[Even with her eyes closed, Lexa doesn't need any flame or "chip" to know that Clarke is staring after her worried. She was going to tire herself out before Lexa did, and no amount of telling her to stop it would help. They trained their children different on the ark. They were not prepared for such conflicts and so it made them jitter like a foal in its first storm.
With a sigh, Lexa forces her mind still. She focuses not on Clarke and her unsteady, almost quietly terrified breath but on the wind outside her bedroom, on the sigh of the old stone of her tower. She lets her mind drift until Clarke's presence is a mere afterthought.
It's here, somewhere in the stillness that Lexa has always found the others. Sometimes they are clear, like standing face to face; other times they are shadows, foreboding, lurking.
Today there is only one she wants. Becca Primheda. She is the one who would know about this City of Light and Jaha's chips, if any of them would. Or maybe the second Heda might... but technology and the knowledge of it had fallen to the wayside as the mountain had stirred, as people split into warring clans and simply surviving life as it became more necessary than remembering whatever had come before the great fire.
This is where she belongs, in the quiet, in the sureness... in the grief hidden behind withdrawn expressions as she passed them. It was like a great hall, or was it a winding staircase like one that might wrap around the tower? It doesn't matter. Lexa can feel her, somewhere deep within the flame. She has no doubt Becca is there, she has heard her speak before though she is quieter than the rest.
Eventually, she finds her, the room is suddenly white. Lexa is clean, her hair flows freely over her shoulders, over garb she does not recognise and there Becca is before her once more.
There is no need for words in this place, Becca knows her every thought just as well as any of the others. And eventually, Becca begins to explain and maybe it's the chip - because gods know Lexa doesn't know most of these words or what they mean but she retains it all, or most at least. She retains that sense of what Becca is saying, what memory she drags up from the flame, old and unsteady but ever present.
Eventually, Lexa opens her eyes.]
Becca Primheda says that it is A.L.I.E., an AI she created... She says that this is how the world ended the first time. The flame, too, is an AI. Different. It does not control me, nor the world like the first got into everything to try to end humanity's suffering. [There's a sharp formalness, almost alien-quality to Lexa's tone as she tries to perfectly recite what she has been told, certain Clark will make more sense of it than she can and equally certain she never signed up for whatever an "AI" was.]
She supposes that the City of Light is some kind of Uplink, like the space in which I speak to Heda's who came before me, only without an opt out. Perhaps even without the concept of pain. An attempt to follow the original orders that were taken too literally even then. But A.L.I.E. has had a lot of time since Becca, so. [Could be wrong.]
no subject
With a sigh, Lexa forces her mind still. She focuses not on Clarke and her unsteady, almost quietly terrified breath but on the wind outside her bedroom, on the sigh of the old stone of her tower. She lets her mind drift until Clarke's presence is a mere afterthought.
It's here, somewhere in the stillness that Lexa has always found the others. Sometimes they are clear, like standing face to face; other times they are shadows, foreboding, lurking.
Today there is only one she wants. Becca Primheda. She is the one who would know about this City of Light and Jaha's chips, if any of them would. Or maybe the second Heda might... but technology and the knowledge of it had fallen to the wayside as the mountain had stirred, as people split into warring clans and simply surviving life as it became more necessary than remembering whatever had come before the great fire.
This is where she belongs, in the quiet, in the sureness... in the grief hidden behind withdrawn expressions as she passed them. It was like a great hall, or was it a winding staircase like one that might wrap around the tower? It doesn't matter. Lexa can feel her, somewhere deep within the flame. She has no doubt Becca is there, she has heard her speak before though she is quieter than the rest.
Eventually, she finds her, the room is suddenly white. Lexa is clean, her hair flows freely over her shoulders, over garb she does not recognise and there Becca is before her once more.
There is no need for words in this place, Becca knows her every thought just as well as any of the others. And eventually, Becca begins to explain and maybe it's the chip - because gods know Lexa doesn't know most of these words or what they mean but she retains it all, or most at least. She retains that sense of what Becca is saying, what memory she drags up from the flame, old and unsteady but ever present.
Eventually, Lexa opens her eyes.]
Becca Primheda says that it is A.L.I.E., an AI she created... She says that this is how the world ended the first time. The flame, too, is an AI. Different. It does not control me, nor the world like the first got into everything to try to end humanity's suffering. [There's a sharp formalness, almost alien-quality to Lexa's tone as she tries to perfectly recite what she has been told, certain Clark will make more sense of it than she can and equally certain she never signed up for whatever an "AI" was.]
She supposes that the City of Light is some kind of Uplink, like the space in which I speak to Heda's who came before me, only without an opt out. Perhaps even without the concept of pain. An attempt to follow the original orders that were taken too literally even then. But A.L.I.E. has had a lot of time since Becca, so. [Could be wrong.]
...what is an AI?