daibhidc: (Default)
[personal profile] daibhidc
Still working on the others, but I came up with an idea for this quite quickly.


Sufficiently Advanced

Merlin was polishing Prince Arthur's armour when he heard a strange, wheezing noise. Rushing out to the corridor, he saw a blue cabinet that hadn't been there before. Out of it stepped a tall red-haired man, wearing a long sheepskin coat over a peculiar outfit including a yellow woollen jerkin.

"Interesting," the man said. "5th century? Maybe? Somewhen around there, anyway. Oh, hello." The way he greeted Merlin wasn't exactly unfriendly, but somehow gave the impression Merlin was the one who wasn't supposed to be there.

Merlin stared at him. "You're ... you're a sorcerer."

"Well, not exactly," said the man, "Although maybe, in a way. It depends where you're from and who you are. I call myself a scientist, but I know many scientists who'd disagree. Is there a problem?"

Merlin shook his head, "Sorcery's forbidden," he explained, "The king says..."

"Oh, I never mind much what kings say." The man looked at him more closely, "Now, you, my young friend, I'd call a Class-3 Telekinetic-slash-Sensitive, with a certain amount of haphazard training. But I'd guess that your king would call you a sorcerer as well, am I right?"

Merlin nodded.

"Then we're both sorcerers together, so that's all right. I'm the Doctor, by the way, and you are?"

"Merlin," said Merlin.

"Really?" said the Doctor in surprise. He examined the boy closely again.

"I really don't see the resemblance." he said finally.

Date: 2009-05-30 05:07 pm (UTC)
scarfman: (Default)
From: [personal profile] scarfman

Of course I didn't specify which Doctor. He's all the same person.

I was hoping you'd offer a rationale for the conflict between Merlin continuity and Battlefield continuity. So I could steal it or subvert it, and have one myself.

The vocabulary conflict is one I approached once from the other persepctive, in a pencil daily, back before AKOTAS or KAITAS or possibly even Battlefield. When the Doctor tells Arthur he's a scientist, Merlin says, "The sorcerers of the future use this term. They believe it implies they have greater understanding and control of the forces of the universe."

Date: 2009-06-02 11:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daibhid-c.livejournal.com
Although I didn't go into detail, the underlying assumption of the fic is that Battlefield's Arthurian characters come, as stated, from an alternate universe where sufficiently advanced magic has become indistinguishable from technology.

Merlin is (at least for the purposes of this fic) about the King Arthur from the "main" fictional universe.

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