[accidental video - memory cam]

[rudeandginger]

[ooc: Watch the clip until 5:02, and ignore the bit with The Brig. Sorry I couldn't edit it together, iMovie hates me currently :|. For those who don't chose to watch, the clip shows Turlough goading another student into stealing a car, crashing it, and making his deal with The Black Guardian to kill The Doctor in exchange for a ticket off Earth.

He has no idea it's up obviously. Open action in the Tardis for any of the Who Crew.]

Comments

[saidrepent]

Rather than the poor judgment or reaction time of the kid behind the wheel. [Right.]

[rudeandginger]

I'm not a kid.

[saidrepent]

How old are you, then?

[rudeandginger]

Twenty. I wasn't supposed to be at that gastly school.

[saidrepent]

And I'm more than five decades your senior.

You're a kid, kid.

[rudeandginger]

You don't look over seventy. What is it, a good moisturizer?

[saidrepent]

[He would sigh, but he can't help but have some appreciation for the kid's wit.]

In my world, people stop aging once they hit twenty-five years. [He doesn't see any reason to get into it any further than that.]

[rudeandginger]

Really?

[Try not to sound too interested, Turlough.]

What is it, genetic mutation? Intentional or unintentional?

[saidrepent]

[Well, it's a different reaction than the ones he's used to hearing: horror and disbelief.]

Genetic engineering, and it was intentional. As of about two hundred years ago.

[rudeandginger]

Do people still die of old age or do you have to just wait for disease and violence to pick everyone off?

[saidrepent]

Why would people die of old age when the body no longer ages? [Really, now.]

No, there's a different system in place.

[rudeandginger]

People's exteriors could remain young while their organs still deplete. How does one liver withstand a hundred year of toxin build-up? For example.

What is the new system, then?

[saidrepent]

I don't think liver failure is really in the same ballpark as physical aging. [But anyway.]

From the moment you turn twenty-five, you have exactly one year left to live. If you want more time than that, you have to work to earn it.

[rudeandginger]

And if you kill someone, do you take their years for yourself?

[He has a morbid brain, alright?]

[saidrepent]

[Years. As if most people in his town had any years to steal.]

No. [Still, he's a little impressed by how quickly this kid seems to pick up on things.] You've got it backwards.

You can't take time from the dead. But stealing all of someone's time will definitely kill them.

[rudeandginger]

That certainly boils survival down to its essence, doesn't it?

[saidrepent]

[Very quickly.]

More than you know.

[rudeandginger]

It might makes things simpler, really.

[saidrepent]

And how is that?

[rudeandginger]

At least people would know what they're fighting for.

[saidrepent]

[Hm.]

I'm not so sure that I would call it fighting, exactly.

[rudeandginger]

What would you call it?

[saidrepent]

A struggle, if anything.

[Unless one happens to be lucky enough to be born at the top. The word fighting implies that the odds are in any way even.]

[rudeandginger]

A struggle for life. As I said. Boils things down, really.

[saidrepent]

[Just as he thought.]

In practice, it's not that simple. [Which he wouldn't have expected this kid to know or assume. In his experience, twenty is about the right age for most to have at least some perspective on the grand scheme of life, but still young enough for one to hold onto that adolescent belief that some perspective is just the same as all perspective.]