milliways_bar | (no subject)

Gordon's been out by the lake since sundown, doing his best to walk or run himself into a state of exhaustion advanced enough to let him sleep for once. It didn't really take, so he's come inside, a bit damp from the usual Scottish weather. It's not all that different from the weather he used to slog through at home, a fact which may have inspired an idea or two. He migrates over to the Bar and says, "Excuse me. Do you have back issues of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in stock?"

A napkin materializes with one word on it: Yes.

"Good. May I please have an issue from..." He drums his fingers on the bartop a moment, thinking. "The first week of September. 1982. I- oh."

After riffling through the Local News section he adds, much more quietly, "Any chance of the WSU alumni newsletter and a pair of scissors?"

That, too, seems to have worked. He looks for a moment as if he might ask for something else; then he goes silent and heads in search of a place to sit. His guns can wait. For now, this is more important.

[Tinytag: Gordon Freeman, Wilbur Whateley, Alyx Vance. Open until it scrolls off the front page.]

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"Pictures of my family," says Gordon, looking up. "I lost all of mine at Black Mesa. I can't expect a place like this to have access to anything private, but both my mother and my brother appeared in publications, so-" He gestures at the newspaper in front of him.

Annabelle's face is sympathetic at Gordon's mention of losing the pictures of his family. "I hadn't thought of being able to get photographs from publications."

"I'm afraid I may have given your friend Alyx a bit of a shock the other day," Annabelle says ruefully.

"It was a hunch, that's all," Gordon says. "I still won't have any pictures of my father, or my niece, but you take what you can get."

"Is this about the gender thing?"

"I'm sorry that you won't be able to get pictures of all of your family that way."

"Yes. I was telling Alyx about one of my own adventures, and I explained that Jack Tallon had never approved of women in combat..." Annabelle pauses, "The idea was completely alien to her."

"I'm rather glad that the idea was so strange to her. Some idiocies shouldn't persist."

"Between the suppression field and the sheer number of people simply killed off by the Combine, there aren't any gender roles left on my Earth, really," Gordon says. "I had to explain why they ever existed in the first place."

"That can't have been an easy explanation."

"I suppose that should have occurred to me," Annabelle says after Gordon's explanation. "I suppose that for all I hate the idea of gender roles I'm accustomed to other people believing in them."

"It's all right. You had no real reason to think of it," Gordon says. "Besides, I grew up with a mother who was a judge and a father who was always traveling. Not the most traditional upbringing even before the Combine."

Annabelle smiles, "My upbringing wasn't terribly traditional either. My mother was an acrobat and my father was a contortionist."

Annabelle grins mischievously, "I take after her in stubbornness and temper."

"I can believe it," says Gordon. "I bet she'd be proud."

Annabelle laughs, "I'd like to think so."

She's serious though when she tells Gordon, "I think your mother would be proud too."

"Mom was never a fan of violence," Gordon says. "But I think she might make an exception for this."

Annabelle nods, "Sometimes killing is the only option. There's no reasoning with the things that have invaded your world."

"I suppose that's why people with our talents exist." Annabelle looks off into the distance, "We do the killing so other people won't have to."

His mouth twitches a little. "Starship Troopers again," he murmurs. "It's a novel I read years ago. I was talking to Alyx about it the other day. There's a line in it- 'The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation.'"

(He's unaware that this is in fact a paraphrase of a line from the Star Spangled Banner- O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand / between their loved homes and the war's desolation. Given how twitchy he gets about what people in City 17 call him, he probably wouldn't admit to knowing even if he was aware.)

Annabelle's mouth twitches a little as well. "There's a saying about life imitating art, but I suspect it works the other way 'round too. I may have to read that novel myself."

Annabelle never read science fiction while she was alive. We would say that it would have reminded her too much of work, but that would require her to have been paid.

"It's about a young man who joins the infantry of the far future to fight space alien bugs," Gordon says. "In my world it was the first novel to introduce the concept of powered armor. The author was a Navy man who had to resign from the service because of lung disease, so it's pretty gung-ho, but it's an interesting read."

"There's an odd number of parallels there..." Annabelle says after a moment. It does sound interesting."

"I can't recall anything like that being published back in my time."

"Did your world have a Jules Verne? A lot of the early science fiction writers in my world took their inspiration from him," Gordon says. "I'm pretty sure the early pulp magazines got started in the 1920s with this stuff."

"The name sounds vaguely familiar...I must have just missed reading them. The only pulps I ever followed were The Tales of the AEon Society, and that was because my friends and I were in them."

Gordon nods. "I'd imagine that'd make a difference," he says. "Verne was a novelist, though, and older than the pulps. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey To The Center Of The Earth, that kind of thing."

"Most of the stories were reasonably accurate accounts, as they were taken from Whitley's journals. If the general public had realized how true they were there might have been a bit of a panic."

"I may have to look those novels up." She grimaces, "Until your door opens I have time on my hands, after all."

"You're always welcome when I'm out on the range," Gordon notes. "Either way."

"Thank you for the invitation. It occurs to me that you haven't seen me use anything other than the knives...not that stationary targets are the best for displaying skill." She shrugs.

"I could always try throwing something," Gordon suggests after some thought. "Poor man's skeet-shooting rig."

Annabelle brightens, "That would work. Stationary targets just aren't the same. I'll return the favor for you, if you like."

She'll remember not to try to hit Gordon with them, really.

"Sure. Headcrabs're nasty about leaping when you're not looking, anyway."

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aeons_crackshot - 2008-09-20 03:38 (UTC) - Expand