(no subject)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

Date: 05 May
Location: Sitting room
Status: Public (Atlan, Jan)
Summary: Atlan is trying to kill time


Fool, his extra sense told him. You're never going to find your way home like this.

That was true. But then again, he wasn't trying to find his way home right now. Right now he was just trying to keep his mind off of the mess he was in. This place had been supposed to be his ticket home. Well, it didn't seem to be.

Maybe he could at least escape into the distraction of a good movie for a while.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

Jan was once again sitting in front of the TV channel-surfing. No Antiques Roadshow today and nothing else that held his interest. He'd almost given up hope for company today when the door opened after all.

The sitting room was obviously occupied. Atlan sighed. He had not really been looking for company. In particular not human company.

"Excuse me," he said. "Didn't mean to intrude. I thought maybe the TV was free."

"You're not intruding," Jan assured him quickly. "I'm not actually watching anything in particular."

He held the remote out to the stranger trying not to stare at him too obviously. An albino?

Atlan settled on the sofa without reaching for the remote. "What's that?" he asked, gesturing to the current TV programme.

His lips twitched as he noticed the man's look. "Anything the matter?"

Jan looked to check, shrugged. "Some quiz show."

Ups, he hadn't meant to stare. "No, just surprised. I thought I'd at least seen all the other guests. But I guess new people arrive all the time."

"I was kind of busy," Atlan allowed. "Not getting out much the last few days. have you been here for long?"

"A while," Jan said. "But I was ... busy at first."

He shrugged.

"Any particular sort of show you're looking for? Maybe I'll remember seeing something of the sort."

Atlan shrugged. "I was mainly looked for distraction," he said. "Life's somewhat frustrating at this point."

"Frustrating?" Jan asked. "What's wrong?"

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

The albino wasn't an immortal, so Jan assumed he must be here on holiday. Surely nobody came to this quiet little town for business.

He was feeling reckless. Heck, why not?

"If I told you I was looking for a way to get back to my home planet, which happens to be a few light years away from here, you'd probably call me a liar... so I won't."

Let him make of that what he would.

Jan laughed. "It's more believable than some tales I've heard. Do you have wings as well?"

As far as he was concerned aliens were more believable than angels in any case. Maybe this one was simply more honest than the rest?

"Wings? No." He gave a wry smile. "Wouldn't do me any good if I had them," he said. "I could hardly 'walk home' that far."

"So, you're not from the same planet as the winged people? Have you met them, by the way? I'm not sure whether they have a ship, but it can't hurt to ask. Maybe they can give you a lift."

Jan wasn't quite sure whether he was serious or playing along with a joke himself.

"I've met one," Atlan said. "He doesn't have a ship. I asked. No, they're not from my home world. Or, not that I know of."

What the heck, he had told a lot more than he usually did anyway. Let him know the rest and make of it what he wanted. He was probably thinking it was all a great joke or game anyway.

"I haven't been home in ten thousand years."

"Ten thousand ..." but he didn't feel an immortal aura. Jan fell silent while he contemplated possible explanations.

"Are your people generally this long lived?" he asked finally. After all, unless the man was insane, he wasn't human and might not have a human lifespan. Or even a human perception of time.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

"No," Atlan said. "I'm an exception." He wasn't going to mention the cell activator or IT.

"I've also been trapped on this miserable piece of dirt for the past few millennia. About since your Stone Age. It's getting tedious. Every time you get some culture anywhere close to the point of building space ships - " he gestured - "BOOM! And they manage to blow themselves up or otherwise lose all their knowledge and someone else has to start all anew."

If this was true they had a lot in common, but Jan didn't dare say so yet. But ...

"If you've been here this long, then you must have seen how much things change in a thousand years, even in a century. Won't things have changed on your planet as well? Are you even sure it's still there after all this time?"

He remembered returning to his former home town about a century after his first death. It had been quite a shock to see how everything had changed.

"My people rule a vast, interstellar empire," Atlan said firmly. "Of course they're still there!"

Keep telling yourself that, his extra-sense chimed in. Maybe you'll start believing it some day, old fool

"And even if things changed, being back in proper civilisation will be better than living among savages."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

"How much history have you seen?" Atlan asked.

The man didn't look that old, but no one knew better than him how outer appearance could be deceiving. After all, that Methos was almost his own age, too.

"Nothing near what you have, but enough to wish I hadn't." He didn't dare tell a stranger, even an ancient alien one, the truth, but some things he could say. "My parents, my entire family are dead, the house I grew up in has been torn down and there's nothing left in the town that I recognise. Even the language has changed."

"There's enough left that I still feel drawn to the country, but well ... it hasn't been thousands of years. Imagine a man from Ur returning to Mesopotamia today. Or someone from the days of the Pharaohs seeing modern Egypt."

"Seems to me, the most pressing thing on the mind of the one other person here who's seen Egypt at the time of the pharaohs is wringing my neck," Atlan muttered.

Louder, he said: "That's because yours is still a young people. Things change fast and hard. My people is a lot older. More set in its ways. Things are settled in a way that works. They are stable. Changes will not be nearly that bad."

"So how long had it been since he last change in your society when you left?" A culture that stable sounded tempting. Jan wondered whether he'd be able to blend in on that planet ... if the whole story was even true and the man wasn't just deluding himself.

"The last major changes on the homeworld? Several centuries before I left. I was rather young at the time, and it was political rather than cultural, too. There's war and all kinds of things along the perimeter of the Empire, but the homeworld isn't affected by that."

He stood and walked over to the window to take a look outside.

"A strange place, this," he noted.

War along the perimeter? Well, they could be wars of expansion ... though even those could turn bad and at the moment Europe seemed rather peaceful. Jan preferred to stay as far as possible away from any wars.

"Strange? How so? I thought it was a rather nice and quiet little town."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

"It's too stable," Atlan said. "Same weather patterns, year after year, even if the surrounding countryside has extraordinary weather for the season. It's too nice and quiet, if you want. Everything just as it "should" be, without the uncertainties the environment or human nature might throw at you."

"Says the man whose home world has been stable for centuries plus most likely the entirety of human history?"

"My POINT precisely," Atlan said. "My people are stable because they're a very old culture, well-developed and set in its ways. Mankind is more like... barely out of diapers. My homeworld is stable because we control every last bit of it with technology. Mankind doesn't have that kind of technology. The safety and stability of my homeworld simply is not naturally possible here and should not be technically possible either. If it appears nevertheless, then something out of the ordinary must be causing it."

This sounded worrying.

"so, how long has this stability lasted?" The town looked perfectly modern to him, but perhaps he wasn't quite up to the current time himself. They had electricity and even TVs, though.

"About two decades," Atlan said. "When three years in sequence would be strange with this kind of weather pattern."

He shook his head.

"Other things, too. Except for this hotel, the town doesn't seem to have a very great resident fluctuation. People don't move away from here, and new people hardly ever move here. It's almost as if it's stagnating."

"They're country folk," Jan said. "And if they've been so lucky with the weather, they're probably happy here. Farmers don't move away from their land unless their crops keep failing."

"Point being," Atlan said, "They're not farmers. I haven't seen a single farm here. It's a town, they're townsfolk. They defy all demographic statistics. Now, a coincidence may be just that, but... chances are it isn't. Not on this scale. Not with this degree of predictability."

"For current standards it's pretty rural," Jan pointed out. Thing had been very different in his youth, though, so he could follow Atlan's argument. "I mean, have you seen London?"

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

"Of course," Atlan said, though truth be told, that had been through the screen of his underwater sphere.

"But it's not as rural as could be. No farms. No fields. Not rural enough for the people here to be country-folk stuck so much in their ways that nothing ever changes until forced. And there's still the matter of the weather..."

"So, they've been very lucky with the weather for some years, which makes it very pleasant to live here, so they don't feel like moving away?"

Or maybe the place attracted so many immortals that their reluctance to change was influencing the town? If so, he needed a new place for his holiday.

If only he could take his shooting instructor with him!

"For decades? No one gets lucky with weather for decades!"

Atlan leaned back on the sofa to get a glance out the window past the other man. "And I don't think people generally chose their place of residence for the weather."

"No, but they might choose not to leave it because of it." Even though he'd grown up in a town Jan had learned very early on that most people were farmers and that they were dependent on good earth and weather for their livelihood. He'd probably never completely get it out of his head no matter how much the situation had changed.

"If the place really is that unnatural, though, perhaps it would be safer to leave?"

"It seems safe enough, in spite or or maybe because of the unnaturalness," Atlan pointed out. "And I hope that whoever caused this will be able to help me find a way back home."

"It does seem peaceful," Jan agreed. "But I never encountered anything unnatural that was safe."

Though, if he was completely honest the only unnatural things he had encountered were other immortals and changing the weather or influencing people's minds weren't abilities he'd ever seen any hint of in either them or himself.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

Atlan gave a nonchalant shrug. "Usually there's something that makes things unnatural wherever you can find unnaturalness," he pointed out. "Knowing where it comes from and how to counter it if need be makes it one hell of a lot more safe."

"Sounds reasonable," Jan allowed. "But I'm not exactly in top fighting condition." He held up his right hand to show Atlan his missing thumb.

[kristallprinz.livejournal.com]

Atlan raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't hinder you too much in unarmed combat. I imagine some weapons would be easier to handle if you switched hands, though."

[jan-skovasja.livejournal.com]

"If the other guy is unarmed, too," Jan said. "And I'd count unnatural powers weapons, I guess. As for switching hands, I've never been any good with my left. I could try, I suppose, but it'd take me a long time to get just barely passable results. Nothing to equal ... anyone healthy and skilled with his weapon of choice."

[kristallprinz.livejournal.com]

"You'd have an advantage because the other guy wouldn't be used to fighting someone who's left-handed either," Atlan pointed out. "Most people don't bother to train that way these days." Or had for a long time, so it seemed safe enough to say.

"And I feel reasonably confident that I can best most people with close-range weapons unarmed."

[jan-skovasja.livejournal.com]

"Lucky for you, but there's little hope for me at it." Besides his most dangerous enemies were old enough to have been trained for it. "I'd rather stay safe."

[kristallprinz.livejournal.com]

"Maybe you could learn a few moves," Atlan suggested, not quite sure why he did it. He did not usually teach Dagor moves to rendom barbarians, nor offer it.

You're going soft, that voice in his brain accused him.

He choose to ignore the unbidden comment.

[jan_skovasja]

Mr. von Arkon was rather an arrogant bastard, Jan decided, bragging about being mistaken for a demigod and keeping slaves, but luckily modern people knew what an albino was, even if most would never have actually seen one and slavery was illegal now.

Or at least here it was ...

"Did you have slaves on your home planet as well then?"

[kristallprinz]

"No," Atlan said. "We are long past such barbaric customs. My people are cultured and educated."

It wasn't like the man was going to believe anything that he was telling him about another planet anyway...

[jan_skovasja]

"But you aren't above keeping them here," Jan noted. "Because it was legal, or because they were human?"

He wasn't sure which answer he preferred himself. Neither was particularly appealing, but there had been times when Jan had seen nothing at all wrong with slavery himself. Could he really judge Mr. von Arkon?

[kristallprinz]

"You should have seen the humans back then," Atlan mused. "They were very much incapable of taking care of themselves. Why, they hardly are now!"

His slaves had lived better lives than quite a few free persons.

[jan_skovasja]

"It seems to me that the species survived just fine," Jan pointed out.

[kristallprinz]

"They did have help," Atlan pointed out.

[jan_skovasja]

"You are rather full of yourself, aren't you?" Jan stated more than asked. "Or just how many of you are working on this project?"

He didn't like the idea of Earth just being a giant lab experiment for some unknown alien race. It was ... rather demeaning.

[kristallprinz]

"Me," Atlan said. "You don't really think I'd still be on this god-forsaken rock of a planet if I had the means to get back home, do you? It's just me, and I've been working hard. If there were more of us and we were interested in staying, your people would be far beyond where they are now."

[jan_skovasja]

"Right," Jan snorted. "And you've made such a big difference all on your own? I doubt that."

[kristallprinz]

"Oh yes," Atlan said. "The right kind of infomratoin in the right hands at the right time can do wonders. A few times I'd almost had them where they could've built me the ship to return home with, you know. But these little barbarians just can never do without a major war that destroys everything again for more than a couple of weeks, it seems."

[jan_skovasja]

This turned Jan's thoughts in a new direction.

"Could it be that your information has had something to do with those wars? Creating new weapons that others feel threatened by? Inspiring a desire to posses it as well?"

[kristallprinz]

"My information inspired the construction of spaceships, not weapons," Atlan claimed. "It's the local Barbarians that can't go a century without some random war."

[jan_skovasja]

"And that technology can't be used to make weapons as well?" Jan asked thinking a little nervously about the things he'd seen in science fiction movies lately. "Not to mention that other peoples might simply like to travel to the stars, too."