milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The door opens Jack walks through. He's a bit preoccupied with the scroll he's carrying, so it takes him a couple of seconds before he registers the fact that he's in Milliways.

When he does, he just mutters, "Oh, okay," and shifts direction, heading for the bar.

Once he's got some writing paper and a pen from the bar, he heads up to the library, where he settles down to translate this scroll.

[ooc: recycled EP is recycled]

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In the library, there is a man in a suit and a paisley tie, working at the card catalogue and taking notes.

There is a small stack of books on top of the catalogue.

Jack sees the man as he comes in, and acknowledges him, but moves away to find a table and work on his translation. He's got a lot of work to do, and may be here some time...

"Excuse me," the man says, after a while. "May I borrow the red pen on your table?"

There really is one, among the assorted pens in a holder.

Laid out on Jack's table, along with the scroll he brought in, which is written in hieroglyphics, are two stacks of paper. The first may seem to be nonsense, to anyone who doesn't recognise transliterated Egyptian. The second, on the other hand, has English written on it.

Jack's aware of the man's approach, so when he speaks, it's not necessarily a surprise, but he was focused on a particularly difficult transliteration at that point. So, he blinks for a moment, before realising the man is speaking to him. When he does, he blinks, looks up, before gesturing with the pen he's holding in his hand towards the pens. "Oh, sure."

The man takes the red pen, bending partway over the table, away from Jack.

"Egyptologist," he says. "Interesting."

"To some. Others seem to find it intensely boring," Jack says lightly. "Yourself? I noticed you were reading. What caught your eye?"

"Literary criticism, at the moment," the man says. "Following a weak paper trail fro one book to another, across different universes."

Jack's visibly interested. "Found anything interesting?" he asks.

"Oh yes," the man says. "Apparently, there are books about me in other worlds."

"How odd. And you are?" Jack inquires.

"Dr. Hannibal Lecter," the man says. "And you?"

"I'm Jack West. No doctorates here." Jack says.

"What is your doctorate in?" he asks.

"Medicine," Dr. Lecter says. "But I practice as a psychiatric therapist now."

Jack nods. "Interesting work?" he asks. "I won't ask you for details. I can understand patient-doctor confidentiality."

"The mind is much more interesting than the body, or even the brain," Dr. Lecter says. "Its problems are infinite in variation, and solutions often have to be unorthodox and creative."

Edited 2013-07-20 00:59 (UTC)

Jack considers this. Then, he nods.

"Not something I'd like to try myself, but certainly worthwhile work."

"With Egyptology, you can be sure all the human subjects you have to deal with are completely dried out and utterly still, despite urban legends and scary movies to the contrary," Dr. Lecter says, with a tiny smile.

"Indeed," Jack snorts dry amusement at that comment. "Even if you don't completely understand their motivations. Or what the bloody hell they were doing or thinking."

"They wrote it down, you try to read it," Dr. Lecter says. "You probably lack context and connotation. Not all that makes people and a culture can be dried and preserved."

"True. But, marching out into the desert with ten thousand men doesn't seem to make any sense, no matter what culture you're from."

"Alexander did that because he was Alexander," Dr. Lecter says.

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