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Current Location: Theta's Shop

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[Location | Speares - Theta's Shop]

Paul Smecker had had his duties explained to him-- keep the shop and the apartment above it in order, clean, swept, dusted, etc. Cook meals three times a day-- but do not nag if she didn't want to eat them. The use of the in-the-building-hatch to get ingredients for the meals had been explained; he had said he'd just as soon walk to the nearest grocery store; she had shrugged and said it hardly mattered to her as long as things were on time.

And she had gone upstairs, and he had looked at his cleaning supplies, and decided what the hell, get started.

How much of this was due to a coping mechanism of just wanting to stay busy he didn't want to analyze. But the idea of having a specific task to accomplish, a specific simple task in which he could judge his progress, was appealing. For that matter, he'd always found cleaning somewhat therapeutic.

So Paul had dug out his mp3 player from his pocket, popped in the earbuds, and lost himself in some Chopin and some industrial-grade dusting. He compiled lists of things to do as he worked, not least of which was start gathering information on everyone he ran into in Taxon, try and ascertain what if anything was the common thread binding them all. See about getting a weapon. That would (might?) require money, which this job worked towards. See about finding his own place, even if this worked as a temporary measure.

Paul couldn't focus entirely on his own internal thoughts-- possibly because dusting required he move various clockworks out of the way, off the shelves, and a lot of them were distractingly... well... alive. Little toy soldiers walked along shelves in short marches; a teapot scuttled away from his feather duster in a way that suggested wariness.

It was disturbing, but then, he was rapidly reaching a numbing point for disturbance.

He dusted for an hour, the time it took to get everything clean, and felt frustrated when he looked around and found nothing else to dust. So then he went back into the supply closet, took out the bucket and rags he found there, and set to washing the inside of the shop's display windows.

Then the outside.

By the time he had moved on to sweeping the floor, Paul had already had several trains of thought complete themselves in his head. The first was how much this reminded him of his early days in New York, doing all sorts of shit grunt work to survive. The second was that surprisingly he didn't mind it-- back then it had all been someday I'll be out of this, I'll be goddamn FBI. Well, he'd tasted being goddamn FBI. It wasn't all shits and giggles, and it was damn well never as straightforward as clean this room.

Third was plans to go shopping. For some tools of the trade, not clothes. He was developing Plans on that front. They might not work, but they were plans. He made a note to discuss them with Westen. Maybe Cain.

For that matter, four was to see if there was anyone else in this city he felt on the same approximate wavelength with (Paul drew the line at saying 'anyone he could trust.'

Fifth was that it was awfully quiet in the shop, and he was getting hungry.

He put the broom away and pondered. Finally he went up the narrow stairwell to the upstairs suite and knocked on doors. "Ms. Theta? You about ready for some supper?"

There was no answer.

After some debate, Paul started opening doors. After five minutes it was very evident that Theta was nowhere in the building.

He frowned, then dismissed it. He'd had his earphones on-- she could easily have gone down the stairs and exited the shop's back door when he'd been cleaning. She didn't strike him as the sort of person who needed to inform her subordinates of her every move. No doubt she'd be back. He went out, got himself some dinner at a little Chinese place, came back, and went to sleep in the second bedroom she'd said was his.

The next day he cleaned the upstairs, the living quarters. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen-cum-small-dining area. Dusted, swept, windows washed, vacuumed. No sign of Theta. Paul debated with himself whether or not to turn over the Open-Closed sign in the window. If anyone came by, well, he didn't know fuck-all about the clockworks.

On the other hand, the register was fairly straightforward, and the clockworks all had price tags. Paul shrugged, said to hell with it, and put the sign to open again. Bosses rewarded initiative in his experience.

He spent the rest of the morning examining one of the clockworks, out of intellectual curiosity as much as anything else, and keeping an eye out for the return of his boss-- or anyone else coming through the door.

[OOC: Open to anyone who would be passing by Theta's former shop and curious; especially open to any of the characters who were talking about buying clockworks! Paul will still sell them to you even if he has a limited idea of what he's doing...]

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Paul scrawls down Cain's info on the card as well-- his handwriting not quite as neat as Cain's, but reasonably readable. Date-- he chews briefly on the end of the Sharpie, then consults the date Cain himself had put down on Paul's cards.

Time in Taxon, who the fuck knows.

"Only the entire city," he grunts. "Well, the real people. I've met a guy named Michael Westen who might be on board with this project... he's not law enforcement exactly, I don't think, but he seems, well, rational enough. If people'll give them voluntarily, great. If not..."

Paul shrugs, capping the pen again. "Well. 'Due process' doesn't really... apply here."

Date and Time in Taxon = whatever the bracelet tells you. Cain's stopped wasting energy on caring about the little things that don't make sense, when there's so many more gigantic ones that scream off.

"I think a lot of things that apply here shouldn't, and the other way around," he says, not without a tinge of bitterness.

"Well, yes," Paul grants, and rakes his fingers through his hair.

"However. There's not much we can do about most of those. There's... a joke back where I'm from--" (Paul refuses to say 'my world' yet) "--about a man who's playing in a card game, a rigged card game, in a small frontier town.

"He loses hand after hand, and all the spectators can see the others are cheating. Finally one man can take it no longer and says to the losing player-- 'You know this ain't on the level, man.'

"To which the player wearily responds: 'Hell, I know it's rigged; but it's the only game in town'."

Paul spreads his hands, with their fingertips dark with ink. "The rules as our Alien Overlords are giving them are the only things we have to work with, Officer Cain. Don't like it anymore than you, but it doesn't appear we have a choice to not play."

He tilts his head to the side in half a shrug, looking the other man over - faint streaks of ink in his hair and all. "The thing about rules, the way I see it, is they're meant to be circumvented when necessary."

He looks around for a towel, or something else fitting for wiping your hands on; he finds a soft rag on a work bench, probably used for wiping off excess oil from the clockwork automatons. It's relatively clean, despite a slight greasy feel. It goes a long way in getting the ink off. "Within the confines of the law, of course. But seeing as we have no law here..."

He throws the rag over. "I see no reason why we shouldn't get creative any way we can."

Get used to Paul having streaks of things in his hair. At least ink is easily explained and more or less hygienic.

"Nor do I," Paul agreed, taking the rag bemusedly then realizing it was for his hands. He wiped on automatic.

"I'd just as soon not let the city at large know we're going to try and fingerprint-- if there are those who don't want their prints known, well, now they'll have a very good reason to wear gloves, won't they. So..."

Paul closes his eyes, takes a slow breath and lets it out. "Hatches. Stores. The palm print things. Difficult customers might require a tail, wiping off the hand scanners...."

He is half blithering to himself, yes.

"Because it's the ones who'd refuse we really want to print," he murmurs, draining the last mouthful of coffee with a slight grimace. There really is something strange about the food and drink here.

What doesn't feel strange is the way things are looking up; looks like he'll get to do some good again on a more basic level than Saving/Restoring the World/to its Former Glory(tm).

"Mmhm. Yes. 'Xactly," Paul nodded in agreement. He chucked the cleaning rag on top of a flower (?) that slowly opened and shut, opened and shut, its petals in imitation of nature. He was half-operating on a mental suspicion that if he behaved in a manner that would annoy his boss, she would show back up. God knew that had happened enough when he'd been a very junior agent.

He jerked out of his mental meanderings on how one might go about printing the more difficult customers, looking back over to Cain. "These powders-- is this looking similar enough to what you're used to working with that you'll have no problems?"

Most of all, this is a very welcome distraction from his most recent delving into the Realm of the Unwanted Awkward.

"Yeah. Dust, brush, pictograph or some sort of adhesive film to capture the marks. I may have spent so-and-so years in a jar, but I'm not that rusty."

Paul nodded approvingly and looked over the little cache of supplies so far and their... 'database' of two.

"I'm going to get in touch with another guy I've met here who might be on board with this-- the more discreet, competent people we have collecting, the easier and sooner we will have some workable information."

Paul paused, tapping the (recapped) Sharpie against his chin as he looked down at the cards. "Dossiers," he muttered after a minute, and pulled out a notebook from a drawer. The first few pages were full of impossible diagrams he was completely lost on other than assuming they might be for clockworks; he flipped through to a new page.

A crooked smile up at Cain: "Full name for the record?"

"You have my full name," he noted amicably enough (read: with a twist to his lips that belied the gruff tone of his voice), and opted for taking off his scarf now that the last of the cold had seeped well and truly out of him.

"Strength in numbers," he agreed. It really went without saying, but that's the thing about conversation: You can't have just one of you talking, or you'll never get anywhere.

"No middle name?" Paul asked with a brow arch, but dutifully started writing. "W-Y-A-T-T Wyatt, Cain C-A-I-N, just like on the map I trust?

"And let's have your date of birth, height, weight, eye color-- that I can tell for myself and I will trust you are a natural blond, la."

He shook his head Negative, no middle name. The rest was fairly straight forward, and delivered in such a manner. After a bit of wracking their brains for how to translate O.Z dates and measurements, they moved onto the more self explanatory bits.

"Natural blond, yes. Do I look like the kinda guy who'd mess around with chemicals unless it was part of the job?" Then, holding up one finger, he added. "You know what? Don't answer that."

He'd always been pale on the side of translucent, as long as he could remember. The kid with the big blue eyes and the beaming smile. Playing outdoors as a kid and building his home when he grew into a man helped a long way in turning his shade of pale less substantial. But all the sun ever did to his skin was counteracted by what it did to his hair.

He hadn't been out in the sun for a long time, and if he ever looked himself in the mirror in the mornings, he might be reminded of the comments of his childhood. Pale on the side of translucent. The thin, gangly kid with just two things going for him that people could see. His eyes and his smile. But he had something else, too. He had a heart.

"Now, if I weren't common folk, you might get a different answer. Features of Note: scars."

Edited 2010-12-16 07:41 (UTC)

Paul wrote down 'six feet' and all the other requisites, then just grinned at Cain's 'Do I look like.....' But Cain got in a pre-emptive don't answer that so he decided to save that retort for a rainy day.

He glanced up, nodded, wrote down 'scars' simply. "Any majors should be specified beyond that fancy brow-cutter there?"

Manic cheer aside, he bit back the perversely amusing impulse to suggest the other man strip. Paul was aware of things like 'limits', sometimes.

"Ya think that's fancy?" Arch went said brow. "Try having a mouthful of four inch incisors gnawing on your thigh."

He shook his head, more at himself than at the question. It was a good one, while they were on the topic of logging stats. "Half a dozen gun shot wounds, most recent one to my right shoulder. Had a first hand experience with frostbite a few days before I came here, can't take the cold like I used to because of it. Want my entire medico log?"

Paul is able all too easily to visualize the damage from 'four inch incisors'. He makes a face. "Pass."

He jotted down a summary of the gunshots and frostbite, pursed his lips, shook his head. "I think for our purposes something that can be used for identification purposes, but I'll leave thirty-page files back in the real world where they belong."

Scribble scribble, then Paul chewed absently on the cap of the Sharpie, considering his next word.

"....this is going to sound-- paranoid, I realize," he said slowly. "But I think security questions might not be a bad idea."

He nodded, coming to lean his back against the cashier's desk, elbows placed neatly on top of it. "Code for 'I can't talk right now, the aliens got me', and 'I'm myself, not glitched--'" Glitched "'Completely cognizant'."

He closed his eyes briefly, and tried his hand at a deep breath. It did nothing to soothe his already frazzled nerves.

He opened his eyes again, turned them on his co-conspirator. "Got any suggestions for trick questions?"

Edited 2010-12-17 08:56 (UTC)

"Yes, exactly, for situations like that-- I think someone told me something about bodyswapping too so fuck, I'd love to be able to verify if I'm talking to you or someone wearing your face."

He's getting used to the weirdness of being here-- of saying things like that. Paul's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Questions.... he taps his pen on the counter instead. "For 'can't talk right now/I'm danger' or something to that effect... hmm..." Paul smirks. "Well, there's always 'Sorry, I've got a headache tonight, can we do this later?' "

He wonders if that particular excuse extends across worlds.

This time around, both his eyebrows did the steady crawling up his forehead trick. "Bodyswapping, yeah. Not pretty."

And despite the not entirely good memories of the bodyswap thing, he couldn't help but feeling a touch amused at the choice of excuse. "Right. But, in keeping with the paranoia angle, if we can we stuck in a body not our own, there's nothing suggesting our memories couldn't be transplanted into an alien object." He hrm-ed, pursing his lips. "Like robots. We got some pretty high tech units back home, wouldn't put it past the aliens to try to outdo 'em."

Suddenly trick questions didn't seem so clever anymore.

Paul wrinkles his nose at that rejoinder. "Alright, possibility, yes-- but we can't necessarily do anything about that. It's... not saying it's a failproof idea, but it's better than nothing."

Unspoken: It FEELS like security, okay?

Paul sighed. "For what good it may do... a question about, I don't know, our first meeting or something. A common reference point we can agree on that-- unless minds are being read-- can be used to check."

"You sure you remember the first time we met well enough?"

It's a fair enough question, the way he sees it. Paul wasn't exactly experiencing perfect equilibrium at the time, and any amount of stress plays major tricks on your attention to detail. Even remembering the course of things where nothing was out of the ordinary is shifty business. The mind has a way of filling in blanks where it sees fit; Wyatt never liked taking down statements, and that's one of the biggest reasons why.

"Might help if it's something you can't dig around for in the system. I don't know if our tablet bound communication's logged somewhere, but I'd rather assume it is."

In Taxon, you can't be too paranoid.

Paul shoots Cain a quasi-dirty look for the question, but grunts his acknowledgment of what the other man is saying. He gives the stool another spin and is silent a moment, thinking.

"Something we can bring up casually though, something that doesn't automatically read as I'm obviously testing you."

Paul scratches at his jaw. "How about... 'have you tried those free gingersnaps yet', I don't know."

"Might want to go for something less seasonal." And while Cain's a practical man, he usually isn't a bastard about it.

He also usually doesn't share horrendously, heart-and-brain-breakingly awful things with near-to-perfect-strangers, but he figures Smecker might appreciate a heads up.

"Something like 'Hey, Cain, how long since you last cheated on your wife?'"

If it looks like a joke and sounds like a joke, chances are it is a joke.

Too bad Cain's stone cold serious. "Steer clear of everything green growing out of the walls. Mistletoe's...bad news here. Worse than usual."

Paul's gaze is unsurprised. "Oh, you've run into it too? Not just them fucking with me, that's good to know. I exchanged a passionate and highly involuntary kiss with a complete goddamn stranger." The bitterness in his voice is mostly perfunctory-- the sting of that episode has mostly faded now.

His gaze though sharpens on Cain, and after a few seconds' pause, partly to judge whether or not this question is totally.... wise, or maybe he should just leave the topic the fuck alone--

"...yours a bit more than that?" he hazards. Sure, it's possible that the other man was just wigged by a kiss, but Cain doesn't strike him as a guy to wig easily, and the look in the other man's eyes...

The look in his eyes betrays the rest of his face, in that it shows Smecker exactly how much he regrets mentioning it. Because if he's already been there, done that, then Cain's just telling.

He grinds his jaw slowly from side to side, and then he shrugs. A kiss, they could've gawked at each other owlishly for a moment or two, and after the initial awkward horror had faded, he'll bet you his goddamn hat they would've just laughed it off and gone about the day.

"We're close friends. But for ten minutes or so, we were starstruck lovers with not a care in the world but each other. Just like that." He shakes his head, finding the floorboards increasingly intriguing.

"So, just watch out."

Ah, Christ. Paul does Cain the courtesy of looking down at their fingerprint cards rather than at Cain himself, as Cain explains through gritted teeth, metaphorically if not literally.

"Duly warned, thank you."

Paul gets to his feet, grabs his coat from the rack. "Come on. This is all we can do on these right now, and I do owe you a drink."

Which is probably more what you need.

Edited 2011-01-03 10:26 (UTC)

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