teslamomma to Auren:
I don’t quite know what Drin is up to, but he left a rather cryptic email to forward to you.
BTW, I do notice that the elegant creature portrayed as the Aristocrat from the same meme over on xxxx’s entry for the 2nd, see here:
He noted that picture, and continued:
Given the powder dusted on the shoulders, it looks remarkably like a chemtrail assassin to *me.*
Must be fairly self-sufficient with all the antenna in the hair, even if it’s hard to tell precisely which kind with the sensor array folded back for a social occasion like that. Probably a heavy-duty military installation there, which is a little too obvious with the out-of-period clothing. Claiming to be steampunk does not mitigate the necessity to be careful about the fabric combinations and styles. The power-generating part of the outfit is clearly visible as the stripes in the pants, which jars on one’s delicate historical senses as anachronistic with the jacket. They must be losing any kind of oversight, because that sort of sloppiness was never tolerated before. It’s a mark of bad training as well as bad maintenance.
I assume Auren can sort it out? I daresay he’s not pleased to referenced in public so often.
teslamomma adding my own notes here:
I’m not on M’s flist **cries** but I did manage to cop a look at the Aristocrat. **shakes head** Boy, is *he* beautiful.
Auren: **dryly** in Turner’s wildest dreams.
teslamomma: No?
Auren: Turner’s beauty is on the inside.
teslamomma to bennie:
I relayed Auren’s comment here to Drin via email–I got a chance to grab some time with him on his laptop when he picked up Em at work today. He had Dance the Bowhand Boy in tow too, as he put it. Drin typed out something odd to me right in front of the other two, where they could read it, and I think they did. He told me, “You know, it does make me wonder why they inserted the insect boys when they have something like Turner on the job. That bug let those pix get taken, and the old surveillance bugs like it just couldn’t allow anything like that. It’s in some new public intimidation mode, which is asking for trouble. Nobody’s pulled that graphic off the net, either. It looks like Akdrdzyan’s idea of advancework, the same way he managed to promote certain designers in fashion shoots until stomper boots turned into clubwear. If you see one of the insects, you know there’s more, just like roaches.”
Em leaned in right there on the same machine and told me, “Well, that’s going to make charity fashion shows more interesting, I must say.”
To which Dance typed in on her machine, quite out of the blue, “You know, I really hate those bug broaches that everybody’s wearing. Those Louis Comfort Tiffany things. I didn’t like the originals. The only ones that aren’t looking at you are the dragonflies. I’m okay if you want to wear dragonflies, Emma, but the others just creep me out.”
Emma replied from her own machine, “No bugs for you, dear, though you realize your playing with worms in the potting soil always makes my tum go all weird on me, right?”
Dance typed, “But why? I’m very careful with the worms, I make sure they have somewhere new to live.”
Emma told him, “Yeah, that’s the creepy bit.”
Dance replied, “I always wash my hands when I come in. I get a shower.”
Emma told him, “Because you have to, you come in wearing your work all over you.”
To which Drin replied, “I think it’s pretty hot-looking when Dance comes in all relaxed and sweaty and he’s getting out of the dirty overalls and you can see where his shirt–” and didn’t finish it.
I’m not sure what the other two thought of that, because my brain totally fritzed out on that one.
I think Emma said something about him inciting Dance to roll around in the dirt like a six-year-old and tracking mess into the house. Then she told Dance it was time to go to out to the car, and dragged him off, and I don’t think he minded one bit. It doesn’t seem like the reaction of a woman who doesn’t like the idea of a worm-wrangler touching her.
That was when Drin warned me that he’s ordered a ten-cubic-yard load of compost from the stables down by the river. He said that ought to give Dance plenty of muck to plant things in. I told him Dance didn’t have time to take care of the yard as it was, and he may have no neighbors left by the time the stuff had calmed down. He told me that might be a good thing.
PS–Em says she canceled the compost and told them the yard was in no state to spread the stuff. They’d be trying to use a machete in one hand and a shovel in the other.
to which replied:
O_o
what
the
hell
Auren: **curses softly** Just like the chemtrails. Yeah. I’ll let you know what I see. Note that some of the archives are under lock and key; wonder when that happened. Tell Drin he’d better watch his step.
teslamomma replies:
Thanks, will do.
Then:
And Drin says to warn Auren to recheck their own archive locks, Dance is working himself out of the pins.
So I sat me down and had a little chat with Drin while the other two were off visiting the restrooms.
He says Emma is good, but she’s an older… something. Sorry–he tried, but I don’t get it. Imagery involving rotating columns and 3D zooms on complicated wire-frame constructs that animate and change shape as the viewer shifts around them. It’s frustrating, but he says not to obsess on that part.
He says what matters is Dance’s comment about the bug pins.
He says it’s tough enough for him and Emm, the two of them trying to keep up with a retired naga who’s pinned in sleep mode. He says to let you know the decommissioning committee statistics did show that the standard nagas were perfectly reliable civilians when pinned correctly.
But he thinks Dance maybe can’t be pinned correctly, he’s too flexible in too many ways.
He says Dance shouldn’t be making remarks like that bit warning us about the bug jewelry.
He says your team is aware that Dance shouldn’t have been able to call Emma to him first, either.
I asked why, because it kind of puzzled me too, it doesn’t match the Kipling-type back history at all.
That it was an override on Dance’s usual preferences and not a normal heterosexual response to a meeting a smart, pretty woman is proven by Dance’s reluctance to engage Emma physically, except to relieve her backaches, until Drin was there to approve it.
He explained to me that means Dance overrode the historical imperative with his male partner and correctly assessed that he first needed Emma there, as a–whatever that 3D rotating thing is–so they’d have enough research material to give Drin to work with when he arrived. He says he’s been partially smudged out, he doesn’t know why Emma’s given him some of the things she’s found, and she doesn’t always understand why either.
I asked, but Drin didn’t explain what kind of extra research Emma does for him at work sometimes.
He says to relay that Dance’s needs for touch have been increasing and the recent alert ramped it up considerably. He’s not sure what Dance is doing with the extra energy demand he’s pulling from them both. He says he knows the multiple skills have been helping Dance retrain his brain around memory losses.
Drin says he left a coded message on #67 for emergency purposes. He said to warn you also that Dance appears normal in sparring but in real combat the power strokes are with his feet, an unconscious defense to protect his ability to play music with his hands. This is why his legs and abdomen have become so heavily muscled.
He says he was quite alarmed to learn that Dance described a bad dream to him where he saw a six-armed woman walking across the ceiling with guns in four of her hands, and pale skin, just like the figure named Hideo. Dance was quite agitated when he saw that image, as if he knew it in some way, but couldn’t quite work out how.
He agreed that Dance was also agitated when he saw pictures of the scupltured Vega mermaid-man. We both recalled Dance’s distress, as if it was real, and Emma’s comments about how much it riled him up. Dance was offended by the image, saying it should not be lying there passively as if it was drugged out, no wonder it looked sad. Dance was rather angry when he commented that it should be able to roll upright on its own tail and shift around on its own coils like a side-winder, it certainly had a long enough tail to do that. Dance remarked that the fins they’d given it were far too long and impractical, so they must have bred it as some kind of grotesque show-betta, not as a real fighting fish. I recall Dance also remarked something like, “Look at that mouth, though. I bet that it can still bite like a mofo.”
Drin said not to obsess about *that* either.
I asked, cautiously, about the whole naga body-parts thing recently. This was Dance’s sudden strong idea to have Emma and me design a costume for the big Halloween gala which has a lower torso that looks like something in between a dragon, a mermaid, and a cobra body. This included a generous offer that he wouldn’t mind if it was built for Drin instead, or Emma. If it turned out that it would fit and work better for them, he was okay with that too. That kind of freaked Drin out. I got the sense that it was an unusual offer, a gift, something really out of the ordinary.
0.o
Drin said to encourage Dance to give me more descriptions, talk about the colors and the scale patterns, keep it all focused on the mundane design and what to do about construction details, finish, all of that, let him go all OCD on the details and tell me all about it. And then I should relay what Dance is trying to accomplish in the final version.
When I asked if he’d talked about it with Dance, he said no, and sighed. He said he wasn’t spending enough time at home, he needed to give both of them more attention.
When I showed him old stuff Emma dug up on the bloody lab’s original website, he said that proves the standard releases were all light-colored. Only two tan ones were ever recorded, the other was released in Korea. He says he’s has no idea what a black ops naga might have done, or be capable of doing, and he’d really rather not have the bug boys provoke them into finding out the hard way.
He says Dance is no threat to the public as yet, he drops into conflict-freeze mode immediately and responds normally to partner distress. He’s imprinted firmly, the two of them should be able to handle emergencies with him.
We stopped talking when Dance wandered in with his hair a mess and flopped into Drin’s lap in the chair, and said something about always wanting to fall asleep even though it made Drin’s legs go numb. Drin said there was a handy answer for that, and picked him up, told me good night, and carried him off to the car, which is quite something to see. Emm says Drin didn’t go to work this morning either, and I think he originally meant to. I haven’t heard much from Emm but some giggling all day.
Oh boy.
o.0
teslamomma to bennie:
Got another update for you.
So I was emailing Emm at her house couple days ago, waiting for something she had to get off the computer for something for Drin, and I got a chance to talk to Dance on IM while everybody else was on too. Originally I was talking to him about the naga body costume, and a comment set off for me the lovely vision of a gold Egyptian/desert/rattler type of pattern on the scales. Possibly with a Scorpio necklace. Dance reacted to that indifferently, as if that kind of glitter is no big deal, nothing special, just something a cheap trashy cousin with big tits might use to show off for the Big Brass or something. On IM, it sounded like he was yawning like a bored cat.
I said flashy Egyptian stuff was good enough for the Stargate tv series’s big fancy Goald, then it ought to be good enough for other folks.
“Amateurs,” he says back, and I know he’s flipping the computer game back on just from how slow he is to respond, and boy, the rest of the IM chatter at that place gets quiet. Everybody else gets real quiet.
I ask him what color his gear really ought to be, and he just does some shrug smileys and says he doesn’t know what to say, it’s not the right thing to go fixating on for this project. That’s not how the original works. I ask in some detail: I say, hey, is it a dull gray like a bullhead catfish, or a striped green with little iridescent sparkles like some of the bass or pikes, or more like a darker barracuda blue, or maybe the edge of UV lavender that’s not quite a Morpheus butterfly type of thing that disappears into heat waves. He says he doesn’t care. He says that stuff should just take care of itself in different conditions, just like the spines and plating should.
I give him 0.0 and when I pulled myself together, I asked what the really cool stuff should be, what we should be fixating on.
He just waves it off with an eye-roll smiley and says that stuff doesn’t matter, and asks me what the chest harness is going to look like. He says the straps should be wide enough to hold pockets for throwing knives and things.
What kind of things? sez I.
Just…things. Not big. Smaller than our stupid cell phones.
And then he says he’s putting down the game controller and he IMs Drin–cc’d me, I guess to tell me what the lag was– to give him a good hard shoving-type heavy palm scritching between the shoulder blades, it’s bothering him something fierce. Get that vertebra to pop back in place.
Drin doesn’t say much on IM, just that Emm can’t do it for him like she used to, it takes too much hand strength to dig into the tissues far enough now.
Then Dance comes back on, says he’s better, gives me a big grin and a relieved smiley, and talks smack about losing his computer game and having to go back to the last save.
When I ask, he says that he’s been doing backward stretches every couple of hours to make that damn vertebra go back where it belongs, or sex will do it, but he knows he’s been pretty unreasonable lately about being all over them lately, and he’s aware that it may be a little much for their patience, and–
About that point Drin must have grabbed him. He just IMd “Gotta go now!”, and then they’re both gone.
Thank God Emma *finally* got her printer to cough up.