milliways_bar | (no subject)

"...Well, that was Enzo. He's a Sprite." She points after the little green boy, "He lives in a computer from Whistler's time."

"He lives inside a computer?" That doesn't make any kind of sense. "He looks sort of familiar...same skin tone as a friend of mine. An AI named Bob..." OK, that sort of explains Bob. Well, not really.

"Want to explain this to me again?"

"Uh huh. Bob and Enzo and Matrix and Dot are all Sprites." She says firmly, "They're computer programs. They live in computers."

Now Jim is very confused. "They're programs? Surely you mean robots, or androids. A program is just data. It's not more real or alive than ink or paper."

"And you're just a complex collection of acids devoid of selyn." She points out, "In my universe the only biologic things without selyn are corpses. Brains are fired by electricity. Why wouldn't they be alive?"

Jim gives this some thought. "You have a point. And I have encountered lifeforms that are completely unlike either of us...being made entirely of energy, and a species based on silicon, called the Horta. Ray told me that a crew member I know fromt hat species was here, in fact.

"And I could accept that a program could be alive, under certain conditions. But it would consist of something non-corporeal. It would be an idea, essentially, rather than a body. Bob and your flying friend over there, they have bodies. Software is simply not designed that way.

"Usually."

"This is Milliways, Jim." She points out, "My apprentice is a dead werewolf."

"You have a point. If the dead can exist here and be corporeal, I suppose AIs could as well. Though it does raise more troubling questions about this place." Questions that would be explained if only Jim could ever accept magic.

"A werewolf...as in a person who shape-shifts into a wolf? Like in the old legends?" That he can accept more easily. "I wasn't aware you had an apprentice."

"I've never seen his other form, not really? Just the puppet version. He's been helping me with jeweling, so I started teaching him? Captain Richard Ryan."

Puppet? Some things are best left unasked, Jim thinks. It's weird enough that this man is a shapeshifter out of old folktales.

"I think I met him. We had talked about the possibility of going mountain climbing, but I never heard anything further from him...

"He didn't strike me as the apprentice type. More of a commander, if anything."

"Well, in a military situation I'd certainly follow his orders." The little Sime says with amusement, "But I know more about jewelry than he does."

"From what I know of the military mind, most soldiers don't make jewelry. How did you get him involved in that?" The notion of any solider - even quasisoldiers like Kirk and his ilk - is a bit funny, and a bit weird, so Jim's smile is a bit crooked.

"I don't like fire." She says after a second, "It scares me, but I need it to work. So when he was looking for a job I offered him the job of keeping the fire and coals at the right heat. Eventually I started teaching him...in part because if he was doing the work of an apprentice I should teach him like one? It all boils down, though, to he's dead and needed a job."

"And your business here, it makes enough for two?" He doesn't quite get the economy here, but the Bar never seesm to bother him about paying, either.

"I make very, very good jewelry." She says simply, "And I don't eat much at all. I'm also looking into seeing if Bar is able to sell things in other worlds for me."

"Tha could be interesting." And as perplexing as anything else that can be found here. The havoc that crossdimensional trade could unleash on economies could be immense. As could the benefits.

"I'd offer to take some with me, but even if I didn't have to deal my situation, I am not particularly good at sales." Or at least at sales that involve money, as opposed to ideas.

She smiles at him, "Thank you for the thought, Jim. Although...well, to be honest?" She holds up her hand and the ring on it. Her work is beautiful, she deserves the title master jeweler. She's no Sergi ambrov Keon, but she was one of that legend's best students, "It sells itself."

"It is nice," says a man who knows a bit about beauty but not much about jewelry.

"Do you do engagement rings," he adds, trying to sound exceedingly casual.

"Uh huh." She says quietly, "I do. Do you need one?"

He pauses. "I don't know. I honestly don't know." He taps on the PADD and shows Suzi the unstarted letter. "Have I told you about Antonia?"

[ooc: heading home and into slowtime]

"You've mentioned her." Suzi says quietly, "Mostly that you miss her."

"I haven't seen her in months. I haven't talked to her since before we stople my ship. And I haven't made any contact with her at all since we arrived on Vulcan." He takes a puff of air. "So I'm finally writing her a letter. And sending it to Earth with our host, who's heading there ahead of us to try to help us.

"I'm thinking...if I don't get sent to prison, if she'll still have me, I might ask her to marry me." A pause. "Or just to break it off.

"It's gotten...complicated."

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks after a minute, "The complicated?"

He was hoping she would feel that way. And so he smiles a little. "That would be good.

"I've talked to Bones about this, but he's been distracted by being the only reasonable man on a planet of of overly logical Vulcans." Which is to say, Bones has long ago sworn off trying to make sense of Kirk's love life.

"What's complicated is that there are days when I miss her as much as life itself. When I can smell her hair and see her eyes and feel her touch, and when I am ready to steal another ship just to see here.

"And there are days when I don't think about her at all. When I don't miss her and just move along like I'd never her. And those days came often my last month here."

This is Suzi. She always wants to listen when her friends need to speak. "Well," she says quietly, "That's part of being human, isn't it? If we spend all our time dwelling on what we don't have, we go crazy. Trust me, I know that!"