revivalproject | Coming in at last call!

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Coming in at last call!

WHO: Drake Riley
WHERE: Coruscant
WHAT: Angrily bumbling through unsuccessful social interactions
WHEN: March Event catchall
WARNINGS: Language, but only if you speak Goa'uld

Arrival
For the second time in - what, a week? - Drake woke suddenly and with no idea where he was. And it was getting annoying. At least this time, he didn't feel as though he'd been pushed down a cliff and trampled by an upset moose. The ship gave a judder-

Ship? What? He sat bolt upright and staggered to the front just in time to see the planet spread itself out before them, glittering and vast. Astonished, he couldn't take his eyes off it, and only found a seat by fumbling blindly for one.

Later, after being ushered against every protest into the hotel and subsequently his room, Drake spent a few minutes going over his tablet to make sure it hadn't been damaged, and then promptly left. It wasn't like he had any belongings to unpack, after all.

Shopping
Drake's first impression of Coruscant was that it reminded him a bit of Tokyo. Except that he'd never been to Tokyo. But he knew it was vast and crowded and cluttered with bright signs, and he expected he wouldn't like the smell of all the street foods mingling with the steam drifting up from manholes, and he was assaulted by all of that the moment he left the hotel.

The first thing he tried looking for was an adapter for his tablet, both for powering it and for interfacing with new technologies he might encounter. (He didn't have much luck, only finding a few little scraps he could try splicing together later.) The next thing he looked for were any items that could replace what he'd lost in coming here: a proper torch, a canteen, waterproof matches or firesteel, binoculars, water tablets, a first aid kit, a weapon, and definitely some meal bars. Maybe a small shaving kit if he had room. So far, he's only found some meal replacement bars and a flashlight, and his increasing agitation with being unable to communicate with the shopkeeper (who he's sure is holding out on him for a better price, but is actually just getting fed up with his tone) is about to get him kicked out.

Underground
It didn't take long for Drake to get himself thrown out of the establishment, after which he'd yelled "Kel kek, mikta!" which didn't mean anything to the shopkeeper, but was clearly an insult if the rude gesture that accompanied it was anything to go by. They'd squealed angrily and thrown a small, hard bag of something foul smelling at him.

WELL.

It wasn't his fault they were too thick to understand easy-to-decipher body language regarding drinking, shooting, and bandaging (but could, for some reason, understand when he was calling them stupid). Oh well. That was fine. No upstanding citizen would sell a weapon to some random stranger without an identification, mailing address, or even a background to check, anyway, so he'd go looking elsewhere. After asking around here and there, Drake began to get the impression that he could buy just about anything he wanted the further down he went. No one really warned him about the violence down there, though.

That's how he wound up pinned against a wall with a blaster under his chin when he'd made too quick a move to reach into one of his pockets.

Late lunch/Early dinner
If no one came to his aide, he'll have escaped by offering up all of the power bars he'd bought earlier, claiming that they had "sun" in them - which he assumed they did. Vitamin D, that is, which appeared to be distinctly lacking down there. Weapon or no weapon, Drake will have taken the experience as a cue to retreat.

Tired, shaken, a bit smelly, and hardly having found anything on his shopping list, he turned his focus toward dining. He'd have given anything for a P.F. Chang's. Just someplace quiet to gather what remained of his wits, have something warm to drink, and try to calm down and formulate a plan. And have something to eat, obviously. He was starving.

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She pulled out her phone and waggled it at him with a wink and a friendly smile. She didn't want him to feel on guard around her, she wanted him to learn that he didn't need that wall at all.

"That's what these're for. I can give you the numbers of folks on the other ships if you want to ask. I can tell you the First Breath is mostly loading up on foodstuffs and equipment for the diner, and some ranching supplies."

The people that Drake loved and trusted most in the world had built that wall, brick by brick, so slowly that he hadn't noticed it was getting too high to see over until he realized that those people had built fortresses of their own and locked him out. It wasn't long before he began quietly adding bricks on purpose. Every once in awhile, he would open a window or perhaps decide not to shoot at intruders from the battlements. Lowering the drawbridge entirely was something he was still working on.

He pulled back one corner of his mouth in wry annoyance as a response to Clarice waggling the phone.

"So I'm just out of the loop, then. Brilliant. You know, for the next excursion, there really needs to be a briefing where everyone can be assigned a task. No one has contacted me and I've no idea what anyone on the Mudsnort or whatever is purchasing, so...yes, I'm a bit cynical of the whole process so far." He crammed his hands in his pockets and stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact hard. "I'm also not in the habit of trusting the competence of complete strangers, 'least not without reading their files first. Even then! Save a few planets," he grumbled, "then we'll see. Anyway!" His voiced pitched up again, "Contact information would be helpful, yes, thank you."

"No one's leaving you out of it on purpose, I suspect they simply don't know you're here, Doctor." She had a feeling that with his defenses so staunchly and stubbornly in place, he wouldn't believe that for a hot half second, but the effort still needed to be made.

"I do agree that we need to have a way to all be on the same page if we're going to be working together, though. I'm used to briefings and debriefings and all of that, too, after all. ... Here, I'll send you everyone I have."

She tapped at a few spaces on the screen and contact attachments began to port themselves over to Drake's device. Obi-Wan, Cayde, Ezra, Cobb, Tommy, Jon, Tony, Lauri-Ell...

Predictably, he gave a soft snort when Clarice suggested that it was as simple as his presence being anything but noticeable, but he didn't say anything about it, choosing to stew irritably for a few moments, fiddling with his communicator and organizing contacts until she mentioned that she was accustomed to briefings as well.

"Are you? What do you do, then?" Drake paused and corrected himself with marked sobriety. "Did. What um. What did you do? At home."

She smiled a little at the way he fumbled with the tenses, largely because it was something she was still catching herself doing, as well.

"Did, yeah. Up until a few years ago, I was with the Behavioral Sciences division of the F.B.I. To make a very long story short, I left for political reasons: there were some corrupt people pulling strings, and it would have hurt too many colleagues' careers if I'd stayed and fought it out."

That was a half-truth, of course: sure, she'd marginally protected Crawford and Mapp, but Mapp was tough and could handle herself, and Crawford had been on the brink of retirement. She was quite certain that I ran away with a fugitive from the top of the Most Wanted List because he made a lot more sense and was a lot kinder to me than most people I'd professionally dealt with was not the sort of thing you told people when you were first getting to know them, if you wanted to keep them around.

"Oh, I love Criminal Minds. Guilty pleasure. All those leaps of logic that somehow turn out correct is like watching voodoo magic." He wiggled his fingers in the air.

But then he made a face when she mentioned 'political reasons.' Drake was no stranger to politics getting in the way of progress. His work was always for someone else, and more than once, he'd had his funding cut or his project scrapped or handed to another department because of some stupid reason or another. Usually, it was down to cost/benefit analysis determining his research was unlikely to yield desired results, said yield was taking too long, or said yield wasn't worth the expenditure. Sometimes it was deemed too dangerous or was fundamentally misunderstood by politicians in Parlaiment.

He made a derisive noise. "Politics. Sounds like a shite situation, if you don't mind my saying."

Edited (i kan slepp) 2021-06-07 20:37 (UTC)

"Never heard of it, but then again, I don't watch a lot of crime TV. I watched one episode of something where they asked to zoom in on a still of surveillance footage, and when the perp's face actually showed up clear as day I think I about had an embolism."

She rolled her eyes. "If that could actually happen we'd have caught the entire got-damn Most Wanted List by now. But yeah, shite situation about sums it up. Right down to the fact that one of the people pulling the purse-strings was a major player in the pork industry."

"It's new for me, so it might not be out yet for you. But - Ha! - Yeh, I don't see that technique going away any time soon, it's far too convenient. How else are they supposed to catch the killer in the hour?"

Drake frowned, cycling through various possible meanings behind 'pork industry' as he continued walking, but they were all equally viable, so he finally asked, "In a literal sense, or in more of a Pink Floyd sort of way?"

Thinking about advanced technology and unbridled capitalism together at once caused him to pause and look suddenly concerned and subdued. "Actually....I shouldn't say anything - technically, I'm not supposed to know about this, but," a small shrug, "work contacts. And I imagine it won't make any difference here, especially if we're from different realities anyway, but...around your time, three years ago for me, there was an enormous security breach within the USAF. A few, actually. At least a dozen patents on new technologies and materials could be traced directly back to Groom Lake." He raised an eyebrow and glanced sideways at her, wondering if, along with his earlier slip about energy weapons, she'd catch his drift.

"In an hour, sweet Lord, wouldn't that be nice." Her eyes sparkled and her laugh was light and genuine. The thought of catching someone like Jame Gumb within an hour - hoo, it would have saved so many lives, and it was easier to laugh than think about it seriously and get mad about it. What happened had happened, the present was the only malleable thing.

"Literal, but he also traded a lot of government favors for the money he made in the meat market," she clarified. "As for that breach, I sure hadn't heard anything, and where I'm at now I'd have no one to tell. My lips are sealed. ... Especially if what you're insinuatin' is that they had alien weapons at Groom Lake. They'd haul me off to the loony bin."

Starling held up her hands to interrupt any incredulous bursts of that temper of his. "Which is not to say I'm callin' you crazy, Dr. Riley, it's just that what's aliens for you might not be aliens where I'm from. Different worlds and such, right? No knowin' for sure."

Her laughter didn't exactly startle him, but it surprised Drake enough that he looked up at her again with raised eyebrows and when he returned his gaze to the street, it was with a small, uncertain smile.

He cleared his throat. "Now, I didn't say anything about aliens, and I can neither confirm nor deny, etcetera etcetera. I'm just...relating, I suppose. Read any science fiction novel, and you'll notice people think that sudden access to technologies beyond what we're capable of at our current stage of development will lead to...to a civilization ending war, or to a totalitarian dystopia, even just a shift in the balance of military power on the planet. What these security breaches really lead to - just like you said - is money. Simple as that. Keep an eye out for new elements being 'discovered.'" He added air quotes just to punctuate his disapproval.

"In fact, if we ever go home and you happen to notice an experimental plane on the news exceeding hypersonic speeds of Mach 7, you can thank yours truly. I'd have put my name on the research, but I can't exactly publish classified information."

The way he said it suggested he was just itching for the declassification of a number of projects, because to all outward appearances, he'd been a brilliant young scientist with great promise who just dropped off the map one day. And he couldn't tell any of his peers why.

"Sounds like whenever I do something undercover," she said, relating. "Unsung heroism ... they say it's its own reward, but come on. Human beings thrive on interaction, so it's amazing how far a little praise can go in the right situations."

As they wound their way through the market, she made a couple purchases of her own: portable medkits, and a pair of ripe, pomegranate-like fruits. She offered one to Drake as they walked, peeling her own open to pluck out the tiny sapphire-jewel seeds. They tasted like kiwis, which caused her to raise her eyebrows in pleased surprise.

"Mach 7, wow, that'd take your mascara off, wouldn't it? You really do know your stuff. I'm lookin' forward to seeing what you do to help us all out."

"What this human being would thrive on is a Nobel Prize or two - oh, thank you! - but I haven't published anything in years and can't tell anyone what I do! That's a deathstroke when you think of how cutthroat the physics community is..." He tossed the fruit up and down in his hand a couple of times as if to weigh it before beginning to pick at its peel grumpily.

"Which isn't to say the work isn't rewarding! I mean...yes, I've gone a few days without sleep, and...maybe had to make a difficult decision or two." The expression Drake made just then might have been frustrated concentration at the fruit peel, or it might have been diligently ignoring a feeling of tremendous guilt. "But it is..." he almost said something about the earth still being in one piece being quite nice, but caught himself. "...it is very rewarding. Ah! Finally. Oh, that's pretty."

Where Clarice experienced pleased surprise, Drake squinched one eye at the sudden tartness. "WOW. That'd be excellent on a salad."

Throughout, the mun swears that she meant to mention earlier that Drake's been making a few purchases, himself. Mostly small things to restock his tactical vest, like a flashlight, a utility knife, a canteen, etc. And spare cords and connectors that he wants to splice together later to see if he can make his tablet compatible with Agra 10's technology.

"Hm." Came a short huff of a laugh. "That was a few years ago. You ought to see some of the projects since then."

"Oh my gosh, you're so right," she said in regards to the salad. "Almost like a Waldorf, yeah. ... I didn't realize that bit about the physics community, wow. Must've been a difficult atmosphere in college, then, vying for internships and scholarships and all of that."

It was nice, she thought, shooting the breeze with someone while they shopped. It reminded her a little of meandering through similar open-air markets with Hannibal in Buenos Aires, picking out the week's produce, though they'd discussed which galleries and museums to visit instead of science and technology and the thanklessness of hard work done behind the scenes. Riley may have been a snob, but she was too in her own way, and could allow each of them a bit of indulgence.

"Oh, uni was the easy part!" Drake waved a hand with a grin. "I mean, I almost got booted from Life Drawing a few times because honestly, how is art even a field of study. And I mmmmmay have upset a few professors and Fellows." Read: all of them. "So I tugged at a few loose threads in a few bad theories, how's it my fault that the whole fabric unravelled?" Read: in front of an assembly of undergrads.

In retrospect, if university had been difficult at all for Drake, it was because he'd made it difficult for himself.

"Anyway, no, it's once you're out and expected to publish groundbreaking papers on experimental high-energy particle physics that the stakes get high and Michio Kaku sends snarky emails asking when you're going to revolutionize mankind's understanding of the universe."

Being professionally jabbed at by fellow physicists was clearly a sore spot, if the glower and spiteful tone were anything to go by. She'd be spiteful, too, he thought, if she researched technology that was so advanced, you had to create a whole new form of math just to express it, but someone else got famous for explaining what amounted to basic shapes and colors and then asked you when you'd do something worthwile.

Her eyebrows nearly crept into her forehead as he proclaimed that art wasn't a field of study. She may not have been an artist herself, but she had learned to appreciate so many forms of it: music, dance, sculpture, painting. But he had his own field, just as she had hers, and his grasp of it already impressed her.

"Well, I don't know Michio Kaku from Mickey Mouse, but I would imagine that the confidential nature of your work means you wouldn't be able to publish it anyway. Just because they can't see what you do doesn't make it any less valid. They can pound sand."

Drake was already rolling his eyes prematurely, "Yes, yes, Professor Kaku was one of my doctoral co-advvftz- What?" He did a literal double-take. "You know, uh. Superstring theory? Auntie Beeb's Time series? ... Well, that is refreshing!"

The next couple of purchases Drake made along the way - some sort of high sensitivity microscope and a radiation assessment detector - seemed to go more smoothly than any of his previous encounters, and there was a marked spring in his step, now. Yes, Michio Kaku absolutely could go pound sand. Whatever that meant.

[[ disclaimer: I love Michio Kaku <3 ]]

She knew of superstring theory, but she didn't exactly read about it in her spare time. She also didn't know who Auntie Beeb was, but she guessed it was probably some British thing, a pop culture divide, like Monty Python versus Laugh-In.

She left him to his own purchases, making a few of her own, and their idle chatter made for pleasant enough company for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time for her to go and find herself some tickets for the opera.

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Coming in at last call!

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this seems a good place to wrap it - ty! <3