[phone calls OTA] Technical Difficulties

[st_abby]

He'd passed by the alien, gleaming thing in his room a hundred times by now, or nearly must've done, and hardly stopped to examine it. It was strange, but so were most other things in this place. A shiny, awkward looking device attached to the wall by means of a long cable, set on one of the little tables that seemed to litter these rooms. It had neat rows of square buttons with numbers etched on, and a handle, so Vax'ildan had supposed it was meant to work some feature of the room in a way he could scarcely imagine. He didn't want to break it, but eventually the boredom and curiosity got the better of him, much like with the door locks. It would probably fix itself, if it came to that.

After the first few moments spent listening to the monotonous warble that came from the handle, Vax'ildan reached to jab a finger into a button. When it beeped but did no more, he pushed another. And a third...

OOC Note: If you would like a thread with Vax, please leave a top-level comment to this post and he will reply! No need to pre-arrange, but as one does when learning new technology, he may disconnect the call etc. accidentally or your character may tell him to leave them alone in very few words if they so choose - most of these threads are likely to be short.

Comments

[st_reetwolf]

"Not at all! I don't even know what they're called," she answered cheerfully enough, wedging the ear-and-talking part between her face and shoulder; it fit comfortably enough that she knew she'd done it before, but.... "Ankh-Morpork didn't have them anyway. I rather think the bits I don't remember had them, though."

[st_abby]

"Phones," Vax offered, feeling more worldly for it. "Someone else told me they're called 'phones.' ...How would you know, if you'd used them in those bits you don't remember?"

[st_reetwolf]

"Well, I answered this one without thinking about it 'til after, and I've currently got it wedged between my face and shoulder so my hands are free. It feels familiar even though I don't remember doing it before." She frowned, then waved a hand vaguely even though Vax couldn't see it. "Never lose only part of your memory. It's incredibly disorienting."

[st_abby]

"All or nothing, then. Duly noted." It was as much a joke as he could think to make of it, but Vax's tone was tempered with concern. "...Are you sure that's healthy, having so much memory gone?" He'd lost bits and pieces of his own when he'd blacked out in battle, but that had a clear cause - and wasn't 'healthy' either. "Do you want me to find out if there's a proper healer here that might know what to look for?"

[st_reetwolf]

"So far it seems to just be knowing things without knowing why I know them. Light switches and such. Irritating and awkward, but apart from that...." She sighed. "I don't know. I'm not sure I want to remember any of it, since I know one thing in there is going to hurt like hell once I actually know it." It would have to hurt more seeing what she was hanging by that window for than just knowing it was there. Especially since, more than likely, she'd never have whatever it was back again, anyway. That just wasn't how life worked.

[st_abby]

Vax'ildan was quiet for a moment, though some muted rustling and the slither of cord over mouthpiece seemed to suggest he'd rearranged himself somehow. He tried to imagine never having known his sister. Not agonizing over the loss of her. Not clinging to every stupid little memory of their lives spent together as if it were all the riches on the world. Just being... Calm, and numb, and ignorant, of every part of her.

He couldn't do it, but he tried.

"I think the question of it - of what I might be missing - might drive me mad," he supposed. "But it's not me. It's you." It was an obvious thing to say. Sometimes people needed to hear obvious things, though he didn't know Angua well enough to guess. "If you decide want it back, the offer stands, is all I mean to say."

[st_reetwolf]

"I could bear knowing what I'd lost if I thought I could get it back. But I don't." She consciously injected a little more cheerfulness into her tone. Getting upset would only lead to more upset, which was honestly a serious pain in a soft place. "I'll keep your offer in mind, though, it's quite kind. Thank you."

[st_abby]

"I know fuck-all about mind magic or the brain," Vax admitted. "But I've some experience facing problems too big for one person. Problems too big for a number of people, even." Large, scaled, fire-breathing, city-devastating sized problems. "I don't know that it's out of kindness so much as wanting to get through this other-world trauma alive, but I'd rather figure out sooner rather than later who can help whom around here and how, yeah? And it doesn't hurt that you're likeable either, wolfie."

[st_reetwolf]

"Awwwww." Now the cheerfulness, with a thread of laughter, was completely un-forced. Even though the point he'd made was both serious and true: if nothing else, someone who could help with mind and/or magical matters could prove to be highly useful even if she decided to keep her blank space blank. "Same to you, elf. Nice to know I don't need to worry about peppermint oil in the hallways on your account." Not that she had been, at all, but it could be in the nature of a gift: here's how you mess with scent-based trackers.

[st_abby]

"I wouldn't," he agreed, when Vax took her meaning. He'd known that Trinket had a similar sensitivity to smell, but he'd never given thought to trying to cancel that out. Tracker mammal problems, for sure. "Sorry about the bird smell, anyway. I'm well used to it by now, but I know I'm not exactly springtime fresh from the armor."

[st_reetwolf]

"Don't worry about it. I've smelled worse." Much worse, much more persistent, much less ignorable. "For one, Corporal Nobby Nobbs. To give you a general idea of his cleanliness, he actually had to carry around a signed chitty stating that to the best of his examiner's knowledge and on the balance, he was most likely a human." And that didn't even get into the fact that he genuinely seemed not to know what soap was for or his tendency to buy the cheapest and largest bottles of perfume he could find.

[st_abby]

Vax was making a face before he stopped to consider that Angua couldn't see it to appreciate it. And he'd thought that Scanlan and Grog were bad. They had been, even for him not being an exactly fastidious fellow himself - but that sounded miserable. "I'd rather not try to imagine that smell, if it's all the same to you."

[st_reetwolf]

"And Nobby wasn't even the worst. Ankh-Morpork had a river so polluted you could walk on the crust on top mostly safely." And she knew of at least one dog who'd been loaded in a sack with rocks, tossed 'in' the Ankh, and squirmed out of the sack to trot back to allegedly solid land no worse for wear.

She wondered absently how Gaspode was doing. Likely well, as he was quite clever for a dog. "So never you mind the musty bird smell. At worst, I can smell you coming, but I could do that anyway."

[st_abby]

"Well that sounds pretty disgusting, but I'm glad not to offend your delicate snout," he told her in good humor. "I'd better get back to working this thing out, but let's sniff each other soon."

That did get weird.