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

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

For you, perhaps.

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I'm trying very hard not to think about being invaded by beings who have no right to exist yet.

Manuel