ArchivedLogs:In Which Videos Are Watched While Library Books Go Unread, And Shane And Taylor Provide Illustration Into What Is Wrong With America These Days

In Which Videos Are Watched While Library Books Go Unread, And Shane And Taylor Provide Illustration Into What Is Wrong With America These Days
AKA: Millennials. Different millennia, but who is counting.
Dramatis Personae Shane, Steve, Taylor
In Absentia	2015-11-08 << /L.A./ Dodgers? Is nothing sacred? >>
Location <NYC> NY Public Library - Midtown East
Guarded by two lions nicknamed Patience and Fortitude, the main branch of New York's public library system provides a space for New York residents to do more than just check out books. The reference library holds thousands of works, and the reading room is a majestic work of architecture in its own right. The computer lab and free internet access is available to all who need it. The expansive reading room is bustling today, yet also more quiet than usual. There's an almost palpable nervous tension in the air, here no less than elsewhere in the city. Someone (maybe the library personnel, maybe some concerned citizen) has left small white boards with attached dry erase markers scattered all over the place. A tall, well-built blond man is walking in with a prodigious stack of books in his arms. He's wearing a blue-and-green plaid flannel shirt and indigo blue jeans, and the titles he has selected are mostly 20th century history: A Bridge Too Far, Endgame, Hiroshima, The Marshall Plan, Wirtschaftswunder, A People's History of the Civil Rights Movement, Global Feminism Since 1945, The Digital Frontier, Endless War, and on and on. He finds a seat near the end of one long wooden table and carefully sets down his reading materials. For a long moment he just stares at them. And then, slowly, he lays them out in approximate chronological order. The very (very!) tiny teenager entering the reading room is, in contrast to Steve, quite sharply dressed. A pale grey vest with a deep pink dress shirt, crisply ironed, dark slacks, striped tie tied with a trinity knot, dark jacket draped over his arm, a dark messenger bag slung over one shoulder, a bowler hat perched atop his spiky dark head. None of this /hides/ the gleaming blue shade of his skin, the enormous black pools of his eyes, the alien construction of his narrow features, the webbed-clawed hand with which he is gesticulating to his companion as he talks (in quiet Japanese): "{-- if it's really getting unsafe, you know? I mean, that isn't worth your -- anything. Just give them their coffee for free if you have to and move the hell /on/ you know?}" There are /more/ than a few eyes on the pair as they enter the room. People haaastily rearranging their items to take up more space than necessary, putting bags on chairs that /were/ previously unoccupied. Shane seems unsurprised by this, ambling through the room to rest his hand on the back of a seat diagonally opposite Steve. His eyes skim the books first, and then Steve's face. He doesn't /say/ anything, but the lift of his eyebrows is questioning -- these seats taken? Even though he's already tugging one out without reeeally waiting for an answer. And in contrast to /Shane/, Taylor's caaasual. Scuffed old jeans, Adidas sneakers, a Los Angeles Dodgers tee under a plain black and blue zip-up hoodie, unzipped, at the moment. Both tee and sweatshirt have been heavily modified to allow for his extra limbs -- often hidden when he's in the city but with the current overhead threat of Zombie outweighing the threat of Bigots, today they're all very much free and visible, a coiled mass of sucker-lined arms with gleaming sharp hooks nestled along their lengths. One tentacle reaches out, its club end hooking around the chair beside Shane's (directly opposite Steve) to scoot it out. He sets his backpack down beside the chair, shrugging as he looks over the books with automatic curiosity. "{It's getting ugly. But getting ugly everywhere. This morning someone /decked/ me because we didn't have pumpkin flavor syrup. No joke, launched straight over the counter -- it'd be funny if it weren't --}" His head shakes again. The books /he's/ setting down on the table are linguistics texts. Steve seems momentarily paralyzed with indecision as to where he should put 'The Red Scare'. << After the war, yes, but...before Civil Rights...? >> Absorbed in his task, he does not pay much mind to the teenagers until Taylor speaks. He looks up as if startled, and then leaps bodily out of his seat, dropping the book to the table with a heavy thump. Other visitors all around them turn and glare, but he doesn't even seem to notice. << Holy Mary, Mother of God what are those?! >> His pale blue eyes are locked on the pair across the table from him, his jaw slack and his body coiled for action. Then, slowly, he untenses. << They're not threatening anyone. >> Looks down at the teens' respective limbs pulling out the chairs. At the backpack and books. << And they're people. Mutants, I guess? >> Then at the clothes they wear. His gaze lingers at last, incredulously, on Taylor's shirt, of all things. << /L.A./ Dodgers? Is nothing sacred? >> Then he bows his head slightly, cheeks flushing red, and waves to the seats they were taking anyway as he sits down again himself. Steve's reaction puts a flutter in Shane's gills -- with his tie and collar, not hugely visble, though audible in a whisper of rough skin against starchy fabric. There's a faint coil of tension stiffening his shoulders, a whisper of anger flaring through his mind << ... goddamn /flatscans/ can't even fucking /read/ -- >> but outwardly -- he only smiles. Very, very wide. A mouthful of far, far too many sharp and serrated teeth flashes bright and warm at Steve as he drags the chair out and drapes himself into it. "{Funny. Right. A lot of things would be funny if we weren't stuck in the fucking middle of them.}" He's speaking to Taylor, but his enormous pupilless black pits of eyes, now, are locked on Steve. Taylor's smile is contrastingly just -- the normal compliment of teeth. They look very white in contrast to his blackblack skin, but blessidly flat and unpointy. His shoulders shake in a silent laugh, one long ropey arm draping around Shane's shoulders in a small squeeze when he feels that anger flare. When he speaks there's a very /strange/ mental effect -- though Steve is very /noticeably/ still /hearing/ Japanese -- there's no question about that -- there's an jarring mental dissonance as his mind manages to parse Taylor's speech /anyway/. Not an interpretation, quite; he may not understand a full translation of all the /words/ Taylor is saying, but the boy's intention comes through more or less well enough regardless. His fingers pluck at his tee. "{Seriously? Where've you /been/ man, that's not just old news, that's /ancient/ news.}" And with a broader smile, one thick club-end of his largest tentacle comes down on the cover of one of the books. "{And they're /called/ books. We're in a library, for /shame/.}" Steve is /trying/ to go back to sorting his books. << For heaven's sake, calm down. Get back to work. >> 'The Red Scare' he sets aside for the moment and instead picks up a weighty volume bearing the title 'The Cold War' in heavy, ominous letters. He does look up when Shane grins, proving he's kept aware of them in his peripheral vision. << Dear God, those teeth! And those tentacles. They might have just stepped out of my childhood nightmares. >> Now he's /really/ staring at Taylor. << Is that...what's /happening?/ >> His confusion is so substantial that it's impossible to tell whether he even realizes Taylor is answering questions he had only /thought./ But at the boy's question his mind reflexively flashes to a dizzying expanse of ice and water rushing up to meet him, the shock of impact, the radio cutting out into static as glass shatters and the world goes black. He grips 'The Cold War' tight in one hand, the other holding onto the edge of the table as if he's afraid he might fall out of his chair if he let go. Shane looks kind of blankly at Taylor, privy to only one half of this conversation. "{... the fuck?}" It's kind of irritable, a little sharp. He shakes his head sharply, reaching over to draw a book out of Taylor's pile -- Andrea Moro's /The Boundaries of Babel/. He doesn't open it, though, looking sharply back to Steve when the other man's hand tightens on the table. "{Woah, dude, you okay?}" He doesn't have the benefit of Taylor's psionic interpretation, but the concern in his voice comes through clearly enough across language barriers. Taylor leans slightly forward in his seat, /all/ his many limbs going slack and limp behind him. There's a moment where he's silent, before abruptly refocusing his grey-blue eyes on Steve. "{... fuck you, we're not --}" he snaps, but then stops. His palm presses to his face, and he draws in a breath. Stares down at the table. Looks back up at Steve. His next response is less snappish: "{... Hey man, are you...}" Frown. "{/That/ seems more like a nightmare. /We're/ real. Are -- you alright. I didn't mean to -- sorry.}" Steve looks at Shane (with another twinge of disquiet at the boy's inhuman face) when he speaks, but it doesn't take a telepath to see he does not understand the words. << It's Japanese. /I don't speak Japanese./ But the other kid...I /understand/ him! >> Sweat beads his forehead and start rolling down the side of his face. << No, I'm imagining it. This is some kind of...shock. Stress. Side effect of being frozen for seventy years. >> He looks back at Taylor. Shakes his head slowly. << No. >> He looks down at the book in his hand, sets it down quite deliberately, and pulls a small notebook and pen from his pocket. His hands are shaking as he scribbles 'I'll be fine. Why are you apologizing? What did you do?' in crabbed but regular cursive. Shane leans down, sliding a slim tablet computer out of his bag and untucking its stylus. When he powers it on, he doesn't bother writing /on/ the screen but on the display area over top of it -- his words appear, glowing, in the air in front of him. 'He cursed at you. Motherfucker's too damn polite. I bet you deserved it. Did you deserve it?' When he writes the words they're written backwards -- from Steve's point of view, anyway -- but a small flick of his finger spins them in mid-air to face Steve. Taylor draaags his palm down against his face, slumping in against the table. "{He didn't /deserve/ it. You can't help what you're /thinking/, asshole.}" One of his smaller tentacles baps Shane lightly against the back of the head. Slowly, though, he turns his gaze back to look at Steve. "{... frozen for /seventy years/? You're -- you're...}" His eyes are widening as he studies Steve's face. Scrutinizes it carefully. "{That's some weird-ass Han Solo kind of shit right there.}" Steve stares at the holographic display, calmly filing it away as another feat of future magic. He has to think really hard to remember when Taylor had cursed at him, for he was at the time rather distracted by cognitive dissoance. /Then/ a brief spike of indignant anger. << /Deserve/ it how? >> But it fades. << He's just a kid. Can't be but ten or twelve... >> Taylor's words, though, summon a cold, creeping dread from the pit of his stomach. << What I'm /thinking/? Well, I can't, but how would /he/ know? >> His eyes only grow wider and his fears more concrete. << Seventy years...I didn't say that. Maybe he recognizes me. >> There's a moment of wavering before his rationalizations give way in something half-way between resignation and relief. << No, he's definitely reading my mind. Well. >> He sighs, sets pen to paper again, 'That's what they told me, and judging by how much things have changed'. He pauses, eyes drifting to Taylor's shirt, which now conjures not confusion but a vague sense of loss. 'I have to believe it. Who's Han Solo?' 'Bullshit. That kinda crap is the sort of shit bigots say to justify wallowing in their bigotry.' Shane's expression has no more heat to it, though, just sort-of-amused, sort-of matter-of-fact as he weather's Taylor's smack with a small duck of his head. 'Who told you what now?' He tips his bowler hat up off his head, setting it aside on the table after he's spun these words around to face Steve. After this his eyes widen, opening up /huge/ till they're just enormous pools dominating his face. << {Seventy years, Holy shit} >> is in Vietnamese, though in English, << that's fucking Captain America. >> "{Holy shit,}" This time the Vietnamese is aloud, a half-second after it's thought. He frowns at the display in front of him. Frowns at the other people in the library. 'What languages do you speak?' he finally writes. Taylor /snorts/, out loud. "{He's older than I am, man. In college and everything.}" Less amused, "{And yeah. I can read your mind.}" This isn't quite /apologetic/ but -- almost. It comes with the mental equivalent of a helpless shrug, a contextual suggestion that it's not something he's /trying/ to do. "{Seventy years. Noooooo shit.}" His eyes skim the history books in front of Steve. "{Guess some things have...}" He kind of winces at the question, though, half his mouth hitching up in a grin. "{Shit, man, you've missed so many movies. You're overdue like. A million marathons. Make sure to check out /Star Wars/ or you'll be missing so many people's references.}" Steve's brows wrinkle faintly at Shane's first question. << I wish I knew for sure! >> But what he writes is, 'The Strategic Science Reserve told me I was frozen for seventy years, until they revived me. They're a...special projects division of the War Department. I work for them.' << Don't trust them, though. Oh, dear, you heard that, didn't you? That must get old sometimes. >> He shakes his head slowly, then scribbles, 'French, German, Italian...also Russian, but not very well.' Then, with a faint and crooked smirk, he adds, 'English.' He raises his eyebrows at Taylor, looks slightly bemused, but opens the little notebook to its central crease and scribbles down 'Catching Up', then beneath that, with a bullet point, 'Star Wars' << Pretty sure I'm going to be missing references for a long, long time to come. >> Shane wipes his glowing words away with a swipe of his hand. "{Seventy years.}" His French comes nowhere near as easily as his Japanese had, stilted, with a Quebecois accent to the halting words. "{Might be surprised at how much hasn't.}" He rocks back in his chair, a palm braced against the side of the table. "{The government was full of bullshit then, too. Why do you work for them?}" One of Taylor's eyes twitches when Shane switches to French; he slumps back in his seat, jaw slightly clenched. /He/ continues in his previous Japanese, the same dissonant mental interpretation accompanying it. "{I hear a lot of things. You get used to the clutter. At least with you it's --}" He huffs out a laugh. "{New. Old. I don't know. Not the first person I've known to come back from the dead but this is something way different.}" His eyes slant sideways at Shane's question. Then roll. "{Haven't you read the news? He's a Big Damn Hero.}" Steve's relief at hearing /and/ understanding a language he actually knows is tremendous. "{I've noticed.}" His French is continental and rustic, but comes smoothly. "{Propaganda hasn't changed much.}" He isn't actually very surprised by that, though. In his mind, a flash of the newspaper article his SSR handlers showed him, with his photo above the headline 'Captain America Saves Shelter Volunteers From Undead Horde.' "{Before? Because they were the only way I saw to help right a tremendous wrong.}" A brief memory of a red flag with a black swastika on a white circle, fluttering in the smoky breeze. << There's probably a lot in my head you don't want to see or hear. >> "{And 'before' wasn't that long ago from my point of view. They say they're still protecting the world.}" He looks down at the books spread before him. "{I don't know how to even think about the things they tell me. I have no context.}" << But I will. >> "{Protecting the world? From us.}" Shane's teeth bare. Sharply. For all the fierce sharp teeth, it's distinctly a /smile/. "{You want context? You won't find it in those.}" His claws gesture to the books. His other hand taps at the screen of his tablet, now, eyes flicking down to it. "{That's his dad, you know.}" One of Taylor's smaller arms flicks towards Shane. "{The guy who you fought with. At the shelter. Is his dad. The one who they -- didn't mention in any of the news.}" His shoulder lifts in a small shrug, though his eyes have scrunched up tighter again. "{Probably. But I've seen a lot of terrible. I can handle it. -- What /do/ they tell you? About us? Or about the world?}" Steve makes himself look at Shane's grin. His gaze holds steady, but he still flinches inside. "{It's written by the victors, I know,}" he pushes 'The Cold War' aside. "{I've got to start /somewhere./ What're you going to recommend?}" There's a kind of weariness in him for this incomprehensibly complicated future, but he does genuinely want to know. He blinks at Taylor several times. "{Ah, the man with the light that burned. I didn't even get his name.}" << My handlers were oddly eager to get me away from him... >> "{They said mutants are dangerous, a threat to humanity and to the world itself.}" He bows his head, his eyes straying to 'Hiroshima'. An intense, wrenching pain shoots through him. "{But, then, so are humans.}" "Jackson Holland," Shane tells Steve. His voice here is soft, and clear. "{Two years ago the first time the plague hit and killed a million people they put him in jail. Charged him with starting it. Only let him free when we started telling the world what the government had been up to the past years.}" He plugs a pair of earbuds into the tablet, pulls a set of holographic controls in front of himself, sliding the actual /tablet/ over to Steve. A series of videos queued up on it. "{Put those in,}" Taylor explains of the earbuds -- more helpfully, this comes with a telepathic /image/ of how to insert them. "{At least one of them. For the sound.}" His eyes have flicked to the tablet, his fingers clenching up. "{... throwing him the hell into the deep end, aren't you. I -- don't imagine they explained about Prometheus. And they probably wanted to get you away from him because --}" He frowns. "{Well. The whole terrorist thing.}" Steve accepts the earbuds, fiddles with them until Taylor shows him how to use them. He still jumps when the sound from the first video comes through them, one hand rising to touch the tiny plastic bud in his ear. << More future magic. >> He props the tablet up against 'The Cold War' and looks down at the tiny image of Shane speaking to him from the past. His mind is quiet at first, full of forboding. Then anguish. Then fury. He does not speak and does not look away from the screen until the queue has played through. And then he waits for a few moments longer, his thoughts a chaotic jumble beyond deciphering. "{The America I remember was far from perfect, but we fought to keep the world safe from men who thought /this/ was an acceptable means to their ends. We fought and died.}" A fleeting shadow of a man falling through the howling wind and driving snow. "{And now. We.../we/ are doing this.}" He grimaces, blinking back tears, and looks up into the faces of the two teens sitting across from him. "{/Why?/}" Shane opens the book in front of him -- but doesn't actually pay it a whole lot of attention, much of his focus on the man across from him. He watches Steve's expression with a small furrow of brow, and despite everything churning through his mind there is, primarily, concern there. His gills flutter slowly, his head bowing as he shuts the video player off, leaving the tablet's screen on a Wikipedia article for Prometheus. There's no flippancy or callousness left in his tone when he lifts his eyes back to Steve. "{They thought we might be the key to creating new super soldiers.}"