061 ± [visual / location: the black friar] done with all the circlin' round

[aintnoconvict]

"All right, I'll try and make this quick:"

Glitch? Getting to the point in a reasonable amount of time? Is it possible?

"For those who don't know me: my name's Glitch, I'm that guy who's been here since forever and kinda know the most about all the...stuff that goes on here. Sorta."

No, no it is not.

"Anyway, ah...I've been studying the lighthouse and found some peculiarities with the light-beam thingy which I wanna discuss with everyone. Or most of you, if you can make it. Plus there was that whole hanging out and having drinks thing which I mentioned before all the stuff north of the river happened-- hey we can talk about that too."

Yeah he is taking notes now, all frowny and confuzzled.

"Right! Unless you've got something drastic going on, let's meet at the Black Friar after sundown for the...sunlight-avoidant. First round of drinks is on me. See you later."


ooc: Gathering of the citizens! This is a mingle log so tag in, tag each other, frolic away. I will be adding a tag of Glitch discussing his Very Scientific Observations and there will e a Q&A to follow which I hope will e full of threadjacking. And here havesome pub details. Go go go!

Comments

[smecker]

Paul gives Metody a little half-blink at the quiet-but-practically-squee'd enthusiasm at the mention. Oh-kay, pineapple juice it is.

He twists on the bar seat again, waves his braceletted wrist rudely towards the bartender until it dings-- he's not trying to be particularly generous, per se, but newbies get some freebies as far as he's concerned and anyway he's closer to the bar-- and he reaches back to hook a finger around the resulting juice glass, bring it back, and offer it over.

"Cheers, then. You're twenty-seven?" Slight skepticism.

[skinandbone]

"Oh - oh, gosh, thanks." This is a bit startling. He'll have to get Paul something nice in return, once he knows what he likes. Or maybe pineapple juice is easier to get here? He's already seen all kinds of fruit in unnatural season.

"Thirty, actually. I know - I look a bit younger."

[smecker]

Paul shrugs away the thanks, digging out his cigarettes even as he slides the glass to Metody. "Yeah, don't mention it."

There's a whiff of-- something-- when he slides the glass over, which Paul notes, files away with a slight tightening of his mouth, it's a smell that evokes the word chemotherapy in his head. He lights his cigarette to help cover the scent.

"You do look younger," he says neutrally. "Immortal?"

They've got enough of those running around Taxon, after all. It's a legit question.

[skinandbone]

" - what?" In what world is that even a possib- Paul's world, apparently. Metody takes the glass, wide-eyed.

"Golly, no, I wish. I had some work done on my face after an accident, and since I'm so pale now...it's trompe l'oeil youth, I'm afraid."

[smecker]

"Ahh," Paul says, accepting that. The smoothness of surgery, alright. In a way he's almost disappointed that it's something so mundane; Taxon has numbed him to just about everything weird that would once have left his poor human psyche screaming protest.

Anyway he's just as happy you're not a vampire, pale Metody. Paul's had ~experiences~ with vampires.

Though the thought of a vampire who says 'golly, no' does sort of make him smile into his coffee mug.

"How long have you been here now? I know you were here before we all became Callow Youth Once More, but I don't believe I'd said hi."

[skinandbone]

Yes, surgery. It's all surgery. Yes.

"I arrived...gosh, I guess two or three days before the change? Something like that. I was a bit disoriented at the time."

Paul has been carrying the conversation, and it's high time Metody made a bit of effort. "I'm a - back home, I was a grad student. What'd you grow up to be?"

[smecker]

Paul shrugs. "Everyone's disoriented at first. Everyone normal, anyway. I spent the first week thinking I was in Hell."

The question makes him dart eyes up, offer a sharky sort of grin.

"Law enforcement. FBI, if you have that in your world. For the record, I was not much like the High School Musical version of myself as a kid."

(....okay, there were similarities, but yeah. No.)

[skinandbone]

"I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't a hallucination. I could have gotten a concussion or there could have been a gas leak or - oh, lots of things."

"Ah? I remember you mostly as being driven. I'm afraid I'm very much like my high school self, albeit a bit more subdued." Or a lot more subdued. But Metody is rethinking that. High school Metody had a lot more fun.

[smecker]

Paul doesn't argue that. Two years and change later and he still sometimes wonders if it's a coma dream or what. He has a drag on his cigarette instead.

Driven, hah, yeah, that he can't argue with he supposes. He gives Metody a wry squint.

"If you're not still attempting to sell me baked goods I think I'm down with some slight subdual."

[skinandbone]

Metody laughs cheerfully. "It's venison, actually! But not right at this moment. It turns out there are very few cupcakes running around in the woods right now."

[smecker]

"Venison," Paul echoes with a second look at Metody.

"You're out in the woods trapping... deer?" Spoken with all the inherent wariness of a city boy.

[skinandbone]

He shrugs cheerfully. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

[smecker]

Paul knocks some ash off the end of his cigarette into an ashtray on the bar, sips coffee again.

"You'll pardon the ignorance of someone who has never been hunting in his life, but isn't that a fuckload of work? Aren't dead deer... shit, I don't know, heavy?"

[skinandbone]

"It is, I guess, but if you calculate it in terms of hours spent versus meat gained, it's fairly economical." And there's no more efficient way of gathering delicious spines. "And they are heavy, though they become a bit lighter once you've gu- once you've cleaned them. I actually drag mine on a sledge, since I can't exactly sling them across my shoulders."

"Hunting is like anything else: it sounds terribly difficult until you've done it a few times." Or until you bring down a deer by breaking it's back, then use its former skeleton to carry the meat home. One of those.

[smecker]

Paul isn't exactly squeamish about dead things and guts*, so it's more his general 'ew' regarding everything in the great uncivilized outdoors at play, but he listens with an arched brow and more sips of his coffee and skepticism and the like.

"Whatever rocks your rowboat, Cupcake," he says with a shrug. "Me, I like my meat from the store. Or in a banana hammock, but barring that. Do you go the whole skinning-and-tanning route too, Jesus?"



*Within reason. It is fair to say animate skeleton horrors will probably get some 'MOTHERFUCK's from him for a while

[skinandbone]

He sips his juice and smiles a bit dreamily. It's sweet. And, he thinks, he might even taste a little bit of the tropics. Marvelous.

And then he blinks. "A what?" Banana, he gets, but hammock? Is that some kind of preparation?

"I actually don't; you need some specific chemicals for that, and I don't have the resources to make them. I might eventually, if I can find the right things in the market. It kind of kills me to be throwing away something that could be used."

[smecker]

"Never mind," Paul says with a not-really hidden smirk into his coffee cup re: the hammock.

He gives Metody yet a third assessing look. "...is there a Depression on where you're from, or something?" Paul asks after five more seconds of silent scrutiny.

[skinandbone]

Metody is going to be a touch scarred when he looks that one up, Paul.

"Wh- oh, no. I mean, no more than at any other time. But I've got seven brothers and sisters and you know. You learn to be thrifty. And if you're going to kill something, it's kind of horrible to not make good use of it."

[smecker]

Just one of the many services Paul Smecker provides for free.

"Ah, big family, you poor bastard. 'If you're going to kill stuff' is the operative word though-- I guess if you really value the whole independence shtick I can't blame you, but it's a lot fucking easier to just jump through their hoops and play fake-shop with them."

Even as he says it the words sound a little sour to Paul. He spent a hell of a lot of his first year-ish in Taxon bound and determined not to get a fucking job, not to play by their rules and join in their prison economy, which got him... getting a job he didn't even realize he was getting. But he's spent the credits, no lie.

"Never mind. Fuck that. You want to live off the land, more power to you."

[skinandbone]

"Oh, it's a nice family. Very...supportive." This is the first time in his whole life that he's without that support. That vast, deep, all encompassing, inescapable support.

He laughs at the last bit. "I don't know how long I can do it - I badly miss indoor plumbing. But it is pleasant while it lasts, except for the lack of hot water."

[smecker]

"I will take your word for that." Paul Smecker and families, ha, ha, ha.

A shrug, another drag on his cigarette. Whatever else, the Black Friar doesn't seem to have any injunctions against indoor smoking, which Paul is exploiting for all it's worth.

"Like I said, whatever rocks your rowboat. Me, I'd be screaming for them to let back near a coffee machine within the first half-hour. Why do you want to be out there?"

[skinandbone]

"It...I grew up outside, hunting and gathering" - and yes, those are two distinctly separate activities - "but I've spent the past six years of my life in Steel City to pay for school. It's just...so nice to see growing things, and birds and animals, even if they're not the right plants and birds and animals."

And there is privacy. Can't forget that. With no eyes on him, Metody can be whatever he wants.

[smecker]

There's no flash of recognition in Paul's face at 'Steel City', but then, there hasn't been for anyone else in Taxon either. He gives another small nod-slash-shrug, okay then, you want to be out with the bugs and the dirt then he'll leave you to it.

"Spoken like a true hippie," Paul says without any malice. "Be careful out there, I think there's a lot of wildlife and some are probably nastier than others."

(Again, spoken like a total city boy with only the loosest conception of what wildlife is dangerous. Bears? Are there bears? Shit something like that. Wolf howls, who knows.)

[skinandbone]

"There was one big...toothy tooth thing. But I managed to scare it off. I did see a bear too! It was pretty cool. Mind you, I watched it from a long ways off, because soon as it showed up, I evaporated. But on the whole you leave things alone, and they will leave you alone."

[smecker]

"....a big toothy thing that wasn't a bear? I thought that's what they were," Paul says, still bleeding city-boy all over his words and general demeanor. He shakes his head a little, shrugs at Metody.

"Better you than me, then. Insert my obligatory 'if you get mauled by a fucking bear use your tablet to call for help' thing, I guess."