>>
|
d052fd.jpg
Orange Castle Climber
d052fd
>>1008839
I'm not sure how I could possibly verify it without relaying the information to her inadvertently. I am fairly certain in my memory, though; I specifically remember now that the news report about the hurricane was how I learned about the island in the first place.
>>1008835
Yeah, I guess I could just get her to explain herself. She's expecting a response from me anyway.
"Uh, sorry. Yeah, I'm still hearing the, uh, voices. They were quiet for a while there, but they came back."
Ira looks concerned. "Huh, I wonder why that happened. Something stressing you out?"
"W-well, I was just thinking about what you said about that island. Uh, North Sentinel Island."
Ira nods her head towards the couch and takes a seat. "Yeah?" She doesn't provide anything else, and her expression is unreadable.
I take the seat on the other side. "How, uh, literal were you being about that? Were you actually talking about that island, or..."
I trail off, but Ira picks it up. "You're asking if I meant it as a metaphor from the beginning, or if it turned into one halfway?"
"I guess that...so, it was a metaphor."
Ira seems surprised. "Yeah, didn't you-" she cuts herself off and takes a deep breath, as if reconsidering her words. "Sorry. It's hard to tell, when I haven't talked to anybody in a while, how into my own head I'm getting. How well-understood I am. Maybe you can relate." She shoots me a sad smile, which I return with a shrug. "If I were talking about the island literally, well...it is an interesting case, isn't it? There's a lot out there on Earth that could make their lives objectively better. But if someone from, say, America said they wanted to quote-unquote civilize those people, it's a problem, yeah? It's disrespectful, taking away their agency to make those decisions for themselves, implying there's some threshold of civilization that they're failing to meet, destroying their culture, all that stuff."
I think for a moment and nod noncommittally. "And if you're not talking about the island literally, if you're talking about...about the entire Earth, all of humanity..."
She looks me in the eye pointedly. "I don't think it should be my call whether you're civilized enough."
I try to replay what I recall of our prior conversation in my head. "...And you just want to show up and exist to defy the people who you think already made that call. The people who already said they don't want to be shown how big the world is."
Ira sighs. "No, Mike. I don't. You said so yourself: I don't know how people would react. It could hurt a lot of people. Just because I may now be able to live out my-" she flails her hands through the air as if searching for the term, "immature escapist power fantasies doesn't mean it would be right. The less I have to do with Earth, the better. Current errand notwithstanding."
I find myself uncomfortable and turn to face the screen. I can barely make out Trinity Bay on the rapidly-enlarging image; the probe is almost in range. Or, will have been almost in range, 10 minutes ago when it sent this signal. I'm not sure whether her explanation makes the information about the island more or less worthy of sharing, but if I'm going to bring it up I should probably do it before the deluge of distracting data arrives.
|