trans_9 | Learning Curves Ahead

[[OOC: Bendytimed to before Cloneplot, after Melting Clock]]

Jeka was forcing herself not to hide in her room this time. It wasn't as bad as the first time she'd been transformed, of course, but being returned to...her post-transformation appearance was still disappointing. If not for the memories she'd have lost, she almost wished that the clock had kept that last portion of her personal timeline.

But it would do her no good to brood over it in her room. Especially when she had things to do. Primarily training in Medical and her work with Security, but there were other things she could find to do -- such as help Sakura with her omnicom. It would be a distraction at the very least, and she had promised.

She and the human had agreed to meet in the Media Library after Jeka finished eating. Hopefully Sakura hadn't been waiting long. Jeka slithered through the corridors, hovering several feet off the ground with her flight ring, as usual. At least she could wear her flight ring again, it was so...creepy to have to crawl around on Stacy all the time.

"Sakura, are you here?"

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Sakura looked up from the article she was reading on one of the screens in the library. "Ah! I'm here!" she said, standing and waving, lips curling up into a smile. "Doing a little personal reading while I waited. There's something really fascinating about the study of chemical reactions in the brain."

Even if this one had been about rats, but the interest of the study was still the same. "Thanks again for doing this with me."

"It's no trouble," Jeka said, touching down and slithering over to Sakura's side. "Of everyone here, I'm the most familiar with the technology -- well, perhaps less so than the Brainiac 5 we have on board, but he's from an alternate universe and wouldn't be a good teacher anyway."

She repressed a sigh as she glanced over what Sakura had been reading. She knew that medical science had originally involved experimenting on living creatures, but to her thirty-first-century sensibilities, it seemed so...unpleasant.

"Shall we move into one of the private cubicles or just find a bench?" she asked, gesturing around the Media Library.

"I wouldn't mind one of the cubicles, personally." Sakura preferred using one on one time to learn anything as effectively as possible, and in one of the cubicles they were less likely to be disturbed.

She had to admit it was difficult in ways to remind herself that Jeka was not similar to Orochimaru in any sense other than the snake affiliation. Snakes themselves were interesting animals; her unfortunate associations weren't a reflection on the species or any other species that happened to look similar.

And Jeka was most notably not a summons, if this was more a mental sidenote of Sakura's from back when Jeka had been in quarantine. "Not everyone knowledgeable in something is qualified to teach what they know. That's been my experience at least. I wouldn't be too surprised it that proved to be similar in different universes."

Moving toward one of the cubicles, she smiled at Jeka. "Which makes a good teacher all the more valuable." When they'd teach, or when they were recognized for their talent.

"'People are people everywhere'," Jeka said in an almost sing-song tone. "Doesn't matter if they're from three planets over or three realities over, really. Though who knows, there might be a reality where knowing about something means you're qualified to teach it."

She held open the door to one of the cubicles and gestured Sakura inside. "We'll find out how good of a teacher I am, I suppose. Though a willing student always makes a difference."

"So I've been told," she said with a smile, recalling the difference it had made for people back home when someone was willing and eager to be taught. The difference between Naruto in the Academy and his efforts over the years after he graduated.

She stepped into the cubicle, fiddling with her Omnicomm. "Though it's kind of nice sometimes. That people are people no matter where you go, or where they're from."

"It's nicer when people actually believe that people are people," Jeka said, settling on her coils. "I don't know if your society has made contact with other sentient species yet, but in my reality, people are willing to call the people on the next planet anything but people. Or at least not really people. But I'm sure you didn't come to listen to me rant about my pet subject."

The cubicle responded to their presence with a display of warm colors on the wall that slowly dimmed and brightened along with a choice of unintrusive music.

Unintrusive enough that Sakura only gave slight pause as she took in the background noise. People used music and other such sounds so freely on this ship.

"We have and we haven't," she said, not sure how to explain the summoning contract beasts. "They're all native to my world. Or they were, maybe on a somewhat different plane of reality sometimes."

She smiled, taking a seat. "I don't mind listening to rants," she said, "I kind of miss hearing them from time to time. Maybe we can combine the two. Rants and weird, future technology from worlds I never would have imagined."

"'Different plane of reality'?" Jeka repeated, tilting her head to the side. "Sounds a bit like magic to me. Does your reality have that?"

She laughs a little and shakes her head. "I'm afraid that most of my rants are variations on that one. It's one of the major reasons the group I'm part of formed, so it's rather near and dear to all of our hearts. Do you find the music distracting?"

"One, yes. It's hard to explain, and I only have a little contact with it myself." She looked toward where she thought the music might be coming from, smiling awkwardly. "Yes and no? I'm not used to so much... environmental music. You hear it in towns sometimes, or at the festivals, or if you have a neighbor practicing some instrument or another, but nothing like this. I feel like there's some existence defined by how much music is surrounding it when I'm in here, sometimes."

"I don't use it myself, but I have a friend who's quite good at it," Jeka says with a shrug.

"We can turn it off if you prefer," she said, gesturing at the wall. The music stopped immediately. "Stacy really likes providing mood music in these stalls. It's probably meant to soothe and relax the mind and make learning easier, so there's no point in it if it's only a distraction."

Sakura was curious, but continuing to distract herself from what she needed to first learn wouldn't be helpful quiet yet. "It's interesting how much overlap in possibilities there really is. Then again I guess that's almost part of the point in us being here, or some of us hearing about each other on our home worlds." Threads, whatever it really meant, being woven together into some larger image.

She tapped on the surface of her omnicomm. "I think I know how to get into the files kept on this thing, if I heard you can transfer things from the media library here?" She looked up, not sure about the veracity of the statement.

"Mm, yes," Jeka agreed. "Perhaps the similarities are necessary for us to work together. It would certainly explain why everyone awake and active right now is either human or familiar with humans in some capacity."

She leaned forward a little, so that she could better reach the omnicom. "Yes, that's true. You see this little nub right here?" She pointed to a small protrusion on the side of the device, next to an equally-small button. "That's actually a plug. If you press the button, the plug comes out and you can insert it into one of the holes in the main console over there. I can show you how to transfer those files as well, obviously."

Learning Curves Ahead

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