victormakesart | (no subject)

(no subject)

If you find yourself in a secluded corner of the Nexus, past the rhinestone statue of a... no one quite knows what that is, but it's blobby in shape. And perhaps not a statue at all. If you find yourself there, you might stumble upon a child's birthday party.

The birthday cake is pretty standard. It says: Happy 2nd Birthday Anya and Athena!

That's where the standardness ceases. Little Anya is dressed as Amelia Earhart, but she keeps taking off her hat, messy blonde hair static clinging up. Athena is dressed up as a toaster, keeping with the history theme, because that's in the history of mechanical doodads and Athena is a robot. It made sense to her papas.

Victor, for her part, is dressed up as Abe Lincoln, complete with a fake beard and a stovepipe hat. That is to say: she's being ridiculous, like usual. Anya is trying to tear the beard off, and Victor is leaning back out of reach of her tiny hands, laughing.

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Clark's gone the much cheaper route of getting away with his work clothes as a costume, and ditching his glasses for the day. "Hey there, you," he says to the kids with a smile, then cocks an eyebrow at Victor. "A toaster, huh?"

"Yep! A toaster. It's in her history. I wanted to go for a lightbulb, but... what the lady wants, the lady gets." She rests a fond hand on Athena's head. "Who're you today, my good man."

Clark sits down next to them, to do his part in distracting the munchkins from demolishing Abe's beard. "Alan Turing. Does that count as cheating?"

"Not at all," she says, tipping her hat back so she can look up at him a little better. "I can see the resemblance."

"Plus he was pretty much the father of artificial intelligence, and my father is an AI," he adds, quirking an eyebrow.

"Perfect choice for you." She leans down to give Athena a little kiss on the top of her head. Athena spontaneously starts reciting her ABC's. Anya tries to join in, but she stumbles more than Athena does, and ends up babbling through most of it.

"Note to self: Recite ABCs button is on top of her head." He looks very seriously at Anya, though. "And you did fantastically too."

"Totally! I'm so proud of you, Anya-baby." Anya smiles a proud smile, and then waits until Vic's looking to Athena and then tries to grab the fake beard again. It's weird and she wants it. "Showin' off for Uncle Clark, yeah? Yeah. I knew it. You did a great job, honey."

"She did better than I did when I was their age." He very gently boops Athena on the nose with one fingertip. "How are you with numbers, sweetheart?" He automatically uses his mom's endearment for him, having associated it with small children for his whole life now.

"Three point one four one five nine two--"

Victor suppresses a chuckle and slips off her fake beard.

"Good job, honey! That's pi!"

"Not for eating," Anya intones, solemnly, clearly something she's heard many times before.

Clark chuckles a little at that. "It'd be pretty hard to eat that kind of pi."

"It wouldn't taste very good at all," Victor says, giving each girl a kiss on the tops of their heads in turn. "How old are you now? Fifteen? A million?"

"Two!"

((♥?))

Gosh, they're adorable. "That's right. And what does having a birthday get you?"

Adia was not expecting to walk past a children's birthday party today, and probably would not have noticed but for the sound of familiar laughter. Rather than interrupt whatever sort of celebration is happening (she sees cake, but Victor is in costume and so are the two small, adorable children).

So rather than approach like a socially confident person, Adia just hangs back a ways and looks confused.

((Too late to tag? I didn't see this until recently. <3))

"Oh, gosh, come on in, come on in," Victor insists, trooping up in her little fake beard, feeling ridiculous and very proud of being ridiculous. "Have cake and stuff! The kids turned two today, right on Thanksgiving!"

((Never too late! ♥ Glad to see you!))

Oh, so it is a birthday party. That doesn't explain the costumes, or what Thanksgiving is. Adia smiles anyway and shyly waves at the birthday girls. "Happy birthday!" She turns to Victor, full of questions, not sure where to start. "I think you've told me before, what what are their names?"

((I'm going to be out of town from the 21st to the 28th, but I'll try to tag when I can before and after.))

"Thanks," Vic says, because the girls are but two and still working on politeness (at least Anya is, Athena has it down, and Anya will never quite get the purpose of tact).

"This little gal is Anya, and she's Athena," Victor says, straightening Anya's costume because she is super interested in dishevelling herself. Athena, for her part, is being an angel.

((I actually had a similar out-of-townage! Sorry about that, holidays snuck up on me!))

"They're very cute," Adia says, because that's what one says about small children, expect she really does mean it, the two are positively adorable. Her gaze lingers on Athena -- this is the child Victor built, the one who Adia was afraid would be like a cylon, except she's just a little girl, not very cylon-like at all.

But her costume, once it registers to Adia, sends a shiver through her. Victor couldn't possibly have known that "toaster" is slang for cylon where she's from. Still, it's a little unnerving. "Is it normal for people from Earth to wear costumes on their birthday?"

((Sorry I'm impossibly slow with tagging. My baby got sick right before the holidays and I'm only now just getting my act together. But I didn't forget!))

Victor would humbly protest and say that, really, Billy mostly built Athena, she just sort of helped a little. The child she built mostly on her own, Jude, has yet to be activated. He's ready to get transferred into his body. He's fully formed, completely built, checked for bugs and run through simulations. But he hasn't been put in his body. Victor's scared to activate him. Precisely why is hard to pin down. Maybe she's afraid that she made a coding mistake. Maybe she's scared he won't like her.

"It's not a normal thing at all, nope. But this birthday has a history theme, so I decided that we'd be dressing up in historical costumes."

The Doctor strolls by in high-waisted silver pants, a cravat, and laser glasses. "...in some cases, historical costumes that haven't happened yet," Victor points out.

((Gosh, no worries!! I hope your kid's doing okay now.))

Adia probably wouldn't be able to assuage Victor's fears. She's still lukewarm at best to the idea of creating artificial life. Victor gets a pass because of how kind she's been to Adia and how much love she has for her children.

"I wish I'd known. I would have worn a toga," she jokes. She follows The Doctor with her eyes. "The future is very shiny," she decides with a small giggle. The girls are cute. It keeps her relaxed. "Athena is a toaster." Ha ha. "Anya is... a pilot? And you're...?"

((She's fine now. Making me get up super early, but that's normal. ;) ))

Edited 2012-01-09 02:25 (UTC)

"Anya is dressed as Amelia Earhart," she says, trying to trick her back into wearing the hat. She's having none of it. "The first lady to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean. And I'm... Abraham Lincoln, the fellow who freed the slaves (and was President). Admittedly, I only really dressed as him 'cause he's known as being super tall, and I'm soooo not."

((I'm glad! Though the getting up super early, oof! :) ))

"Oh, I see." That does explain the pilot costume. "A president who freed slaves... I'm assuming this was some time ago in your Earth's past?" She laughs. "You're tall enough, Victor. If you were super tall, I'd have to crane my neck."

"Yeah, totally. Like a good... one-fifty years ago. Not long enough for me, though. We never shoulda had slavery to start with. Some places it's still going on." She wants to save the world. She wants to toss on a cape and make everyone act better toward each other. But now's not the time to get broody and grumpy so she kisses the top of Athena's head. "Gosh, I'm itty-bitty. I know all of my kids're gonna get taller than me."

"Slavery used to exist on Kobol, but that was thousands of years ago." Not that Adia's climbing on any high horses. The Cylons probably thought of themselves as slaves, and the Saggitarions weren't treated much better. "Sounds like a good president, then." She watches Athena a moment, then asks with a forced casualness, "How's your kid that you... um, were working on?"

"Lucky," she says, and she fully means it. At least in that case, Adia's world is more evolved, better at human rights, if not people rights. Victor chews down on her lip and doesn't even notice that Anya is trying to feed her hat to Ziggy the robot dog. "I've built him. I've programmed him. I just haven't put the two together yet."

She leads a little away from the girls. Anya might not retain the information, but Athena has a memory like a video camera, and good hearing besides. "I'm just nervous, is all. I don't know why. I guess I've never had so much control over the process before. Anya was a surprise, Athena was mostly built by Billy, and now I have the control, and I can't hit the final buttons."