Email to Dayspring, Nathan

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From: de la Rocha, Manuel
To: Dayspring, Nathan
Subject: Ethics

So what, precisely, is wrong with my ethics? They're supple enough to deal with changing realities, and ... well, that's all that really counts.

They're quite supple. I am growing adept at adapting them to changing circumstances. This is how things _should_ be.

Manuel

Comments

you really do have all the facile answers, don't you?

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So you would call being forced to wear that dampener unethical?

Nathan

Hrm.

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Forcing me to wear it, perhaps, is unethical. But I can see the benefit, so I do not protest it too much.

Anymore.

It's a benefit of power. Xavier has it, I do not, therefore he can impose his will upon me and there is precious little I can do about it. He has things I want, so in order to get them, I play his game.


Manuel

you would disturb people less...

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...if you ceased referring to everything as a game. It gives you a rather feline air which makes people instinctively distrust you.

But apart from that, I'm interested and possibly a little encouraged. What do you see as the benefit to you in wearing that dampener?

Nathan

I think...

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that sanity is a large enough benefit, don't you?

But it _is_ a game, that's the beauty of it? It's an elaborate game - or would you prefer I refer to it as a dance? It is move and countermove, action and reaction.

It's glorious, really.

Manuel

okay...

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Here's the thing, Manuel. It's not a game, or a dance. It's people. The more you depersonalize them, the deeper a hole you're going to dig yourself.

Have you ever heard the lifeboat question? If you're on a sinking ship and escape in a lifeboat with a pregnant woman, a great artist, a child, and a scientist with the cure for cancer, and it's going to sink unless one of you gets out, who goes in the water?

Nathan

The artist.

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The pregnant woman would be killing two lives, the child has its entire life ahead of it, the scientist could potentially save millions of lives.

The artist, in this scenario, is useless. Get rid of him!

Manuel

interesting...

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Do you want to know my answer? (Of course you do.)

Either myself, or the person in the boat who swims the best.

Nathan

And that's your choice to make

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I want to live. I have most of my life ahead of me.

You're old. Step aside for somebody younger.

;)

Did I use the smiley right? Amanda has been showing them to me.

Manuel

I see...

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Well, here's hoping the pregnant lady and the little kid gang up on you and dunk your ass if you ever find yourself in that situation.

Put Amanda in the place of the artist, then.

Nathan

Not fair!

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You're just making this all up to make me look bad.

Do you have a _point_? I'll toss them _all_ off the boat if Amanda and I get to live.

It's that simple.

Manuel

actually, very fair...

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Because as far as I can tell, Amanda is the key to your conscience (if you can call it a conscience when it's still in the fetal stages). I'm trying to map out its limits, that's all.

But again, we come back to the idea that your choices--no, that life is simple. Do you really believe that it is, deep down, or do you just wish it was?

Nathan

Life is as simple or as complex as you make it.

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That's what Samson tells me.

Manuel

and that's what we call...

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...avoiding the question.

I think you want it to be simple, Manuel. I think you see in black and white - it reflects in all of your philosophical constructions - and I think it terrifies you when you have to face up to the fact that the world isn't like that. So you call it a game, or you start babbling about how your life is yours and no one is ever going to take your freedom away from you again.

You're not much more, in those moments, than an abused animal reacting out of fear, on instinct. And before you take umbrage at me insulting you, that's a description I would apply to myself at some moments, even now.

Nathan

Name-calling?

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Really.

I am sorry if my wanting to be me offends you. If my desire to protect those I am close to offends you. If my refusal to throw my life away for someone else offends you.

There is really not much else I can say about it. I have my own way of living, and you have yours. I prefer Brits, you go in for Scots. You like redheads, I apparently like bad dyejobs.

I do what I must, and you ... I do not know. Once, I would have throught that you did whatever you had to, but now? I do not know what I think.

Manuel

not name-calling...

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An analogy, and an accurate one.

I'm not saying you need to throw your life away for anyone, Manuel. I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't protect those you care about. In the end, though, it's the 'wanting to be you' that's the trickiest of the three.

If you damage the lives of people around you, trying to be you... that's wrong. Call it my opinion if you want, but that won't change the facts. One person's rights stop when their fist, either literal or figurative, impacts with another person's nose. You may reject that position, but there's a reason it's survived in one form or another for so long.

Nathan

I do reject it

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I'm a psion.

Why do other people's rights to think malicious thoughts or want to do me harm not end at my brain?

Your little analogy works fine for humans, but for those of us with gifts, it breaks down.

Manuel

here's a thought...

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Learn to shield better. Until then, don't bitch. You had a roll of the genetic dice that left you with something that puts you at the advantage of all humans and most mutants. Your transient difficulties are immaterial. It doesn't excuse a number of the things you did to land yourself in that dampener.

You're a psi, you're not a child.

Nathan

Oh, I get it now.

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It's a trap.

My right to swing my fist, as you say, ends at other people's metaphoric noses. But their right to swing their fist stops - nowhere?

Is that it?

And what, precisely, did I do that was so bad that I have earned your venom?

Manuel

well, let's see...

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When you don't have the discipline to keep their fist from impacting with your nose in the course of everyday life, you're the one who needs to work on things. You seem to think that psis are a cut above the rest of the race - if that's true, aren't we to be held to higher standards?

As for venom... if you'd ask me this last week, I could have given you a list. I suspect it would have started with Angie's name. Lately, though, I find my perspective has been altered. Too much Askani philosophy, maybe. They have their own opinions, I'm finding, and they can't help but sway mine.

So, what do I feel. Fear, still - old habits die hard. But I also feel... pity, also a certain resolution. If you don't learn, you're not going to make it.

Nathan

No.

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No higher standards.

So you let the Askani, whoever they are, define you now? How very interesting. Have I been talking to you, or to them?

Is there even a difference anymore, if they've altered you so profoundly?

Maybe it is _YOU_ who needs the dampener around one wrist, Nathan, not I.

Manuel

you can't have it both ways...

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Either we're better, in which case we're expected to be better - stronger, more disciplined and more worthy of the distinction - or we're not.

And you've been talking to all of us, Manuel. Interesting: I don't think anyone else has twigged to that yet. But in all the things I've thought about you, I've never thought you weren't perceptive.

As for me wearing a dampener... a weak parry, Manuel. Very weak.

Nathan

Sure I can

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Power gives me that right.

Well, it seems that your ability to keep people who aren't even alive yet from punching your nose is an order of magnitude worse than my problem with keeping my time-contemporaries from doing it, isn't it?

Manuel

they're not punching my nose...

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I'm being transfigured, not invaded.

It's really kind of nifty. Care to take this offline? You could always come meet them.

Nathan

Pass, thanks.

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Not while I'm like this.

I'm trying to be me. I don't want to be them any more than I want to be you.

And there's scant difference between those two - just your perspective. Take it from someone who knows.

Manuel

your loss...

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But then, I'm sure we'll run into each other in the halls at some point. Happy thought.

Nathan