Grace
The Office is not an imposing structure, nor is the Warehouse that sits beside it. The Warehouse sports old, flaking paint on the outside that vaguely resembles the shape of a cow. Maybe this was an old dairy at some point in its lifespan? Call it camouflage. No defunct dairy would be protected with steel doors and biometric locks.
The invitation has been sent, multiple times. Samir, come to the Office. Samir, I have presents for you. At first glance, the place might be... dare we say it... disappointing?
Alexander
[Awareness?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Samir
Sam has the uncanny ability to ignore his phone and his email inbox if the phone or email inbox require a response that would have him leaving the apartment to do anything other than collect money from someone to whom he was delivering illicit substances.
To be fair he has only been known to a few of the city's Awakened population for about a week now but in that week he has ignored shit knows how many invitations. It finally reached the point where he had to respond.
He didn't respond though. He just showed up. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Except for in order to rip off the Band-Aid he had to check the windows and the faucets and the stove x number of times and the less said about what he has to do to even walk through the door the better.
So he just showed up and now he has to find the entrance to this dungeon. He's already regretting this decision. And when Alexander shows up the first thing he feels is something piercing. Something piercing and Mind magic.
Grace
[Awareness Too!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Samir
[ah fuck it. awareness.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Alexander
Alexander isn’t a stranger to the Office or the Warehouse. He may not frequent the library as much as others, but he makes up for that with the time he spends in the firing range. Yes, there’s a firing range. And that’s not even the most impressive part about the complex.
He’s only just arriving, though, after some hesitation at the gates. He spends time reaching out for the awareness of who else might be around. There’s one that he’s looking for and another that he’s looking to avoid for the moment. Someone who has changed way too much in a very short period. There is someone else noted, though. Someone new. Always someone new.
The coast is clear, though, and Grace is in! So the sound of a motorbike idling a short distance away is replaced with the roar of an engine as he finishes his approach. A blue sports bike parks up close to the entrance to the office, and a helmeted figure in biker leathers gets off.
Samir
At the sound of the motorbike the newcomer stops what he's doing and turns to look.
Said newcomer stands of average height for a western male and is darkly complected. His hair is black and long enough that he can tie it into a knot at the nape of his neck and he has no other distinguishing features. He's handsome, maybe, but he also fades from memory so quickly that even the government doesn't have much in the way of memory of him.
In this moment though he feels like a needle in the second it stabs into a vein. That kind of sharpness. Like the gaze of an overly perceptive stranger.
And he looks like he wants to bolt when he hears the engine. The best way to describe his fashion sense is "punk-bohemian." A leather jacket overtop otherwise nondescript clothing. His hands are in his pockets. He has found the front door but he is holding off on announcing his presence until he sorts out who the fellow on the bike is.
Grace
Somebody's not expecting visitors. Here's the thing about Mages, right? They do as they like. And that includes showing up without warning. It's not much of a shock that neither Alex or Sam bothered to let anybody know they were dropping by, it just means Grace is woefully unprepared for the prospect of people.
Right at the moment, she only vaguely notices the presence of something cold, and this being almost Summer, that's enough to prick the ears and go 'huh?' at. The motorcycle arriving and stopping makes it more obvious who that is.
Fucking Hell, she thinks, looking down at her hands, covered in long yellow gloves. Somebody has to clean things, and in the spirit of mutual cooperation and shit, they have a rotation going on in the place. It's just fantastic to get visitors while you're scrubbing a toilet, no?
On the other hand, this is a good excuse to quit.
She gets up, stows away the brush, doffs the gloves in the sink. The bathroom is a mess of cleaning products, so hopefully nobody needs to take a piss.
Alex can just deal.
With that done, she goes to open the door. He probably doesn't need it -- hadn't Kalen made sure the door recognizes him? But just in case...
Alexander
Alexander has no illusions that he’s as close to the comings and goings of the Awakened in the city. Maybe it’s his efforts to retain his ‘normal’ life that pull him a touch further away from the usual storms of chance that pull them together and throw them apart again. There are some in the city that he just hasn’t really crossed paths with much. Maybe that will change. Maybe it won’t.
Either way, there’s a new face – and a new resonance to go with it – lurking outside one of their meeting places. It’s not obvious whether he’s here by invitation or chance or for some malicious intent. His helmeted head cocks to the side, the only display of puzzlement through the darkened visor, and a muffled voice says, “Hi.”
Alex, by the way, is not a small man. Tall, broad, dressed in biker gear and with his head masked, he may well come across as an imposing figure. And those who pay attention to such things might note the aura of cold around him. Something timeless, Frozen in the heart of the comet.
Samir
"Uh..."
This fellow in the bike helmet is if not One of Them then at least capable of tweaking the fabrics of the Tapestry. He may or may not be freaking out the newcomer but the newcomer doesn't have a stellar track record insofar as convincing other people that he isn't constantly freaked out goes. If this is a Fallen or a Marauder he'll figure it out sooner rather than later.
Sam points to an area somewhere near his temple. He isn't wearing a helmet so when he frowns Alexander can see it.
"I don't..." I can't see your face dude help me out here. And then he realizes he's not responding appropriately and puts his hand back in his pocket. "Hi."
Grace
Grace comes to save the day from awkward greetings by opening the door. Alex is there, as expected. Someone else is with him, who isn't.
"Alex, hey, what's up? Come in," she says, opening the door wider, and giving the other guy a quizzical look. "This a friend of yours?"
No, wait... That guy is familiar, isn't he?
"Oh, hey! You're that guy from the pho place! With the emails! I remember now."
Alexander
First encounters don’t always go smoothly. Sometimes it’s like old friends – who knows, even friends from past lives – reuniting and hitting it off like they had always known each other. This isn’t one of those times. This time, there’s caution. Distance. Barriers. Things that ward off connection, unless some way is found to breach them.
It’s either surprising or fitting that Grace is the one to start those connections forming. Given her choice of Tradition, it could possibly be considered poetic. Assuming any of them had a poetic heart to consider it.
Alexander hadn’t made any attempt to be overtly threatening, but he hadn’t done anything to lessen the threat that his size and presence and anonymity created. He noted the head-tapping but didn’t do anything about it. He’s about to ask something when the door opens – the visor turning to see who was emerging.
“You know this guy? He ok?” One interesting question would be who of the two of them would be best suited for taking care of an unwelcome visitor. They each have their own skills and approaches for dealing with problems.
Samir
Grace recognizes him after a time. He knew she would have trouble. He said so in the first email he ever wrote her. She remembered him in text but in person is a different fucking story. In person he would prefer not to exist. In person he is stuck inside his own head. In text the entire world is open to him.
That doesn't mean it doesn't jolt him when Alexander refers to him like he isn't standing right there. They can both see it jolt him. Excuse me? writes itself across his face though he doesn't voice it. He doesn't voice anything. He can actually understand where the man wearing the bike helmet is coming from. He waits for Grace to respond anyway.
Grace
"He's ok, yeah. Samir. I told him he could come by and meet the robots," she says, to Alex.
"Samir, this is Alex. He's a friend." And a cop. But also, unlikely enough, a friend.
"You guys want uh... coffee? There's also waffles. Listen, I don't want to sit here with the door hanging open because Pomegranate likes to bolt for the outside and then cries when she can't get back in."
Alexander
He’s a friend. There’s a one-shouldered shrug and the leathered figure moves to remove the helmet. Like the others present, he does have a slight tendency to slide from notice or memory. Maybe not as much as they do, but he does tend to blend in with a crowd more easily than most. When the helmet does come off, they might notice some bruising around his face. It doesn’t seem to be anything that’s bothering him, though.
“Sorry about that. Hi, Samir. Alexander.” Sorry Grace, that stick is still up his ass about that one. He pulls the glove off his right hand and offers it in greeting. “I wasn’t sure if you were meant to be here or not.”
Grace offers coffee. “I’d love some, but this is a bit of a flying visit. I wanted to ask you about that text message you sent.” Which one? The one about Kalen, who he’s deliberately not mentioning because he doesn’t know how much or little Samir know about the people in the city. “You’re sure he’s… Not a clone? Or anything else funky? Because that man I saw in the park really didn’t feel like him.”
Samir
Nothing overt in his desire not to shake Alexander's hand but there is hesitation. Like he has to gauge the social implications of not doing so and weigh it against his own discomfort and Samir can't lie for shit so they can both see he is uncomfortable for a second before forcing a smile and putting out his right hand to grasp the bigger man's.
"No problem," he says. Note the accent: he's Canadian. Or learned to speak English in Canada. "Sorry to show up unannounced."
And then the offer of coffee and the text message Grace sent and someone may or may not be a clone and Sam is frowning but not interrupting. Fidgeting a bit. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and tries to fight the urge to check his phone but fails the more Alexander talks. Okay. He's been here four minutes. Fuck.
Grace
Neither of them are getting the hint that Grace Evans is not a doorstop, so she steps outside and shuts the door behind her. She wasn't lying about the cat being catlike and indecisive about what constitutes her territory.
"Right," Grace says, looking at Alex. "I've told you about Seekings before. When I have had them, I change, but not everything. Kalen is different. The connection he has? His Avatar? It's a thing of changes. Metamorphosis. When he goes to find himself, he is another person each time. He told me that once, a long time ago. Now, when I first saw him after, you know, I thought the same as you. But he hasn't been not-Kalen, and his memories check out. You can stay away from him if you think it's wise, but personally, that would be kind of sad. You know?"
She keeps eye contact as she talks -- rare for Grace. But it can get uncomfortable, with how she can stare a hole into you. There's a sigh, and then she looks to Samir. "Don't worry about the unannouncing. I don't care. Gave me an excuse to stop cleaning the bathroom."
Samir
For what it's worth Sam did not go inside because Alexander did not go inside. Some sort of cultural thing or he's nervous or he thought he had more than a few seconds to decide whether he was going inside or fucking it and leaving.
"Why would you want to stop cleaning the bathroom?"
It sounds like he's joking. Maybe he is joking. Neither of them know him enough to say whether he's joking for real or joking in a self-depreciating way of joking or just not joking at all. It sounds like he's joking though. Nobody actually likes cleaning the bathroom.
Alexander
Alexander wasn’t planning on staying, so heading in seems rather pointless when he’s going to be leaving again in the next few minutes.
He does nod thoughtfully as Grace explains Seekings again. It wasn’t exactly that he was unfamiliar with people changing. He knows several people who have grown after Seekings. But it had always been the case that it was a growth – the way they felt deepened and became more complex. Kalen was the first who had completely replaced what he was with something else, regardless of whether he’d chosen it or it had happened to him.
“I won’t shoot him when I see him then.” Alex grins a little, but a little awkwardly. “Naah, I’ll talk to him. I think that maybe the circumstances weren’t the best for finding out that it had happened to him, you know?”
Alex looks to Samir, after almost forgetting that he was standing there. “Sorry to interrupt. If you’re here for the grand tour then I can leave you guys to get on with it. I still want to see mecha-Gamera, though, Grace. Next time, though.”
Grace
She rolls her eyes at Samir. "I know, right? Pinnacle of human endeavors, cleaning the bathroom. So pleasant and enjoyable. Wouldn't want to ever stop..."
"And please don't shoot my friend, Alex," Grace says, rubs her eyes. "I'd have to shoot you back, and the blood would get everywhere. Talking to him sounds like a great idea, yeah."
Okay, so, with Alex on his way out, this leaves Samir, and getting him through the door. Grace turns around, puts her finger on the print scanner and heaves the door open again with a crunch of machinery noise.
Samir
So much talk of shooting. Sam definitely looks uncomfortable now. Some combination of meeting people in the meatspace and this occurring outside of his already slim comfort zone and the helmet and fuck. He puts on a tight smile and lifts his hand to give a likewise tight farewell wave to Alexander and then there goes the print scanner.
"Nice to meet you," says the voice belonging to the man Alexander won't be able to recognize later.
Okay. Inside. Yes. Good.
Alexander
“Hey, I’d only shoot him for a really good reason! I’m happy to just throw stuff at him when he’s being his usual dense self. If you bump into him, tell him I’ll be in touch.”
To Samir, “Nice to meet you too. Sorry if I scared you and all. And… I really don’t go around shooting people.” Well, not unless they’re mad cannibalistic Adepts. Or spirit-possessed-and-corrupted human hosts. Or they shoot first. But those things don’t really need to be said. “Enjoy the tour!”
Alex throws them a wave before returning to his bike, to disappear to do whatever it is he needs to be doing. Probably not shooting people.
Samir
Vague hand gestures that indicate oh no you didn't scare me okay you did scare me I'm a shitty liar I'm pretending to be cool with this entire thing yeah okay great bye in the slow span of about three seconds before he plunges it back into his pocket and follows Grace inside. Harder to get shot if you're inside. Hypothetically. Statistically you're more likely to get shot inside than outside but Sam hasn't got much use for statistics.
Grace
Inside, Samir will find the place decorated to an eccentric Hermetic's taste. It looks different on the inside, with walls painted in jewel-hues, and expensive wooden furniture. There is a Bengal cat staring at the door, pissed off that it's closed again, and not at all concerned about the New Person. She flicks her tail and walks off in disgust, the way cats do when they've had their plans stymied.
"So yeah, this is the place. I work here, and only technically live in my apartment, you know? It's nice here. More secure than any apartment at least. Had a... bad experience at my actual living space with some witch-hunting pieces of shit, and this place has nice comfy couches. Speaking of which, you are welcome to crash here if you need a place that's safe."
Grace talks and talks, and also starts making her way up the stairs without paying much attention to Samir. He can follow, or he can wander around. You get the impression that basically anything goes with her.
"Kalen's my 'business partner', he works here, and his apprentice Elijah lives here. We get others from time to time too. We have a gun range in the Warehouse next door, a laser-tag arena, a library in dead tree and digital form, some servers because Kalen was certain we needed multiples of them so that they would have other machines to talk to when they got lonely... You met him right?"
Samir
It jars him a bit that she brings him inside without explaining who Alexander is or why Alexander was so paranoid but it does not jar him enough that he begins to question her so soon as they're stepped inside. That would be rude and he's new enough as it is. This is not his city. Truth be told no cities are his city. None but the one where he grew up and that city is as close to dust as a city can get without a sound leveling.
As he comes back to the moment and listens to what Grace is saying rather than focusing on counting syllables and cracks in the floor.
He listens attentive and follows Grace because what the fuck else is he supposed to do. He has his own place. It's a place no one in the fucking world is ever going to see but then no one in the fucking world can ever remember seeing him either. Even his own mother forgets that he exists sometimes and his mother would have laid down in traffic for him before he Awakened.
You met him, right?
"Hmm?" Like he wasn't actually listening for a second. He was listening. That doesn't mean his mind isn't racing. "Oh... Kalen? I... yeah, it... it was kind of by accident, he was in the park... I didn't know about the, ah... the vampires. When I met..." Fuck. "I... is Elijah... did Elijah get in a wreck? A car crash? Recently?"
Honest men can't lie for shit. Just for the record.
Grace
"Yeah, he did. He was pretty miserable for a while. Did you meet him too?"
Grace was there at the park, but she never saw Samir. Or, let's say, she may have seen him, but didn't place him. Couldn't remember him. She doesn't know that this guy is the one who supplied Elijah's 'painkillers'. Which, let's be honest here -- she was less upset about the drugs, and more upset that he didn't talk to her about it before getting on the darknet and contacting strange people thereupon.
Elijah gets himself in trouble on the internet. It's a thing.
She gets to the top of the stairs and starts walking down a long hallway with lots of doors. Some of those doors are locked with mechanisms that look like the one on the outside -- high security kind of place. Really, Kalen just thought Grace would like her privacy. Her office has a lock that even he can't open.
Samir
After the first couple stammering incidents he starts to catch himself and think before he opens his mouth. No cognitive-behavioral therapy under his belt but he's a smart young man and he can recognize why he starts to stammer and what it means and hone in on the why and the what and steer the ship away from the rocks a bit.
So: did he meet Elijah too. Breath.
"I did," he says. "In the, ah... in the park. I kind of had a busy week last week."
To the top of the stairs and down the hall. Sam's eyes traipse but he does not touch anything. This isn't his first foray into a high-security kind of place. That doesn't mean he isn't looking for cameras or little holes in the wall that could shoot poison darts or sedative clouds or lasers or something at him.
"Kalen was... I mean, you know, he's the one who told me about this."
Grace
She gets to the door with the impressive lock, and shows it her finger -- the middle one. It clicks open, and Grace gives Samir a little grin as she pops the door to her office open.
One of the first things Samir is likely to notice is the walls, which are a deep cobalt blue, with constellations of stars painted in silver.
The place is a strange concoction of Kalen's taste in furniture, and Grace's taste in things to put upon it. There's a massive, l-shaped cherry-wood desk, with a workspace covered in leather, upon which sits a robotic turtle. At least, it is a robot, has four retractable legs, and has a shell. Grace has the aesthetic sense God gave a rock, so there's more function than form, but still -- she has tried to give it turtle functions.
Also on the table workspace is a sprawling ivy plant with a nametag that reads "Chloe III". It's surrounded by a scaffold which holds robot arms, all pointing lasers at the plant, but it is not under attack. These lasers are meant for another purpose.
On the desk proper, is Grace's laptop, with a few dirty coffee cups around it, and some jotted-down notes and diagrams.
On the shelves lining the wall here are several leather-bound journals labeled "Teh Wall 01" and "Teh Wall 02" and such in black Sharpie marker. There are many of them, all stacked up. There's a copper-wire fox mask and a puzzle box and a container of syringes.
Also in the room is her office chair, and a large, overstuffed leather couch, with a Grace-sized indentation in it, and a fuzzy blanket thrown over the armrest. She has her own mini-kitchen and fridge off to the side. Someone could live in this office, and by all indications -- she does.
"Yeah. Kalen's good about that. This is my place. I said I had some goodies for you, didn't I? Did you bring your phone? Shit, I know you did, what am I thinking..."
Samir
Even the most scatterbrained technomancers tend to remember to bring their lifelines with them. If he had walked out of the house without his phone that would have meant he didn't walk out so much as exited not of his own volition. Like through the window or by force of a paradox spirit possession or something. His phone is in one of his jeans pockets. His jeans are mustard-colored tonight and his Doc Martens are blood-red. He has no fashion sense whatsoever.
He does have a sense of decorum though and a sense of respect for other people's space. Just because she's invited him in to share it with him doesn't make it his. So he keeps his hands in his pockets and chews his lower lip as he takes in the menagerie of devices and artifacts.
"It's... yeah, hang on..."
Out of his pocket and Sam checks his messaging applications to make sure nothing incriminating has popped up before he unlocks the screen and hands it to her.
Grace
Grace has no decorum or respect for other people's space, and thus she doesn't expect it to be given to her either. Samir would be welcome to pull all of her books off of her shelves, to try on the fox mask, even to muck about with her robots (because hey, he might have an idea on how to make it better). But it's not as if he knows that.
This is her office in the sense that she spends a lot of time here, and she works on her projects in this place. But Grace has few firm ideas of ownership. Things, ideas, projects, information, space -- these are for everyone. To own is to take what was never really yours.
And just like that, Sam hands her his phone, likely knowing what she can do with it. Grace would be hard pressed to just hand somebody her phone without a good reason, and we've already laid out her personal philosophy on ownership...
She looks down at his phone, looks back up without taking it. "You don't know what I'm offering. You might not want to accept it."
But then, after that's said, she takes the offered phone, heads over to her desk, and pops open her laptop.
"I got in some trouble when I first Awakened. Was talking with my friend Gadfly about stuff that shouldn't be talked about over unencrypted text messages. A kind datamancer let me know I was on a watch list and erased my incriminating chat logs, but after that, Gadfly and I realized we had to do something a bit more secure. That's how Ginger was born."
Samir
"It's a burner," he says. Like that justifies the ease with which he gave up the little bit of silicon and plastic. "If you put a tracking device in it I'll just set you on fire."
Is he joking? He doesn't laugh or try to sound charming as he says it. He can be charming when he puts his mind to it but most of the time he's too nervous or distracted to put forth much of an effort. After he blurts out that casual threat he starts chewing on a thumbnail. Oops.
[OOC: I'll continue my post if she doesn't feel the need to respond to that but Jamie has brain worms and can't handle two separate conversational threads in one post so.]
Grace
Grace snorts a laugh. "Man after my own heart..."
Then, we're typing and talking, because while Samir could say no, it's doubtful.
"Ginger isn't a tracking device. In fact, it's built to be the very opposite. It's a communication network, but you can only post messages to the message drop, it does not return any contact to your specific device. It keeps no record of access, and all posts are encrypted end-to-end. No messages are sent from individual Ginger users to another user, with the intent of keeping our network from being crawlable -- so if one person was compromised, they'd have a hell of a time sussing out the other users.
"It's essentially a back-door in a phone-sex line. What it'll look like on any official records is that you are a lover of 1-800-FAT-GRLS. And we're hiding in between the normal, legitimate traffic that line gets, as a bonus. Whoever's looking would have a hard time separating a Ginger caller from one looking to talk to an actual girl named Ginger, you know?
"Bottom line is, this is what we use in Denver to talk about the weird shit that goes down, in the hopes that someone out there can help or at least be warned away from hot zones. And I'm not going to say it's perfectly safe, because it's not. You throw enough Magic at anything, and it'll bust open like it's got Heartbleed and a rootkit. It's just safer."
With that, she looks up from the laptop and gives Sam questioning eyebrows, hovering his phone over her laptop screen like she wants to make them kiss.
Samir
Man after my own heart.
He breathes out what would have been a laugh if he were a more jovial creature and then he traipses closer to watch her as she works. This isn't a novel procedure to him and she doesn't have to explain to him what the hell she's talking about the way she would have had to explain it, say, a middle-aged Chorister who still uses a freaking pager in 2015.
"Oh, good," he says. "You have a whole system worked out for the weird shit. That's..." Stop chewing your thumbnail Samir that's disgusting. He puts his hand into his pocket. Where the hell is his hand sanitizer. "That's comforting."
Oh. There it is. In the same pocket as his cigarettes.
"Is, ah... is everyone in the city hooked up to Ginger?"
Grace
"Not everyone. I know a lot of people, but there's new faces all the time. And some old faces don't want it, and some have told me how they'd love to sit and watch the city burn or be eaten by grues because people are a waste of flesh -- and thus do not have it." Grace's demeanor goes rather sour at that. Somebody pissed her off.
"But yeah. We have systems worked out for the weird shit. So far, those systems have worked out fairly well. The world's not ended yet, ya know," Grace says, smiles at him a bit. It's an attempt at comfort, but honestly, how comforting can a thing be when it is sharp and jarring and even a bit predatory?
Samir
He's fully aware of the fact that he looks like a germophobe dumping hand sanitizer onto his hands and scrubbing them right out in the open like this but Sam doesn't particularly want to spend the rest of the conversation fidgeting because he had his thumbnail in his mouth for a couple of seconds.
Mm. The stink of isopropyl alcohol.
As she goes on Sam pockets the little bottle of cleansing goop and keeps rubbing his hands until he's sure all the gel is absorbed. Puts his hands back in his pockets and replants his feet on the floor. She smiles at him. He gives her an uncomfortable but earnest response of a smile.
"Yet," he says. "So... that's it? Do I need to introduce myself, or does Ginger do that for...?" Wait. "She's not a herald, is she. Do you have a Chantry? This isn't..." His eyes sweep up the wall and across the ceiling before coming back to Grace's face. "This isn't a Chantry. Right?"
Grace
"Nope, this is just a hangout. We do have a Chantry, but it's way out in Morrison and it's kinda... rural."
She wants to go on, to explain that (from what she can understand) there was once a Chantry in Denver. It's gone now. But Samir seems so worried about weird shit, and he's about to be introduced to the weird shit repository, so she'll spare him. For now.
"So this is like, something a bit closer to home -- somewhere people can go if they need help and can't get themselves all the way out to BFE. And how you introduce yourself is, I install some encryption software. Then, at the prompt, you say "Hello, Ginger" at your phone. It'll let you in if you have the right keys."
Samir
"Right on."
For being as terrible an actor as he is his state of mind isn't easy to recognize even when he's speaking to someone who is trained in psychology and the disorders of it. He can't read Grace's mind. He can prevent her from reading his after a fashion but he cannot tell that she thinks his discomfort is owed to the idea that monsters and other fucked-up things are trying to destroy Denver same as they're trying to destroy every other source of progress and goodness on this planet.
That isn't why he's uncomfortable but it's better for her to think he's a nebbish little pacifist than figure out why he's actually uncomfortable.
"Thank you."
Grace
Right on, and thank you. And Grace takes that as an invitation to actually muck about with Samir's phone. She swivels around in her chair and selects the appropriate cord, connects her laptop to the phone, and runs an installation script.
"Okay, so the next time you look at your contacts list, there will be a new one named Ginger. Call the number, do like I said, and you should be in business," she says, and gives him another smile.
"You want to check out the library or the danger room next?"
Samir
He is trying not to hover while she sets the script to squirreling its way into his shitty prepaid phone but Samir doesn't want to start touching things in here so instead of hovering he starts pacing. It's slow pacing but pacing all the same. At the smile he makes another attempt to return hers.
At least Grace can say with no small amount of certainty that he is neither the least socially competent nor the weirdest person she's met recently. They've got that going for them.
And then she asks which room he wants to check out next.
"What kind of a question is that?" he asks. "Obviously the danger room."
Grace
Grace has great patience for the merely socially inept. When people cross into socially abrasive or socially abusive, she has issues. But the thing is, there was a time when she was the one who couldn't speak to people without massive amounts of trepidation and preparation. She's been there, done that, and knows that the best thing to do is ignore it.
Samir's doing great, all things considered. After all, she met Steel the other day, right? Can't get much worse than that and not be Arionna.
So, she disconnects his phone, hands it back (without having looked through its contents or his messages) and stands up. "It's downstairs. You'll love it."
Now, we're walking again, and Grace goes out of her office, starts heading down the hall, and talking without looking at Samir. Hell, she could be talking to herself for all she knows, but somehow she's pretty sure he's going to follow her. And she doesn't really mind looking like a fool.
"I've been wanting to integrate some VR into the setup, have the room mapped out in 3D, so you can crawl the maze with solid walls, but fight digital monsters. More of an augmented reality kind of thing... That's coming next, obviously. But I have robot antagonists and traps set up right now."
Samir
Samir isn't sure whether he'll love or merely tolerate it but he takes back the prepaid phone and follows Grace out of the office all the same. For all she knows she's talking to herself. If he had weaker self-control she would be. They've passed a lot of thresholds and doorways this evening and he's managed each one without packing or fucking with the locks or the light switches.
Maybe there's something to be said for this getting out of the house occasionally thing.
All the same: he lingered a bit long as Grace left the office. She can hear his footsteps scamper as he catches up to her while she's talking about mapping the room out in 3D.
Neither one of them minds looking like a fool, must be.
"How do you..." Oh okay now he's abreast of her again. He swipes an errant strand of hair back from his temple and hooks it behind his ear and goes on, "I mean, would you have some sort of monster database the user would be able to load from? I've heard people talk about realms, like digital realms, where... you know, the executable just throws out random monsters every time you show up, but I don't... I don't know about all that, I've never been. Realms aren't really my, ah... my area."
Grace
"Mmm. Mine either," Grace says, pondering a bit. "Even though, I have been to one. That was probably uh... a bit more complicated than what you're talking about though. I mean, random monsters I can do now. Video games manage that one just fine. Could snag the code from No Man's Sky or something, make procedural beasties..."
As she's talking, she's going down the stairs two at a time, walking at a quick pace down the hallway, and then they come to a door that looks much like any other -- a nice thick wooden thing that doesn't look out of place in this Hermetic's lair. However, once opened, it's obvious that someone with much less decorative sense was responsible for this room and its contents. Grace figures that the black padding that lines the floor and ramps, and the walls that are a uniform shade of grey won't really be an issue once the lights are off.
There are knobs and buttons along the outside wall by the door, labeled with plastic label-maker strips as: "Lights", "Fog", "Ultraviolet", and "START". A row of coathooks is on the other side of the door, and this at least shows some of Kalen's doing, because these are some classy coats. There's the one Grace wore all winter -- her red, sharply tailored thing -- but also many others, some of which are Kalen's old things, all done up with LED strips. Also hanging on the wall are a number of modded NERF guns painted black, with their own wires and added hardware. It's a little chillier here than in the rest of the office, just so one would be comfortable wearing a modded coat and running around.
Hanging from the ceiling are a number of robot arms wielding the same (fake) modded guns with laser attachments. You don't need a person to train with here -- Grace has provided some autonomous antagonists. There could very well be more, hidden within the maze of mirrors and grey walls, but they're out of sight.
Samir
It doesn't take him much physical effort to keep up with her. He's a head taller than she is and built lanky like even when he's sitting still he's stricken through with nervous energy.
Which becomes more apparent as he walks into the room and having walked in and taken stock of the place jumps back half-a-step. That must be when he noticed the robot arms hung from the ceiling. He doesn't move to flee the room. It just startled him. Hypervigilance will do that to a person.
Near-silent laughing at his own jumpiness and then Samir is at Grace's elbow again. Yeah yeah procedural beasties those are all well and good.
"What kind of complicated are we talking, here?"
He's back on the topic of realms. This is either of particular interest to him in general or Grace has piqued his interest somehow.
Grace
"Reality 2.0 complicated. Long story, but I can certainly tell it," Grace says, and steps out of the doorway so he can gaze upon the awesomeness that is Grace-construction.
She leans up against the wall and stares at the ceiling, then, because she's about to go into a long spiel, and if she just flat-out stares at somebody the whole time, well... It can get uncomfortable perhaps?
"We had a bunch of our people in Denver just go into a coma one night, including three Mages. Of course, we went and checked that out, because that's normal as fuck, right? So we get to the club where they all went down, and it felt like there was definitely some major mojo going on. Turns out, we weren't the only ones interested in such a thing, because we were joined by a guy named Maddoc Orion. He was a Hermetic who'd been working on this Reality 2.0 project called Bastion with a bunch of Adepts. The Techs found out about it, fucked it up, killed anyone who had actually put any code into the thing, and then -- couldn't do a damn thing about Bastion itself. Imagine that."
Grace is... woefully unimpressed with the capacity of the Technocracy to not fuck up. They are bumbling idiots as far as she's concerned, and it shows in her utterly dismal tone when talking about them and the most massive utter failure she's ever seen on their part. She's like a disgruntled IT person who has had to come in on the weekend and fix the problem caused by some dipshit who turned the server off as they left on Friday to 'save energy' -- only magnified by a great deal. They almost destroyed the universe they claim to want to protect so much.
"So, Bastion is a fully-realized universe, with an AI to run it. And it was damaged by Technocrat attacks, and needed help. So it started abducting people. Small numbers at first, but then increasing exponentially. It was desperate. So, in order to free our friends, we went in with Maddoc to fix it from the inside."
Samir
The last Chantry he visited was so old that visitors had to either hunker down in the library for an extended period of time to glean what had passed prior to their arrival or else ask specific questions of a computer database. The last Chantry he visited was also large. Los Angeles is a busier city than Denver. It calls to those who can't find their way by any other than the shoreline.
Samir has always lived by bodies of water. He said as much in his email exchange with Grace: he was born in Vancouver and then he lived in Spain for a while and then he Awakened in Egypt. Vancouver and Barcelona are right by an ocean. Even Giza sits on the Nile. Denver is the first place he's ever lived where he couldn't just walk to the water and call it a day.
This doesn't have anything to do with anything. Maybe his mind wanders a bit as Grace talks about Bastion and the Technocracy's near-annihilation of it. She can't tell if his mind wanders or not. She isn't looking at him and he's got a ward up besides.
For the record: his mind doesn't wander. He could repeat everything she'd just said to him. But his mind is capable of attending to more than one thing at once.
"That wasn't too long," he says. The way he says it makes it sound like he's cracking a joke. "What... were you able to? Fix it, I mean."
Grace
"Yes, although it was a long and involved process. We spent months there, in various different reality bubbles. Maddoc died in the attempt, because the security protocol thought we were Technocrats. In the end, it was just me and an Etherite left, but we found the AI and convinced it to let us repair the damage. After that," she shrugs, and her eyes finally focus on Samir's. "It stopped abducting people. But it didn't want to stay in contact with Earth anymore, and we were in no position to say 'Hey, no, you were made by people, you are staying under our control.' Gods are like that, man."
Gods are like that. Even the human-made ones. Perhaps especially the human-made ones.
"Bastion was pretty awesome though, in the sense of inspiring awe and a bit of terror too. I wish it had decided to stay."
Samir
With his back against the gray wall Samir looks like he's trying to blend in. Nothing in here to notice him but he almost escapes it anyway. If it weren't for the fact they've been talking all this time she may have forgotten he was here. He asks questions because he's interested sure but it also helps Grace remember she isn't alone in the room.
She looks back at him. Focuses on him. He's been watching her the entire time. Rubbing the bones of his right wrist with the fingers of his left like to make sure they're still there. Prayer beads for a being that could lose track of its own body at a moment's notice.
As for Bastion deciding not to stay:
"Would you have?"
Grace
"Maybe I would have liked to take out a few more 'Crats. Fuck if I know. Maybe not, though, you're right," Grace says, and just lets that sentence hang in the air as her eyes go wandering around again.
"I just... I would like to know... The Technocracy, right? With all those scientists and technology-obsessed people, how is it that it seems like none of them have a functional brain between them? That wasn't the first time I've had to clean up their world-devouring mess. And they call us the bad guys. Fucking lunatics."
Samir
He has no idea. He chews his lip and shrugs but he has no idea how that wasn't the first time Grace has had to clean up a mess they've made.
"Statistical anomaly," he says. Doesn't sound like he's trying to be funny that time but how can she really tell. She barely knows the guy. A smaller facial shrug. "I'm sure there're two of them somewhere saying the same thing about... death mages or mad scientists or something. Our side's made plenty of messes."
Grace
Grace gives him a sharp look, followed by a squint. Hello? Trying to go on a self-righteous rant here? Did you not get the message?
"Oh, sure, deflate my bubble of incandescent rage, why don't you."
She's definitely trying to make light now, but wasn't there a wee bit of 'wtf' to that sharp look?
Samir
So her look is a wee bit WTF. He's probably on some Interpol watch list for using illegal means to bust pedophiles and human traffickers. Homeboy rolls out of bed and pisses a moral gray area.
But she tries to make light. And he gives an exaggerated shrug combined with an uncomfortable smile that's one part contrite and one part charming without either meaning or trying to be. My bad, he doesn't have to say out loud.
Jo Hamilton
Trouble is afoot! Oh wait, that's Jo. JO is afoot. Or abike. Or..
Jo is riding a bike. That is her usual mode of transportation. She glides along the city often times, with her buds in her ears and and her mind set on the next snack, or series of code, or video game. Currently she is making her way down to the office, her backpack with her goodies, and a candy cigarette hanging from between her lips. She bobs her head to some music, techno most likely, and rolls to a stop outside to park her bike.
With an adjustment of her pack, she sauntered in, breaking off a piece of the cigarette to crunch. "Yoooo!" She gave a yell, plucking one earbud out to listen for people. "Wuz up ma peeps?!"
Grace
"So. We're in the right place," Grace says, gives him a lift of the eyebrows, and conjures up memories of a Seeking. "Do you want to play a game?"
Maybe this time, it won't be Wheel of Thermonuclear War. But then again... that's just when Jo arrives, yelling out a greeting, and Grace's eyes go wide. If there ever was a runaway reactive element...
"Oh, hey! It's Jo!" she says, and peeks her head out of the doorway. "In here! Danger Room!"
Samir
Someone comes in upstairs and that someone yells. Grace's eyes go wide. Samir's eyebrows lift towards his hairline and his eyes lift towards the ceiling and he steps on out of Grace's way as she moves to the doorway. They're already reaching his saturation limit for meatspace interactions today but he decides to stick around a bit longer.
One day he's going to learn how to teleport. That's going to make extricating himself from social situations way easier.
Oh, hey! It's Jo!
"Yay!" he says in a weak voice like to prime himself for someone with way more energy than he's ever been able to muster up without pharmaceutical assistance.
Jo Hamilton
The danger room. "Danger Will Robinson!" Because Jo has no limit to exactly how quickly she'll connect something completely irrelevant to something else. She sets her backpack down, sliding her phone and buds in its pocket before, with the half of the candy cigarette dangling between her lips, she makes her way towards the room. "Ready for the action now, Daaanger boy.." She bobs her head as she makes her way over, grinning and stuffing the rest of the candy cigarette in her mouth to crunch. "We gunna pull another Metal Gear? Cause I'm like, totally down for it this time! I am Solid Snake!"
Grace
"Oh really? Where's your orange box?" Grace asks, giving Jo a fake look-see, trying to figure out where she's hiding the cardboard.
And, also totally leaving herself wide open for a return volley of innuendo.
She would exclaim something for Samir's sake, ask him if he wants to play again perhaps, but... she's kind of forgotten he exists right at the moment. Jo's just distracting enough to do that.
Samir
Which is nothing he's going to take personally. Jo might not have even noticed he's here yet standing behind Grace with his back against the wall like he is. He doesn't do anything to make himself obvious and the universe is doing a fine enough job of rubbing him out of memory anyway.
It doesn't help that he holds his tongue while Grace and Jo bat their innuendo back and forth. Maybe he's trying to decide if he can slip back up the stairwell without their noticing. Stranger things have happened.
Jo Hamilton
Innuendos, oh yes. Jo is not a stranger to awkward comments and sexual innuendos. She latches on to them like a drowning uh..person latches onto ah... Jo uses them a lot."Where I put all ma weapons. In ma pants." Jo points down and gives Grace a slow, but rather wide grin. There's even a waggle of her brows. "You can do an inspection if you want. I won't won't like, mind. We could even, ya know, explore a little of it's like, distracting qualities. You know, see how much like...you can really see through like, those tiny holes."
"Course you could like, be the liquid Snake to my Solid, and we'll like, see where it goes. We'll start a whole new like, franchise for Kojima. Sell like hot cakes. Or like, hot women in a mud pit." She lifted her arms, sliding her hands behind her own head and lacing them there as she rocked from heel to toe, grinning. She hasn't noticed him there. Right now she assumes it's just Grace.
Samir
[a roll for a thing]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace freezes in place, her hand halfway to her forehead, because Jo went there and went there hard, and Grace never saw it coming.
"Uhhhh."
Okay, let it not be said that Grace is a creature of perfect composure in social situations. There's a train, right? It just got derailed. And then set on fire. And then a giant stomped on it.
"Wha? Um..." There's a cough.
Maybe Grace is trying to decide if she can slip back up the stairwell without Jo's noticing. Isn't there somebody else here? Who heard that?
"That's... not playing fair. Although I congratulate you on your ability to make my brain dump core," she says, finally recovering. A core dump, by the way, is a post-mortem dump of everything contained within a computer's RAM so it can be examined for debugging purposes. She's just saying how it feels to be Grace right now.
Samir
Houston, that is a big fat nope.
"Whoa!" Samir says like he's just come around the corner and realized he isn't alone down here.
Being as this is Jo's first introduction to the somebody else who heard that: male in his early twenties, lanky build, average height, brown skin, brown eyes, dark brown hair long enough to tie in a knot at the nape of his neck. Handsome but not handsome enough to really pin his physical attributes or his voice or anything else about him into her memory after he slips away in a moment.
Which he intends to do. Yes he does. He manages not to just bolt out of there like a cat with its tail on fire but that doesn't mean he's sticking around.
He has a cellphone held in his left hand and that hand's index finger is held up in a Wait A Minute sort of gesture. Nervous sort of laugh that shows white teeth and then he shows the palm of his right hand like he would be offering to shake or bump fists or whatever it is the kids are doing these days but for the fact he's - well. See the part about not sticking around.
The fact that he has a Canadian accent won't stick either but in the moment it's worth mentioning. It's an obvious accent. Particularly when he says Sorry.
"Sorry, I didn't... I was just... hi." The right hand gives a sharp wave. Left hand gives the right hand the phone so it can reach out for but not touch the door. Oh good it's still there. That sort of reaching. "Leaving. I was just leaving. Didn't hear any-- Grace, thank you, for the--" Waggle waggle goes the cellphone. "--for the Ginger, eh? It's... yeah."
Another nervous laugh. Fuck his life he is never going to the Danger Room again.
"Right. Okay. Bye!"
Jo Hamilton
Grace's awkwardness only makes Jo laugh. She doesn't often hit on Grace because, well, she and Grace aren't like that. But when she does, she does it for the LOLs. If her face could split open into a grin that could span the world, it would, and it would probably stay that way for years as she pats her own back and does some sort of ridiculous jig in celebration. Ah the fun she has. "Tcht. You know like, I wouldn't really like,hit on you Grace. We ain't like that. But man your face. YOUR FACE. Dude. Wish I could like, Instagram that. Best. Ever. "
She hadn't noticed Samir, and the fact that he has been there isn't even something she realizes. Nope, he just came in on it. Right? Jo tilts her head to look at him, and that grin, oh lord, does it only linger longer. "Dude don't lie. You like, saw two girls liken to be alike all over each other, you'd like youtubin that or something. Or like keep it for your own like private porn. Tcht. I would. For realsies. Not like every day you like get somethin like that." She let her arms drop and stepped over to Grace to wrap an arm, quickly, around the woman's neck. "Sides, Grace is my homie yo. Like, we ain't like that. Now Lavinia... that I'd hit like..two fold man. For realsies. "
"Man Grace, you got some like skittish peeps on your like call."
Grace
Okay, now the palm hits the forehead. Samir.
"Aww, fuck. Samir? This is just... Jo," she says, like the sky is gonna be blue, and Jo's gonna be Jo. "Go, if you need to, but you're welcome to stay. Or just disappear somewhere."
Wouldn't be hard for him, nope.
Jo puts her arm around her, and Grace just shrugs it off. Someone's gotten a bit better at handling the whole touchy-ness that people like to inflict.
"Well, you know," she says to Jo. "I have been skittish before myself. For good reasons. Sometimes we have them."
Samir
What even is he supposed to say to that. He stops at the threshold and he keeps his back to it as Jo accuses him of filming them or watching them on youtube or... whatever it is she's accusing him of he stands still and he takes it but his eyebrows are aloft and he keeps looking over at Grace like to ask if this is going to end soon.
Then he makes the mistake of awakening the cellphone to check the time. Fuck.
He's welcome to stay. Or just disappear somewhere.
He points the head of the cellphone at them and flashes the world's most uncomfortable I'm Pretending to Be Super Confident lopsided grin. He has it in him to be a charismatic piece of work. He just doesn't have any interest in it. That involves... you know. People.
"I'm gonna go home," he says. "You two... yeah." Anything he says can and will be used against him in the court of lewd comments. Sharp tack, this one. "Party on."
And with that he's hustling up the stairs. Gone from their cognizance before he reaches the front door. It's like they were here by themselves the whole time.
[Thanks for the scene, ladies!]
Jo Hamilton
"Ah yup. I'm Just Jo. Good ta like, meet you Samir? "
"tcht. You? Skittish? Like a terrier. But it's like terrier cute. I mean like I'm not all into the weird like mustachy fur, but they aren't like bad ya know? Prefer Corgis maself."
Jo lets out another laugh. "We what? Like... play some tag? Dude. Would like totally kill to be a fly in your brain. Totes. "Though I get any hot chicks and I'll be all like 'So.. Samir, wanna get a little frisky?' Though I'mm be honest. I'm not like a big sharer... so once I pee on it, it's totes mine. Just sayin."
Grace
"Play some tag!" Grace exclaims, having totally forgotten about Samir. Maybe later she'll remember having a conversation or something, but right now? Jo's here. Jo is enough distraction for anybody.
"Do not pee on my lasers. Or the coats. If you do, you are cleaning that shit, because nuh uh."
"Also, I am totally not a terrier. I am a fox."
Someone hasn't learned her lesson about the innuendo yet.
Jo Hamilton
"Like, peeing on lasers does not seem like a good idea. Coats tho? Totes on coats. Lasts forever."
Samir forgotten, by both it seems. "Laser tag! Totes! Let's! "
Jo slips away from Grace, hands stuffed in her pockets as she spins around to look at Grace while she speaks. "Totes are fox-y lady. Rawr." With a wink, and a laugh, she heads off to get her gear for a game.
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