And now
Coasting Down the Other Side
Convention 2024.
They say it gets easier now
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Coasting Down the Other Side
Convention 2024.
They say it gets easier now
Quote:-----------________________________________
"Sharrup you mouth? What is this Sharrup your mouth? "
Lun glared at him…
"Rocky… and Bullwinkle. Natasha Fatale. Ahm….." he paused, looking a little confused. He began to sweat as Lun's gaze bored. "It's funny."
"Who?"
"…..Television."
"Mudachok," scoffed Lun.
Of all the thing's that'd been said at the Marsden debate, some random wag's interjection of 'Sharrup your mouth' had gone on to become the most quoted moment of the hour-long discussion.
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Lev found a corner in a bar that could almost pass as quiet. With the heaving mass of the convention passing around himself and his drinking companion, what passed as quiet, was still loud enough that making sense of the feed on the television
It was as good a place as any to meet up with an old friend - one who introduced him to the concept of Single Malt.
"Laphroaig, Quarter Cask," he said, placing a half-empty whisky bottle onto the table between them
Lev eyed the green bottle suspiciously, before looking up at the grinning, dark-skinned man behind it.
"Hmm…. Peat," he said.
Andrew Otenbe glowered at him. "Don't tell me you don't like peat?" he asked, pouring a measure of golden liquid into Lev's glass. The scent of burning turf began to fill the bar.
"Like him? I can't stand the bastard." Lev snorted, before taking a sip from the tall glass. "But I'll never say no to good Scotch."
He drew in a deep breath, allowing the warmth of it to travel down through his body, before exhaling it with a deep, satisfied sigh. It never failed to satisfy, like drinking deep of a peat-fuelled bonfire by the crashing seaside.
"So Lev," Andrew said, settling back into his seat. "Halfway through the project you disappear off the face of Mars without telling anyone. What the fuck happened to you man?"
Aware of just who he was working for Lev couldn't help but glance around him to check for listeners. He felt the gaze of unseen eyes crawl down his back, and knew he couldn't tell the whole truth. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward across the table.
"Someone asked me to run a lab," he answered, remembering his cover.
It was still hard not to brag
"You, running a lab?'" His drinking companion sat bolt upright, staring at him. The man almost seemed ready to burst out laughing
"Without even a professor's reference or publishing history? Are you for real?"
"Fuckin' truth." Lev grinned, before swallowing a mouthful.
Andrew set his glass down on the table. "Well, don't keep it to yourself…. I'm all ears."
"You know that cyber with that rock in the belt…"
Again, the surprise was obvious. "You mean…"
"The other one!" he corrected. "The redhead with the armour…. "
"Ah Martial arts one. I get my cyborgs confused, they're all the same kind of crazy. I'm going to guess she didn't hire you for those two years of Karate in secondary school?"
"Fuck no. She's got this thing in her head about changing her reputation, so she's putting together a mission to Arcadia - an amateur science mission."
Again, Andrew blinked. "You sure it's the same redhead we're thinking of?"
"Yeah. She thinks if people see her putting together a mission like this they'll start to buy what she's selling." Lev took a drew in a dubious deep breath, keenly aware of the real reasons behind everything. He glanced down at his glass for a moment and his own reflection swirling in the pale gold liquid. "I think if she's willing to pay me, and give me a chance to actually publish real results then she's got herself a scientist."
And that was the truth.
"Lucky bastard," said Andrew, taking a drink.
Time to brag, thought Lev. Brag about science. "It's a deep ocean survey too," he continued, finding his excitement. "so it's something literally nobody's ever done. There's a real chance to learn something about the evolution of life in the Devonian period, because that's where Arcadia is…"
"Lucky bastard." Andrew repeated sourly, interrupting him "Sorensonn's bughunt is still going but I don't think anybody knows what they're looking for anymore. Mars's too bloody contaminated these days - there's no way to be certain it isn't ¬just something terrestrial that's hitched a ride anymore. Eight found tardigrades on a wreck that were still living happily."
"Living? Or just viable?"
Viable tardigrades being nothing special, of course. The only thing that really killed the buggers was incineration. And even then the superstition was to scatter the ashes to make sure they couldn't re-assemble themselves.
"Oh these bastards were living alright." And his irritation at that face bristled. "They'd even reproduced at least one generation. God knows where they got the moisture from - maybe the wreck. You see our problem…"
The man's smile suggested it'd be Lev's problem too.
"We were planning on running test dives in the Great Lakes and North Atlantic…." he said, flatly.
"You want to have some good sterilisation protocols," Andrew stated. "Or tardigrades will inherit the universe."
"I guess I'll have to come up with something that'll fit on a cramped transport," Lev took a deep breath. "Or get the dive team to do it since they're sorting out their own hardware. All I have to do is worry about the lab."
"They let you spec the lab too?"
Now that was almost too good to be true.
"Well, my redheaded employer knows as much about Science as I do about Martial Arts." he said, allowing a smile to crawl across his lip, before taking another sip from his glass. "She experiments on herself from time-to-time you see, and I think the one time she actually tried to write a paper on it, the journal pulled it because of 'informed consent' violations."
"Hah…. mad's who have no idea what they're doing to themselves - that's an old joke."
"They're a blight on the profession of honest science!" Lev declared for all to hear and ignore. He took a deep breath to calm himself. "They also let me spec lab assistants if you're looking for something more interesting than bughunting for Sorensonn."
"4 weeks on a cramped ship half-filled with women, to a sunny paradise world with a chance to make real discoveries." Andrew sighed "If you'd asked me a month ago I'd have jumped on it. But admissions for the Doctorate programme is next month, and the professor's already recommended me. I might have a real chance too."
Lev sat back."You've been working for him for ten years, and he only just got around to that now?"
"Unfortunately, I think I made the mistake of being too good to be replaced…" he offered a wan smile, before turning his gaze to the bottom of his glass. "He's still complaining about having to find another to replace me and I'm not sure he's joking."
"Well. Here's to getting out," Lev offered, before downing the last of his Scotch. It sent a shudder through his body, fallowed by a warm, smokey exhale.
"Thanks…Good luck with Arcadia."
"Thanks, man. And now for the next item on our list…" He drew a short, squat bottle bottle with a blew label out from his backpack, placing it on the table beside the Laphroaig.
"Kilchoman First 18, Cask Strength."
The unasked question being 'Who'd you murder to get it?'
"I traded a Yamazaki 18, my Auchentoshan Three-wood and that GlenDronach Allardice I'd been saving for it." He popped the stopper, before pouring two generous measures. "But trust me, it's worth it."
"I find that, after drinking Laphroaig, everything that follows tastes like Laphroaig." And that worried Andrew, greatly. Such a wonderful thing, could go to waste.
A glass of water would cleanse the palate. Maybe two. Something that special, deserved special treatment. It also required an extra special effort next year…
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Daryl settled herself into the pilot's seat of the cruiser, watching the convention traffic go by through the windows. The ship was cruising under Newton's autopilot, orbiting steadily
Her reflection looked up at her, red-eyes meeting read before the glare of sunrise over Saturn swallowed it in magnesium arc-light.
She reached up with a gloved hand and flipped down the green-tinted sun-visor. She took a moment to soak in the warmth of the sunlight, inhaling the scent of someone's lunch from the galley, mixed with machine oils from the generators behind her, seeping ozone from the overhead vents and her own black polymer skin.
She clenched her gloved hands into a fist one, twice, then a third time before allowing herself to relax
For this first time since it happened, her mind was clear. Catharsis was a beautiful thing. A screaming hurricane of tears had blown the fog from her mind.
There was a big difference between carrying on as if nothing at all had happened, and carrying on as normal. One was a refusal to even fight. One was victory.
She took a deep breath, then pushed a button on the pilot's panel to purge the waste canister. With it went her remaining contact lenses and blonde hair dye, drifting away into open space.
Soon, the dye would wash out, leaving an unnatural silver behind to accompany her now red eyes.
At least she still had her natural skin tone. Daryl sat there for a time, twirling strands of her hair through her electropolymer-skinned fingers, smiling softly to herself.
After that, it was time to watch Kotono demonstrate the results of paying someone to build her a replica set of 3D-manoeuver gear. Including frangible sword-blades. The results were almost guaranteed to be embarassing.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?