the portrait of Hamilton on the wall in the 4B office. That's when everything came together. It was one of those things that in seemed so obvious after the fact that I couldn't believe I'd never seen it before, but I just needed that... that context. Hamilton. 4B. Shadow government. 4. B. Obvious. It all came into focus, and I mean it all came into focus. Two hundred years of American history ran through my brain, which was also cross-referencing current events and extrapolating towards future ones.
It hardly matters, of course. They've come out into the open anyway, all on their own. It's not lik I exposed them. It happened a little less smoothly than they'd planned, due to the fact that the event they'd been counting on using as a smokescreen ended up never happening...
I mean, it happened. They brought it about. But it ended up never happening, and they just had to use the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the Champion League's headquarters as the explanation for why the United States suddenly needed a fourth branch of government.
The scary thing is that it worked. People just shrugged and moved on. The Powers That Secretly Were had been prepared to unleash the apocalypse to generate the level of OH HOLY SHIT they felt was needed to justify their existence but all it took was one unexplained and unexplainable phenomenon.
Status:In progress (updated 11/16/2010 12:30 PM)
Word Count: ~1200.
Um, hi.
My name is Claire Clevenger and this is the first week of year zero. The world began yesterday. It ended, too. Or the old one did. I lack the language to really describe what happened, but I'm going to try. I want for there to be a record. Most people have no idea what happened. Even the ones who were involved... well, I mean, the world ended. Everybody was involved with that. Everybody was affected. But those who were there, at ground zero. Those who did it. Those who tried to stop it. Those who undid it, as best as they could. Most of them have forgotten.
When I say "a record"... I'm not writing this down. I'm not crazy. Not that crazy. I'm just thinking this, and trying to make it interesting. You see, I have this theory, about alternate realities... okay, it doesn't fit the most rigorous definition of "theory", but I have this hunch that comes from listening to my moms' ex-girlfriend and her sisters, and from various other things, and my hunches? They're better than most people's theories. They're better than most people's facts.
So I think the odds are pretty good that someone's going to be reading this.
Someone will know, besides me and the few whose senses are able to transcend this reality.
Let me back up and tell you a little bit about myself. I'm not a superhero. I'm not a U.S. citizen. Not technically. I wasn't born on U.S soil. I'm not the child of a citizen. But then I wasn't born anywhere and I'm not the child of anybody, so... yeah. There you go.
That had all crossed my mind more than once. I mean, it crossed it several dozen times in the space of the second that I first learned I was a clone. It might have crossed it a bunch more but there was a lot to take in at that moment. I didn't like dwell on it or anything I mean it popped into my head the way things do sometimes but it was more like an odd abstract thing than anything else. I never really thought it might occur to anyone else or that it could ever matter in any way.
The woman who made me, who gave me my DNA, is Cassandra Clevenger. She's a Double Darkwell. A mad scientist. I was her proof of concept, her beta test. She wanted to see what happened if she doubled up her Darkwell traits so she engineered me. If I came out awesome, she'd go back and introduce the same changes into her own genome. But the side effects of a couple of extra-extra Darkwells in one person caused her to regard me as a failure.
The thing is, I did end up a bit cleverer than her, more clever than she'd expected. I got away. I got adopted... well, taken in. They couldn't legally adopt me... by Athena and Minerva Wisdom, a pair of superheroes. I think of them as my moms. It's not a gay thing. Well, they are both gay. But they're not a couple. They're not doing it. I mean, they're a bit into each other but they have this big hang-up about what people will think, because of their mom and... well, that's going a bit too far back.
So I'm not a superhero but I'm like kind of a sidekick. I'm also one of the smartest people on the planet. Sort of. My brain... no one was really meant to have two Darkwell traits, as far as I can tell. I have four. So there are some glitches. The side effects I mentioned.
One Darkwell trait is enough to make for some seriously sketchy people.
Two is enough to produce people like Dr. Clevenger or Rhyme.
Four? Four's just asking for trouble, trust me.
So, anyway, I was sort of at the periphery of a lot of important things that happened in the last year. A lot of the most important bits I didn't put together until after the fact, but I'm not sure that anybody else would have been in the right place to see them or capable of putting them together at all.
Sometimes things just snap together for me in a way that's blindingly obvious. That can be literal, with me. My brain lights up so hard and fast that my optical processing goes a bit fuzzy. You know that thing about only using ten percent of your brain? It's not true. The brain's the giant energy hog of the body. It's possibly one of the most efficient organs ever devised by evolution. It has to be. The thing is that most of it is doing stuff other than thinking. It might be true that less than ten percent of the brain's functioning is devoted to what we'd consider conscious thought, but that kind of gets bogged down in definitions. My brain? Occasionally goes off on a tangent and starts grabbing processing power from other places that kind of need it. If I get too clever, I might briefly forget how my limbs work, or how to see, or breathe.
It never lasts long. There seems to be a sort of safety net involved, like a circuit breaker that trips if something's going seriously wrong, but it kind of sucks when it's happening.
The longest episode I've had in the last year was when I saw the portrait of Hamilton on the wall in the 4B office. That's when everything came together. It was one of those things that in seemed so obvious after the fact that I couldn't believe I'd never seen it before, but I just needed that... that context. Hamilton. 4B. Shadow government. 4. B. Obvious. It all came into focus, and I mean it all came into focus. Two hundred years of American history ran through my brain, which was also cross-referencing current events and extrapolating towards future ones.
It hardly matters, of course. They've come out into the open anyway, all on their own. It's not lik I exposed them. It happened a little less smoothly than they'd planned, due to the fact that the event they'd been counting on using as a smokescreen ended up never happening...
I mean, it happened. They brought it about. But it ended up never happening, and they just had to use the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the Champion League's headquarters as the explanation for why the United States suddenly needed a fourth branch of government.
The scary thing is that it worked. People just shrugged and moved on. The Powers That Secretly Were had been prepared to unleash the apocalypse to generate the level of OH HOLY SHIT they felt was needed to justify their existence but all it took was one unexplained and unexplainable phenomenon.
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no subject
on 2010-11-16 05:33 am (UTC)Huzzah!
on 2010-11-16 03:46 pm (UTC)Um... wow.
on 2010-11-18 01:41 am (UTC)I must say, I'm very happy that SHN seems to be undead (as in, not dead), it's my favorite story among yours, and I was exceedingly sad when you announced the death of it. Hmm.. now to re-subscribe to the RSS...
Re: Um... wow.
on 2010-11-18 03:12 am (UTC)