Lamar found himself in a room, waiting. The wait was somewhat short - soon enough an individual wearing a long grey coat walked in, and for a long time, stood. Looking at him, completely silent.

Lamar

Lamar took in a long look himself, before moving around to give him the full panoramic view with a wry smirk.

“So.”

The voice sounds like gravel wrapped around silk, both rumbling and smooth.

“You are what Inanna took from me.”

He inspects further.

“The results of her deceits.”

Lamar

The reply was slightly flippant in tone, but there was a tense undercurrent. Golem had years of life, experience and power over his child, and if things went dangerously south it would likely be one-sided.

“Oh, I don’t know, I imagine you enjoyed it enough at the time. But yes. Hello, my sire. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”

The man cocks his head to one side, in a manner almost reminiscent of a predatory bird. Something about him was almost not completely human.

“Less, perhaps, than you might think. I wonder - Lamar was it - if you really know what you think you know? I am looking to see if I have someone who is more a son, or who is more his mother. I am looking to see if you know who you are or if you are merely one of many masks. Do you know the answer, in a hall of mirrors, to “which one is real?” I know the answer for myself. Do you?”


Widely speaking the reputation of ‘Golem’ or at least the scuttlebut was as a man of few words and possibly few thoughts. Perhaps slow.

Lamar

“It doesn’t matter how many copies are out there. Doesn’t matter how perfect a facsimile they are. No matter how many sets of these eyes are looking at me, there’s only one set I’m looking out of.”

Lamar indicated his own eyes.

“I’m me. Plenty of Inanna in me, all the rest is you, not going to quibble over exact amounts. Not going to claim any particular knowledge, the man who says he knows everything usually knows nothing. Shy of an omniscience power anyway.”

Golem:

“You can admit you don’t know. One better, then, than your mother.”

He paces for a second.

“As for myself, I know not my father, I know not my mother, I know not my age, and I know not who I was, nor for how long. I merely know who I am, in the here, in the now. I have no chains to others save those I choose to put upon myself, and those choices are few.”

He seems to,be waiting to see if Lamar can comprehend where he is going with this.

Lamar

"I can certainly appreciate being unfettered. Can't say I am, currently, and can't say all my bonds are there by my choice and will. By saying you do not know now, you're begging the question if you once knew, if there was an event of severance with your past, by choice or by incident."

Golem

“Perhaps. Perhaps. What it does mean is that my book is written one page at a time. I am episode four of Star Wars before one through three existed. If there was such an incident neither I nor anyone who wishes to tell knows. More important is what you are. It is somewhat of a surprise you exist, as there has never been an indication that is .. possible… before.”

Lamar

"Given an origin species several billion strong would hint at a few possibilities, as would denying association with that species. If you have a genetic sequence, I'd be far from the only person here to have had theirs manipulated at origin. Or there's Inanna's power, providing memetics if genetics weren't an option. Getting hung up on the scope of the possible when confronted with something actual, someone tangible, seems a bit like using only one page when many may be needed."

Golem

“Indeed Lamar. That is my point. You exist. You are not in thrall. You are your own person. Do you, I wonder, see the significance?”

Lamar

"I am not in thrall that I know of, given Inanna. She did, after all, shape how I was raised, for good or ill. But yes, your point is well taken. A great many of my peers here had a far worse relationship with their sires or guardians. Some effectively condemned to thralldom, if they went along with it or not, and that's just from what I've been able to establish from what little they consciously or unconsciously reveal. So, it does indeed beg the question. Why go to all the trouble of seeking you out as a father, only to leave me with a high degree of autonomy or a very convincing illusion thereof?"

“Because she is something they actually fear. Mainly because she doesn’t fear them, or truly anything. She is something like me, only she falls on the other side of the line. A free agent who belongs to no one and acts as she chooses. Smart - and amoral. But, in her own way, ethical. And she wants a child that is like her. And that is something she will never get by having a brainwashed slave. The others don’t interfere both because she use useful, and is a grenade, with the pin almost pulled.”

Lamar

“Beings too powerful to be curtailed, either by their own side or the opposition, subject only to their own morality, the ethics they choose to follow. Certainly an exclusive club. She wanted a child. What of you? Ever have any thoughts of progeny?”

Golem:

“That was not part of the equation. A child is an inevitable responsibility - a tie that cannot properly be denied once it has come into awareness. A variable in the equation of your actions becomes a constant. Do you comprehend?”

Lamar

A brief nod.

"A value that always needs to be accounted for, and which others can potentially take into account to your detriment. Sun Tzu's lesson on formlessness no longer can be applied. Ironic, given the protean nature of our respective abilities."

“Things can only change until they cannot. Yet I will not, I think, be your master. I would not.”

He pauses and almost smirks slightly.

“It would also require opposing those whom it would be painful to oppose. So there is that.”

Lamar

“That opens up a whole bevy of questions. Master in what sense, exactly, from academic to owner? In what way can opposition become too painful, and is it worse to oppose friends than enemies?”

“In any sense, Lamar. I am not a master. I rule only myself and no other. I would not purposely place myself in opposition to the strong willed people surrounding you. They may be still within the system, yet I do not think it rules them. I am in opposition to Alchemy, to Inanna, to Nyx - because while I do not wish to play the game, I would also not see the game board shattered.”

Lamar

"Maybe the sense Henley intended in Invictus, 'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul'. Recognising the difference between 'I do not wish to play' and 'I do not want anyone to be able to play', the passive over the assertive, though being able to not be on the board is a powerful privilege afforded to very few. So, what happened back then? Between you and my mother? Was there always opposition, was she always firmly in those two's camp?"

“Inanna always was, and is, only in her own camp. I met her in a …”

He pauses.

“In all honesty, Lamar, I do not rambler how I met her. At all. Which troubles me.”

Lamar

"I can understand why that would be a concern. What memories do you have of her in general, and where do they fit in the chronology?"

“She …”

He pauses a long time.

“She came like Water and like the wind she goes.
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.”

“How does one define that which defies definition, and which she herself, I think, could not give a proper answer?”

Lamar

"Start at realities and work up, would be one way to define her. Human enough and female enough to have a passably human most of the time child. Defying definition is in itself a trait, capriciousness, arbitrariness. She's clever, or gives an appearance of cleverness indistinguishable from the real thing."

Lamar paused, grimacing. "...Huh. Hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I am the main authority on her, having spent most of my life directly in her company. But proximity means less perspective, and that's the angle I think I need."

Golem

“Lamar, she played roles. She had no identity. That was her identity. She was - she is - whatever she needs to be at the moment. A complete social and emotional chameleon. You were probably her most consistent “role” of her life. I could not know what she was because I am not in all honesty sure that she does herself.”

Lamar

"I'm not so sure. Stick her in a room of infinite mirrors and challenge her to find the real one, and I'm damned certain she'd point to the self that sees out of her own eyes. Yes, she puts on roles, but there's an underlying 'she' putting them on, and just because she makes it practically impossible to discern, doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and presupposing its non-existence could well be a big reason why she gets away with so much. No matter how perfect the blend-in, at the end of the day there's still an insect-eating lizard beneath the miracle."

“Perhaps, Lamar. Do you, however, understand the inherent problem with her sense of self? By nature it is malleable. By nature there are few if any standards she holds herself to, as most of the standards are irrelevant to her. Hr morality, it is not black, grey and white - it is blue and orange. We all weave a constraining web of morality and ethics, connections and conventions which bind us and reign in our instincts. Those binders have much less meaning there. They are taken off or put on like an outfit.”

Lamar

"She does as she pleases, yes. Her morality is not easily categorized in the current paradigm, yes. But consider: Can you imagine her murdering innocents on a whim, or actively trying to genocide humanity? What she does, she does smiling. Often you see it, but it's there even when you don't. She could be a far worse horror if she wished to be. She doesn't wish to be and is unlikely to ever cross that horizon, for there is no reason to smile beyond it."

Golem:

“Can I imagine it Lamar?”

He pauses a long time.

“I wish I had to imagine it. Can you view sacrificing innocent children to the machinations and manipulations of Enkidu as anything other than a horror? The creation of the broken, such as Hadassha, such as your Blake and countless others who have lived as little other than toys and discardable tools. And who do you think was his broker? Who procured the genetic material for his … projects? I don’t know, Lamar, everything he does. But I do know that she played a central role.”

Lamar

He pondered that fpr a moment before replying,

"Anything other than a horror? Yes, yes I can. A long game. How many of those she had a hand in are here?"

“Some. Nowhere near all. Fundamentally they are tortured, broken down. Many irretrievably so. The ones who emerge as viable individuals are a small miracle. Do you really suppose, Lamar, that there is any was in which whatever was done to Hadassha can be described as a kindness or anything other than cruelty? Wracked with pain, abused, ignored, used as a lab experiment and discarded and left to think you are a broken thing. Wherever they were or whomever they were with before that, do you think it was worse than that life?”

Lamar

"On whose head is that, though? These are Enkidu's crimes, Enkidu's machinations. What does he have on Inanna? Is she free in her actions there, or is it another's will?"

“Do you truly believe, Lamar, that another does or even could control her actions if she truly wished todo otherwise?

Lamar

"Think about that for a second. I'm her son, her child. She raised me. There is no parent on this world worthy of the name whose actions have not been controlled to some degree by the needs and wants of their child despite their wishes. This is not a situation where absolutes apply. And the thought occurs that familial bonds go both ways. Filial obligation. Repaying that debt to Enkidu could be a motive for her involvement, this entire place is filled to the brim with people who helped bad people do bad things because of those bonds. As above, so below?"

Golem:

“Close, Lamar. Close. This place is filled with people who decided to take another path. Let me ask, are your needs best served by a world in which Alchemy and Nyx, perhaps Enkidu, get what they want?”

Lamar

A pause. A silence, uncomfortably long. Mulling it over. Weighing it up.

"That depends entirely on the full extent of what they want. I'd fare better in such a world than the vast majority would. The question is if the ceiling there would exceed the ceiling here, and just how much further down the floor for me would be there over here, and how likely, how close, either extreme is to being reached in either place. I'm not going to lie to you, there remains a possibility that the answer to that question isn't no. As it stands, I'm firmly on our side, but a question that big is better served by the truth."

Golem:

“You would be advantaged yes but would you be better served? Those are not the same thing, Lamar. Do you really trust them to act on or hold to any principle you would recognize? Do you really think the lines would stay between powered and unpowered?”

Lamar

"You know, there are principles they do appear to hold. Alchemy and Nyx. Nyx and Alchemy. Do you think either one would die by the other's hand and if not, why not?"

Golem:

“Lamar, that is a rather shaky definition of principle. Their main principle is the will to power and their own superiority.”

Lamar

"I'm not denying that. But they're monstrous enough without having to add in a fresh layer of othering as well. They cooperate, they collaborate, and speculating that they would stop doing so, that they would suddenly break from those principles, warped as they are from our perspective, doesn't seem wise."

“I find I cannot trust in their benevolence and grace. Do you find any likelihood that your mother will do any other than continue to help them create world in their own image?”

Lamar

"Oh, definitely. She values her own freedom to act far too highly to permanently be in anyone's thrall, and I suspect they're aware of that."

“In thrall? No. Not in thrall. But there are plenty of ways to be in cahoots without being in thrall. I think Lamar, altruism is not in the cards.”

Lamar

"A world in which she can get the best use out of her powers likely doesn't overlap entirely with the world those two intend to create. I wouldn't count on altruism, but I'd place good odds on self-interest."

“A world in which you have a witch queen who is in charge would be very much in her self interest would it not? What does she want, ultimately, Lamar? It seems she has fallen in quite readily in this case.”

Lamar

"In charge? No, far too confining, too many responsibilities, no room for flexibility. In control, maybe. If you see the distinction. If there's a throne, she'd rather be behind it whispering, or in front offering a unique and irreplaceable service, than on it."

“Lamar, you do realize that you argue semantics? Their world would have no place for several of those here. Do they deserve to exist? The ones you know as Blake, as Hadasha - they are imperfect. Do you think they would be allowed to exist in such a regime? Is that important to you as well?”

Lamar

“Oh, the regime Nyx and Alchemy have in mind is absolutely worth opposing, one hundred per cent, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a bad idea to look at Nyx, Alchemy and my mother and see only the enemy, to reduce them to cartoonish adversaries incapable of nuance beyond cunning and duplicity. Especially my mother. She’s a wildcard, her morality doesn’t match up with theirs or yours, and I really wouldn’t want to put money on where she ends up when the chips are down.”

Golem

“If you are expecting to see nuance or reason out of the “new god” which is Nyx, then you have disappointment coming. There is no nuance. She is not rational. She is not, entirely, sane. I am not talking just in the sense of not making sense to you or I. I am not sure either she or Alchemy for that matter are retrievable rational actors. You may or may not be right about your mother. But regardless of arguments, Lamar, do you see what I’m driving at without it getting lost in the weeds?”

Lamar

“I refer you to my earlier answer. As it stands, I’m firmly on our side.”

Golem

“Now who says I’m on any side.”

He offers a small smile.

“Aside from Mr. Kemp and possibly Enkidu I may just be the oldest individual alive. It tends to give one perspective, even if much of it I do not remember. And I have enough perspective to realize that I, and certainly you, are part of a science experiment of sorts. More than just you, me and those picked up from Enkidu’s ruins. Do you see it, I wonder?”

Lamar

"That first part sounds just like something my mother would say. As for the science experiment, almost definitely. Both sides of the coin, 'heroes' and 'villains' to be reductionist, and those of us who prefer the edge as well. The question is, where is the control group, the double blind study, and the peer review?"

Golem:

“To be honest, Lamar. I don’t think the staff here is really on anyone’s side, at least so far as the recognized sides. If you claimed that Grey was on the side of Eidolon , I’d have to laugh. Mariel is very much her own person and won’t be constrained. Kemp I think is the sort that recognizes principles rather than principalities. Carver is Carver, and I think someone assuming they control him would not end well. Eric? An odd bird, to be certain, and he did invent much of the technology that goes into ‘The Black Hole’ - however I’m not sure he is happy with that anymore. All of them are their own brand of rebel. None of them are villains yet they don’t really work within the system any more than neccesary.

Lamar

“I did specify those of us who prefer the edge. Eidolon is definitely one side of the coin, the likes of Alchemy and Nyx on the other, both of them desirous of being top of their respective piles and in control. Eidolon’s perfect world includes full ownership of the monopoly of violence, that one thing that makes a governed state a governed state. Alchemy and Nyx are more might makes right.”

Golem:

“Lamar, I have a question, and you can be honest. Are you angry with me?”

Lamar

He took a moment to weigh up his feelings. It had hardly been a usual upbringing, but Golem’s absence from it was something neither of them had had much say in or influence over.

He shrugged. “No, not really. Never knew you well enough to develop strong emotional ties, the concept of you being my father was largely an abstract one. Never really desired your presence to the extent that Inanna’s power would pick up on it, all things considered. Not enough there to fan the flames of anger or the pangs of loss.”

“I may be coming back here. I think it is time for me to pick a side, even if that side is not a side. And I think … this is the right side. These are the right people.”

Lamar

“What makes you say that, exactly? Sure, they’re better than Alchemy and Nyx, less calcifying than Eidolon, but those are pushes. ‘Least worst’ might be valid but it’s a low bar, low enough to store up future problems. So, what to you are the pulls? What draws you in here and makes you actively want this side?”

“Allow me to ask a question, Lamar. Do you know the fable of the scorpion and the turtle, or in its more recent incarnation the scorpion and the frog? “

Lamar

“Because the scorpion is so set in its ways, a prisoner of its nature, it and everything it tries to help perishes.”

Golem:

“What, Lamar, is the nature of which I am a prisoner? The prisoner almost always holds the key, should they dare to use it. The cell is locked from the inside. Lamar, I will not talk to you as if you were your actual age. Your actual age is just a number, and one that can at times I’ll define you. So I will ask you this question as if you were an adult with all that entails. What do you think, broadly speaking, the difference is between the way Eidolon and Alchemy view people and how those you see around you here view people? What is the biggest similarity between Eidolon and alchemy, and the biggest difference of say, Grey from both?”

Lamar

"They see themselves atop their pyramids, the apex of their worlds, defining how things are and ruthless towards those who oppose their vision. Grey tries not to be where she looks down on everything, is less ruthless and tries to be more magnanimous and egalitarian in the way they wish to define things. I don't really see you in the scorpion role."

Golem.

“Speaking in quotes can be droll but … if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. The current balance cannot hold. The center cannot hold. I may not be a scorpion, Lamar - but in the current situation scorpions abound. And sometimes, you need to surround yourself with turtles and frogs who can sting back. Who know and admit they could be wrong, and that they do not have all of the answers already sealed up.”

Lamar

“Metaphors, parables and fables have their place, but it’s probably a really good idea not to read too much into them when there’s an option to speak plainly and straightforwardly for mutual understanding and to make sure we’re on the same page, rather than ascribing values to each other’s allusions that may be illusions. So. Eidolon’s current regime is brittle and in the process of cracking. A and N are looking to impose a new one in its stead. Grey et al, most likely with us, are placed to try and weather the coming storm and make something better if we’re able. Would you say that was where we were?”

Golem:

“If you potentially include Enkidu in the mix, whatever role he has in … this. If, Lamar, there is someone to pick up the pieces I would rather they were those who care more about people and choices than power and ideology. Choice is free but seldom easy - but it is the very essence of human freedom. And whatever else we are, Lamar, we are still human. In the end, I go with those who acknowledge this.”

Lamar

“Freedom versus control, I’m choosing freedom. Relevance to baseline humanity is another matter. Both of my parents and myself have been very non-human things at various times, and to deny or suppress that, to assert its wrongness and insist it be otherwise… it feels like the wrong side of the freedom-control equation. I’m not saying ‘better’. I’m not proclaiming Homo Superior or something equally stupid or powerhungry. But what I am, what we are, is loosely constrained within the bounds of the ‘human’ super-type, for some but not all of the time.”

“Lamar … you still are human. You are an odd human, but you are no less ‘human’ than anyone else. I am human. Dash is human. Mariel is, also, human. Inanna is human. History, all of history, is a changing and refining of human nature. All of what you are fits within the boundaries of human. Human is in the mind, in the soul. The things I can do are not wrong. They just are part of the human I am. I am not more - and I most assuredly am not less. I just am.”

Lamar

"It is a label, and to decree everyone fits in the box on which that label is plastered is to deny the possibility of anything transcending it, nor anything from outside being granted personhood or valued as sentient life. Consider a dolphin with powers and superintelligence, an elephant, one of the great apes. Given what can and has been done to us, to many of the people in this building, such things are entirely within the bounds of possibility. For that matter I've been most of them. Can you at least see how the insistence of that overarching category feels overly constraining?"

Golem

“You don’t get out that easily, Lamar. You being essentially human does not,deny sentience or personhood to anyone. Yet you are, essentially, human. Were any test run, you would be - human. All of the things which we are can fit within that rubric. Were one of these other things to exist they would be what they are. They would be a self aware being who is still what they are. The more important category is that you are Lamar, and that is both constraining and freeing on its own.”

Lamar

“‘Of primarily human origin’, then. I am, first and foremost, Lamar, and how I choose to self-actualize is an inalienable human right, namely that of self-determination. And yes, I’m aware of the irony.”

“The important thing is … you are not a monster to be hunted, or a thing to be worshipped apart from your own actions. “'Human' is not one narrow subset of primate DNA. From the scientific standpoint we can breed true with and produce vibrantly healthy children with unpowered humans. Mariel herself had a vibrantly healthy daughter with her thoroughly ‘normal’ husband. From a scientific standpoint it is an undeniable attribution. From a moral standpoint we are, in fact ‘representative of or susceptible to the sympathies and frailties of human nature’ Even Nyx, even Alchemy. However you want to view yourself is up to you, but for the future it is important that you are not viewed as ‘other’ and do not view those you must share this world with as ‘other’ yourself. The road of coexistence is the one I choose. The technology isn’t available to divorce and move out of the house.”

Lamar

"Rest assured that I'm very much against othering, in any direction."

“Near as I can figure, this family. Possibly figuratively, definitely genetically. If there were stock books for supers, then Enkidu, I suspect, is their owner. There are several distinct lineages, but I suspect that there is significant crossover - some of it, perhaps, engineered through whatever it is he does. Mariel’s father, Inana and her … mother. Have you ever given thought to how many supers have odd circumstances?”

Lamar

"In many ways, it goes with the territory. To inherit powers is to have a parent with them, which lends itself to a complete lack of normality. It'd be stranger to have a latter-generation super who didn't have odd circumstances."

“Oh, the norm through much of history, has been one-off enhanced individuals. They would pop up, but not breed true in most cases. It’s only recently that there has been an explosion in second and even third generation powered individuals. And the majority of those who have bred true have been villains, those outside of the accepted structure. Isn’t that interesting?”

Lamar

"Given that manipulating the stuff of life has the potential for immorality and taboo in the best of cases, in some ways it would have to have come from those neither constrained by commonly accepted mores nor willing to submit to oversight."

“To a degree, yes. Have you ever wondered, however, why now?”

"Life takes time. Powers emerge over time. Why two decades ago, give or take five years? Easy to miss back then, when the seeds were sown."

“Lamar, I look forward to further … conversations… but currently I need to meet with some others, make plans. Figure out how to react to current events. I would suggest that it may be a good time for you to study - and not only your abilities, but those around you.”

Lamar

"Yeah, good advice. Nice meeting you, father."

(Move back to common room)