Post by xXxStitchesxXx on Jul 30, 2023 17:16:15 GMT
Pepper simply listened as words poured from Cody. A slow smile broke across her face as he broke down the information dump that she had given him. She let his final question sit in the air for a moment before she straightened out herself and fully turned her body to face him. “Okay, let me answer as many of these questions as I can.We don’t have any answers on the question of what I’m supposedly a herald of. But, we do have an answer as to why they don’t see me as an abomination. I’ve asked them why I’m different before, as part of the research, and they did say that I don’t have a face. Our current theory is that I glow in some way. They’ve had high energy readings off me when I travel, and I see the path as a path of light. So our current theory is I actually glow in some light wave that they see, but we can’t. Dr. Kallie has been trying to find a camera capable of capturing it, but all of our cameras stop recording properly when they cross the barrier.”
Pepper’s hands were moving rapidly as she relayed the information. She talked with her hands, sometimes too excitedly. She’d knocked over samples and equipment before swinging her hands. And she was extremely excited about this, so her hands moved wildly. It had been years that she had been under an order not to speak about this, so this flood of discussion was almost overwhelming to her. “I’ve asked them about their dead god, but all of their answers have been, well, nonsensical. From what I can understand, it is dead, but not dead, and I am its chosen. They won’t explain anything further than that to me”
She took a moment to think about all the research that they had done so far. Then she carefully continued. “We’ve tried to bring other reality-bending anomalies in to test their effects, but we’ve been having a hard time requesting access. Dr. Kallie is never specific enough about why she wants them, since she wasn’t ready to tell anyone about the heraldess aspect. They always deemed understanding their speech to be, uhm, a low priority. Which I understand completely. We’ve taken some samples over the years, but we haven’t convinced one of the beings to return with us. From what we can tell, the planet is, uhm. Composed of flesh and bone? It’s complicated, and it’s hard to explain without all the data in front of us. We’ll have to go over that later. We have about twenty samples in all, and they deteriorate with time.”
Pepper paused to take a little breath, similar to how Cody had. She still had one question left to answer- and to be honest, she had to give it a lot of thought. Dr. Kallie’s reasons weren’t always clear. She tended to be cryptic with some of her research and requests. Pepper had a pretty good idea of the answer in this case, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase it to Cody. “Okay, so. I think one of the reasons Dr. Kallie wanted us to talk about this is that she’s hoping to get clearance for a more expansive study of the dimension. She’s really convinced that there’s something else going on there that we don’t know about yet. But also, I think she wants me to. How do I put this? She’s the one who pushed me to become a researcher when I showed interest in it. I think she wants to put me on your radar. But her motives aren’t always clear to me, and I’d love to hear your theories as well. You’re her superior and you’ve worked with her before. I think because I’m her ward, I have a different view of her motives than others do.”
She shuffled her feet a little, a bit uncomfortable at the admission. People always thought she knew the inner workings of Dr. Kallie’s mind, but sometimes she wondered if she knew the woman at all. It was like growing up and realizing your mother was an actual person with interests and hobbies. You began to wonder if everything you had ever known about them was wrong. That was what it was like to go from ward to co-worker with the researcher.