milliways_bar | (no subject)

~~Because it had to be done...~~

Geoff sees Trillian and can't resist the temptation, so he walks over to her table.

"Only one thing you're missing now," he says with a cheeky grin. He waves his hands dramatically and produces a plate of dinner rolls.

It takes her a second to note the presence of anything besides old stones from Texas, but when she does, Trillian smiles at him.

"Hopefully not actually resembling rocks in anything besides shape and the occasional colour - but then again, these're dusty."

Sampling a roll, Geoff gets a grin.

"All I can offer you, though, is a rock."

He waves it away. "Oh, that's all right. Tribute's nice, but hardly necessary anymore. I do it because there's little else I can do.

"I'm Geoff."

"A good name - s'my father's name, actually."

Trillian smiles, shrugging again.

"You could sit, if you wanted to, maybe share. Um, the food, not the rocks - though they are nice rocks."

Geoff does sit. And he does take a roll as well. Never trust a chef that won't eat his own cooking, after all.

"So, er. They are nice rocks and all, but why are you sorting through them?"

"They're not entirely just rocks."

Trillian gives one a sideways glare. It starts glowing. It gets shoved back in the box.

"Separating real rocks from pieces of a granilith."

"Oh, right."

Beat.

"What's a granilith?"

"Uh, it's ... "

Something she never wants to go near again.

"Sometimes used as a beacon, telling a story of some sort. Or a prophecy, that's what this one was. It's a series of stones and things that look to be just a strange geologic formation, until the right people come by. Felt like it was something out of a freaky sci-fi novel until I saw one.

"And then I kept it."

"And what happens when the right people come by?"

Somehow he doesn't expect the answer to be 'they get all you can eat hotcakes' or anything else remotely pleasant-sounding.

"I wasn't there, so I can't be sure always - but sometimes, it causes flashbacks and other unpleasant emotional reactions. Most of the time for a good cause, though. People who created them are quite dead, so I'm stuck theorizing a bit. I'm trying to trace them back to initial composition."

The boxes get a longer look, along with the calculator, one of her books, and the plate of rolls, which loses another member to Trillian's mouth.

"Not working."

He nods sympathetically. "You can't get the flour out of the biscuit, unfortunately."

"Exactly. Deconstructing is a lot harder than building."

She pokes distastefully at a rock, which teeters and sparks.

Her finger sparks back at it.

"Ow. Shit. Stop that."

Geoff eyes the sparking rock.

"I could turn that into a scone if it's bothering you."

"... really."

Trillian pokes the rock again, which leads to another electromagnetic battle against her finger.

"I'd like to see that."

Geoff shrugs and pushes the corner of the rock a few times, causing it to spin. As he does so, he pushes some of that godly power he was endowed with into the atoms and gently coaxes them into another form.

When the rock stops spinning, it has turned into a flaky cinnamon scone.

It may still occasionally spark, however.

"Oh, hey, shiny!"

Yep, the chemist in Trillian who also likes food? Is appreciating that.

"-- is that edible?"

Geoff wrinkles his brow. "It... should be. I've never tried to change something with so much power already in it. You may want to wait until it stops sparking, though."

He looks down at his hands. "Time was, I could have turned entire buildings into biscuits, or roads into flatbreads. Now, I'm just... old and tired, I suppose."

Michael wanders by, eyeing the rocks.

"...are those what I think they are?"

"I think they are! Only - maybe not, since they might not be what you think. Not much of a mindreader."

"A granilith."

"Mostly. It's, um, bits, at any rate."

She pokes at another one, which shines for a second and then goes completely dull, then pitches it in the box.

"Trying to figure out how they do that. The whole hiding-funky-shapes shiny prophecy deal, that is."

He blinks at her phrasing.

"The last time... it kind of came clear when we needed it."

"That's what I've managed to figure from stories - but how does it know when it's supposed to show up?"

She cocks her head a little. "Chemically, they're just electrically charged rocks."

Michael shrugs. "Never understood it myself. Programming, maybe."

"If there's anyone who can just get it, I want to meet that person. So far, nobody has - and I don't think that anyone I know outside of Benjy and Frankie will get it, and they might not be able to explain in ways that humans can understand."

"There might be someone on Antar who could help."

"... I never thought of that. Brill, Michael."

He grins. "I try."

"If you come across anyone." Trillian smiles at him, jotting something down on her notepad - in Aurebesh. "Not sure if chemists run rampant, I haven't been taking polls - but if there is one, send 'em my way."

"I'll ask around", he promises with a grin.

"I'll owe you one."

Beat.

"... Y'know, again."

"Nah." He waves it off. "We still owe you for what you did."

"I didn't do anything special. Just what I do, really. Max got me out of a sticky situation."

Max put her in it, too, but that's not the point. Besides, she offered.

"Then it's a whole big... payback thing. We do that."

"Everyone can just owe everyone else for all eternity," Trillian sums up.

He grins wryly. "Something like that."

"Hoopy."