There's a Starman...

[iamjustvisiting]

Tommy stepped through the door into the Plaza. For some, it might be a shock to have a door lead somewhere unexpected or that it has never lead to before. He was far passed caring about so many things, or perhaps, it is the years of imprisonment that made any outside space welcome even when he had no idea where this was.
He watched the video of the man to inform him about the location with a frown. He seems arrogant to the alien. The information is welcome though and Tommy quickly looks over the brochures. They remind him of Holiday brochures for a trip. Was that what people thought ending up randomly on a planet was? A vacation?

It was hard to tear his eyes away from the paper to gaze at the people moving around. It was a pleasant spring day, on the warmer side, but Tommy still wore a suit and overcoat. Everything was always too cold for him given the planet he came from. His gaze turns up to the two suns and he frowns. They were messing with his vision which was well beyond the spectrum humans, or even their equipment could see.

The pamphlet is tossed on the table with a sigh. "What do you do when everything you wanted is gone?"

He wasn't talking to anyone, himself maybe. He's been wrestling with this question for nearly half a century. His whole purpose for leaving home, coming to Earth.. none of it mattered anymore. 

Comments

[sharpcompassion]

"You learn to want something else." The response is swift and calm; the speaker hasn't missed a beat. She looks young--if she were human, maybe fifteen or sixteen--with strawberry-blonde hair, a tranquil, unsmiling face, and clothing in an ornate, near-archaic style. The bag slung over her shoulder is full of books, but she has a frozen drink in her other hand.

"Or you simply learn to live without wanting anything at all. If that's possible."

Which is she attempting? She's not certain yet.

[iamjustvisiting]

"There's nothing else I want." His voice is quiet when he looks up at the young woman. He too looks very young for his age but the reddish hair does get the faintest smile.

"What's the point without some purpose or want?" Tommy's fidgety, pulling at his sleeve and pushing his hair behind his ears.

[sharpcompassion]

It's an excellent hair color, particularly for spring weather! She has a couple tiny braids in her hair as well, with little shells tied to the ends.

"Purpose and want are two different things," she says, coming a step or two closer and setting her drink on a nearby table. "If you have a duty, you should do it. If not, it's not hard to find someone who needs some kind of help you can give."

"In a general sense, I mean. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, specifically." There's a flicker of something sheepish across her face, but it doesn't linger long.

"I think you have to grieve anything that's lost, though."

[iamjustvisiting]

His own hair is not far off from her shade, orange and a little less natural perhaps.

"Why would you have a purpose that is something you don't want to do?" Here is where his alien mindset may come rushing forward. Freedom and pacifism before coming to Earth and then the horrible brutality of humanity has produced a jaded cynic. Duty. That word pulls away whatever begining of a smile there was. "I don't want to help anyone."

He didn't. Helping someone gave him heartbreak and, in the end, betrayal and torture. Grieving too was something he couldn't get through. His eyes flicker away from the woman. "I can't get away from it."

Everyone thought visions would be amazing to have, but Tommy knew better. His crushed everything, sometimes his will to go on.

[sharpcompassion]

She has an answer for that, as well, and it's probably ingrained in her own alien mindset. "Because you are a part of something greater. A clan, a people, a world, a universe, a story. One of those, or maybe all of them."

His words are cynical, but the sadness in them screams at her. She drags a chair out from under the table she's set her drink on, and sits, crossing her ankles delicately and resting her bag on the ground. "You have nothing you want, then, but you have something you don't want. That's a start, isn't it?"

Granted, the idea of not wanting to help anyone is foreign to her. "It makes sense to hurt, if you've had awful things happen to you. It would be abnormal if you didn't. Sometimes it takes a long time to feel that hurt, before it starts to be bearable."

[readvondaniken]

Palmer doesn't know Tommy's an alien. He's aware of aliens that look like or can disguise themselves as humans, but most of the extraterrestrials he's encountered in the Nexus wouldn't be mistaken for human beings. So he assumes Tommy is human when he approaches him.

"That's happened to a few people here. Some of 'em had bad things happen to their worlds, have bad people in charge, or are hiding from war and violence back home. Some of them died back home, so they're stuck here and have nowhere to go. A lot of of 'em were able to make something of themselves here, thankfully, including me. I ain't dead, but I'm here so I don't get that way. If that makes sense."

[iamjustvisiting]

Tommy doesn't know if more people here in his situation was good or bad. His flat expression perks up, just a little in the middle of Palmers monologue.

"The dead come here?" His eyes turn to scour the people in the plaza. He's wondering if his wife and children are here. The flicker of hope is better than nothing at all.

[readvondaniken]

"Yeah, some people who died in their worlds come here. There's a few of them I know personally - Kinner, Cricket, Cassian. They all died or got killed in their home worlds and came back here alive, none the worse for wear."

Palmer notices the stranger's movements. "You're lookin' for someone? I, uh, wish you luck."

[iamjustvisiting]

He's listening but glaring at the people passing. It takes the question to pull his gaze back. The words come before he's able to stop it. "My wife."

And his children, but his wife is who he is missing at the moment.

[hispeoplesfate]

A newcomer, hm? A lot of them lately.

"That depends. Is there any possibility of revenge? If there is, you can always try and survive to have a chance for one in the future. If there is any person or people who took everything away from you."

[iamjustvisiting]

"Revenge?" He takes a moment to think about that word, lingering on it in silence. "No, I don't want revenge."

Maybe he would if it could actually correct what was lost. That seemed unlikely.

[hispeoplesfate]

"I see. What do you want, then?"

[iamjustvisiting]

"Nothing?" He really didn't want anything. "The question I asked of myself was honest. What I wanted is gone."

[xue_yang]

Xue Yang had been walking by when he saw the other man. He hadn't expected to be talked to and perhaps he wasn't but he still hears the question and it makes him frown, something almost dark flickering across his expression.

"I destroyed the place I was living in and then tried to find a way to get it back."

He was not successful and still can't quite accept it.

[iamjustvisiting]

The comment from the stranger pulls his expression to hint at the pain he has bottled up inside. It brings up that nagging feeling that he was at fault, even if he was not. The blame always lingered.

"They wouldn't let me go home. Now it's too late." He was certain of it. His visions didn't lie, ever, and all he saw now was death.

[xue_yang]

"Too late? How can you be sure of that?" He already knows its too late for what he lost as well but that doesn't mean he didn't continue to fight for it. Unfortunately for him..he died so there is no more chances.

[iamjustvisiting]

He's silent for a moment, blank, of emotion. Then a heavy breath comes. "They're all dead."

[londonreporter]

Henderson would be a little wary if he knew Tommy was an alien, but only because his last experience with extraterrestrials was a nasty one. Once heat-rayed, twice shy.

"I don't have a job anymore." He doesn't know if the Nexus has a newspaper. If there isn't, he'll have to start one, just so he can use his skills for something. He can interview, he can gather information, and he's able to write stories. "Used to be a journalist, in London, but that was a while ago. Now I don't know what to do, really. I suppose I could start my own paper here."

No boss and no job mean Henderson can start something new. Run a paper himself, and do it the way he'd like to.

[iamjustvisiting]

"I don't have a job." He admitted it easily, then listened. He's watching the stranger warily but with interest. Humans always made him a bit anxious.

"How do people read about the happenings here?" Tommy's openly curious. He was a consumer of media. It's how he learned about Earth when he arrived.

[londonreporter]

"We don't, at least that's my impression. There's information passed through word of mouth, but I don't think anyone's written a history of this place. There's no newspapers. There are the pamphlets, but they aren't about current events."

Henderson's disappointed, really. Something will have to be done about that, and he has some of the necessary skills.

[iamjustvisiting]

"Are you going to start one?" Tommy had billions of dollars to his name in his own world, well Earth. Earth wasn't really his world. They destroyed the spacecraft he built and now it was too late for another one to matter. Maybe he could do something with all that money. Everyone he knew and trusted was dead, or on the verge of it and hated him. What could it hurt?

[welcomingembrace]

Death immediately knows that the soul standing there is not human. And so it catches her interest. She strolls forward, tapping her umbrella against the street as she walks.

"Everything? How could everything be gone?"

[iamjustvisiting]

His presence is confident but emotionally flat. Too much had passed over the past years and it had bombed out his ability to connect.

"Greed." Of everything, that was probably the most truth. Greed had people trying to take what was his, stop him from going him, imprison him. It all went back to greed and he wasn't greedy. His generosity had opened Tommy to what had happened. He learned it too late.

[welcomingembrace]

"Strange. Most with greed continue to want something. If it has come to everything being gone, perhaps the greed has finally left you too?"

[iamjustvisiting]

He gives her a really peculiar look and then slow shakes his head. "Not my greed."