ArchivedLogs:Quantum Res Change

Quantum Res Change
Dramatis Personae Doug, Lucien
In Absentia	2013-02-15 Doug and Lucien meet once more. It goes much better.
Location <NYC> Busboys and Poets - East Harlem
A quiet, artsy spot nestled away on a side street in East Harlem, Busboys and Poets combines cafe and bookstore in a way a Starbucks tacked on to a Barnes & Noble could never achieve. The food is a solid, multi-national cuisine menu that caters to all kinds of dietary choices, and its fair-trade tea menu is extensive. Its weekend brunch tends to draw a large crowd, but there is ample enough seating both at tables and on its many comfortable armchairs and couches that at other times of the week there is never a wait. The walls are adorned with the work of local artists, and tucked in among and alongside the couches are rows upon rows of books, with a definite slant towards the political and the bohemian. It's a quiet, in-between sort of time. Not breakfast, not lunch. No rush. Just a few scattered people, eating at the tables or browsing the shelves or working on their laptops. Lucien is curled up comfortably in an armchair, a book in his lap -- /Le Survenant/, by Germaine Guevremont -- that he is paying no attention to at all. Instead he is frowning at his phone, absently tapping at its screen. It is buzzing at him frequently. Though his clothes are nice enough -- dark corduroys, a slim-fit green button-down with epaulettes at the shoulders, both well-tailored to his fit -- his generally haggard-tired appearance and the way he constantly scrubs his fingers through his hair gives him an overall sort of rumpled look. It's not much improved by the scowl he directs at his phone. There's a cup of hot beverage nearby him, and a croissant, but both these things are barely touched. Close enough to Columbia's campus to be worth a look, the coffee shop's sparse patronage is increased by one more. When Doug pushes through the glass door, he's clearly just come from said campus, a laptop bag slung over one shoulder and a battered-looking denim backpack hanging from one shoulder. He's not as nicely dressed as Lucien, in a Columbia sweatshirt and jeans under the faded flak jacket and scuffed boots on his feet, but he certainly fits in with the bohemian feel of the place, if not the other students in the shop. The blonde pauses on the threshhold of the space, eyes scanning the place as if memorizing its layout. After a moment of this, his gaze lands on Lucien, and his mouth pulls to one side briefly before he pushes in that direction, stopping only when he's near the older man. "Lucien," he says, shifting his backpack and offering a warm smile. "How've you been?" Lucien glances up, and his smile at being addressed is a reflexive thing, polite -- it freezes, and thins, when his gaze lights on Doug, and something tightens in Lucien's face to accentuate his haggard expression. "Whorish," he answers, and here his thin smile curls a little wider, his tone frostily /proper/. "You know. Whoring about. As whores do. And yourself, Doug? Well, I hope? Finding people who allow you to live up to your full potential?" Doug flushes at the response, his brow knitting. "I deserved that," he says with a frown. "I was really awful to you the other day, and you didn't deserve it. I'm sorry." He reaches up to scrub at his face. "It was rude and hypocritical of me to assume that what you do is the sum total of who you are. It's exactly the sort of thing I was complaining about." He inhales deeply, and the smile he offers now is tighter, and honestly regretful. "I hope that you'll accept my apology." There's a moment, at the apology, when Lucien's eyebrows lift higher, his expression tightening further and his green eyes narrowing on Doug as though looking to see if the man is serious. This narrow-eyed look lingers a few beats, and then all at once relaxes into careful neutrality, Lucien exhaling a soft breath that loosens tensed muscles through his shoulders. His hand scrubs again through his hair, and he looks down at the phone in his hand as it buzzes at him again. "Thank you," he says, at length, and this is quiet and lacking in the earlier frostiness. "How /have/ you been? You go to school around here, yes?" He is glancing at the Columbia sweatshirt, like it is refreshing this memory. Doug exhales when Lucien's frost melts, and his shoulder visibly relax. "I do," he says, looking over his shoulder towards the door. "Columbia's near by, and some of the people in my study group have been talking about this place. So I thought I'd check it out. They might have a book I've been looking for." He glances at the shelves of books, wrinkling his nose. "It's been out of print for a while, though." He falls into an awkward silence, then, and chews at his lip. "Do you come here often?" "They have many esoteric things. I have been quite pleased, sometimes, with the finds I stumble across here. Their chili is excellent, too." Lucien says this more down to his phone than to Doug, tapping quickly at the screen but then looking up again once his text message is sent. "I come here often," he affirms, "when I --" There's a beat of hesitation, his eyes dropping to the phone. "-- Need to kill time. What is it you're looking for? Perhaps I could help. I have spent many an hour in those shelves." "Chili?" Doug brightens at that, and he looks around as he slides the backpack from his shoulder. "I could go for some chili, actually. I'm already done with classes for the day." His grin is easier, now, and he finds a chair adjacent to Lucien's to drop his weight into. "It seems like a nice place to hang out," he says, looking around and pointedly /not/ at the text conversation going on. The question gets a shrug. "It's really just a paper that was published," he says. "But it cites some other papers that are even harder to find." He purses his lips. "It's 'Mutation: A Study of Darwinism as Applied to Man in the Modern Age.' It's by Doctor Herbert Edgar Wyndham." He wrinkles his nose. "The paper was written in the '30s, though, so I don't know how fruitful my search will be." "Chili," Lucien affirms. "It is rich and spicy. Sour cream optional, but, in my opinion, it would be a shame to forgo it. It adds a certain creaminess. -- Wyndham?" His lips purse, thoughtfully, and he returns his attention to the phone. "Is this for school, or for your own personal edification?" "Oh, /man/," Doug says appreciatively, rubbing his now-rumbling belly. "That sounds delicious." He glances at the counter, and back at Lucien. "For me," he says with a chuckle. "There's not much call for reading genetics papers in my Computer Science or Econ classes." He grins widely, and unzips his backpack, pulling out a worn-looking notebook. "No, I was reading some stuff online, and people kept mentioning this paper, so I thought I would check it out." He frowns. "Weirdly, as much as people kept mentioning it, no one's put it online in its entirety." "It is delicious," Lucien affirms, absent as he continues poking at his phone. His brow furrows in thought, eyes fixed on the screen. "As are their soups, generally. But the chili really hits the spot in cold weather." Still looking at his phone, he stands, closing his book carefully with a slim tassled bookmark in its pages and setting it down beside his cup. "One minute." And with that and nothing more, he gets up, slipping away from the tables to go vanish among the shelves. When Lucien excuses himself, Doug slips from the chair to go to the counter and order. Then he returns to his chair, and fishes out his laptop, setting it on his knees and swinging it open. He doesn't seem interested in what's on the screen, though, instead watching the place where Lucien disappeared. The place Lucien disappeared is full of books. There is probably time enough for Doug's order to be delivered before Lucien comes back, a beaten old book, clearly used, held in one hand. He sets it carefully down on the arm of Doug's chair, and slips back into his own. The book is a collection of scientific articles from the 20s and 30s; the one Doug was looking for is tucked away somewhere near its middle. "Some fascinating things, there," Lucien comments absently, slipping his book back into his lap though his attention just returns to his phone. "Possibly a lot of rubbish. Possibly some gems, too." Doug perks when Lucien returns, his interest in the book the man holds. He gently picks it up from the arm, and thumbs lightly through the pages, turning each one carefully. "This is..." he pauses, his eyes widening. "Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!" He reads a few moments, turning a page and making a startled noise. "Holy crap! This has most of the Essex paper in it. /No one/ online has mentioned seeing it. Just a line or two." This may be only of interest to himself; his attention is too focused on the paper mentioned to be certain. Then the book is re-settled, and Doug fishes in his laptop bag, extracting a wand-looking thing that he plugs into the side. "I really appreciate this, Lucien," he says, looking up as he flicks the thing on. "You are a hero." Lucien's lips twitch, at this, amusement warming his green eyes for the first time out of their default bland neutrality. "A hero," he echoes, softly. "Who gets people books when they need it. There are worse kinds of heroes to be. I'll take it. A world where nobody finds the books they need /would/ be fairly horrific." "Yeah, but you didn't find /any/ book," Doug says, pulling the wand slowly over the open book. "You found /the/ book. Like, the best one you could find. That's heroic. Saving the world from boredom and stale thinking." He grins up at the older man, then checks the screen on his computer. "I mean, the Wyndham paper is a find, but to find the Essex paper with it...that's just..." He breaks off, wrinkling his nose. "Sorry. I'm being a nerd about this. Dr. Essex was Wyndham's mentor. So, to find them together is sort of like finding an ancient sroll with both Socrates and Plato's writings on it." He reaches over to tap a key, then gently turns a page, beginning the process again. "And you just plucked it off the shelf." He seems amused and impressed by this. "I am glad I could help," Lucien says, tipping his head slightly, his smile brief but warm at Doug's words. "Nerd away." He reaches over to finally pluck a small mouthful off of his croissant, nibbling at it slowly. "I like books," he says, then, with a slight shrug. "They speak to me. I had a hunch. What is it you want from that essay, anyway?" "It shows," Doug says of Lucien's biblio-love. "I mean, you look very relaxed in this setting. More than you usually come across, I mean. That's telling." He grins, and turns another page as he taps a key. "I like to read," he says slowly. "But I admit to very little of it being in actual books. Mostly on my computer or my Kindle." He wrinkles his nose, leaning to peer at the screen and tapping a couple of keys. "Hmm?" The question catches him so engrossed, and he glances up at Lucien. "Oh, I was doing some research on another scientist, and Wyndham's name came up as an influence on their work. I thought I would see what the DNA of their research looked like." He can't hide the playful cant to his smile, or the playful crinkle of his eyes. "See how it's mutated, as it were, over the course of interpretation." "Books are relaxing. They are -- an escape," Lucien says, carefully. "Sometimes that's a good thing." His phone has stopped buzzing. He sets it down on his knee, keeping an eye on it like he expects it to summon him again at any moment. His brow creases, slightly, when it fails to buzz in a timely manner, but then he returns to picking at his croissant in small nibbling bites. "My nook is highly useful, but there is something about actually holding a book that it fails to capture." There's a faint twitch of his lips, too small to be really marked as smile or not, as he watches the playful note to Doug's. "Mutated," he says, dryly. "I imagine quite a bit, from then till today." "Oh, yeah," Doug says with a grin. "I still like the crack of the spine on a new textbook. It makes me happy. But my Kindle is so much easier to carry around, and I have, like, hundreds of books on it. There's a small part of me that gets a thrill of knowing I'm walking around with an entire library that doesn't even weigh a pound." He checks the book, turning a few more pages before he nods, and unplugs the scanner, winding the cord around it quickly and offering Lucien a chuckle. "Not really," he says with a wrinkle of his nose. "Wyndham was kind of ahead of his time. He cracked the human genome before anyone really knew there /was/ one. His theories on natural human evolution line up, for the most part, with similar offerings by Professor Charles Xavier and Doctor Moira MacTaggart." He shrugs. "Quantum res change , quantum subsisto idem eadem idem, I guess." He wrinkles his nose apologetically. "I mean, the more things change the more they stay the same. Sorry." "{The more things change}," Lucien murmurs, under his breath in French, and there's something that pulls his mouth up into an amused smile at Doug's words. "Did you study Latin?" he wonders, and there's a subtle undercurrent of -- skepticism? -- to this query. He is /quick/ to unlock his phone when it buzzes again, a shadow of worry flickering across his face as he reads the message. "It seems I must be off. Enjoy your afternoon, Doug." He doesn't finish his barely-touched croissant or tea, just putting on his jacket and tucking his book into an inside flap as he stands. "Kiiind of," Doug says slowly as he closes his laptop first, then the book. "I have a talent for languages." He might offer more, but then Lucien's phone is distracting the older man, and a server is approaching with a bowl of chili generously topped with sour cream, and that distracts /Doug/. He glances up as Lucien rises, and offers a sympathetic look. "I hope everything's okay," he says as the man collects himself. "Thanks again for your help." He waits politely for Lucien to actually leave his company before he accepts the bowl and spoon from the girl with the rainbow ponytail with a ravenous teenager's glee. Yay, chili! "A talent." Lucien says this with the same thoughtful? Dubious? note, but his smile is quick and easy. "Latin is a useful one. You should study it more." He buttons up his jacket, slipping his phone into his pocket. "Have a good day, Doug." And then he is off, drawing in one deep breath before he goes. Because mmm, chili.