Repent! Spring is nigh! (open)

[Bobby Drake]

> " Wait, you…he…where exactly are these cameras? "

Bobby backs up a step, his hands held out in an unconsciously protective gesture, then shrugs. "I really don’t know… there’s a lot of information from that period that I didn’t store locally, it’s stuck in a datafile somewhere -- " he stops explaining when it becomes clear that she’s not really listening, and she turns her attention to Christopher.

> " And you’re still watching them? To practice?! What the hell does that even…"

Bobby gives Chris an I-told-you-so shrug, not that he’s expecting to be understood. This is exactly the reaction he was afraid of – not that he blames Laurie in the least. Frankly, he’s pissed off about it as well, and he’s the one who put the damned things up in the first place. (Granted, his righteous indignation is somewhat ruined by his curiosity about what the cameras have picked up in the last year or so, but he tries not to think about that.)

> " is the…the cyber-version or whatever of him still floating around watching us too? "

Bobby steps in on this one. "No… he – it – whatever, shouldn’t be able to access them. No network I/O, no broadcast. There’s no normal way to access the stored data." Which, he realizes, isn’t particularly reassuring, but it’s the best he can do.

[Christopher Bertrand]

"There was not a joke intended to be placed there for your amusement, I assure you. It was an observation contradicting your wrong assumption. Is this a way of coping with being proven false? It seems highly unlikely, since you behaving in such a manner would deviate from the routine." Christopher asks, not really confused, but rather missing a certain factor in the analysis.

And then they both commence with the attacks on integrity, or something of such a nature.

"I am mildly insulted by this outright attack upon my person. Collins, yours was one of the first cameras to go. Please follow along, I stated this earlier." he pauses, and then just for good measure, since the kids don't seem to be paying attention, adds, "The irrelevant information was immediately discarded. What you do within your room is only about 3% of anything of importance. Your actions would not change the world, or even the area outside the room. The room itself is subject to greater consequences, but only should you decide to suddenly cease with your behavioral pattern of hiding in what seems to be somewhat of a comfort zone and abhorring any change that might come along. This is highly unlikely."

He doesn't try to say all this insultingly, he really doesn't, but there's not much he can do about it when trying to control that monotone voice. He needs a break from interfacing, and he knows this very well. It is much like a drug, except that it is far more available and potent in its effects.

Then he waves his head, and only later realizes that it was a reflexive reaction. The emotions are coming back!

"As I stated before, the intelligence calling itself Robert Drake uses those devices in such a way as to discard almost everything that happens and is not within its personal reach. Since it possesses no body, it has concluded that discarding all the data would be the best course of action. The process has become a redundant must, nothing more. Drake, the emotional reactions to the notion of the presence of cameras within private quarters have well been predicted on a scale of comparisons. To observe a blatant example, the Worthington couple would react very different. While both would object, Joshua Dalton Worthington's reaction would be far more rage-related than that Warren Worthington III due to the latter's slight tendency towards exhibitionism."

[Bobby Drake]

Bobby tries hard to control his urge to start giggling as Christopher digs himself in deeper and deeper, especially once he realizes that the guy is still emotional enough to feel insulted. Which is probably a good sign, all things considered.

> " Drake, the emotional reactions to the notion of the presence of cameras within private quarters have well been predicted on a scale of comparisons."

That catches Bobby’s attention. He himself, back in the day, had been lousy at predicting other people’s emotional reactions to events except in the broadest statistical sense; he wonders how Christopher is doing his analyses, but he doubts any answer to the question would make sense to him.

"I’m glad to hear it. I was never any good at predicting that sort of thing myself… glad you don’t have that problem."

Of course, it’s somewhat beside his main point – it’s not so much a question of whether the man can predict various people’s outraged reactions, as it is whether he cares about those reactions enough to let them influence his choices. Which seems to vary from moment to moment. And is, in any case, not Bobby’s problem.

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie’s in the process of downshifting back to sullen- mollified both by Bobby’s rather frantic, defensive reassurances and Mr. Bertrand’s guarantee of the camera in her room’s absence- when Mr. Bertrand comes out with:

“Your actions would not change the world, or even the area outside the room. The room itself is subject to greater consequences, but only should you decide to suddenly cease with your behavioral pattern of hiding in what seems to be somewhat of a comfort zone and abhorring any change that might come along. This is highly unlikely.”

Laurie actually looks stung at that which surprises her, in a peripheral sort of way, but probably doesn’t shock anyone else as she’s rather the world champion of Taking It Personally. Still, it’s hard to find a way for her not to take offense at that between the fact that she’s just been assured that there had been a camera in her room at one point or another that he’d presumably watched at least for a little while and the fact that she’s walking around all the time panicking about changing herself and everything else so as to avert the apocalypse and the death/conversion to evil/ other grim circumstances of all her friends and family and he’s just told her she’s highly unlikely to be able to change. Given all that she guesses (or will guess when she has time to reflect on it) that it’s not all that unreasonable for her response to be to whip around from where she’d started to turn towards Bobby to apologize for freaking him out and hiss out a low “Fuck you.” There’s a beat where she looks horrified at herself, can feel her face heating up, and so ducks her head slightly, embarrassed at the overreaction and at snapping at probably the one person at the Institute who genuinely can’t help but offend people yet unsure what exactly to do now and plowing on out of helplessness and frustration. “I mean,” she tries, rapid-fire in her speech and a little wide-eyed, “you should take all of them down. You shouldn’t watch people like that, it’s not fair unless they’ve given you permission.” The end of that comes out rather lamely and she doubts she’s convinced Mr. Bertrand of anything other than the fact that she’s really weird but she wants to get the focus back onto the ethics of technology and off her latest outburst. What’s wrong with me? I used to be able to filter this stuff didn’t I? Or at least I used to be able to want to more than I wanted to snap at everything close enough…