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THIRTY SIX ✖ VOICE
[Hi, Barge, someone else really doesn't want to talk about the flood, so Charles is taking this opportunity to talk more about science. Everyone loves science, especially when it's a distraction from things like promising your best friend you'd come rescue him from Auschwitz and sincerely meaning it because you're a telepath and can pretty much do what you want. :\
Science is generally easier to talk about than feelings. :c]
I'd imagine most of you are familiar with the concept of mass extinctions, wherein the population of all living things on Earth is decreased by over fifty percent. It is, after all, what helped propel mammals into being the dominant life forms on Earth after the dinosaurs went extinct. But despite the widespread devastation each time, some species do survive, and can remain largely unchanged since they originally evolved. The horseshoe crab, for example, is virtually identical to its relatives that have been preserved as fossils from several million years ago.
Others are considerably less well known and familiar to us, and some potentially have yet to even be rediscovered. Although it's quite rare to rediscover a species after it's been thought dead for thousands if not millions of years - for example, it's highly unlikely that a Brachiosaurus has escaped the attention of modern science while roaming the woods of North America - it has happened before.
One such species was considered extinct by the scientific community until December 23, 1938. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer - a museum curator in South Africa - told local fishermen that if they ever found anything unusual in their hauls to call her in immediately. On this particular day, she was called down to the docks to investigate a captain's haul and discovered a five foot long fish with navy blue scales and white spots that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before. After hurrying the specimen back to the museum and preserving it as best she could after the local morgue refused to help preserve the body, she began to go through her books trying to locate the fish, but couldn't find any information about it. When a friend from Rhodes University was finally able to come look at the specimen, he immediately recognized it as a coelacanth, an ancient fish thought to have gone extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. A population of fish had apparently been living on the east coast of Africa for potentially millions of years, largely unnoticed by human populations because they spend most of the day very deep under water. Occasionally a fish would be caught by a fisherman, but as the flesh is incredibly oily and often makes people sick, they were often tossed away as trash without a second thought. A second population was more recently discovered in Indonesia.
There are plenty of other examples of so called "living fossils", and Lazarus taxa, both plants and animal, but a discovery like this is generally unheard of, especially considering the coelacanth is generally considered to be a step in understanding how land based animals developed locomotion, as fossil evidence suggests that tetrapods evolved from fish whose fins eventually developed into legs and allowed them to walk out of the water and onto dry land. I've often wondered if another similar discovery might be made with further exploration. Living things are, after all, incredibly resilient, and we still haven't mapped the entirety of our planet's surface.
[Private to Steve]
Do you have a minute? There's something I need to discuss with you.
[Private to Jean]
Merlin tells me you two have been experimenting with the limits of your abilities.
Science is generally easier to talk about than feelings. :c]
I'd imagine most of you are familiar with the concept of mass extinctions, wherein the population of all living things on Earth is decreased by over fifty percent. It is, after all, what helped propel mammals into being the dominant life forms on Earth after the dinosaurs went extinct. But despite the widespread devastation each time, some species do survive, and can remain largely unchanged since they originally evolved. The horseshoe crab, for example, is virtually identical to its relatives that have been preserved as fossils from several million years ago.
Others are considerably less well known and familiar to us, and some potentially have yet to even be rediscovered. Although it's quite rare to rediscover a species after it's been thought dead for thousands if not millions of years - for example, it's highly unlikely that a Brachiosaurus has escaped the attention of modern science while roaming the woods of North America - it has happened before.
One such species was considered extinct by the scientific community until December 23, 1938. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer - a museum curator in South Africa - told local fishermen that if they ever found anything unusual in their hauls to call her in immediately. On this particular day, she was called down to the docks to investigate a captain's haul and discovered a five foot long fish with navy blue scales and white spots that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before. After hurrying the specimen back to the museum and preserving it as best she could after the local morgue refused to help preserve the body, she began to go through her books trying to locate the fish, but couldn't find any information about it. When a friend from Rhodes University was finally able to come look at the specimen, he immediately recognized it as a coelacanth, an ancient fish thought to have gone extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. A population of fish had apparently been living on the east coast of Africa for potentially millions of years, largely unnoticed by human populations because they spend most of the day very deep under water. Occasionally a fish would be caught by a fisherman, but as the flesh is incredibly oily and often makes people sick, they were often tossed away as trash without a second thought. A second population was more recently discovered in Indonesia.
There are plenty of other examples of so called "living fossils", and Lazarus taxa, both plants and animal, but a discovery like this is generally unheard of, especially considering the coelacanth is generally considered to be a step in understanding how land based animals developed locomotion, as fossil evidence suggests that tetrapods evolved from fish whose fins eventually developed into legs and allowed them to walk out of the water and onto dry land. I've often wondered if another similar discovery might be made with further exploration. Living things are, after all, incredibly resilient, and we still haven't mapped the entirety of our planet's surface.
[Private to Steve]
Do you have a minute? There's something I need to discuss with you.
[Private to Jean]
Merlin tells me you two have been experimenting with the limits of your abilities.
[Spam]
What happened?
[Spam]
When I arrived at Camelot, the first time I saw him he was...throwing daggers at a servant holding a shield. For target practice. I tried to stop him, and I...didn't know he was the prince.
[And after he'd found out he hadn't much cared.]
[Spam]
Why was he doing that?
[Spam]
Because six years ago he was a horrible ass and he didn't particularly care about other people's dignity. Or their toes.
[Spam]
I imagine that sort of selfishness is a difficult habit to shake entirely, even after years of learning better. Maybe this is just something else he needs to learn about how to be respectful and forgiving. I understand it has to be a terrible blow to the ego to realize how much you helped him over the years, but without you, it seems like Camelot would be destroyed and Arthur dead. I'd like to think he'd realize how lucky he is to have someone like you in his life.
[Spam]
He will. I know he will. He's a different man to the one I met, a better man. But that change has...had a cost. He's not his father's son any more, he can't rely on Uther's approval - he has to look for other ways to prove to himself that he's a good man. I just wish that he could acknowledge what our friendship has been all along and not think less of himself because of it.
[Spam]
I am sorry about what I said, he's just seemed terribly sulky lately and I suppose it's frustrating to have the person who lectured you about feeling sorry for yourself turn around and act like a spoiled child because he's doing exactly that.
Re: [Spam]
He - Arthur lectured you?
[Spam]
[Spam]
But he doesn't say all that, because he expects Charles already knows.]
Well, that was unnecessary of him.
[Spam]
Maybe he just needs someone to give him a taste of his own medicine, so to speak.
[Spam]
If it's going to involve someone smacking him about with a weapon he doesn't know how to use properly, I could stand for that.
[Arthur is not a very good lecture recipient.]
[Spam]
[... Which is said completely without bitterness despite him being a little bummed about this. :v]
[Spam]
[Spam]
[Spam]
[There's a pause.]
Does it bother you? Having people make things very clear to you about using your telepathy.
[Spam]
The first thing most people ask after they find out what I can do is tell me to stay out of their minds, and there's sometimes an attitude that seems to expect that I'm going to shove my way in and take what I want. It's even worse when they realize I can do more than just hear what they're thinking about. And I don't mind accommodating other people, but it's frustrating not to be trusted because of what you're capable of. The only person I feel like was actually really understanding of the issue before I came here was Erik.
[And that was kind of fucked now because hahaha that fucking helmet. :|]
[Spam]
I'm sorry. [Not an apology, of course, just an expression of sympathy. He smiles self-deprecatingly.] For what it's worth, I don't mind. There's not much in here worth seeing anyway.
[Spam]
Re: [Spam]
But if Charles uses his telepathy that way, he'll be no better than the man people assume him to be. Merlin understands that much.
He smiles sadly.]
It's not necessarily better to have no-one know, but I suppose you know that as well. [He's quiet, thoughtful, for a moment.] These people with strong opinions, have they run into telepaths before? Ones who weren't as decent as you?
[He's primarily thinking of Uther. Not that Nimueh had lacked decency, at least not back then, more that Uther had failed to understand (or refused to acknowledge) the laws of the Old Religion - but the principle was the same. Get hurt by one and hate them all. Merlin would nominate himself one of the Barge's better-versed in that concept.]
[Spam]
I mean, it bothers me, but I don't really begrudge them for it. Someone with less solid morals with a gift like mine would be basically unstoppable. [If, say Sebastian Shaw had been a telepath, they all would have been doomed. There was literally no question of it. Humanity wouldn't have stood a chance, and anyone who opposed him would have just been brainwashed into helping anyway.] I'd probably feel uncomfortable initially with a telepath if I was a human, or had a different mutation. It's just frustrating to have people immediately assume the worst of you, especially when that didn't always used to be the case.
[Spam]
...I know.
[If he actually wanted Camelot, if he wanted all of Albion - enough to kill for it - it could be his.
He doesn't even think it would be very difficult.]
[Spam]
I know you do. [Another way in which Merlin was a good person to talk to, because he just got it without Charles needing to explain.] So, any plans on how to address this with Mr. Pendragon?
[Spam]
Which will happen right after he admits that he's been a bit harsh on Morgana or that Camelot isn't all it's cracked up to be.
And he realises that part of him still feels like he's broadcasting and that Charles probably 'overheard' at least some of that. He shoots him a sidelong look, oddly guilty.]
...I don't know.
[Spam]
Merlin, it's alright to be irritated with him and to want that. I won't go as far as to say I know exactly how that feels, but I can say with confidence that I know how frustrating it is to want something a friend might not even know how to give you.
[Spam]
[Spam]