Logs:Two to Tango

Two to Tango
Dramatis Personae DJ, Hive
In Absentia	2022-04-10 "if you're careful you can be -- so much more."
Location <NYC> Creative Little Garden - East Village
It's not a big park, really. A small secluded garden in the East Village, quite close to Tompkins Square. The trees stretch overhead to both sides of the mulched paths, forming a leafy canopy through which New York's murky city-sky is visible. Between the paths the grounds spill over with an abundance of flowers, hedges, community-tended, in here. The paths all wind together into the small central clearing, a little circular retreat with fountain and benches. It's the third time in recent days that a vast psionic net ripples its way out across New York, flinging ephemeral strands from mind to mind across all five boroughs and beyond. Most of these connections wither and fade almost as soon as they've formed, though many remain in a taut web of connection that blankets the city. At the center of this web, dressed in tatty old jeans, sneakers, a blue chambray workshirt, Hive makes a very unassuming hunter. He's perched atop a picnic table amid a riot of new springtime blooms, the deep pink petals of a kwanzan cherry drifting down around him. He has a bagel sandwich in his lap -- only one bite taken from it -- and a large cup of coffee at his side. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, fingers repetitively flicking at and missing a stray petal that's landed on his knee. For a while, Hive is left... not-quite-alone with his myriad thoughts. Maybe the strobe-bright mind flickering towards him now is familiar; maybe it's just another bit of static. DJ is oscillating rapidly between curiosity, annoyance and concern, and hasn't really picked one to settle on when he drops down to the garden path. He walks over to climb up on the table beside Hive, reaching out to brush at the wayward cherry blossom with a wordless, << ? >> Hive bats sharply at DJ's hand, face twisting into a scowl. "Don't fucking touch me, freak." The words are growled low and irritable and shed of his usual mongrel accent. Amusement bubbles up in DJ's mind. << Look who's fucking talking >> tumbles swiftly into a more worried, << who are they now, then? >> << some asshole >> << hope it's for a good reason >> << eight million people to choose from and you're inhabiting some bigot. >> << (or they're inhabiting you) >> He does pull his hand back -- taking Hive's sandwich with it and taking a bite. "Mmm, yeah. Being the entirety of New York is extremely normal behavior." Hive's hand curls into a fist, but his small twitch of movement is aborted. He narrows his eyes, glancing over at his stolen sandwich. His scowl remains as he looks back down to the ground. "The fuck are you here for?" << you >> surfaces immediate and fierce, followed by a softer, << (us) >>. There are snapshots in DJ's mind of another Hive, of his last years on earth stretched thin across an entire country of people. The exhaustion and the oddly familiar mercuriality of his moods fluctuating with the minds in his collective. "I do have some practice at this, you know." This, the vast system that is Hive, felt briefly but acutely as the telepath leapfrogged his way across the city. "You want to be some asshole, you don't have to be some asshole." The thrust of Hive's mind is sudden and hard, pushing itself into DJ's with a commingled fury and relief. It's a tangle inside their thoughts -- here a harried bike messenger dodging between cars, there a cop leaning up against a subway station wall playing Wordle, there a nanny trying to wrangle a trio of toddlers in a park -- on and on with the millions of voices of the city chattering between. And prominent through it all, a deep hatred and resentment twisting over themselves in thick gnarled vines, half strangling the withering trunk running up the core of this sprawling entity. << You're here for this? >> Sharp and incredulous. DJ closes his eyes, hand squeezing down against his knee. He's feeling out the boundaries of their network critically, displeasure clear in their minds. << You're not very good at this, are you? >> It's not really a question. Even as he asks it he's sifting through their aggregate identities, their thoughts ballooning back out slowly to pick new minds one by one from the glut around them. Pruning away some of those already among them. Swapping the subway cop for a college student protesting outside HAMMER, ditching a realtor for a sculptor currently getting stoned at Chimaera, excising a couple bickering in their UES penthouse for a young woman selling jewelry in Riverdale. << need balance. >> He's tracing along the twisted angry strands, highlighting them in their thoughts. << want to keep these, find some people who don't hate us. >> The current spread of their network is a grab bag, a slew of minds plucked more or less at random for their geographic reach and not for what effect they have on the whole. Hive observes the careful reshaping of their mind with interest, just a mental shrug given to the question of his skill. << try to avoid spending much time like -- this. >> << Why? >> Even as the question rises, DJ's memories supply answer, his Hive vacant and forgetting to eat. "I mean," he says instead, "if you're careful you can be -- so much more." Different memories, now. His Hive slipping fluidly in and out of different expertise -- becoming an electrician when the farm needed repairs, borrowing DJ's medical knowledge on many occasions when he was holding down the fort for new refugees, turning an entire Resistance cell into sharpshooters when their safehouse was under attack. An entire catalogue of proficiencies kept in the minds of people across the country who were never even aware that their prowess was being freely borrowed. "It's good to plan ahead. Know where to find skills you might need. Know where to find people whose minds won't drown you out. You get the hang of it, you can be anything." Hive's brows furrow deeply. He picks up his coffee, taking a slow sip as he turns DJ's memories over -- and over -- and over. << be anything >> echoes between them, skeptical. "Anything! It doesn't just have to be this -- this pain you put yourself through when someone needs you, it --" DJ sets the sandwich down on the table between them. "Like -- do you know how to --" He glances around their surroundings as he casts about for an example. << fly a plane? (don't have a plane) >> << do heart surgery (what then cut ME open?) >> << shoot a -- (no, everyone knows that) >> "-- Tango?" he finally settles on. Hive just snorts at that. << hell no >> "Sure, yeah. Got no end of dance partners just lining up for a turn with me." Their mind is expanding again, swift and wide. << (tango) >> sits somewhere in the forefront of their thoughts, quiet but insistent. For a very large slew of New Yorkers this surfaces and vanishes again without much notice, just some passing whim that most don't stop to reflect on. There's a smaller section that do dwell on this unbidden thought, and it's these that DJ hones in on. He discards most of them after a cursory examination, << really should sign up for those dance lessons >> set aside together with << maybe I'll watch Scent of a Woman tonight >> and a fuzzily amused << gay penguins >>, seizing finally on one mind alight with anxiety at the thought, fretting over getting more practice in before his upcoming competition. It's here that DJ digs in, pulls the man's knowledge to the front of their minds. DJ hops lightly down from the table, reaching for Hive's hand to pull the other man along. In an apartment far across the city -- and clear and present in their ears -- Carlos di Sarli is playing. His hand closes through Hive's, mechanical hand slower to find a place at the other man's back. "Is there room on your dance card for me, then?" Hive sets his coffee aside hastily, scrambling down off the table considerably more clumsily than DJ. His breath has caught when DJ's arm curls round him. He lifts his own hand, tentative, to close the embrace. "-- I'm always gonna have room for you."