trans_9 | Pointed Ponderings [open]

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Pointed Ponderings [open]

After the meet and greet, Jamie needed to think. There was a /lot/ of information that he had gotten that he needed to process, and he wasn't entirely sure where the best place would be to go and do that. He wasn't at all sure he was up for creepy sleeping areas or a lot of the other places that had been described...and he was still missing his knife.

Figuring that he could try and sort out this thoughts while he was looking, he made his way back to the weapons and possessions locker, starting where he had found his kilt. He's in there now, rummaging around, but being careful to put things back where he found them afterwards.

Spotting a promising looking knife, he pulls it from its sheath and holds it up, looking at the blade of the knife intently. His back is currently to the door, and he seems completely absorbed in his study of the small weapon.

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Last time Lois had come here, she had been struck by a bizarre revelation: it was a usual and common thing for people to have giant fantasy swords and some extremely unfortunate-looking bits of clothing that no one outside of the eighties should ever wear. It was rare for people to keep more mundane things as possessions.

All she wanted was a freaking notebook and a working pen, and this was her THIRD try coming back here to dig for one.

Lois opened the door enough to slide between it and the frame, looking ahead of her to see if there was anyone else in here.

Nope–– oh wait, yes, there was a guy.

"Hey," she said, friendly enough, as she closed the door behind her. "Seen any notebooks? Pens?"

Jamie's response, is, perhaps, not completely surprising. As the door opens, he whirls around, knife brought up into a defensive position. However, he relaxes marginally when he's not immediately attacked, and a little more when the voice is both friendly...and female.

"Sorry," he states, lowering his hand. "I wasn't expecting anyone." He adds, curiously, "Why would you need a notebook when there's that bitty computer thing? The...Omnicom? I saw you could write on it." He hasn't actually figured out what it does yet, but since he saw Wednesday using it in the meet and greet, he's making a few assumptions.

"Woah, tiger, relax," she said, brusquely. "I'm not going to get you."

Lois steps over a pile of stuff and starts picking around again. Maybe she just overlooked something last time? Hopefully, anyway.

"As great as that's been so far, anyone who has ever dealt with their cellphone being wiped or their iPod taking a trip down a steel staircase knows that technology will find a way to backfire sooner or later."

She inspects some sort of helmet for a moment before glancing back at him.

"I don't care how green or alien or superintelligent their inventor is. My paper notebook isn't going to mysteriously lose my files."

She's just going to skim over the fact that she is a lousy, lousy typist.

Edited 2009-09-06 06:01 (UTC)

Tiger? Jamie's eyebrows disappear up into his bangs for a moment at that, then he shrugs and takes a second to re-sheath the knife. Lacking any other place to put the weapon, he places it into his sporran. The handle's sticking out, but he's ignoring that for now.

"Of course you're not going to get me," he states, matter-of-factly, and moves over to help look - without asking if she needs help first.

"An i...what? And why would it trip down a steel staircase? Doesn't it look where it's going first?" It's a serious question, believe it or not.

If she hadn't met Sir Sparhawk earlier, she might have gotten on his case about not knowing about technology, but oh well. Apparently the kilt wasn't just some ceremonial thing.

"Uh, iPods aren't exactly sentient beings. They're little machines that play music."

Jamie seems to accept that statement pretty much at face value. "Oh, aye. Those. I've seen things like that before." It's just the name that threw him.

"So, uh..." he blinks, then realizes he doesn't know the other woman's name. Slightly embarrassed, he hesitates for a moment, then continues.

"Uh, miss. Is there a special notebook you're trying to find?" He holds up what could either be a pump for an air mattress or a odd weapon of some sort. He eyes for a moment, then very carefully sets it back down. Whatever it is, it's definitely not a notebook. "Or would any one do?"

"Any notebook works."

She steps over a pile, almost treading on someone's lance of plus-ten nerdiness, and looks at the pump Jaime's holding up. Whatever it is, it isn't going to make a good journal. Lois ducks down to pick through some stuff without having to knock over the pile.

"What time period are you from, anyway?" Lois asks, with some degree of skepticism. Asking that question is awkward, and probably always will be.

Awkward is an understatement, really. Jamie's quiet for moment as he rummages through some more things, then takes a deep breath.

"Well, that's a wee bit complicated. Originally, I'm from the 18th century." He's quite tense, rather suddenly, and not actually looking at Lois at all. Instead, he's picked up something else from the ground, something vaguely cylindrical in shape, and is turning it over and over in his hands.

Finally, he looks back up at Lois, and says bluntly, "So, you're probably wondering how I know what a computer is, or what a little machine that plays music is, but not an iPod." He caught that skepticism in her voice, and is assuming that's what it's based on.

Jumpy people get on her nerves and make her defensive, and it's like talking to some of the more socially awkward people at the Planet. With just a touch of malice she wonders why, exactly, a person so awkward would be chosen for "a great purpose."

But she pieces together what he's telling her to see the obvious bigger picture: this guy has either been here long enough to know, or he's a time traveler.

Weird, how this crap was getting easier and easier to just shrug off.

"Let me guess. Some kind of time travel?"

He's not socially awkward, he's newly podpopped and still a bit discombobulated. So that rules out 'been here long enough to know' and leaves 'time travel'.

"Aye." The fact that she's come up with that answer that quickly, however, does bring up a few questions of his own.

"Are there a lot of time travelers here, then?" He's not fiddling with whatever is in his hands any longer, but hasn't set it down, either.

Excuses, excuses.

"Maybe," Lois shrugs. "Most people seem to know what it is, at least."

She thumbs the inside her –– well, Smallville's –– Legion ring, subtly twisting it around on her finger. Time travel. Before this place, it had firmly been in the realm of things that aren't possible, regardless of how much Lois had seen in the past five years.

"There's probably at least a few experts on the subject here."

"I think I may have met one at that clishmaclaiver earlier, now that you mention it." He helpfully gestures in what he thinks is the general direction of the obs deck. For all he knows, it's the creepy bathrooms or whatever, but he'll just fake it for now.

"I take it you've been here awhile, then?"

"Not as long as most of the people here, but long enough," she replies. "I'm just pretty used to being thrown into unexplainable situations... but there's usually a twenty-four hour cap on those adventures, tops."

This was definitely pushing past that cap.

"The guy in the clishmawhatever. He wouldn't happen to be green and have no concept of personal space, would he?"

"Green?" There were a few individuals there that had been green, but none Jamie had met personally.

He shakes his head. "No, not green. Just looked like...a regular person. Although he seemed to smoke a lot. I guess that could make someone green, but I know that's not who you meant."

Thinking hard for a moment, Jamie suddenly snaps his fingers. "Oh - was he floating around? I saw someone green who was floating around but he looked rather distracted."

Dear god, it was a bit like talking to Jimmy Olson in a kilt.

"Floating? I have no idea. But I guess it wasn't him. It was just a guess. But either way, like I said, there are probably a lot of people here who know about the time travel thing way better than I do."

She heaved up someone's shield to check underneath. Nope, nothing.

At least Jamie isn't prone to poking in everywhere with a camera - although he can get just as nosy, sometimes.

"I thought floating might be helpful, but..." He shrugs, and only then seems to remember he has something in his hand. He offers it out to Lois.

"Not a notebook, but you said you were looking for pens?" She was looking for pens, and this is about the right size with a cap on it. He hasn't actually taken the cap off to check, though.

She looks up, completely disregarding any talk of floating for the sake of pens, and puts her hand out to take it.

"Let's see."

He hands the object over without any hesitation. It /looks/ like a beat up Bic - something that might have been stuck in someone's pocket and fallen out when the piles of stuff were shifted. The end's chewed on, and it's a little warm from being in Jamie's hand.

"So?" Is it a pen, or is it a Martian death ray cleverly disguised as a pen?

Lois doesn't even inspect it for possible uses as a weapon, because no one in their right mind would put a weapon in a plain old Bic. In a fancy steel pen owned by James Bond, maybe, but not a Bic.

So when she uncaps it to presumably scribble on something to see if it works, and the first thing she sees is some jet of red light that burns through things, it's understandable that taking notes is suddenly the last thing on her mind. Whatever was in the path of that deadly nib looks to be, well... not so good.

She drops it like it like the instrument of death it is, jumping back and nearly landing on a pile of stuff.

"What the HELL––!"

Thank god it wasn't pointed at her face.

Jamie, just as surprised as Lois was by the death pen, takes an inadvertent step to the side before realizing that leaving a ray that burns through things active is NOT good.

He scrambles after the cap, yelling "Stay back!" That's probably unnecessary advice, given the situation, but Jamie doesn't want to take any chances. He's going to make sure that cap is back on the pen (if Lois hasn't put it back on) and he definitely isn't willing to risk her getting hurt - even if he still doesn't really know who she is.

Lois stumbles over things for a grand total of three seconds while the ray melts through things, and while her first stupid knee-jerk reaction is to grab the death-pen, she realizes she needs something to stop it with, and when she freaked out, well...

Where did the cap go?

"Crap, who makes these things?!" she says, frantically, looking around.

"You think /I/ would know?" Jamie's voice is sounding a little strained, as
he is desperately trying to find the cap - or anything, really, that he thinks will stop the ray.

He spots the helmet Lois discarded earlier, and makes a dive towards it. Maybe it'll at least contain the melting a little.

"I don't know, maybe you visited a future with –– with laser pens!"

Lois kicks herself into business mode (or maybe that classic stupid dive-right-in mode, the one with no care for consequences.) She's not about to leave the thing rolling around causing trouble, so she steps around Jaime as he dives, and much like trying to pick up something from a hot griddle with bare fingers, she tries to pick it up as fast as she can.

"Findthestupidcap!"

"Aye, but they had off switches and not caps!" He's grabbed the helmet and is running back towards Lois when he steps on something pink, scarf-like and slippery and loses his balance. The helmet goes flying off in one direction, Jamie in the other. He manages to break his fall, and as luck would have it, there is a small piece of blue plastic right in front of his nose.

"I got it!" He grabs the cap and runs over towards Lois.

Lois is standing there with the pen at arm's length, aiming it at what looks like a ceremonial robe of some sort. Sorry, owner, whoever you are. She looks down at Clumsy MacKilt with the meanest pointed look she can muster at the moment.

"Well, get it on without burning your fingers off, then!"

It's a good thing that Jamie has some old-fashioned views about women, including not insulting them to their face. He narrows his eyes at Lois for a moment, however, then tilts the cap so it's between him and the laser beam.

"Aye, I will, thank you."

He's careful about his fingers, but does get the cap on in a few seconds. Or a small eternity, from his point of view.

He lets out a long sigh, then asks, "Are you okay?"

"Fine, just surprised that office supplies could be death tools in disguise," she says, a touch snippy. Seriously, though, what the hell was that? She turns the pen over between her hands, inspecting it.

"How about you?"

His ego's a bit bruised, but that's about it. "Och, I'm fine." He picks up the offending slippery scarf, and gives it a very dark look before tossing it out of the way.

"I can't say the same for some of the things in here, though."

"Whoever owns this thing can cover damages," she says, picking up a hardcover book that had a perfect tunnel bored through it.

And then, remembering her manners, she turned to Jamie and stuck out her hand to shake.

"And I'm Lois Lane, by the way."

"Aye, I suppose they can, at that." He looks at the book and cautiously extends his hand towards it, like he's going to poke a finger into the hole. He thinks better of it at just about the time Lois holds out her hand, and opts to turn the gesture into a brief, but firm, handshake.

"Jamie McCrimmon. Pleased to meet you."

He smiles at her before returning to the contemplation of the book. "I wonder..."

He looks down. "What d'you think the chances are that something wooden got burnt just enough by that pen that it turned to charcoal?"

Not, perhaps, the best option. But certainly better than the Laser Pen of Death.

"Please to meet you, too," she says, and when she lets go of his hand, she subtly pockets the pen. Could come in handy. Hey, with a time traveling ring and a death pen, she had the makings of a super-reporter arsenal.

She watches him pore over the book, and considers it for a moment.

"I dunno. Not to play with lasers or anything, but we could test it out."

Jamie snorts. "Aye. At least not any without visible off switches."

There's also a bit of an arched eyebrow as he notes her pocketing the pen, but instead he says, "So, I think the question is - if we're not playing with lasers, are we willing to risk searching through this to see if we can find a wee bit of burnt out wood?"

He's willing, although a little leery at the prospect.

There's a bit of a grin.

"I laugh in the face of risk," she says, boldly. "I'll do it. What are you looking for burnt out wood for, anyway?"

Jamie tries very, very hard to keep impatience with Lois from creeping into his voice. After all, what seems obvious to him may not be to her. He succeeds...mostly.

"If it's burnt enough to be charcoal," he comments, "you can write with it."

He's trying to be helpful, here, honest.

Oh.

Oh.

She lifts her eyebrows for a second, and then gives a little amused snort.

"I appreciate the thought, but regular ink pens? Way easier. No offense or anything."

There's a shrug at that.

"Your choice, really." If she doesn't want to use the charcoal, it's her loss.

Since she doesn't seem interested in his idea, he doesn't bother looking for any burnt wood, specifically, but instead goes back to rummaging absently through the mess for the notebook and pen.

After a few moments, he looks over at Lois. "What will you do if we can't find the pen, then?" Because other than the death pen, and the charcoal idea, he's coming up with a bunch of nothing.

"Would just not write...uh, whatever it is you write?" He didn't think to ask earlier, what with the lasers and all.

"I guess I'll use their little computers, but seriously, I hate typing. If you ever see me on the network, you'll see that. It's slow, and all the typos... I can't be bothered."

She resumes the hunt.

"I'm a reporter."

Jamie can understand that. "I'm not much better. It's not like they had computers back in my time in Scotland, aye?"

Seeing she's poking around again, he gives it another go as well but looks up with interest at the word 'reporter'.

"Oh, so you look for information and write stories about it?" Sounds kind of fun, actually.

"I was a piper, before."

"They keep telling me practice, or to take classes, but it doesn't make a difference. The second they invent computers that type whatever I'm thinking, it'll be good." She pauses. "No, scratch that, I wouldn't have a job."

And her editor would kill her.

"But it's more than looking for information and writing stories. It's about getting to the bottom of things and exposing the truth, and that's exactly what I do."

When not writing about stray kitten charity cases, anyway.

But given his accent, she shouldn't have been surprised. "And what's life like being a piper?"

Jamie's eyes twinkle as he says, "Noisy."

More seriously, he adds, "I was the piper for clan McLaren, and it was a great honor. Usually, you would play the pipes before a battle, to inspire the men of the clan, but there were other occasions."

He's quiet, then, and admits, "It's been awhile since I've played properly." He's kept in practice with his chanter, but...

"Sounds interesting. My dad's a General in the military; we don't use the trumpet so much anymore, but it pretty much the same concept."

She pauses in her search to look up at him.

"Well, if I find bagpipes buried somewhere in this mess, I'll set 'em aside for you."

Jamie will love you forever for that. The rest of the crew might not, so much.

"Aye? Thank you. The Doctor wasna so fond of my playing."

He winces internally, then. He hadn't planned on bringing that name into the conversation at all, and he's kicking himself for letting it slip. Stupid, Jamie, stupid.

Lois doubts there a bagpipe in here, but who knows.

"Hey, you're helping me find stuff, might as well return the favour," she says. "But I can guess why people wouldn't be so fond of it. It does sound obnoxious."

She didn't seem to notice the slip, or decided it wasn't worth investigating. That was a bit of a relief.

"Well, I suppose to the untrained ear it could be a wee bit irritating, I'll admit. But I think it's grand."

And hey, if there isn't a bagpipe in here, he bets he can get an imaginary one to work in the Sensoriums.

"I'll give you fair warning if we do find one, alright?"

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Pointed Ponderings [open]

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