picture post

[caughtthebullet]

[Posted on the door of the main entrance to The Palace.]

Comments

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, how anticlimactic.

Though I guess it'd be a fairly useless power to have, anyway.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

Is that common where you come from?

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

Only in comic books. But around here, a guy can't be too careful. There are shape-shifting mass-murdering space aliens.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

Astute. How long have you been here?

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

This is day sixteen of my incarceration.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

And you're already practicing caution, not panic. Impressive.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

I don't panic.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

Never? You're piquing my curiosity.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

Am I? Do tell.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

You don't know panic, but do you know fear?

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

My welcoming committee consisted of a mass-murdering space alien and I was recently witness to an invasion of carnivorous rabid zombie sheep.

And yet I have retained my sanity.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

Fear doesn't make you crazy by nature. But to have it shows you're human.

Unless you're not.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

There are more direct ways of finding out the relative status of my humanity, for the record. Like asking.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

Being direct would imply I need to know; I don't.

Adrian Veidt.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

But you do need to know if I know fear? Interesting.

Rudy Miller.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

It was a question, Mr. Miller. Do you always think you're obligated to answer?

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

No. But the same can't be said for most adults.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

That's true enough.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

Given your failure to press the issue, I take it you're not most adults.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

Every adult is his own person just as no two children are alike.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

Unless they're clones.

[caughtthebullet.livejournal.com]

That's a question of nature versus nurture.

[prefers-chess.livejournal.com]

Sure. It's their nature to nurture, even when a guy just wants to be left alone.