[Damn, they really could build their own. Hmm. It makes him consider something else momentarily, but he glances up to listen to Scien.]
It's a shame you missed the Rec Room.
[This is earnest.]
Piltover has some games which are like puzzles, but... nothing like the ones I saw in there. The only puzzles I ran across were the ones I made for myself trying to invent things. Well, until Jayce gave me the biggest puzzle of all.
[from what he can guess. another side done... scien turns the cube over in his hands, examining the different colors. a faint smile is on his face the entire time because puzzles really put him in a good mood]
Puzzles aren't bad for the brain. It loses efficiency to focus on the same problems without end. Even I do them from time to time.
Magic. [The correction is not mad, and, in a way, not very far off from the Core exactly.] He brought me the puzzle of figuring out how to harnest the arcane.
[Says the title of the show a thousand times. He watches Scien ponder the snube.]
I think... focusing on one problem without end is undoubtedly why... our assistant is now nothing but ashes.
I did not think much about magic until Jayce blew an entire half of his apartment open. It was... interesting. Studying something he claims to have seen, but something I had never witnessed in all my life.
[His eyes lower to Scien's arms, then quickly flick up again.]
It is magic for now, but it will be science once you understand it. People always call what they don't grasp miracles or works of the occult.
[just... speaking from experience. but!! scien has just a few squares left to still puzzle through before he's done]
One girl held the key to saving the entire island. She agreed to sacrifice her life to my procedure that would allow everyone to have more time to live. Her lover took issue with that and stormed the Institute, engaging in a fight with me.
[He would agree, but after everything, he isn't entirely sure if he can confidently say that would be true for them. Jayce clung so tightly to the awe of magic.
His brows crease.]
You let them go... [HE SOUNDS SURPRISED.] But didn't you believe her lover was ridiculous and too emotional?
[It isn't an assumption like usual. It's a question. He's holding the usual cookie cutter up to see if Scien will fit in it or not.]
[WAIT PAUSE. HE SOLVED THE CUBE!! HE IMMEDIATELY BRIGHTENS UP AND LAUGHS AS ALL THE COLORS COME TOGETHER WITH A LAST CLICK. he's truly so satisfied, smiling brightly as he turns it all around. he's laughing with such joy even if it still sounds kinda evil]
[he just laughs to himself as he scrambles it all up again, making it nice and impossible
and then tosses it over to viktor once it's jumbled]
Your turn.
[help]
Anyway, of course I did. Tell me—what do you think? If you were to weigh three thousand lives against one life? Where you know for certain that sacrificing this one life, who actually wants to be a part of the experiment, will be able to improve the lives of countless others? That could be the salvation that your country is looking for?
What would you do?
[there's a clear answer, scien thinks. but he is curious what loopholes and other considerations viktor would look for]
[Serial killer vibes........ Like standing right at the precipice of being a serial killer vibe. The juxtaposition of Scien being maniacally joyous over figuring out a puzzle and Viktor, on the other hand, is viktoratcomputer.jpg about it.
WAH!!!
He stumbles trying to untangle himself quickly enough to catch the jumbled cube. DON'T JUST TOSS IT. He exhales, brows immediately furrowing as he turns the cube to look it over, as if he's checking for a pattern. HE'S ALREADY SHAKING HIS HEAD.]
No... I don't agree with testing science on others. That was my condition for Hextech. It's for improving lives, not destroying them. [He starts on the cube, twisting it rhythmically in a similar sort of pattern of rotation.] It doesn't matter if it's one person, or a thousand.
A single person is not just... a life in a void. They're connected to other people. Their lives are a web, and one thrum can be felt on the other side. One hole can make the whole web collapse.
I both agree and disagree with you, but I don't find that your reasoning is inherently bad.
[it's just different. it's honestly more righteous than scien's is, but he doesn't think that he has the time nor need to be so righteous and good.]
However, I will not allow thousands of lives to be extinguished for one person. That is the choice I made in creating my technology. Whatever I can experiment on myself, I will, but that is not always possible. But even everyday medicine requires clinical trials and risks. While I take it to the extreme end, there is no progress that can be made without calculated experiments.
When her lover came to attack me in the name of love, I did find him to be foolish. I didn't think someone so inherently good and kind would be able to survive knowing that he destroyed a chance for salvation.
[would viktor be able to? if he came to a point one day where it was just one single person's life weighed against thousands?]
But he won against me, and I am not a person who wants to take lives—so I let them go.
[The rhythm of his turning slows into something easy and steady, but it's clear he is doing this while listening to Scien. Because he is looking at Scien mostly aside from the period quick glance down at his hands.]
There is no point to salvation if he can't spend it with the person he loves. [His hands have stopped, momentarily, but then begin again.] It's not a feeling I'm familiar with personally, [virgin] but it is... one I can understand. I don't know how to explain it to you. It isn't... science. It can't be explained. It isn't reasonable. It isn't meant to be.
It's love at its most maddening and illogical. [he agrees] But that love has cost so many other people their chances of salvation. It is selfish in a way that I can't even begin to understand.
[becaus scien cherishes nothing in the world quite so much, and likely never will. not to this extent, when as someone who has become the leader of the country, he has so much more to consider than just himself.]
What happens... is that the Institute gets rebuild. I follow a new lead that was dropped into my lap just before I came here.
I save the girl and her lover both, if I can, before they die to pay for the debt I owe them.
Then it worked out. Without you having to sacrifice a single person for the sake of many. Maybe.
[He rolls the finished cube around in his long fingers, and then he starts jumbling the cube up again. He moves to Scien, placing the cube down on the table and sliding it toward the other man.]
I know a puzzle you'll never be able to solve. [He glances up. Not because Scien isn't intelligent enough. Because it's unsolvable.] Love.
[he'll be honest about that. either way, people would've been saved, but he's not going to spend all that time waiting on a coincidence that might not come. while he doesn't think he was wrong, he also doesn't think he was right. his logic was sound, but his principles were almost compromised....
well. at the rest, he sighs.]
And why would I want to? It's clear enough that love puts more people at risk than it seems to truly help.
[Boy, does he know that sentiment. The first one. WHY ARE SO MANY FUCKS DOWN HERE LIKE THIS.]
I guess it's something you would have to experience to understand. Someone loving you, you loving someone else.
[He, of all people, does not have the answers for this at all. He's a virgin. One shoulder shrugs gently.]
You... had a sister, right? Family? Even if things did not go poorly with them, would you not have come to a frustrating impasse if you cared about them being alive with you, but their death meant helping thousands of others...?
The family was not a loving one. My father and my grandfather both spent the vast majority of their live concerned with the curse—I wouldn't be surprised if they procreated only for someone to take on the work. My mother was killed by bandits and my sister eventually found me to be unsalvageable as a person.
[it's said like a report. facts. that's what they are. even before scien was a reliver, he wasn't particularly emotional. none of this hurts him, the same way that he hasn't been afraid of memshare all week, because all of it is fact.]
If my death would solve the curse, I would be the first to sacrifice myself. But that is because I believe in the persistence of humanity and the right of the average person to live, not individual humans.
[he thinks briefly.]
There are some I would make exceptions for—that I would go out of my way to save. It's not as though I don't think the decision isn't difficult... but I don't think countless more people should pay the price for my selfishness.
[It isn't lost on Viktor he is getting these as facts, and... for once, it doesn't bother him. It does, but it doesn't spur any sort of defensive anger in him. He's Adapting.
Carefully, he crosses his arms over his stomach again.]
...When you died, Dahut was extremely upset. When you were testing our limitations for death here. He came out to tell us, and... I said "good riddance" because I hated how callous you were to others. As soon as I said it... the look on his face.
He cares about you a great deal. You mean so much to him. He even told me, and I questioned him. I couldn't imagine someone admiring and caring about a man who treated the very people he saved so coldly. And, yes, I know he understands the sacrifice of your life for whatever greater good you think is there, but it still hurts him. Your loss still affects someone, it still affects him.
I know you are both Relivers, and I know he only has a small lack of limiter, but... that's love, you know? It is. No one can grieve if there isn't some kind of love there already.
You are the second person to lecture me on something as if I don't understand it.
[but scien isn't an idiot. he doesn't know if he'd call his relationship with dahut as something like love, when there are too many things that make it more complicated than that. it's not this all-encompassing duty and loyalty. with the way that their country works, it can't be. but what he'll admit is - ]
I know what care is. I know what our relationship is. You cannot be next to a person for fifty years and feel nothing. It was irritating when, even when I was the one to kill Dahut, people spoke to me as if the only reason I could possibly be upset is because I was inconvenienced by not having my assistant. That doesn't see him as his own person, and irritated me far worse than anything else they said.
[even if he will not say so in such simple words - scien cares about dahut exactly the same. as a person, not a tool. it's just a hard thing to earn from him.]
But you would be surprised. In our country, so many people will claim to feel love and affection, but utterly fail to mourn someone's death. I understand it's not the same in other countries. That's a good thing.
[to not be a society that fails to properly grieve]
[Thank God Scien has at least a scrap of... Viktor isn't sure if he'd call that altruism, but that's what it is really.]
It isn't really different in Piltover and Zaun in that regard. No one in Piltover mourns the people dying in the Undercity. "They did it to themselves," they'd say. Even the children being forced to work the chemlabs. No one cares if they die. No one cares about the people addicted to Shimmer, wasting away in the polluted hollows and the dark.
[Another shrug.]
I'm not surprised people are indifferent to others' suffering.
There is a divide amongst our districts as well, though crime occurs amongst both the rich and the poor. Though our royal family is rather useless in actually doing anything to address it, or rather they'll often make it worse.
[but scien considers governance to be someone else's job, because he has a little too much to think about as is with his research and keeping the institute running]
There is plenty about human nature that people don't care to acknowledge.
Don't get me wrong. It happens in Piltover, too, but... they sweep it under the rug. They're... craftier about it. The crime isn't... violence. Murder, brawls, discontent. It's crueler. More manipulative.
[He frowns.]
Piltover doesn't have royals surprisingly, but it does have a council. They make all of the decisions by vote. It's the council... Jayce became a part of. I don't think... politics and science should be mixed.
I think he was being pulled in two directions he couldn't compromise. The council, and our Hextech dream.
You're right—the two shouldn't be. Those with political power will always try to get science to sway so that they can stay in power. It's half of what our royals bother me for, instead of doing their jobs.
[he shakes his head]
I'd be wary of that friend of yours. He's probably going to follow the illusion of power.
[Naturally, he looks somewhat irritably offended at the warning. It's reflexive, reactionary.]
No, Jayce... wouldn't...
[Dahut had also sort of warned him.
But he and Jayce have been partners for so long, have been close. And yet, in this moment, he thinks again about the hammer being dropped near him the last they had truly spoken. He thinks about... how he had accepted the Shimmer so he could utilize the Hex Core, unbeknownst to Jayce.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[Damn, they really could build their own. Hmm. It makes him consider something else momentarily, but he glances up to listen to Scien.]
It's a shame you missed the Rec Room.
[This is earnest.]
Piltover has some games which are like puzzles, but... nothing like the ones I saw in there. The only puzzles I ran across were the ones I made for myself trying to invent things. Well, until Jayce gave me the biggest puzzle of all.
no subject
[from what he can guess. another side done... scien turns the cube over in his hands, examining the different colors. a faint smile is on his face the entire time because puzzles really put him in a good mood]
Puzzles aren't bad for the brain. It loses efficiency to focus on the same problems without end. Even I do them from time to time.
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[Says the title of the show a thousand times. He watches Scien ponder the snube.]
I think... focusing on one problem without end is undoubtedly why... our assistant is now nothing but ashes.
[HE IS SELF AWARE NOW.]
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[scien will just... glance over at viktor again before going back to the cube...]
I've lost sight of myself as well. It's what I lost my arm over.
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[His eyes lower to Scien's arms, then quickly flick up again.]
Doing what...?
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[just... speaking from experience. but!! scien has just a few squares left to still puzzle through before he's done]
One girl held the key to saving the entire island. She agreed to sacrifice her life to my procedure that would allow everyone to have more time to live. Her lover took issue with that and stormed the Institute, engaging in a fight with me.
I lost. I let them both go.
no subject
His brows crease.]
You let them go... [HE SOUNDS SURPRISED.] But didn't you believe her lover was ridiculous and too emotional?
[It isn't an assumption like usual. It's a question. He's holding the usual cookie cutter up to see if Scien will fit in it or not.]
[1/3]
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How satisfying.
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and then tosses it over to viktor once it's jumbled]
Your turn.
[help]
Anyway, of course I did. Tell me—what do you think? If you were to weigh three thousand lives against one life? Where you know for certain that sacrificing this one life, who actually wants to be a part of the experiment, will be able to improve the lives of countless others? That could be the salvation that your country is looking for?
What would you do?
[there's a clear answer, scien thinks. but he is curious what loopholes and other considerations viktor would look for]
no subject
WAH!!!
He stumbles trying to untangle himself quickly enough to catch the jumbled cube. DON'T JUST TOSS IT. He exhales, brows immediately furrowing as he turns the cube to look it over, as if he's checking for a pattern. HE'S ALREADY SHAKING HIS HEAD.]
No... I don't agree with testing science on others. That was my condition for Hextech. It's for improving lives, not destroying them. [He starts on the cube, twisting it rhythmically in a similar sort of pattern of rotation.] It doesn't matter if it's one person, or a thousand.
A single person is not just... a life in a void. They're connected to other people. Their lives are a web, and one thrum can be felt on the other side. One hole can make the whole web collapse.
no subject
I both agree and disagree with you, but I don't find that your reasoning is inherently bad.
[it's just different. it's honestly more righteous than scien's is, but he doesn't think that he has the time nor need to be so righteous and good.]
However, I will not allow thousands of lives to be extinguished for one person. That is the choice I made in creating my technology. Whatever I can experiment on myself, I will, but that is not always possible. But even everyday medicine requires clinical trials and risks. While I take it to the extreme end, there is no progress that can be made without calculated experiments.
When her lover came to attack me in the name of love, I did find him to be foolish. I didn't think someone so inherently good and kind would be able to survive knowing that he destroyed a chance for salvation.
[would viktor be able to? if he came to a point one day where it was just one single person's life weighed against thousands?]
But he won against me, and I am not a person who wants to take lives—so I let them go.
no subject
There is no point to salvation if he can't spend it with the person he loves. [His hands have stopped, momentarily, but then begin again.] It's not a feeling I'm familiar with personally, [virgin] but it is... one I can understand. I don't know how to explain it to you. It isn't... science. It can't be explained. It isn't reasonable. It isn't meant to be.
[...]
...So now what happens?
no subject
[becaus scien cherishes nothing in the world quite so much, and likely never will. not to this extent, when as someone who has become the leader of the country, he has so much more to consider than just himself.]
What happens... is that the Institute gets rebuild. I follow a new lead that was dropped into my lap just before I came here.
I save the girl and her lover both, if I can, before they die to pay for the debt I owe them.
no subject
[He rolls the finished cube around in his long fingers, and then he starts jumbling the cube up again. He moves to Scien, placing the cube down on the table and sliding it toward the other man.]
I know a puzzle you'll never be able to solve. [He glances up. Not because Scien isn't intelligent enough. Because it's unsolvable.] Love.
But if you ever do, I'd love to hear the answer.
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[he'll be honest about that. either way, people would've been saved, but he's not going to spend all that time waiting on a coincidence that might not come. while he doesn't think he was wrong, he also doesn't think he was right. his logic was sound, but his principles were almost compromised....
well. at the rest, he sighs.]
And why would I want to? It's clear enough that love puts more people at risk than it seems to truly help.
no subject
I guess it's something you would have to experience to understand. Someone loving you, you loving someone else.
[He, of all people, does not have the answers for this at all. He's a virgin. One shoulder shrugs gently.]
You... had a sister, right? Family? Even if things did not go poorly with them, would you not have come to a frustrating impasse if you cared about them being alive with you, but their death meant helping thousands of others...?
no subject
[it's said like a report. facts. that's what they are. even before scien was a reliver, he wasn't particularly emotional. none of this hurts him, the same way that he hasn't been afraid of memshare all week, because all of it is fact.]
If my death would solve the curse, I would be the first to sacrifice myself. But that is because I believe in the persistence of humanity and the right of the average person to live, not individual humans.
[he thinks briefly.]
There are some I would make exceptions for—that I would go out of my way to save. It's not as though I don't think the decision isn't difficult... but I don't think countless more people should pay the price for my selfishness.
no subject
Carefully, he crosses his arms over his stomach again.]
...When you died, Dahut was extremely upset. When you were testing our limitations for death here. He came out to tell us, and... I said "good riddance" because I hated how callous you were to others. As soon as I said it... the look on his face.
He cares about you a great deal. You mean so much to him. He even told me, and I questioned him. I couldn't imagine someone admiring and caring about a man who treated the very people he saved so coldly. And, yes, I know he understands the sacrifice of your life for whatever greater good you think is there, but it still hurts him. Your loss still affects someone, it still affects him.
I know you are both Relivers, and I know he only has a small lack of limiter, but... that's love, you know? It is. No one can grieve if there isn't some kind of love there already.
no subject
[but scien isn't an idiot. he doesn't know if he'd call his relationship with dahut as something like love, when there are too many things that make it more complicated than that. it's not this all-encompassing duty and loyalty. with the way that their country works, it can't be. but what he'll admit is - ]
I know what care is. I know what our relationship is. You cannot be next to a person for fifty years and feel nothing. It was irritating when, even when I was the one to kill Dahut, people spoke to me as if the only reason I could possibly be upset is because I was inconvenienced by not having my assistant. That doesn't see him as his own person, and irritated me far worse than anything else they said.
[even if he will not say so in such simple words - scien cares about dahut exactly the same. as a person, not a tool. it's just a hard thing to earn from him.]
But you would be surprised. In our country, so many people will claim to feel love and affection, but utterly fail to mourn someone's death. I understand it's not the same in other countries. That's a good thing.
[to not be a society that fails to properly grieve]
no subject
It isn't really different in Piltover and Zaun in that regard. No one in Piltover mourns the people dying in the Undercity. "They did it to themselves," they'd say. Even the children being forced to work the chemlabs. No one cares if they die. No one cares about the people addicted to Shimmer, wasting away in the polluted hollows and the dark.
[Another shrug.]
I'm not surprised people are indifferent to others' suffering.
no subject
[but scien considers governance to be someone else's job, because he has a little too much to think about as is with his research and keeping the institute running]
There is plenty about human nature that people don't care to acknowledge.
no subject
Don't get me wrong. It happens in Piltover, too, but... they sweep it under the rug. They're... craftier about it. The crime isn't... violence. Murder, brawls, discontent. It's crueler. More manipulative.
[He frowns.]
Piltover doesn't have royals surprisingly, but it does have a council. They make all of the decisions by vote. It's the council... Jayce became a part of. I don't think... politics and science should be mixed.
I think he was being pulled in two directions he couldn't compromise. The council, and our Hextech dream.
no subject
[he shakes his head]
I'd be wary of that friend of yours. He's probably going to follow the illusion of power.
no subject
No, Jayce... wouldn't...
[Dahut had also sort of warned him.
But he and Jayce have been partners for so long, have been close. And yet, in this moment, he thinks again about the hammer being dropped near him the last they had truly spoken. He thinks about... how he had accepted the Shimmer so he could utilize the Hex Core, unbeknownst to Jayce.
Their pact is crumbling in their hands.]
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