milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The green bagel on Barry's plate was a dead giveaway. It was St. Patrick's Day. And the bar was being funny.

Barry, in costume today but with the cowl down, found himself remembering the breakfasts before half the cops went to either watch over or march in the parade. Every year, Sgt. Fay, Sgt. O'Neil and Officer Murphy would bring in their wives' soda bread and hold a taste test. Barry never could tell the difference, but all threee swore by each wife's taste of Eire.

He took the bagel and his coffee to the back of the bar, and sat to think. To think about how he has a granddaughter who's also a hero. To think about how Bart seems so mercurial. And to think about Sara. Was she really flirting with him? Was he really flirting back? Should he be doing this? Is it too soon? Will it ever not be "too soon?"

He was confused. He didn't like confused. So he just sat back to eat his bagel.

[ooc: usual work-enforced slow-time advisory.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"And the bar gave it to you that way? I'd talk to Richard, or Bernard. And I'd dump it."

"No, it's okay." Ray downs a big swallow of it. "The radiation wears off after a couple of minutes, before the beans get brewed. It's an old trick the Japanese use to improve the quality of bad whiskey." If by 'the Japanese' you mean 'two nuclear physicists Ray knows who have way too much time on their hands', anyway. "Works much better than going to all the trouble of luwak coffee, and a lot less expensive. Anyway. Good morning. Did I say that yet?"

"I have no idea. You lost me with the radioactive coffee.

"Was that your way of saying it's really Irish coffee? Or do I have too much green bagel on the brain?"

"It's not radioactive. Any more than you would be several hours after an X-ray. The radiation causes a number of alterations in the volatile organic compounds inside the beans, the way it does to human DNA. Since there's no radioactive material being injected into the beans themselves, the associated nuclear particles decay pretty quickly and that's the end of that."

He takes another pull at the coffee. "Pretty close to Irish coffee, yeah," he says. It's not really the most accurate description but he's come far enough awake to not want to be cruel to a man he considers a friend. "But it tastes better than normal, and it's a lot stronger than normal. The guy in I Come in Peace had a rig the size of a small bathroom to process his coffee for him. This stuff looks like the end result, so I'm going to assume it's roughly the same process and not think about it too much, since it's doing a great job of making up for my lack of REM sleep."

"Ahhhh. So we get to the bottom of the matter.

"First off, I would stick with Irish coffee. At least today.

"Second, you don't need me to tell you that this is not a solution. You would be better off finding out why you aren't dreaming. You know that too.

"So I won't preach about the evils of coffee. I'll ask if you have any clue as to what the problem is."

"I know why I"m not dreaming," Ray says patiently. "It's because I wasn't sleeping. You can't get into the REM portion of the sleep cycle if you're only out for two hours- the human sleep rhythm requires at least a hundred and eighty minutes of consecutive downtime to achieve the proper set of brain waves in each phase. That's why it's better to sleep for three hours than five. You're not in mid-cycle. And before you ask, I slept for two hours because I spent the rest of that time trying to send Washu's device back... it's supposed to respond to voice commands, but my Japanese accent is terrible, and it wouldn't open the portal to take itself back to her. About all I managed to get it to do is this."

He reaches into a pocket and drops a book in front of Flash. The cover says The Gods of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. If Flash opens the book, the text is that of Lo!, by Charles Fort.

"The thing won't take a simple command like 'go home', but it will transmogrify one of my favorite childhood books into another on cue."

"Oh dear." He's not happy, but at least Ray was trying to do the right thing. At first.

"I'm not thrilled with a transmogrification device, to be honest. But I appreciate that you ar being smart about the thing in the first place. Really.

"I hope you have your room locked. Around here, someone could use that for the same kind of mischief I was afraid of with this device in its other mode. It's one thing if Meg wants to become a dragon, lord knows why. It's another if it happens against someone's will. Or if someone uses it to make lead into gold.

"Perhaps you need to find a Japanes speaking patron?"

"Yeah, my room's locked," Ray says. "Washu keyed it to all of my bio-signs, though. Voice, retinal scan, respiration, pulse rate, you name it. I think that's the problem. I'm pretty sure I’m getting my inflections right, but it won't operate without my pulse and stuff being in exactly the same state as they were when I first made contact with it. She also keyed it to the mental state of any intelligences involved- all three people have to be willing, and their biosigns have to indicate that none of us are under duress. I believe it works on the books because there are no biosigns or mental indications of anything whatsoever." He rubs at his face and finishes off his coffee. "I may look for someone who speaks Japanese, though. At least they can correct my pronunciation if I'm getting it wrong. It seems to be happy with my pronunciation of a few words, though- open, follow me, stay here, things like that."

"Well, sounds like you have the bases covered. Except the sleep. So I'd suggest you take a nap.

"And if a parade comes marching through, I'll let you know."

Ray smiles wryly and puts the book away. "I'll give it a shot," he says. "I did want to let you know I was trying to get rid of it, at least. I'm not as thick as I look."

"No. But then, I've been dealing with Bart. Sometimes, he's a genius. Other times, he Is as thick as he looks." Barry smiles at this.

"You know him better than I do," Ray says. "That time-scout thing he does is really amazing... god, if I could just figure out half of that... did he tell you he offered to take me to the thirtieth century for a visit?"

"No, you didn't. I think you might like some of what you find there, but I found it just a bit sterile. Bart claims it's a bit more tolearnt of sexual and other mores, but I didn't see that. I jsut saw lots of clean streets and bland people."

Ray nods. "I told him I'd have to wait on his offer," he says. "Romana's asked me to come along with her in the TARDIS as a companion for a while, and that's not an offer a guy like me can say no to. Not that the thirtieth century wouldn't be equally fascinating, but we're talking about time travel and interstellar travel here. I'd be kicking myself well into the afterlife if I passed up a chance at that kind of observational opportunity."

He orders another coffee, and gets a rather more normal cup this time.

"Besides, she said she likes pizza. I owe it to the city of New York to spread Little Italy's fame over as many planets as possible, don't I?"

"I met Romana a couple of days back. Defintely an interesting woman, though there was something odd, like she knew a private joke that she couldn't share.

"She and I compared notes. I think she was surprised to meet a time traveller without a time machine of his own. And she told me about her TARDIS. Have you seen it? Apparently it's pakred in here somewhere, in disguise."

"She's not from Earth," Ray says absently. "I don't know much about her home planet of Gallifrey, but from what I understand they're an awfully long way ahead of us- any version of us- in terms of length of continually operating civilization. Might be something to do with some kind of Gallifreyan ethos or injunction against temporal tampering. I know they've got rules about what you're allowed to fiddle with, but I'll be snockered if I can remember what the rules are, other than they're probably a good deal more sensible than the Federation's Prime Directive."

He thinks for a minute, then shakes his head. "Nope, haven't seen it," he says. "It's probably got a chameleon circuit on it so that it looks like it's a perfectly sensible part of the background, if I remember right. If you happen to walk into a room that's twenty times bigger on the inside than the outside, though, that's probably it. They're funny that way, from what I recall."

"Hmmm. Like a storage tessaract. We had one of those in the 30th century. We never had much in it, but it beat my old walk-in closet.

"Any civilization that tries to minimize timelime corruption is one I approve of. Maybe you should take Bart. He's awfully cavalier about it.

"But who are the Federation? I know I've heard the term Prime Directive, but I can't place it."

"I'll mention Bart to Romana, if you want. That might be the best place to start. I'm not really sure having Bart go interplanetary as well as inter-temporal is necessarily a good idea, since unlike my colleague Dr. Venkman, I don't carry syringes of psychoactive medication around with me on a regular basis."

He rubs at the bridge of his nose. "The United Federation of Planets is the interstellar government postulated for most of Earth's sector of the Milky Way galaxy in the television show, movie series, and other entertainment formats collectively known as Star Trek. It started its run in 1966 in my world. Lasted three years but developed a massive fan following, and there are so many variations on it by my time that I don't think it'll ever die... the Prime Directive says that members of the Federation aren't supposed to interfere in the social or technological development of non-member civilizations at a lower stage of advancement, which is of course bupkis. Any explorer interacting with a previously unencountered civilization is going to interfere with their development even if all he does is stand in the bushes and go 'ooh, shiny'. I remember my anthro 102 classes well enough to remember that... The creator of Star Trek was a man named Gene Roddenberry, and frankly, so far as I know the only reason he even stuck the Prime Directive into the TV show was so that he could make a moral point about the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War."

"There's at least one character from Star Trek here in the bar. I've met the ship's doctor from the starship Enterprise twice now- he's a man named Leonard McCoy, about so tall, blue eyes, Southern accent. He pointed me at some studies on human telepathy from his time that're absolutely fascinating, so I gave him my Milliways research and a copy of Tobin's in return. I don't think he knows about the multiversal nature of this place, though."

"You could have stopped at Star Trek. I'm not as up on pop culture as you are, but I did watch that as a kid. Liked it, but never feel in love with it. Guess I think that it got the aliens wrong, in retrospect.

"I liked the idea behind the Prime Directive, but I seem to recall that Capt. Kirk kept ignoring it. Never spent time thinking much about it.

"You say Dr. McCoy is here? And he hasn't signed up for my medical registry. Shame on him. He'd be a good man to have aboard.

"I have one doctor so far. One. Lots of healers of the magical kind, which is fine as well. But I think we need more MDs. if you see McCoy again, ask him to sign up?"

Ray smiles wryly. "Sorry. Lecture mode took over for a second there. I can't always help it."

"I've only seen Dr. McCoy twice so far. He's looked like hell both times, so that's probably why he hasn't signed up for anything. If he comes around again I'll let him know."

"Well, don't pester him then.

"But having a man of his skills would be good. Given the population here and the tendency towards mayhem, we need more medical care."

"Pester? Me?" Ray sounds injured for all of half a moment; then he grins. "No, it's okay. I'll let him know if it seems appropriate."

"Good. And the same would go for any other doctors, or healers, or nurses, you meet. I have 12 names. And one is a self-proclaimer pretender and one is Mike the turtle. I like Mike, but I don't want him doing surgery."

Ray considers this, then shakes his head. "He's probably pretty good at taking people apart, but I don't know how his anatomical skills for putting people back together are," he says. "I'd offer to help but the most I can do is two-man CPR, bag-valve-mask use, and mask-based oxygen administration. Real standard basic first responder stuff."

"I hope we don't need that, but it's good to know you can. Add it to the sheet, so I have it.

"What I really want to find is a pediatrician."