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MemoriesA POV of Crais and The ChairBy notasebacean |
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Rated: PG-13, I guess. Maybe less. Occasional use of �unacceptable at the dinner table� Farscape language. Violence? Yes. How good is your imagination? (And I guess, how well did I write this?) Sex? Nope, no kiss and tell here. Maybe next time. Spoilers: The Premiere, �The Hidden Memory�, �The Way We Weren�t�, & �That Old Black Magic�. But who is reading this who hasn�t seen these, probably over and over? Summary: POV for Crais and the Chair Disclaimer: Of course they aren�t mine. Sniff, sniff. Could I convince anyone they were? They belong to Jim Henson Productions, The Sci-Fi Channel, Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia. Then there�s Rockne O�Bannon, David Kemper, and all the rest. Aw, guys, come on. Hey, wait a minute. Oh Nooo, not the Chair!?! Dedication: To my favorite ex-PK captain, and the actor who has done such a beautiful job of bringing him to life. No Betas here. I wanted to do this all by myself the first time, although I can certainly see now just how much of an advantage a good beta might be. Archiving: Sure, just say hi and tell me where so I can maybe visit? This is actually my first attempt at writing anything (well, fiction, anyway). I�m hoping it won�t be my last. I had fun and learned a lot. I�d like feedback actually, especially constructive criticism. Please don�t just yell. I know some of the faults here, and undoubtedly don�t realize others. I know, fixing them is another story. Hopefully, it will be... �So Nothing Of What We Saw Was True� He stood in disbelief. The words that he was hearing, the lies that somehow were so perilously and painfully close to the truth, true in spirit if not in deed, were turning into an endlessly reverberating wash of nonsense sound, overwhelming his desperate attempts to keep control of the situation, of himself. A lifetime�s work, so carefully constructed and at such very great cost. Now everything began to unravel all at once, in slow motion but simultaneously at geometrically increasing speed, and he was powerless to stop it. The human seated at the chair had begun this, and his mind was finding it very hard to process the concept that this very same human�this weak, pathetic inferior being�was about to end it. That miserable bucket of dren! This couldn�t be happening. So this was how the world ended. His mouth suddenly drier than the dimly remembered nearly desert surface of the world on which he had been born, he felt a slow crumbling, was aware of the nervous ticcing of his eyes, uncontrollable. That was a particularly ironic indignity for someone who prided himself so on his control, who had sometimes found a final lonely refuge in his unshakeable, unbreakable control. He heard a voice say �He must have stolen it from a data base�. His voice, but then again, not. The crisp accent that marked his status as an officer, one of the privileged, was suddenly and inexplicably missing. Instead of the cultured dialect of the Elite, to his horror, he heard the common voice of a common soldier, a recruit, a conscript, a grunt. His hard won social skills were rapidly deserting him. He tried one last, desperate time to pull himself together, to step away from the abyss. He was not able to stop himself from a last futile attempt at brazening his way from under this. �You overstep yourself, Scorpius. You haven�t got the numnas to put me in the Chair.� Even so, he knew as he said these words that he was only making things worse, if that were possible. How dare the half Scarran abomination do this to him? And how had he been so blindsided, so outmaneuvered when his world had seemed to be finally righting itself again? So he was being forced into the Chair. Other soldiers had been called from their post just outside the room to drag that wretched piece of human dren back to his cell. The two guards assigned to the room, pulse rifles at the ready, had brooked no further argument. Before he was �allowed� to approach the Chair, he had been made to drop the Peacekeeper leathers. (When he would later find himself drenched with his own body fluids, the practicality of this arrangement would become evident, although it would hardly seem very important in the greater scheme of things by then.) The captain�s garb, which had cost him so dearly, lay discarded on the floor, the flowing coat jumbled in a graceless heap. Clad only in an undershirt and trousers, but still allowed to retain the identchip around his neck as the solitary remaining mark of his rank, he made his slow but steady progress to meet Fate. He had somehow at least managed to keep his feet so far, though he had stumbled just a bit on the final step approaching the Chair. He had managed to keep enough control that the guard who stayed nearer his back had neither need nor excuse to further abuse him, although, encouraged by this unfolding and utterly unexpected spectacle, the trooper had the insolence to give him an initial prod to begin his approach to the Chair. Once he had taken the seat, the second guard had remained at the ready, out of reach and weapon carefully trained on his midsection, while the first had firmly locked down the wrist restraints. Next, the guard engaged the bar which pinioned his lower legs at the ankles, effectively trapping his entire lower body. Finally, the soldier positioned the Chair�s headset firmly against his forehead. That deceptively innocent looking device served a dual purpose. This piece of the Chair looked like nothing so much as a heavily padded lozenge of black leather, a comfortable pillow against which an unfortunate inhabitant of the Chair might rest his brow in search of relief from his physical and psychological distress. In reality, the headpiece served an opposite purpose. First, it effectively pinned the resident of the Chair so that his head was very nearly immobilized�the poor unfortunate so caught was unable to turn his head even slightly sideways to see what might be happening around him. Not only was the Chair�s victim physically controlled, but the psychological effect, the claustrophobic sense of helplessness engendered, was also substantial. Moreover, this was the part of the Chair which was actually responsible for the mental assault on the Chair�s resident. The Chair had a number of controls. Some adjusted the intensity of the attack on the victims. Others adjusted the focus of the attack, emphasizing the access of various memories in the subject�s mind, willing or not. The instrument delivered energy charges capable of uncovering thought, and ripping hidden memory from any victim, then translating the accessed mental images onto a round, haloed vidscreen. The question was never whether the images would appear, but only how long it would take them to appear, and what would be left of the particular unlucky occupant in the Chair by that time. The Chair was even capable of so scrambling the uncovered memories that they were effectively useless, and deleted for all intents and purposes from the victim�s mind. He was by this point too preoccupied to notice the clicking sound as the headset was engaged, but he was aware of the pressure as it pinned him in place, just the newest specimen for the half breed scientist�s collection. He didn�t know how he was going to successfully resist the Chair, when, to his knowledge, no one other than the frelling human had ever managed this feat. He hadn�t even been fully aware until he witnessed the human�s torment, of the terrible power of the Chair, although he had heard rumours of its existence. He only knew that he had to somehow, or only ruin and death, death and ruin, would be left to him. And somehow the human had done just this, although he had never before manifested any unusual mental or psychic abilities. Whatever the explanation for the lies pulled from the human�s mind, if the human had been able to resist, so could he. He would have to. So the questioning started. The first memories to be accessed were those that he felt no need to block. Jumbled scenes of training and combat and battle, of a young, seemingly endlessly confident Peacekeeper successfully passing one test after another, completing mission after mission flawlessly. Scenes of a lieutenant who impressively completed every assignment thrown his way, no matter how difficult and undesirable those assignments had initially seemed to be (why give the plum assignments to someone not bred from prime PK genes?) Even so, this conscript showed himself so capable that those at higher and higher levels, eventually reaching all the way to High Command itself, felt compelled to keep testing him, waiting for him to fail. And he never had�this mongrel had shown himself more ingenious, more resourceful, more ferocious and more capable than the thoroughbreds he put to shame. Still, he was not the only one aware that had he been cr�che born, he would already have found himself not only a captain, but also being groomed for an even loftier position. Even so, he had advanced along the Command track more quickly than any conscript in memory. Interspersed were occasional scenes of an even younger, more jauntily handsome version of himself sitting at table with him, joking, sharing a flagon of raslak with him, the two of them plotting out their careers, their futures together. Somewhat less common were scenes involving social engagements with others, although these did on occasion surface, almost as if they were obligatory and planned in their regularity, in fulfillment of some outwardly (?) imposed set of expectations. There were scenes of the same �recruit�, now a captain, capably and ruthlessly administering a revolutionary experimental breeding/modification program involving one of the immense captive Leviathan ships. Scenes that included a panorama of Peacekeeper troops he had led. He felt a curious sense of detachment watching these scenes on the screen, almost as though they were happening to someone else. After a bit, he began to notice something which he had never perceived while these events had actually been ocurring. He had always prided himself on how closely he matched the Peacekeeper ideal, how he was smarter, more clever, stronger and more resourceful than those around him. He had often wondered at the faults, the incompetence even, of the fools and buffoons, the nurfers around him. He had profited more than once by the willingness of others to betray their PK brethren in order to obtain an advantage for themselves, but had held these in contempt for their faithlessness. What he began to see now was a pattern. He began to see not the steely resourcefulness he had always credited himself with, but a savagery toward those who served under him as well as any others unlucky enough to cross his path. A willingness on this Captain�s part to use those beneath him for what they could provide him, and a willingness to discard them without even an attempt to disguise his disgust for them afterwards. He saw a slow but steady procession of his more competent underlings leaving his barbaric command, and a certain dispiritedness among some of the more competent who remained. He relived the moment when the first second in command ever assigned to him as a captain, an officer of comparatively advanced age for a Peacekeeper in active service, the respected Lt. Merak, unexpectedly pensioned himself off. There had been little warning and less explanation, but he had sensed a feeling of disapproval, which he had written off at the time�the old man had gone soft, or was just jealous of being denied further advancement himself, or, the crowning insult, could not bear to serve under a �conscript�. There had been others�a slow but steady stream of requests for reassignment from those who seemed to be much better thought of by others. The vidscreen replayed a scene involving the arrest for treason of an officer Velorek who had been assigned to his Leviathan program. That had been a real fiasco. He had been frustrated by the lack of progress with his pet project but hadn�t wanted to share credit for it either, not to mention being aware of the potential price of failure. At the time, he had thought his action to replace the Leviathan�s original Pilot with another creature who would be more accommodating, to be decisive. It had turned out that the switch, which had been incredibly difficult to accomplish, had not resulted in any visible benefit. He had ordered the detailing of his most precocious Prowler pilot to that mission because his project was so important to him. But no one had communicated to her that this assignment was so crucial, or given her to understand how much of an advantage this could be to her career, or even that she had drawn any special attention from her Captain. (Few tried to cultivate his special attention.) She was, and had only ever wanted to be, a Prowler pilot. And now he watched the look of mingled desire, disappointment, and distaste on his countenance as Velorek�s arrest took place after she had turned him in. The pilot involved, a young officer named Sun, had caught his eye for a variety of reasons, but the black plaited young woman was lost to him as not only a possible recreating partner but also as a potential future aide after that incident. Yet it seemed that those who did revolve in his orbit, hitch their wagons to his star, were no more inspiring of his trust�the officer named Braca who he came to believe would do anything for advancement, his late second in command Lt.Teeg another who he instinctively knew only served beneath a �conscript� because she considered it the best route to further her own career. It was a sudden and stunning realization for someone who considered himself to be so intuitive�that he had in the end only wound up with the staff he deserved. And his project had never flourished as he had expected�he had blamed those around him, beneath him. Seeing these scenes played out on the screen, watching as though he were some uninvolved third party, he was ambushed by the grim realization that the Captain shown bore as much responsibility for his own misfortune as the Fate he had blamed for his troubles. Finally, there was another set of memories, showing a notorious group of prisoners escaping aboard that same Leviathan, and the buzzing of prowlers around that colossal beast. An odd, primitive looking small craft appeared on the screen from nowhere, and then one of the fighters attached to his ship grazed the white �deathpod�. He watched in horror (yet again) as the prowler exploded, and then this particular scene was rerun, over and over. It seemed to go on forever before he gratefully and finally slipped into unconsciousness. He came to, of course, in not too considerable a period of time�long before he would have cared to, really. So much for the advantages of being a PK officer in the prime of his life and in exceedingly good physical condition. The operator resumed her skillful manipulation of the Aurora Chair controls. More pain now, more tearing at his mind, and the memories resumed their relentless kaleidoscopic march across the screen. Now there were increasingly jumbled scenes, some nearly indecipherable, they flashed by and melded one with another so quickly. Many of them showed the younger Craislike Peacekeeper melting into images of an unidentifiable charred, disintegrating corpse. The human who had been the Chair�s last occupant was now also figured prominently in the ever-increasing blur of images. There were confused scenes of a struggle between the current occupant and the previous one, then oblivion. The half Scarran responsible for this torment found himself becoming more and more frustrated. Most occupants of the Chair speedily gave up their secrets. Excepting the human, who had finally appeared to be approaching complete collapse, and the Banik stykera who was an entirely special case, none had shown extended resistance to the Chair�s tender ministrations. The one satisfaction the scientist had gotten so far was to note that at a few points, his guest in the Chair had fought so hard against releasing his memories that the resulting convulsing nerves were causing the stylish Pk hair braid particularly favored by certain officers (waggishly called a �tail�) to jerk and wiggle back and forth. The half-breed, who had his own litany of grievances against PK prejudices, found himself thinking �So there is something to be said for applying my experiments to an officer of rank.� So again he felt the hooks dragging the memories from his mind, piece by piece. But these memories were different, and now their display occasioned increasing resistance from the Sebacean. These were not the record of a mostly successful career, or the fond recollection of good times spent with the younger edition of himself. There actually had seemed to be remarkably few memories even in the previous session of other casual, pleasant contacts, and those few mental pictures were totally absent now. What did begin to appear on the screen now was a confusion of images of an aging, portly, self-important minor functionary from some backwater drenhole (was there any other kind in a place like that?), in discussion with a pair of Peacekeepers. Then two boys, one small, the other smaller, dressed in similar array to that of the man. Their garb was loose and flowing, natural fiber woven in light, neutral colors�a style universally favored by residents of hot arid regions, especially when they were of modest means. The only visible sign of prosperity was the ornate trim which bordered all their robes. (Was this some sort of �family crest� brought from home�wherever that had been? Or was it merely a mark of their social station?) Apparently this agricultural commune hadn�t even managed to choose its new home wisely. Either that, or the colony was still quite young, and the �terraforming� process had not progressed yet to its final hoped-for conclusion. (Or this particularly group of colonists had been willing to accept far less than the optimum site to settle in their haste to be gone from their previous homes). The climate here was such that even now, except for the short cold season, it was barely tolerated by Sebacean physiology. Intensive irrigation as well as more sophisticated technology had made agricultural projects possible, but still not assured of success without massive amounts of work and more than a little luck. The younger child was little more than a toddler, a happy boy who always seemed to fill with laughter even when he had little provocation to do so. He was still tagging along behind the other, where he could always be found, at his unending place in the universe. The cheerful chatter, the silly giggles had stopped now. The older child balanced the scales. He was actually only a little older, maybe seven cycles or so, as opposed to the other�s four. But that was measuring his age in chronological time. For as long as could be remembered, this one had been mantled with the seriousness of the ages. This preternatural gravity in one so young, even on occasions when the two were involved in the same mischief that little boys their age had gotten themselves into from time immemorial, had not gone unnoticed by some of the other colonists. A few had even joked that he had a fine career ahead of him as an ascetic and a hermit, though they were careful not to repeat this in the father�s hearing. The father�s attention was wholly focused upon the two Peacekeepers, one of them an officer, the other a trooper sheathed in full PK body armor. He seemed to be in animated yet respectful discussion with the former. Then he turned to the children. �The recruiter is here to pick you up. I�m counting on you to protect him! He is your brother. Bialar!� That was the sum total of what his father had said to him. Not �Bialar, my son, remember how I have told you that someday you would leave our home? You and your brother both? This is very important and I am counting on you, and Tauvo is counting on you, as we both always have. Tauvo is so much younger than you, and so much smaller. He has looked to you always to care for him and protect him, and now it is more important than ever that you do this for him. Your place in the world was never meant to be here; you were always meant for bigger and better things. I�ve done what I could to prepare you. I always knew this day would come, and I�ve always feared it would come too soon. Now it is time for you to leave, you and your brother. Your mother and I, we have always treasured you, and we will always miss you. But now you must go. Go with all our love, and make us proud of you. Take care, my boy. Take care of yourself, and take as good care of Tauvo. At least you will always have each other. And, remember your mother and remember me, for I promise you that for the rest of our lives, you and your brother will live in our hearts, and we will most certainly never forget you.� No, his father did not say this, not any of it. The man who had never shown affection, especially for the firstborn he had always known he would lose, did not shed his skin, did not change his spots, now. All he said was �The recruiter is here to pick you up. I�m counting on you to protect him! He is your brother. Bialar!� The sternness in his voice relayed no further message. The look of anguish and despair on his face after he said this registered, but not on the boy�s conscious memory. And that was all the older boy heard. The little one understood only that he and his brother, whom he worshipped, were going away on an adventure. And what could be wrong, since he would still be at the side of the other, his best and only friend and confidant, his protector, the one constant star in his universe. But the other, the older boy. If this had happened at any other age, things might have been different. A few cycles younger, and perhaps he would have accepted this change in station as his brother did, and not been so terribly scarred by it. (Although who would then have protected him?) A few cycles older, and he might have understood so much more. (Although would he then have been so infernally driven to not only survive, but excel? To be not a servitor, not a tech, not a mere soldier, not even a commando, but to aspire to Command?) Just a little older, and he might have heard other words behind the ones spoken so gruffly. And he might have understood at least a little more about the ways of the world. He might have already sat by the hearth in the evening after all his chores were finally done, and pondered why his world had taken the shape it had. He might have begun to wonder whether people lived on other worlds as his family did here, in relatively impoverished and primitive circumstances, out on the edge of nowhere, even though evidence of more sophisticated technology was everywhere around him. He might have considered just how farming and mining colonies ever managed to get established in the first place, and what they had to do to survive, much less prosper. Who paid the price, and just how dear was it? For surely one thing he had already cruelly learned was that nothing was ever free. There were no gifts of such great value at this end of the galaxy. And he might have wondered at the grim authoritarian he called �Sir�, although his mind said �father�. He might have wondered at how a man so ill-fitted to this crude existence found himself in such reduced circumstances. He knew nothing of politics at his age (though he would learn these lessons very well later). He knew nothing of family strife and power struggles and political intrigue, nothing of internecine warfare, nothing of what a younger son or the scion of an offshoot of a family in disfavor might have to do to protect himself and his own. He would later become a master of plot and counterplot and subterfuge himself, but his mind would always skitter away from any examination of this, any application of those lessons to his own history. He devoted himself to Tauvo, and Tauvo only, and built himself more pleasant and soothing memories of a contented childhood, simple but idyllic, with the parents who loved him so. In some respects, the final memory to be accessed, the one giving witness that he had cold-bloodedly snapped the neck of his second in command, was almost anticlimactic. He had feigned even more distress than he was actually in after his battle with the human, and caught her completely unaware. She had died instantly, never realizing her fatal miscalculation. So he kept tumbling in and out of consciousness, each time reviving for just a few microts more. The pain had gone somewhere, and he didn�t care where, though it seemed too good to be true. Oh, not the cramping of what felt like every muscle in his body. Not the burning, not the relentless aching sensation that suffused every square dench of his flesh. Not the exhaustion, which at least in some kind of fahrbot devil�s bargain kept dragging him down into blessed oblivion. Not even the burning shame that he had fought so hard for so long to keep buried safely below the surface like a mother draksill hiding her precious eggs in the sand until they were ready to hatch. That shame now felt as if it would never again sink below the surface waters of his consciousness, like some primordial monster endlessly trolling the black seas of Resnack. No, the pain that had gone was the searing white-hot pincer grip that had seemed to be physically tearing apart his brain. Resistance had been futile. The more he had struggled against baring those frelling memories, the more relentlessly they had been pulled from him and the worse the torment he had undergone. In the end, his very strength had been his own worst enemy, and still, all had finally been revealed. 
He had not screamed in nearly a quarter of an arn now. Funny, if anything could ever be funny again. He remembered the last time he had ever screamed, and it had been so long ago, nearly a lifetime for him. At first, he barely heard the footsteps entering the room (why so slow? Why so cautious?) then proceeding more firmly up the stairs to the Chair. �Captain Crais, what are you doing in this Chair?� Home // Cohort Master List |
