The night had been high tension. Fighting robots and running to make sure people were okay wasn't something that had been on Nico's agenda, but he thought he'd rolled with it okay. He'd thought that everyone had rolled with it - until he'd woken up the next morning and read that some poor bastard had died.
It wasn't anyone he knew, but that was hardly the point. People didn't come here to die, far from their friends, loved ones, people who they'd known and who knew them. And if they did die here, they deserved to be remembered. Which was why he'd been sat at his sewing machine since three minutes after he'd heard the news, crafting the silks he used for lining fabrics into things other than their purpose.
It was what had him in the park after midday, piles of flags at his feet - nothing national, he didn't know where the dead guy had come from - but colours and celebration. He realised, however, that he hadn't thought things through properly. He had flags, but nothing to hang them from. So it was that he ended up trying to hang his flags from low branches, hoping that the message would get across.
Riven had expected to meet new people in New Eden, but she hadn't expected it to be while defending herself against attacking robots. The whole experience the day before left her feeling overwhelmed, unsure of what she'd gotten herself into, and far too alone for her liking. She wanted to yell at someone for letting the attack happen, but there was no one to yell at except her computer. Finding out that someone had died was just too much to handle by herself, alone in her pod, and she grabbed her sketchbook and pencils and fled out into the city.
Just because she was out didn't mean she knew where to go, but the park seemed as good a place as any. She was looking for a place to settle in when she noticed the guy hanging flags from trees. She watched for a few seconds, then walked up to him. "What are the flags for?"
Nico took a step back, only for the latest flag - this one a sky blue silk with a black diagonal stripe across it, to flutter gently to the ground, not at all held in place by his efforts. He sighed and picked it up as he turned. "I wanted to do something," he explained. "The guy who died - they're apparently just going to bury him on the surface. I don't even know if anyone really knew him. I didn't want him to be forgotten. Of course, it wasn't until after I'd made a shit tonne of flags that I realised that I didn't have any, y'know, flag poles to fly them at half mast on," he explained, his accent a slightly strange Italian-tainted London twang.
"You made the flags?" Riven asked, her lips turning up slightly as she moved to get a closer look at the flag he held. She could sew, but not that fast and, if that fast, definitely not that well. If she'd tried to put together flags as quickly as he had, they'd be a mess, but this one looked well made. A glance around told her that they probably all were. "Maybe we can make flag poles. Find some PVC pipe, some string, put them in the ground, and you can fly them that way. Or... I could paint you some flag poles, but then we'd need a way to hang them from a wall, which might be harder than the trees." She chewed on her lip for a moment, thinking. "It's a good idea, though. I'd like to do something for him, even if I didn't know him."
Nico smiled proudly, running the silk through his hands and then handing it to her. "I own a tailor's shop in the centre - mostly they're made out of silks I use for lining and ties," he explained. Which probably meant that he'd spent more on this than he properly should, but he'd taken quite a few commissions since he got here, and sometimes things were just more important. "Each one if different, except for the black strip on each. They're not fancy designs or anything, so it didn't take me long to run them up." Not with an industrial sewing machine and lots of experience of working under pressure.
He looked surprised, but glad at her suggestions. "Hey - any of those could work. If you wouldn't mind helping out?"
Riven took the flag, running her fingers over the silky fabric. She knew fine textiles when she saw them and he had to have spent a ton on the flags. They deserved to be hung properly, in remembrance of their lost companion. Or whatever he was to them. He was something, as she was starting to think they were all in this together, whether they liked it or not. "It's faster and cleaner work than I could ever do. And yeah, I'd love to help out. I'm not totally sure what I'm doing here if there's no one running the place, but I think it'd count as a community art project, don't you think?"
"Trust me, I've had a lot of experience," Nico chuckled. "Running off a few straight lines was the least I would do." He considered she question and nodded. "Yeah - definitely a community art project. That your kind of thing?" he asked.
"Art is. Painting, drawing, creating in general. I dabble in sewing, but never anything major. I was told I'd get to paint a mural here, so I was planning to scope things out, but I get the feeling I've really got free reign," Riven smiled. If she got to get creative, she'd get involved with just about anything.
"There's MABEL," Nico told her, starting to pull down the flags that he'd already managed to hang up and carefully folding them until they could be used in a more appropriate way. "She, er, well it I guess really, seems to be the one overseeing things." or not, given what happened to Ryker and the total mess of everything that was last night. "You can contact MABEL through the stations and wrist doobry-whatsits," he added, gesturing to the wrist device he was wearing. "But who knows - people seem to have come here for all kinds of reasons and not all of them end up panning out."
"The computer? The one that 'tested' us and got one of us killed? Doesn't there have to be someone in charge of her-- it?" Riven had seen MABEL's message that morning and it had pissed her off. If someone wanted them to bond, there were lots of ways to bring people together that didn't involve getting them hurt. Throw a party, for fuck's sake. A gift basket really didn't make up for it. "I can probably paint a mural regardless. I could paint ten of them, if I had the supplies. What did you come here for? To open the shop?"
Nico held up his hands, shoulder height, silk pooling in the crook of his elbow. "Hey, I don't know. really, no idea. There doesn't seem to be anyone in charge, unless there really is someone behind the curtain, pretending to be a robot." Which, given this place, Nico wouldn't be surprised. Hell, he doubt he'd be all that surprised if someone told him that Walt Disney had never died, he'd just come here to play producer in a weird kind of zoo. he relaxed a little more at the question. "Yeah, I came to ope my shop - my former employer retired too early for me to take over his business and nobody else who I migh have wated to work with was hiring. Then I was offered this and it seemed like a good opportunity to get that experience before I go home again."
"No, I know," Riven sighed, not meaning to jump on him. "It's just a lot to take in in a really short amount of time." She'd started scrolling through the messages on the net. Some of it was fine, while the rest was rather disconcerting. That no one had answers didn't help. "That's really cool. You make everything by hand then? All custom?" she asked, moving with him to the next tree to take down a flag. "Where's home?"
"I come from London," Nico said. "Trained as a tailor in Savile Row and yeah, everything's made by hand. All custom, mostly menswear," he added because he'd had a few people asking him about making dresses, which was way out of his comfort zone. "How about you, where do you hail from?"
"Seattle, Washington, which is beautiful, but tiny, and nowhere near as exciting as London," she smiled. "I'd love to come by the shop sometime, even if it is mostly menswear." She was more interested in his setup, his machines, and his technique. If she ever did want to sew something, he'd probably be the expert she could go to for help, or at least input. "So... do we want to find something to make poles? Or a place to paint poles?" she asked, just so they could start in a direction.
Nico looked confused. "Seattle's tiny?" he asked. "I... Didn't know that. Y;know, you hear about these places and you think they're all the same kind of size. Then again, London's not really as big as people expect - just crowded. I think people are always surprised when they're there, when all these parts that seem like they should be miles away from each other are just a few streets away." He shook his head, feeling a pang of homesickness. London had been his home all his life, he'd barely even left for a holiday. They couldn't afford them when he was growing up, and time off work wasn't something he'd ever really taken.
"Anytime you want to come by the shop, just stop in, but in the meantime, yes, let's do poles - let's try and find something to make them out of, I think. If you painted them, we'd still have to try and find a way to hang them up on the wall."
"It doesn't feel little when you're in it, but we've got less than a million people, so compared to cities like New York or LA, yeah, kinda small," Riven smiled. "But I know what you mean. This is the farthest I've been from home, so it's a big change." She'd thought about traveling, but always expected that to cost quite a bit of money, even if she was just trying to see the US. London seemed a world away. "So, okay, maybe we need to go by the shopping district? They'd have a hardware store, right?"
Nico considered that, then realised that London was probably well over eight million by now. "All things in perspective, I guess," he mused. "But this is the furthest I've been from home as well - that was one of the draws. See some of the world, travel a bit. Of course, they didn't mention the whole 'underground island' part of it all," he added with a small laugh.
"I'm sure that we'll be able to find a hardware store - I haven't see one around, but there must be one somewhere, right? Wanna go see what we can find?"
"I think there was a lot they didn't mention, and I don't even know who 'they' are," Riven said, lightly stroking one of the flag she held in her hand. She was trying not to think too much about the way they'd been manipulated. It would put her in a mood and likely run Nico off, and he made for good company. "Let's do that," she smiled. "I figure they should at least have some two-by-fours, and maybe some of those screws with rings on them, and some rope. And some cement. Or something to hold up the poles. An actual pole would be great, but we can improvise if we need to."
"I'm just gonna follow you lead on this one - I'm good with a sewing machine, but anywhere past that and I don't have a single clue," Nico admitted with a self-deprecating laugh as he packed the flags away into the rucksack he was carrying.
"I'm not exactly an expert in a hardware store, but I can wing it. We can learn together," she grinned, hooking her arm through his as she led the way towards the shopping district.