strangetrip | [Arrival GP] it’s summer, right?

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[Arrival GP] it’s summer, right?

June, Xavin decided, was a puzzling month. It still seemed like spring in some ways, but was very summer already in others. Among the ways that it was summer: less demand for hot drinks. And yes, she could do iced, but that tended to mean hauling ice to her coffee-cart territory and that got old fast.

Since it was arrival day, therefore, she was trying something new. She’d taken over part of the cafe (with a decentish view of the lobby) and set it up with blenders, fruits, and other things. Surely smoothies would be acceptable, and the cafe space meant not having to haul ice.

As a further acknowledgement of probable sun and warmth, Xavin ensured there were obvious stacks of towels near the more usual baskets of things for new arrivals. If there were any newcomers and she’d forgotten something, well... it would probably be all right eventually.

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Five was used to being an oddity, he'd been one (for multiple reasons) his whole life. Being normal would have been the oddity for him, though this bizarre pocket outside of time and history seemed to be forcing some degree of normality on him: no assassinations, no world-ending apocalypses, no insane family (even if he actually missed them a little), and he'd managed to dress in something other than his old Academy uniform... mostly, anyway. Yes jeans, yes sneakers, but also button-down shirts specifically so he could still wear a tie.

Ties were useful weapons.

Anyway, his powers made him an oddity even when nothing else did... right up until he saw a woman appear in front of a door with a gentle ding. A woman without a briefcase, whose power therefore had to be internal to her. He blinked down the hall and surveyed her up close, not thinking to speak until he realized that watching someone watching a door was another oddity. "Hey. Haven't seen you around before."

"Hi, Number Five. I'm Janet!" Janet's perpetual cheeriness cuts through the hall. "You haven't seen me before because I just arrived."

Five had kind of expected as much, but it was good to have confirmation. Actually kind of disturbing was that she knew him, and he was as sure as he could be that he didn’t know her at all, from any phase of his life. “Good to meet you, Janet.” He was not cheerful. “Where did you come from.”

Janet does not find Five's lack of friendliness offputting. "Originally or just now?"

"Pick one." Especially if they were both interesting answers.

"I was in the Judge's Chambers," Janet helpfully offers.

“Interesting. The judge of what?” She didn’t look like your usual run of criminal, or even your unusual run of criminal. And she’d said the judge, like there was only one.

"She rules on disputes between the Good Place and the Bad Place," Janet says without missing a beat.

“Uh-huh. I’m probably going to need a drink for this conversation, aren’t I?” Five hopped to the nearest bar, stayed only long enough to grab vodka and a shot glass (in case he felt like being civilized and not just drinking from the bottle), then hopped back. He’d been gone about ten seconds. “So. Good Place, Bad Place? Is that you being cutesy about Heaven and Hell?”

Janet is utterly unphased by Five's ability.

"No, those are their actual names," Janet says, still smiling.

“Oh-kay.” Five couldn’t decide if the almost robotic cheerfulness was annoying or not. It reminded him of the Handler, a bit, though she’d cracked the facade once in a while. “So this judge was deciding which you go to?”

"Oh, no. The judge was trying to determine whether or not the system that determines whether or not a person goes to the Good Place or the Bad place was corrupt."

“Due to it being a system, I’m betting the answer is ‘well, duh’?” Five knew how to manipulate systems, after all. If they weren’t fundamentally broken or breakable, he wouldn’t be able to.

Janet smiles. "That's exactly what Michael would say."

“Thanks.” Five wasn’t sure at all that that had been a compliment, since the woman seemed to smile about everything, but ‘thanks’ would get them past it. “Has anyone given you the rundown on this place yet?” First be nice, then squeeze for information; he wasn’t about to shoot her in the head.

"No," Janet pronounces, still smiling.

“Okay then. This is the Madonna Inn, which is technically in central California, but this iteration of it is extradimensional. It and a four-hour radius of territory, not including any other towns or settlements, are in a pocket dimension outside of normal time and space.” He could show her the math, it was in a bunch of notepads and on several walls. “It’s basically a roach motel, starring us as the roaches. Fun, huh?”

"Okay," Janet responds to that, filing that information away in her OS's files for future reference. It was rather unusual, having to fill in the mental gaps. It was weird having mental gaps at all. "Sounds fun!"

“Sure.” Fun, right. Quiet, mostly, at least. “How do you teleport? I’ve never met anyone else who can do it without a briefcase.” Knowing who he was wasn’t as impressive. He was infamous, after all.

"It's a base functionality of all Janets," she informs him pleasantly. "I was built this way!"

“So you’re an... android of some kind?” Super advanced, but not impossibly so, at least to the mind of someone who called an android Mom. “What are your other base functionalities?”

"I'm able to instantaneously retrieve and/or create any requested object. I'm also an accessible database of all knowledge in the universe."

“Seriously? What job function needs that much power?” Five tilted his head, then shrugged. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter, you’re stuck here like the rest of us. But if you’ve got all the knowledge in the universe... did killing the butcher work? I kind of blew up the Commission before finding out.” The math had been so perfect. Kill the butcher so his disgusting filthy son took over the shop, thus providing tainted meat, thus rendering the Hindenburg pilot too sick to fly, thus delaying the flight until it would have to go through an electrical storm and BOOM. History preserved. But math was for shit if some bonehead couldn’t figure out ‘pull trigger’.

Edited 2019-06-19 03:42 (UTC)

"Yes, it did. Congratulations!" Janet says with far more cheeriness than what seems appropriate for what was such a gruesome plan.

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[Arrival GP] it’s summer, right?

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