[Social] A Little Role Reversal Never Hurt Anyone

[Will Stanton]

"In a restaurant, your choices are limited. Outside forces -- the chefs, the ownership, the availability of ingredients -- control what appears and does not appear on the menu. Similarly, outside forces -- the time I'm from, the things I've experienced, past experiences -- control what choices I'm likely to make or not make. Or even possibly could make, to be honest."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"By that logic, none of us have free will and we're all just very complicated molecular machines, trapped in a script that was written when the universe exploded into being."

[Will Stanton]

"Eh, it's more complicated than that," Will said, shaking his hand to imply complications. "I don't believe in a lack of free will. I do believe, however, in our options being constrained by who we are and what we've done."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I'm inclined to agree with you. We're all shaped by the forces around us. But for the sake of argument, on a truly fundamental level, if free will exists as a concept that somehow elevates us above those forces in any way, no matter how small, then does it not follow that theoretically we are capable to eschewing those external factors entirely?"

[Will Stanton]

"I mean, perhaps if you can harness the Phoenix Force or the Power Cosmic, you can overwrite all other forces applied to you. But most of us can't even fight gravity, much less the pull of history."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Ah but some of us can, can't they? I've seen both of those things happen. I'm not saying it's easy or even common, just that we are not fundamentally bound by those rules. They aren't absolute."

[Will Stanton]

"Perhaps they are more absolute for some than others," Will said, diplomatically.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Practically, yes of course. I couldn't have freed myself from my programming by myself any more than you could shake the way your power works."

"But dealing with these 'Sparks' we are standing at an exciting and infinitely dangerous precipice."

[Will Stanton]

Will paused, his eyes flashing more rapidly than before.

"...What do you intend to do if you can harness the sparks, headmistress?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I'm not sure I want to. Helping those whose mutations are deleterious, certainly, but what else could it open the door to? And can I afford not to? Others have already decided to chip away at it and we cannot leave this field to Conduit alone. Not to mention the understanding of the universe this could bring. Yet I find myself hesitant."

[Will Stanton]

"A little hesitancy when talking about something of this magnitude is probably not a bad thing. These are some powerful forces you wish to investigate."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Well. It's a lot of highbrow musing about something we might still find ourselves unable to even fully decipher. Conduit kicked in the proverbial door and while the damage was severe on a personal level, she hardly ascended to godhood."

[Will Stanton]

"The Wests are, on the whole, morons. Someone with a more calm and calculating approach to their research could take it much, much further."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I shudder to think that the fabric of the universe is held together by idiocy and blissful ignorance of the possibilities."

[Will Stanton]

"Ignorance is, I believe, the fifth fundamental force of the universe."