this is the part where prison is more or less dave and busters

[saklas]

Passengers: Everyone who wants to come see what the weird vending machine is about for the first time it is open to them! This is an open mingle/party style log.
Location: "a corner," the location of the Commissary
Date: February 1 - 7 on year one of our cool and sexy journey
Summary: 14 space idiots squint at the ATM that can supposedly make elk meat and clown shoes for them
Warnings: Will add as needed! I'm 90% sure someone's going to ask for drugs or blades, just as a weather forecast

Comments

[saklas]

"Yeah, you offered. Taking advantage of someone isn't-"

Okay, this is pointless. Volk centers himself.

"Look. You don't need to hate him, but I think he'd sell us both, on the dark web, to human traffickers, for the cost of ONE club sandwich, with coleslaw on the side."

[rank1]

“No one’s taking advantage of me, I know what I’m doing,” he says, even if the subject has changed. Just so it’s clear. “But he has insight. If he tries to screw us over, I’ll just kill him.”

[saklas]

No, okay, no, the ONLY backup plan cannot be fucking murder.

"He's too risky. Killing him won't help after the fact if the plan goes down anyway. Also, I'm not comfortable with murder. That's not a proportional amount of force for this. Or, like, almost ever, actually. I know you don't care about that."

No one should, because no one should care about anyone ever. Let's move on.

"Point is, I'd like to try to do it without him. If we can't, I'll think of a way to get him in without giving him a way to ruin it."

[rank1]

The immediate pushback almost surprises Travis —— when’s the last time he heard someone say hey, no murder in a way that wasn’t followed by it’s not profitable? Jeez.

“It’s not that I don’t care,” he says, but he doesn’t finish that thought. Whatever. This guy doesn’t care about his reasons. “But sure. Figure out what you want to do. I’m in as long as there’s a chance at something exciting.”

[saklas]

"Escape and a heist."

Shrug.

"I hope it isn't exciting, in the same way you're not supposed to want to live in interesting times. But I'm sure it will be." Because life is a fucking nightmare. He goes to clap Travis on the shoulder. "Don't worry."

[rank1]

Travis doesn’t brush it off, much less make and move to avoid it, but it is confusing to him. Like they’re on a football team and not grown-ass prisoners.

“Who’s worried? We’re gonna get out of here.”

[saklas]

"Me."

Volk holds up his fingernails, which are so bitten down to stubby little half-circles.

"Constantly, about everything."

[rank1]

“You’re a real sensitive guy, huh?” There’s sincere concern there, but this is Travis. It veers to pity quick. “You’re not gonna freeze up when you nab a ship, right?”

[saklas]

"Yes. I am also tough, and you should tell girls about it."

A little wince at the next question.

"I don't freeze up. Other things happen. It won't get in the way."

[rank1]

Travis could have winced at the first. Maybe it's just the girls Travis knows, but he can't imagine a single one of them going for this guy. They'd eat him alive, poor guy.

"Other things like what?"

[saklas]

Well, okay, now he has to make something up.

...No, nothing. He can't think of anything on the spot like this. Okay he will tell like a third of the truth.

"Magic flares. They're harmless, my Court just makes butterflies and rabbits and stuff."

Okay, so more like a... tenth of the truth.

Flares are embarrassing, but they only happen when someone has more than one kind of magic and one effect can accidentally trigger the other. Implying that he's got two kinds of magic at twenty six, when most people don't develop personal magic until their middle age, makes him look like a cool child prodigy. So, it balances out.

There are no holes in this logic because they aren't in space. Everyone is from Nephele. Thanks.

[rank1]

Travis does think this is pretty fucking cool, and his eyebrows shoot up in unabashed surprise, but hey, he is also a man from a world without real magic.

"Chicks don't dig bunny rabbits?" he asks. He's sure he could have turned that into something impressive, a handful of years ago. "But I can see how that wouldn't be helpful when, you know, trying to escape."

[saklas]

"It won't hurt or help, they'll just be annoying."

Volk crosses his arms. This part is all lie.

"Chicks ... do? They do. I get a lot of uncomfortable DMs. Look, relationships are hard."

He's been to conventions. He's had teenagers wait in hours-long lines to propose marriage to him, while dressed as one of his characters. It means something is working, at least. That thing, however, is not Volk himself, because people don't usually stick around after being irradiated by his actual personality.

[rank1]

"Ah," Travis says, like he's found a lead. "But you are getting DMs! Some guys can't get any girls to look their way."

Not him, of course. Not in his former line of work. Can't say the gaze has always been normal, though.

[saklas]

Volk draws in enough of a breath to sigh.

"I'm a little famous."

He's in a shitty spot where the autograph lines make C23 organizers wildly underplan for the volume of people and the queue overflows into the room next door - but his apartment is still awful. He made a finance magazine's list of Thirty Rising Leaders, Stars, and Entrepreneurs Under Thirty - but most people who have seen his work don't actually know who he is. Did you watch Passage? Sure, yeah, I loved it. Who showran that? Uhh, I don't remember.

God.

"They don't want to be in my personal life. They just want my personal life to be exactly like they imagined it."

[rank1]

A little. Travis nods. That shit's always on the road, but it's that little flick of the eyes up to the rearview mirror that puts his stomach in an ugly place.

"What do they think they're getting?"

[saklas]

Volk moves his neck in a way that's not really a shrug and not really a head-shake - just something that expresses that he's having trouble articulating.

He goes to stories, as usual. Peter Pan's shadow is always running off and escaping him. It has to be chased, caught, sewn back on. When all of this started, he thought of himself as Peter, manipulating his shadow to make spectacular shows in Plato's cave - but life has a way of making everything turn on its head. He's sure he's the shadow, these days. Mute, restless, gone already when exposed to too much light.

"Somebody better than me. Smarter. Funnier. Has his shit together. Has a plan four steps ahead, to keep everybody guessing. I'd just be getting in his way."

He lifts his arms, drops them.

"People always say they thought I'd be taller, which is annoying. How'd we get on this subject. Nobody cares about this. Um. The owl has commlinks?"

[rank1]

"Fuck the owl," Travis replies, curt and swift. This shit is real, and it gets under his skin quick –– who doesn't care? He's here, isn't he? "Look. Maybe you're not that guy, but you're you. You're here in space prison and you're the only person making a serious effort to get out of here, that sounds like enough for me."

He's almost testy about it:

"And the pithy shit you say on the network is funny as fuck. Don't ever cut yourself down for being yourself. It's the only thing that matters!"

(This is a terrible take.)

[saklas]

Volk looks a little startled, and pulls backwards into the collar of his coat in a turtle-ish way.

"Uh. I don't know. Thanks. ... I mean, I know lots of ways that who I am could be better, but I definitely don't want people telling us how they think we'd be better."

His eyes go flinty. "Not their call. My life's mine to decide on. If you choose your own actions and then get slapped on the hand and told to try again, it's not even really a choice, is it? It's just a trap."

[rank1]

"Worse than a trap," Travis says. "You've been set up for life. And who knows where the line is? How long we can be here before this is just the rest of our lives?"

[saklas]

"I'd rather they just pretend it was a punishment."

Completely serious.

"Or revenge. The blurred line here between restorative 'justice'"

Volk's eyes go wide and creepy-doll-like as he does air quotes.

"-that supposedly focuses primarily on the good of the universe and just weird punitive shit where the focus is on making us bored and uncomfortable is non-existent. Just say you set up a fucked up tiny society with an artificial class system and made us lower because you think we're bad, man, stop acting like it's for our good or safety."

What good is it doing the universe, in aggregate, for him to not be able to have coffee in the morning?

[rank1]

He's been so busy thinking about the cool shit and aesthetic trappings and the surface-level fuckery of being considered a space criminal that justice hasn't even crossed his mind. It puts a sour twist on his face.

"I don't even how how making us into other people is supposed to do good in the universe," Travis replies. "We're just a couple people."

All he ever did was kill people who killed other people. Is that really a problem?

[saklas]

"It isn't.

If they really meant what they said, we both know who'd actually be in here. Stemrock and her shit. The Prince of Vanishing. Anybody running Jurchen. Probably the POJ. Those guys having to admit they did something wrong would change things.

I think they probably just picked up a bunch of people nobody would believe."

[rank1]

Well, that's certainly Travis. He knows it. Sylvia wouldn't even let him finish talking before blowing him off.

"For what, though? Why? Is some Truman Show shit where we're entertainment for someone?"

And no offense to the guy here, but he'd expect way more hot babes for something like that. It's not 1998 anymore.

[saklas]

"Why's anyone start a cult? Why does anybody - kidnap people and stick them in a suburban basement for eight years?"

People are just kind of fucked up.