Cat's in the cradle (Melia and Taliesin)

  • So many newbies lately! Here is a very important PSA about one of our most vital content policies! Read it even if you are an ancient member!
Status
Not open for further replies.
As they neared the city, Dominic interrupted briefly that Kristie would have to let him know where to turn. But otherwise he listened to her intently. He had noticed that she had blushed a bit, but paid no mind to it. When she was finished he enthused, "That's great! I'll work on seeing what I can get set up to help. We've had an old van that we used to use to shuttle employees to and from work, but have since graduated to a bus, so I could just have a little maintenance done on that and that should be ready to go!"

"I have Matthew go through the secretary because I tend to like to have a bit of mental preparation before he comes bumbling in. I used to leave that door in my office unlocked because no one had ever bothered with it. Somehow that was the first door he bloody tried. I'm sure he's somehow found access to our security cameras, so that's how he knew. He's certainly given me reason to up my security system though. And I've had a very thorough talk with my security personnel as well since then. I think sometime after we close would be a more ideal time for an upgraded security system. Matthew uses his nights I think to do his hacking or whatever it is that he does."
 
Kristie was glad she had plenty of practice at keeping her face smooth and lying because at the mention of hacking she really wanted to laugh. Matt was doing a lot of things with his computers but she hadn't seen much in the way of hacking. Intricate routing of signals, yes, hacking in the more traditional sense? Not as much. Mostly just keeping a close eye on the government which Kristie did as well, but she was an accomplished hacker who tended to hack things just for fun. She also tended to do most of hers during the day.

She was actually having to steel herself as they neared the city as she experienced both excitement at rolling through town like she was in a movie, and trepidation at the same time. She could already hear the kids from her programs teasing her. Tessa in particular since she was watching the shop right now and would be right there after she got out of the car. "Well, I'll have to come over at least a couple times. Once to get a better look around your place before coming back again to do the actual upgrades." She had been paying quite close attention to his security actually, since that was just a habit of hers, but it wouldn't do to say that and it didn't hurt to have a second more thorough look around. "Perhaps when the van is ready? I can bring one of my aids then and they can drive it back." While Kristie wasn't afraid of cars and could in theory drive them, she preferred not to. People drove too crazy in the city and she would rather have the very well trained bus and cab drivers deal with it.
 
"Oh, sure!" Dominic said of her plans. "Whatever you feel you need to do." As they neared Kristie's shop, Dominic slowed down. "Sometimes I forget about how rough some of these areas can get. I feel a bit like a dick driving through here in this car..." he mumbled. "Like I'm rubbing something in their faces." Dominic lived in a relatively well to do neighborhood. He still lived pretty modestly for a man of his means. But as he had said earlier, he was at work so much and was so rarely home, most of his funds went into his business and less into his personal life. With the exception of his car. And his clothing. He did like to be well dressed, but also felt he did require a rather professional attire for what he did anyway. Not that he was a suit and tie type, because that was just impractical, but he did like to keep his threads well tailored.

He pulled up outside her shop and turned to her with another one of his charming smiles. "Well it was great to meet you, Kristie, and I'll be keeping in touch!"
 
"Well, I don't live in quite as bad of area as Matt, but I wouldn't leave your car parked here either." Kristie chuckled softly. He, almost as much as his fancy car, did not fit in too well around here, which only increased the odd feeling of riding with him. Thankfully cars got around pretty quickly and they were in front of the shop almost before she knew it.

And there was that smile again, which somehow never seemed to get less effective. "I'm glad I decided to visit today." She replied warmly. "I look forward to hearing from you." She made sure to get out before he could even think of repeating his performance of opening the door for her and turned to give him a wave and a smile. "Try not to get jumped on the way back." She turned her gaze back towards the shop and winced at the almost predatory expression on her seconds face. Tessa was clearly bouncing in her seat to jump Kristie and Kristie couldn't help but linger outside the door for just a bit before reluctantly heading inside.

"Soooo who was that?" Tessa arched an eyebrow at the other woman.

Kristie sighed and walked over to lean on the counter. "Too good to be true, as far as I can tell." She chuckled wirily. "That's Dominic." She had entirely too much fun rolling that name around on her tongue. "Otherwise known as 'Mr. Howard.'"

Tessa gave her a dumbfounded look. "Wait, what? Seriously? The one Matt's…and he just happened to drive you home in his fancy convertible looking like he just came from Hollywood?"

Kristie couldn't help but laugh, though she almost wanted to cry. "That's pretty much exactly what I thought! And yes, really that one. You can imagine my surprise as well."

"You seem to have recovered it from it fairly nicely." Tessa said with a suggestive grin, causing Kristie to groan.

"Don't get any ideas. It may end up being a fling but it can never be more than that, and you know why."

Tessa sighed dramatically. "You are way too paranoid. He looks nice enough I'm sure he wouldn't care."

"It's precisely because he is so nice that he would." And with that Kristie moved around the front desk and took her seat at the computer, making it obvious that subject was done.

Tessa pouted but let the subject drop for now. She was sure she would have plenty of opportunities to bug Kristie more later. And she couldn't wait to see what Matt thought of this.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
It took Matthew a few days to get over his initial irritation with Mr. Howard and his fidgeting with the data. But that didn't stop the fact that Matt had learned the error in the equation on his own, and therefor was able to determine that his idea had in fact worked, and if he could figure that out, he could figure out other errors to. Mr. Howard's lapse in judgement had actually steam powered Matt's determination further, by giving him the empowerment of learning his weakness. And as if Matt's sheer force of will hadn't pushed his determination enough, now it was a bullet train.

That didn't change the fact that Matt was miffed at Mr. Howard though. And while he spent his hours at home powering through calculus "courses" he eventually got to a point where he had excited himself enough at the whole new world he had opened up for himself that he had a great need to burst and share with someone who understood. And since Mr. Howard was currently on his naughty list that left only one other person who had even the slightest clue as to what was going on and so he raced to Kristie's shop, bubbling with new information, a notebook scribbled with his "discoveries" in tow, and burst into her shop with as much energy as the mailbox bombs that had used to be a daily problem in his mailbox. His hair stood on end almost to an extent that he looked like he had gotten an electrical shock. However it was actually due to the fact that he hadn't washed it in a few days, and unlike some people's hair, that got flat and stringy when it went unwashed, his got fluffier and fluffier and absolutely refused to lay flat at all. His grin stretched from ear to ear, making his already prominent cheekbones more prominent and that one crooked tooth shine like a beacon of toddlerness.

"I figured it out!" he exclaimed.
 
When Matt burst in Kristie and Tessa were having pretty much the same argument they had been having since Dominic had dropped Kristie off. Tessa had been coming over almost every day to tease and otherwise rag on Kristie about her confusion on the matter. Of course there was also business talk, as they were looking at a sudden influx of money and the van which gave them several opportunities to do things they hadn't even thought of before.

So there was a fair amount of planning, but Tessa couldn't seem to resist bugging Kristie about Dominic as Kristie had pretty much told every guy who had shown any interest in her to fuck off before this. "Oh come on, you were literally glowing when you came up to the door!" Tessa was whining as Matt burst in. Both woman jumped a bit in surprise and turned to give him bemused looks.

"Figured what out?" Kristie asked as she finally recovered, raising an eyebrow with an amused grin. "How to take care of yourself properly?" She couldn't help the jab, since it was obvious that he hadn't been.
 
Matt ignored Kristie's jab and bustled forward with his notebook on full display, the page covered in unusually neat handwriting, for Matt. This was because he discovered he got more confused with math if he wasn't careful with how he wrote it. It was where almost all of his errors came from.

"The amount of energy it would take to power a shuttle from here to Tau Ceti!" He cried pushing his notebook across the counter so Kristie could see. It was a massive number. And the amount of fuel he had calculated that took was most definitely larger than the amount of fuel that scientists predicted was left on Earth. This didn't seem to concern Matt though. Beneath it he had written other possible forms of energy including nuclear, solar, water.

These were things that Mr. Howard had gone over with him. The amount of energy. And the amount of fuel that would take. But what Matt was proud of was that he had also managed to calculate it on his own and then had gone further, calculating other options. He wasn't even sure he had exhausted every option though. And he was still playing with the initial get out of orbit energy and the amount of energy he could gather if he jetted around the sun first. And lined it up to pick up Jupiter and Saturn as well to gather speed. He had pages and pages of calculations and drawings.
 
Kristie exchanged a glance with Tessa before getting out of her seat and leaning over the calculations to get a better look at them, for all the good it would do. She had no interest in the kind of ridiculously high level math required to figure out some of this stuff. Just looking at the equations and trying to make heads or tails of it was giving her a minor headache. She quickly pushed it back towards him. "Well, from my poor computer technician eyes that looks pretty impressive." She said with a slight smile and a chuckle. She wasn't lying either. She fully believed that Matt had successfully calculated everything on there properly and was quite impressed.

Now however that he seemed more excited than ever, Kristie felt the need to point out at least one of the big things he had been ignoring thus far (willfully, she was sure). "There seems to be one thing missing though." At some point while Kristie had been looking at the notebook Tessa had vanished. Probably upstairs. "I see no diagram for how you're going to survive your thousands of year's trip." She tried her best not to sound confrontational but as impressive as Matt's work was, he needed a dose of reality.
 
"Well I figure we're going to figure out how to make it not a thousands of years trip," he replied, completely unconcerned with this problem. "But we have talked about centrifuges so I can have gravity. Evidently that's necessary for long term survival in space. Or we're going to figure out how I can live for thousands of years." He nodded. He laughed. "Put me in a cryotank if necessary. With a little self timer that goes off after a certain amount of time and I wake up. Why does everyone always worry about the minor things?"
 
"Because there are no concerns about the actual possibility of cryogenics either." Kristie couldn't help but mutter in exasperation. "I hope you're planning for all the farming materials and such to come with you as well." She didn't consider these issues to be minor either. It was an impressive dream but there were so many problems to overcome that she certainly wouldn't consider it a possible dream. Perhaps in a couple hundred years maybe, but unless they made some huge strides in medicine it was unlikely Matt was going to be alive, let alone in any shape to be flying around in space.

She put aside her exasperation for the moment though and instead leaned forward, looking at him quite seriously. "We are worrying about the so called 'minor' things, because on a trip like this there is no such thing as a minor thing. Absolutely everything would have to be planned for and work out pretty much perfectly for you to pull this off. And considering the odds on that, can you blame us for being concerned about you? You hate earth so much apparently that you're trying to run away on a practically impossible mission."
 
Matt adopted a rather glum expression. "It's not impossible. It only seems impossible because no ones tried to do it before. No one has dared to." He pulled the notebook toward himself. "And it's a good thing I know how to garden too." He said with a huff. "And I don't hate Earth. But somebody has to scout out a new planet when we've fucked this one up to the point we can't use it anymore and I want that to be me." He fixed both Kristie and Tessa with a glare. "Besides I'm only one person and if it fails it won't matter but at least I bloody tried!" He was breathing rather hard after speaking. Mad. And somewhat feeling betrayed because no one ever believed in him. "And even if I fail it will be me who starts the movement to try again. And again. I just hope it works right the first time before the government can corrupt the whole operation. Even better, this dumb, selfish race can burn itself up for all I care and stop hurting nature and innocent species."

He was so tempted to push Kristie's computer off the desk and on the the floor and let it get destroyed. He restrained though, and stormed outside instead where he did kick over the trash bin.
 
Kristie had been speaking somewhat purposely to provoke that reaction so she wasn't dissuaded when he got rather upset. She was not about to let the subject drop so quickly. She wasn't afraid of dealing with some anger, she was more concerned about actually talking about this. She didn't even care so much about dissuading him from his goal so much as conveying to him that everyone wasn't against him, they were just worried and even a bit scared. So she jumped agily over her counter and swiftly went after him, moving to stand in front of him. "You know, I personally find it very hard to actually talk to someone when they storm off immediately. Perhaps you should stick around and actually listen to what I say before running off. Regardless, I'm not going to just leave it at that so take your pick, out here or in the store?" She kept her tone serious, but conversational.
 
Matt was still breathing hard when Kristie jumped in front of him, but he knew that if he went back in her shop she would likely have a destroyed store.

"Out here then," he said lowly, trying to calm down by clenching and unclenching his fists over and over. He could feel his legs were trembling a bit and all the blood seemed to have rushed out of his hands, making his right hand hurt a bit, and his pinky finger not retract quite as far as the rest of his hand did.

And he didn't want to hurt her. And he was a little scared he might get mad enough that he would, an unfortunate side effect of growing up in more than one foster home where abuse, not necessarily to him, was present. Sometimes foster care could do more harm than good.

Matt fought this instinct with everything he had though and at least stepped a safe distance away from her and made sure to put his bike between them. At least he had been smart enough to work through some of the instincts that foster care had attempted to engrain in him. Enough to realize that it happened and enough to resist it.
 
Kristie was fairly happy with his response, she had been entirely prepared for him to try and hit her considering how quickly he blew up. Of course him putting his bike between them just made her want to go over and hug him but that would be a thing for another part of the conversation, hopefully. "Okay, good." She murmured now putting a more soothing tone. "Now then, just breathe please, and listen to what I am actually saying. I know it seemed like I was saying I didn't believe in you back there." She gave him a little more space and leaned against the wall, perhaps more aware than the average person how posturing could help her if not calm him then at least seem non-threatening. "But that wasn't what I was saying. I think you are one of the most amazing, brilliant individuals I have ever met. I used to consider myself to be pretty smart and then I met you and you just blow me out of the water." She flashed him a warm smile before turning a bit more serious as she continued.

"However, I am not afraid to admit that as much as I am impressed and admire your goal, it scares me. The thought of everything that could go wrong and what could happen to you scares me a lot. And thus I want to make sure that you aren't so caught up in your excitement and dream that you leave behind any sort of detail. You didn't seem to care much about your life back there but to me it is quite important. And to Dominic as well I know, though he can go about it kind of stupidly." She obviously did not really approve of how Dominic went about trying to deter Matt. "Space travel has gone wrong more times than it has gone right it seems, and when it's gone wrong people have generally died. And I don't want that to be you." She was doing her best to convey her earnestness both in her voice and her facial and body expressions as she spoke.
 
Kristie was very good at what she did because Matt calmed down almost immediately and by the time she was done he was trying to hide the fact that she had touched him rather deeply and that had caused tears to spring to his eyes. And was pulling the whole 'I'm allergic to the air' spiel that so many men used in particularly sensitive moments. His posture changed from defensive to relaxed as well.

"Will you help me make sure I don't miss any details, then?" He asked. Though he was aware of fatally most space missions ended, he had done plenty if research on what humans already knew and had accomplished, after all. He had chosen Mr. Howard specifically because of his goals to eliminate the margins of error in space travel. Except he was asking on a much much larger scale. But Matt had always believed that what could be learned from the smallest possible scale could apply to the largest. Had science not made that clearly evident time and time again? The structure of the atom mimicked the structure of the solar system, the structure of the brain mimicked the structure of the known universe. And who was to say that the way thoughts travelled through the brain couldn't also open up all the possibilities of traveling through the universe? Well Matt didn't think there was much difference at all, it was simply a matter of understanding the way the brain worked. And that was all in a matter of time.
 
Kristie had to exert a ridiculous amount of restraint to not chuckle at Matt's attempt to hide his emotions. She kind of hated how society taught boys that it wasn't okay to feel- unless it was anger. That was a social rant for another time however. "I'll give you whatever help you need. That I can at least. Dominic is your rocket scientist." That also meant there might be a few more moments like this, where she prodded him a little because she felt he needed to come out of his shell and actually connect to another human being once and a while. She would still rather he not do it, but she also was willing to admit he was an adult and was at least putting some thought into what he was doing so she wasn't going to do anything more underhanded like Dominic had done either. She actually felt a lot better now that he was willing to let her be sort of involved in the process so they would have more opportunities to talk and reassure herself that while he was being a crazy dreamer he was willing to reason.

She also had plans to knock both his and Dominic's (though mostly Dominic's) heads together to ensure that what had happened on her visit would not happen again. Perhaps she would make that moment now. "Speaking of the dunder-head, you should probably go talk to him soon."
 
Matt laughed a bit through his sniffles. "He is a dumb dunderhead, then shuffled closer to her as he picked up the satchel he had hanging on his bike and slipping his notepad into it before hoping one leg over the bike.

"Will you come with? That way you can, y'know, make your suggestions and stuff and make your pessimistic little list of all the things that could go wrong," he flashed his tooth at her in a playful grin that said he was just joking and not being insulting. "Do you have a bike? Otherwise you can ride in the back. I fit in there." And there was certainly no way that Kristie was as heavy as all of the papers and books he carried back there sometimes.
 
Kristie grinned, relieved that everything was going fairly well so far. She hadn't thought through the problem of getting to the hangars though, she'd just spent so much time thinking about what she was going to say. She supposed she'd planned on taking a cab, like she had every time so far. "I usually ride the bus." She was starting to think it might be worthwhile to invest in at least a bike, if not a proper car though. She eyed the trolley, not quite as pleased at the idea of riding in it in her human form. She figured she might as well save the money and do it. She would survive a little awkwardness. "Well I guess you're always pulling around huge loads…" She sighed and gingerly settled herself in the back, desperately wishing she could just pop into her cat form. "I'm going to make him drive me back though." She muttered under her breath. This was definitely not her preferred form of transport.
 
Matt grinned and took off as Kristie made her self "comfortable" in the cart. The cart was pretty rattly still, and couldn't have been the most comfortable ride for her, especially over one of the dirt road shortcuts that Matt usually took to get to the hanger. The ride itself put a lot of exertion on Matt as well and his unfortunately unshowered state, by the time they got to the hanger he was looking and smelling a bit gross. And the moment they entered Mr. Howard's office he was greeted with, "Mate, when was the last time you cleaned yourself?" and was handed a towel, an old but clean flannel shirt and a pair of jeans and directed towards the male employee locker room. "We're not doing anything until you get back."

"No bloody excuse to not be clean," Dominic muttered to Kristie.
 
By the time they had arrived at the hangar Kristie was having more of a problem with Matt's smell rather than the unpleasantness of the ride itself, though she was quite determined to never do that again either. She made no bones about holding her hand over her nose the entire way to Dominic's office and she actually refused to enter the office until Matt was out of it. "You did set him off last time. He probably has been so involved he hasn't showered since then." She reminded him, not even asking permission as she opened his back door to air out the office. A day or two of body odor was tolerable but in the state Matt was in it had taken a decidedly rancid tone and her sensitive nose was not having any of it. "That being said, if I'd been thinking I would have told him to go home and shower before meeting me here." She remained by the door, taking slow deep breaths of the fresh air. "I'm glad you were prepared for this." Matt hadn't even been the room for that long, but there was enough scent lingering she felt the need. Or maybe it was just stuck in her nose at that point.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back