Scene #9350:

Owner	Pose
Calvin Nash	Calvin leans on his kitchen counter, staring at the green letters on his COMP's monitor as if he might bore a hole through it. As embers die down in his wood-burning stove and boiled water cools on freshly cleaned plates drying in a rack in front of his window, a frown settles onto his face. Pushing off of the counter, he sighs and drags his free hand across his face in resignation. A message from Petra is among the last things Calvin wants or expects, but as much as he finds himself annoyed by her, he can't find it within himself to ignore her or turn her away, when the subject matter is something this sincere. Maybe it's the same impulse that had him tensely talking Rita down even as people around him reached for weapons. yep i know a place. i'll come pick you up at the gatehouse n we'll ride out there aint but about five minutes in the truck One of the Marshals guarding the gatehouse remembers Petra from the last time she visited, and asks how she's been with genuine interest rather than rote pleasantry. There's a notable pall over her warmth, however. The wave of her callused, sepia-brown hand seems more effortful, and her blue eyes have lost some of their luster despite her effort to hide it. Even her motions don't set her wiry hair to bouncing with the same vim as before. It's not hard to see why. Rhonda, the girl who'd worked the desk, was the Marshal who didn't make it back from Ongyo-ki's assault. She's been replaced by a rail-thin, redheaded guy with a scraggly goatee, whose green eyes convey his awareness of the seat's emptiness, and who tries to put on a brave face, as much for himself and Petra as for Thompson. He signs Petra in with a few hurried strokes of a pen--she can see the previous few entries are his, and the page still has a few in Rhonda's handwriting, too, a neat and gently ordered thing compared to his forceful, hurried scrawl. Thompson's demon partner, a hoary old dwarf barely knee-high to her, bows his wizened head to Petra but otherwise keeps his silence. Outside, Calvin waits by his truck. It's an off day for him. Not in his uniform, but in a black snap-button shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a faded pair of blue jeans and a pair of beige square-toed cowboy boots. "Brought by some beers in the toolbox," he says, as she approaches, gesturing towards the bed of the pickup. It's a little early for that, but he must have thought the gesture would be appreciated. "Didn't know what you liked, so I got somethin' most people don't mind." He hovers awkwardly by the driver's side door for a moment before getting in.
Petra Soroka	Petra wouldn't ordinarily feel compelled to talk to Calvin when she doesn't have to either. It's more convenient for her for him to be hostile towards her, another faceless soldier arrayed against her in the grand war against mankind and the ideals of the world, because frankly, he isn't a kind of guy who can ever possibly measure up to Petra's sky high spiritual standards no matter what she does, and by her own rhetoric, that makes him an enemy. In order to demonstrate her unwillingness to compromise even an inch with the world, and thus refuse the slippery slope of self-justified inertial helplessness, he, his stupid town, and the whole stupid world he lives on are all ontologically opposed to Petra, since they can't ever be her closest allies. But that ideological stance rings less and less true lately. There was a time where it was exactly what Lilian needed, but it hardly seems to benefit her at all anymore. More than that, even Petra is finding it hard to dredge up the spark of hostility needed to take aim at everyone who crosses her path. She reaches for some reason to hate Calvin, just feels vaguely guilty, uses the moral failing of feeling guilt towards someone irrelevant in order to keep herself going for another argument, and then runs dry again. So this morning before dawn, when Petra wakes up from a nightmare where the crumbling last days of Lobotomy Corporation's HQ were disgorged across the ruined District 12, hazily melding together where the torn piping of Control leaks enkephalin onto the rubble-strewn cobblestone streets, she picks up her phone before she's even fully conscious. Gripped by impulse, she hastily texts Calvin asking him if he's free to talk a bit, and hits send before she thinks twice about it. Petra shows up to the gatehouse in clothes that would almost fit the residents here: baggy green cargo pants with a drawstring at the waist, hiking boots, a long t-shirt with a false underlayer for long sleeves and patches on the elbow, and her compact mirror hanging by a cord around her neck. The question of how she's been since last time she was at Ossabaw Island leaves Petra a little bit lusterless herself, though, she has to admit that she's been Fine, All Things Considered. After an overly long silence, when the conversation feels like it's already dropped, Petra fumbles out a few more words while Thompson writes her in, though she doesn't know where to go with them. "Sorry about-- yeah. Just, sorry." "Brought by some beers in the toolbox," "A'ight." Petra averts her eyes downwards from Calvin, hands in her pockets. Almost like a joke, but with a bit too dull of a tone to fully come across as one, she adds, "I guess I'm technically twenty-one now." After slouching into the truck, she leans her elbow against the door as Calvin starts it up. Angled away from him, looking out the window towards the direction of the town, most of the short drive passes in silence, until she suddenly speaks up. For the dozenth time today, but only the second time to Calvin, she says, "Sorry."
Calvin Nash	@@emit Both Thompson and Calvin seem to know, or at least believe they know, what Petra means by 'sorry.' In Thompson's case there's a sad little smile and a nod--they were friends, despite the age difference and the difference in personalities. For Calvin, it's a harrowed sort of "Yep." The same kind that he uttered when he said "I know it," on the highway with Hell Biker. A kind of compelled acceptance of something he wouldn't otherwise accept at all, had he the power. "Thanks. For not pretendin' like it didn't happen." The place Calvin knows is a clearing where the moss-laden boughs of swampy trees opens up into a flat stretch of spongy shoreline shot through with low clinging grasses and the occasional tracks of the island's native hogs. The sea extends in placid blue-grey for miles beyond the reeds that dance past the shore. The afternoon sun filters through those, and breaks upon the waves. This is a good spot for thinking, and for frank discussions in privacy. "So." Calvin drops the truck into park, steps out and clambers into the pickup's bed to open up tge bed box beneath the cab. He retrieves a six pack (a stamp on the wooden holder advises 5 macca will be paid upon its return, and an extra 1 for each bottle returned empty). Landing with a little grunt, he sets the beers onto the hood and pats it with a palm "What's goin' on?"
Petra Soroka	"Thanks. For not pretendin' like it didn't happen." Petra puts a hand on her pendant, fiddling with the rim of the mirror, while still facing away from Calvin. It's hard even for herself to tell how much of her unhappiness is genuine, and how much is parasitically manufactured, mimed instead of deeply felt. It makes her squirmily uncertain about what to say and how to say it, caught up in her own head searching for speech guidelines from books and movies, and shying away from actually saying any of it. "It's... probably weird coming from me. I don't know." Petra might have woken up in a weird mood today, but what she said to the Marshal at the door wasn't exactly untrue-- given the circumstances, she is doing surprisingly well. So even in this solemn, slouchy mood, she's still got the instinct and energy to carry her momentum hopping out of the truck into a short run down the slight slope leading to the shore. Once her shoes squish in the mud, she comes to a stop and closes her eyes facing the sea. She raises up her arms to accept the fresh breeze that comes in to rustle her hair, and takes a slow breath to acclimate to the environment and tone of interaction. Once she's completed that little ritual, she turns around and squelches back towards the truck. As part of her passive idle animation, she perches on top of a particularly hardy patch of moss, not enough to make herself close to Calvin's height, but an inch of height and more stable footing feels impactful from her perspective. She crosses her arms, looks at Calvin's face and then away, struggling to find the words for a minute. "... I think..." She hesitates, and then shifts tracks to be just a bit more roundabout. "... I guess, you'd talked about the... way demons are, with... the feelings in the collective unconscious, coming over from the Expanse. And... intellectually, I guess, I kind of know exactly how that is. I mean, the Abnormalities aren't that. One of them's even an... angel, sort of, like that. It matches basically exactly, same principles." She looks down. "But I-- it's not, exactly, all the same feelings, really. And maybe none of them should really just be, business as usual. I..." She fidgets with her compact mirror, and then takes a breath. "So, I'm sorry for talking shit about your whole island and whatever. That's what I was thinking about."
Calvin Nash	Calvin listens to Petra for an uncharacteristically long time, and there is an uncharacteristic lack of aphorisms or one-liners following it. He nods, and grabs two bottles from the 'pack'--really more the skeleton of a crate. Opening the driver side door and wrapping the seatbelt around his forearm, he grips the buckle and uses it as a bottle opener for each. The beer is cold, which is nice on a warm day like this. The color is a striking gold, almost like someone poured a sunrise into a bottle. Calvin offers one to Petra. The taste is not at all like the stereotypical idea of a popular (especially American) beer. It asks not to be endured; drinking it is not a work of labor but a refreshing delight. The taste is a pleasant and noticeable sour, as balming as the sea breeze that sets the reeds to dancing, and ever so slightly salty, just like the air here. As far as aftertaste, 'the other shoe' drops and there is no ugly surprise or bitterness, but rather the same kind of gently receding warmth one might get from a pillowy, fresh loaf of homemade bread. Calvin takes a sip of his, and nods. "Apology accepted. Sorry for callin' you a Chinaman and throwin' a sandwich at you," he says. The ridiculous nature of such an event actually happening and thus requiring an apology in the first place isn't lost on him. He snorts and shakes his head. A silence falls over him, though not the kind that indicates discomfort. This place is where he goes to think. "Ghosts get to you, back in Atlanta?"
Petra Soroka	Unfamiliar with Calvin's game, Petra digs around in her deep pockets and pulls out what appears to be the completely empty skeleton of a swiss army knife, without any of the tools inside. She's going to offer it as a way to open the bottles, but in the few seconds that she was looking away in order to reach halfway up to her elbow in her pocket to grab it, Calvin's entire action cycle of opening and closing the door has resolved. So she looks bemused at the mysteriously open bottle, assumes Calvin has some magic for bottle opening-- it seems very likely-- and takes the one offered to her. Petra is not a beer connoissuer, though. She rarely ever drinks alcohol at all. Even this beer elicits a faint grimace from her on contact, with its quality mostly being filed away under being easier than usual to get used to. "Sorry for callin' you a Chinaman and throwin' a sandwich at you," Petra shrugs. She can't really find it that ridiculous, since her daily life is filled with nonsense that throws off the scale. "It happens. I actually barely even remember the first one; it was like, a million years ago. And weren't we in the Everhood? Literally that whole place is a fucking haze, getting insulted was probably the only reason I survived it." "Ghosts get to you, back in Atlanta?" Petra sighs and puts her hands behind her head, beer balanced right on top. "Yeah. A bit." It was definitely more than a bit. "Because of psychic stuff. Lesbian business." "But it made me think how... well, you've seen the City. And before that, too. I've been around that kind of... 'end of the world' a few times, but I was always sheltered from the worst of it, I guess. I was a kid in the superfaction war, before you unified, but, back then especially. It's always happened around me, or in District 12's case, a little bit because of me, and... not 'to' me." Petra takes another sip of her beer, eyes down. "So I don't really have any right to talk shit about somewhere that actually survived something like that. I, uh, obviously don't know what it's like. And it's an, important place, I guess, for rebuilding."
Calvin Nash	Lesbian business. "Uh huh." Calvin nods, taking Petra as the authority on this matter; if she says it is, it must be so. And it's an, important place, I guess, for rebuilding. Calvin takes a sip of beer and watches the dancing reeds with a thoughtful frown. "The people that did survive it--directly, I mean--get a little bit older every day," he says with a certain kind of weariness. "To me, those people were failed. Them, and especially the ones that didn't make it. I'd like to figure that the people whose fault it was made up for it in the end. But then I look at the City," he says, nodding in Petra's direction. "You came right out and said you were a... 'supervillain,' when we was in the Everhood. So I ain't happy about what you done in the City, or to Rita. But," he says, one index lifting from the bottle, "I can make a certain kind of sense out of it." "And I look at our own history, too, and talk to the old folks I meet, and I figure... that just ain't the case." "What the hell kind of sense does it make to say that you're responsible for thousands of people and then get 'em killed, every damn day?" he asks, his voice quavering a little. "I heard the City came about to protect people. I look around there, and I listen to Angela and Roland and them. And I don't see a whole lot of protectin' in the air. I see a whole lot of mouths writin' a whole lot of checks that a whole lot of asses don't never have to cash. And when they do, it's the people they're supposed to be helpin' that pay for it the most." "So then," he says, after another swig, "I get to thinkin' that, at best, all them people--governors and senators and presidents and whoever else, 'cross the world--just died scared and hungry and sad and alone, same as all them other people. At worst they fucked off somewhere. Into a bunker or somethin'. Died just the same as they lived, not never havin' to breathe the same air as the people they were supposed to look out for." "And... that's why this here island, this whole little country we made, is so important to me, even little as it is." He pinches the bridge of his nose and turns his gaze away from the shore. "'Cause one day it might not be. And when that day comes, I hope like hell we grew it right." He falls silent after a sigh. His head lifts, then, a moment later, and he turns his gaze from the ground to Petra. "You see what I'm sayin'?" Another brief silence follows. "...got to thinkin', just now, 'bout the supervillain thing again. You didn't do what you done for that reason, did you? Otherwise..." Otherwise, she wouldn't have reacted that way to Rita. Part of it was fear for her life. But, Calvin thinks--did he not see a bit of queasy guilt there, too?
Petra Soroka	"What the hell kind of sense does it make to say that you're responsible for thousands of people and then get 'em killed, every damn day?" The sudden shift to the topic of actual political governance, rather than war as something that Just Sort of Happens and sometimes God is involved, takes Petra off-guard. This is an area where Petra's expertise is critically low, because there's always been an intangible barrier she's felt between the governments she's engaged with and the idea of 'politics' as a whole-- sure, Petra can't disagree that people seek power in order to claim some sort of animal prestige and no one cares about anyone that they're allowed to hurt without retribution, which happens to line up with politics, but she feels resolutely that it's a different thing. So, instead, she sticks with what she knows, and tries to clumsy mash the two subjects together to see where they line up. "I think... out of any random selection of people out there in the multiverse, literally none of them would do any different. People are, like... so desperate to find a way to fuck each other over, and find someone they can't be punished for hurting, that the government blowing everyone up just seems like the natural endpoint. It's, like, something fundamentally wrong with the world. It doesn't change until the world ends." "But it did." Petra looks away and takes another sip of her beer. "So." So, present company excluded. "The City's somewhere that sticks out because everyone's so honest about the ways they want to hurt each other, not because it's any worse really. The CEO of District 12 never gave a shit about anyone living there before I killed him. He was a megalo--megalomaniac loser freak and I bet the blackouts didn't even come to mind as a problem to him, not for decades and decades. The Head's the same, but worse. I'd bet fucking anything that the City existing to 'protect' people is just bullshit propaganda for another reason it was built, and I've already got some leads to follow on investigating it. But, like everywhere else, it's just a fucking evil cesspit that'll keep killing people until I destroy it." "You see what I'm sayin'?" Petra nods, quiet. Directionlessly agitated by the power of most of one bottle of single digit ABV beer, she gets off her mossy perch to start pacing around the truck, wandering close to the shoreline and teetering aimlessly between patches of grass like a lazy game of hopscotch. "I think I have to. You know, we're doing the same with the Library. I hope. It's been... a goal, I guess? A plan. That the Library has to be a safe place for the people living in it, maybe the safe place in the District. To be somewhere fundamentally different from the City, as un-City-like as possible, so everyone in it's taken care of." Petra scoffs, emotionally worn down and still guilty-tinged despite her words. "My fucking supervillain lair is a home for orphaned coworkers from L-Corp. And literal orphans. I'm the Sector's worst fucking supervillain because I have a stupid little bulletin board where they can ask me to get anything they need for their apartments because I felt obligated to give everyone a chance to get out of L-Corp after it fell. No, the supervillain stuff's... separate."
Petra Soroka	"I did it because I didn't believe in the Project. And because if I'd lost, Ange would've died. And if Rita and Lilian had beaten me, I think things would've been exactly as bad, but without me as a fucking scapegoat for it. But I don't really say that last one, because I would've torn down L Corp even if I didn't believe it was true, because I didn't want Angela to die." Petra comes to a stop, balancing on the arches of her feet on an upraised root. She rocks back and forth idly and looks over at Calvin. "The Assembly's smaller than the other places around, isn't it? Canaan and... the... the other one, with the L? If you had to choose one or the other, you'd choose the Assembly, right, since it's 'your people', even though there's more people in the other ones? And even after that, you'd feel responsible for picking up what came afterwards?"
Calvin Nash	But it did. "It did," says Calvin in agreement, both with the fact--and with her conclusion. "Sometimes at night, when I'm 'bout to go to bed, I ask myself. 'Could it'a happened no other way?'" "And I don't know." He shrugs, and the gesture has a rare, almost defeated energy. "I know what the old folks say. 'If it wasn't for this, we coulda.'" Calvin shakes his head and takes another swig. "Mm. Well," he says, gesturing outwards with the half-gone bottle, "You ask twenty old timers and you get twenty different 'this-'es. Maybe one of 'em is right. So," he says, nodding towards Petra, "Maybe that's too damn much to fix without pullin' the whole sumbitch up out the ground." He reaches back and pats the hood of the truck with his free hand. To be somewhere fundamentally different from the City, as un-City-like as possible, so everyone in it's taken care of. Calvin looks right at Petra for that. "That's a big plate, Petra," he says, in the same sort of way one would warn an unwary traveler away from a killer cave. "But I know you don't half-ass nothin'. So." He lifts the rest of his beer towards her and finishes it. "If that's what y'all're doin', I really do want you to win." The empty bottle is placed back into the 'pack,' and Calvin hears Petra's explanation of her actions. A stern sigh escapes him--not to chastise her, and she can surmise as much given the lack of any of his usual blustering attempts at discipline aimed her way. If you had to choose one or the other, you'd choose the Assembly, right, since it's 'your people', even though there's more people in the other ones? And even after that, you'd feel responsible for picking up what came afterwards? "Libertalia," Calvin says with a nod. "I would," he further answers, almost haggardly. "I'd choose us over them. Either of 'em, even though I met people I liked in both of them places." The thought is enough to warrant another beer, which he opens in the same way as before. "I think about that, too, at night," he admits. "'Bout how..." His brow knits. This is something he doesn't share with other people, and thus, has had little reason to put it into words. "How you can't make numbers out of people and still see 'em as people. How, if I wanted to save 'the most' people, then I'd just push for us to join up with Canaan and we'd roll over Libertalia." "'Bout... what 'saving' somebody really is, too. Is that just 'alive?'" He'd talked about that a little with Roland, too. "I think you'n me both'd say the answer's 'hell no.' What good's bein' alive if you ain't livin'?" "Not everybody can live in a place like that. So, if that was what I wanted to do--'save the most people,' and 'save' means 'keep 'em alive even if they feel like they're dyin''--what should they do? Shut the hell up and pretend, for everybody else's sake?" The thought makes him shudder. "No. Uh-uh." He banishes it with a shake of his head. "Shit on that." "...and that's why it's gotta be us over them, if you ask me. If it came to it. 'Might makes right' means 'weak makes wrong,' and an ark means you expect a flood. Well, we just want people to be able to live. Really live," he emphasizes. "Not just to be alive and waitin' for the chance to, if you're just strong enough, or... godly, enough." "Choosin' 'us,' like that, I'd be hurtin' a whole lot of people, too. And not just... you know, directly." He frowns. "I figure... lotta people would resent us. For closin' the door on 'the promised land.'" Calvin shakes his head, slowly, eyes closed. "That's why, if I have to pick up the pieces after, part of that includes makin' sure whoever's left can live here, too. Gettin' past the... bygones and the grudges and shit. And when I put it that way, I think maybe I get how come you done what you done." A pause, a swig of his second beer, and a skyward lift of the bottle. "'Cause you wanted your people to stop dyin'." "So here's to the Library."
Petra Soroka	"Maybe that's too damn much to fix without pullin' the whole sumbitch up out the ground." "Mhm." Petra's agreement is just a subvocalized hum and nod, but she means it. It's a lot easier for her to peacefully consider Calvin as a person whose ideas might be worth listening to and agreeing with when he seems harrowed by giving them. A loud rude man with total confidence in his social dominance and no real problems isn't worth listening to; a guy who's unhappily relaying stories of the apocalypse that happened a generation before he was born is. "The problem is, it's human nature. It's not the only human nature, but it's what humanity made here and everywhere else. It sticks and breeds and fucking metasticizes into every single person that touches it, so 'humanity' has to be destroyed. Once the collective mass of humanity is broken enough that it collapses, then you get pockets that grow and maybe be something else. Like... here." "That's a big plate, Petra," Petra winces, a tiny bit guilty that she's compelled to tell the truth to 'correct' Calvin. "It's not... I'm not exactly a saint. And Ange isn't either, as much as I like her. I don't really believe that any place that I'm kind of building by hand is going to end up as a utopia. I mean, my one point on that particular resume is an island torn out of a functioning nation because of an evil plot, which-- which also kind of almost describes the Library exactly too. But I'll... at least do my best for everyone in it." "How you can't make numbers out of people and still see 'em as people." Petra nods a few times, and struck by a thought that alcohol encourages her to share, she wanders towards Calvin, briefly slipping off of one of the roots she's standing on before catching herself. Holding him in significantly more friendly confidance than she did both before this conversation and this bottle of beer, she nods yet again and lowers her voice slightly. "Yeah. You know, I'll tell you a secret. I'm actually, like, kind not all that good at that even normally? Seeing people as people. It's just so hard to, like, make myself believe that, they've got anything at all inside of them, like there's any bit of, primordial awareness of the ways that they have to have like, relationships with the world around them and opinions about being affected by stuff. Like, believing that everyone could add something beautiful into the world. They just don't, right? You just can't look at someone like Lilian, and then someone like... that squirrel, and think there's some kind of fundamental human worth that makes everyone morally equal, right?" "So I can't. Justify it, I mean. Choosing anyone over 'us'. No matter the numbers, because I'll choose people over numbers every time. I want to care about people. That's the secret, I think." Petra is faintly pleased with herself for working all of that out. She swallows the last of the beer, and goes to carefully slot the empty bottle back into its place. "So once those people enter the Library, they matter to me. And because they matter, I want to see them grow and improve. And for that, I want to keep the world away, so whatever dumb shit the Head infects the City with, or the ideas that you have to betray your friends or yourself to get ahead, don't get into the Library. That's my promise to District 12, I think."
Petra Soroka	"'Cause you wanted your people to stop dyin'." Petra goes quiet for a little too long to go unnoticed. This wasn't the kind of thing Cinder was envisioning for Angela's future during her final monologue, certainly. She wanted Angela to live, and she hated the City, but the Distortions, the Invitations, conquering District 12... Petra would feel vaguely ill trying to justify any of her own actions by imagining Cinder's approval of them, not in the least because Cinder was one of the sacrifices she was evidently willing to make to make it happen. But still... being kinder to the Backstreets, to the people barely scraping by in the ruined District, and eventually challenging the Head, those, at least, feel pretty safe to be proud of. She eventually raises up her fist to mime making a toast herself, even without a drink in hand. "Yeah. To the Library. And to Ossabaw Island."
Calvin Nash	You just can't look at someone like Lilian, and then someone like... that squirrel, and think there's some kind of fundamental human worth that makes everyone morally equal, right? "Yes and no," says Calvin. "I think... I think everybody starts out with a certain amount. Not everybody sees it, mind," he adds with a frown. "Even if they say they do. That's your... Sarracenias of the world. They're gonna say they believe in that worth, but then the way they act towards certain people shows they don't, even if they don't know it." "Some people, like Dumbass," he says as if it's Aidan's name, "Spend theirs until they ain't got none left. They make shit up, don't keep no promises, can't shut their mouths when it counts, never do nobody no favors, and y'know, just generally, they're more trouble than they're worth." "They don't have no 'people' except whoever ain't tired of 'em yet. So," he says, "They never have to act right. Until it's too late for anybody to believe they can, anyway. A hard head makes a soft behind," Calvin recites with certainty. "Him, only thing makes him different is, he's delusional enough to figure he's still got time to clean up. And probably always will." "I'd almost feel sorry for him, livin' in his little fantasy land, if I didn't know what a shit he was," says Calvin, putting emphasis on 'shit.' He has to take a moment, then, drinking to find the words again, and then searching for them in the lap of gentle waves against the shore. "...I think a lotta people hear 'everybody's got a right to be treated decent' and somewhere in the translation, 'forever' gets put in. 'Cause some people get caught up in wantin' to be somebody that 'treats people decent' more than they want to treat people how they deserve to be treated. Then," he says, turning to Petra, with a tone, pointed index and thin frown that suggests a personal pet peeve being commiserated, "That's how you get people bitchin' and moanin' 'bout, 'oh, y'all need to be nice,' when really, it's that other person that needs to act right." Thus, the difference between their philosophies on inherent worth, and their frustrations with it; Petra wants other people to prove they have it, and Calvin wants them not to squander it. When Petra berates someone, it's a frustrated attempt to get them to provide evidence, whereas, for Calvin, it's a chastising for mismanagement of a resource they should know well enough to use right. Another sip. "Anyway," he says, washing the thought from his mind and the taste from his mouth. I want to care about people. That's the secret, I think. "I think so, too," he says, nodding slowly and letting it sink in. "And you can't do that if you can't see who's right in front of you. I gotta admit," he says, "I never thought about us as... creatin' a new kind of humanity. But I guess that's what the... race, or contest, that's happenin' here, is all about. I really hope it's ours that makes the cut." The gentle rush of the sea against the shore and the trickle of water through the dancing reeds fills the silence. Calvin lets it, until he feels sober enough to drive Petra back.