VOICEMAIL

[siteboss]

Commander Sylvester Terrell Jones












Objective: NOT GIVEN




POD E

This is Commander Jones. Leave a message.

[ End of recording. ]

Comments

[siteboss]

“It is very strange,” Jones says, eyes on Q. “That face would never let me speak before.”

[trilluminati]

“It’s never apologized either,” Q says, eyes downcast. He glances up, for just a moment. “I’m sorry. I owe you all of the sorries in the world. I never had the fucking strength to step up and say that I knew that I was torturing you.” His nostrils flare, but he adds, “I understand why you did what you did.”

[siteboss]

Jones quits picking at his sleeve. Q looks again, for another squirrely, nervous instant.

[trilluminati]

“Ves,” Q says, “you don’t deserve any of these apologies now, but I’m not about to be the kind of man you are. I can admit that I’m wrong. You--”

[siteboss]

“Enough.” Jones holds out his hand. “You are not my brother.”

[trilluminati]

He hears that all the time now. It will never stop disarming him.

[siteboss]

“I received all of your messages too. That was ludicrously stupid of you. I had already killed you once.”

[trilluminati]

“Why?” Q asks, nearly cutting him off short. “Why was that, Ves, because I think I know.”

[siteboss]

“You--” Jones cuts the air with his hand again, silencing any of Q’s enthusiasm. “Jaden had an episode. He started...hearing things. I had to pull him out of traffic once during one such event.” Picking. Again. “All of my life, I feared him. And then he taught me that I never knew what fear was. My brother… metamorphosized. He always had to evolve, to change, to adapt -- and here you are.” Jones does not move an inch, but something burns deep in the eyes in has locked on Q. “Another incarnation. The discarded wardrobe of the Project's last season.”

[trilluminati]

“Tch.” Q cracks a cranky smile.

[siteboss]

“Why did I kill my brother? To let his soul run wild.” Jones is stonily solemn. “He is never happy as a something; he prefers to be everything. Nirvana. My brother achieved that, and this agenda of his seeks to resurrect him. But that is not right. My brother cannot be quantified. No vessel can contain him. As you are a farce, so is that fool masquerading in my brother’s visage.”

[trilluminati]

“Who’s closer?” Q hedges his heartbeat on Jones’s reply. “Who reminds you more of your brother?”

[siteboss]

“Neither of you,” Jones says. “And both of you.”

[trilluminati]

Q smiles and toys with his dangling shoelaces over the foggy gorge below.

[siteboss]

“I remember a night when my brother and Clipse came home stumbling over one another.” Jones straightens out the front of his jacket. “He...threw my books off of the table. Replaced them with a Colt 45. I still remember the condensation blurring the print of my copy of--”

[trilluminati]

“Uhuru.” Q leans into his hands, staring off the edge.

[siteboss]

Jones finishes his work on the front of his jacket, and then, after a moment, resumes. “We had an old stacking radio. We were the only ones in the neighborhood who had anything like it. I think it only ever played one Otis album before that.”

[trilluminati]

Q snorts.

[siteboss]

“Clipse looked so...foolish.” Jones stares off. “A man ought to not dance like that in the company of--”

[trilluminati]

“Anybody--”

[siteboss]

“Before I knew it, people came pouring in--”

[trilluminati]

Q licks his lips. “Leila, that foreign exchange student from Afghanistan--”

[siteboss]

“Those two from Princeton who insisted without end that I had to meet their friend--”

[trilluminati]

“Scabby Jess made you dance with her to One Love--”

[siteboss]

“Junior and Tisha knocked my ant farm off of my nightstand and the house was covered in insects in the morning--"