taxonomites | [accidental visual | location: twelfth floor] trust our deepest secrets to the artificial lake

The sun's scrambled high into the sky like a sure-footed kid climbing a tree—it's the itch under his collar and the sweat on his palms. He raises the hoe and swings it down into dry earth, sending up a puff of dust. There's always one weed left. Sun's baleful glare on his back, he drives the blade in again. He hears himself grunt (it sounds more like a squeal, like he's gonna cry) as if from far away.

He must close his eyes because the next thing he knows his hands are empty—slick with sweat and streaked with dirt but empty. He wipes them on his pants and looks up.

His eyes go wide. His arms prickle with goosebumps; he hugs himself against the sudden cold. He takes a step back, then another—it's a white room with a bed and the covers are rumpled. Maybe he should see if they're warm but he takes another step back and stumbles over a bottle. A gasp snags on something before it can escape his throat. He freezes, goes rigid. Listens with all his might.

The tablet switches on to show a dark-haired boy in clothes—a grimy shirt, suspenders, brown pants—that are worn but not ratty stooping to carefully right a whisky bottle.

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Kaylee is all but actually swearing at this point. Teenagers and adults are one thing, but bringing children to Taxon? What the di yu are those hamsters thinking up there? Granted, it's not the normal set-up in the Sanctuary, and it crosses her mind that it could be a glitch, but she doesn't recognize the name.

"Ai ya," she mumbles to herself, before she pulls the tablet closer, puts on her nicest smile, and switches her end of the feed on. "Hey, y'alright?"

His nervous fingers almost topple the bottle again when the floor starts talking. Dick sucks in a sharp breath; mouth hanging open he stares at the tile under his shoes. His gaze creeps timidly over the floor and comes to rest on...some kind of thing. Something smooth and bright and new.

Throwing an anxious look at the door, he stretches out on his belly, head propped up under a fist, to peer at what turns out to be a woman's smiling face.

Kaylee watches him carefully, smile never wavering. He isn't the first to not understand the technology. Hell, she doesn't understand some of it herself half the time, but she's almost positive that's partially because the hamsters haven't figured out what they're trying to do.

"S'alright, ain't gonna hurt ya. Name's Kaylee--mind if I ask yours?"

Dick looks on in fascination, frowning the perplexed, impatient frown of someone captivated by a magic trick and dying to find out how it works, help himself to the magician's secret knowledge. He watches her lips form the words while she speaks. He watches her hair—he can see it ripple as she moves her head.

Too late he remembers the question. "Dick Whitman. I didn't touch nothing," he protests without pausing for breath. "It--"

A mechanic knows the look of someone trying to figure out how something works when she sees it. Kaylee wrinkles her nose in thought, then offers, "Ever seen a television?" If he has, explanation might be slightly easier.

Just as quickly, Kaylee is shaking her head and trying not to laugh. "No, s'alright, even if you did touch somethin'. See, my room's even messier'n yours." She turns the tablet to show him just that--a room filled with walkie-talkie or radio bits and tools and the occasional empty fruit basket.

"It ain't mine," he says of the room, quiet but insistent. He looks again at the bottle, unease naked on his face, his frown shifting to one of resignation.

"Did you make this?" He traces the screen's border with a fingertip.

The smallest trace of a frown crosses her face as she looks at the whiskey bottle, though it's pretty well covered by that smile of hers. He wouldn't be the first kid she's seen sneak a whiskey bottle, but he seems a little too startled by the thing to have taken it. "No, maybe not," Kaylee says thoughtfully, then quickly brings up the map to see where he's landed himself. Who would normally be there...

She tilts her head after a moment, shifting the tablet back to Dick to figure out exactly what he's asking about. "The tablet?" The mechanic shakes her head. "Can't say I made that, no, but I've had to fix 'em once or twice, at home. Normally I make other stuff."

He withdraws his finger from the contraption, curling his hand into a fist to curb the temptation to touch. Nothing in this room belongs to him, least of all the baffling...tablet in front of him.

For a long minute he studies Kaylee's surroundings--now that he's glimpsed the room he can spot bits of machinery in the background, tools whose purposes are a mystery. "Where's your home?"

"My normal home?" she asks absently, fingers back to tapping the map. "Long way away from here. Place called Kowlonshi, though I was livin' on a ship for a good three years before I came here."

Don's room. Kaylee's brow furrows a bit. Somehow the kid's landed himself in Don's room, and she can't find Don anywhere on the map. Oh boy. "Here, though, I normally live a few blocks away from where we are right now. What about you?"

He's grateful--a twinge of gratitude that goes unexpressed, that he holds tight to himself--for whatever it is that's occupying her attention. He's not used to scrutiny, doesn't hold up well under it.

"Illinois."

Something's bothering her.

"Illinois. That's Earth, right?"

She doesn't realize until after she's said it that the question might sound a little odd to the poor kid. Things are clicking in her mind, though, and she finally looks back to Dick with a soft smile on her face. "Well, Earth'd make the most sense, wouldn't it? Does for most people. Bit scatterbrained sometimes, sorry 'bout that."

"It's in America," he clarifies, and goes back to trying to identify the parts scattered throughout her room. There's a question he's ignoring, a question he keeps fighting back, that keeps rising in his throat like the urge to vomit.

It's easier to distract himself with lesser puzzles.

“America, right.” She scrunches up her nose. “Bit terrible with Earth geography.”

He’s got an interest in the contents of her room, that much is clear. Kaylee shifts the tablet a little to give him a better look around. Isn’t like she’s got anything in there that needs hiding anyhow. “Can you tell me what year it is? Back home, I mean.”

[accidental visual | location: twelfth floor] trust our deepest secrets to the artificial lake

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