Re: sushi-time: adrian, patrick, lou
Lou didn't trust government. Surprise, huh? She didn't trust government, it screwed people who couldn't afford to learn the way around the red tape and the people in the system were beat, broken all the ways a person could get broken before they were allowed to look for the exit. She didn't hate it, because hate didn't get a girl very far and it was a waste of fucking heat and light on an entity that didn't give a shit and was comfortable that way. It surprised her, that Connie, the girl who had been smart and warm and motherly way too early to be that grown up, had gone in that direction. Power fucked with people. The government had that, money, too.
She chewed on beef that tasted better than the sushi, and washed it down with beer while she listened to the two guys thrash out how they felt about government and experimentation and she felt the hair on her neck rise, hackling at the idea of the government given time to fuck with as well.
"Someone in the government will explain it away," Lou said shortly, of time-travel. "They'll find a reason it makes sense. Find a reason it's safe. Tell people that over and over until they believe it. They'll make it all about paper forms and red tape, until it looks bureaucratic and sounds it, and it hides the way it's fucked as all hell."
She looked at Adrian, the kid with the messy dark hair who reminded her of the waitress back in the small town she still had the tang of in her vowels, and knocked his shoulder with her hand.
"Anybody else? Kid, you aren't doing it if it's risking you," she said, as bluntly as if she got a say, a vote, a vote that trumped everybody else's. "You don't need friends who can stab you someplace soft. This guy isn't holding a knife," she looked at Patrick, "Then okay."
She put her fork down, and her beer, and she leaned back. "I'm sorry about your sister," Lou said to Patrick, as characteristically blunt about that as about everything else. She was sorry, the girl had been smart, head on her shoulders, way less likely to fuck up than Lou remembered being at the same age, but Connie hadn't turned out as straight as she had been meant to. Shit happened.
"But you can't save people from their choices." Which arguably, was the opposite of what Lou had been trying to do with the kid going off to see the mole, but she was trying, here.