milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Jordan is supposed to stay and wait for the guards to come back. But maybe her friend Lincoln's curiosity is finally rubbing off on her because she can't sit still. She's going to the Island, but the wait is making her crazy. She has to get out of this white room, but how? She can't go out the way she came, and there might be guards on the other side of the door. She's about to give up when she spots a cracked bit of ceiling tile. Standing on top of the bench, she can just reach it...

She nudges it aside, and getting a good grip, hauls herself up. I'm just going to take a peek, then I'll go back, is the promise she forgets as soon as she hears strange noises that sound like people talking. She heads towards the noises until she finds another loose board overhead. Maybe someone else has been this way before? She repeats the process that got her into the ceiling and finds herself rising up out of the floor. Weird.

This place looks like the evening commissary--a bar, as one of the censors called it--but unlike the one from the Institute. She takes a seat on a stool, wincing at how dirty her uniform is and staring helplessly at a menu. Where are the fruit smoothies? There isn't even a vegetable-protein frappe. Time is short, and she isn't at liberty to puzzle out all the words she doesn't recognize all on her own. She has to get back soon, or she'll miss her ride to the Island (not to mention the fact she'd get in trouble for exploring without permission if the guards discover she's left) and she so wants to know more about this place.

Won't someone help her figure out what to do?

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No fruit smoothies?
Clearly she's been asking the wrong bartenders. The guy in the bright orange Hawaiian shirt would surely give her a smoothie if she asked.

And he wouldn't even be smarmy about it.

There is a man in an orange shirt who is smiling at her. She's used to men smiling at her. There's something about her sunny disposition, that's what Lima always said. So, it's not the smile that is strange.

He's wearing...orange.

Uh oh...For a moment, she's afraid he's with the Institute, but then she remembers that they usually only wear black. Maybe he's with the cafeteria staff?

"Do you...work...here?"

"Yup. Though, uh, I'm not technically on duty for another couple of hours. But seeing as you're looking like a checkmark in the Super Lost column, I'm more than willing to make an exception."

Jordan nods her head along with his breathless speak. He talks a lot to reaffirm the really short word he said at the beginning which she now takes to mean 'yes.'

"Yup," she whispers to herself. Wow! Keen! The censors are really getting lax these days. She decides to try out the new slang with the less-new one she learned from Lincoln last night. "Yup, that's me. Can I have a drink, please, dood?"

"Sure, anything in mind? Or should I suprise you?"

Oh boy. Surprises. This is her luckiest day possibly ever.

"I love surprises!" She giggles, unable to help herself, and almost mentions her trip to the Island. But that wouldn't be fair to him; he couldn't go because he worked at the Institute. This makes her feel incredibly sad for him. He seems like such a nice person. Orange suits him, too.

"Whatever you think is good. Whatever people like," Jordan mumbles, looking at her hands in her lap.

"Okay, I think I can handle that. But, you're going to have to answer some questions first. Just so I get an idea what you'd like. Deal?"

"Deal?"

She blinked at him, confused. She looked up and down the bar. There were no scanners, no way to swipe for her information and credit her a drink accordingly. Maybe...so, maybe she had to win one. But where were the cards?

"Go Fish or Old Maid?" She gathered at once this was the wrong thing to say. She opted for her previous tactic: mimicking. As seriously as she could manage, she said, "Just a joke, ha ha ha. Uh, deal."

Oooookay. There was something wrong with her, but that's okay. She's clearly new, and anyone subjected to Milliways without warning was due some freak out time.

At least that answers one of his questions right there. No booze for her. His turtey sense tells him that'd be chock full of badness.

"Are you allergic to anything that I should know about? And, do you prefer sweet or savory?"

"No, I'm healthy." She knew what allergies were, at least; Dyson 4-Charlie was always in front of her at meal times, and she had a warning flag that said she was allergic to peanuts. That meant peanuts made her sick. Nothing made Jordan sick, not like that.

"I like sweet things," she said, not sure if savory meant exactly the opposite and so focusing on what she knew. "I like pineapple," she added, trying to be helpful. Pineapples were tart and sweet, much better than plain old apples and, though she'd never had any to compare, probably better than pines.

"Pineapple huh? Okay, one Orange Pineapple smoothie coming up. Food wise. Would you describe yourself as Peckish, Hungry or Ravenous?"

They hadn't let her have breakfast this morning.

"Starving," she said, pepping up a little at the mention of the smoothie. She didn't see it listed on the menu, though one of the drinks, a [three-letter word]-on-the-beach had pineapple in it. "Is that it?" She pointed to the listing. It didn't say smoothie, but maybe [three-letter word] meant smoothie here. That was kinda silly, changing around words when old ones would do. But...she kinda liked it. She was learning so much already: dood, yup, deal...what could one more thing hurt?

"Can I have that, too? I like beaches. What do beaches have to do with pineapples? And what's that word mean?" She tapped [three-letter word] and scanned his reaction carefully. "Have you ever worked in the commissary before? I don't recognize you."

"I ... I uh suppose I could make you a Sex on the Beach. I just sort of figured you'd like to go virgin, what with all the confusion. And..."

He does this strange hand gesture that's somewhere between jazz hands and just random finger wiggling. Don't worry, first day or not, no one would understand it.

As for how to explain sex....

"You didn't used to be a turtle did you?"

What? It makes sense to him.
Mike sets about making both the pineapple orange smoothie, and the Sex on the Beach as requested.

"Commissary? OH the bar? I've been working here for couple of months or so, I guess. Nice dig. Normally me and my roommate Indy do the Monday Happy Hour shifts. I came down early to prepare and stuff."

He wipes his drink spattered hand on his apron, and then extends it to the lady across the bar.

"Mike. You can call me Mike."

"Mike," she repeats the name she has never heard until today. He doesn't have a number, which means he definitely works here. She had no idea the staff had to live together. That seems unfair.

"I'm Jordan Two-Delta." She beams at him and takes her drinks. The smoothie is easily best thing she's ever had until she tastes the other drink. It makes her wrinkle her nose and shake her head. "Weird!" But she likes it...she thinks. "Hey, what's a turtle?" A beat, another sip of the beach drink, then, "And what's a virgin?" She absently looks away at the name on the placemat and puts together the first thing he said with the three-letter word.

"And what's sex?"

What is the sound of one jaw dropping?
Oh, that'd be it right there. Convenient that.

At first he thinks she's just plain crazy, but then he remembers that not everyone is from Earth, no matter how Earth-Looking they might be. Silly Ex-turtle and your planecentrism.

"Well...okay. Um. Right. A turtle is a...here, I can draw it better than I can explain it."

He grabs a napkin and the pencil behind his ear. He draws a circle with four small ovals at the ten - two and four-eight positions. With a larger oval at noon, and a tiny triangle at six.

"They look sort of like that, and can be any color from green to brown to even black depending on species. As for virgin, in this case it means a drink that doesn't have alcohol. Like your smoothie, for example.
...
Sex? That ones not nearly as easy to define. It really depends on where you stand on a whole lot of different things."

Sex already seems really complicated, so complicated it depends on point of view. She knew that people standing in different places see things happen differently, and sometimes they don't agree what happened. She'd have more time for that question later.

Jordan picks up the turtle. It's really cute. Basically the same shape as a puppy, even with a tail, though a bit rounder than the one Dick and Jane have. She has never seen a green animal before, but then again, aside from pictures, she has never seen any animal before.

"Can I have this?" She wants to look for turtles when she goes to the Island. Terr-till. Turtle. Turtle. Turtle.

Experimentally, she sips her smoothie and switches for the sex-on-the-beach. There's something different about the second one. It has al-kah-hall in it. It makes her stomach warm even though there's cold smoothie running down ahead of it.

"I think I like al-kah-hall."

"Um...sure. Napkins are powerful things. Trust me on this."

He wipes down the bar, watching her with amusement. It's not a mocking type of amusement, just plain old amusement.

"A lot of people do, but you've got to be careful. That Fire Water can do some damage if you let it."

"Fire can't be water. That's just silly." But maybe it's not wrong even if it is contradictory. Right now, the warmth has risen almost to a burn, and her stomach is swimming a bit. She fears the damage Mike mentioned, but the smoothie is a balm and nothing feels injured. It feels all a bit unreal.

As ever, it has taken her a bit longer than it ought to have done to latch onto something, something he said and she let pass because she was too busy finding out what every other word out of his mouth meant. She blinked at the flimsy napkin in her hand and the sketch of the turtle, then looked at him, down at herself, and back at him.

"Why did you ask me if I was a turtle?"

"The silly doesn't reign around here, it pours."

He says with a smile and a wink.

"I asked because I was really curious about sex right after I changed...and so I thought I'd ask the obvious."

Mike leaves out the part where he's been curious about sex since pretty much the beginning.

"After you changed?"

Horrified, Jordan falls off the back of her stool when she tries to discreetly lean away. On the floor, head aching, she manages, somehow, to calm down. He isn't contaminated. He can't be. He works here. They wouldn't let him be here if it weren't safe...

Feeling stupid and undignified, she climbs back up to her feet and takes three tries to find the stool. Why is her balance so off? Normally, she's so nimble...

"Uh," she stutters, "I think I'll have another one of those." She points to the smoothie and attempts to brush off her own stupidity. "Changed?"

"Woah, are you okay Jordan?"

Mike leaps forward, extending a hand in her direction. When he's sure that she is all right, he returns to his original position, and begins to gather components for another smoothie.

He used to be used to reactions like that, but it's something he's forgotten about in the days since his birthday present.

"You know what? Forget I said anything. Everything is A OK. Here, while we're waiting for this to mix, maybe you should have some water."

One hand works on the smoothie, the other fetches her a glass of water. Nimble and ambedextrous is our Mike.

"Water's good," she agrees. Alcohol is good but not a lot, like bacon or UV bathing. It's too bad.

"Can I ask you something?" She realizes she already has, and blushes, frustrated, "Do you ever wish that you could win the lottery? Aren't you sad you can't leave this place?"

The smile that appeared when she righted herself and took the water, only grows when she catches her punnish mistake. She's quick, this one.

"The lottery?"
Mike shrugs.

"I guess sometimes. I mean, who doesn't like winning things? But you know, I've always sort of lived by the idea that one should be with who one is, and not where one is. If you don't have the first, the second doesn't matter at all."

"With who," she repeats, dully, saddened to think of Lincoln. For the first time ever, she thinks she might be jealous of the people who get to stay here. The Island may have sunshine, maybe even turtles, but there are people here.

"I'm glad I met you," she says, honestly. "You're pretty smart. And you talk about things. None of the others talked about things." She shook her head, sipping her water. "Do you have friends you're happy to be with?"

"I can't help but talk about things. Things are my life. I collect them....and people. Don't ask."

He grins.
What can we say? The man is all smiles.

"Friends and family. Some are here, others aren't. Doesn't mean they make me any less happy."

He gestures her closer for a stage whisper.

"i'm a happy guy"