Memory 11: Aphra's mother's file
Dec. 15th, 2019 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wontforbidtherain[CW: dehumanization, human experimentation, genocide]
Aphra is in Charlie’s bookstore when Mister Spector comes in. Charlie tries to chase him away, but he says he has something for Miss Marsh: ‘her mother’s records’. He implies that a prior encounter was him holding them over her, but he notes that wasn’t honorable of him. He can’t let Aphra have them, but she can look at them at least — he wasn’t supposed to remove them from where they were kept.
Aphra asks Charlie for some privacy, and she takes a few bracing breaths before approaching Spector and the folder. He warns her that they’re ugly, but she looks.
What follows is some hella ‘let’s experiment on this person’ clinical descriptions of scientific experiments from the US government as Aphra’s mother became more and more fishy in her metamorphosis, including tests of how she handled things like starvation and dehydration. There are photos, both of the experiments on her, and of the autopsy after she died a few months in. Aphra is trying very hard to not burst into tears or start screaming or both.
She returns the file to Spector, who mentions that his mother came to the US young, but his mother had an older sister who stayed in Poland. Spector’s aunt is currently in a hospital in Israel and ‘sometimes she can feed herself’, and that he has her files too. And that if the new German government asked him for help, he’d probably react like Aphra was. (Cat won’t get all the context to this statement, but she will get the realization that she accepted the comparison as valid; Spector’s community and family suffered of a kind to how her people have suffered.)
Aphra then says she’s not willing to work for Spector, but she will ask details of the case he’s pursuing involving Aeonists. That is a tie to her home, that she wants to encounter.
What Cat Learned:
Cat knows she’s from a people who have a deep connection to the ocean and that they undergo a metamorphosis in middle age. The fact that the first time she sees what her people look like as elders is grainy black and white photos of some hella unethical experiments on her mother is pretty damn upsetting.
The fact that apparently this isn’t just a water versus air rivalry, but apparently people in Cat’s world are hella fucked up is also depressing. Cat’s gotten that before, but mostly casual bigotry against Neko or Miss Dawson.
Also, ‘Aeonist’ is the name of her religious beliefs. Cat gets the impression that the people Spector are talking about aren’t the people of the water, but people of the air who share her faith is also a part of the community.
Based on her reactions, she also has enough to know that this is not her first meeting with Spector, but it is close.
Aphra is in Charlie’s bookstore when Mister Spector comes in. Charlie tries to chase him away, but he says he has something for Miss Marsh: ‘her mother’s records’. He implies that a prior encounter was him holding them over her, but he notes that wasn’t honorable of him. He can’t let Aphra have them, but she can look at them at least — he wasn’t supposed to remove them from where they were kept.
Aphra asks Charlie for some privacy, and she takes a few bracing breaths before approaching Spector and the folder. He warns her that they’re ugly, but she looks.
What follows is some hella ‘let’s experiment on this person’ clinical descriptions of scientific experiments from the US government as Aphra’s mother became more and more fishy in her metamorphosis, including tests of how she handled things like starvation and dehydration. There are photos, both of the experiments on her, and of the autopsy after she died a few months in. Aphra is trying very hard to not burst into tears or start screaming or both.
She returns the file to Spector, who mentions that his mother came to the US young, but his mother had an older sister who stayed in Poland. Spector’s aunt is currently in a hospital in Israel and ‘sometimes she can feed herself’, and that he has her files too. And that if the new German government asked him for help, he’d probably react like Aphra was. (Cat won’t get all the context to this statement, but she will get the realization that she accepted the comparison as valid; Spector’s community and family suffered of a kind to how her people have suffered.)
Aphra then says she’s not willing to work for Spector, but she will ask details of the case he’s pursuing involving Aeonists. That is a tie to her home, that she wants to encounter.
What Cat Learned:
Cat knows she’s from a people who have a deep connection to the ocean and that they undergo a metamorphosis in middle age. The fact that the first time she sees what her people look like as elders is grainy black and white photos of some hella unethical experiments on her mother is pretty damn upsetting.
The fact that apparently this isn’t just a water versus air rivalry, but apparently people in Cat’s world are hella fucked up is also depressing. Cat’s gotten that before, but mostly casual bigotry against Neko or Miss Dawson.
Also, ‘Aeonist’ is the name of her religious beliefs. Cat gets the impression that the people Spector are talking about aren’t the people of the water, but people of the air who share her faith is also a part of the community.
Based on her reactions, she also has enough to know that this is not her first meeting with Spector, but it is close.
