personal

I wrote this today:

“Are you going to finish that?” she says. His coffee has grown cold while she’s kept him waiting, and for that she apologizes, but they really do need to be going. She takes the cup and places it next to her own untouched coffee on the desk. She’s spoken with his direct superior on the phone and confirmed his credentials — she’s sure he can understand her precaution — but now they only have a limited window in which to talk with the prisoner.

“I’m not completely sure what you hope to accomplish here,” she says, staring at him. Young, eager to please, no doubt exceptionally bright, but also obviously naive. They always are, the ones they dispatch here to investigate these things. She has seen his sort all too often. She doesn’t know exactly what his bosses at the Bureau have told him, but it will almost certainly not have been enough.

“You can’t tell who he is just by looking at him,” she says. “You could stand right next to him, have a long conversation. You could invite him into your home, and you still wouldn’t be able to tell. And I still don’t know if that’s because he’s so good at hiding it or because we’re simply so eager not to look.”

”I’ve seen his kind before,” he tells her. He is impatient to begin what she thinks he will foolishly call in his notes after this is done an interrogation.

“No,” she says. “Not like this. You’ve seen remnants, the broken armies of the Shard. Those were echoes, whispers in a distant room, compared to this. This is darkness. This is evil.”

“I didn’t take you for the superstitious sort, Doctor,” he says.

“I just want you to understand,” she says, “that the man in there isn’t a man. Whatever he may tell you, whatever lies he may spout, you need to understand that much. But he also isn’t like the animals that you’ve rounded up and killed.”

“They’re extra-terrestrials, Doctor. Not demons or ghosts…or whatever it is the fanatics are believing these days. The Shard came to Earth to conquer it. And they failed. If this man is what you say he is — if he’s committed the crimes you say he has — then he’s just another one of their fallen army that we need to quarrantine and eliminate. There’s nothing special or mysterious about that.”

“He isn’t one of the Shard,” the doctor says. “This is what I have been trying to tell you. The thing in there is much, much more dangerous. He’s one of their gods.”

There’s definitely a little bit of the influence of Hannibal running around in there, the sfnal elements notwithstanding. I watched this week’s episode this morning, after the Sunday crossword puzzle kicked my brain’s ass, and it really disturbed me. I say that as a good thing, as the show has thoroughly surprised me with just how good it is, but these folks are not kidding with their “viewer discretion advised” warnings.

The silliness of Iron Man 3 helped, I think. It’s pretty slow to start, and probably more silly than intelligent, but the second half (or last third) at least is genuinely entertaining.

And that was Sunday. I haven’t looked at my work e-mail once since Friday.