Log:Coffee Between Colleagues

2020/08/12 Magda Arthur Aevus 1

It is some time after the explosion and the fight and the theft of the power cells, not to mention the extensive examination of the ... unit ... interdimensional Porter ... whatever. Magda, once more in one of her usual flowing skirts and loose shirts, enters Past Time quietly, approaching the counter for a late-night ... hm. Something sweet. She actually pauses to review the board for a few moments, and gets an icy 'frappucino', with lots of whipped cream and caramel. Listening to the grinder crush the ice for it, she looks around the place to review who are the night owls. Spotting Arthur, she considers whether or not she is surprised ... and decides that she is not -- she's just too tired.

Arthur is leaned back in one of the upholstered chairs, legs crossed so that his ankle rests on his knee. He's sipping a matcha latte and has a slice of pumpkin bread on a dish in front of him. There's a tablet resting propped up against his crossed leg as he browses something.

Magda takes her drink, eyes the bread Arthur has, and goes through the baked goods on offer for something ... oooh, look. She subsequently orders a piece of it for herself, taking it and moving over to her fellow professor. "Evening, Arthur," she says, sounding run down.

Arthur is engrossed in whatever he's reading, then looks up as he hears his chosen name. He flashes a smile. "Dr. Gutzu, how pleasant to see you. I hope your classes aren't wearing you out already," he says warmly, full of life.

Magda shakes her head. "I can handle five or six hours of that; after all, the kids are doing half the work. It's ... other things. Do you know of the super-powered individual James Porter?"

Arthur blinks a few times at the mention of Porter. Does he know about Porter? Why, only half of him is made of Porter's powers, memories, and what passes for skills. "Yes, I'm acquainted with the man. Wouldn't dare have an insurance policy that doesn't include a Porter clause in it," he chuckles.

Magda smiles a little wryly. "I was wondering why my agent was so insistent on me having one of those. Well," she says, settling into the accompanying chair, and giving a little groan of ease as she does, "apparently the Mechaneer is ... has ... acquired Porter, or something along those lines, and has been acquiring other-dimensional versions of him, killing them and ... zombifying them or something. Wiping their brains, infusing them with nanotech, armoring them up, controlling them, and sending them out after ... well. What he's looking for, I guess." She floats her cup on a bit of telekinesis, and rubs her face with one hand before taking a bite out of the bread.

"Your agent knew what he was doing," Arthur smiles. The smile dims away at the news. "Oh...my..." he says in response as all that sinks in. "Is mm...is his wife and daugther alright?" he asks as he takes a sip of his tea.

Magda sighs, shaking her head. "Honestly, I have no idea -- I cannot begin to say how not-close-to-them I am. I've only met the two of them once, and that was in a very ... tense situation. Shortly after Paragon had come back to herself, only a few weeks ago." She shakes her head. "To be honest, I don't even know if Porter himself, the one from here, has been 'acquired'. God, what a mess." She lets her head drop back and closes her eyes, just trying to relax for a moment. "This is why I have the glen," she tells him.

"'A mess' describes Porter's life quite succinctly," Arthur comments at the accuracy of it. "The glen?" he prods lightly as he leans forward to tear a piece of pumpkin bread and pop it in his mouth.

"Where I brought you and your grad student," she replies, "the cottage, with the orchestra." She nips off another bit, and worries it between tongue and the back of her front teeth. "I just spent a good number of hours analyzing and probing the thing. Gabrielle Grimm hopes there's someone to save, but ... from what I could tell, the majority of the mind was erased."

Arthur chews a bit more on his piece of bread before swallowing and washing it down with some of his latte. "Ah yes, I hadn't realized that was your name for it. A nice place to get away from it all, to be sure." He considers her explanation. He knows Grimm only through Porter's memories. "I...do hope there's still something of the man within," he says with a faint clearing of his throat. Porter is a close friend of Kat's. Someone she looked up to, though no one could figure out why. "Perhaps the answer is more...metaphysical in nature. Something that probes or technology can't answer."

Magda nods, subdued and quiet, licking up some of the mocha-drizzled whip cream before taking a sip from her iced drink. "Yes, well. Hopefully," she says quietly. "I've known some who have come back from the dead, or rather come back quickly from being killed, but ... Gabrielle has spoken of Porter casting a spell to bring his wife back from the dead. Magic and the like," she says drily, "is not my forte'. I may have gypsy heritage and all, but I've been a scientist for most of my life. For me, the metaphysical is just something that science hasn't yet figured out."

"Perhaps so. A new way of manipulating atoms, applying chemistry and physics," Arthur can't help but wonder. "Someday, science will find a way to explain it. But...hmm...yes. His fiancee--sorry, wife--was undead long before they met."

For a time, Magda sits in companionable silents. "One of the many, many theories of deep physics," she eventually says, mostly conversationally, "is M-theory, an idea that unifies all of the various concepts of string theory. One of the ... more philosophical side conversations about it is that, amongst all of the supersymmetrical strings that make up the bosons and fermions and quarks and leptons, which make up protons and neutrons and electrons which are the building-blocks of elements -- amongst all these seemingly infinite number of strings in a body, there is one, just one, that is ... you. The elementary vibrational superstring of the soul." She looks into the distance of the glass window that overlooks the street, sipping her drink for a moment, inadvertently giving herself a whipped-cream mustache. "And part of the theory is that when you die, that string ... slips away. Goes elsewhere, ties to something else. Maybe reincarnation, maybe ... something else. Finds all the other person-strings ... in a heaven, or in a hell. And maybe, just maybe, if you can find the one singular right superstring, if the body was healed, revitalized, you could ... return the string to the body. Bring them back; resurrection."

Arthur leans back into his chair and listens with a faintly dreamy smile on his face at her telling of M-theory. "It is a beautiful thought. I believe Witten had suggested 'magic' should be one of the things 'M' stood for. Also 'mystery', among other things. While I have yet to witness any proof of reincarnation, resurrection has been something achieved." He mulls that over for a moment. "Though...not in any perfect form as I know it," he adds before taking another sip.

Magda smiles quietly. "Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I sometimes wonder if magic is simply a science so advanced, operating on such a deep elemental level, that it is accessed and accessible by such other things that we cannot fully comprehend -- by which," she confesses, her head turning towards Arthur though she doesn't actually look at him, "I mean consciousness. Perhaps the science is that those most in tune with their consciousness, their spirit, their single and singular supersymmetrical string, are capable of causing strings around them to resonante in harmonic sympathy ..."

She sips her frappucino, and nibbles at her bread, drifting in thought and hypothesis. "Someday," she says quietly, "I'm going to find out whether or not that theory is true."

Arthur thinks on that a bit. He's familiar enough with Clarke's well-known saying. Though Kat originally learned about it from one of her favorite scifi shows. "Hmm. It sounds like you intend to find out personally."

A little laugh comes from her. "Oh, yes," Magda murmurs. "Approaching it from the other direction, though. Can a sufficiently advanced scientist ... I don't know how to phrase it correctly. Create sympathetic harmonic resonance, magic, through the tools of her scientific knowledge and her power? I've been able, if I really, really focus, to see genes directly. Well, not see, but sense. It'll be very much a stretching of my capabilities, but ... eventually, I think, I'll be able to perceive electrons directly. And from there, well. Well." She finishes off her bread. "From there, we'll see."

Arthur nods slowly at that. "Have you considered whether or not you should?" he smiles in amusement.

Now, the laugther is much richer. "You're asking the ethicist whether or not she's thought about it? Yes, Arthur, I've thought about it. The answer to that question is, in my personal opinion, a qualified 'yes'. Always, a qualified 'yes'. Yes, after you know everything there is to know about it, and after you've taken every precaution there is to take, and after you've discovered many more things about it than anyone else knows, and invented new precautions because of the things you've learned -- and then you pause, and consider, and be paranoid of the negative possibilities, and learn even more, and come up with more precautions."

She lifts her hand and gestures 'thataway', a vague flick of hand and fingers upwards. "If I ever do learn a sufficient amount, I'll take myself off to the middle of nowhere -- and by that point, I may well have advanced my personal speed best to be able to get out into intergalactic space within a reasonable period of time -- and try it out there. But who knows -- by the time I can, I may well know that even that is an insufficient protocol."

Arthur taps his finger lightly against his cup as he considers her words. "You certainly sound driven on this quest of yours. When you do attempt this experiment of yours, I do suggest a safe and instant place. Or star system," he chuckles.

Magda shakes her head, swirling the last of her frappucino in the bottom of its cup. "Driven? No. No, Professor Aevus, I have awoken to the long game -- the very, very, long game. Closing in on a hundred and fifty years, and save for my eye and hair color, I look much the same as I did when I was in kibbutz in nineteen forty-eight, or in London two years later. I suspect I may live a very long time indeed, and that goal is a distant one. There are far more important things for me to lend my passion to in the present than some personal quest to shake the hand of God -- if, indeed, that's what it would be." She shrugs. "As I said -- intergalactic space, a few hundred light-years away."

Arthur listens kindly. Speaking about the long game to a time traveler--whose spent many an adventure across time and space, in distant galaxies and beyond the time barrier before its erection--is not an irony lost on him. He sips his tea slowly now, thinking to himself. o O (And We thought We were crazy.) He decides to play innocent enough. "And which long game is this?"

Magda sits for a few more long moments, and then 'huhs'. "I could get out there now," she realizes. "Andromeda is only a week away." She rouses, and looks over at her fellow professor. "Personal exploration, Professor," she replies. "Scientific inquiry. The growth of the human race -- less on the technological side than on the social and personal side."

She shakes her head. "I have a question for you," she suddenly says. "What would you say would be the definition of arrogance? I mean, I've been called arrogant enough that I don't really care any more," she muses, "and I suppose that's arrogance itself, but ... when it comes down to it, I want there to be the opportunity for everyone to live and grow and develop. To not have to fight fourteen hours a day to have a full belly tomorrow. To learn; to explore. To find love, and happiness, and enough time to discover that hate and spite are dead-end, self-defeating paths."

"Andromeda has its own confederation of races. If you were to do something there, it might be considered an act of war," Arthur notes helpfully. His lips purse faintly at the comment that she's been called arrogant. "You don't say," he responds on the revelation that she's been called arrogant.

He shifts a bit in his seat to get more comfortable. "Well, I suppose to some, being very opinionated can seem like arrogance. Thinking one knows best and not listening to others? Pride? It's usually not obvious to the one who is purportedly arrogant."

"That," she says drily, "is why I said /intergalactic/ -- in the spaces between galaxies. In case an accident happened. But ... it's good to know there's life there too. People, in whatever shape and size and mind they come in."

She muses on the response. "Mmmm. I suppose those are all true. I've learned not to claim, or even think, that I know best; I certainly /do/ listen. I have found that intellect is not experience, and experience does not automatically transform into wisdom; it seems to me that it takes contemplation of one's experiences, usually failures, to generate that."

She considers the matter for a few long moments more, then sighs and finishes off her drink. "The burned hand teaches best," she says finally and climbs from the comfortable armchair. "Well. Thank you for the companionship, Professor," she says, giving him a courtesy -- an inclination of her head, akin to a bow or curtsey. "I hope the rest of your evening is more cheerful than what I brought into your presence."

Arthur raises his cup and gives a nod and a smile. "Have a good evening, Professor. It was a pleasant and mind-expanding conversation," he smiles sincerely.

Magda briefly smiles, then walks out of the store and slowly down the street, her arms folded beneath her breasts as she looks at the sidewalk and watches the path she's taking.