Second Floor Common Room, Tuesday Afternoon

[endsthegame]

Generally speaking, Ender never did find anything worth watching on television. Reality programming interested him about as much as scrap metal, and the less said about sitcoms, the better. Occasionally, though, the TV surprised him - such as right now.

They were running a documentary on the possibility of life on other planets. An in-depth one, and though it had a few factual errors, it involved a lot of interesting speculation on extraterrestrial intelligence.

Maybe if they'd spent more time thinking about this in the 21st century, what had happened in Ender's time might never have occurred at all - which was reason enough for him to make himself a mug of cocoa and sit down on the couch, watching and looking terribly thoughtful about it all.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[dollpocalypse]

Hey! Topher happened to like scrap metal.

He also really liked space, though, so on his way back from class there was no way he wasn't poking his head in to watch. "Hey."

[endsthegame]

"Hey, Topher," Ender greeted, glancing up over the edge of the couch.

[dollpocalypse]

"Mm... 'sup?"

Topher was a conversationalist like that.

[endsthegame]

"I'm watching a documentary," Ender said, "But I imagine you've noticed that already." He tilted his head. "Are you staying or going?"

[dollpocalypse]

"Staying, I think," Topher said, flopping down on the couch. "Space. Cool!"

He thought about mentioning his trip to Peter's house yesterday, since his leaving for it with Kenzi had made radio which I'm almost done writing I swear, but then got distracted by the shiny, shiny other planets.

[endsthegame]

"Extraterrestrial intelligence, to be exact," Ender said, shooting him another glance before turning back to the television. "Or life, at the very least - I don't think anyone expects much higher brain functions from it in this time."

[dollpocalypse]

Which naturally raised a question. "What about in your time?" Topher asked, glancing over at him.

[endsthegame]

"Considering that we were attacked and nearly annihilated by an intelligent alien species a hundred years ago," Ender said, "Attitudes changed a little..."

[dollpocalypse]

No wonder they didn't have any Mountain Dew.

"Wait, really?" Topher asked, moving to face Ender now and totally ignoring the TV. "What happened?"

[endsthegame]

"Peter didn't tell you?" Ender asked curiously.

[dollpocalypse]

Topher shook his head. "Nah, we mostly just talked about tech and Kenzi's new job and stuff," he said, shrugging. "And how your sister's room is really messy."

It was possible that Topher was talking about something different from what Ender was talking about.

[endsthegame]

Quite possibly.

Ender opted not to ask after Valentine - not yet, anyway. "A hundred years ago, we were attacked by a race called the Formics," he said. "We barely beat them back. They came back again a few decades later, and we beat them back again, but we lived in fear of them coming back. Until we destroyed them all -- just a few months ago, in Peter's timeline."

He sounded awfully neutral the whole way through.

[dollpocalypse]

"Huh," Topher said, pondering that. He thought about adding a "cool!" to the end of that, but remembered how Tony had berated him for doing that when they were talking about supervillains, so he didn't.

See, he could sometimes learn. Rarely. A little.

Instead, he asked, more curious than necessarily eager, "What'd they look like? Probably not meta for E.T., right? I figured that movie was full of it."

[endsthegame]

"Insectoid," Ender supplied. "They walked upright, though, and were capable of manipulating objects very securely. They operated from a hive-mind structure, with a Queen as the intellectual centerpoint of society. All the other Formics under her command were mindless drones, at least as far as we've been able to figure out."

He thought a lot more fondly of the Formics than Tony did of his supervillains, though. Just FYI, Topher. (He definitely sounded that way, too.)

[dollpocalypse]

Okay, now came the dorking out.

"Cool," Topher breathed. Not that he would have some experience with hive mind himself, you know, later down the road when technology and military stuff combined in the crackiest episode of all time. "So was it kind of, like, the Queen sending signals to all of them and functioning as their only brain processes? Just, bam, a signal from her and they automatically did it, without it having to go through channels?"

HE WANTED A VIDEO GAME OF THIS. Oh, the irony.

[endsthegame]

"Exactly," Ender said, nodding. "We managed to learn a lot from them - including how to speak to each other over interstellar distances, by simulating the way the Queens communicated with their drones."

[dollpocalypse]

"That's really smart," Topher said in sincere approval. "And you took them out? What happened when you got the Queen?"

[endsthegame]

"The drones went dead, like puppets with their strings cut," Ender said. "Easy pickings for the marines that came after."

You'd have to excuse him for the hint of bitterness in his voice.

[dollpocalypse]

"Which is... bad?" Topher guessed, judging from Ender's reaction.

[endsthegame]

"It's war," Ender said, "The enemy dies, or you die - I think that's how it works."

[dollpocalypse]

"I guess," Topher shrugged, because he wasn't sure himself. "How'd you tap in to them?"

[endsthegame]

"The network?" Ender asked. "I wasn't a part of that - I assume our xenobiologers took a few of them apart, and the engineers translated the biological data into a technological approximation."

[dollpocalypse]

"Yeah, I guess so," Topher said thoughtfully. He immediately planned to look up whatever he could find out on his shiny new desk.

"So what was the stuff you did? 'Cause you were in military school, right? Was it all, like, watching stuff?"

[endsthegame]

"Mostly, it was training for zero-gravity combat," Ender said vaguely. "We had a lot of homework."

[dollpocalypse]

Wait. Wait just a second.

"You got to play in null-g?" Topher asked, gaping. "DUDE. That is SO COOL."

You know, if you weren't there.