cargojet | IC Contact

[ Well the advantage of arriving recently is her clothes don't look anywhere near as lived in as Nathan's. He's in one of his shabbier suits, the suit jacket absent, but the shirt ragged and worn, grease stained and dirty from oil and sweat and with visible blood stains scrubbed out about the collar and wrists. The buttons are mismatched, multicolored and sewed on with various different colours of thread, and there's off-cream, frayed patches sewed into the elbows and shoulders and halfway down one arm. The pants are in as bad a state. His hair is a little too long again, but it looks rogueish if anything with his hint of stubble, salt and pepper in his beard and sprinkled around his ears. The ship has made him age ten years in just two.

He follows her over toward the screens. Below, there's cables wound about the place and pods erected nudged in under the walkway, built up with welded together panels and pieces of scrap and sheets of fabric. A dark room at one end is the source of most of the heat and hum, exhaling air because it's where the servers are kept, fans running constantly to keep them cool.

The screens behind her show the outline of the ship from two directions. Tiny white dots are centralised at either end of the side on view, with a few scattered away from the rest. The other view shows the more scattered. In any case, where there isn't any light there echoes a vast emptiness of the ship instead, large spaces of blackness inside the outline. ]

Type in your number. It'll turn your dot red so you can see where you are.

( nathan reminds her vaguely of a pirate, or at least the pop culture idea of one; she isn't really sure what she was expecting to find in him, but this makes as much sense as anything else. he seems lived in, and accustomed to his surroundings in a way that she both envies and is unsettled by, underscoring the permanence she was so unprepared for.

she doesn't think about the fact she doesn't have to look down at her arm to do as he bids - the little things that become natural, that you become used to without even realizing, one day you turn around and this is just your life, now - and feels a little foolish a moment later when she's undeniably and immediately charmed by finding herself in his map. )

That's ingenious.

[ If he was aware of how unsettling that might be, he'd have considered wearing a better suit, a jump suit - anything but grease stains and patches - but it's him, and pretending to be someone else at thi point would simply be dishonest. ]

It took us almost six months to set up the grid to make this work, but it's been useful--saved some lives. As far as I'm concerned that means it was more than worth all the effort of putting it together.

So alright, we can call up the whole network on this screen, browse it more easily you know? [ He removes his comms device, locking it into the dock on the desktop, and immediately the network comes up on the screen. ]

This automatically let us scan for conversations in progress, and these empty red blocks are encrypted conversations--we can't look inside them without breaking the locks, but we can at least see that they're there; they leave a sort of feedback on the network, like an echo. You with me so far?

( ilde quietly files that information away, about locked conversations; that's worth knowing, and possibly worth telling a few other people about on the quiet. and in person.

...that aside, though, she nods, and her smile isn't false-- ) It's a bit out of my milieu, but so far. How'd it save lives?

( genuinely interested. )

[ Well, it's pretty invasive, but that's why Nathan keeps such a tight team, and is careful about who he allows to have complete access to records down in comms. Everyone gets screened when they join up to assess whether they're at risk of using information against others, and Nathan would be quick to act should he find out that someone had slipped through the net.

But right now he just has Ryuzaki and Bail Organa, and he trusts both of them with his life and with his secrets. And by extension with the secrets of the entire ship. ]

Well for example we can call up the records. Say this message here was a cry for help, a request for backup or a call for first aid, we can find out when and where it was posted and bring it up on the screen, and we can find out where the device is now, and the directions it took to get to where it is. Most of these accessible floors don't move around much, which means the maps we've made of them here using this data is accurate enough to dispatch medical or security teams. Comms keeps a constant scan on the network, we're generally the first responders, and we send along the ping to the appropriate department to get them involved as quickly as possible.

There have been accidents before, murders and monster attacks. Moreover, there's actually a search algorithm that looks for cries for help we've missed, and gets triggered every time certain words are used, or when specific entities - such as Smiley - post to the network. Everything we do here helps other departments to do their jobs better, and what's good for them is good for us.

( she'd already been disinclined to trust the security of the network - it's nice to put a face on who might, for instance, be able to access at least some of that data, especially when it's one she's decided she likes, but her mistrust of people around her is instinctive and unrelated to whether or not she likes them. that he explains it to her is a mark in his favour that she'll remember, even as she adjusts her behaviour on the network with this in mind. she'd like the list of people who are aware of who she has private conversations with and in what context to be a short one.

she thinks about what it means for her personal communications, like how she'd contacted him and how people sometimes contact her; this is both less problematic, in that it's harder to draw a picture of what the unseen conversation might be about, and at the same time moreso, as it instead draws a picture of her social circle and its ebb and flow. she is acutely aware of the fact she has a tendency to keep interesting company.

but in the grand scheme of things, she isn't very interesting, probably, and that makes this largely academic. just-- good to know about, all the same. )

Security, Medical...or you'd contact a department if something were happening nearby them, or...?

( it is good, she thinks, that somebody is doing this. the arguments in favour of it are better than the reasons it makes her edgy - knowing both who's involved down here and that he's willing to be transparent about it eases some of that, and hell. lots of things make her edgy. she can't throw a tantrum about most of them. )

[ Well it's always useful to know who to question if somebody puts a sword through you in a dark corridor, but Nathan would support any efforts to keep things off the network that were better conveyed in person. The network isn't just a resource that the communications department has access to. The pirates had been able to access it for days using the Scylla's communicators, and Ward and Resnik and Smiley all seemed to have access without limit, able to read and listen through barriers without even thinking about it. ]

That's right. If someone were to lead a rallying cry to steal all the shuttles, it'd be our department that ensured the shuttle bay was ready to rebuke the insurgents. In many ways we're the command center of the ship, though the Tranquility has no defined heirarchy like that. The department heads all have rules of seniority in place, and we all try to cooperate and make decisions together wherever possible.

[ He takes out the comms device and gestures to the right toward the stairs. ]

Shall we continue with the tour?

( the way he puts that - 'totally not in charge or anything but basically the command center' - gets a laugh, one that is very knowing if not at all mocking or unfriendly. he is exactly the kind of guy she thinks he is, and she suspects, idly, that this transparency is probably a new thing for him, born of pragmatism. she understands the decision even as she's mildly surprised by anyone actually embracing it, but he's too smart not to, she thinks, and then there's the other thing, where this is all very professional.

she's extremely forthcoming herself, but it's a sleight of hand that prevents her from being asked the things she doesn't want to be. the kind of questions she never asks (all you learn from those are how people choose to answer them - what kind of person they want you to think they are, and she can usually figure those things out without the help) are probably the kind he'd start closing doors on. )

Definitely. Lead on, Macduff.

I haven't really got too familiar with most of the departments, ( conversationally. ) Like I've been to Xenogen's labs, and I know a couple of guys on Security, but I'm not... ( a vague hand gesture. )

There are social politics involved. I'm still figuring those out.

[ They might be, but Nathan truly has learned to be forthcoming out of necessity. The ship doesn't keep secrets for long, so Nathan tries not to have them. He even insists that private conversations aren't hacked into despite the expertise to do so, unless it's needed for security reasons and the safety of the entire ship. Nobody would care that Sirius and Remus were meeting up for snuggles but them, for example, but they'd be royally pissed to find out that someone knew about it in an entirely preventable way.

Secrets are never secret forever, and this way Nathan earns credibility as being honest and forthcoming, even about things that others might expect him to be more hesitant to remark on such as his own troubled past. But he's guilty of using sleight of hand too. By all but admitting his belief in his authority without outright stating it, he grants permission to view him as a potential candidate, confident in his own ability to earn support by demonstrating his leadership qualities without outright demanding it. ]

The politics aren't so big a deal really. Everyone here has the same story. It doesn't matter if they were a king of seven kingdoms or a ballet teacher, we were all thrown into this melting pot against our will. As long as you remember that, you'll always have a way to bond with other people, no matter who they are.

[ At the bottom of the stairs the hum is louder, and the warmth of the balcony, of rising heat, is subdued by the cool breeze gusting out of the server room. ]

There's pods enough here for eight people to work. My spot is no different to anyone else's--I don't need much room. [ There was an eerie looking painting of a ruined cityscape behind his pod, one of Isaac Mendez's portraits of the future. ] Then through that door is the server room, where the entire network archive is stored and organised. Every message you ever record, encrypted or otherwise, is tucked away in that room, and if something were to happen to it we'd be back to square one--or at least we woulda been up to the end of last year. There's a backup now. Not of everything, but the important stuff exists in duplicate on a stack of hard drives that I personally protect. If someone tries to erase us like they erased the old crew, they'll have to go through me.

( she notes not only that he - in charge of this department, so capably ready to be perceived as a contender to take command of the ship itself - doesn't differentiate his workspace from those around him but also that he tells her so and tells her so as a brief observation, not pointedly. he is very good, she thinks, at the game he tells her not to worry about playing; the observation isn't a critical one. somebody has to be, and somebody might need to be, sooner or later. if he's quietly campaigning through the backdoor, then at least he's building it on genuine, demonstrable competence. she can respect that.

however. )

Erased the old crew...?

[ He learned his father's lessons well; that's at the heart of this. Smooth might as well have been given as his middle name at birth. ]

Erased. When we came on board there was almost no sign of them left behind. No personal effects, no messages on the network, nothing scrawled on the wall. Medical bay had been stripped and all the libraries wiped clean of anything useful regarding the ship or this universe. Just a whole lot of crappy spacenovels.

We've found bits and pieces since then, a message of Gallagher's that got stuck in a shuttle buffer and survived the purge, for example, but very little else.

Everyone's always so, oh, we don't know anything so don't even ask.

( it's an observation that she doesn't press any further - she's not going to complain about it, or go rattling cages, but her restlessness with that is hard to miss even from the fact that she's here asking these questions or that she does feel the need to comment on it at all. being told to accept ignorance is something that she can't help but resent; information is control, and ilde has always both wanted it and been clever enough to know where to find it.

she's already made her mind up that this is an acquaintance she's going to maintain. even if none of it is information she can do anything with, even if all she can do is hoard it like a shield against complacency, that'll do. )

It's cold of them to put it that way, but it's worth trying to understand it from their point of view. They wanted to know how and why too, and months - years - later, they still have no more answers than they did before. It can be disheartening; frustrating.

That said, we know a whole lot more than anyone who just showed up here would know. It's our responsibility to pass that information down, to ensure that even if we get silence or sent home that knowledge will survive.

Myself and Ianto are deeply invested in finding those answers. Tyke considers herself too busy to think on it most of the time. It frustrates Carolyn, and Ned has never been much of a conspiracy theory guy. But I'm more than aware of how long Ianto and I have been here, and how few people have survived as long as we have. The chances of us sticking around forever is virtually nil.

I'll answer any of your questions if I can. Any time you have them. My door is always open.

I get it, I do.

( inasmuch as she can - she grasps it intellectually, but she hasn't been here for as long as they have, doesn't feel the weight of so much time, so much loss and confusion and so much silence, drawing conclusions in the dark. she hasn't lived it, yet, and even if she knows coping strategies for what they are, she can't help but resent the consequences.

but in two, five, ten years from now it's unlikely that that will change so much - she'll still understand it only from a logical standpoint, still resent it from an emotional one. it isn't how she copes, and it inconveniences her, so it's annoying and stupid. the only difference is that given time and confidence, she might be louder about how much it irritates her. )

Just-- well, you get it, too. ( a shrug, loose-limbed. )

If I think of more questions, I'll know where to find you. I'm always curious about something.

[ Louder wouldn't hurt anyone. Louder is useful in many ways, because if people stop talking about things they settle in instead. They get complacent. It's not a good look for this place. ]

Alright. You want me to show you out?

[ He led the way back up the stairs politely, and tapped the door console. ]

Thanks for coming by.

IC Contact

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i am SO LATE but i love this cr >_>

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