thebastion | Day 217 (Open)

Entry tags:

Day 217 (Open)

Who: Colin, Rosethorn,anyone else who wants to drop by
Open: Closed to Rosethorn, Open like a door afterwards
When: 217, all morning
Where: Colin's workshop
What: Colin's at his workshop for anyone who needs to talk to him
Format: Prose to start, but will match
Warnings: There be Colin here

As he had been doing ever since the plague had been resolved, Colin was busy at work on some project of some sort. He'd been in a very poor mood for quite some time, and had been mostly keeping to himself. The movies nights that he'd set up had been a good distraction, and there would be another one this evening, but that was at least ten hours away.

In another couple of hours, he'd set out with someone for another salvage run. Until then, he works with his head down. Someone might be able to catch him by surprise, if they remember he's got a proximity sensor...

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"Well, there WAS a quarantine and all," Nanaki says, saying it like it's the obvious answer here. Which it is, to her, because she has enough common sense to not break quarantine.

She walks over to where Colin is working, looking over the aircraft Colin had found. It's not quite what Nanaki would have expected from something that could fly- it looked more like a boat than a plane- but if everyone was saying it could fly, then she wasn't going to doubt them. They know better than her about mechanical things, after all.

"I thought I should check on you, you've been hiding away a lot. Probably working, I figured, but I wanted to check."

"Over a week ago," Colin tells her in amusement. "I don't think I even saw you for movie night, you missed a heck of a show."

Her observation on the craft is oddly accurate, and the source of much of Colin's frustration. He knows how it should work, mostly, but it's missing a lot of the instruments that it needs before Colin will be comfortable flying it. It can get people where they're going quickly, but Colin would rather that it also get them there in one piece...

"Oh? I appreciate it, but I'm doing okay," Colin says. "Morale's taken a bit of a hit after that damn plague, and I've had to re-assess some projects, but all things considered, I'm doing okay."

Edited 2014-08-25 17:03 (UTC)

"Well, it's better to be certain," Nanaki says in response, "You don't want to mess around with getting sick when there's almost no doctors left."

She still presses the issue, though, because she thinks Colin might be working too hard. Maybe.

"As long as you're remembering to eat and sleep, then things should get better slowly. I think everyone's still recovering, and it'll take time."

Unless something really awesome happens. That would boost morale a lot.

"I don't like to mess around with getting sick at all," Colin says, leaning on the edge of the craft and looking down at her. "But then, I'm properly paranoid."

He smiles in amusement at her worry. "I'd almost think you were worried I was grinding myself to the bone," he tells her. "But yeah, everyone's having a tough time of things. I'm about at the end of my rope when it comes to trying to keep peoples' spirits up. Not that it'll stop the movie night, I've got plans for those for months."

"Well SOMEONE'S got to worry. I mean, have you seen some of the people here? I thought Yukio was going to work himself to death while everyone was sick!"

She only saw him after the fact too, when everyone was getting better, and he looked really tired then. She can only imagine what he was like in the middle of it.

The mention of months of movies does pique her interest, though. "Just how many movies do you have?"

"Yukio's young, and yet he's grown up way too fast," Colin says, sighing and smiling. "He hasn't quite figured out that the whole universe doesn't rest on his shoulders. Or that those shoulders will get tired if he doesn't take a break. I made him take a break when it was done. He didn't want to, and yet, he zonked like he hadn't slept in months."

He shook his head then. He could only imagine how much Yukio must have been through to get the kind of education and outlook on life that he had. To say nothing of his working tendencies...

"Whatever the case, Corsican labor laws are clear. Ten hours of work a day, with three hours of overtime, max. I don't push myself past that unless lives are on the line." Colin says, and he pauses. "For reference, the Corsican standard day is 31 hours long. As for the movies.. well... do they have the cybernet where you're from? Internet? Some sort of society-wide computer network?"

31 hours seems like a really long time to Nanaki. Then again, she's used to 24 hour days, so she couldn't imagine having to switch to 31 hours. She'll have to ask him more about his world later, it's piqued her curiosity.

But for now, she's distracted by the second part, about internet. "Yeah, we have internet," she says, "Probably not as sophisticated as yours, and not everyone has it, but a lot of people do. ....Well, 'did,' I suppose."

Sometimes she forgets to talk about her world in the past tense.

"But are you saying you pirated a bunch of movies?"

"Close," Colin said, smirking. "I pirated every movie that was on an accessible server on Earth. And between two and three dozen other worlds."

He holds up his wrist and pats his computer. "Storage space and data speeds continue to grow exponentially as societies progress through the information and space ages. I can hold a world's internet on a fraction of a fraction of my computer," he explains, probably sounding more than a little full of himself.

"ALL of them?"

That. Sounds pretty amazing, actually. So much so that she doesn't immediately take in the stuff about storage space. There are more important questions to ask, anyway.

"So, um, do you have 'Totoro' saved on there?" No, she's totally not asking because she wants to watch it, what gave you that idea?

"Everything that was ever stored on a server somewhere," Colin confirms. "And given the information age... I think that the only thing I don't have is the films that were destroyed by age before they could be preserved. So yes, everything."

He pauses for a moment, running a quick search through his programs. His artificial eye briefly shifts to black and green, before returning to normal. "Yes, I have Totoro," he confirms. "Along with a few other related projects. A short film about a Kittenbus?"

He sounds unsure, but amused as well. "Anyway, yes. I had to track down the location, but it turns out my wife's family enjoys Miyazaki's works, so they're readily accessible," he says.

As soon as Colin says that he has it (and the short video about the kittenbus, which she actually hadn't seen before), Nanaki is practically grinning from ear-to-ear. It's been years since she saw Totoro, but it had always been one of her favorite childhood movies.

Then she remembers that Colin is from the future, and the future may hold more Ghibli movies that she has not seen before, since they would not have been made yet in her time. "So...if you have Miyazaki's movies, do you have all the ones Studio Ghibli made?"

She's trying to play it cool, but her excitement might be noticeable.

"The Earth that we frequently visit is in year 2059 AD," Colin says, prefacing what he's about to say. "Needless to say, studios like Ghibli, Kadokawa, Disney, Warner Brothers, all of them have continued quite merrily. And yes, I have Ghibli's entire collection. Among other things. But bear in mind, alternate universes frequently have some divergence, so I can't promise everything is as you expect. However, it may not be different at all, and won't finding out be fun?"

He's glad to see her excitement, really. It offers insight into some hope for the future.

"That's okay, it's just more things to watch."

Really, Nanaki is excited. Movies are something she really misses from home, and having the chance to see them all again- and some new ones too- makes her feel happier than she has in a while.

Oh, but she has to ask first, right? "So...think we could watch one of them, on the next movie night?"

"I like the way you think, Prophet Girl," Colin tells her, giving her a warm smile. "You know, not one person has asked me for another movie... And so long as they don't, the request queue is wide open. So... I think we're watching Totoro next."

Externally, Nanaki just smiles warmly at Colin as she says, "Thank you so much! I bet everyone will like it, it's a classic."

But internally, she's practically dancing with excitement. Which is weird, she doesn't normally get so excited about things, but a real movie after months of just surviving and it's one of her favorites apparently is enough for her.

"I'm sure everyone will love it," Colin tells her, smiling just as warmly at her. "And if you've got any other movies you want to see, don't hesitate to mention them. Ideally, I'd like to show a movie every couple of nights."

Nanaki is in no way a movie expert, but she knows enough to give a couple suggestions. "Well, I guess it would be a good idea to rotate genres? Like, an action movie, then a comedy, then a tragedy, and so on. Um...in my time, there was a series of movies coming out, they were about a kid at a school for wizards? I never saw them, but I think they were pretty popular. And a bunch of science fiction movies were popular then too."

Colin nods in agreement with her, and pats his wrist affectionately. "That's what I was thinking. Nobody wants to see an endless string of action movies, or romantic comedies, or any other single genre," he says. "I was thinking of switching it up, a night of comedy here, a night of drama there, sci fi, fantasy, you know, give it a good mix. About the only thing I don't care to show is horror or tragedy. I think we've got enough of that to last us quite some time."

He keeps smiling at her, hoping she realizes he's just making a point, not chastising here.

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Day 217 (Open)

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