Supernatural - Compression
Jul. 13th, 2010 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charybdisTitle: Compression
Characters: Sam
Summary: In times of great stress, Geekboy thinks like a computer. This is probably as stressful as it gets. PG-13, 760 words
He's not losing it. He's just putting it on hold, you know? Because he has to get his brother back, and it doesn't matter what it costs.
He tells himself that it's like when he used to study for final exams -- somehow all his exams seemed to cram themselves into two or three days, no matter what classes he took -- and filled his head so full of briefs, exhibits, and vocabulary that he didn't have headspace for things like friends' birthdays and Jess's mildly obsessive weekly menu planning. After exam week was over, he slept for twenty-four hours, reconstituted his social life and easy personality, and dismissed most of what he'd crammed for school to the fog of trivia at the back of his mind. When it was over, he started talking like a normal person again.
(Once, a professor had made the class memorize an impossibly long list of Latin definitions, and Sam had studied it so hard he'd spent the next three days trying to start conversations with Jess in a tongue she didn't speak, and accidentally answering the phone in a dead language. Because he forgot that normal people didn't speak Latin anymore.)
This is just like that. No demon will deal with him, so he'll have to pass Hell's tests; go Downstairs to get his brother himself.
He imagines his mind like the hard drive of his precious laptop, compressing knowledge that he doesn't need to save his brother into tiny .zip files.
The first layer of knowledge is the usual stuff -- birthdays, holidays, anniversaries of people he never sees or are too dead to care whether he remembers what day they got married or were burned to char and ashes. He collapses the minutiae of what might laughingly be called his social life into a single line of reference code. Forget about it; it's all written down in the journal.
This isn't one semester of exams though, and he needs more space.
The second layer is memories -- well, most of them. He can't let go of his memories entirely; he's smart enough to realize that even the most apparently useless things could prove to be helpful in his crusade. But he strips them of vividness and immediacy, discards the visceral rage and fear of listening to his brother tell him, 'What's dead should stay dead,' over and over, guilt in his eyes like he didn't even want to be saved, and keeps only a bland catalog of impressions -- the Impala smelled like fried chicken that night, mixed with the the zombie-hunter perfume of embalming chemicals, grave dirt, sweat, and smoke; they were thirty miles from the next town; his brother was wearing a shirt that had been shredded by harpies two months later. He codes this layer and looks back on it dispassionately, unsurprised that what remains is pretty much a black-and-white bitmap sketch of his brother -- guilt, fear, and protectiveness wrapped up in bravado, skill, and a killer smile.
For a while, it looks like this is going to be enough. He crams for the test that will define the rest of his life, for an entrance exam that no one has ever failed once they decided to take it. But he doesn't just need to pass; he needs to excel.
He's practicing exorcisms -- and yes, he always knew that the word came from the Greek exorkizein, having more to do with command than banishment -- when he hits the wall. No progress for four days, increasing amounts of goading from his erstwhile tutor, and all he gets is entrails everywhere because he just can't grasp the finesse necessary to pry anything more powerful than an imp from the human body without letting things get messy.
The last layer that he compresses is hard to name. Social niceties, maybe, or thoughtfulness. There are a lot of exhortations, 'You can't just let that girl die'; 'Don't you dare make a deal'; 'I need you to stop fucking lying all the time!' each one in his brother's voice. There are also commands, guiding principles that have always ruled his actions: respect feelings, respect ownership, respect life. A handful of emotions that he doesn't need and, at this stage of the proceedings, doesn't want.
When he's done, what remains is a skeleton of code, an empty template of what it means to be human. He chooses the expansion key carefully, mindful that he is quickly approaching the point of no return.
One short word.
Dean.
If his brother doesn't come back, neither can he.
Characters: Sam
Summary: In times of great stress, Geekboy thinks like a computer. This is probably as stressful as it gets. PG-13, 760 words
He's not losing it. He's just putting it on hold, you know? Because he has to get his brother back, and it doesn't matter what it costs.
He tells himself that it's like when he used to study for final exams -- somehow all his exams seemed to cram themselves into two or three days, no matter what classes he took -- and filled his head so full of briefs, exhibits, and vocabulary that he didn't have headspace for things like friends' birthdays and Jess's mildly obsessive weekly menu planning. After exam week was over, he slept for twenty-four hours, reconstituted his social life and easy personality, and dismissed most of what he'd crammed for school to the fog of trivia at the back of his mind. When it was over, he started talking like a normal person again.
(Once, a professor had made the class memorize an impossibly long list of Latin definitions, and Sam had studied it so hard he'd spent the next three days trying to start conversations with Jess in a tongue she didn't speak, and accidentally answering the phone in a dead language. Because he forgot that normal people didn't speak Latin anymore.)
This is just like that. No demon will deal with him, so he'll have to pass Hell's tests; go Downstairs to get his brother himself.
He imagines his mind like the hard drive of his precious laptop, compressing knowledge that he doesn't need to save his brother into tiny .zip files.
The first layer of knowledge is the usual stuff -- birthdays, holidays, anniversaries of people he never sees or are too dead to care whether he remembers what day they got married or were burned to char and ashes. He collapses the minutiae of what might laughingly be called his social life into a single line of reference code. Forget about it; it's all written down in the journal.
This isn't one semester of exams though, and he needs more space.
The second layer is memories -- well, most of them. He can't let go of his memories entirely; he's smart enough to realize that even the most apparently useless things could prove to be helpful in his crusade. But he strips them of vividness and immediacy, discards the visceral rage and fear of listening to his brother tell him, 'What's dead should stay dead,' over and over, guilt in his eyes like he didn't even want to be saved, and keeps only a bland catalog of impressions -- the Impala smelled like fried chicken that night, mixed with the the zombie-hunter perfume of embalming chemicals, grave dirt, sweat, and smoke; they were thirty miles from the next town; his brother was wearing a shirt that had been shredded by harpies two months later. He codes this layer and looks back on it dispassionately, unsurprised that what remains is pretty much a black-and-white bitmap sketch of his brother -- guilt, fear, and protectiveness wrapped up in bravado, skill, and a killer smile.
For a while, it looks like this is going to be enough. He crams for the test that will define the rest of his life, for an entrance exam that no one has ever failed once they decided to take it. But he doesn't just need to pass; he needs to excel.
He's practicing exorcisms -- and yes, he always knew that the word came from the Greek exorkizein, having more to do with command than banishment -- when he hits the wall. No progress for four days, increasing amounts of goading from his erstwhile tutor, and all he gets is entrails everywhere because he just can't grasp the finesse necessary to pry anything more powerful than an imp from the human body without letting things get messy.
The last layer that he compresses is hard to name. Social niceties, maybe, or thoughtfulness. There are a lot of exhortations, 'You can't just let that girl die'; 'Don't you dare make a deal'; 'I need you to stop fucking lying all the time!' each one in his brother's voice. There are also commands, guiding principles that have always ruled his actions: respect feelings, respect ownership, respect life. A handful of emotions that he doesn't need and, at this stage of the proceedings, doesn't want.
When he's done, what remains is a skeleton of code, an empty template of what it means to be human. He chooses the expansion key carefully, mindful that he is quickly approaching the point of no return.
One short word.
Dean.
If his brother doesn't come back, neither can he.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-15 09:40 pm (UTC)