06-05-2014, 11:27 AM
That evening, once ensconced in his room for the next year, Malik sat down on the floor to meditate on the day’s activity.
When Constantine had returned, it was to take Marcus to the luncheon. They went through another security scan to get into this particular dining room. Malik noted that Ascendancy took no chances even inside his own palace. People where always being checked and only allowed where they were supposed to be. One might interpret that as paranoid, but he did not. “Care and long life go together,” floated to his mind, a saying from an old book series he’d read years ago. Imposing order did not always make one popular. But once again, he also saw another aspect to it. It added an element of exclusivity to things. You were here because you deserved to be. And the converse corollary: you can get in here when you earn it. Malik smiled. It was genius. People strove to enter the inner sanctums, angled and jockeyed and competed. It brought out the best, efficiency and order in people.
He’d noticed Constantine and the way she walked through the room, stopping at tables, introducing him. There was no fear, no hesitation, even though these were Consular heads of various Cabinet departments. She had every right to be here, as much as they did, and it showed. She carried herself with pride and confidence. And, he realized, so did he. He mentally nodded to Ascendancy. Well done. Such a little thing, and yet not a little thing at all, to make a Sith Lord feel honored to be here in this room. He smiled. He was indeed in the right place. Oh, he noticed the side-long looks or subtle surprise that some had when finding out he was a Sigma- an American, and a black American at that, as he noted the sparseness of color in the room. No matter, he belonged and they would know it. But when they left a table, conversation would spring up. He would have liked to be privy to those, if for nothing more that gaining information for use later on. And, he thought darkly, perhaps to get an inkling as to who his enemies might be and any dirt on them. A matter for later, he thought, tucking it away.
After the meal and further meetings, orientations and tours, he’d finally been shown his rooms, which were quite luxurious compared to what he’d lived in for most his life. It seemed only fitting though. But by that time, he was getting tired. Between the flight, the orientations, the meetings, and everything else, he knew that he was going to need rest soon. But not yet. There were new opportunities here, just as he’d hoped. He’d met many Consuls, including the heads of the first two departments he’d be rotating into. Leonid Bykov, Consul on Communications, a tall handsome man in his 50’s, with an affable demeanor and engaging manner. He personified his office, able to charm and deflect at will as the situation demanded. Malik approved. The media needed to be the handmaiden to the government at all times. The other was Lesya Alexandrova, a strikingly beautiful woman in her 40’s, red hair and fierce green eyes, sharply intelligent and predatory in her gaze. She was the Consul on Public Engagement, Propaganda, and Interdominance Relations. He found it curious that Communications was separate from Propaganda. But then again, it may simply have been a public and private face of government kind of thing. He would learn. But to learn, he’d need more tools than just Force-compelling people like Varcim, as helpful as that was. It got back to his earlier thought.
He needed to be able listen without being caught. He had been sitting there cross legged on the floor, breathing evenly, eyes closed, and gradually became aware of the way the quiet pressed in on his ears. It spoke to how insulated everything in the room was, even the windows and doors. He imagined he could see the air, the stillness of it, each molecule of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide perfectly suspended and equally spaced from each other, a shifting lattice work swaying. He closed his eyes and seized the Force, forced it to his will, and looked again. He became aware now of the lattice-work, could imagine the tiny vibrations in them as sound energy passed through them. His mind was now more attuned to the vibration of eardrum and cochlear hairs. The Force enhanced his perception of the minor vibrations in the air. He could now hear better. But could the Force actually enhance the sound itself? It was the difference between turning up a hearing aid versus actually turning up the volume on a media player.
As the power of the Force surged in him and the constant mastery keeping him sharp, he thought about the way sounds propagated in media like air. Media with specific densities propagated sound waves over different distances. He paused at that, seeing a key. Air propagated sound relative to the spacing of the molecular density of air. As a gas, the molecules were further apart, so the molecules had to vibrate over a larger distance to transmit the wave energy to the next molecule. Thus, the sound only travelled a short distance. But in water, with the molecules closer together, the vibration was passed more easily, energy was conserved, and the sound could travel much further, sometimes even miles.
So, he thought, If I make a conduit of air between me and where I am trying to listen more dense, the sound waves should be preserved better and I should hear clearly. He wove air in a particular fashion, compressing a tunnel of air between his ears and the door. Nothing. He frowned, examining the conduit. It was very dense, too dense. The sound waves were hitting a wall of air that wasn’t elastic enough to transmit the energy. He modified his weave, lessening the compression a little at a time, as if he were tuning an old-style radio. Suddenly, he could hear outside his door. Feet on the carpet, a man and a woman whispering. He smiled. They were sneaking to his apartment. Interns from different departments, together. He let the weave follow the sound until they came to a door just down the hall. He heard everything, even after the door closed, the breathy kisses, sounds of zippers and clomp of shoes being removed. He pulled the weave all the back to himself, smiling wickedly.
Malik was pleased. Now, now he had another tool for information gathering. There were all sorts of ways to use information gotten this way. The Force surged in him and he laughed as he dominated it.
<small>((continued in Beginnings))</small>
Edited by Marcus DuBois, Jul 16 2014, 01:18 PM.
When Constantine had returned, it was to take Marcus to the luncheon. They went through another security scan to get into this particular dining room. Malik noted that Ascendancy took no chances even inside his own palace. People where always being checked and only allowed where they were supposed to be. One might interpret that as paranoid, but he did not. “Care and long life go together,” floated to his mind, a saying from an old book series he’d read years ago. Imposing order did not always make one popular. But once again, he also saw another aspect to it. It added an element of exclusivity to things. You were here because you deserved to be. And the converse corollary: you can get in here when you earn it. Malik smiled. It was genius. People strove to enter the inner sanctums, angled and jockeyed and competed. It brought out the best, efficiency and order in people.
He’d noticed Constantine and the way she walked through the room, stopping at tables, introducing him. There was no fear, no hesitation, even though these were Consular heads of various Cabinet departments. She had every right to be here, as much as they did, and it showed. She carried herself with pride and confidence. And, he realized, so did he. He mentally nodded to Ascendancy. Well done. Such a little thing, and yet not a little thing at all, to make a Sith Lord feel honored to be here in this room. He smiled. He was indeed in the right place. Oh, he noticed the side-long looks or subtle surprise that some had when finding out he was a Sigma- an American, and a black American at that, as he noted the sparseness of color in the room. No matter, he belonged and they would know it. But when they left a table, conversation would spring up. He would have liked to be privy to those, if for nothing more that gaining information for use later on. And, he thought darkly, perhaps to get an inkling as to who his enemies might be and any dirt on them. A matter for later, he thought, tucking it away.
After the meal and further meetings, orientations and tours, he’d finally been shown his rooms, which were quite luxurious compared to what he’d lived in for most his life. It seemed only fitting though. But by that time, he was getting tired. Between the flight, the orientations, the meetings, and everything else, he knew that he was going to need rest soon. But not yet. There were new opportunities here, just as he’d hoped. He’d met many Consuls, including the heads of the first two departments he’d be rotating into. Leonid Bykov, Consul on Communications, a tall handsome man in his 50’s, with an affable demeanor and engaging manner. He personified his office, able to charm and deflect at will as the situation demanded. Malik approved. The media needed to be the handmaiden to the government at all times. The other was Lesya Alexandrova, a strikingly beautiful woman in her 40’s, red hair and fierce green eyes, sharply intelligent and predatory in her gaze. She was the Consul on Public Engagement, Propaganda, and Interdominance Relations. He found it curious that Communications was separate from Propaganda. But then again, it may simply have been a public and private face of government kind of thing. He would learn. But to learn, he’d need more tools than just Force-compelling people like Varcim, as helpful as that was. It got back to his earlier thought.
He needed to be able listen without being caught. He had been sitting there cross legged on the floor, breathing evenly, eyes closed, and gradually became aware of the way the quiet pressed in on his ears. It spoke to how insulated everything in the room was, even the windows and doors. He imagined he could see the air, the stillness of it, each molecule of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide perfectly suspended and equally spaced from each other, a shifting lattice work swaying. He closed his eyes and seized the Force, forced it to his will, and looked again. He became aware now of the lattice-work, could imagine the tiny vibrations in them as sound energy passed through them. His mind was now more attuned to the vibration of eardrum and cochlear hairs. The Force enhanced his perception of the minor vibrations in the air. He could now hear better. But could the Force actually enhance the sound itself? It was the difference between turning up a hearing aid versus actually turning up the volume on a media player.
As the power of the Force surged in him and the constant mastery keeping him sharp, he thought about the way sounds propagated in media like air. Media with specific densities propagated sound waves over different distances. He paused at that, seeing a key. Air propagated sound relative to the spacing of the molecular density of air. As a gas, the molecules were further apart, so the molecules had to vibrate over a larger distance to transmit the wave energy to the next molecule. Thus, the sound only travelled a short distance. But in water, with the molecules closer together, the vibration was passed more easily, energy was conserved, and the sound could travel much further, sometimes even miles.
So, he thought, If I make a conduit of air between me and where I am trying to listen more dense, the sound waves should be preserved better and I should hear clearly. He wove air in a particular fashion, compressing a tunnel of air between his ears and the door. Nothing. He frowned, examining the conduit. It was very dense, too dense. The sound waves were hitting a wall of air that wasn’t elastic enough to transmit the energy. He modified his weave, lessening the compression a little at a time, as if he were tuning an old-style radio. Suddenly, he could hear outside his door. Feet on the carpet, a man and a woman whispering. He smiled. They were sneaking to his apartment. Interns from different departments, together. He let the weave follow the sound until they came to a door just down the hall. He heard everything, even after the door closed, the breathy kisses, sounds of zippers and clomp of shoes being removed. He pulled the weave all the back to himself, smiling wickedly.
Malik was pleased. Now, now he had another tool for information gathering. There were all sorts of ways to use information gotten this way. The Force surged in him and he laughed as he dominated it.
<small>((continued in Beginnings))</small>
Edited by Marcus DuBois, Jul 16 2014, 01:18 PM.