## Preface

Friend()
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/1834780.

Rating:
  General Audiences
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  Gen
Fandom:
  Transistor (Video Game)
Characters:
  Royce Bracket, Grant Kendrell
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 1 of Become()
Stats:
  Published: 2014-06-23 Words: 1,024 Chapters: 1/1

# Friend()

by _digital cairn (Schemilix)

Summary

> “Nothing alone. You understand that better than anyone. How is it that Cloudbank has put the individual - you, you or I - above the whole, and yet the whole has the self so… locked down I suppose. How is that?”
> Grant doesn’t pause before he responds, “Human nature.”

> (A trio of ficlets, conversations between the elder two Camerata.)

## Friend()

Flood()

The Flood - lingering, obstructive. A thousand destructive little thoughts about a nucleus too bright to look into. The first time Grant saw what the Transistor had made of his old friend, he understood - understood that he hadn’t, in fact, known as much as he thought.
“I’m surprised with you. And yet it makes perfect sense,” Grant says.
Royce folds his pianist’s fingers around the edge of the Transistor, looking at it with a fondness Grant has never seen him give a fellow human.
“Hm? It does the job. Does the job.”

——

Tick()

"Time, Grant - ephemera." Royce’s hands flutter to his face for a moment before dropping back into his lap. He leans forward, pulling the legs of his trouers to straighten them as he does. "Doesn’t mortality - ah - vex you? People being born, being born, dying all the time. All the time…"
When his voice trails into a whisper Royce sinks back again with his mouth a straight, tight line. Grant remains still for a moment, not moving apart from one long finger that taps against the edge of his chair. He replies,
“It vexes everyone. Probably not so much as you, mind. Death is our motivation to excel, Royce. Not even you can overcome it, and why would you?”
“Hm - well - evolution, you know - you know it works not on an individual level but as communities, groups. I change, I die, they - you know. We’re nothing alone. I am my ancestors, my descendants that I - never did feel the need for, but.”
Royce is pressing his fingers together again, and though he looks away as if he is finished, Grant leans forward to take his mug in his hands again and waits.
“Nothing alone. You understand that better than anyone. How is it that Cloudbank has put the individual - you, you or I - above the whole, and yet the whole has the self so… locked down I suppose. How is that?”
Grant doesn’t pause before he responds, “Human nature.”
“But why - do I fear death? I don’t fear death. Were you asking that? I don’t like the impermanence, this… house of cards the people have made of Cloudbank, building and falling, building and falling endlessly. I don’t make cards, I - am an engineer, we build to last. I tried to give them what they didn’t know they wanted but, well, I suppose you can lead a horse to water…”
His sigh is deep, almost deflating the man’s frame onto itself. In his mind’s eye Grant can see a parched horse and a frustrated Royce knee deep in water while the animal fails to drink. Maybe it doesn’t like the taste?
“And there’s your answer,” he says. “People do want change, in some capacity. You’re aware of how I learned that. I wanted to give the people what they wanted and, in turn, realised I’d been talking myself in circles. Just as you build what you’d destroyed just the week before. But that doesn’t mean there’s such a thing as perfection.”
Just as he finishes the last sound of the word ‘perfection’, Royce plants his palms on the arms of the chair and says,
“Not true!” before he relaxes again, holding up a finger and wagging it in a knowing way. “Not - true. If you had the formulae you could -“
” - ‘calculate heaven itself’,” Grant completes the quote blandly. “‘God’, whatever he or she or they might be, isn’t on a data chip. But we do our best, my friend. Perhaps you are right and it does exist - but maybe the goal-posts alter.”
“Adaptation is not absolute but merely a marker of the environment - ergo - perfections might on the small scale be - hm - variable but - no, no, I don’t like that.” Royce makes a motion as if batting the thought away. “‘Perfect for’ - I didn’t mean that. There is some law, somewhere. A transcendant one perhaps, you might call it that.”
A god in the machine, something along those lines. Deus ex machina. Royce leans his head on his hand and thinks on that a moment, staring out of the window to Cloudbank’s ever-shifting blue-green skies. Grant pats the chair by Royce’s shoulder without touching him as he makes to leave.
“Maybe you should redecorate your abode, Mr. Bracket,” he jokes as he reaches for his coat. “Red is rather popular these days, so Sybil says.”

—-

Sybil()

"I like her - I think. She looked up me with - ah - this fear. Well, not fear, concern perhaps. I’m not sure what to call it, but then she smiled, and she said, ‘Well, what do you know? Bracket Towers!’"
Royce cracks a smile as he recalls the pun, clapping his hands together for emphasis. The smile is infectious - unnerving to some, with pinprick pupils like that, but a fond sight for his oldest friend.
“I remember,” Grant says. “You’re an imposing fellow, I don’t blame her. How tall must you be?”
“She’s smart. Ve-ry smart. Don’t trust a smart person, Grant, you and I know that, nineteen years we’ve known that. I’m six foot two and - I frightened her. Is that so tall?”
“Good posture and a stare like that can do wonders, my boy.”
“I stare?”
“Yes, and you always have,” Grant replies, and smiles when Royce looks restlessly around the room instead. The sight prickles a memory which, for reasons he couldn’t explain if asked, he decides to share, “In fact, you’ve changed remarkably little from that wild-eyed prodigy I spoke to almost two decades ago.”
Royce looks up from stirring one too many sugars into his coffee with a raised eyebrow. For a moment he is silent, looking directly between Grant’s eyes. Slowly his eyes narrow and he says,
“Thank-you.”
Grant only chuckles. “Well, you were a prodigy - and are. That’s no compliment by now.”
“No, no. For saying I - haven’t changed. I never wanted to… differ so much, I was always ‘Royce’. Hm… Sybil, though - she doesn’t know what she wants. Why is she ‘here’?”
“To find it, of course.”
Royce nods as he looks into the swirl of milk in his coffee. “Ah. Well, then. That’s a want all of its own.”

## Afterword

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