Cooper ●● (kinetix) wrote in gen_m_logs, @ 2008-04-09 10:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | cooper baldwin, jimmy langkowski |
Log! Box & Kinetic
Who: Cooper & Jimmy
Where: The Rec Room
When: Tuesday, April 8
What: Cooper makes Chester a collage because he feels bad for the guy. And to huff glue fumes.
A heavy sigh issued forth from Jimmy as he entered the rec room. He'd been looking for his robotic knee joint blue prints for nearly an hour now. He'd finished building the lower leg and was now ready for the next step, but he couldn't find the plans that he'd drawn up for it. He'd started off his search in his workshop, then over to his room, then the kitchen, the bathrooms. No luck anywhere. He was starting to get a little desperate in his search, looking anywhere he might have been in the past week or so. So he entered the rec room, a frustrated look on his face. He didn't come into this room often, as he wasn't really into recreation. But he had been persueded to sit through a movie over the weekend, and he might have brought his blueprints with him for something to do during the flick.
The first thing he noticed as he entered the room was that it wasn't empty. The friendly-looking boy he'd seen around before was in there, sitting at a table with what looked like art supplies spread out in front of him. He noticed the bottle of rubber cement on the table, and that explained the faint smell he was noticing. Jimmy walked toward the other man, getting right to the point. "Hey. Have you seen any papers around here? They'd be about this long", he said, holding his arms out the appropriate distance, "and rolled up real tight?"
Poor Chester. Even though Cooper didn't know him really well, the boy seemed to be kind of distraught. Coop had seen Chester jump up into a tree the other day, and figured maybe the guy could use some cheering up. He'd be a super ninja about it though, and slip it under Chester's door when he got it all done. But what exactly was he doing? Making a collage! He wasn't all that handy with some things, but he could cut up pictures from magazines and glue them to a larger piece of paper. He'd found a box for a fridge in the garage. Since the only things seeming to use it were rats, he'd cut off the back panel - giving him a good six feet of room to cover. And, if Chester didn't like it? Well, at least Cooper got to huff the paint.
No, not a druggie, but he was getting a little buzz from just using the adhesive. Off to his right and beside him was a big box of magazines he'd found...or assumed wouldn't have any use any more. He checked the dates on them, and only pulled them from public places, but he was trying to play that bit down some so that he wouldn't get in any trouble. Who could really be mad at him for trying to do something nice for someone else? NO ONE THAT'S WHO! Looking up at Jimmy lazily, he smiled a bit. "Uhm...blue prints you mean?" Reaching down into his basket, he pulled them out - the edges frayed and bent, but otherwise in good order. "Sorry, figured they were up for grabs." More glue!
"Yeah, that's them!", Jimmy said, getting an uncharacteristically large smile on his face as he raced forward the rest of the way to the table. "You found them!" He reached for them, taking them and right away unfurling the papers, holding them up as there wasn't that much extra room at the table to lay them down and look at them. He studied them for a moment, the smile slipping from his face. "Oh." He turned the plans so that Cooper could see them. There was a carefully rendered sketch of a robotic hand on the paper. "Wrong blueprint", he said, the sound of defeat in his voice.
Jimmy rolled the paper back up before pulling out a chair at the talbe and sitting down. He couldn't even think of where else to look. "I've got to stop losing these things", he said. He did have a pretty bad memory. He just got preoccupied easily, and would forget about things until much later. His attention turned to the other bits of paper on the table, all spread out over the large cardboard canvas. "Oh. What're you making?", he asked, interested by this. His eyes moved from the collage to a few of the magazines that were still on the table, glancing across the titles of them. Most of them wouldn't interest Jimmy, but he did notice there was a Car and Driver in there and a Popular Mechanics. He reached over, snagging the Car and Driver one to browse through.
Cooper was a bit sad that one of his much-sought after publications were being pulled away. He should have glued those on first, but he had been trying to fit in other stuff around the area so that Chester could see the best of the images. "Mind if I have them back then?" Cooper asked, working and talking at the same time as he placed a picture of a car rolling over a picture of some hills. He was sure Chester would like them - at least to look at them. Cooper had the sneaking suspicion that the guy wouldn't know his ass from his elbow sometimes, so building a mechanical hand would be a bit of a stretch.
"I saw Chester climb up into a tree the other day, figured maybe the guy was feeling a little down." Cooper had to stop himself from bringing up the obvious differences between Chester and everyone else - like the four fingers. Gross. He had been raised better than that, so he might as well act it. "I figure I could do half and then give it to Chester and let him do the other half. It'd probably keep him busy and should be something he could do." But what about scissors? That could be a problem. "If you're hanging around, mind looking for some pictures in there? Or good fonts or something?" Nothing brought people together like a collage, Cooper supposed. "So, what're the blueprints you're lookin' for...for?" English was his first language, swear!
"I still need it", Jimmy quickly said, glancing down at the blueprints. "I'm just not building that part yet." He thought it a little odd that Cooper was going to add his robot hand drawing to a collage. Maybe this Chester likes robots? Jimmy really had no idea who Chester was (other than immediate family members, Jimmy had trouble with everyone's names). But he supposed it made sense that Chester could like to do collages. From the way Cooper talked about him, Jimmy felt a little bad for him.
When he was asked to help out, Jimmy shrugged, saying, "Sure." He liked magazines as much as the next person, and even though he didn't really know Chester, or this guy he was talking with for that matter, he was still willing to help out. He'd find things he liked and hoped Chester would and cut them out. Jimmy reached for a pair of scissors, starting to cut out a picture of a ring of keys with a car remote attached to it. To answer Cooper's questions about his blueprints, Jimmy said, "I'm building an exoskeleton", Jimmy explained, not making the connection that he'd talked about this before with Cooper over the journals. His memory wasn't the best for that kind of thing. "And this one", he said, tapping at the blueprint, "Is the hand for it, the one I was looking for has a knee joint on it." He glanced back down at the blueprint, thinking. After a moment, he asked, "Do you think Chester would like it? I could draw one just for him. Or a whole robot even!" Now he was starting to get into being helpful.
A grin crept over Coop's face. He figured that the guy would still need it, but he figured it'd worth asking. And just the quick response he had gotten had been good enough for him. Truthfully, Cooper had no idea what Chester might like, but it gave him something to do, seeing as how they weren't allowed to go on missions and he was procrastinating on his coursework. He had until May to get it all done - why worry about it now, right?
"Good, should go by faster then," Cooper mused, realizing that with the size of the board he'd chosen, he probably had bitten off a bit more than he could chew. The fumes were making him really rather friendly, and he was glad to finally have someone to talk to while he was doing it. "Oh right, exoskeleton guy. It's me, Cooper...saw you in the cafeteria watching the footage from the brawl we weren't allowed to go to. I'd offer my hand, but it's covered in glue, so best not to do that." For the most part, the strings of rubber cement had dried, but still - he didn't know how much of a germophobe Jimmy was. "So, it's pretty much just a person...but not." Cooper really had no idea what the guy was saying, but figured showing interest would get him to cut out more stuff. "Uhm...I dunno. From what I read, he's a clone of somebody, so it might scare him? Who knows." Yeah, clones were kind of creepy. Except for Pete - he had a good throwing arm on him. "Couldn't hurt though, to make him a drawing of a small one? Depends on how much time you put into something like that." Finding an ad for Cheetos, Cooper cut out the whole page and plastered it down, figuring he could fill in the parts around the bag and cheetah with other stuff.
"Oh!" Jimmy's face lit up a bit in recognition. "Cooper! Right, remember telling you about my projects on AIM the one night." He was remembering now. When he was being asked more about his project, Jimmy said, "Ehh, not exactly. It's like something for a person to sit inside and control, but it does, will, look humanoid in appearance, apart from being really huge." He hoped that helped to clarify it some.
"Chester's a clone?", Jimmy asked a little surprised. It didn't bother him, clones weren't unheard of, especially in this place. His former roomate had a clone, and the guy was very nice. "That's cool. But maybe I won't draw a robot then. I'll have to think of something he would like." Though Jimmy had no idea what that would be. So maybe he'd stick to cutting for now. He finished cutting the keys out and reached for the rubber cement, spreading a sparse amount on the back of the picture. "Should I just put this anywhere?" he asked. He wasn't sure if Cooper had a system for where he was gluing things down or not.
"Yeah yeah - that'd be me," Cooper said, grinning. Finally, he got through to the guy. He waited for him to stop before all Cooper could do was shrug. "Humanoid and really big. Gotcha. I caught a repeat of a really old show the other night - it was about a girl robot named Vickie who had to live with other people. Could you make a robot that would pick up after people? Do...you already have one of those?" Because that would be the absolute best and Cooper would put in an order for one, especially since with Jay and himself in a room? They were used to hopping over piles of stuff to get to their beds.
"I think so - he's mentioned it on other journals and stuff. Yeah, sometimes I'm that bored and just read all the posts I can. When I can't sleep, a couple entries on the system and I'm all set." He chuckled some. Okay, people weren't really all that boring at the school, but he figured that it would be something to talk about. "Yeah, just stick it anywhere on this side," Cooper said, his finger drawing a line down the bend of the box. "I figure that way we can fold it up and slip it under his door, let him do with the rest whatever he wants? Plus...I don't think I have enough magazines to cover the whole thing." Kind of a cop out, but hey! Fumes!
If Jimmy had a quarter for every time someone asked him if he'd built himself a girl robot, he'd have a lot of quarters. It was a question that depending on how it was phrased could come across as pretty offensive, but Cooper hadn't asked that way, so Jimmy's response was friendly as well, and not as defensive as it could have been. "No, never tried that one before", Jimmy answered. "That's already been done before. That really old cartoon, The Jetsons? Don't know if you'd ever seen it or not. I remember watching it on one of the cartoon channels when I was real little. But no robot maid for me. No robot girlfriend either", he added, as that was what people were usually getting at when asking that kind of thing. It really hadn't crossed his mind. He'd never had a girlfriend, real or robotic, but didn't really see a need for one, either.
"I don't really read those too much", Jimmy said about the journals. "No one really writes anything interesting." Again, Jimmy's sense of interesting is very subjective. He was turning the pages of the magazine again, looking for something else to cut out. Flipping a page, he found something and let out a little laugh. "I am remembering seeing some of what he'd written now", Jimmy said about Chester, turning the magazine so that Cooper could see. "He writes about these a lot." His finger was pointing to the full page ad for some kind of beer prominently featuring a busty model in lingerie. He set the magazine down and reached for the scissors, starting to cut her out for Chester.
A robot girlfriend would have just been weird. Even having a robot as a friend would be really kind of sad - much less a robot designed with portals for things to be stuck in. Gross. One unfortunate jerk and a guy's sausage could become so much ground meat. The thought actually made Cooper's face bunch up as Jimmy felt the need to elaborate. "Well, it's a cartoon, so it doesn't really happen, right? But you? You can make exoskeletons and all that and well...I guess if people want to be slobs, they just have to learn to live with it or clean up after themselves, right?" Which, really, was a sad state because Cooper really wanted a robot - no gender needed! - to pick up his slowly-developing pigsty.
"Well, you're missing out on some drama, dude." No need to bring up what Quin already had, the flirting thing. "It's almost as good as a soap opera, and that's how I learned that Chester might have been a little put out by that child star Andi whatsherface." Coop always tried to not read too much into those things, since they could clearly be misinterpreted, but it didn't sound like Chester thought she had been joking. Glancing up from his gluing, the stick and brush ended up coating his palm as he looked at the picture that Jimmy had cut out. He laughed, nodding. "Yeah, guy does like lookin' at those things. Plaster 'em on wherever. But if you end up giving him a heart attack? That's your fault, and I take no responsibility for it."
Jimmy hadn't even given as much thought to the robot girlfriend idea as Cooper had in those short few moments before he made that face, not thinking of the physical complications of having a robot girlfriend. "I guess I could make a robot maid, but it's not high on my list of priorities", he said. It would be useful for Jimmy, who wasn't very tidy, though was fairly organized when it came to his tools and workspace. But he didn't mind having to live with the mess that he did make.
"I know", Jimmy said with a small smile at mention of drama. He preferred to keep things as drama-free as possible. He rarely read people's replies to one another's journal entries unless it had to do with something he might be interested in or else if he was really bored. Jimmy made a confused face at what was being said about Chester and a child star. He had no idea what Cooper was going on about, other than it must be some of that journal drama that Jimmy tries to avoid. "Oh", he said simply, not really caring for more details. "Like I said, don't pay much attention to that stuff." It was amazing that he remembered that Chester wrote about boobs a lot. But of course Jimmy would notice that, he was a guy after all and no matter how single-minded he could be about making things, he still did take notice of a nice pair. Like on the model he'd just cut out of the magazine. "I doubt it'd have that effect on him", Jimmy said, smirking. They were nice, but not heart attack-inducing, at least in Jimmy's opinion.
He looked at the collage, thinking it was coming along nicely. He pasted up the model, sticking her onto the board a fair distance from the car keys he'd pasted on previously. "He should like this", Jimmy said, looking it over. He looked back down at the magazine for more things to cut out. "So you do stuff like this a lot?", Jimmy asked Cooper. "This your thing? Artistic stuff?" Jimmy could kinda relate to that. He used to draw a lot when he was younger. Now he'd limited himself to technical drawings, but he still had a bit of talent for it.
The fumes were having a nice effect - and they probably wouldn't be that strong with anyone else using the rubber cement, but like with all teenagers, Cooper had experimented before Jimmy had entered the room. A couple huffs had him floating pretty freely behind his eyes and between his ears. He'd never huffed glue before, and figured that he'd get a headache later, but some things stupidity had to manufacture so the smart side could logically say later it was a Bad Thing. Thanks to that, he was just picking up bits and pieces of what Jimmy was saying, filling in the rest of it as he saw fit. It was all making some sense, which was good and Cooper continued to nod his head until the question was asked.
"Oh, I don't think cutting stuff out of magazines and gluing them are all that artistic a thing," Cooper would have been more articulate if not for the paint huffing, "but it's something to do. I have a steady hand, can cut out pretty well, and don't make the glue go all over the place. I figured I was as qualified as anyone to do it. I like sports." Sports were awesome, and if Cooper wasn't sulking because he didn't get to go on any missions, he would have been outside running around or in the gym. As it was, he figured he needed to save up his strength and endurance for training with the hairy guy.
Jimmy's nose continued to pick up on the smell of the glue as they worked. It was a presence that wasn't unpleasant, but he also knew better than to huff it. When he'd first gotten interested in building things, his dad had given him considerable freedom to do so, giving him whatever supplies and resources he'd needed. When he'd first started working with verious materials, including certain kinds of paints, Jimmy had noticed that the smell of it could have intoxicating effects. It wasn't long after that his dad had caught him in the garage, high off of paint. They'd had a long and painful conversation about the dangers of doing such things, and Jimmy had been banned from the garage for two months. It had been enough to discourage him from trying anything like that ever since.
"It can be", Jimmy said. "It's what kids in elementary school do for art class half of the time, isn't it?" Not that he was meaning to compare Cooper's artistic ability to that of a first grader. "It looks real good so far", he said again, "I'm sure Chester'll love it." When Cooper started talking about sports, Jimmy's face winced a bit. It was a look of regret that he was feeling. He'd been into sports too when he'd been younger, particularly hockey, but it was something that had been all but forgotten once his mutation started straying his attention from things he'd once had interests in. "Oh. What do you play?", he asked, wondering if nothing else if the guy was into hockey at all.
Oh yeah, Jimmy, Cooper caught the whole reference to school children. Of course, comparatively speaking, making a bioskeletal hand and looking for a bioskeletal knee joint were above and beyond what Cooper was doing, so he figured he'd just let it slide. "Love it or not, I just hope no one gets pissed off we cut up all these magazines." Hear that, Jimmy? We. Your butt was in the fire now too. Blame was always best served i n portions of two or more - made it easier to go down. "Besides, I really just started doing this for the hell of it. Funny how cleaning up a room can lead to something like a frickin' collage for a clone, eh?" Cooper chuckled and rubbed his palm on his jaw, the dried glue coming off in little balls and plopping to the top of collage. He'd have to give it a good shake before folding it up.
"Oh, pretty much anything. Football, roller hockey, soccer - lots of contact sports. I guess since my powers manifested, I'm kind of invincible. My buddies and I started up a coed roller derby team for a while. That was a lot of fun. Plus like I like roller blading and all that - but I just use my kinetic field around my feet. It reminds me of..." How best to explain this...? "I once saw a super old cartoon with a kid with butter on his feet, working on a skillet for flapjacks for Paul Bunyan. That's...kind of what I do, minus the cholesterol." Made sense, right? Hopefully.
"Pissed off?", Jimmy asked, having a deer-in-headlights look on his face for a moment. "You mean... we're not supposed to be doing this?" Flipping the pages of the magazine he was butchering back to look at the cover, he saw the school's address on the label for the magazine. This was not good. He'd already gotten the wrath of Ms. Frost this past week, and she was scary when she was angry. "Maybe... maybe we should stop then? You said Chester would finish it anyway, right?" He thought on this for a second before adding, "Oh! And I have more magazines in my workshop that I could give him to use!" They were Ryan's technically, but Ryan had given them to Jimmy, so he supposed it should be okay if he gave them away to someone else. "That way he can add to it without doing anything to get him into trouble." Because he didn't want to see Chester get into trouble because of this either.
"Oh, you were cleaning in here?", Jimmy asked, taking a look around the room. It did look fairly tidy. "Is that why you were hoping for a robot maid?", he said with a smile. "You must've done pretty good cleaning without one, you even managed to find this", he said, tapping his finger at his found blueprints.
Jimmy nodded as Cooper rattled off the list of sports he played. Even in his more 'normal' days of childhood, Jimmy'd never been that active with sports. He had enthusiastically enjoyed hockey, which was an interest his whole family had shared. And when Cooper mentioned roller hockey, Jimmy's face showed a hint of interest. "Invincible? Wow. So a kinetic field? Sounds fun", he thought aloud, even if it might give him an unfiar advantage in the sports he played. He got a confused look on his face when Cooper started mentioning Paul Bunyon and flapjacks. "So you cook too?", he asked, just a little bit off target. "Oh, that's right, you do! I forgot, you were the one who made those treats that one time. The good ones, not the ones that made everyone poop", he clarified.
Whoops. Maybe Cooper should have shared that bit of information with Jimmy from the start. Of course, it probably wouldn't have been obvious that Cooper didn't have all these magazine subscriptions, but maybe it wasn't so obvious to someone who spent all his time in a workshop. "Well, it was one of those bored things, you know? I started out by wanting to clean off the coffee table and then it just kind of escalated from there."
Cooper didn't know where Jimmy had gotten actual cooking from, but it wasn't that big of a deal. He was about to defend himself about the poop cookies but the other beat it to him. "Yeah, I cook when I feel the mood, but...this just sort of happened. And yeah, we should probably stop soon - it'd give Chester a chance to finish it up." Besides, Cooper was kind of getting bored with this project anyway - he had definitely had bigger creative eyes than actual labor stomach on this one. Mixed metaphors for the win! "That'd be nice if he could get some magazines from you - or maybe he'd just tear off the blank side and keep it small. Either way, it's lookin' good. Thanks for your help." Once the last cut out was secure, Cooper started cleaning up. So many strips of paper...everywhere.
Jimmy was glad Cooper was agreeable to wrapping this up. Since Cooper had mentioned that they maybe shouldn't be cutting up the school magazines, Jimmy was feeling a certain paranoia about the entire project. Again, the bad experience with Ms. Frost had done that to him. And maybe it wasn't paranoia, the woman could read minds after all!
"I can get those magazines for Chester, that's no problem", Jimmy told Cooper. He'd already looked through them and they'd held his attention for a short while, but he knew he probably wouldn't look at them again anyway. "I'll just leave them outside of his door. He'll know what they're for, I hope." Jimmy did his part to corral some stray shreds of magazine into his hand and into the wastebasket from there. Once he'd done that, he picked up his blueprints. "Thanks for finding these. I still need to find the ones I needed." He sighed heavily, deciding he'd had enough of a break and he should continue his search. "I'd better get on my way. Thanks for the distraction! I'll get those magazines for Chester", he said as he made his way out the door, a few more tasks now to keep him busy for a while.