Sime~Gen Roleplaying: District Controller's Office Scenario
Episode #182: You Say Tomato (3/26/00)
Nick is in the break room, trying to wake himself up with another cup of tea so he can work a little longer.
Nick is so far gone that he doesn't even flinch too badly at the Tecton #3 which is all that seems to be available.
Nick's aching feet vetoed his tongue when it came to going up to the fifth floor to get his supply of Narosian tea from Arat's office, by a vote of two to one.
Lalique slips in the door, Tecton uniform crumpled with use, dark circles under her eyes, cropped hair limp and sweaty.
Lalique looks thinner, almost haggard, and her cheek bones are sharply etched when devoid of make-up.
Lalique stops short when she catches sight of Nick.
Lalique: Excuse me.
Lalique gives Nick a challenging stare and heads into the room toward the bookshelf.
Lalique pulls a book out from the shelf and removes something from behind it.
Nick raises an eyebrow at such defensiveness, then goes back to more immediate concerns: his tea, and keeping his eyes open.
Nick's eyes, having been joined by both eyelids, are now at parity with his sense of duty, his sense of self-preservation, his loyalty to Arat, and his unwillingness to doze off in a public area.
Lalique goes to the flower arrangement and searches among the stalks and extracts something.
Nick has, in fact, not worked so many hours, in such improvised surroundings, since his last TBT concert.
Nick reflects that TBT concerts and outright riots have a great deal in common, with regards to the type of damage done their participants and the working conditions they provide.
Lalique goes to the tea collections and starts searching through all the tea leaves. She seems to be pulling bits out of there too. Her movements are driven and frantic.
Rifan enters the break room, looking like something the cat dragged in, then the wife threw out, which then crawled back to where it belonged and has been working diligently there for 2 days wondering if it will ever see its mousehole again, and if so, will the wife be waiting with some sort of household projectile.
Lalique rushes to the window, opens it and throws something out.
Rifan, for how bad he looks, actually seems rather optimistic. He likes the excitement of the emergency.
Lalique turns to face Rifan, smoothing her nager and her expression.
Nick's sense of compassion, being currently uninvolved in the ongoing debate with eyes and eyelids, is free to respond.
Nick: There's hot water for tea.
Rifan looks at Lalique oddly.
Rifan: What was that all about?
Rifan thinks Lalique has been acting pretty strangely ever since his dope started disappearing, and no coincidence either.
Lalique: Ah, Hajene, I just required a moment to take care of something in here. I am at your service.
Rifan: Well, we may as well take a break since you're here already. Do you want some tea?
Lalique: ~~ powerful support laced with confidence, exhilaration ~~
Lalique: Yes, that would be wonderful.
Nick tones down Lalique's projection a bit, to give something more ~~ restful ~~
Lalique is pleased that he is willing to give her a moment's breather; Gens were never meant to keep up with Simes, and she has to keep ahead of him.
Lalique glares at Nick and gives him a gesture; don't mess with my assigned channel!
Rifan thinks, hoo boy.
Rifan had been about to ask Nick if he wanted some tea too, but thinks the better of it. Wouldn't want to tick Lalique off!
Rifan tries to keep ahead of the women in his life.
Lalique thinks that she has very carefully researched and crafted her current projection to compensate for Rifan's stimulant withdrawal; who does Nick think he is interfering with her therapy without a by-your-leave.
Rifan takes the opportunity of her attention on Nick to dig in the same flower arrangement Lalique did, briefly, but does not seem to find what he is looking for.
Rifan mutters to himself and pours hot water into the tea leaves.
Lalique decides she must at least be civil; after all Nick is the Controller's Donor now.
Lalique: Sosu Nick, do you want some tea also?
Nick looks at his nearly-empty cup.
Nick: Please.
Rifan hands both cups to Lalique and starts making a third.
Lalique realizes that Rifan is sometimes lacking in the social graces and requires prompting.
Lalique: Thank you, Hajene.
Lalique: ~~ warm thanks ~~
Lalique thinks positive reinforcement never hurts.
Nick covers his mouth politely with his hand and yawns.
Nick's hand tends to be like that: striving to keep the worst of the dirty linen within the family, as it were.
Nick: Is there any sign that these riots are slowing down?
Rifan turns to the table with his cup, then realizes that he failed to bring any work in with him. It's been happening more often recently, that he finds himself scurrying after Lalique without remembering to bring any work to do. Then he ends up sitting idly during her breaks.
Rifan: You seen the news lately? [to Lalique]
Rifan tends to ignore the news himself, although he knows this irritates others. It just doesn't seem that important to him.
Rifan offers the first chair to Lalique. He is trainable, after all.
Lalique sits and sips. Her nager caresses Rifan, carrying the pleasure of the flavor of the trin.
Lalique: I saw a paper this morning. Got up early. It just seems to get worse and worse.
Nick: Ummm.
Lalique: Now they're picketing the Department of Taxation.
Nick: The Department of Taxation?
Rifan sits beside Lalique, enjoying her nager.
Nick: Well, I suppose taxes are never popular.
Lalique: The claim is that if the Dam goes, there will be plague and food shortages that will injure Gens, followed by a selyn shortage.
Lalique: So the rioters are urging people to withhold their taxes until the government can guarantee their safety.
Lalique: Makes no sense at all to me, but I guess people don't require sensible reasons to hate the tax collectors.
Nick: I'm not sure I understand the logic, there. How can the dam be repaired, if there aren't funds to do it?
Lalique shrugs.
Lalique: Ask the rioters, if you dare.
Lalique: Me, I'm staying in here.
Lalique: The Emergency Room is dangerous enough.
Rifan: Me too. At least until I can get a locksmith to my house. [adds under his breath]
Nick: I've worked in worse, but not recently.
Nick remembers the day Snake took him to the Bender Cove Sime Center for practice in crisis-management.
Lalique: Oh, when was that?
Nick: When I was training with Snake.
Rifan looks at Nick uneasily.
Nick: Hajene Darrel had told you about conditions in the Bender Cover Lower Sime Center's lobby, hasn't he?
Lalique: Ah, so you still recall your pre-Tecton existence. I thought you had put that behind you.
Nick shrugs.
Nick: There's no point in trying to deny my past never happened. That never works.
Rifan hadn't really remembered that he is sitting with 2 rogues until just now. He was OK with Lalique's status, but Lalique and Nick together is kind of disturbing.
Lalique: But now you are completely committed to this new way of life.
Nick: Without a channel, where's the appeal of living as a rogue?
Lalique catches that the conversation is making Rifan nervous and holds her support steady.
Lalique: Precisely. And yet you doubt me when I make the same judgment.
Nick raises an eyebrow at this sniping, which he is not in the mood for.
Nick: You made do with renSimes for years. Despite the damage that did your "clients".
Nick: That shows a level of tolerance for substandard transfers, and degree of ruthlessness towards others, that I never had.
Lalique: You are quick to judge what you know nothing about.
Nick: I can only judge by what I know of you.
Lalique: I had no choice. Given a choice, I make it.
Lalique: I told Arat, and I will tell you again, I am prepared to pledge whenever you will permit it.
Nick: You had choices. And you picked the worse choice possible, for yourself and others.
Lalique: What choices?
Rifan looks at his half-finished tea, and at the door. Nageric support or no nageric support, this doesn't sound like the kind of conversation he should be listening in on.
Rifan considers begging off break and going back to work without Lalique, but decides he'll have to put in at least 10 minutes to be polite.
Rifan is, as has been mentioned before, trainable. 1
Nick: Your choice of profession, for one. And what you did in conjunction with it.
Nick: It would have been much healthier for yourself and the renSimes you seduced if you had attained transfer dormancy, or found a rogue channel, if that was unacceptable to you.
Lalique: When I had a House, I was a Companion. When my House was destroyed, I was Companion to a channel. When my channel was murdered and my life was threatened by both the government and the underworld, I had to go into hiding or be murdered myself.
Nick is not particularly sympathetic.
Lalique: I cannot attain transfer dormancy. It's physically impossible for me.
Nick snorts.
Lalique: One month out-Territory and I became very ill.
Lalique: I have no choice.
Nick: You're a Second. You'd have much less trouble than I would, and I went without transfer for ten years. 2
Nick: Without hurting anybody or anything, my grandmother's ambitions excepted.
Lalique: I am a product of my House's breeding program and what I say is true, whether or not you choose to believe me.
Lalique: I know the characteristics of my line.
Lalique: And I could not survive out-Territory or in jail.
Lalique: Why do you think I went to Riyyh, knowing that he might reveal my secret?
Lalique: Why do you think I came back, when I had made my escape over the border?
Nick: Whether or not that's true--and personally, I very much doubt it--by choosing renSimes as transfer partners, you guaranteed that you would not be satisfied, that they could not go back to a normal life, and that you would eventually be caught.
Lalique: When I was originally trained to serve renSimes, it was with the purpose of extending the lives of the semi-juncts... who could never have what you call a normal life.
Nick: That might have been justifiable. But the semi-juncts are dead, years since, and the renSimes you served were nonjuncts.
Lalique: Always I have served channels when there were some available to me.
Nick: Lalique, you might bamboozle Rifan with that story, or even Arat, if you really believe it. He knows nothing about life outside of the Tecton.
Nick: But you won't convince me, or Snake, either. We've lived outside the Tecton, and we know just how difficult finding a rogue channel is--and isn't.
Lalique: And you know nothing of my clientele or connections before you met me.
Lalique: You are quick to think the worst.
Nick: If you had been truly interested in hiding from the authorities, as you claim, and if you had cared about the welfare of your clients, you would have settled down with a rogue channel, and stayed away from renSimes.
Nick: The Tecton would have ignored you, as long as you were discreet about it.
Nick: That you chose instead to give transfer to the people most likely to be harmed by it--transfers that couldn't satisfy you, either--does not impress me with your reliability or good sense.
Lalique: The Tecton did ignore me, because I harmed no one, until I went out of my way to help your plan with Buggfa and Tiarala arrested me for no reason forever.
Lalique: Then I lost my safe contacts and clientele and had to deal with criminals.
Nick shakes his head.
Nick: I understand Gulf Territory is far more lenient in allowing renSimes direct Gen transfer.
Nick: However, when you came to Nivet, it should have been obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense that the rules are different here.
Lalique: Yes, that has become clear.
Nick: And yet even after you were arrested and managed to escape, you didn't either change your practices or move on to a Territory where you wouldn't have to.
Nick: Instead, you came back into the one city in the Territory where giving renSimes direct transfer would do them most harm, and proceeded to serve a whole party renSimes in transfer.
Nick: And under circumstances that virtually guaranteed that you would be caught.
Nick: Not to mention your clients, who will be suffering legal and medical consequences of your actions for years to come.
Lalique: Change my practices? You think I liked dressing up like a Reloc choice Gen and serving all comers? I never did anything like that in my life before!
Nick: There were plenty of other choices open to you.
Lalique: But when I had to go on the run with no job, money, credentials or identity, my options were limited.
Nick: You've got two hands, and you're reasonably healthy.
Lalique: So?
Nick: It's not that difficult to make your way as a laborer--I did it for ten years.
Nick: It's even legal.
Lalique: Do you think I transfer for money?
Lalique: I had my shiltpron; if I could live that way I would have stayed out-T.
Nick: You did transfer for money--or did you dress up "like a Reloc choice Gen" for nothing?
Nick: You could easily have earned a living while you searched for a rogue channel--it isn't that difficult to find one.
Lalique: I dressed up like a Reloc choice Gen because I required transfer and out-T there was no way to get one.
Lalique: I do care about the legal and emotional consequences to the Simes I serve.
Nick: But not enough to not serve them, if that is what is best for them.
Lalique: I wouldn't seduce a renSime into a way of life that would cause problems.
Nick: You did.
Lalique: The guy I contacted promised me that he would only set me up with Simes who already wanted Gen transfer and chose the risk.
Lalique: Maybe he lied, but that was what he told me.
Nick: And it never occurred to you to question it, or to exercise independent judgment as to the consequences to your clients.
Nick: In fact, any time you had a choice, you picked the one which had the worst consequences for yourself and those around you.
Lalique: You are very quick to judge, you with your Sectuib Daddy and your Farris protectors.
Notes:
1) Apparently Rifan did leave at some point, because some of what Lalique says next, she wouldn't have said in front of Rifan. [return]
2) For Nick to have actually become "transfer dormant" before meeting Snake, he would have to have served transfer(s) during his brief enrollment in Tecton Donor training in his youth. [return]