003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

[norea]

Who: Hasibe Ozcelik, and OPEN.
What: A show premieres at The Vault.
Where: The Vault.
When: Evening til the wee hours of the morning.
Notes: I will set up sections in the comments for people to hang out.
Warnings: WELL IT'S AN ADULT CLUB, SO.

The show starts at nine o'clock, and the bar is full pretty quickly thereafter, but the variety in the club is pretty striking. Xenians in their best suits, non-Xenians in leather and ripped fishnets, everything in between. There doesn't seem to be a lot of cultural divide here between human and not, even given recent issues. Hasibe makes good on her promise to have members of her cohort given seating preference, as she's sweet-talked the cocktail dress-clad hostesses, and the bartenders (in their vague approximations of suits with very open shirts) are aware that she's invited a lot of heavy drinkers. ...she just assumes people in her cohort want to drink--they've been kidnapped to a strange city with many new things to offer, so why wouldn't they?

Comments

[caballero]

Bruce doesn't really do idle conversation if he can help it; he's not acting like a pod person, tonight, and though Tom isn't quite who he really is (...whatever the hell that means), he's still able to converse how he might like to. (If he could figure that out halfway.)

That said, sometimes he seems lost, and sometimes he seems a little - intense, pointed, too-saturated, something. It goes back and forth, sometimes subtle and sometimes a bit jarring, and some people find it intriguing while others tend to be unnerved.

For now, thankfully, he's fine.

He smiles, which passes for a reciprocation of her greeting, and then moves to sit down, gesturing for her to do so first if she'd like, because he's got manners. (Unless they're already sitting and Bruce's typist is lacking in reading comprehension tonight, in which case ignore this.) "It is unusually busy tonight, so I've been told." There's a cocktail (and... assorted other services) menu stood up on the low table in the room, and he glances at it, doesn't pursue it. And, ah, now he recognizes Rachel from the cohort network; of course everyone he runs into is from that cohort. When's it going to be that masked woman? He puts it out of his mind, forcibly- "Hasibe's a friend of mine from home, actually, though I haven't been in here before."

[gotbottle]

Fret not, O Typist, they were not yet seated, so Rachel moves to do that now with murmured thanks and an appreciation for Bruce's good manners. The wine glass is first moved back to her right hand and then raised to her lips as she settles in.

"Is she?" She smiles, a bit sadly. "I never know whether to be happy or sad for people when other people they know turn up here. It's like--look, it sucks. Being dragged here, not being able to leave, all the crap that happens. But at the same time... at least you're not alone? I don't know."

[caballero]

"It's strange," he admits. Even stranger, actually, considering the very bizarre circumstances that have led Bruce and Hasi to be friends, but for now, he's fine with people thinking that he's from her world. "But I suppose there's some... larger interest, maybe comfort, in thinking that the universe isn't as isolated as we might worry."

Specs of dust in a vast galaxy, and all that. Maybe their little lives aren't so small.

[gotbottle]

She nods, thoughtful, apparently satisfied by that answer. There is comfort in thinking this isn't all at random, somehow. If there's a meaning then there may be something to reason against.

"Have you been here long? I don't remember you from the cohort network. But I used to be a lot better at keeping up with who was new and who wasn't." She sighs. "There are so many of us now."

[caballero]

"Not long, no." Which is ambiguous, but implies he counts as in her cohort; Bruce had toyed with the idea of pretending to be from some other time, but it's been easier to slip into the wake of Hasi's high-octane social engineering. She lived in Boston, Tom studied at MIT. It fits easily enough.

As for the network itself- "Digital crowds get me as much as real ones, I'm afraid I haven't been very talkative." Slightly apologetic, as if he doesn't mean to be mysterious.

[gotbottle]

"Oh, no, of course. It's overwhelming as it is, being snatched up and dropped into that room, having to wait to be let out, no warning or anything. And then you have all these strangers coming at you. I don't blame you at all."

But that's Rachel for you, always being reassuring, always ready to help someone excuse whatever needs to be overlooked or smoothed over. It's a skill honed in a tumultuous home and carried over into adulthood, second nature.

"You're not still living at the inn, are you?"

[caballero]

"No, I got out pretty quick." He smiles, brief. "Not anywhere glamorous, but the whole thing was just too weird."

'Not anywhere glamorous' means he was living on the streets and in the uninhabited areas of the city until Hasi made him crash with her, but... whatever, he could have also been in a cheap motel somewhere without propaganda pamphlets. Bruce is on his own by now anyway.

"This is less strange, in all honesty."

This meaning the Vault - and all it entails - people being themselves, trying new things, living life and engaging in fuck knows what.

[gotbottle]

She nods, understanding. This, the nightclub, the people doing what people will do in such a place, it's expected. It's more normal, has more of a frame of reference, to most people. She can't imagine, even in all the worlds that must be out there, that there's a lot of places where being hauled away without so much as a by-your-leave and tossed into an inescapable city is at all normal or everyday.

"No, I know. That whole place gave me the creeps. And, like--it's awfully convenient, right? Sure, it's hospitality, the whole least-we-can-do-for-you-poor-thing act. But at the same time they get people to hang out a while and they get a chance to watch them. No, thanks."

apparently i hallucinated replying to this earlier

[caballero]

"You have to wonder what's happened to people to give them that mentality. Since there's no natives."

The light tone he says it in - perfectly in line with their conversation - is strange, considering the relatively serious nature of the suggestion. What could make people who'd been abducted turn on their peers like that? Why is the Militia feared like it is, if it's made up of people who were once like them? What parents wouldn't teach their children about being abducted? What's going on, there?

But it's interrupted; someone at the door calls out to anyone inside, and pushes it open. Another waitress - Bruce rises and goes to intercept, pleasant if still mild. He asks Rachel if there's anything she'd like. (On him.)

not to worry!

[gotbottle]

"...Yeah."

It's a question she's considered, a lot. Were they beaten down? Figuratively, by being trapped here, or more literally, threatened, coerced? She can almost understand, sometimes, wanting to give up, lie down, go with the flow of things when you've been worn down and the fight's gone out of you. But to go further, to make the conscious choice to participate in turning on everyone else... she's not sure what would push a person that far.

She's glad for the interruption; as much as these are questions needing answers and she always wants to hear what other people think, this room was meant to be a place of refuge, for now. It wouldn't do to suddenly drag the conversation under into dark, heavy places. It's enough, for now, to know he shares some of those same questioning urges.

She asks, instead, for another glass of wine, making sure to properly convey her gratitude for Tom's generosity.

[caballero]

Wine it is, whatever she was drinking, and Bruce lets himself get coyly bullied into ordering something, anything - he gets a soda, and at the look, he says 'On my planet alcohol makes us really sick,' which apparently passes. It'd be nice if he didn't have to bullshit at every turn, but the alternative is buying a cocktail and just. Letting it sit there. Which seems wasteful.

He hands Rachel her glass, ushering the waitress away first. "I don't drink," he says, sounding almost apologetic, and sits back down.

[gotbottle]

She waves a hand, dismissive--not the kind of dismissive that entails getting the fuck out of here with this nonsense, but rather the easy kind, the kind that says everything's fine between friends. "It's okay. Not everyone does. And thank you."

She lets him settle in before asking, "Have you managed to find work, yet?"

[caballero]

He raises his glass a little in response to her thank-you, a silence salute. No problem. She is a lady, after all, and it's not like he paid to get in. (Thanks, Hasi.)

"A few prospects, nothing concrete as of yet. I work in engineering, usually, back home I'd taken over a computer system management job at a technology firm a couple of years ago, but I've done city planning before." He shrugs. "The potentials for R&D here aren't what I'm used to, but it's not like I'm going to be bored."

One bright spot, at least: for someone who likes learning and problem-solving, Baedal is a never-ending puzzle, even at the nine-to-five level. "What do you do?"

[gotbottle]

"No, not at all. It's fortunate that you'll be able to, like, use your background and skills here."

She sips from her glass to buy herself a moment, shrugging one shoulder. "I work at The Shrove's Wing, over in Gallmarch. It's a tea house. I wait tables." She's not exactly ashamed of it, necessarily--it's more that she's restless, these days, knowing she can do more, wanting to do more. "It's all right. The hours are decent and the money's good. I took the job right after I got here, so I could get money under me and get the hell out of that inn."

And yet half a year later, here she is, still making tea. Complacency, maybe. Being comfortable. Not wanting to change things once she was settled in. "Anyway. I volunteer with one of the city's political parties, the People's Independence Front, a few hours a week. Mostly leafletting and stuff. I might try to move into something that's, like, a better fit with my background; I wrote and edited things back home, I was working on maybe moving into reporting."

[caballero]

He nods, recognizing the tea house. He's only swung by once, creeping in for a cup of something that nearly burned his tongue out of his mouth (it was pretty good) in the first few days hew as in the city. That information gets filed away in his head; should he ever come back he'll try to time it so that he can say hello.

"That's the nice one, right?" The Independence Front. (Bruce knows damn well; Tom hasn't caught up just yet.) He sips his soda, and something in the back of his mind wonders what the hell it's flavored with as it doesn't taste like anything he recognizes. "Considering how mass media here is still firmly entrenched in print work despite the whole - network thing - I'd imagine you could do pretty well with that."

[gotbottle]

"The nice one? Oh, the nice political party. Yeah." She grins, faintly. "I like them. They seem like they have some genuine concern for the people who get dragged in here. I'm all for that."

She has another sip of wine, shaking her head slightly. "I have my doubts. I was moving toward getting into investigative reporting. Digging up the stories that don't get told. I'm not sure that'd fly real well in this city." Not that that should stop her--normally it wouldn't, but lately she's tired. Complacent. Unfocused.

"I don't know. Maybe there's another way."