(Untitled)

[simon_doctor]

Kaylee's out for the evening, having stayed just long enough to say hello to Jordie when he arrived. (She's going to Milliways, Simon knows; she'll be back late.)

They're on their own for dinner.

Comments

[walk_ins]

"I'm hoping you'll forgive me for saying so, but Simon -- "

Jordie doesn't look away. "He works for the feds now. He is the feds. Are you sure it doesn't matter?"

[walk_ins]

"And why's that?"

[simon_doctor]

"You remember the Miranda broadwave, a few years back?"

[walk_ins]

Liz had been -- irrationally, in his opinion -- terrified that they'd start look into revoking medical research funding.

Jordie nods.

[simon_doctor]

"To give them some credit," though by the renewed dryness of his tone he doesn't think they deserve much, "they were trying to neutralize the threat they'd created. They just wanted to do it without acknowledging publicly that they'd created it, or even that it existed at all.

"The primary purpose of the Academy project was to create soldiers who could successfully fight Reavers."

[walk_ins]

"That's a very interesting way of eliminating conflict. They needed fourteen-year-olds for this? Fourteen-year-old civilians?"

[simon_doctor]

"Fourteen-year-old geniuses. The exceptionally gifted."

His tone's gone thin and hard.

[walk_ins]

He's silent for a long moment.

"And none of their parents spoke up. Ever. There's no... board on the Cortex, there's no fund, no lobbying group."

[simon_doctor]

"Well." Quiet, and considering. "Anyone trying to contact the families of other students there, to organize ... they didn't, of course, have a readily available list of other students. For security reasons. And I imagine any public attempt to contact them, such as starting a board on the Cortex, would have been ... discouraged."

He stirs around the rice and lentils on his plate, takes a spoonful.

"And of course, anyone trying it alone would have run into the same problems I did ... or the same ones my father did."

[walk_ins]

"And the organization that contacted you in the first place decided not to get involved?"

[simon_doctor]

"No, they ... " He stops, and starts again with a slightly crooked smile. "They were involved in the rescue. The help I mentioned, that I can't tell you anything more about -- that was largely due to them."

Pause. "They weren't willing to do anything public, though. For which I can't fault them, considering."

[walk_ins]

"So you're the only non-coward of the lot. Is what it comes down to." It'd be wry, but it's too serious for that. Jordie's shaking his head with something approaching disgust. "And the kids? They're -- ?"

[simon_doctor]

"Well, at least the only non-coward with enough money to be approached by the underground. Or else just the first."

(It's Karl Brown he's thinking of.)

He takes a swallow of his drink. "The kids are safe," he says, "and they're somewhere they won't be found."

[walk_ins]

"You know," Jordie says, striving for thoughtful but hitting bitter, "sometimes I really hate people."

"Anyway. Reavers. They're still around. The plan didn't work. And the broadwave brought attention to the corrupt government, but that's about it. What then? -- and how'd you find the connection between the school and the wave? Was it in those files?"

[simon_doctor]

Too many questions to answer at once; he takes the last one. "No, it wasn't in the files. Or only obliquely. We found out about it ... around the same time the Miranda broadwave came out, in fact."

He's speaking carefully, and trying hard not to let that show.

"Because of the connection between the two, there were people who knew about Miranda who came to observe the progress of the Academy project. And ... River picked up their thoughts about it. Not at a level where she could articulate them or even consciously examine them, but ... she knew what had happened there. Before the rest of us did."

[walk_ins]

"...and because of the trauma she couldn't talk about it." Jordie's nodding. "Which I'm sure didn't help."