Late Night at Waffles and Reading

[Pepper]

One of the best things about waffle and pancake houses was that at 10:30 when your sweet tooth kicked in and you had another 150 pages of manuscript to read, it was there, with coffee and waffles. Or Pancakes, or ice cream.

Plus, The people there never gave a damn about how you were dressed. Pepper had forgone the suit, wearing instead Flannel drawstring pants of yellow pink and blue plaid, and a simple long-sleeve t-shirt. Sleepwear, almost, other than the jacket on. Though, that was a suit jacket, actually, but she hadn't paid that much attention when she'd grabbed to ward off the developing night chill.

Footwear other than sandals might have done a better job of keeping the chill off, but she evidently didn't care, shoved into a booth as she was flipping through the manuscript and sucking down coffee (Black, extra sugar) while waiting for her waffles (Strawberry, banana and blueberry, yum). She scowled at the words on the page, muttering as she pulled out a pen and made a mark on the page - wasn't that character one of the darker skinned ones last chapter?

[Avis]

The joys of late night waffles were entirely lost on Avis. The only thing going through the fried carcass of her mind at that moment were the words fuck swing shift. Usually she worked nights, which wasn't bad. It meant occasionally losing some sleep to keep up with her cabalmates, or to take care of everything else that could only be done under the sun, but it wasn't that hard of a schedule to manage. This week, though? No, fuck this week. For whatever reason, several people on the staff decided to take their sick days, so now Avis and a few other unlucky people were pulling the oddest fucking hours to get things done. It meant overtime, which wasn't anything to sneeze at, but it also meant she was running on less sleep than the number of fingers desperately wrapped around the mug of caffeine in her hand. It didn't even register as coffee at this point. It was just black, bitter, acidic, liquid energy.

A partially demolished plate of savory waffles, eggs, and fries sat in front of her sprawled form, along with a miniature dollar bill zoo, complete with cranes, frogs, foxes, mothra, a camel, and a lion. A sip of coffee spilled down her throat, and she could almost imagine the swell of black that was gathering in her stomach as the manifestation of her mood. The type of mood were she was seriously considering leaving the entire bill, plus tip, as an origami display to taunt the servers. The only question was, did she have enough energy left to do that?

It was hard to tell. She was trapped in that horrible limbo between sleep and wakefulness, where her nerves demanded consciousness but her mind kept trying to refuse to participate. Even before the coffee she'd been hovering in the liminal zone of insomnia, so she'd decided: fuck it, I'll go out, eat nice food and drink something to wake me up. If only it had worked. Maybe it was the boredom keeping her weighed down. She didn't know, but sitting here idly making paper-things wasn't going to change anything.

But, maybe the person muttering in the booth behind her would. She seemed to be awfully interested in something, which in itself was interesting, because the woman looked like she could shame a rainbow, and in her pajamas, too! What the hell was she reading?

Momentarily forgetting about the possibility of origami-ing space into a better viewpoint, Avis levered herself up a bit higher and craned her neck so she could literally read over the woman's shoulder.

[Pepper]

Pepper didn't notice, at first. Avis had plenty of time to catch a few of the names on the paper - Valk, Jasti, Penn, and M'cai - and that it was definitely a piece of sci-fi, since they were talking about re-colonizing the Moon. Though M'cai was speaking like he had way more authority over what happens on the moon than Penn, which was odd since Penn was evidently some kind of official and clearly didn't treat M'cai like a person.

And maybe that was just because M'cai wasn't physically there. But then Pepper looked up as her waffles came, and she noticed Avis peeking. The Acanthus set the stack of papers down and took a drink of her coffee, all the while looking at the dark haired woman. "Hi, so, what do you think?"

[Avis]

At first, a blank, dull green stare was all that met the Acanthus' question. It took several moments to register that she'd been caught, and that the woman wasn't even upset about it. Well, hey, the day couldn't be all bad, could it?

"Um. It's ok, I guess," she finally replied, eyes flicking down to stare at the manuscript there. "Maybe if I read the whole thing, then it would make more sense, but I'm a bit confused. Like, I get that it's in the future, but why re-colonize the moon? It's a white rock. And why isn't M'cai on the fucking moon if he cares that much about it? What, his spaceship is still in the shop?" she asked with snort. "I don't know, it seems like it could be fun, but I'm not really getting the, ya know, point of it all. I mean, there's always supposed to be a point, right?"

[Pepper]

Pepper took a bite while she listened to the brunette's thoughts, and swallowed in time to answer, "Ah, yeah, I'm around the three quarter mark and approaching one of the major climaxes, so that would be a confusing spot to jump in."

She gestured across her table and raised her eyebrows in an invitation, then continued, "It's set far enough in the future that Earth's increasing over-exploitation makes most places on it really sucky to live in. There's a few exceptions, hyper-wealthy countries that seem pristine, but are built on taking advantage of all the other places. The Moon Colony was first built as a way for these hyper-rich people and countries to set up a place where they could completely remove themselves from the consequences of their actions - no pollution, no damaged landscapes, no poor or hungry people visible. They set up the colony's transportation, clean up sewage, everything, to be run by a super AI, and worker they teleported up from Earth to work, and sent back at the end of the day."

She took a bite, chewing it to see if Avis was following along. "But even that is pretty old history by the time the story starts - stuff happened, the moon was abandoned, the AI left to maintain an empty city. It start when Valk - she's a descendant of one of the old workers, and is from one of the more exploited places - managed to get teleported to the moon when one of the old transport systems come online for mysterious reasons. Meanwhile, the Super wealthy countries are talking about trying to do what they did before, but they're going to send a group of people up to see if it's livable up there. Valk Befriends the AI, and being terrible at thinking of names, phonetically reads out the acronym of 'Moon Colony Artificial Intelligence' - M'Cai - and that's why he's communicating through the computers."

[Avis]

With a shrug the Warlock slipped out of her booth, leaving her zoo behind, and joined the colorful woman at her table. She was glad she did. The story being told to her wasn't exactly a simple one, and with fatigue weighing her down it was a lot easier to focus with her body matching the direction of her attention. And, thankfully, the polychromatic woman's story was an interesting one. Avis nodded along while Pepper talked, slowing sitting up out of the slump she'd first folded into as her imagination was piqued.

"Ok, that makes a lot more sense. I can get behind that. There's a lot of, ya know, applicability there. Plus, it sounds interesting. Much better than that shit show of a movie Matt Damon was in a bit ago. That one had a haven for the rich, too, but obviously that story was a lot different than what you're describing. I don't know, what you said at first just reminded me of it. Not that it's really that relevant. So, um, anyways," she wittered, a pale hand reaching up to rub at the back of her neck, "tell me more about this AI. You said someone befriended it, but what does that mean for the computer. I mean, if it had the capacity for emotion, it would have gone batshit during that long a period of isolation."

[Pepper]

Pepper nodded, "I don't think I saw that one? There's bound to be parallels though." And, that was an excellent question about the AI.

"Good catch - that was a bit of a plothole in early drafts, but it was patched in by extending one of Valk and M'Cai's earlier conversations. The Thing with AIs is that they're designed to be able to learn and change their programming. The M.C.A.I. starts off with the core concept of taking care of people's needs, but with the absence of actual people on the moon, it uses the Colony's communications array to keep updated on what's going on with humanity..."

She trailed off then shrugged. "By the time Valk shows up, he doesn't fully understand emotions or perfected the programming for them, but it's like he just got a puppy for Christmas 'A Person! My very own Person to care for and love and feed!' so yeah, He boots up a bunch of systems he had sitting on standby to help Valk out, at least until she travels back to Earth because she does have family, etc. She basically tries to fill in the gaps that binging on TV and the internet for a century will leave." Pepper took a couple bites of the waffle and a washed it down with coffee, wondering what the mystery girl would ask next. Pepper only felt slightly

[Avis]

"Yeah, those would be pretty--big gaps," Avis agreed, eyes flicking away from Pepper, down to the table. The hand that had disappeared behind her hair and hood kept massaging the back of her neck, and after several seconds it stopped, dropping back down beneath the table.

"Well, I take it back," she began again, eyes coming back up to meet Pepper's. "That actually sounds like a really cool story. I haven't read much Science Fiction stuff, but I'd definitely read that once it's, ya know, the final draft. There's all kinds of stuff I'd love to see explored. I mean, you've got the class stuff, the question of sentience, and even stuff about media, which is kind of ironic, but that's part of what makes it interesting. It's all good stuff. Did you write it? Or did a friend?"

[Pepper]

"Colonialism and Identity too. M'Cai has access to holographic projectors, usually, and was using them to experiment with how he wants people to view him - including gender. Reason he's not using them in that scene is 'cause Penn smashed the projectors to try and cut out M'cai's arguments." Pepper flashed a grin, enjoying that she was picking up on all that. "Actually I'm a fact editor for a publishing house. This is probably on it's last five of ten drafts before printing."

Wasn't that a cool thing. Pepper silently marveled at working for the publisher that was going to put this story on the shelves. "I could only dream of doing this much complexity in a story." She was still working on finding Voice, ironically for a member of the Vox.

[Avis]

"Well, that's the thing. Dreams are where this kind of stuff comes from, ya know? It's our connection to everything that's, um, like," Avis fumbled, a hand appearing above the table, poised so that it was reaching, yet also cupping air, the possessing it, stealing from it. Her face twisted unconsciously while she grappled for the right words, and then relaxed again when they finally came, spilling out with the inertia of gravity.

"It's our connection to everything greater. To everything that can be thought of and made real in the realm of the mind. Created or realized, learned or imagined. Haven't you ever woken up from a dream and just been filled with the compulsion to do something? Like, not just a desire, but a kind of burning impulse that haunts you until its been satisfied? One that won't leave you alone because it's literally branded into your brain? Stuck there until worn smooth by the action of actually doing it?"