(no subject)

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew's got himself a booth not too far away from the bar, a dulce de leche milkshake, a little bowl of goldfish crackers, and a tablet on which he's apparently playing some sort of grid-based number game.

Come say hi.

Comments

[skatefree_diehard]

Noah has spent the last few days lurking in and around the bar, parsing through his thoughts. He sticks to the corners and the shadows, his head down, and doesn't speak except to the waitrats whenever that unfamiliar sense of hunger starts clawing at his belly. Sure, the people around have seemed friendly enough, but the thought of interacting with them after so many years of being almost outright invisible is overwhelming. Getting a room, too, seems too foreign and permanent. He sleeps in a cluttered library, and the rumpledness of his clothes and hair hardly feels any different from his ghostly appearance.

But haunting Milliways is only temporary (he hopes). Finally, he returns to the bar. He spots a familiar face at a booth near the bar, and without any further ado, flops into the seat across from Andrew and declares: "I have some ideas."

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew looks up from his game, startled and then pleased. "Oh hey," he says. "Noah, right? What kind of ideas?"

Who needs small talk? Nobody, that's who.

[skatefree_diehard]

"Getting un-stuck," Noah replies. "You said that people get stuck here because there's something they need to do, right? Then I just have to figure out what it is I need to do, and do it."

[stilljustandrew]

"That's ... a theory, yeah," says Andrew a touch cautiously.

[skatefree_diehard]

"Either for myself or someone else," Noah continues. "So those are the two approaches. Something for myself kind of makes sense, with the whole 'unfinished business' being the ghost specialty and all, but also Milliways yanked me out of my business, so it also doesn't make sense. So I'm not sure which one I think is more likely."

[stilljustandrew]

"It might be both," Andrew offers. "Like, sometimes you put a problem together with a problem and you get a solution? Like that."

[skatefree_diehard]

Noah considers this. "Point. So three options. Or two point five. Because that's not really a new approach. I'm thinking picking one thing for someone else and one unfinished business thing for myself and attacking them both and seeing if either works. If they don't, then I pick something else - go down the list until I hit on it. But also I need to find a way to figure out if I'm hot or cold."

[stilljustandrew]

"Like, how close you are to the right answer?" He frowns thoughtfully, and takes a meditative sip of milkshake. "I dunno. Maybe if the door appears but you can't open it yet? But that might not happen even if you get really close. Or it might happen for some other reason."

[skatefree_diehard]

Noah makes a face. "Maybe if I learn more how Milliways magic works, maybe if it's anything like the ley lines... Anyway, I don't need the hot-cold test to start trying things. First thing: I need some businesses to get involved in."

[hadyougoing]

"I found out some things," Ava announces without preamble.

[stilljustandrew]

Who needs small talk? Nobody, that's who.

Andrew glances up, and immediately puts down his tablet. "Me too. Uh, you first?"

[hadyougoing]

Ava slides into the seat across from him while the mun looks upthread and dies laughing.

"Okay," she says, "I haven't managed to talk to X yet, but I did get it confirmed that the Jim I met's the one who set the bomb."

[stilljustandrew]

"Right," says Andrew, looking a little grim. "Anything else?"

[hadyougoing]

"That's it."

[stilljustandrew]

"Okay. I talked to Baby, and ... think I might know who he really is."

[hadyougoing]

"Who he really is," Ava repeats, eyebrows climbing.

[stilljustandrew]

"Yeah. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but a lot of the things he said, and especially this one conversation he had with a guy who came to visit him -- he called the guy Sherlock, but not like no-shit-Sherlock, like it was actually his name --"

Andrew takes a breath.

"I'm pretty sure he's James Moriarty."

[dont_mention_the_tips]

The tablet catches Wil's attention.

"What is that thing?" asks Wil pointing at the machine.

He's Half-Elf and has pointed ears, and is wearing clothing that is almost 21st century, but also strangely post apocalyptic and slightly fantasy book like.

[stilljustandrew]

"This?" asks Andrew, looking up. "Uh, it's a tablet computer. I don't know if your world has them?"

[dont_mention_the_tips]

Wil shakes his head, "If we do, none of them work anymore. Is it like those phone things I've seen here? What are you doing on it?"

[stilljustandrew]

"It's sort of like a smartphone if you took away the phone part?"

He turns the screen around to show something a lot like this. "I'm playing a game. You squish the numbers together and they turn into bigger numbers."

[dont_mention_the_tips]

"Huh," says Wil, "So, do you do this a lot?"

[stilljustandrew]

"What, this game? Or like games in general?"

[dont_mention_the_tips]

Wil shrugs, "I guess games. I mean we have games in my world, but not on those."

[stilljustandrew]

"And this game would be pretty hard to do analog; you'd need some way to randomly toss in the new numbers ..." He frowns for a moment, trying to figure out if it could be done.

"Might be too complicated to be any fun," he decides, regretfully.