SIM:Kevin Breeman - Friendship and its Varying Guises
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Characters
Summary
While discussing friendship with T'Tala Kevin contemplates autism as his ancestors experienced it.
Sim
((SB-118 - Dry Dock Commercial Sector))
((OOC: For anyone wondering what the backstory is for why Kevin is thinking/talking like this see this sim: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sb118-ronin/message/6363 ))
T'tala: I have found that acquiring friends is an entirely logical venture and one which anyone can successfully accomplish. I, myself, have found acquiring friends to be very easy.
::This woman was proving to be very peculiar indeed. Her application of logic to the problem of finding friends was admirable. It indicated that she had betrayed if not an in-borne use of intuition then at least a sense of creativity. She, Kevin decided, had found a way to employ the unconventional in order to achieve the conventional. To be sure, to have friends was a good idea -- logical if not at least pragmatic. But the socially isolating nature of Vulcan logic seemed to preclude the aliens from ever establishing friendships the way humans could.
He thought back to his grandfather's always finding his job as a programmer easy and fun. He had done exactly the same thing in using odd approaches to solving problems. A requirement document was the boring part. It was normal and everyday, like finding friends. But implementing that document was a problem as fascinating as one that might arise when one contemplated the origins of the universe or the philosophies of the current Federation zeitgeist -- assuming such a thing could exist given that from certain viewpoints Hegellian philosophies were not universally applicable even to human cultures.::
::He digressed and brought himself back on track.::
Breeman: It's hard to be social sometimes when there's so many interesting things happening inside of a computer program, I guess.
T'tala: Possibly. Yet I feel as though you could easily acquire as many friends as you desired if you simply followed logic. If you like, we can practice together- I will have to acquire at least another two onboard the Victory, once I arrive. We can begin immediately if you'd like... as soon as we've arrived and got ourselves settled in.
::He felt very awkward now. To befriend someone entailed a rather convoluted and unconscious process of growing accustomed toward the other person. Kevin remembered his own failed ventures in high school followed by his successes in university. "We love you!" one girl had said half jokingly in a lounge where he and others had spent a lot of time during his university days.
It was difficult to reconcile what had happened in high school with what was then happening in university. People changed, he supposed. He remembered telling an instructor at the academy about that strange incident when the girl had said that to him in the lounge. "How to I reconcile that with what happened in high school?" he'd asked.
"Maybe," the elderly man had retorted, "the question you should be asking now is how to take what that girl said to you and make other people feel the same way she made you feel?"
And yet now there sat across from him a woman who by all accounts he should have expected not to respond to a lifetime of gestures of amicability. But she had terrified and surprised him repeatedly like a Vulcan Bruce Lee violating all the philosophies her people held dear and breaking the culture barrier between human and Vulcan.::
Breeman: Logic? I don't understand. I've been trying for such a long time to learn the less logical and more... emotional dimensions of friendship. ::Modestly he continued,:: I've been successful at times, and at times not so successful.
::She nodded gently at him. Kevin was stunned a moment. Immediately he felt panicked and instinctively he turned his head away from the powerful burst of emotion the gesture conveyed. He forced himself to look back at her again and to face the alien who had surmounted biology and custom to break such a great divide.::
T'tala: I will take the lead, if you desire. Simply follow as I do and I am certain you will acquire yourself an adequate number of friends
Breeman: I'm glad to hear it.
::What else could he say? Every part of him was trying desperately to escape this awkward conversation. Yet it was awkward not because of what T'Tala was saying but rather because of the brutal truth T'Tala had enabled him to discover in himself. What she said next cemented it still more.::
T'tala: Through my method, I have experience in acquiring one friend and one partner for romantic experimentation. ::Inwardly he almost choked.:: I acquired another "naturally", and although we have not strictly and verbally confirmed our friendship yet, I feel that it is already cemented in place. I have not encountered any failures as of the current time.
::Kevin's face tightened. He had no right to doubt himself. If she could do what she claimed to have done then Kevin should have no problem, autism or not, with finding friends and maintaining amicable relationships. He was intrigued, startled, and touched.::
Breeman: I agree. I think... ::He mustered his courage, trying to sound as human and as truthful as he could. He wanted to show her, to show himself, that he could do this.:: you've done a great job. We're both friends. We've become acquainted with one another.
T'Tala / Anyone: Response?
::Should he risk it?::
Breeman: There's something that happened to me recently that made me think I couldn't make friends. I think I was wrong.
T'Tala/Anyone: Response?
Breeman: Someone told me I had been living with a strange disease all my life and I thought that now that I knew I would not be able to make friends because of what the disease had done to me.
T'tala/Anyone: Response?
((Forward))
::Later on, T'Tala asked,::
T'tala: You mentioned you were a programmer. Have you worked on anything of significant consequence?
::He grinned and thought back on some of his projects.::
Breeman: Well, I wrote a cool collection of widgets for my tricorder. And I built my own custom LCARS for myself back during my academy days.
T'Tala: Response?
Breeman: Yes, I reverse engineered them. They were being used to brainwash our people so I rewrote their code to brainwash the Vaadwaur.
::He thought back on his work with Dr. Fengjian and the guilt he still felt at how clinical he'd been during the whole ordeal combined with his awareness that he was making the conversation decidedly one-sided with his talking about himself prompted him to try to change the subject.::
Breeman: Do you enjoy security?
::It was a simple question and yet also one which perhaps would test her own apparently unique implementation of emotion. Or was she merely getting back in touch with her feelings after having allowed Vulcan training to pull her away from them?::
T'Tala: Response?
TAGS TBC
Lt. Kevin Breeman Asst Chief of Engineering USS Victory
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