taxonomites | [Location: Central, near but not at Taxon Mall]

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[Location: Central, near but not at Taxon Mall]

Paul Smecker was wandering around the city, not exactly lost but nowhere near found, either. That sort of blank, overloaded expression common to newcomers flitted across his face at times, although more often one saw frustration. He was mostly looking at his tablet as he walked and trying to figure out the map function, with some goal of orienting himself in the city.

He looked scruffy, the product of not shaving in the two days since he'd arrived, and he looked unhappy about that. In addition, he was still wearing the clothes he'd arrived in-- the shirt, in particular, had a large but now dried bloodstain on the chest. He was also less than pleased about that.

The goal, inasmuch as he had one, was to find a place where he could get a new goddamn shirt, and a razor. (He hasn't figured out hatches yet.) So he was looking for the Mall. And getting goddamn lost.

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Paul messed with the tablet map as Westen spoke, getting a bead on a place that looked to be what he wanted-- gas station, they always had smokes, unless here they didn't-- and started walking that way with Westen moving along too.

He couldn't help a sharp laugh at Michael's observation. "Amen to that. For that matter, I haven't seen anyone among the real people yet who isn't white. Oh, the clone guys? Yeah, we get racial die-versity there-- a nice politically correct population sampling-- but everyone I've seen wearing one of these--"

(he taps the bracelet)

"--is both crackerjack white and speaks English." Honesty compelled him to add, a moment later, "Although I brought that up to the Jenny girl and she said she has a black friend here, as well as... as well as a blue one."

Paul gives Mike a wry quasi-apologetic smile after saying that, like he knows how screwed up it sounds. Then he remembers the other thing Jenny said.

"--oh, and here's some mindfuckery if she was telling the truth-- she says she auto-learned English on waking up here. So your game-players, designers, Mengele wannabe, whatever we want to call them-- seem to have some decided biases."

Another pause, and Paul sighs, obviously resigning himself to relating another tidbit he has some mental issues wrapping his head around. "...Jenny also said that to her it was weird so many of us are from... Earth, and from the same approximate time period. So apparently the bulk of us are from a more or less contemporary culture, if looked at in the big scheme of things, with a few monkey wrenches for variety's sake."

He's starting to get a headache from all this theorizing, even if does make him feel better. He's all too aware that if you're dealing with something who just doesn't understand humans, all of this could be bogus as fuck and they could be in the farthest left field possible.

The gas station is head. Paul quickens his pace. Nicotine will help. Or it can't hurt. Something.

"Crackerjack white. Speaks English. Also, like you said earlier," Michael inclined his head and walked a little faster, "a little young, don't you think?"

Michael wasn't used to being on the older half of the spectrum of people he met. Starting with being underage and in the Army and continuing through his twenties in special ops, he was used to having to compensate for his age pre-emptively -- talk like he didn't notice it, and like he wasn't defensive about it, as anything else would've been blood in the water for the kinds of drug lords and mob kingpins he dealt with. He'd made a couple mistakes there before. Even now, Miami was where people who were too old to have anything better to do went to die. He knew what he was doing, all right, but he had to prove it to people.

Here, though -- "I mean, there's minors acting like they own the place," he said, "college students, even the other Bureau man I met couldn't have been more than twenty-three? I'm thirty-three, Agent, I'm not used to thinking the world's gotten a little more youthful than I can keep up with. There's something wrong there too. What's the point exactly in snatching professionals like you and me and then the cast of Degrassi High, you know?"

The mini-mart at the gas station loomed. Michael slid his shades on, a little unsettled by the emptiness of all the pumps, and went inside, holding the door open for the FBI agent to catch it behind him as he walked through.

"Why thank you darling," Paul said with perverse cheer as he swept on in the open door. Call it defense mechanism, because he totally wasn't feeling up to actually hitting on people yet.

There was another Tofu Citizen (Paul dubbed them) behind the counter, but other than that, the convenience story was empty. Paul felt no qualms about continuing their conversation.

"It does make one feel one has waded onto a college, or even dare I say high-school, campus, yes," Paul says as he breezes to the counter and smiles ferally at the cashier.

"Pack of Camels, please," he said, and the cashier smiled and nodded and reached back into the glass cabinet and handed them over. Paul dug one out, put the rest into a pocket, and lifted one of the cheap Bic lighters from the counter display.

"Well, if we're going with the extra-normal hypothesis, then just because they read as punk kids doesn't necessarily mean they are," he offered, with a shrug for knowing it was a little thin.

"That'll be $5.29, sir," said the cashier as Paul nodded for them to head back outside. "Sir, that'll be $5.29-- place your hand here--"

The voice cut off as they exited the room. Paul lit up, and took a blissful long drag with his eyes shut. Inhale..... exhale. Ahhhh.

"Where're you staying?" he asked Michael, slowly opening his eyes again.

Michael wasn't in the habit of telling people where he lived. When you were a spy, you fast learned the advantages of being able to go up in smoke and reform back at your own bolthole if things went south without anyone following you there. That being said, he didn't exactly have a bolthole, he wasn't going to be staying there much longer if he had a say in it, and things were pretty much already in Antarctica.

"I stayed the night in the Sanctuary," he said, "but if I have any luck I'll find somewhere better by the time the sun goes down. You can always call me on our new cell phones, yeah?" You need some tech support first? he resisted the urge to quip, smiling. "What about you?"

"Myself as well," Paul grunted in response to having stayed in Sanctuary so far. "Not exactly my ideal either, but apparently we have a whole city to choose from."

Oh cigarettes. Blissful cancer-sticks. He could tell there was something that seemed just a bit off beneath the smoke, but at the moment he was ignoring it in favor of being hedonistically pleased and letting nothing spoil that.

...except for the reference to the goddamn phones. He grimaced.

"Walk me through it, future boy," he suggested with distaste. "Last cell phone I used was three times this thick and only had, you know, buttons."

In 1999 Michael Westen was... in the Army, with a jovial Navy SEAL for company. 1999 was a long time ago. "Sure can do," he said, stepping shoulder to shoulder with the detective, his stomach unsettled. "I hate to say it, but what you call cell phones we now call walkie-talkies, old man. Nothing really happened on the changeover of the millennium, apart from a bunch of paranoids stockpiling Spam." He squinted through his sunglasses. "Okay, here. The 'Voice' or 'Visual' buttons should bring you to a list of people you can call, depending whether you want to make this a telephone conversation or a short-running closed-circuit TV show."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a relic, I get it," Paul bitched without malice-- and once more resisted the urge to ask things about politics. He carefully watched, though, having already understood that life here basically revolved around these piece-of-shit phones.

"Holo," he read, squinting at the screen (note to self-- go steal some contact lens cleaning solution, goddammit). "That's the projection thing they were yakking about when each of us arrived, yeah?"

"Yup. Like a hologram in a sci-fi flick, it projects a 3-D image of you to people. Personally I'm not sure the purpose, unless you're giving virtual tai chi classes or something," Michael shrugged, "pretty much everything can be accomplished through visual, except for making you feel creepily spied-on when you first get here. You can ring me anytime, though I like phone better than visual when I'm walking."

He gestured in the direction of Sanctuary. "You want to get shaved while I hop a shower, and we reconvene after we scout this ghost town a little better, partner?"

"Duly noted," Paul said with a little nod. Video-phonage felt rather sci-fi to him anwyay, holo could go screw itself as far as he cared.

Shaved. Oh that sounded good.

"That sounds like the closest thing I've heard to a sane plan in the last 48 hours," he admitted. "Mostly because it involves my not looking like something the Yeti coughed up."

Paul hesitated, then offered a hand to Westen to shake. "Under the circumstances, I won't say it's a pleasure, but.... good to have met someone here who's..." Oh so many adjectives one could use there. Normal, sane, of-legal-age, not-chirpy, not from a magical kingdom....

"...not afraid to wear lilac." Paul grinned crookedly at Michael.

Michael took the FBI agent's hand. With his luck Paul Smecker was going to turn up dead, evil, or nonexistent, but the fact he was thinking that paranoid already probably meant he was sleep-deprived. Or shower-deprived. Either way, the relief flooding his nerves right now was real; "Likewise," he said, shaking it, "though I think navy blue suits your coloring a little better, just, personally."

The grin accompanying his half-hearted joke was real. (And navy blue did look a lot better on him than lilac would, but anyone who wasn't deuteranopic could tell you that.) "Good luck with the razor, Agent."

"I tend to agree," Paul said airily. He hefted his bag of toiletries over his shoulder again, gave Westen a little wave as he turned for Sanctuary.

"Watch yourself out there," was as close as he came to a real goodbye, tossed over his shoulder as he started walking.

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[Location: Central, near but not at Taxon Mall]

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