milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Most young men coming to Milliways from 141 AD Londinium would be confused by the electric lights. The slight blond man in the blue wool tunic, belted at the waist with a cloth cord over his grey trousers, seems unconcerned by the electricity. He is busy wondering why his chronometer has reported a malfunction, and running a self-diagnostic on his mechanical parts. The self-diagnostic fails to explain the chronometer failure but reports no other problems.

Lewis scans his surroundings. How very odd -- a Company bar in which Lewis is the only cyborg. It is a bar, in any case, and it looks like quite a civilized one (except for the rats skittering about everywhere). Lewis might as well find out whether the place serves good martinis.

[tinytag: Lewis]

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Perhaps unusually for a bar, there's a twelve-year-old girl sitting at a table, frowning down at a book filled with images of greenhouses.

It's not particularly useful in telling one how to build said greenhouses.

Lewis notices the book's late twentieth-century binding and printing before he notices the human girl reading it. He resists the urge to grab the book from her. Instead, he smiles and bows slightly to the girl, waiting for her to speak so he knows in what language he should answer her.

It takes Mary a few moments to notice the young man standing in front of her, absorbed as she is in scowling at the pictures; when she finally looks up, her scowl doesn't shift.

"I do not know you," she says, by way of introduction.

Lewis bows again, and answers, in an educated modern English accent, "In that case, I should introduce myself. My name is Lewis. Might I have yours?"

"I am Mary Lennox."

All the bowing is unnerving her a little, but she's certainly not going to curtsey. She settles for giving her head a sharp jerk, instead.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss" --Lewis looks more carefully at the girl, and his eyes widen-- "Lennox. You have a lovely book there."

"It is not very useful," Mary complains, and closes the front cover, with a decided snap.

"It is only pictures; it has not told me anything I did not know already."

"May I see?" Lewis reaches out towards the book even before he receives Mary's permission. "What are you studying, Miss Lennox?"

"I am trying to learn how to repair a greenhouse."

Mary watches him reach for the book, warily, but decides not to protest for the moment. It's not as if she has any further need for it.

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There is a cheerfully swearing...uh. Probably swearing. Um. Human shaped person with an English (mostly Yorkshire, if we're picky) accent. We say probably swearing because there is a lot of clicking and sub-vocalized barking going on in there. And human-shaped because the biochemistry is whacked.

Hell, leave the details to the imagination, Spoon is over that-a-way, braiding his hair, and trying to count beads without dropping the one he's currently sliding up the hair.

What a treasure this bar is! Lewis decides. Twentieth-century Yorkshire curses, from a man who -- peculiar, that isn't a man at all. Very peculiar, in fact--

Aware that he is staring, Lewis bows politely to the human-shaped person. "Good evening," he says in the English of a gentleman educated in twentieth-century Oxford.

Lewis has not, in fact, been educated in twentieth-century Oxford, but he has had an education that is, to put it mildly, extremely out of the ordinary for first-century Britain.

"Aourr?" Spoon says, looking up and tilting his head, "Hallo. Fuck..." that would be as his bead bounces out of his hand, "You're new. Haven't smelled you around before."

Lewis looks slightly pained at the profanity. "I am, actually. I quite like it here, although I haven't any idea what's going on. Might I introduce myself? Lewis, at your service."

"Spoon." is the cheerful response, "This is Milliways Bar, pub at the end of the universes. What's your favorite drink? You'll want it after you look back over your shoulder at the Window."

Sometimes Spoon is mean.

Lewis looks, automatically; when he turns back from the window, he is very pale. "I beg your pardon; did I hear you say the end of the universes?"

"Alcohol first, explaining later." Spoon says insistently, "Trust me, unless you're as crazy as a tortured werewolf with a canine brain you're going to want alcohol. Now be a good...man...an' tell me what to go get."

Lewis had been going to order a martini, but gin really does very little to cyborg biochemistry, and Lewis feels the need for something stronger. "I don't suppose this establishment provides hot cocoa?"

Now, here's an interesting specimen. It's more or less humanoid in shape, but no human being ever had a skin tone like that, and it scans like... well, like nothing at all, actually. There are some very peculiar electrical charges in the air in that spot, but other than that the chair the entity is sitting in might as well be empty.

It looks up and waves cheerily at Lewis as he enters.

Having noticed the blue creature, Lewis says, "God Apollo!" aloud in second-century Latin. It's terribly rude of him, and he feels guilty almost at once. To remedy his faux pas, he approaches the blue creature and bows.

He's not quite sure what language to speak, so he waits for the other to speak first.

"...I'm sorry?"

The voice is that of an adult male human, speaking with a twentieth-century American accent. There's a vaguely artificial quality to it, though, that only a very sensitive ear would detect.

There's something equally artificial about Lewis. Most mortals would never notice, but he blinks once every thirty seconds precisely.

"I beg your pardon, I was staring," Lewis answers in Cinema Standard.* "I don't believe we met. My name is Lewis."

[*Early twentieth-century American English, as immortalized in classic Hollywood film.]

"My name's Bob," says the blue person. "Pleased to meet you. Is this your first time here?"

[ooc: Must flee for bed. Slowtime?]

Edited 2008-01-26 06:51 (UTC)

"I'm fairly sure it is," answers Lewis. "I would have remembered this."

[Of course, and sorry about my disappearance! I may be slow, but I'll do my best. Poke me if I forget.]

"Okay then." Bob clears his throat. "Welcome to Milliways, the Bar at the End of the Universe. It's a crossroads of all possible realities. You'll find people here from every time and place you can imagine, and plenty more that you can't. It can be weird sometimes, but for the most part it's a nice, mostly safe place to meet people and grab a drink."

Lewis accepts this explanation with the usual newcomer's level of bogglement. "When you say 'realities,' what exactly do you mean?"

Some of these realities clearly have blue people who don't show up on infrared scans.