Logs:Many Hats

Many Hats
Dramatis Personae Anahita, Jax	2024-05-01 "Back in my day, 'signal thread' meant lighting a series of beacons, one after the next, to call your comrades to action."
Location <NYC> Evolve Cafe - Lower East Side
Spacious and open, this coffeeshop has a somewhat industrial feel to it, grey resin floors below and exposed-beam ceilings that have been painted up in a dancing swirl of abstract whorls and starbursts, a riot of colour splashed against a white background. The walls alternate between brick and cheerfully lime-green painted wood that extends to the paneling beneath the brushed-steel countertops. There's an abundance of light, though rather than windows (which are scarce) it comes from plentiful hanging steel lamps. The walls here are home to artwork available for sale; though the roster of prints and paintings and drawings and photographs changes on a regular basis it has one thing in common -- all the artists displayed are mutants. The seating spaced around the room is spread out enough to keep the room from feeling cluttered. Black chairs, square black tables that mostly seat two or four though they're frequently pushed around and rearranged to make space for larger parties. In the back corner of the room is more comfortable seating, a few large black-corduroy sofas and armchairs with wide tables between them. There's a shelf of card and board games back here available for customers to sit and play. The chalkboard menus hanging behind the counter change frequently, always home to a wide variety of drinks (with an impressive roster of fair-trade coffees and teas largely featured) though their sandwiches and wraps and soups and snacks of the day change often. An often-changing variety of baked goods sit behind the display case at the counter halfway back in the room, and the opposite side of the counter holds a small selection of homemade ice creams. A pair of single-user bathrooms flanks the stairway in back of the cafe; at night, the thump of music can be heard from above, coming from the adjoining nightclub of the same name that sits up the stairs above the coffeehouse. Evolve has not yet reopened for business, but that has not stopped it from being busy. Along one corner there are piles of protest signs available for the taking, with materials near at hand to make more. The nightclub upstairs has turned into a storage space slash decompression zone. Near the comfy chairs in the back are many large and neatly labeled bins of medic supplies. Even if there is no food currently for sale there are free lunches supplied to the protesters during the day and plenty of snacks available other times. Somewhere upstairs, a number of people have just crashed for the night. At this Very Small Hour of Wednesday morning it's -- not actually all that quiet in here; despite being the middle of the night there are several clusters of protesters sprawled recharging in the chairs from one of many splinter marches that went on Many Miles longer than planned. Jax is not recently in from a march; he's been here for a while. But the last patient (for now) has just cheerfully ignored his advice for Resting and hobbled out on their freshly splinted ankle sprain to rejoin the rowdiness several blocks away, and so at the moment he's slumping back on a corner of the couch and closing his eye for just a second. Then sitting back up again to open his computer back up and take this Brief Respite to add to an in-progress document of Various Instructions that need to be disbursed to Various Groups in the morning in preparation for the packed day ahead, currently halfway through a bullet list of Things Protest Marshals Should Know. The coffee never really stops flowing in times like these, but the fresh pot Anahita has just brewed smells a lot more appealing than whatever's left in the industrial beverage dispensers. She is recently arrived back from a march. Or from something, anyway, having showered and changed somewhere along the way into a purple plaid flannel worn open over a black ribbed undershirt, carpenter jeans, and gray hiking boots. There are lilacs woven into her crown braids, and a sprig of it sticking jauntily from her shirt pocket. She brings Jax a mug of coffee and sits down beside him with her own thermos. "You should take a real break," she admonishes mildly, then adds, perhaps as a sort of corollary, "you could farm that out to someone with fewer hats." Jax glances up with a grateful smile. He's taking the mug first, nodding his thanks as he takes a large swig. There are hats -- several hats -- piling cartoonishly atop each other in a precarious-looking pile on his head. "Everyone 'round here wearing too many hats." Half the pile vanishes, now on Anahita's head, though there's little enough she can currently see of it except for the immensely wide brim of a comically oversized sun hat. "Not to mention how grief takes up like, room for five hats all on its ownsome." The hats vanish. He adds another bullet point to his list. "S'late, besides. Folks oughta sleep that's going to sleep. Tomorrow --" A small wince, correction: "-- later today's gonna be a lot." Anahita looks up at the brim of her illusory hat(s) and gives a noncommittal hum. "I only just see the one." She uncaps her thermos and breathes in the steam before drinking. "Strange how much space grief takes up, when it is usually spoken of in terms of absence. I doubt I am going to manage much sleep, even if I ought." Her eyes track over to the counter that so many associate with Taylor. "An absence we're trying to fill with an uprising, but I suppose that is appropriate for May Day." She glances aside at. "What is the current estimate on numbers for. Later today? It still boggles my mind how much technology both aids and complicates organizing. Every time I stumble into an electronic security debate I have to bite back the words 'back in my day.'" Jax shakes his head, the tip of his tongue wiggling at a lip ring. "I ain't even got a hope of guessing, at this point. Groups I been talking to already thinked we gonna clear a hundred k easy for the main march but that was before all these flatscan orgs hopped in on things and I sure ain't gonna say no to some actuall solidarity for the first time in pretty much ever but they ain't really communicating with us at all." His head drops briefly against his hand, fingers scrunching into his brightly colorful hair. "Not to even mention the fact that Ryan getting up on stage again gonna bring out a crowd all its own." He drops his hand back to his knee, peeking over at Anahita from behind a shaggy fringe of peacocky blue. "Lord, we gotta cluster of medics trucking up from down South, wanna get connected, but ain't bringing a phone 'tween the lot of 'em. What exactly they want us to do with that I got no clue but it's --" He grimaces, his shoulders sagging just a little. "Tag's problem now, I guess. Anyway," this has a crooked smile to go with it, "sure do make me long for the days when we hadda communicate with pigeons or however y'all's people worked things out back then." Anahita nods sympathetically. It's contextually sympathetic, anyway. Her serene expression gives little indication one way or another. "Last minute pivots on big actions are hard even when the organizers are in accord, and coalition-building takes time. They may have dissent in their ranks from those who are wary of our powers, or fear the police reprisal, or just don't trust people they haven't worked with." She bows her head. "If they show up anyway, it says a lot. They should still try communicating." The curve of her lips is not quite a smile. "Even if they have to use pigeons. They should be grateful. Back in my day, 'signal thread' meant lighting a series of beacons, one after the next, to call your comrades to action. Police stations are ideal, but patrol cars will do." After a brief pause, she allows, magnanimously, "In a pinch, signal lamps work, too." She takes a sip of tea and adds, "Maybe, if Tag is lucky, your medics from the South have a telepath. Or a technopath." "We should try that," Jax says, earnestly. His cup and then Anahita's thermos both wreath in flame, crackling realistically but without heat. "How many stations 'tween seven and fifty, you think. We could have a real dramatic beacons of Gondor moment. Reinforcements already on the way but I think it'd be good for morale." He lowers his coffee, the flames dwindling to just a faint shimmer where his fingers curl against the cup. "I'on think any of them mutants," he confides with a small widening of his eye. "They seem a little gunshy on the whole, you know, joining up with a whole barrage of freaks thing, but." He looks down at his cup, faint whorls of light swirling out from where his finger taps against the side. "He was a Black man, too." Anahita's nod this time is firm and approving. "Not just morale. The city can be confusing to navigate. It would only be hospitable to light the way for our visiting comrades." She holds up her thermos like Lady Liberty's torch before lowering it for another sip. "The comms team will complain it is not secure. In fairness to them, last minute pivots on comms are hard, too, but we know some people who would be happy to help implement this." She tilts her head and studies Jax sidelong, quiet. It's several beats before she says, softly, "He was. The local organizers knew him. The reinforcements from out of town probably did not." Another beat. "I was locked up for a decade. Has this...happened before?" "Y'know, on just this one, I think it'd be fine if the cops got the message." Jax is turning his cup slow between his fingers. His brow furrows, and after a moment he shakes his head. "When Flicker died, lotsa people turn out that don't usually, but that was different. And certainly these weren't the first mutants cops've killed 'tween then and now. But --" He takes another slow drink. "Lassiter's the only time I seen anything close and even that was -- I don't know. People turning up cuz they cared, which sure ain't nothing, but it also ain't -- other orgs releasing statements, folks organizing one coast to the other. This kinda momentum..." His eye flicks up toward Anahita, his smile small and wistful. "I just wish Luci was here." There's another long pause from Anahita. "When I was still with the Maoists. Before Internationalism died. Again. Black communists tried and tried to bring our focus back to the community level. To people, where it should have always been." She rolls her thermos between her hands meditatively. "Our little lives are where movements start. Lucien understood that. So did Taylor." Her eyes track to the counter again, where a few recently awakened or too-long awake people are sluggishly helping themselves to coffee. "But so do you and Ryan. Taylor might not have ever gotten here without you." She turns to study Jax. "And you are still here." "I ain't been round so long as you but feels like in all the movements I seen, Black radicals always the quickest to take solidarity serious." Jax's cup is growing new designs, new colors, coils of black tentacles writhing against a marbled red background. "That's the thing. Our community, here, our people, here, I know how to talk to them. These days folks expecting me to know how to talk to the whole dang country and that I don't got a clue about." "In all the movements I've seen, white radicals are usually the slowest." Anahita does actually smile, this time, though she isn't looking Jax. "Not always. America may not be the proverbial melting pot, but she does seem a crucible for unusual cultures and a cauldron for unexpected alliances." She watches the designs on Jax's mug, mesmerized. "Lucien could have probably offered you advice on that. But I don't think any one person alone can reach that many people. Not with the kind of nuance necessary for collective liberation." She gestures with a reserved splay of her fingers from herself to the others in the cafe to him. "Much of our community here hail from elsewhere. Other communities here are reaching out to us now. And reinforcements are on the way." She tips a sidelong glance at Jax. "I don't pretend that what I suggest is easy, but: talk to those you know how to talk to, and ask for their help talking to those you don't." Jax winces, rubbing absently at the back of his neck. "I know nobody can an' I don't expect to. There's just so few of us got the privilege of having any platform and I feel like if I mess this up..." He trails off, his hand dropping back to curl around his coffee again. The tentacles snake out to curl around his fingers, as well. His eye follows Anahita's gesture out to the cafe. "Well. You got a lot of experience and been taking care of people a long time. And Lord knows I could use the help." When he looks back to Anahita, it's with a small smile. "Think you got time for one more hat?" "That is an understandable stress. You will probably mess it up." Anahita sounds very matter-of-fact about this. "No matter how much coaching you get or how much you prepare. You will also clean it up. That does far more for the coalitions we seek to build than appearing to be perfect. The whole dang country is --" She stops, brows pinching in thought. "I do not disagree with the sentiment, but every time I hear 'it's a marathon, not a sprint', I remember how the first marathon ended. The whole dang country is a longer game best played with those who trust and support you not only when you succeed, but when you fail as well." She sits up a little straighter and returns his smile with an approving one. "I do. Even if I didn't, it would be worth making time, for hats as fabulous as yours."