Tris had spent the monorail ride back down to the city with Chris. Going back down hadn't really been a question. Anja was down there - they had to go back. Neither he nor Ethan were willing to leave her down there, even if it meant passing up the possibility of finding a way out. Either they all got out, or nobody did, no matter what pipe dreams Tris might have been harbouring. When it came down to it, family was more important.
So, that meant facing a future here, for now. Which meant, first things first, making sure he still had a job. He knew he had to go to the club as soon as he could, but Chris had been a little pouty when he'd brought that up. Clingy as well - not wanting to be separated again. Which was understandable, he knew, but sometimes he had to play the adult. So, the ride back had been spent reassuring Chris with quiet words, touches and stolen kisses until he pushed him off into the crowd of people disembarking when they got to the bottom of the monorail line and turned to head into the centre of town.
Being trapped on the surface had thrown Julian off his schedule, left him wondering what to do, where to go, and when. He'd been stranded in a way he'd never experienced and jumped on the train the moment he heard about it, eager to get back to something familiar. A home with a bed were things to hold onto. So was his job. His shop. An opportunity he'd never dreamed of being given that he couldn't let collapse just because a few robots forgot how to run a train. When the train pulled into the station, that's where he was headed, needing to know that his livelihood was as he left it. While most people headed towards their houses, Julian took off towards the center of town.
It was once the crowd began to clear that he spotted Tris and he called out his name before even thinking about it. Christian's Tris, he thought, eyes wide. It had never occurred to him that the Tris he knew from back home, the one he'd grown up with, would be the same one. What were the chances of that happening?
Tris turned as he heard his name being called, spinning on the ball of his foot. He'd been walking fast, lost in thought, trying to figure out all the things that he might have to sort out and feeling generally disoriented from the whole experience of the last few days. He blinked rapidly, as though dragged from a deep sleep, as he looked around.
"Don't fall!" Julian said, impressed that Tris was able to maintain his footing with how fast he spun. "Christian's Tris?" he said, realizing that Tris wasn't sure who was talking, that he'd turned at the sound of his voice. He hadn't been a hundred percent sure before that this was the boy from his childhood, now a man, but now he was. A hundred percent. "Julian. Jules. From New Jersey." It was possible Tris didn't remember him, but Julian remembered him. God, how could he forget. He'd been dreamy even then.
Tris frowned, for a moment trying to place the guy who seemed to think that they should know each other. Then it clicked into place. "Fuck," he breathed, mouth curving upwards and lips splitting into a blinding grin, scrunching up his green-blue eyes until they were little more than splits. He closed the gap between them and pulled Julian in for a hug, clapping him on the back before letting him go. This place was just filling up with care kids. He found it hard to wrap his head around. For years there'd been nobody at all, he'd felt so alone. Now, he was meeting little brothers from the past all the time and he wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to get to know any of them again. "How've you been?" he asked, pulling back and looking the guy up and down. He'd definitely grown up well.
Julian could see the moment when it clicked, when he went from being a weird stranger calling out his name to an old friend. He grinned as Tris pulled him in for a hug, the excitement of finding him lighting Julian up, washing away the worry from the past few days. "Great! Fantastic! I mean, aside from the last few days, which were just bizarre. I just got here, like, right before this big spa party? And I'm about to open a bakery, which is my dream and I'm not really sure how it's happening, but I can't look a gift horse in the mouth. Is that what they say? It's a weird saying. But, fuck, I can't believe it's you! How are you? I met a guy named Christian and he mentioned a Tris and I didn't think, are you, is there more than one Tris?" he asked, realizing suddenly that he had to stop talking if he wanted Tris to answer anything at all.
"You're opening a bakery?" Tris asked, intrigued by that. "I...am totally going to have to be a regular customer," he said, hesitating for a moment, but then deciding that there were certain people in his life who were going to get sweet treats whether they liked it or not. "That's me - I guess I am Christian's Tris. I don't think there's another one of me around. If there is, I haven't met him. But, yeah - I'm good. Have a regular gig at Room 101 - which if you haven't been around, you should come. It's a jazz bar and the music's pretty good, even if I do say it myself. Actually, I'm headed over there now, if you've got some time. I could buy you a drink and we could catch up?" he suggested.
"Yes! I've kind of wanted to forever? It's the only thing I'm any good at, but I promise I'm good. Like, anything you want, I can make," Julian grinned. Even if he hadn't made it before, he'd give it a try. There was no better way to learn. "I'm sure that was a huge assumption on my part, but he said Tris and I never would've thought it was you until I saw you and then it was like BAM! He said you played, and to check it out, and now you're saying it, so good assumption for once, right? I vaguely remember you being into that kind of thing. But yeah, sure, I'm in for a drink," he grinned, bouncing on his toes.
"Hey, I'm all about following your dreams," Tris told him as Julian started to try and justify what he was about. "That's what brought me here, after all. The chance to be a full time musician? Wasn't gonna turn that down." He'd spent far too long having to take whatever bits of jobs he could to get by. He'd never really banked on being any kind of famous anyhow. He'd never been able to really imagine that in his future, no matter how hard he tried. But to be able to actually work his craft - that was more than enough. They walked for a few before Tris spoke again. "I was kinda always more than just into that kind of thing - but by the time you knew me... Well, there wasn't a piano at home and Jill and Dan weren't the most encouraging of foster parents, right? They saw my music as more of a problem than anything - I'd skip class and spend the day in the choir room reworking old songs. They never got that music was all I was ever good at. I didn't have brains worth shit - grades were never gonna get me anywhere."
"Yeah, well, they didn't want me crawling all over the other kids, so you know," Julian shrugged, remembering what it was like, the way he could get into trouble for just being himself. Even when what he did wasn't wrong with the law, it seemed to be wrong as a foster kid. "You were always smart, though. In the way that matters. Books don't mean anything. Nobody's asking me to write term papers on Hamlet in the real world. To have a skill like yours? You can't teach that. Not to the level that you have if you're making a living with it, which is great. I'm looking forward to hearing you play," he smiled.
"They just wanted us all to shut up and not get in any trouble," Tris agreed, remembering back to those days. He hadn't lasted long there. Jill and Dan had done there damndest to label him a problem kid - which he hadn't exactly made difficult for them, under the circumstances, and had him moved on. By that time though, he had begun to expect it. Let go of even trying to fit in, convinced he could never be good enough anyway, so what was the point.
"Well, this is it," he said, as they rounded the corner. The entrance to Room 101 was a set of steps leading down from the street to the basement bar. The sign was lit up in blue neon print, obvious, but simple enough to avoid being tacky. Tris headed down the stairs and pushed the door open. The place was empty, though it was still early in the day. It was then that Tris remembered that the bar was mostly staffed with robots. In fact, one still stood motionless behind the bar. It was kind of creepy, but clearly someone human had been coming in, because the counters were cleaned down and the empties had been washed. His piano stood empty before a red velvet curtain on a small raised stage, though the spotlights were off, since the house lights were all on.
Julian nodded, quiet as he thought back on it. He'd wanted to be a good kid, but it was like he just couldn't help himself. It had been a difficult time in his life and his foster parents didn't want to deal with him. No one really did, no matter how hard he tried. Things hadn't improved until he was out of the system, but then everything else became an issue.
"Wow, all swanky," Julian smiled as they stepped into Room 101. He liked the entrance, the way it reminded him of something out of a movie. And the bar itself was something he wanted to run his fingers over, to see if it was as smooth and polished as it looked. His eyes landed on the piano and he grinned, looking to Tris. "You know you're going to have to play something for me, right? Is it open yet? Are you and Christian the only human staff here? Like, who owns the place? I'd think they couldn't function without you." What was a piano bar without the piano man?
Tris lifted the bar hatch and stepped behind it. He'd never tended bar here, but he had elsewhere enough times that it felt like familiar territory. Plus, there'd been that time with Chris after closing. That had been fun - but possibly not the thing to mention here. He pulled up a few glasses. "What's your poison?" he asked, starting on something whiskey based for himself. Sure it was still morning, but there'd been a long few days and it was five o'clock somewhere, right? "Then, sure - I always take requests." And he was an incorrigible show off at times. "This place usually runs with a mostly robot staff, but there's a couple of human's around - we'll just have to make do."
"Can you do a Moscow Mule?" Julian asked. "Or, you know what, it's early. How about a Bloody Mary? I never make it early enough anywhere to do something like brunch, but I love those things if you have the ingredients." They had so much flavor when they were made right and Julian loves his spices as much as his sweets. "What kinds of things do you play? Anything? Any favorites? Do you have it all memorized or do you just play by ear?" His musical talent didn't move beyond clapping and banging out a rhythm on the counter. He couldn't imagine sitting behind a piano and just letting the music flow out his fingertips.
"Bloody Mary coming up," Tris said, pulling out ingredients as he talked. "Music isn't always a stable job, so I've done my fair share of other things," he explained. "Tending bar, couple of spells as a croupier - whatever paid the bills and left me some flexibility." He poured the concoction into a glass and slid it across the bar. "By choice though, I'm behind that piano." He upnodded to the stage. "I never got my head round writing, so I play covers - though reworked with my own spin. A kind of jazz/swing vibe. I can read music, but it's more trouble than it's worth to write it all out - anyway, it's part of the magic to not need it. As long as I know the tune, I can usually work most things out." Which was Tris being modest - he had a hell of an ear, perfect pitch and music just seemed to flow from his fingers with little to no effort.
"Oh, totally," Julian said, nodding along. He'd done all kinds of things before eventually finding his place in a bakery, so he knew what it was like to hop around. He watched as Tris made up his drink, noting the ingredients and the ratios of each, a different version of his own little talent. He looked towards the piano after Tris slid over his drink, continuing to listen. It was sad when so much talent grew up in the system, unable to get the support they needed to flourish. He was glad Tris had found his way because Julian truly believed that was one of the keys to happiness, to find a way to make a living doing something you loved. "That's incredible, being able to play by ear, to just hear something and be able to replicate it with your own twist. That'd be like me tasting something and then being able to bake it. I mean, I could try, but there'd be lots of trial and error."
Tris laughed as he walked across the room and slid onto the piano seat, setting his glass on the top of the grand. "Oh, trust me - there's a lot of trial and error to really get something right. The difference between playing something someone's requested, and really playing my version of it. There's cheats and tricks I can put in to something unfamiliar to make it work - then I go home and obsessively rework it," he admitted. At least, he did now his had his own keyboard. Before he'd just beg the use of somewhere during the day, when he could. "So - requests?" he asked, setting his hands on the keys in readiness.
"Okay, so maybe a little bit similar," Julian grinned, taking a sip of his drink as he followed Tris over to the piano. He was intensely familiar with the act of obsessively reworking something until it was right. "Shit, I dunno, um... Walking with a Ghost by Tegan and Sara?" He wasn't sure why it came to mind other than it had been in his head earlier that morning. "Or does it need to be a piano song? I'm trying to think of songs that feature a piano." His mind ran through a little catalog, featuring artists that focused on a piano, and he tried to decide on one to request if the first didn't work.
Tris laughed a little, mentally going over the song. He thought that he knew all of it, though it wasn't usually his kind of thing and he was a little hazy about the end. He figured that he could start it off, then slide it into something else if he started feeling wobbly. "It doesn't need to be a piano song," he assured Julian. He started out in the right key to make things nice for him, just a little different from the usual, also changing the tempo a little and adding in a couple of extra chords. It helped, when he kind of knew a song, to make it more familiar. People usually ended up being impressed that he could change things up that way - they didn't tend to realise that was part of the cheat. More modern songs had the same few chords, structure and beat. It didn't take much to layer over something he'd practised over and over to hide the deficiencies in his performance. They said 'original interpretation', he said 'saving grace'. The end result, as he started in on the lyrics, was a jazz interpretation of the request.
As someone who couldn't even play chopsticks, Julian would have been impressed with anything, but when Tris started to play he immediately understood how he could make a living at it. He knew the song he'd picked was random, had already come up with something a little more traditional when Tris started to play. The way he made it his own, yet maintained the sound of the original, amazed him, unable to pick out how he'd changed it, other than to say it was different, but still the same. He didn't know all the words himself, so it didn't matter if Tris stumbled over a few, but he handled it so smoothly that Julian didn't even notice if he did. He grinned, mouthing along with some of the words he knew, but not singing aloud. He was confident with close friends, when he'd had a bit to drink, but not around a professional.
Tris managed to get through it, though he wasn't entirely sure that he got the words to the final verse right. He was smiling though, as he finished. There was a rush to getting through a challenge and he thought he'd pulled it off. Julian appeared to have enjoyed it, at least. "So, yeah. That's what I do," he said, leaning forward to rest his arms on the top of the grand piano, above the keyboard.
"That's incredible," Julian grinned, clearly impressed. "I don't think I could have even hummed it as well as you played it." That kind of raw, natural talent was special. Rare, too. "So when things are working like normal, you sit up here and take requests? Work the crowd and all that?" he asked, eyes turning out towards where there would normally be an audience.
"More or less," Tris agreed, reaching for his drink. "I have a set, to keep things going, but most nights it gets more or less derailed. Sometimes a friend of mine accompanies me - she's an amazing singer," he said, thinking of Anja. He needed to head over and check on her. He was sure that she'd be fine, but it had been a few days and he was sure that she would have been worrying about her brother.
"You meet her down here? How long have you been here?" Julian asked. It was weird that this place was full of people and he'd never even heard of it. It wasn't something that he'd thought much about before coming, seeing as how his options were limited and this was such a good opportunity, but wasn't this the kind of thing that made the news? Futuristic cities below ground? Maybe it had and he just hadn't been paying attention.
Tris thought about that, about how long he'd actually been here. Time didn't seem to mean as much at New Eden than if did elsewhere. "Months?" he suggested, then he realised. "Actually, getting on for a year." Had it really been that long? Fuck.
"Oh, wow," Julian said. "For some reason I thought this place was brand new. That's awesome though. And good to know this place is somewhat stable. I wasn't sure after the last few days." It had seemed like a bit of a mistake to come here, no matter how great an opportunity. But if Tris had been there for a year, this couldn't be the norm. Things couldn't break down all the time.
"There's been a few... incidents. Things going wrong for a few days," Tris said, slowly. "Nobody'sever really been able to get to the bottom of why." And with them, added to the threats against people seen as being 'Connies', Tris didn't really want to be here any more. Still though, he'd given up his chance of attempting to leave for the Sinclairs. He knew they'd not asked him to, but he knew he'd never be able to leave them behind.
"That's weird, right?" Julian asked. "I mean, who's in charge around here?" There had to be someone. That was how cities worked. It wasn't his area of expertise, but he was pretty sure that each piece of a city had some kind of overseer to monitor things. There was someone that oversaw the roads or trains, that kept tabs on the food supply up in the gardens. And someone had to be over the robots... right?
"That's the thing," Tris said, with a sigh, finishing his drink and getting up to go get another from the bar. Suddenly it didn't seem to matter so much that it was morning. He gestured to Julian's glass, silently asking if he wanted another. "Nobody seems to be in charge. The place is run by some kind of central computer - goes by MABEL. 'She' has a small army of robots that are menat to keep things going - but that's the ones that are currently down. They usually do everything that people either can't, or don't want to do."
"But somebody's got to be running MABEL. Unless she's an AI of some sort? 'Cause that's kind of sci-fi movie scary," Julian said, handing off his drink. Now it felt like he needed one. The more he learned about this place, the more skeptical he was, despite his good fortune. Why had he been so sure of it before coming there? "Where do you think she is? Is there a command center or something? Or is she just this omnipotent presence on the web here?"
"Considering this place looks like some 1950s version of the future most of the time, I'm going for sci fi AI," Tris said as he slid behind the bar and started pouring drinks again. "Think about it - if you were designing things today, would you make it look like this? Why wrist communicators, rather than cell phones? Why robots, not drones? None of it fits with the tch we have today - it all feels like it's something out of the Jetsons." He handed Julian his drink. "I have no idea where she is, never tried to find out either. Not sure I really want to know. I'll leave the tech stuff to someone else - I wouldn't know what to do with it even if I found it."
"But if they could do this back then, when didn't anyone hear about it? This would've been a big deal. Even if the robots are a little clunky, I've never seen anything this advanced back in Jersey," Julian said. For as outdated as it appeared, there was still something that made it more advanced than the outside world. "I don't know enough about it either. I'm lucky if I can get a computer to turn on. Fancy phones were always out of my price range. But I still thought AIs like that were a thing of the future." He drummed his fingers on the counter for a moment. "There's really no way out of this place?"
"I have no idea," Tris admitted. "None of it makes sense, right? I mean - why did we all get drawn here anyway? I thought it was all legit. I was offered a great job, came for it, but... Chris was invited to a conference that turned out to be fake. Ethan and Anja too - they got an invite to a party that wasn't real. It's like someone looked at our lives and figured out what was the one thing that would get each of us to leave the rest of the world behind and travel half way across the globe to the middle of nowhere." He felt sick, voicing that for the first time, and downed half of his drink. "Never found a way out. And now we can't get back up to the surface, I'm gonna go with 'no'."
"Everyone? I was offered my own bakery. All I had to do was show up," Julian said, his stomach sinking. He thought he'd been offered the chance of a lifetime, an opportunity that he'd never get anywhere else. It had been too good to pass up. He should have known it was too good to be true. "Shit," he sighed. "I guess we just... make due with what we have. It's not all bad, right? When things are working?"
Tris chuckled. "It's... for most people it's not bad," he said, qualifying his answer. "I kinda... If it were up to me, I'd leave. Which - a few weeks ago, I'd've said I'd want to stay forever, but things change. You heard about the shit that's been going on about people being accused of being stealth robots? Connies? I've been accused of being one of them. Been getting death threats and shit. So - time to go. If I could." He looked down, knowing he'd passed up possibly what was his only chance at a break for freedom. He couldn't have left though. Not like that.
Julian was speechless for a beat, then shook his head, finding the thread of optimism that got him through life. "Hey, like you said, things change. Everything could come back on tomorrow. Or the day after. The guy that got the train working could find a way to get it to go back up. You never know." He knew he was new and that he might not know what he was talking about, but he couldn't think of this place like a prison. That was a bit too dark and depressing for him to get stuck on.
"Yeah, you never know," Tris echoed, though he felt a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach. He'd done it - he'd followed Ethan back down here and at the time, it had absolutely felt like the right thing to do. The shitty thing was that it still felt like the right thing to do - it just also was starting to dawn on him that it felt like a death sentence as well. He was never gonna get off this island. Still, Tristan Denham had never been one to be cowed by thoughts of a future. Shit happened and he knew there was no fucking gold at the end of the rainbow. He really shouldn't be surprised that the good had never lasted. So, he pushed it all down with a swallow of his drink, putting on his show face. "We make the best of things, right?" he asked.
"That's what we do," Julian smiled, giving a little nod to Tris as picked up his drink. He hadn't seen Tris in years, but assumed that much was still true. They moved on, moved forward, and made the best of what they had. They couldn't lament the past or what they were lacking. There was no point in it and it would just depress them.