milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(no subject)

(OOM:

every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end)

Unlike the last couple of times she's been in, Claudia is not in the rafters today. She needed a break from clambering around up there, there's only so much she can do for the sound system at the moment anyway, and... well. If Mrs. F wants a report on the apocalypse (all of them), then she'll damn well get a report, and Claudia would rather get that out of the way as quickly as possible.
But she's also going to take full advantage of the time stoppage here to do it, since she has a feeling it's gonna take a while.
So she's at a table, with her laptop open, occasionally typing stuff into her word processor as she figures out how to explain things (and wondering just how many questions Mrs. F's going to have about T-Minus). There's a cupcake with a candle in it sitting next to her laptop; she's long since blown out the candle, but she hasn't eaten the cupcake yet.

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"Hey, Claudia! Cupcake occasion?"

"Birthday," Claudia says. "Seems Bar thought it was a cupcake occasion."
There will almost certainly be cake when she goes home. Leena does that.

"She's good about that. Happy birthday!"

Nice to know that's one thing that's back to normal. Cupcakes seem like a good sign of restoration.

That they do.
"Thanks. You here for all the fun, or did you miss it?"

"Most of it. I had to leave when the... field, whatever that lets sprites exist here started to break down. You?"

Claudia takes a deep breath. "Whole damn thing. Gotta say, even by Warehouse standards, nearly being sucked into a black hole? That'll be hard to top for Worst Day Ever honors."
There was a time when she thought Joshua's disappearance would hold that spot forever, but even that pales in comparison.
"On the bright side, I got to chuck a nuke into a wormhole. That part was pretty cool."

Enzo grins weakly. "'Dja get that on video?"

"Unfortunately, no, but by the time I finished fixing up the bridge device things were getting seriously hairy, and I figured that was better than the nuke detonating while we waited for another bright idea. And there were monsters. Not sure how good of a movie it would've been."
She sounds a lot more flip than she feels, even now.

"Yeah, reality's never staged right. Look, I've got a ton of questions, but I gotta start with... how the heck did this place get rebooted?"

"Well, as for what kicked off the extra helping of weird in the first place, seems Ray remembered his constants wrong in trying to build a hyperspace generator. He came downstairs with that little chestnut after the dust settled. In the moment, though..."
Claudia's quiet for a long time before she answers; then she sighs. "Well, I have to try to reconstruct this for Mrs. F anyway, might as well get a head start. I'm sketchy on the details, things were even more wobbly than when I scuttled the nuke and I was kiiinda having a freakout at the time. But - someone picked up a handy weapon to close the portal the monsters were coming through, it started acting up and drawing from some of the other stuff that was around, we chucked that out a wormhole too, the black hole caught up to the bar... and then, for some damn reason, we fell the other way. I think. Fact that we're all still here points to that, anyway."

"That's... dude. Kind of hard to follow," he admits. "What kind of weapon?"

"And I'm the one who's got to try to write it down in some kind of linear format." 'It all sort of happened at once' worked well enough for Leena, and if Claudia can't make it work that'll have to be good enough for Mrs. F, but in the interests of being thorough...
Claudia shrugs. "I dunno, some kind of funky spear-looking thing? I didn't really get an up-close-and-personal look at it, I was more worried about the wormhole."

Enzo nods. It doesn't sound like the most important part of things. Still, he has his suspicions.

"So, after the black hole, it all just stopped?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Like I said, far as I can figure we fell away from the black hole, and then, bam, we had gravity, blue sky, lack of monsters..."
If not for the lingering chaos, you might think nothing had happened.

"I thought the whole point of black holes was that you can't... No, never mind. Milliways apocalypse. No rules."

"Hey, as someone who nearly went down with the ship, I am not complaining."
It was scary as hell, but Claudia just - couldn't do the Lost and Found box, even assuming she could have gotten to it in time. Too many Issues.

"You coulda come to Mainframe, you know. But... I guess if you had to be here to take care of the wormhole stuff, I can't scold you too much."

"By that point I was outside and not sure I could get the bridge device past all the monsters again." Maybe it was stupid to not want to abandon her pet project, but after sinking a week into the damn thing?
"And there was no way I was taking the Lost and Found option. I can't do limbo spaces, no matter how good the company."

"At least it all worked out."

They can debate reasons and could-haves for the rest of eternity, but since none of it made any sense to begin with...

"Yeah, it did."
After a few moments, in what may at first seem like a total change of subject, she adds, "The door won't work for Artie anymore."

Enzo's face crumples. Far too much for it to be just Artie he's concerned about.

Doors not working, doors disappearing for years before coming back...

"Same door as it ever was, still works fine for me - I dunno if Myka's tried it since, but apparently Artie... can't..."
Claudia finally takes in Enzo's expression, and frowns. "I take it this is turning into a pattern?"

"Kind of. Not enough to really call it that, though. Jordan showed up as a grown-up, said her Door disappeared for nine years before coming back. And my Door just moved. You remember it used to be in the tunnels? It's the cafeteria now."

"That's awfully... public of it. Good thing you started reading people in, then. Wonder if that's worth including," she adds, mostly to herself.

"Might as well mention it."

Claudia nods. "Yeah, probably - Artie's boss is the one who told me the door's not playing nice with him anymore. She had him keeping an eye on the place and... well. Now she wants me to do it, starting with a rundown of the apocalypse."

That gets a bit of a smile back on his face. "Welcome to the club."

"It's kinda weird, you know? I mean, I haven't even really been out in the field yet. Didn't figure I'd draw the extra responsibility stick so soon."
She's grinning, though, so she clearly doesn't mind - not entirely, anyway. After all, if Mrs. F wanted to, she could probably find out everything she needed to know by herself and cut out the middleman entirely.
"Gotta say, though, I'm not entirely sure what she means by 'unusual activity.' The whole place is unusual activity."

"Tell me about it. Might as well just keep a log."

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