001 | [Video]

[inwhichwar]

[The video shows the interior of a bedroom in one of the housing units, and a conservatively dressed woman in late middle age who is fiddling one-handed with the netbook and muttering to herself as she does so. Her accent is worn-down and of indeterminate European origin, more a matter of cadence and word order than any distinctive pronunciation.]

Ach, there we are. Such a contraption.

[Maria steps back from the netbook a bit, enough to show that she leans heavily on a forearm crutch for support. She props the other hand on her hip in a somewhat belligerent pose as she speaks, addressing the camera directly.]

So. The local fellows here give me to understand that what they want is help with their resistance, and it's for this reason they snatched me and all you other people up to this future of theirs. It's a very nice offer and I'm sure we should all be flattered to be so important to the cause, not to mention to have an unannounced trip to this rainy God-only-knows-where with all the expenses paid.

[Her expression should make it exquisitely clear that she considers this to be an enormous annoyance, to put it politely.]

But in my experience causes usually are a messy business, particularly when they resort to wars to do the sorting-out, and I'm in no shape these days to be running about battlefields.

So. Maria is my name, Maria Gordon, and what I would like to know is, who's in charge of the ones who do the patching-up of the people who do the revolutioning? Because I should like to volunteer for that. God knows I'm more use at doctoring than I am at most things, these days.

[She drums her fingertips against her side, thinking for a moment.]

Secondly, and besides that, who knows directions from the housing to the nearest pub?

Comments

[fe_male]

[ What the hell does that mean

He's mostly just raising his eyebrows for a moment over the rim of his own glass at her. Indeed. ]

So you're a doctor? What kind?

[inwhichwar]

Mostly of the emergency kind. At home I run a clinic which . . . how shall I say it? Caters to a rough neighborhood. I am the doctor one comes to when one needs enough patching-up to survive to get to a hospital.

[Or, you know. To avoid going to a hospital because policemen ask awkward questions in hospitals, but these are tiny, tiny details.]

[fe_male]

[ well you sound useful ]

Well, gee, I wonder why they pulled you here. Emergency type doctor, war, those don't match up together at all.

[inwhichwar]

Ach, no, not whatsoever. Truly a mystery for the age, why they thought I should be useful.

[There are other reasons, of course, but if she went around telling everyone about those, she wouldn't have lived this long.]

And I suppose this stuff of yours they stole also was not at all useful for such purposes.

[fe_male]

Not whatsoever. No healing properties at all. Totally unhelpful. Almost - you could say - exactly the opposite. Anti-healing.

[inwhichwar]

Ach, well, and whatever they could want with that takes not so very much guessing. God forbid they should do such a thing as asking before taking.

[fe_male]

Who bothers to do that nowadays? Asking - it's like begging someone to say no just for the hell of it.

[inwhichwar]

Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, is that it? Or perhaps not even to beg forgiveness -- to explain after the fact why taking was the very sensible thing to do?

[fe_male]

Something like that. Want, take, have. No explanation even necessary sometimes. [ Drinks! ]

[inwhichwar]

[Maria snorts into her drink. She likes him, he amuses her.]

Spoken like a man with a great destiny in government.

[fe_male]

[ that bodes well for their roommateship ]

Hah, I have a few senators who'd like to hear you say that. They seem to have an interest being in me - I'm understandably a little nonconsentual about that.

[inwhichwar]

[She snorts in amusement.]

You must hold out for the younger, more attractive senators, obviously.

[fe_male]

[ pfft best roommate ever okay ]

Obviously. Or I could just, contract to the government and let them be in whatever they want.

[inwhichwar]

To judge so far by the government here, they will be in what they want either way. It may as well be that you get some benefits out of the arrangement.

[fe_male]

[ He nods. ]

Exactly. Like a... the opposite of whatever a zero sum game winds up being. Cutting my losses, as it were. Whatever. Drink!

[inwhichwar]

[Her thoughts exactly, and she hoists her glass to emphasize as much.]

Drink, indeed. To your very good health, sir, in this strange future of theirs.

[fe_male]

And to yours! Miss.. Madame.. Maria. Miss Madame Maria, to your health as well. Whatever it winds up meaning.