Logs:Work Life Balance

Work Life Balance
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Isra, Kitty
In Absentia	2020-08-14 “You guys know everyone, huh?”
Location <NYC> NYU Astrophysics Lab - Greenwich Village
This lab is rather unimpressive at first glance: a smallish, poorly-lit space with two standing modular work stations usually neglected in favor of several conference tables pushed together in the center. The truly heavy duty image processing doesn't even happen here, but there is still computing power to spare with the massive networked cluster of cases lining one wall. A high-powered projector is mounted to the ceiling and the projection screen mounted on the wall it points at is more often pulled down than not. It's, needless to say, a popular spot for department movie nights. Currently the lights have been turned down low--just a half-row of the overhead fluorescent tubes illuminating the far end of the room from where the projector is throwing a blurry black-and-white image of a flattened torus up on the screen. Perched slightly crooked in one of the rolling office chairs so as to avoid cramping her tail, Isra is studying the image placidly, glancing between it and a different, much higher-resolution and false-colored image on her laptop. She's dressed in a simple white wrap dress that falls to her knees, but the rest of her makes up for its lack of color. Her skin is a pearlescent blue-purple all over, lighter on her face, palm, and ventral surfaces, a dusting of fine metallic spots along the dorsal surfaces looking like nothing so much as the milky way in a clear sky. The membranes of her massive wings are even more striking, painted to resemble shattered prisms that catche and reflects light in a veritable rainbow of spectra. The horns that spiral back from her forehead and the talons that tip all thirty of her digits are a bright, polished silver. When she is still--and she is often still--she looks more like a vibrant sculpture of a gargoyle than a living person. "No indication of any previously unobserved structures," she says. "But it's early yet. All this computing power and we still have to wait." Kitty is antsy, shifting again in her seat as is swings slowly from side to side. Her hair is starting to fall from the loose bun she put up about half an hour ago, strands of brown framing her face like some sad portrait of the grad stuff condition. Her mug sits next to her, almost empty, as she stares bleary eyed at her own laptop screen. She's writing a script for some sort of analysis, but has lost steam - she stares at the torus for five to ten minutes at at time before slowly pecking out a line of code letter by letter. She shifts again, bringing her legs up and perching her chin on the soft grey fabric of her leggings. "You think there would be room in the grant for another processor," she complains. "Or the endowment or something." Kitty pushes off the table and sends her chair into a spin. "I hate the waiting." There's a knock at the door, though it opens without any waiting for answer. The dark-haired young man who enters reflexively pulls his own large wings tight against his back to pass through the doorway, though they relax again juuuust a little once he is inside -- enough to catch at least some of their current decoration, membranes are patterned like a stained-glass mosaic in mirrored chrome, while the soft fuzz that covers them is painted in a variety of multichrome palettes that shift with the direction of the light. Aside from the wings Dusk is extremely prosaically adorned -- faded brown corduroy cutoffs, beaten-up old Vans sneakers, a relaxed-fit green and white striped v-neck tee, large dark glasses. A large canvas shopping bag in one hand that he holds up in cheerful offer. "If there's waiting, does that mean you have time to eat?" Dusk is meandering through the room, one brilliantly painted limb stretching out to brush lightly against the side of one of Isra's wings. To Kitty, a casually friendly (albeit sharp-fanged) smile, an upward tip of his scruffy-bearded chin. "Yo. Don't mean to interrupt. I worry she might fall into some kind of academic black hole and forget lunch." "It is not high on anyone's budgetary priority list, I imagine. It does work, the image do render. Perhaps they think we operate on cosmic timescales in our work as well as our subject matter." Isra's tail swishes in mild irritation at the knock, but its swaying turns more expansive when she sees Dusk. Her wing stretches out to press back against his, though she hardly looks away from the screen until he speaks. "That," she says, indicating the projected image with a tip of her head, "is in fact a black hole. And I thank you, for I would likely have forgotten lunch, left to my own devices. I am not even sure Kitty here has had breakfast." Turning to her schoolmate, she adds, "Have you met my partner, Dusk?" "Just because it works doesn't mean it can't work better," Kitty grumbles, hitting the spacebar with unnecessary force. She could go on, but the door opening distracts her. She returns the acknowledgement with a nod and raised hand. "I don't think I've had the pleasure." Her eyes are a bit wider now, darting back and forth between Isra and her partner. "Nice to meet you." There's a small smile forming - he's cute. She hadn't given Isra enough credit, clearly. "And I did eat breakfast, actually." Her stomach betrays her with a loud grumble. "Well. Coffee counts, right?" 'Really?' It's signed and not spoken -- even so the impressed lift of Dusk's eyebrows is easy to read. He pushes his sunglasses onto his head, leaning in to peer with greater curiosity at the image. "You weren't planning to fall into that, were you? I think if I had to bring you lunch there it'd be cold by I got there." He finds a free space on the cluster of tables to place the shopping bag down on it. "Coffee counts? You sound like my roommate. Or," he freely admits, "me on a deadline. -- It doesn't, by the way. You like Thai? Got some satay, larb -- some kinda, uh... ginger chicken thing." He's setting out the tupperware in a neat row. 'Really,' Isra echoes, her tail swaying fast enough to ripple the hem of her dress. "It is a lovely subject, but I would have quite a job falling into it given it's hundreds of thousands of light-years away." She sets her laptop aside and peers at the lunch offerings with interest. "It is very good," she informs Kitty seriously. "I use to think that I did not like Thai food, but Dusk's roommate is quite the cook." She cocks her head. "If I could skip more meals in favor of coffee without collapsing of hunger, I probably would. Though I do not suppose it is great for people who have more...average metabolism, either." Kitty laughs- “Breakfast of champions,” she jokes, taking the last dregs from her mug and making a face- it’s cold and sour. She hesitates, but there is no denying that the plethora of Tupperware is more appealing than her own sad lunch that she hadn’t really been intending to eat, anyway. “Sounds like I’d like your roommate- I do like Thai food. Most food, really.” She makes a face. “I think coffee isn’t supposed to be a meal replacement for any metabolism, but I didn’t pay attention in physiology.” She rolls her chair over to the food set-up: “any pork in there?” "What d'you have those bigass wings for if you're gonna let a little distance like that stop you?" Dusk scoffs lightly at the talk of light years, his own wings shifting in a lazy roll of shoulders. He looks down to the containers in front of him, shifting them around to put the larb closer to Isra and the ginger chicken closer to Kitty. Tip the bag out to drop a spoon and pair of chopsticks onto the table. "Don't think so but I can't give you a solid answer on the salad," he says with a shake of his head. "The others are definitely just chicken." Dusk stretches a wing out, hooking talons against an empty chair to pull it closer, spin it around, take a backwards seat in it. "I think my roommate's the shit but I got a bias. Guess 'decent roommates' is nothing to sleep on in this economy. I've seen some friends live through some real fucking horror stories in the housemate department." "Breakfast was a while ago," is perhaps Isra's idea of sympathy when Kitty finishes her coffee. She pulls the larb to herself and the spoon, as well. "I do like coffee quite a lot, but I think the outsized space it occupies in the American imagination says not overly healthy things about our collective approach to productivity." Her pointed ears twitch and perk forward, her tail swaying slow and relaxed. "I think most people have a bias about their own roommates--it is only a matter of which direction. I, being completely impartial, can say with confidence that both of your roommates are the shit." The expression sounds not as stilted and unnatural coming from her as one might expect. Kitty scoffs. “Something like that, for sure.” She gives a guilty look at her mug: “unfortunately, I seem to already have a caffeine dependence.” She waits a second, see if Dusk is going to eat, then takes the chopsticks and chicken gratefully. “Thanks for sharing, man,” she says, taking a second just to smell the food. Phenomenal. She takes a bite, listening to Isra’s next words, then sets the container down. Kitty narrows her eyes, looking back at Dusk as she tries to put some pieces together. She wasn’t positive on Hive’s ethnicity but Dusk matched the description and the name did sound familiar- “Is one of your roommates Dawson Allred?” "See? Glowing recommendation." One of Dusk's thumbclaws twitches toward Isra when she backs him up. He doesn't seem to have much design on the food, himself. "Americans? Unhealthy relationship to work? That's practically a blasphemy." His arms fold over the back of his chair, chin dropping to rest on his arms. The long claws on his wings brace against the floor to either side of him, shifting just slightly as he rocks the chair idly back and forth. The smile that lights is face comes quick and easy. "You know Flicker? Hell yeah. He's the shit, right? He didn't cook this, his husband did. Vast improvement from the days it was just beans and rice for days because we were all working too much to --" Here Dusk pauses, frowns, turns faintly narrowed eyes contemplatively on Isra. "Rough ballpark," he asks with an amused lift of brows, "what percentage of your enlightened attitude towards relaxed work-life balance comes from never wondering where your rent comes from?" "As do I, despite what for me passes for reasonable eating habits." Isra is digging into her larb with relish and perhaps alarming rapidity for anyone unused to watching her eat. She tilts her head, watches the exchange about Dawson keenly. "He did go to NYU," she hazards. "Although I managed not to run into him in that capacity for the whole time that we overlapped here. He had a lot of balls to keep in the air." She considers Dusk's question. "I do not know a good metric for estimating a percentage, but I would venture to say the majority. The rest came from observing the health of friends who do have such concerns. I do take your point, however, that it is also unhealthy to want for shelter." Of course. Everyone she was running into this week knows Dawson. Kitty laughs. "Yeah, Dawson and I went to high school together. We volunteer together still. He's mentioned you - and I think," she scrunches her nose in thought, "that I met the husband earlier this week." She sounds a little skeptical - there is conflicting information here that she can unpack later. There is something she's on the outside of here - "What, do you have Stark funding or something?" Kitty pops some chicken in her mouth, chews thoughtfully. "I thought you were on NSF, too." Come to think of it - has she ever seen Isra TA? "He's sometimes hard to catch." Light and amused. Dusk reaches out to pluck one small of minced meat from Isra's salad with his fingers, popping it into his mouth and sucking the sauce from it slowly. "Homelessness is a way bigger health toll than some caffeine-fueled all-nighters, s'true." He chews the meat slowly, too. Swallows it with a swipe of tongue across his teeth. "Volunteers -- man you are all overachievers." It sounds more impressed than critical. "If I was busy becoming a doctor I would be like, fuck them homeless orphan puppies I need sleep. This," with a only mildly sheepish grimace, "may be why I didn't finish high school." He leans a little more heavily on the chair, setting it to rocking. Eyes the strips of grilled chicken satay but doesn't touch any. "You're missing a trick, though. What I've observed, the best way to get funded through endless years of school is to get yourself a sugar daddy." Isra pauses in her ravenous feeding and looks up--directly--at Kitty for a long moment, still as a statue. But finally, all she says is, "Small world. I do not think they are actually married." This with a small incline of her head. "Nor even involved in any romantic fashion, though of course that is no requirement for marriage." She studies Dusk a moment, the tip of her tail twitching fast. "I suspect there were other reasons. But perhaps it did not help." She scoops out some of the remaining meat in her larb and offers it to Dusk. Her cat-green eyes flick to Kitty, her expression as blank and unreadable as ever. "I am not. My parents are wealthy and support me quite comfortably. I was some years into adulthood before I understood that how we live was--not the norm." Then, thoughtfully. "I think many born into wealth never understand that, not really. I try to be a decent sugar mama." Kitty's brow furrows just for a moment as she catches the tail end of Isra's look. A little bit of a frown, but she tries to hide it. "Dawson knows everyone, I guess. Really?" Kitty takes another piece of the ginger chicken with a guilty glance at Dusk. "I was getting pretty..." she shrugs, "complicated vibes from Hive when I met him. Not that it's my business." She nods at Isra's admission. "That rules, though. Not having to TA to get by- I like the undergrads, but marking sucks." Kitty lights up, laughs at the mention of sugar parents. "Well, if either of you know of someone looking for a sugar baby, let me know. My car is falling apart and loans," she makes a disgusted face, "I would like fewer of them, generally." "Hive is -- regrettably," Dusk says with a small sigh, "aggressively heterosexual. But their bromance would make for an excellent epic tale." He takes another small morsel of chicken from Isra's container, then waves the rest away. "How serious a request is that, because Ryan is freshly single and very suggestible." "It does," Isra agrees placidly. "I image I would have managed regardless, but likely managed very poorly." Her hairless brows pull together. "I had not noticed much aggression on the part of Hive's heterosexuality. But then I have never been adept at reading such things. Ryan, on the other hand..." Her ears flick foward and then back against her skull. "...is aggressively bisexual. Whether you consider 'rock star' a boon or bane is another matter." Kitty chokes on her chicken, takes a moment to cough and sputter and catch her breath. “Ryan like, Ryan Black?” Her eyes are huge with disbelief. “I mean, yeah, screw it. I won’t say no to an introduction.” She has to laugh, setting her chair spinning again as she does. “You guys know everyone, huh?” "I try to know everyone. I get FOMO like you wouldn't believe and how am I gonna keep up with where all the fun is if there are people in the community I haven't met yet?" Dusk lifts one wing in a casual shrug. "And Ryan is, in fact, exactly as delightful in person, since everyone always wants to know. His train of paparazzi and --" Here there's the slightest hesitation, wings curling just a little more snug against his back, "-- adoring fans, not so much." He gets to his feet, leans in to kiss the top of Isra's head lightly. "Although speaking of fun I need to go get some sleep. Caffeine's all that I've been running on since yesterday. -- Maybe I'll see you 'round, Kitty. Good luck with the --" His thumbclaw flicks out towards the banks of computers." "I do not know everyone," Isra insists. "I just know people strategically--those who know everyone so I don't have to." She brushes the index phalanx of one wing against Dusk's wing as he leans over to kiss her, but her expression does not change. "Do rest well. I shall see you tonight." She glances in the direction of the computers indicated. "I am confident this data will give up its secrets in another hour or two. We'll be sure not to fall into any black holes."