milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

The front door opens onto a sedately appointed hallway, framing a tall middle-aged woman in loose-fitting beige knit shirt and tan pants. She pushes back a stray wisp of silvering red hair, and blinks into the noise and light of the bar in brief surprise.

(Her surprise is perhaps understandable. From her perspective, after all, it's been just over six years.)

"...Oh," she says after a moment. "Oh, that's right."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Always," she agrees, with a delicate shudder. "Ah - prodding the universe until it flinches?"

"The design was supposed to increase Planck's constant locally in the computer to skip though most of the calculations involved in matching quantum physics with relativity," offers Robo, "That got the attention of the extra-dimensional thing about six years ahead of the projections."

Action Science can get a bit messy some days.

This time her eyebrows make a leap for her hairline.

"Increase Planck's constant locally?"

"Just in the chip," confirms Robo, "I really need to make more time in my schedule for actually reading the proposals I'm funding."

Those two are so fired when he gets back. So very fired.

OOC: Ack. Late work and such ambushed me. Apologies.

"I can't figure out whether that's brilliant or culpably stupid," she says in a tone approaching awe.

"You're only brilliant when it works," says Robo, "All the results were junk - I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to let the two of them go after this."

He drums his fingers a moment in thought.

"Still, it's a new kind of disaster. That counts in their favor a little."

Beats doing an old one again anyway.

"I've seen a number of cases where people were brilliant and still failed," she points out thoughtfully. "In any number of fields."

"Hmmm," says Robo, "Still, to be a genius you only have to be right once. When it counts."

"I'm going to have to think some more. At lest I have the time."

"And a good place to do it," she adds, tilting her head in an indication of the room.

"I'm going to be taking so many readings when I get home," he says, "And when I get back. There's no way this sort of place should be stable."

Robo sounds more enthused than aggravated. He leans in, conspiratorially, to Cordellia, "I think they're cheating."

She chuckles. "You should talk to Dr. Stantz. ...If he's still around," she adds, with a small sigh.

...Sure, why not. Who's Robo to throw stones about people's reality. Might even be a coincidence.

"I'll keep an eye out," offers Robo, Does he have any distinctive features?"

"Well, he's human, which puts him only barely in the majority here. Caucasian male, probably about ... early-to-mid-fifties." A beat. "Maybe younger than that."

"Ah", says Robo, "Things aren't entirely linear here, or to the same scale. What's the good doctor's field?"

"Physics and ... parapsychology, if I remember correctly. It's been a while."

"Now that's an interesting combination," says Robo, "The interdisciplinary work is almost always more fun."

Her smile is entirely unintentional. "Oh, definitely."

"And you, Lady Vorkosigan, what's your field?" asks Robo, "If you aren't an unrepentant generalist that is."

Robo tends towards any field that goes 'High Energy _____'.

All right, now that's a grin.

"Social engineering."

"I get the sense you do applied work," says Robo with what would be an eyebrow, but instead involves only the top cover for one eye, "A on the larger side of the scale too, as these things go."

A beat.

"It's got to be incredibly frustrating to see all the different cultures here and not have any depth to the backgrounds."

"I don't know that I'd say frustrating," she says, thoughtful. "It's fascinating, but ... everybody here is out of context of their culture. The background's only significant as regards how it's shaped the individual."

"Ah," says Robo in realization, "You're looking at Milliways not at the people as they are on the other sides of their doors. That would change the whole thing..."

She spreads one hand, palm up, conceding his point. "Well, Milliways is all I've got to observe. Seeing people's homes, on the other sides of their doors ... that would be very different."

Robo's eyes give the impression of a grin.

"I am, am afraid, a reductionist at heart," he says, "Which is fine for any system I can take apart --"

Humans, not so much. He shrugs.

"I haven't managed to take a look around another patron's world yet. It really would be something."

"Reductionism does have its place," she admits.

"And neither have I, come to that."