| Doppelgangers |
| Summary: | Sofia shows Rejn some art. |
| Date: | 14 Aug 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | All logs related to the Eleven's sketchbook. |
| Players: |
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| Guest Quarters — Deck 3 — Battlestar Cerberus |
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| The area here has been spiffed up for the Delegates. Bunks are kept neat as a pin, the lockers are brand new and have a beautiful shine on the fake wood. A table sits in the center with a vase of fake flowers resting in the middle. The deck has been mostly covered with a round, braided rug of multiple colors. To the back of the area, there is a private shower area. This is just one of five separate areas along Deck 3. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #168 |
It's a minor miracle that Allan Rejn hasn't run out of whiskey by now, given the not insignificant quantities of it he drinks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But the luxury of being accorded significantly more cabin space than even the CAG is one of the perquisites of power, and the former Secretary of Defense for Libran had a lot of it before Libran and the Quorum of Twelve and fifty billion souls were vaporized on the 26th of February. Judging from the fact that he's still wearing the same suit in which he arrived aboard, all that precious cabin space has been devoted to his vice of choice. And so it is that the portly gentleman now lounges alone at this godsforsaken hour of the night, nursing his ivory flask while poring over old QUODEL reports.
Gotta keep busy somehow, right?
It's certainly something to be in awe of, especially to a lowly snipe. Sofia is wandering the guest quarters. She looks here, there. The place is positively luxurious. She gently raps on the door frame. "Anyone here?" Her wide green eyes peer here and there, as if she might get attacked by a roving bottle of whiskey or something. Notably, she clutches a sketchbook to her chest, looking cautious.
A grunt and a gulp is Rejn's two-part reply. Sitting with his back to the hatch, he sees no reason to move when he can simply let his guest approach him — which might be why his pudgy hands trade flask for the half-empty bottle he's been using to fill it. He's settling in for a long night, perhaps; or, more likely, he's steeling himself for the prospect of talking to somebody at this hour of the day.
That's not a response Sofia hears often. Her eyebrows lift. "Oh, hey there," She greets him warmly. Poor Rejn. "I'm um, not bothering you, am I?" She wants to be sure. Part of her finds it baffling she might actually be /happy/ to see Rejn and another part worries. She inches in carefully. "I was given something I thought you should see," Sofia explains. "But- even I have manners. How are you?" She asks quietly.
This time, Rejn gulps before grunting: mixing it up. She should consider herself fortunate. "Did you know," he mutters — almost to himself, his beady eyes squinting. "Did you know that my men rated Engineering the least efficient department by more than twenty points on our custom scale?" The words are spoken in something resembling a very bitter chortle as he takes another swig straight from the bottle. "Supplies unaccounted for. Defective lights all over the ship. That galley fire." A harsh, tipsy laugh. "They wanted to fire you all."
Good times. Sofia pauses. Then frowns at the comment on engineering. "No. I'm sorry to hear that. The wiring material is kind of crappy to be honest. I've been replacing it, but… I guess if I deserved to get fired, then that's that," She shrugs. There's a faint hint of resignation. One Engineer against masses of wire is a losing battle honestly. "Though, I'm kind of worried about the supplies thing. People would always forget to sign things." Pout. There's that managerial side. She isn't sure whether to be annoyed or acknowledge that there's an unfortunate truth. "Um." Now it's awkward. Sigh. "Um. Well. All that aside… I did bring something you should see. Do you like art?"
"Guys who recommended you be fired?" Rejn continues, as if he hasn't heard a word of her protestations. "Three of them. Two of them got left behind. On the Anchorage. You know." The bottom of Rejn's bottle clatters loudly against the table, causing a few civilians nearby to stir in their bunks. "Third guy? Oh, you'll love this. Third guy, he enlisted, became an engineer, and got fried after he couldn't figure out how to do all those damage control procedures he was evaluating you on." Rejn's gut-busting laugh sounds hollowly in the cavernous room. "Now that, Tits McGee, is what I call irony." The last word is slightly slurred as he chucks his glasses onto the table, their yellow lenses refracting the ceiling's dim light onto the red dart of his tie. And after still another long, long pull from the bottle: "Art? Sure." The big man's snort turns into a low giggle halfway through. "Got this to drag me through it — " Another thud of glass against fake wood. "In case it's that postmodern bullshit Mary likes. 'Look, Mister Curator, I took a shit on some really famous painting. This symbolizes — oh, I don't know, but I do know you're going to pay me half a mil for it."
Oh well. They were probably in vain anyway. Sofia tilts her head, listening. She winces as the civilians stir. Sorry guys! Then a wince at the story of the guy who got fried. … not a pleasant fate that. She just nods slowly. "Guess so. Poor guy." Sigh. "Hopefully I'll keep on my toes." And not get zorched. Though she does frown at yet another breast related nickname. If only she'd opted for that surgery. Siiiigh. Too late now. "Yeah, but this is different," Sofia explains and looks to the glass. "It was all drawn by the Cylon lady we had here," Sofia explains in a much, much quieter tone. "And uhmm. Well, fortunately it's not postmodern really." She rubs the back of her head.
"Cylon lady?" Rejn's clearly behind the times — but even though his small eyes are teary and bloodshot, they flick over Sofia's way for the first time in this entire conversation. The man's interested. "Didn't know they were into that stuff. Maybe the godsdamned genocide was some performance art shit like the guy who sits in front of a piano for four and a half minutes doing nothing except wank." Rejn tilts his bottle Sofia's direction as his other hand scrabbles for his glasses.
"Mmhm. Miss Eleven. I felt kind of bad for her, so - I brought her a sketchbook since she mentioned that she was fond of art," Sofia admits. "I mean, she kinda irradiated me so I'm not sure WHY I felt bad except she was apologetic and helping us," Sofia is truly at a loss. Sigh. She smiles a little at Rejn. "I hope not. That kind of performance art gets weird," She's seen it. She nods at the sketchbook she clings to. "So … I wanted to show you and Miss Sawyer, just in case anything happens to me. I'm sure you noticed Engineering has an unfortunate rate of … attrition," Wince. "Besides, maybe you might offer more insight." She seems to think Rejn might have an opinion at the least. "The strangest part was that just before she died for the final time, she said I should have this or at least see it. I don't know why I felt sad at that moment."
"Huh." Oily fingers leave fingerprints on the lenses of his glasses as he sets them back on top of the bridge of his nose — almost missing, to the point at which he nearly puts out an eye trying to get the frame behind his ears. "This girl — she one of those humanoid freakshows?" Rejn isn't that behind the times. "Got a picture of her in there?" He gestures toward the book with his bottle-hand. "It'd be nice to look the enemy in the eye, if you know what I mean. Oh, I bet she's pretty, too. No reason for the toasters to build infiltrators if they're fat and balding." The man snorts once more, but despite it still manages to kill another half-shot. It's about as profound an insight as he's got to offer, but he gestures for Sofia to sit down nonetheless. More interesting than QUODEL reports, this.
"Well, I don't have one of her with me. She was very pretty," Sofia admits. "She had a sad smile. I'll have to find one for you," She offers. Sofia smiles at him sadly. "Here," She'll open the sketchbook to show him the first drawing after she's sat down. "Thank you. And I don't know." She decides AGAINST mentioning that she faceplanted into Eleven's bare cleavage at one point. Ahem. The first few are several rudimentary portraits of crewmembers she had memorable contact with - Tillman, Cora, and Karthasi. The latter is the most interesting. Sister Karthasi, in this portrait, is displaying a gleaming blank orb where her right eye should be, streaks of light obscuring that part of her features. There is a crow perched upon each shoulder and she cradles in her hands what looks to be a limp, dead owl. She's wearing a diaphonous white gown of what looks to be a fanciful, antiquated style. Very antiquated.
"Get me one?" A picture of the Cylon, Rejn means, though Sofia could be forgiven if she doesn't quite understand what he's on about. "Just so I can take a shit on it and call that art." Clearly someone hasn't quite forgiven the skinjobs for what they've done — but his grim smile fades when he focuses on the matter at hand. A low whistle hums through the air; then, fingers settling on the face of the priestess: "Gods. This shit would make terrible porn." Rejn's lips tighten as he flips through the pages of the sketchbook — and despite his evident intoxication, it seems as if he really is concentrating. "Surrealist." Hmph. "Plus a fair dose of the paint-your-fingernails-black aesthetic. My bet, you found yourself a teen Cylon who fantasizes about pale vampires."
"…" Sofia's starting to wonder if she should wait until he's a little more sober. She hasn't forgiven ALL of the skinjobs, just it seems - Miss Eleven. She rubs the back of her head. "Well, okay," She just accepts it for now. She pauses and winces at the porn comment. "Well. There's more. Like the page with all the math," She explains. That's a page or two over. Various simple mathematical calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and basic algebra) in a slanted, cursive hand that all have the same result. "12." The very last one, a roundabout equation, has "+1" added to its result equalling "13" and then subtracting 12, equalling "1." "I mean, I guess I thought that art was something for people and Gods…" Not really CYLONS. She frowns. There's a shrug, "I don't know. It's kinda strange."
"You're the engineer," Rejn says, tapping his finger on the page with the numbers. A bit of whiskey sprays from his upper lip, landing on the edge of the paper where it rapidly blooms from a pinhole-sized dot to something a little more substantial. "Only math I know is subtraction in divisions." Get it? Because he fires people for a living. Oh, what a joker. "You say this mess looks right, I'll take your word for it. Not that a frakking machine would build another machine to be shit at math." Rejn looks dangerously close to bursting into laughter once more, but something holds him back — and after he does another number on the bottle, any hint of humor has vanished. "Gods," he repeats, tapping his filthy fingernails aginst the side of his bottle. "Gods. Well. There's twelve of them, right?"
Really now? Sofia winces at the whiskey drop on the page. She smiles at Rejn's joke. She nods slowly. "That makes sense," She admits. For now, Sofia is mostly an audience- considering Rejn and the art alternately. "So far as we know. But she seems to have mentioned 13 on this page a lot. That she felt bad for it, an ugly number. I don't know what that means. That there might be a thirteenth model or …" She trails off. There's a sigh. "There's one more drawing, though it's kind of intense." She's waiting to see if he'll want to see it or not. "Or at least - really not what you'd expect."
"Never heard of the thirteenth god. Twelve, though, that's big." Rejn rubs his second chin, his thumb and forefinger toying with the flesh while he thinks. "Twelve gods. Twelve Tribes. Twelve Colonies. Twelve months. Lots of twelve, out there, but I suspect you already knew all that." Because even he isn't so arrogant to expect that he was Sofia's first port of call upon receiving those pictures. "And unless this drawing is of this skinjob eleven wearing my wife's clothes while rutting on a tractor, I think I'll be okay." Hard to tell whether the prospect of the scenario described above scares him, from the thin line of his lips.
"Yeah," Sofia admits. She looks thoughtful as he listens. "Sort of. I try to listen to everyone's thoughts when they see this. I felt compelled to show the Sister since she was pictured here, you know?" She admits. Then her eyes widen at the scenario he presents. *spoink* Ow. Her brain. "N-no, that's - definitely not it," Sofia replies. Mercifully. Finally, the weirdest and most involved piece, is a sketch of a sweeping, classical building that looks familiar, although you cannot remember why at first. In fact, it appears to be a Colonial temple, although it is unclear if it is a specific one. Arranged equally in a circle are twelve statues - apparently displaying the twelve Lords of Kobol. They are all without faces, though. There is a blank oval where each face should be. In the center there is some sort of altar, shaded in such a way that it is stained. At the very top of the page, the words, "A dream" are scribbled neatly in the center of the paper. At the very bottom, more notes are jotted down. "All of this has happened before." Given the scale of the statues, the building is /massive/. We're talking Delphi-style massive. The building is not tremendously detailed, she didn't have the time to probably finish it. "I'm not sure what it means. I wish I could have asked her."
"Isn't any temple I've ever seen," murmurs Rejn, who forces himself to swallow — and stare. Fingers that are almost reverent drift down each shadow of a column, picking up some charcoal as they go. "Not on Gemenon, that's for sure. Not Delphi, not Caprica City, not that piddly neoclassical monstrosity we called a Pantheon back on Libran. Seems to be the ur-temple, if you ask me. Which you did. Ha." He's suddenly stricken with a thirst even large quantities of alcohol can't seem to cure, not that he doesn't try — but the better angels in him force him to cap his whiskey at last. "It's not any single temple but it's all temples, is what I'd say, and the gods — our gods — " Rejn leans back in his chair, resting his hands on top of his belly as he sighs. "Twelve of them, too." He counted. It took him a while. "And one." Down goes his thumb onto the altar in the middle. "Whose is that, I wonder?"
Sofia watches a moment. She tilts her head and nods. "Yeah… The ur-temple?" She peers. Sofia's never heard that term before it seems. She peers and smiles. "I appreciate it," The answer at least. "Huh," Sofia considers. She's learning something here and is intent. She taps her chin. "I wish I knew honestly. It feels like I've seen it before, but … I know I haven't. Or did I?" It's especially troubling. Ur-temple. Her thoughts swirl. She doesn't seem to mind Rejn taking his time at all. "That's about all the art she left," Sofia admits - this the final drawing. "But I felt someone - I guess more people than just a few deserved to see it and it's good to get more opinions," Even if they may not be what she wants to hear. "So I hope I didn't bug you too much with all of this."
"Ur," Rejn says again. He's into professor mode, now, it seems. "Derived from something that definitely isn't Old Gemenese. Perfective prefix, it's called. Means primitive, original — and, importantly, here: prototypical." The civilian toys idly with the base of his tie. "The Platonic temple, sitting in the sky, from which all temples derive." Still another snort. "What that means, I don't know, and that's assuming you believe me in the first place. For all I know, this could be some random building out in the boonies and I could be full of shit." There's that self-deprecating grin once more. "Your call."
And Sofia is content to be a student. She watches Rejn quietly, peering intently and nods. "I see…" Her eyes widen and she looks to the drawing. "Well." She considers Rejn another moment, "I believe you. Your guess is probably a far sight better than mine," She smiles wryly. "Because all /I/ have is a weird sense of deja vu," She admits. She sighs, looking thoughtful. "I wish I knew myself. But… I might bring copies of this by to Miss Averies too," She notes. "So if you wanted some of this for your own reference, I'd be okay with that." It's obviously a gesture of tremendous trust. "But please be careful. I don't know that a lot of people might like seeing this kinda thing. It's a pretty big deal that Cylons of all things figured out /art/." Ponder. "I appreciate your insight though." Beam.
"Big deal?" Rejn allows himself a vaguely drunken smile, his first of the night. "It's that. And bigger. They wanted to be like us so badly they made themselves look like us, talk like us, and think like us. And from the looks of this — " His head jerks in the direction of the sketchbook on the table. "It looks like they went way beyond what even they might have wanted. Maybe they copied us too well, and all of the shit we do as humans — drawing, lying, cheating, stealing, frakking, killing! — maybe they got all that, too." And the man's narrow blue eyes gleam sharply beneath the pulsing of the lightbulb flickering above him. "Which means — " He lurches upwards to his feet, struggling to keep his footing. "Which means we, Boobsy, we get the last frakking laugh." And taking two steps forward, he tumbles into bed, suit crushed beneath the weight of his body.
Sofia blinks, and smiles back. She listens to Rejn, furrowing her eyeebrows. "… guess that would be pretty ironic," Sofia admits. Copying humanity too well, to the point of gaining all of it's quirks and faults. "Wonder if they got our good points too," She looks thoughtful. He has a damn fine point though, "That's - a really good point," She nods, letting it be said outloud. Though her eyes widen as he struggles to get his footing. She'd really rather not get landed on. "Um. Good night, sir." She has to admit that's the clearest perspective so far. Though she does peer over to make sure he's still breathing after he tumbles into bed. "Sleep well." She'll gather her book and go quietly.