firefly_fanfic | (no subject)

Title: Men May Read Strange Matters
Author:

teh_elb
Summary: River thinks about insanity in terms of books and physics.
Rating: G
Characters: River, Simon
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Objects-in-Space, pre-BDM.
Word Count: 681
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Joss Whedon owns Firefly, and all characters and concepts contained therein.
Author's Note: Some rather obscure references dotted about. Points to anyone who spots one!

Men May Read Strange Matters

It’s not a shattered mind. The trains don’t run on their tracks. They collide. Bang! Smash!

She remembered the codices, lined against the wall in red and gold. A fortune. Superfluous of course; her memory meant that books were little more than aids to new learning, and no one, not even the obscenely rich, would buy a codex without that knowing its content matched its price.

A codex was an object. It was leather (ripped from the baby) and gold (riches of the mother) and glue (death boiled down) and paper (skin of trees and animals) and a rich midnight of ink (blood of flowers). A scroll of Han Shan was of the same material as a shopping list (a WANTED poster), just ink and paper. The same object. But that ink on that paper formed different words, and therein lay the value; the object contained thoughts. It contained fears and loves and hates and memories, trapped in the binding, writhing on the page. Humans crawling through life, all iron (touch for luck) and water (drink for life) and calcium (eat for strength), all fine powders and clear liquids. Humans lumbering through life, pillars and rust-ridden rain and slimy lights. Humans running through life, thoughts and dreams and long-dead people jostling in their brains. They were objects, but codices. Not a lightning book. They were heavy, and soft, and warm to the touch, they made noises when you browsed those memories, taking what you need. They were valuable. Codices and humans, weighed on the mind as well as the hands.

Weight twisted.

Space and the mind were similar. One thinks of space as a rubber sheet (geometria situs, curved space, marble or a bowling ball?), and stars and planets all have their weight. They distort the rubber sheet, and gravity swirls and eddies. River’s mind was even more analogous. Stretching off into infinity (would it freeze or would it crunch?), a singularity of potential exploring each direction, stars burning (needles burning) in a velvet intimacy, graceful and languid, laughing and content. They could not see. Every person, every object with every thought and hunger and loneliness and screams and swansong and pain, every object weighed on the rubber sheet of the mind. It distorted. Geodesics, wrong wrong wrong. The thoughts went in the wrong direction. The thoughts were there, lucid, beautiful, dancing thoughts, but the weight, the weight sent them spinning into the oblivion, round and about and colliding until some escaped from her lips. Made sense, and yet was nonsense.

Every object did this. Every human did this. Every thought did this.

She could survive that, though. Meanings might escape, might escape dressed in words that did not fit, but lucidity would cool her mind. Would, were it not for the other weight. That dead mass, hanging like a pendulum, killing her words and sending out impostors, spies with their own meanings.

It was the planet. Not hers, but screaming, constantly, dead and silent and shrieking pounding in her ears, night after night after night, as the objects travelled through space.

“Weights on my brain. Books and stones.” Lucid. Very lucid.

Simon didn’t think so. “Do you have a headache, mei mei?” He felt her forehead. Simon was an object. A codex too, a heavy medical textbook (stones and stars and storm for flesh), crammed with knowledge and theories. Thin pages fluttering nervously, but a strong spine. He was a scientist, and so thought in strict lines of logic. Followed the direction. His illogical thoughts were like splashes of blood on the grey of the page, surgery gone wrong.

He – she giggled, remembering herself, remembering their confusion – understood insanity, but did not comprehend it. Did not realise just how lucid she was. Misdirected thoughts and words, a perfectly legitimate square, but the knight confused them.

“I don’t think it’s the drugs, you don’t have a fever.” So concerned. The reeds that protect her, soft and kind. Just take the planet, smooth the creases. Be her again, not this.

“That takes a load off my mind.” Then she burst into tears.