Every door's got a key. Or a button to get it open.
[ kovacs hasn't necessarily been scrambling to get past it, but there's no doubt more to why it isn't being opened for them than what's been let on.
but maybe it's for a good thing if the orbs are being kept somewhere behind it. ]
I could tell you no. No, I don't want of the things Cheri did — all that power and immortality. But I've seen corruption twist the best of us. And if we're all here because we made a deal to get something we want, no matter how good-willed it might be, that just means the most susceptible people to being corrupted by that thing are right here on this station.
I suppose the orbs and the ones we made the deals with, they all know that. They're all up there with that knowledge, waiting for one of us to break first, eh?
[ To see chaos reign if it comes down to a sole winner to take home their grand prize, like all of this is some grand scheme, some big game, and they're all players for it.
And yet for all of his confidence and devil-may-care attitude, even he isn't sure he could resist such a thing. Could he? If it meant reversing a mistake he holds himself solely responsible for, to save the lives of the people that he loves with every fibre of his hearts, what wouldn't he do? He had once treaded a fine line between healer and warrior. Is it selfish? Is it cowardly? Is it monstrous? Perhaps so, but the Doctor had never claimed to be anything but what he is.
Still. This isn't the conversation for that, and so he shifts his tone to something a little lighter, more conspiratorial.
In slightly hushed tones: ] Between you and me, I don't think it'll work. None of this. No one has control over the things that we've regretted, especially, and this is important, especially when they're fixed points. I'm willing to bet half of this station's regrets are all things that couldn't be undone in any other way and that's why we're all here. So how could it be so easy for one glowing bit of light to change it all, eh?
[ the doctor has a point with the likely high demand from the regrets coming from the people on this station. even with his own personal regret, it's too much to just whisk away and resolve, and yet it's the one he put on the table, likely to see if there even really is a means to change anything of the way things have happened.
but even with the way technology has advanced in his world, along with the sort of magic tricks he's seen some of the orbers capable of, kovacs has a hard time buying into it all being so easily resolved by something that claims to have the power to do so. ]
You don't believe any of it. So then why are you here?
[ it's almost a rhetorical question. because he doesn't really believe in it much either, and yet here he is, just as curious, just as willing to gamble just to find out the truth of it. ]
[ They really are cut from the same cloth in this regard. ]
Curious sort, that's me, I want to know what they've got that might change someone's regret. And if it's something that could destroy the universe once all of these orbs have been collected, well, someone's got to be around to stop it, eh?
[ It's said lightly, very matter-of-factly. It's what the Doctor does, the task he's taken on for himself and those who travel with him. ]
[ curious. it's a trait that kovacs knows well enough, the necessity to die into a mystery, to leave no stone unturned, to find out everything to make it all make sense. it's why he took on bancroft's case to solve his murder, why he's still asking questions, still looking for answers.
and it all applies here too, to better understanding these orbs, this place, for all that it continues to make little sense. ]
Well, you do all that time travel, right? If it'd make sense to anyone, wouldn't that be you? Going back and changing the way something happens?
Yes. Mostly. [ Beat. ] Well — sometimes. For the events along a timeline that aren't a fixed point, yes, perhaps it's possible. But some things, things like a good deal of our regrets, I imagine, it isn't so easy. Some events happen like a never-ending ripple that gets larger with the time that passes, and it's those events that can't be unraveled so easily.
[ Not without a significant price. Sometimes not without a universe being altered and destroyed or forced into some reckoning.
He thinks of his own regret and how much of the timeline he could ruin if he were to take it upon himself to change what had happened. But that's why he was recruited, wasn't it? It's why he'd accepted the contract too. A desperate, foolish, lonely man who finally found his one chance to undo something that he simply couldn't do on his own. A way to cheat the system. ]
It's why I'm just not sure this station and the orbs can do what they've claimed, not without its consequences.
[ even without his knowledge of time travel and whether or not it's even possible (though, on account of the things he's come to see are possible here, he's come to trust that the doctor nor clara would be lying about the whole thing), he can grasp the idea of its complication, of how even a time traveler might be skeptical about a proclamation that the regrets of some several dozen people could be changed in an instant. ]
And how you even determine what a fixed point is? Shouldn't everything theoretically be a fixed point?
Ah. Yes. That's where it gets a little sticky, you see. There are rules, a whole lot of rules, and some of them don't always apply. [He waves a hand like he could grasp a thought out of the air, making the whole concept make sense. But — ] Sometimes you just throw out the whole rulebook. But the common thread in every fixed point is the severity with which it affects the rest of the timeline, you see, and not just your timeline — though that can happen — but the entire universe's timeline. Sometimes the universe itself is at stake. That's when you know — that's when there's a big circle with a cross over it, a 'Do Not Enter' sort of bit.
[ So, in a nutshell — it's all really timey-wimey. The Doctor has experience in feeling most of these fixed points out. And the reason he knows his own regret is a fixed point is because ... well. Undoing it on his own, undoing it like he still sometimes dreams he could do, would render the rest of the universe too fragile.
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no subject
[ kovacs hasn't necessarily been scrambling to get past it, but there's no doubt more to why it isn't being opened for them than what's been let on.
but maybe it's for a good thing if the orbs are being kept somewhere behind it. ]
I could tell you no. No, I don't want of the things Cheri did — all that power and immortality. But I've seen corruption twist the best of us. And if we're all here because we made a deal to get something we want, no matter how good-willed it might be, that just means the most susceptible people to being corrupted by that thing are right here on this station.
no subject
[ To see chaos reign if it comes down to a sole winner to take home their grand prize, like all of this is some grand scheme, some big game, and they're all players for it.
And yet for all of his confidence and devil-may-care attitude, even he isn't sure he could resist such a thing. Could he? If it meant reversing a mistake he holds himself solely responsible for, to save the lives of the people that he loves with every fibre of his hearts, what wouldn't he do? He had once treaded a fine line between healer and warrior. Is it selfish? Is it cowardly? Is it monstrous? Perhaps so, but the Doctor had never claimed to be anything but what he is.
Still. This isn't the conversation for that, and so he shifts his tone to something a little lighter, more conspiratorial.
In slightly hushed tones: ] Between you and me, I don't think it'll work. None of this. No one has control over the things that we've regretted, especially, and this is important, especially when they're fixed points. I'm willing to bet half of this station's regrets are all things that couldn't be undone in any other way and that's why we're all here. So how could it be so easy for one glowing bit of light to change it all, eh?
no subject
but even with the way technology has advanced in his world, along with the sort of magic tricks he's seen some of the orbers capable of, kovacs has a hard time buying into it all being so easily resolved by something that claims to have the power to do so. ]
You don't believe any of it. So then why are you here?
[ it's almost a rhetorical question. because he doesn't really believe in it much either, and yet here he is, just as curious, just as willing to gamble just to find out the truth of it. ]
no subject
[ They really are cut from the same cloth in this regard. ]
Curious sort, that's me, I want to know what they've got that might change someone's regret. And if it's something that could destroy the universe once all of these orbs have been collected, well, someone's got to be around to stop it, eh?
[ It's said lightly, very matter-of-factly. It's what the Doctor does, the task he's taken on for himself and those who travel with him. ]
no subject
and it all applies here too, to better understanding these orbs, this place, for all that it continues to make little sense. ]
Well, you do all that time travel, right? If it'd make sense to anyone, wouldn't that be you? Going back and changing the way something happens?
no subject
[ Not without a significant price. Sometimes not without a universe being altered and destroyed or forced into some reckoning.
He thinks of his own regret and how much of the timeline he could ruin if he were to take it upon himself to change what had happened. But that's why he was recruited, wasn't it? It's why he'd accepted the contract too. A desperate, foolish, lonely man who finally found his one chance to undo something that he simply couldn't do on his own. A way to cheat the system. ]
It's why I'm just not sure this station and the orbs can do what they've claimed, not without its consequences.
no subject
And how you even determine what a fixed point is? Shouldn't everything theoretically be a fixed point?
no subject
[ So, in a nutshell — it's all really timey-wimey. The Doctor has experience in feeling most of these fixed points out. And the reason he knows his own regret is a fixed point is because ... well. Undoing it on his own, undoing it like he still sometimes dreams he could do, would render the rest of the universe too fragile.
He'd endanger everything, and everyone. ]