Meeting Samir

Grace
It's dinnertime at Pho 95, and it's raining cats and dogs outside, warm air giving way to cool rain. So, Grace looks like damp rat at this juncture, her hair just reaching that not-quite-dry-yet stage. She's not used to cool rains or cold snows.

Times like this are good times to find a hiding spot and warm up from within. What better way than with a bowl of spiced soup?

She sits in the back of the place, wearing her uniform of jeans and t-shirt with a grey jacket. Today, her shirt reads: "I'm a ninja!" in dark grey text on black. Even while eating her soup, she's got her phone out, perusing some internet something or other.

Sam
Only after standing outside the glass front door and pacing back and forth four times pretending to check his text messages on his phone and then taking and releasing a bolstering breath does the young man doff back the hood of his sweatshirt and pocket his phone and walk inside Pho 95.

Her eyes are down but Grace is not insensate to the room. The decor is like any one would find in a restaurant in Saigon: modern and sleek with a full bar and low lights. Conversation creates a low hum and cutlery clicks against ceramic as diners set down their broth ladles or their chopsticks between bites. Plenty to distract a mind but the young man's arrival pierces the air.

He waits at the hostess stand and keeps his hands in his pockets.

Grace
Grace has a stronger resonance, though it's masked by the fact that she is a ninja. It doesn't disguise everything. She feels at once sliding and sharp, like a bird of prey -- perhaps a robotic one. And it is with a piercing eye that she looks up to note the arrival of the newcomer.

And smiles.

Maybe he doesn't even notice. She blends into the setting like wallpaper.

Sam
The hell she does.

A word of note about the newcomer: he stands of average height for an American male and he is dressed like someone who does not take many pains with his appearance before he steps outside. He doesn't have to. Even with his face unshaven and his hair overgrown he is easy on the eyes. Of Southeast Asian extraction. In this neighborhood he could pass for Hispanic if the observer had a narrow frame of reference. He wears his black hair in a tight knot at the nape of his neck and has on a black leather jacket overtop a gray sweatshirt.

Grace looks up and smiles.

The young man meets her eyes and before she sees anything else she sees anxiety. He would like to blend into the setting. More like it he will walk out of here and if questioned later no Sleeper present would be able to say anything of substance or certainty about his physical appearance or even his presence.

But he sees Grace. He returns the smile in a flashpan reflex and then a young woman dressed all in black comes to the hostess stand and steals his attention.

Grace
And so, Grace returns to eating her soup and flicking her thumb across her phone. Smiles like TCP/IP handshakes -- I see you -- You see me -- I see you back. Confirmation.

Maybe he'll wander her way, maybe he won't. It matters little. Somehow, she'll find a way to open up communication.

Sam
His phone stays in the hip pocket of his jeans as he places a takeout order with the hostess and confirms how long it will take and that he will be waiting here. Pays in cash and pockets the receipt. After she leaves him he considers his options and then goes to the bar.

If the fates were kinder he would have recognized Grace for what she was but that is not the sort of day he's having.

Before the bartender can approach him he lays both his billfold and his smartphone on the bar by his right hand. Slides it to his left hand. He does this three more times before blowing out another hard breath and leaving the small stack by his right.

Grace
[Corr 2, Entropy 2, Secure Comms -- Diff 5, WP spending = I can see your phone from here, dude. This should be easy...]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
Sam's day is about to get even better.

The woman who smiled at him goes back to her phone and soup-eating, but soon the soup-eating stops. She has to concentrate. The universe has to bend.

Carefully, she puts the code in motion, seeks out the device in his direction, to lock on to it...

On her phone, it looks like wires hanging on strings, a graphic representation of the Code. Connect the dots together. Looks like a stupid cell-phone game.

[And extending!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Sam
As Grace Works she draws no attention to herself. The young man sits on the barstool after he's performed his own silent ritual and he turns so his back is to the wall and not to the door. Lifts his eyes to meet the bartender's and smiles a quiet tired smile while forcing himself to meet her eyes. The interaction is short but not terse. He shows her his ID. This is not his first time venturing out into the world and his ID checks out.

His ID checks out and his phone flashes as the bartender turns around to pour his beer.

He almost doesn't pay it any mind but the color of the notification light steals it anyway. He glances up to ensure he's still alone and awakens the phone's screen.

Grace
Grace has found his phone, locked to it, connected discreetly with exceedingly-hard-to-break encryption. No police department anywhere on earth is going to be able to trace this phone record, unless they happen to be Awakened.

The text message he gets is from a person named chimeric01. There is no number.

And it reads, simply,

Hi. You're new in town? I haven't seen you before.

Sam
That message could have come from anyone in here. Just because a woman smiled at her doesn't make her the one. He can't even bring to mind the features of the woman who smiled at him now that he's sat down at the bar trying to remain inconspicuous. As the bartender brings him his beer he startles and closes out the messenger window only so he can hand over money for the drink and a tip. A subtle bid for her to go away.

He doesn't touch the beer before he takes up the phone again and types.

Where are you?

Grace
I smiled at you when you came in.

This place has gooooood pho.

Speaking to that, she slurps down some broth with her other hand.

Sam
A few seconds pass after she slurps her pho before his phone registers the message and he picks it up and reads it. If she is looking his way she can see the moment of realization. That moment brings his gaze back to her. He draws and holds captive a breath before letting it go slow and replacing it with a belt of beer.

They are all lines of code. That's all DNA is. That's all these floors and tables and lightbulbs are. Code is easy enough to write. Harder to rewrite but ignorance doesn't equal impossibility.

Fuck it.

He puts his phone and his billfold back into his pockets and picks up his beer. Stops to stare down at the condensation circle left behind on the paper coaster before turning it over and walking away.

A moment later he comes to stand beside the young woman's table with a pint in one hand and the other tucked into his jacket pocket.

"Hey," he says.

Grace
Her eyes flit off of her phone, and she puts it down.

"Hey. What's up?" she says, like they're just friends meeting together.

"I'm Grace. You?"

Okay, so maybe not the greatest of friends, if they don't know each other's names yet. But hey -- she's friendly enough.

Sam
Just friends know each others' faces and names. From a distance their circumstance is more like a blind date or a meeting of Internet acquaintances. A little friendliness never hurt anyone.

He doesn't like having his back to the door but he doesn't like a lot of things he has to tolerate anyway.

"Samir," he says. Indicates the chair across from her with the index finger of the hand holding the beer. He isn't friendly per say but neither is his personality repugnant. "Mind if I...?"

Grace
Grace rolls her eyes with a little smirk. "No, you absolutely can't. Every other seat at this table is reserved for my imaginary friends."

She shakes her head. "Go on, I'm cool with it."

Sam
Behold the smile that is natural and uneasy at once. Like the lower leg's jerking upon meeting a rubber hammer's blow. A quick flash of teeth and the rest of it does not meet his eyes. He's old enough to drink or else he knows enough to fabricate an ID.

"Sorry, guys," he says to the imaginary friends before he sits himself down. He sets the beer off to the right and knits his fingers together underneath the table. Like he's settling in for a job interview or something.

Then he moves the bottle of hoisin sauce so it and the sriracha sauce have switched spots.

"I, uh..." He clears his throat. "I just got here, yeah. Good eye."

Grace
"I have somewhat of a knack for meeting new people in Denver. Should get my fate checked or something," she says, as though her fate were something like a muffler, to have a professional take a look at.

What on earth is it? A new arrival magnet attached to her forehead?

"I don't mind though. New people are usually cool."

Mmm, soup. Grace eats with gusto, and no manners -- a thing Samir is about to find out. She lifts rice noodles up into the spoon, and then pours it all down the hatch, coming back with noodle leaking out of the front of her mouth.

Sam
As Grace speaks he moves the beer to rest by his left hand and puts the hoisin and sriracha bottles back where they were when he first sat down. Settles back in his seat like okay that's good that's great and folds his hands under the table again.

Now that he's across from her Grace can see Samir has a pair of folded-up eyeglasses hanging from the neckline of his sweatshirt by an earpiece. They are speckled by rainwater. He either only needs them to see up close or prefers the world to present itself as a blur when he's out in it.

"I guess if you minded you wouldn't hack their phones to--" A nervous bit of humor starts to sneak into his tone but he does not laugh. "--give out food reviews."

Shit. He wants to move the beer again. He does not move the beer again.

Grace
Grace snorfs a little with her mouth full, something that counts as a laugh. "Yea, I gueff not."

Chew chew chew.

She either doesn't seem to mind or doesn't want to appear to notice the way he moves things all the time. She's fairly content to let others do their thing, as long as they're content to let her do hers.

"I just wanted to say hi. Food review was extra."

Sam
"Is there a, ah..."

His accent doesn't not attach itself to any particular part of the world. It is not a Midwestern United States non-regional sort of an accent. Not that he has spoken much but the more he does speak the more Grace can pick up that he has traveled a not-insignificant amount in his short life. His vowels though. Those out him as having learned to speak English in Canada. Whatever other influence on his speech exists is difficult to pin down.

If her table manners need work he's distracted enough or too polite to register disgust at the noodles hanging out of her mouth.

"Like a charge, for the review? I don't know how tipping works in this country."

Grace
"Everything I give is free. Advice, tools, information... Food reviews.

"Tipping sucks, but you should, because the people who work in restaurants make so little. I wish they just paid people, you know? It's discriminatory bullshit, but if you don't go along with the custom, it just means that person's not getting paid today. Fucked up. Standard's like, 20 percent, though."

And thus, she offers her opinion on how tipping works in this country. Like everything else, it 'works'.

Sam
"What the fuck?"

This isn't to the high standard. It's to her claim that restaurant personnel don't receive payment for their service unless patrons tip.

"How is that legal? Is there no... I don't know, minimum wage?"

It's like trying to ignore an itch. Or a warning that if you don't do this thing the big timer over your head will reach zero and the roof will collapse and crush everyone in the room but you. Samir moves his beer so it rests by his right hand again.

And then he drinks the beer. That's why he bought it.

Grace
"Yeah. It's something ridiculous, like two dollars an hour if you're expected to get tips too. Fucking insane," she says, and goes to drink her soup again.

Lofting the spoon up, she says: "That's capitalism, man." then upends it into her mouth again.

Sam
His eyes tick to the right and then to the left and then lock on Grace's face. A stitch has pulled between his brows. He rotates the pint glass thirty sixty ninety degrees as he ponders this. It's a quick pondering. His brain works quickly.

"And people aren't rioting?"

Grace
The rant she wants to go on would be better served with an empty mouth. Even Grace knows that much. So there's a pause, while she chews, and then...

"You ever hear of the ninty-nine percenters? The Occupy movement? Of course people are rioting. For all the good that does... History suggests it won't start reaching revolution-phase until a majority of people are starving though. Give it time, I'm pretty sure..."

Sam
He flicks his eyebrows. That's as close to a concession of conditions as she's liable to get but he can sense that what she says is only a leading edge.

"I don't think history suggests that at all," he says. "I mean, American history? Your forebears didn't start a revolution because people were starving, they started a revolution because they had enough of British colonialism and wanted parliamentary representation."

Grace
"That wasn't the people rising up and taking power, that was one group of rulers fighting another group of rulers. That happens all the time. The American revolutionary government quickly obtained allies with other states, and set up an army. Who do you think would ally with the American people against their government these days? Nobody, 'cause it's the poor people who are pissed off, not the rich and powerful. The poor will starve first before they rise up, because they don't have the money to raise armies."

Which is why, of course, money sucks.

She's been sitting there this whole rant, with spoon aloft, slowly dripping its contents into the bowl. There's nothing left in it anymore. Frown.

Sam
"So..."

He almost loses his train of thought. It looks as if he's about to. He flinches like someone just flicked him in the ear and swaps the two sauce bottles a third time. Dinnertime in a popular trendy restaurant makes a fifteen-minute wait feel as if it will last forever.

"It happens more often that those in power consolidate their resources and overthrow other people in power. Not that the majority are starving."

Grace
"The wheel turns, a new boss takes over, same as the old boss. The problem is that there are bosses. That any inequality perpetuates itself, magnifies itself."

She dips her spoon in her soup again, goes to slurp.

"When looking at any systemic ill, you must always examine the root causes. This one in particular? That humans are scared they're going to die if they can't find someone else who they can measure themselves against and come out on top. And why? Because they're probably right. Money's just a measuring stick people like to use. Find a way to ease that fear, and then you've got the key to break the wheel entirely."

Okay. Finally, she manages to drink soup again.

Sam
"You're never going to rid people of the fear they won't survive. If it wasn't money keeping them in line it would be something else."

Speaking of which: the hostess scans the dining room for a time before tracing the customer's movement from her stand to the bar to a table towards the back. He has his back to her. It takes her a few seconds to walk over.

"Here you go!" she says. Cheerful even if she had to walk it over to him. Pleasantries then. He can be pleasant. He is trying to be pleasant or at least not insufferable as he lays down a first impression. He said at least two things he can lie awake dissecting later.

Those fucking sauce bottles. Soon as the hostess walks off he puts them back where they were a fourth time. Picks up his beer as he's preparing to stand.

"Speaking of..." He tips back the rest of the beer and leaves it on the left side of the table. Now he can go. He does not offer to shake Grace's hand. He's been handling money since he walked in here. "This pho and I have a date. You on the Web?"

Aha. He isn't completely new.

Grace
She smiles with high-beams then, because she can hear the capital W in that word.

"Not often. But yes. Name's in your phone," she says.

"It was nice to meet you. Don't be a stranger. Or do, your choice really."

Sam
Something about what she says or the way she says it has Samir pausing with a bemused expression on his face after he's stood. Fingertips of one hand on the tabletop while the other hand holds his takeout.

"Are those the only two choices?"

Doesn't matter if she chooses to respond or not. Their meeting is over. The rain has not yet skipped a beat. He paces in front of the door a few times like he's trying to find something on his phone before he ventures out. After four passes by the door Samir puts up his hood and steps out of the restaurant.

That isn't the last she'll hear from him. She may wish it was later but that day has not yet come.