[IC] Lost in Dreams (Chandra)

[ericthered]

Gopper looks at smith mischievously, and smith looks annoyed for a second, but says:

"I actually have a list of her traits already. I took a class in impersonation, including helping others impersonate specific people, and I made a list for that specific purpose. Gopper here gives me a hard time about it."

he clears his throat.

"Gopal is seen as somewhat boring hard worker... you know, the typical asian stereotype: good student, people wonder if she has a life-- yeah. She and is somewhat bossy, and has a tendency to try to take over any group project she's in. She doesn't care as much for politics as much as she cares about culture, and responds to what she deems as 'low humour' with disdain."

Gopper: "They're copies, and you just told all of that to her face. Thats cold. just cold."

[Rocket Man]

It is a little cold, since parts of the description seem to fit Chandra Morgan a bit too closely as well.

Would some great power the giftie gie us, she thinks to herself as her uncle's old copy of Robert Burns comes back to mind. Still, at least I have a better social life than my sister. Well, as much as a med-school curriculum allows!

Meanwhile, let's see if the boys want to play.

She arranges her face into a mask, the expression of someone offended but too polite to make it garish. Her voice, when it speaks, has the Gopal accent -- not yelling, but dangerously controlled and soft.

"So, if I am such a 'grade grind' and 'know-it-all,' why do you two even bother with me? I'm sure such upstanding young men could find somewhere more pleasant to be, than ..."

She bites her lip and looks away.

( Acting roll: 9 to successfully put on the 'hurt Gopal' attitude. )

[ericthered]

Gopper: "Just because someone takes themselves seriously doesn't mean we have to. Gopal can be fun to hang around, not to mention she helps keep us on task. As I said, she's fun to embarass..."

Smith breaks out in laughter at Morgan's reaction, and seems to have considered Gopper to have scored a point. "Yep, thats the look!" The laughter isn't hostile though. Just incredibly amused.

Gopper: "Morgan's fun when she decides she has time for it. Which means she finds ways to make work..."

Chandra cracks a smile at Smith, who says: "Oh, so its a show? tell us just how you differ from our mutual friend then."

[Rocket Man]

Her expression becomes easier, as the boys confirm that she's "captured" Gopal's reactions and manner.

"And here I thought a lady was permitted some secrets," she says. "Still, you bit down on the lure rather nicely, I suppose you've earned some reward."

Take that as you will, boy-o.

"Based on a rather brief acquaintance ..." she muses. "It's rather curious, actually. We're both serious students, both survivors of tragedy, both quite happy inside our own heads. But I cut all my ties and came to a place where I had but one relative. She came to the cities of our old homeland, constantly surrounded by people.

"You'd think that would make me the quiet, standoffish one. But I suspect it's more complex than that."

She orders her thoughts, feeling that it's important to make these young men understand. "My 'sister' was always in a crowd, so she had to assert herself. I was alone in a new land, so I had to fit in. Occasional isolation was essential to her sanity -- or so I guess -- while being accepted by others was essential to my survival.

"Also ... well, India wears its feelings on its sleeve --and its face -- more than England does." Morgan's own face hides the disdain she feels for that lack of restraint. "If I needed to, I could hide in the middle of a crowd. My sister, from your description, needs to either remove herself from it, or, I suppose, take it over."

"We both found an interest in medicine, though it led in different directions. And our studies, it would seem, have given us both insane schedules. But I suspect if you compared our calendars, you'd find a few more social appointments on mine."

Now her smile grows winning, as she deliberately turns up the charm a bit. "But if you're thinking of testing my own reactions to 'low' humor, I would advise otherwise." Her eyes twinkle. "You might be less than amused by the results ... though I daresay the onlookers would enjoy themselves."

[ericthered]

Gopper: "That threat's just an open invitation. At least to us."

Smith: "Complete with an analysis of why you're different. You'll do well enough. And no one really questions when someone becomes friendlier. at least, its an easier fraud to pass off."

The three ate a meal in the cafeteria: a room with over 100 people eating food. Its the same food all around... some african paste called foo-foo that you dipped in a dish. The two men explained each day they served a different dish from the quanta, and you were expected to eat it in local fashion. "Some times we get good stuff, but sometimes we get super weird food... the mongolian days are terrible: tea and rancid Yak butter."

Chandra found the group quite diverse, and yet quite monotone: all kinds of ethnicities and languages, but all dressed in the same uniform, eating the same food.

[Rocket Man]

The uniformity doesn't bother her. After all, it's both a barracks and a school; a certain common mold is to be expected.

Much more so than the common mold sitting on her plate anyway. She's grateful for both her strong stomach and her ability to hide her feelings as she reaches carefully for the 'food' on the table, trying to mimic the manners of those around her.

God save the Queen, I thought I left practices like this back in India!

She has a hundred questions on her mind, all of which she has to be wary about asking in a common room where she's expected to already know many of the answers. She decides to start with a roundabout method.

"Honestly, the two of you," she says in her Gopal voice in case anyone overhears. "What do you expect to do with yourselves after you graduate, anyway? Assuming the powers that be actually suffer a mild bout of amnesia and allow it?"

What DOES one do on being enlisted into this Patrol? Patrol, I suppose -- but what? Where?

[ericthered]

Smith: "Oh, the black marks will emphasise our talents. We're headed strait for the contact division."

Gopper does his best to explain without making it sound suspicious or like a lecture. Chandra gathers the following:

There are hundreds of worlds out there, maybe even thousands, some inhabited, some not. These people possess the technology to travel between the different worlds in machines called conveyors. The whole conveyor business is run by two loosely connected organizations: infinity and white star. Infinity is a government body that is run by... the UN? a bureaucracy unto itself? Infinity is a corporation, and stupidly wealthy. And not just in the respect that they made more money than everyone else. This was actual wealth. Stuff. Raw materials. Food. Valuable metals. Art. It'd hoisted the planet up to a whole new level. And it was all driven by harvesting the resources of dozens of worlds... most of which were inhabited. Infinity was extremely concerned about keeping its existence a secrete from the other worlds. Which meant that people had to go in and make first contact with the locals, learn languages, figure out taboos, make friends, assess threats, and identify enemies. And they didn't just do this once for each world. It had to be done in every culture for each world. Gopper and Smith had their eye on this career.

OCC: I assume from your centrum comments you are at least slightly familiar with the setting. This is CLOSE. There are some notable missing or added elements. I'll try to let you know at the appropriate time.

[Rocket Man]

The concept makes Chandra dizzy for a moment. Thousands of earths, side by side, like pieces of a stained glass window. Interlocking pieces of a cosmic picture, perhaps, but each unique unto itself.

Her eyes flick to the others in the cafeteria. And these are the men and women who are learning to visit them. And then ... why be polite about it? ... to loot them.

Or is there actual trade? How DO you have actual trade with someone who doesn't know all the facts?

Her mind goes to the history classes of her boarding school: the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, a hundred other artifacts carted away from their native lands by a richer, stronger, more "civilized" nation.

Not always a bad thing, her English raising insists. After all, many of those lands couldn't protect or maintain those beauties properly. It's possible the only reason they're around now to be argued about is because of the 'imperialists' like ourselves.

Still ... the shoe pinches a bit when it's on the other foot, doesn't it?

She can see now why this world would consider her a threat. If the world's Earths are being systematically shaken down, the last thing any robber needs is someone who can sound the alarm.

But is it a robbery? Or preservation? She needs more information and a lunchtime conversation can't hope to capture it all.

"Delicate work for a pair of roughhousers," she says in the Indian accent, her full attention now on the two young men. "I thought surely they'd use your rugged good looks for the recruitment office." The tone is jesting but maybe just a little flirtatious ... if either of them chooses to read it that way.

She smiles. "Of course, with all you get up to, I wouldn't put it past you to slip that into the job description, too. What betting odds do you think I would get on your talking some backworld beauty out of Coventry and into the Patrol in your first six months? Maybe leaving a few crop circles behind while you're at it?"

[ericthered]

Smith: "Rough Housing? you mean our schemes? That's practice. We intend to continue pulling the wool over people's eyes and get paid for it. As for delicate work... you trusted us, and this certainly counts as delicate."

Gopper: "Perhaps its in the job description ... but perhaps not. You're not Gopal, and you don't have Gopal's training, in the patrol or before it. She didn't join on a whim. And some interesting vital information may get in the way of the background check for the patrol... like the fact that your finger prints are likely to be identical."

[Rocket Man]

Morgan gives a charming laugh.

"While I'm flattered that you consider me a beauty, I was speaking more hypothetically," she tells Gopper pleasantly. "Anyone you two try to shanghai into service is likely to be female and attractive, after all. Though perhaps not if the policy to outsiders is simply 'no, nay, never.'"

I'm quoting The Wild Rover on a foreign Earth. And I though this day couldn't get stranger!

She finishes her meal and looks for a decent place to study, but the medical student in her can't resist one last comment.

"Oh, and don't be so sure about fingerprints. Those are shaped partly by experiences; different lives give you different prints." The tone is the one she's used to correct many a classmate with shoddy homework. "Even identical twins don't have identical fingerprints, anymore than they have identical navels."