kissthatgoodbye | |: 001. Video/Spam : Feels Just Like I Don't Try :|

    [ Public ]

    [It's not unusual for transmissions to start en route to whatever they'll eventually show; this one follows the floor for a moment, spins its focus past a wall, shows a glimpse of common room.

     Shows a partial view of a possibly familiar face, frowning in concentration, muttering more or less to himself.]

     Number of things nowhere near as simple as they should be: two so far. Well done, Admiral. Catch up to the twenty-first century, huh?

     [A few more small adjustments, and Alec is fully on screen, standing mid-corridor on one of the hallways. He beams, pleased with himself.]

     There. Now. Floor numbers go up or down? Is this thing actually on?  Hello?

     [ Spam : Open ]

     [Once his presence is successfully announced, it frees Alec up to investigate his new environment more thoroughly - and explore it he does, once he confirms what his research alone in his cabin has already told him: this place is nothing like Manticore. They seem to pride themselves on it, even. Additionally they're recovering from some kind of unusual crisis, and that leaves him a unique opportunity he doesn't intend to waste, especially not with what else his reading of the network has shown him.

     He covers his barcode with the collar of his jacket, and separates the Barge as he understands it into a grid, sets out to fill in the blank spots. He can be found poking around in the dining hall, the infirmary, the gym, the greenhouse, the art room, and lingering outside the pub, the maintenance office, the engine room. He even wanders down near Zero just to make sure he's left no corner uninvestigated.

    It's simple: act like he belongs here, see who takes the bait; he's friendly to everyone he sees, smiling easily, often waving in greeting if anyone looks at him. Evaluate, adjust, advance. As long as he has new surroundings to investigate, as long as he has new rules and social angles to learn, he doesn't have to think about why he's here, what it means, or what he means to do once he's sure of himself.]

     [ Private : Dillon Cole : A few days later, after this ]

    [No fumbling this time. He wants to be taken seriously and he expects this Dillon person is already familiar with X5s, too - enough to know that a few days is more than enough time for him to become competent with the communicator anyway, if nothing else.

     His speech is a little more formal, too, although he doesn't bother with being as starched and rigid as he's seen his clone on the network; he can, but he only needs the vague connection in this case.]

     Good afternoon, sir. I was told to contact with you a possible employment inquiry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Alec is making a point of being confident in his exploring, but it doesn't mean that he's lost all the skills he accumulated at reading other people. He's quick to smile at her, prompt to wave, but he's more subdued about it; she holds herself too quietly for anything close to his full force smile, but he still drifts closer.]

Not really that surprised this ain't exactly the popular hangout. Is there at least some kind of mixer on the first Friday of the month?

Maybe.

[She says, glancing at one of the easels, a half-drawn picture still hanging. Not hers; she doesn't know when it was abandoned. The exact phrasing of the question doesn't slip by her, though. He doesn't know either.]

You're new too?

[She'll be glad if he is, honestly.]

[She looks at the drawing; he takes advantage of his new vantage point to glance over her mechanical arm specifically. It looks like something a steelhead would go for, at once impressively intricate and yet somehow primitive; functional, not just aesthetics. His eyes are back on her face by the time she looks back, his smile falling crooked.]

That obvious, huh? I'm Alec. [Similarly, he doesn't miss the "too," or the way she doesn't seem to quite know what to do with herself in this room. Herself in general maybe, but not here. He leans in just a little, just enough to make it conspiratory when he adds:] Less than a day, and I'm already wondering what I got myself into, eh?

It gets worse over night.

[In her experience. Furiosa is trying to sleep, and waking up again and again with the need to do. Only, of course, there's nothing but to wander around and eventually find yourself poking through arts and craft supplies, wondering if you're finally dead and this is just one big end of life hallucination.]

Furiosa. Third day.

[Counting is a helpless old habit. It's strange her, but if it's less than seven thousand days, it's something she can do.]

[That's part of the problem with being captive, Alec learned as he grew. They made sure he didn't need a lot of sleep but as he grew older, as he became a more completed product, they didn't give him enough to fill his time with.

And he is exceptionally easily bored. He raises an eyebrow at the initial comment, is not remotely surprised by either the name she gives or her accounting for herself.]

What's that mean, it gets worse overnight?

That feeling. That 'what did I get myself into.'

[Maybe it's just her. But she tries to explain, anyways.]

The doors to the rooms lock. The halls go quiet. Inside them there's clean water, and food. There's nothing coming after you, nothing that could get through the cabin door if it tried, probably. There's no reason not to be able to sleep.

[The 'but' at the end of that sentence is tremendous. She should be able to sleep, but it gets much, much worse at night. Her spine crawls at the thought, and if he's new, he should know that it might for him too.]

[Alec understands both completely and immediately; it's a peculiar, likely overlooked cruelty, to create something specifically to have higher endurance, intelligence, and ability and then lock it in a bare-walled cell while everyone else goes home for sleep he doesn't need. His cell was never safe, not for him. It was boring, and small, and locked from the outside, and he hated it.

What he does instead is consider this, shrug, and nod.]

So. What you're saying is you're still getting your bearings.

[He does not wish to be someone who grew up locked every unsupervised night of his adult life into a cell, and so he pretends as though he is not.]

[One thing about Furiosa's world that she will have to get used to here, is that people don't tend often to wear masks. When you're starving, shooting, dying of thirst, nuanced deception doesn't have much place. The only real exception to that rule had been, well, her. She doesn't look for or expect it in other people, so doesn't really stand a chance at seeing past the practiced front Alec puts up now.

So, she remains a little stoic, but fundamentally polite.]

It will be... an adjustment.

[For both of them, she's sure.]

[On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Alec's entire life has been built on lies or secrets of one kind or another; even the life he wasn't consciously lying about was a secret, one he had to hide from the rest of the world. If he didn't have lies to embody, he would be no one at all.

He blows out a breath, nods easily enough, tilting his head to squint at the easel again.]

God, I hope whoever did that doesn't quit their day job.

...it wasn't you, was it?

[Furiosa looks at him, a little more archly. Unused to it, but not that unused.]

You asked those questions in that order on purpose.

[Very amused, though it doesn't necessarily show as more than a twitch in the corner of her mouth.]

No, I don't paint.

[Alec pulls a face, innocent enough to sell it but with the kind of shit-eating grin that means he doesn't expect her to buy it.]

I'd be kind of a dickbag if that were true, wouldn't I?

Maybe you should. The only recreation I've found so far is the gym, the pub, a pool table, and here.

And the laundromat, but I don't think that's supposed to be as funny as it is.

The laundromat is where everyone cleans their clothes?

[Listen close for the slight overtone of 'compulsively' there- Furiosa looks better than she did when she arrived, but is still a stained and muddy brown. There's no washing most of her gear out.]

I don't think I have an artistic temperament.

That's the one. Regular social hub of activity.

[It's not unusual for him. The mixture of it, maybe, but he comes from an America closer to third world status than most worlds, and the vast majority of the population doesn't bother holding personal hygiene to its usual standards, or are even capable of doing so. Gasoline isn't the only thing in shorter and shorter supply after the Pulse. It's one of the ways he could, possibly, have been said to luck out with Manticore and its government contract for water, environment control, and food.

He raises an eyebrow, quirks a smile at that.]

No? Then what kind of temperament would you say you have?

Edited Date: 2015-07-05 06:49 pm (UTC)

A pragmatic one, maybe?

[If she wanted to be charitable.

Her world is a lot like his, then, maybe a few decades down the line, though she can't quite read that about him yet.]

And I can only hope not too rigid. This place seems illogical enough to likely shred anyone who isn't at least a little bit flexible.

Why would you want to be flexible somewhere that's also illogical?

[Pragmatic he can get behind. Flexible as well, although that's served him better personally than the people he was supposed to be serving. Alec likes rules. The more unyielding they are, the better to find the loopholes between. He glances to a side, and begins to wander to further inspect the art room.]

I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to go mad just because everyone else is.

I'm sure there's a happy medium somewhere between completely bent and so rigid that you end up brittle.

[Finding it, will be the actual challenge here.]

But I don't mind saying, I'm not far gone enough to decide to see merit in drawing my feelings yet.

Happy, huh? Sounds like not quite one and not quite the other to me.

[But he's teasing, as much as he is when he holds up a blank sketchbook, raises both eyebrows impishly.]

Maybe that's because you've never tried it. Maybe there's an inner Furiosa just waiting to be released that you'll never even know about if you don't fingerpaint.

[She just lifts her eyebrows at him.

She can't even say anything, because there are no words to convey a million times no.]

[Don't you mean a million times yes, Furiosa. Don't you.]

You could use mostly reds and oranges at first. We could graduate to the more soothing blues and greens.

Because they have an emotionally soothed overtone?

[Eyebrows lifting just a little higher.]

Exactly. See, you're already catching on.

[It's not that he thinks he can easily change her mind. It's that he started out teasing and now kind of wants to see if he can.]

Weren't you just talking about being a little flexible?

[Not only can he, but she has a tiny bit of capacity to meet him.]

Weren't you just talking about your plan not to go mad in the near future?

Period. Not to go mad period.

[He informs her of this so seriously that it is its own joke, crossing to bring the sketchpad to one of the tables.]

But this is hardly that. This is art. You could just walk around with it at the end of the day and people ask you stupid questions and you just hold it up, and get to call them shallow if they don't get it.

The car may already have left the garage.

[Is her arch reply, but she leans forward to look at the sketch pad.]

More importantly, why would I want to call someone shallow?

Personal superiority, obviously.

[Obviously. He mentioned fingerpainting mostly as a joke, but with all the utensils locked up, it looks like that's about the only option he's left with, so that's what he retrieves - opening a pot of red to show her with a knife edge thin smirk.]

Maybe, maybe not. Last chance: You in?