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Stark Industries, Monday

With no new mission from up above, Ender found himself as free as he'd been the past few weeks, to work on his own projects. He was poking through equations now, stuff he'd gotten from home on interspace travel, relative speeds, the works.

There were a few theories he'd like to test, and while he wasn't the world's biggest math whiz, he knew enough to keep himself busy all day.

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Valentine figured she was overdue for returning the favor of pestering siblings at work, although she barely even had to get through the door of Stark Industries to realize that Ender had far more to preoccupy him in the dull hours of the day here than she'd ever have at the hotel. Most of it was probably above her head, but she was envious all the same.

"So this is where you spend your Mondays."

"Most of them," Ender corrected, looking up. "I also have two classes. My Mondays bustle."

Spy class she knew right away because they were both in that one, and it only took Valentine a second to remember that Ender's other class was Atreides, and she nodded. "That's good," she said. "How've you been?"

It was nice to see that he'd drifted back after drifting out on Friday, although she didn't really doubt that he would.

"Not as busy as I'd like to be," Ender confessed, easily. "I'm looking into some of the science of relative spacetravel. One year for every x years on the scale. You could live almost forever, if you took enough trips."

"Sure," Valentine nodded, "but would you want to?"

"I'd say it depends on what your goals are," Ender observed. "Most people want some measure of peace, security and control. They wouldn't."

"Peace, security and control doesn't sound too bad," Valentine noted. "Would you be among those people?"

"I think I have enough security," Ender said, wryly. He didn't really mean that; he wasn't sure he was even capable of any of the listed components.

"Still, that's only one out of three."

"I thought the point was the longing for the three," Ender replied, with a calm.

He wasn't sure he had that anymore, either.

"And striving to have all three is a futile goal," Valentine countered. "So is it better to continue longing for the sake of the complete set, or to just cut your loses and figure two out of three ain't bad?"

"I think the vast majority of the human race would wind up agreeing with the latter theory," Ender returned. "The few who don't wind up on the outskirts."

"Is that why we're looking into the mathematics of space travel?" Valentine asked. "Or am I just being too literal today?"

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endsthegame - 2009-06-17 05:23 (UTC) - Expand

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a-demosthenes.livejournal.com - 2009-06-17 14:58 (UTC) - Expand

Ben had stopped and started his trip to the store a half dozen times, but finally stubbornness won out.

He stuck his head through the doorway. "Ho, Ender."

He'd almost already discarded his hypothesis that Ben was going to visit no matter what. Ender supposed he should be proud his theory on the Skywalker psyche was sound, if it wasn't so utterly obvious. "Ho, Ben." How that stubbornness would manifest itself next, however, was something of a mystery.

"Today's class was kind of astral, huh?" he asked with a bright smile.

Pretending the fight never happened was Ben's chosen tactic today. Ahh, repression.

"It was a pretty useful lesson in reorientation," Ender agreed. He made a little mental note of the repression, but for obvious reasons chose not to push on the subject.

"I'm not sure how effective it would be if there are cameras on the roofs, too," Ben mused. "Disguises are probably still more useful if you want to avoid being noticed."

"If 'avoiding being noticed' is your only priority," he pointed out. "Half the strategy behind parkour, from what I can tell, is speeding up your movement through the cities. It's not important to be completely invisible, just to be as far ahead of anyone who wants you visible or gone as you're capable of."

"So better for escape than recon," Ben decided. "But bouncing off of roofs is just plain fun."

"I'm pretty sure that's why most of them do it."

"Not that I'm going to do it off the dorm roof," Ben said. "Giving people heart attacks is kind of mean."

"You wouldn't be the first to rappel down," Ender said, shifting back in his chair. "Just probably the first to try to do so without a rig. Smart."

"Or I could end up the first Jedi to divot the lawn," Ben said with a little laugh. "Another reason not to do it."

"It probably wouldn't be a Fandom first," Ender observed, "But a good shot."