(If anyone's read "The Stranger" or "In the Blood", this actually doesn't follow those. It follows the novella at Vixen's Den--Strange Meetings. Those stories--and a possible enlargement of the character of Sekhmet, are probably in the works.)
I know what the problem with me is. Nah, it isn't that I don't think, although that's what Methos tells me my problem is. It's not that I have no moral compass--although I'm fairly certain that's Duncan's opinion of me. And, I don't think it's that I'm insane--although Cassandra, Duncan, Methos, Joe, my mother, and countless others have mentioned at one point or another that I don't exactly have both oars in the water.
Do you want to know what the problem with me is? I romanticize things. Yep. Hopeless romantic--that's me. I tend to get swept up in the passion of the moment, and then I have to pause afterwards to figure out what I was so swept up in.
Like Methos. I got swept up for a moment. Once I paused, I realized that I really, really shouldn't romanticize anything that happened between us. And, showing some sense, I split.
Oh, yeah. I know. It's not responsible of me to just "split". It would have been more irresponsible of me to have stuck around, though. I mean, seriously, there really isn't a future in a relationship based on a string of bizarre coincidences and serious mutual attraction, is there? Of course not.
And I had lots of personal stuff to attend to. Like my business. I had to clean up my act. Genuinely. Biotech was very, very good to me, but there are some attendant hassles. Like the fact that part of my capital-raising for the business was setting up an elaborate pyramid scheme only somewhat removed from "pump and dump" where I...
Well, let's just say, I did try to compensate some of the poor folks I took in. That little blip in the "tech" market? Yeah. Ouch. And what the good people of the NJ Div. of Tax. don't know about my little adventure in creative finance won't hurt them, or me. So, after years of passive loss carry forward and extensive promises to yield some interesting patents--Evatech dropped off the map. Oh well. Its founder also dropped off the map. Double oh well.
And as for my other business? Good thing no one ever did return my calls. If it was hot for me to come back before, after I'd blown up that block in Mayfair, it's nothing compared to what some of my old associates were facing, temperature-wise. And that's all good. Those parts of my finance-venture that served as a legitimate front for the more sophisticated "earners" in that circle--got turned over to the shareholders. And then the books got turned over to the Feds through a "cooperative source".
In other words--I'm a member of the "legit" population. Don't applaud, just throw money. I'm not saying I didn't find a way to make out--I'm just saying...hm. I've probably already said too much, actually.
And then, of course, there is the little matter of that really huge, mind-blowing, identity crisis I had. You know, from Akkasur's Quickening.
Not that I went crazy. No.
Duncan explained it to me, once I settled myself back in at my "Seacouver estate" (the one-bedroom apartment). There are "light" Quickenings. And there are "dark" Quickenings. He himself once had one of the latter, and wrongly supposed I was having something similar.
What I was having, was the aftereffects of a weird-@ss Quickening. Totally diferent, you see. But I wasn't crazy. Just--different.
How diferent--well, I guess I'll just have to let that story unfold.
Posted on Apr 11, 2000, 5:29 PM from IP address 171.208.203.234