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Post by SceneMod on Apr 29, 2010 12:58:16 GMT -5
Is he watching her? He is, he is! Patterwing titters, her head ducking a bit lower as she tries not to make it obvious that she's using her own unique vision to watch the speedster without turning her head.
She doesn't answer immediately, and that's partially because she's concentrating on her data entry, partially because she has to edit her response before she can say it. If she just starts talking, she's bound to say something she's isn't supposed to and that could taint the research.
Well, and even she doesn't know everything about the delivery and what it's for.
"Oh, I know it's different, it has to be you see, though I imagine it's very confusing and just seems deliberately difficult, but is it going to make things to terribly hard for you?" One second she's facing the terminal, the next she's facing Blurr, with a lack of intermediate motion that usually upsets people. "It has to do with keeping the suspension stable you see, because it's less like a chemical and more like an organism, though it really isn't an organism because it doesn't think and feel and emote at all, and that was really a bad comparison, I'm sorry, let me try and explain in simpler terms. Though I'm not saying you're simple, I'm sure you're quite intelligent because you can't move that fast and not be intelligent, and you look as smart as you are cute- oh, blast!"
Patterwing actually brings one hand up as if she were trying to shut her beak, but is stopped by the helmet. She looks rather embarrassed.
After a few seconds, which probably seems like an eternity to the both of them, she drops her hand and looks away, eyes downcast. When she starts again, her voice is softer, with an embarrassed tone, and it seems like she's deliberately trying to slow down both her speech and her thought patterns.
It makes her fidget in a slightly endearing way.
"It's like a piece of music, you like music? You know what a chord is, when you play notes together to get a completely unique sound that you can only when you put that combination together in just the right way? The sound is fuller and more there and greater than the sum of it's original notes, but if you are missing one of the notes, it sounds almost painful? Well, the suspensions are like that, if you have any one of them alone, it has some neat properties, and operates in one way, and that's fine, and easy and predictable and boring, but if you add in the second suspension, their molecular vibration frequencies start to work against each other, while spreading out the energies produced, like adding water to a grease fire, and in short order you get a really, really nasty mess to put it mildy."
"It was a lot of trial and error and I really don't know everything because I wasn't part of that research, but I do know that they eventually figured out that Substance A could be transported safely so long as it was in the presence of substances B, C, and D, but C makes B and A unstable, and- I am not doing a very good job of explaining this simply."
She waves her hand at the pattern, then at the container,"It absorbs kinetic energy, but if it absorbs too much- and a very little bit is too much- it becomes explosively unstable. They made it get cold so they could have a measure of absorption during transit, and if it ever feels like it's getting solid, you really, really have to promise to drop it and run as fast as you can away, but I think you manage it as fast as you are without that happening at any rate to go back to what I was saying about chords, you can play the same notes in different ways and get different sounds. Arranging the containers in different ways optimizes different aspects. In this case, it will help dissipate the built up energy by dispersing it in the most optimal manner."
She takes a very deep breath.
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Blurr
Minor
There Before You Know It, Gone Before You Blink
Posts: 304
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Post by Blurr on May 3, 2010 12:35:03 GMT -5
Surely it only upsets people because they just can't see how she turns! Patterwing is too quick for them, that's all. Blurr sees it, though, and it brings a lopsided, enthralled smile to his face.
Then she starts explaining the arrangement of the containers and Blurr is lost in the sound of it, in the rhythm and pitch of her voice and how it moves along the scale as she speaks. For once, he can't bring himself to say anything; that would mean interrupting her. But Patterwing interrupts herself and the silence is so abrupt that it jars Blurr back to full awareness with an almost painful start. He blinks rapidly, trying to recover first from that sudden loss of sound, then from the admission that put a stop to the conversation.
She said he was cute. He beams and rests the container under his arm – it's definitely warmed back up by now – and can't think of anything to fill the silence that doesn't sound horribly trite. He settles for just smiling encouragingly and, eventually, after far too long, she starts explaining again.
Blurr may be biased, but he thinks the music analogy makes perfect sense once he thinks about it even a little.
"That sounds reasonable and it won't be too difficult," he declares, "probably not difficult at all." Setting them down in a pattern isn't as hard as running them; he even memorised it so he can set them and keep moving! And speaking of moving, he should, too. But he can't resist offering before he goes, "Maybe once I'm done with this job perhaps we could just… go somewhere and talk?" He'll let Patterwing think on her answer and bolts before he can register his own wistful tone.
Time to try yet another route. Not the one that skirts the edges of the business district, though; the traffic's much too heavy for him to avoid accidentally stripping someone when he passes. But this way, near the residential areas, is quiet. He'll try this one.
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Post by SceneMod on May 3, 2010 19:32:30 GMT -5
Patterwing stares after Blurr for quite a few minutes after the speedster zooms off, and her expression is a match to that wistful tone she'd caught in his voice. A conversation, a real conversation at her normal speed without having to dull herself down. It's so very tempting.
She hopes he survives the tests.
The residential route is much calmer, but it is also longer, long enough to possibly border on unacceptable. It is also less twisting, with less traffic stops, and so Blurr may be able to compensate for the distance by being able to run faster.
When he makes his next run through the warehouse, Bob will try to yell at Blurr before he's gone again.
"Probably should decon next time!"
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Fleetwind
Major
The Chancellor, His Eminent Grandeur, Marquis Fleetwind. The Insurgent Subduer of A Non-Threatening Cute Little Furry Kitten
Twined Elf
Posts: 730
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Post by Fleetwind on May 3, 2010 22:06:03 GMT -5
And what's that yellow speck in the sky? Why, Fleetwind's still watching! He's doing his best to trace out the routes and get an idea what Blurr is up to. The end points don't change each time, the Seeker notes, but the intermediate path does. But what could the ground pounder be doing that calls for him scurry back and forth between those places?
OOC: Still skippable.
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Blurr
Minor
There Before You Know It, Gone Before You Blink
Posts: 304
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Post by Blurr on May 4, 2010 12:47:05 GMT -5
Oh, Blurr can most assuredly make up the difference in the length of the route with raw speed. If he was fast before with the stops and turns, he puts his own name to shame now, moving with light and blindingly quick steps to avoid smashing up the pavement. Homes, fences, street signs, that child – or is it just a very tiny grown thing? – in one window staring out with great, wide green eyes as a sudden gust of blue wind bends the sickly saplings in the front yard, everything crawls past him even as he's there and gone faster than the birds can blink.
He isn't gone so quickly that he doesn't hear Bob, though.
"Got it!" he calls back even as he's around the room and out the door again. Indeed, the once brilliant blue of his passkey is washed out, a pale powdery shade. And once he decontaminates, he'll really be testing these runs. He takes a route between the last two, moving the container to his other arm so he can flex out the stiffness and cold in his joints. Almost right out of the gate, so to speak, he has to leap over an unexpected car lurching out from a sidestreet. The driver might never know where that laugh sailing over the roof of his vehicle came from. Traffic is still thick and he weaves through it, around café diners on the sidewalks who must like the seasoning the smog lends to their meals. They could just eat some plain old lead sulphide crystals and probably get the same effect. The crystals would probably be tastier.
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Post by SceneMod on May 4, 2010 22:57:50 GMT -5
This route is probably not the best pick, unless Blurr really wants a challenge. It's busy, but not in the ordered chaos of normal traffic patterns like the first route was. This one is worse than Time Square on a Friday night, people and vehicles jostling for position, bike couriers zipping on and off the sidewalk, and workers clambering upon high rise scaffolding.
It is, however, the shortest route.
Patterwing is still at the terminal doing calculations when Blurr arrives. The screen shifts suddenly from showing one data stream to showing another.
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Blurr
Minor
There Before You Know It, Gone Before You Blink
Posts: 304
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Post by Blurr on May 5, 2010 12:01:42 GMT -5
If Blurr didn't like a challenge, he wouldn't have taken this job! He even enjoys the bustle of the route in spite of the frustrating congestion because there's so much to notice, so many things all happening at the same time that it really engages him. Like talking to Patterwing, really – though not quite the same.
Speaking of Patterwing, Blurr again takes the time to stop once he reaches the lab again. His whole arm feels a little sore from the chill of the container, so he switches arms again. If Patterwing listens closely, she might hear the faint buzzing of his plating as he shakes his cold arm in tiny, rapid strokes to get friction going and warm things back up.
"So the arrangement on this end is to help settle this stuff back down after transport because transport shakes it up and that's bad, so it has to settle again," he begins without preamble. He has to get serious after this run, so he'd better make this conversation count. "And if it doesn't settle it turns explosive, right? And when it turns explosive, there goes the courier because it's an explosion. So how many others have there been if five containers exploded?"
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Post by SceneMod on May 5, 2010 14:55:28 GMT -5
"That's more or less the gist of it!" Patterwing chirps as she turns back to Blurr. His question about how many have been lost though, makes her frown. She ducks her head, once more not quite looking straight at Blurr.
"Five containers, five people, and it's sad, it's really really sad but three of them were because the runners erred not because they couldn't make the time. The numbers said they should have been able to make the run; we wouldn't have accepted them for delivery if they couldn't. We have right of refusal on couriers, you see, and if you hadn't met the criteria when you made your first dummy run, you wouldn't have been allowed to make anymore."
She doesn't say just how Blurr would have been stopped. She suspects, more she knows, but she doesn't want to think about that right now. More, she can't talk about it, if she wants to keep her job.
Without tilting her head back up, one eye swings back to watch Blurr carefully.
"What you asked before you left did you mean it? I mean, I think you meant it because you seem to like to talk to me but is that just because we talk alike and you want to talk to me or did you mean it that you wanted to talk to me?"
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Blurr
Minor
There Before You Know It, Gone Before You Blink
Posts: 304
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Post by Blurr on May 10, 2010 12:39:36 GMT -5
"Oh." That's all Blurr says for a while on the lost couriers. Simply that solitary, sober syllable delivered with an equally sober expression. He can think of many things to say and all of them are very, very trite. It's obvious to him that the loss of life upsets Patterwing and he should do something or say something to cheer her up or at least take her mind off of it because that's what friends do.
But they aren't really friends yet, are they? So what does one say to someone who's friendly but not really a friend yet when one wants to cheer this someone up?
Patterwing deftly handles the change in topic for him and it's a good thing he was already pondering what to talk about with her or it might take him a half-second longer to change gears!
"I want to talk," he says without actually having to think about it. "About you about what you do and what it's like here and what it's like where you come from because I don't think you're from here and if you like I can tell you about my home and anything else that comes to mind and–" And maybe, even for a little while, it won't be quite so lonely out in front of the world. But that seems a bit much too much to spring on someone he's only just met. "–And I promise not to be embarrassing," he adds with a self-deprecating grin that doesn't match his sincerely shy tone.
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Post by SceneMod on May 10, 2010 23:06:47 GMT -5
"Oh...OH!"
It's Patterwing's turn to be awkwardly silent as her head darts around so that she can look directly at Blurr again. She looks rather amazed at his rapid fire proclamation of his intentions.
"I'm...I'm not nearly so interesting as you...." she says at length. Suddenly she turns back to her terminal, "But oh, no you're wrong, I was hatched here! Well, not here but on Pz-Zazz, though out in the mountains, not the city. We don't do well in cities, or they say we don't, but I do just fine!" Her shoulders droop a bit.
"I miss flying though," she says, her voice a touch sad. Then Patterwing shakes her head. "But you shouldn't be wasting time with me! How many more practice runs will you be making? There's not any hurry, not now, of course, but Doc will want some sort of estimate of when you'll get started."
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Blurr
Minor
There Before You Know It, Gone Before You Blink
Posts: 304
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Post by Blurr on May 12, 2010 11:24:47 GMT -5
Hatched on Pz-Zazz, maybe, but she still isn't from the city! Blurr was right after all!
Ah, but she's right. There's work still to be done and that she keeps that in mind just puts her even higher in his estimation.
"I'm hardly wasting my time because I have plenty of time," he proclaims, "but if it helps I'm going to get serious once I decontaminate on the next run back." Yes. Blurr just implied that he's been taking it easy on these first few test runs. "I just wanted to make the most of my time before I start because once I start I won't really have time for as much conversation!"
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Post by SceneMod on May 12, 2010 21:18:09 GMT -5
Patterwing blinks slowly (for her!) before looking back at Blurr.
"Serious?" she asks, "Does that mean you expect to be making your actual runs at an even faster pace? I mean that isn't so surprising because you've been really fast and haven't shown any signs of actual exertion yet, but that could just be how you're built or maybe you're trying to show off a bit. Not that I think you're a show off!" That last comes out in a rush of chirruped worry.
After a few seconds she continues. "Okay, so you should be decontaminating at your return run, and these next few turns you should have as few distractions as possible. Which means," she smiles shyly and ducks her head, "you ought not to stop and talk to me because I'm a distraction, and really, you're a distraction for me so we should try and be professional from now on, or at least until you take a break, if you do."
She shyly reaches out and doesn't quite place her hand on Blurr's shoulder, fingers hovering just above his plating.
"But...thank you for wanting to talk to me. I'd like to do that, I'd like it very much."
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Blurr
Minor
There Before You Know It, Gone Before You Blink
Posts: 304
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Post by Blurr on May 16, 2010 23:16:05 GMT -5
"Well," Blurr starts with a smile, "maybe I am trying to show off just the tiniest bit." And why not? "But when I said I'd get serious, I meant what I said because when I get serious about these runs that means no chit-chatting though I do enjoy the chit-chatting." Patterwing's hand is just close enough that, even through the glove, she might just be able to feel the vibration as Blurr is all but buzzing again. "But no more chat for me for the next few runs." He steps back and gives Patterwing a salute of sorts. "Here we go!" And then he's out the door, back on the streets and racing for the warehouse to start this trial in earnest.
Just watch his time now!
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Fleetwind
Major
The Chancellor, His Eminent Grandeur, Marquis Fleetwind. The Insurgent Subduer of A Non-Threatening Cute Little Furry Kitten
Twined Elf
Posts: 730
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Post by Fleetwind on May 17, 2010 8:28:47 GMT -5
Patterwing's not the only one watching.
Well, Fleetwind is doing the best he can, at least. Blurr still hasn't slowed down enough while outside of buildings for the Seeker to get a clear picture, but by this point he's at least figured out the buildings that Blurr is running in between, and he's starting to get a good idea about which routes he's using.
The Seeker sighs faintly as he continues to watch, wondering if maybe he shouldn't try to, well, do something.
OOC: Still skippable.
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Post by SceneMod on May 17, 2010 9:56:40 GMT -5
Nothing of note happens to Blurr during his run back to the warehouse. However, something of note has noticed Fleetwind- a small camera drone of the type news channels use. Fleetwind may have noticed it earlier, himself, if he wasn't too focused on Blurr. It's been making slow passes over the area between the warehouse and the lab, and could easily be a traffic camera of sorts.
Except it isn't.
The camera drone makes a lazy- though deliberate- path over to Fleetwind, lazy enough that Blurr probably makes a few passes beneath them before it gets there. It addresses Flteewind in a lazy, heavily accented voice
"So, you likey the show? Watchy, watchy, you just watchy, and I'm the one supposed to be watchy. See if he go boom! Why you watchy?"
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