victormakesart | (no subject)

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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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"I think things'll be okay," she says, and the oomph is there behind her words. "I'm not gonna worry. If I have to tweak his programming, I'll figure it out as I go. I've made parts of him imperfect on purpose, so I shouldn't be freaking out about this."

She smiles this wide, toothy smile, heads over to the cake. She is taking very good alien painkillers, so there's only a bit of a wobble to her steps. "Oh totally! Have two!" She leans in, confidingly, "The girls shouldn't be having too much sugar anyway."

((Goodnight, rest well! Make sure to poke me when your post is up! I don't really check the site anymore, but I'd love to reply and play and catch up. And, I know. I mostly play journal to journal now. You could do that, maybe, too?))

"How will he grow?" She asks Victor as they walk back over to the cake. "Will you build him a new body?" How will Athena grow, for that matter? She laughs softly at Victor's words. "Not unless you want them bouncing off the walls all night."

((I will let you know! I am happy to play journal to journal and maybe I'll throw up a post there as well in case other folks don't check DM anymore as well.))

"There are certain spots on his frame that can be expanded when the time comes. At his waist, his shoulders, his neck, arms, legs, chest, stuff like that. And his holo'll fill in the rest." Athena, on the other hand, without her holo, looks almost like a ball, with orbiting littler spheres, gathering information. She's almost all holo, but solid, warm to the touch (Victor came up the idea to make a shifting holo for her).

((That would be fully awesome. ♥!))

"Oh, that makes sense." The expansion of his frame, that is. "Holo as in hologram? Won't that leave, um, gaps?" She pokes at the air. "Like, you could touch him in spots and just have your fingers pass through?"

"Yeah, you got it." Victor gets gleeful at the question, shifting from side to side a little, she can hardly contain herself. "That's actually something I came up with for Athena when she was still in production! There's this shifting matter underneath, like muscle and skin, with sensors for heat and sensation. It can even simulate the rush of a pulse. But I can't get texture and detail and good color with that matter, hence the holo."

"Oh." She looks over at Athena, then away guiltily. She wasn't just thinking of giving the girl a little poke in the side, nope. "That's really impressive. Does that mean she could change her appearance if she wanted to?"

((I've put up a post on Adia's LJ. I decided to eschew D_M for now.))

"She can. And she does. A lot. She shifts ages sometimes, hair color. I made that impossible for Jude. He can make cosmetic changes, but not on a whim; he has to work torward it and program it in manually."

((I'll check it out! Is it okay if Vic happens to be in the Nexus at the time? I'm not sure if she could trace text back.))

"I'm glad you changed it for your son. I don't know why, but I don't think kids should be able to do that. Call me old-fashioned." She grins a little.

((Whatever works for you. :) I'll probably be going to bed soon but I'll tag back when I can.))

"Oh, I agree. Athena was mostly Billy's work, and I like the way she changes around, for her. But I don't think it would be good for Jude. I want Jude to feel his own limitations and learn to make beauty within them." She smiles back at her, warmly.

((Awesome, thanks! Rest well when you do! :) ))

Victor's words trigger a thought in the back of Adia's mind. A line of questioning she has long since forgotten gets a little tug. Her gaze drifts as she pokes at her subconscious, trying to bring that thought back into focus. Something about cylons and why they took human forms, forms that couldn't change...

But then the two girls start giggling over something, and Adia's attention turns to them. She smiles softly. "Are you ready for three kids? How are your husbands, by the way?"

"That was part of what I was worried about," Victor admits, face tilted toward her girls. "But then I realized that... I'd have a million kids if I could. That I love people, and children, and the work I do with them is... energizing as much as it is exhausting. Even when I'm dead on my feet, I feel... proud, and I love my girls fit to bursting. And my husbands are doing awesome. Tonight James is going out with Jonny for some boy time, Cole issss... right there," she says, craning her neck to see, then pointing to the back of a man in a crazy white wig. "He went as Einstein. How're things going by you?"

"A million!" Adia laughs, but in admiration, not to make fun. "I think I'd be worn out with just one. But I'll bet you have room in your heart for a million."

She peers in the direction Victor points. She doesn't know who Einstein is, but the hair reminds her of Doc Brown, which is oddly in the right ballpark. "Not bad, I... guess I have a boyfriend now." She feels dorky for admitting it, but she likes that she is finally building a life with someone else, when a year ago she didn't think she'd ever move on.

((So many RP threads! I should hit the hay, but I'll tag back more when I can!))

"I get kinda worn out myself," she admits. "Physically, I mean." She worries about how much longer she'll be able to pick up her girls, for example, with the joint pain she's in. They're getting big, fast.

"Oh my gosh," she chirps, hands fluttering up into the air, sounding, for once, like a bit of a girly-girl. "Who is he? Tell me all about him!" This is all made somewhat ridiculous by the dark suit and the stovepipe hat.

((No rush! Rest well! :) ))

"I'm not surprised. But you do have two husbands to help you out. Or is that just twice the work?" Polyamorous marriages weren't unheard of on some of the colonies, but Adia did not have any personal experience with them.

She laughs, surprised by Victor's reaction. "His name's Will. He's a chemist and works at the water treatment facility. We met at a science function -- the fleet tries to keep ingenuity going, y'know, get all the eggheads together to keep things fresh. Anyway, we have some things in common, and... well, I wasn't exactly looking for a boyfriend, but he was interested in me from the beginning. He's really passionate about workers' rights. Passionate in general, really."

"Definitely not twice the work. James has another partner, too, so there's not really any pressure on me, and I have a lot of other people to help me out with the girls. I'm much luckier than most other parents, I know." She practically has a village, and her children are going to be so loved.

"That's so exciting! Aren't the brilliant ones so much fun? Is he really cute and stuff?"

Certainly luckier than the parents Adia knows, but she doesn't dwell on that. A birthday party is a happy occasion. "Well, I'm glad you have help. They look like a handful -- but in a good way." What toddler isn't a handful, though?

Adia laughs again, blushing a little at the questions. "He is pretty smart," she says shyly, "And I think he's pretty cute. He kind of looks like -- oh, never mind, that won't help, you won't know who I'm referring to."

"Ha! They totally are! They're gonna grow up to be little wild savages," she says, with the greatest amount of relish. She looks forward to them being crazy little kids, capable but impulsive teenagers, and adults who can dollop up a big blob of bonkers with their happy, well-adjusted lives.

"Hee! That's okay. Describe him anyway. I bet he's so adorable."

Adia looks up, bashful but amused all the same. "Okay, okay. Um, he sort of looks like this actor I used to fancy. He's tall and blond and... I don't know, just really there/i>, you know? He never hides how he's feeling."

"I love people like that. Totally present, totally honest. They kinda hold you accountable, you know? Won't let you get away with the silly dishonesties other folks let you get away with. And tall and blond is pretty cute." Take her choice in husbands for example. Though Cole isn't tall-tall, more like taller-than-Vic tall, he is blond. And James is definitely blond and tall.

"I just like that I know what he's thinking. I guess it does keep me honest, too. I'm not into mind games." She considers Victor's costume. "He'd make a good President Lincoln, maybe. Well, minus the beard."

"Honest Abe," she says, with a little grin. "I like that kind of person. It's a kind of person you don't really see anymore. I wish I could be more like that."

Adia laughs. "You seem pretty honest, Victor. And you'd free slaves in a heartbeat."

"I totally would. As for me being honest... I kinda go into survival mode sometimes, and I bluff like you wouldn't believe. I just talk and come up with stuff on the fly, and...." She clears her throat, embarrassed, but not so badly embarrassed, because the situation has resolved itself (mostly). "I did that with Cole a few times when we'd have fights and he'd get so mad at me for it. I wouldn't even realize I did it, I'd just redirect his attention or (well) I wouldn't lie, not to him, but I'd see the situation, and I'd think that the solution was 'make him not mad at me' when the real solution was 'fix the actual situation.' Does that make sense? I just took shortcuts to make him not upset, because I thought that was a greater good than solving the problem."

Adia listens with a warm look. "Oh, Victor," is what she wants to say. Leave it to Victor to feel humble and embarrassed by something almost everyone does on a daily basis. Instead, she smiles and replies, "It makes perfect sense to me. You didn't want him to be upset and a lot of times appeasing someone is easier than dealing with whatever upset them in the first place. And, y'know, honesty is good, but it's kind of irritating if it isn't tempered with kindness. Some people are blunt to the point of obnoxiousness." Not her new beau, hopefully, or she wouldn't be dating him. But she can't help but think, briefly, that he could use a small dose of Victor's humility.

"Yeah, but it's bad. Bad that I treated him the same way I treat someone who has a knife on me in the alley. Words are my weapon and I need to use them wisely." With great jabbering comes great responsibility.

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