Let’s get some coffee Who: Parker, Wrex What: Wrex has Parker teach him how to use his phone. When: Sometime last week. Where: Urdnot Ranch Ratings/Warnings: PG? Some language, maybe. These guys are pretty mild. Status: Complete!
In an attempt to try and get more up to date with the latest technology, Wrex had been talked into buying one of those ‘smart’ phones. His old phone, like his old computer, was such a Dinosaur that one of his kids had even been surprised it accepted text messages.
This new one was slick, and slippery, and obviously had a glass face. There were all these colorful buttons on it, and he was easily confused by the whole thing, though at least the green one looked - helpfully - like a phone. He was pretty sure that one was the ‘make a phone call’ button.
The salesperson at the store had tried to walk him through the basic features, but it was like he was speaking some foreign language. Listening had only made Wrex feel older and more confused. And a bit like he wanted to throw his brand new phone through a window. Which would suck, because it hadn’t been cheap.
He remembered, then that the girl he’d been mysteriously stuck with was on the internet a lot. She probably knew things about the phone, or maybe at least how to message people. He really wanted to send a message to someone.
So he got up and walked out of his office, and headed around the corner to the rec room. It was about as far away as they were able to get from eachother before one or the other had to stop.
“Hey Ki-- … Er. Parker. Let’s get some coffee, I want to ask you something.”
Parker wasn't necessarily a tech wizard, but she knew her way around a phone and a computer. They were fun little distractions, and right now, she needed all the distractions she could get. Being around this place was uncomfortable. The kids here were... well, they were like her. Or like she would've been if she hadn't been placed in awful foster home after awful foster home.
She'd never really spoken much about her childhood. Even Archie, her mentor and the closest thing she had to a father figure, didn't know the full story of what she'd been through, and Parker liked it that way. It kept them from feeling like memories, more like they were faraway nightmares that hadn't actually happened to her. It gave her control, just like stealing did. But seeing kids like this... it took away that control. This was the kind of place she'd run screaming from if she could, but right now? She was stuck.
It wasn't really surprising that she'd sort of bonded with the kids over the past couple of days. Ever since that first day, where they'd attempted to pelt her with a couch cushion and she'd dodged it with an easy back-bend (which was "some cool Matrix stuff" according to one boy, whatever that meant), she'd spent as much time with the kids as she could. They were much easier to be around than the adults.
When Wrex (she'd dubbed him 'Mr. Dinosaur' in her head, but she didn't dare say it out loud) came around the corner, she was standing on one hand more gracefully than most people stood on two feet. It was a little impromptu show of her gymnastic and contortion skills, with a small group of kids sitting on the couch in front of her, and they clapped when she went into a little tumble and landed on her feet to go talk to Wrex.
"Okay," she shrugged. Coffee sounded good right about now. "But there's really coffee involved, right? This isn't some thing to get me to talk about stuff or something." Way to be vague, Parker.
It was like Parker thought she was talking to a man who didn't deal with the whole 'I don't want to talk about anything even though I have deep-seated issues of some variety' crowd every day of his life. Wrex found it amusing. The last few days of having her around gave him the impression that this place made her uncomfortable on several levels, and he honestly felt bad that she was stuck here. It was curious, though, because she'd fit right in so easily. He figured, maybe that was the reason she didn't like the place. He'd grown to at least appreciate her sense of humour while she was here. In his book, she was alright.
She was obviously talented too, and had the ear of his kids, and had managed to impress them, too. That, in turn, impressed him. Bonding with his kids wasn't easy. They were abraisive and liked to play push-away or pretend like you'd never in your life felt the feelings they were feeling. That she'd managed it so quickly was really pretty damn good.
"It really is coffee. Fancy coffee, too." Wrex grinned at her, and motioned in the direction of the cafeteria, "There's something I'd like your help with, but I'm not gonna make you bond with me or anything. Promise."
While walking in the direction of the cafeteria he'd just pointed at, he looked over his shoulder at her and smiled a bit more warmly, "You're good at that. The acrobatics."
To be fair, Parker could be her fair share of abrasive, and her strangeness was as much a defense mechanism as anything else. People tended to keep the weird little thief at arms' length and for the most part didn't bother asking questions, and that was exactly what she was comfortable with.
She followed along behind Wrex, chewing on her lip. That was the other thing: her fingers itched. That was the best way to describe the urge she had to slip things into her pockets, to fish out wallets and trinkets, to just generally make off with stuff that wasn't hers. But she couldn't. Not here. She wasn't stupid enough to steal from a place she couldn't make a getaway from, first of all. And if she was being honest with herself, Parker wasn't quite sure she could steal from a place like this. It might not have shown on the surface, but she didn't want anyone to turn out like she did.
"I don't bond." It was stated matter-of-factly. She might have gotten along with the kids, but she wouldn't call it bonding. Bonding meant attachments, and attachments were something that caused Parker panic. So she wouldn't bond. It was that simple, really. His compliment about the acrobatics was met with a shrug. "I ran away from home to join the circus," she said, as if it explained everything in the world.
"So what do you need help with?"
"I wasn't even asking. But if you really did, that's interesting."
He headed into the staff lounge, which was really starting to become his favorite place to do business. It had all the coffee he could handle, for one thing, and the chairs were comfier than the one in his office. All it really needed was an open bar.
Which would be against the law, sadly.
He got some coffee and took a seat, then pulled his new phone out like he was holding onto something so delicate that it might actually break just by him touching it the wrong way. He gently placed it on the table, wincing while he did so, "I have this new phone. It makes phone calls, I think. It does stuff. Other stuff. I don't really know what stuff. The guy tried to explain, and it made my head hurt."
He squinted down on the delicate piece of techno-wizardry and then glanced at Parker, "You get around on that net thing. Do you know phones?"
“That’d be a stupid thing to lie about,” Parker snorted. “Of course I did. Where else do people learn acrobatics?” It seemed a fairly obvious thing, to her. But then again, who knew how Parker’s brain worked?
She grabbed a cup of coffee and loaded it up with far, far too much sugar to be healthy for a normal human being, then sat down. “Oh, phones are easy.” She’d pickpocketed so many of them, she knew her way around most pieces of phone technology. But that was probably not the best thing to mention to someone she was stuck to. “What sort of other stuff do you wanna do? I mean, I can show you how to get on the internet and stuff?”
Where else did people learn acrobatics? Wrex figured they learned them at those schools people took their kids to, like dance schools and karate dojos and things. But he didn’t reply to the comment, instead choosing to remain fixated on the phone.
“I hear phones can send messages now. I got sent one once, but I wasn’t sure how to reply. I want to send someone a message,” Because he was scared of what his voice would do if he called her and spoke to her, which was a subject for another time, “And I probably need to put my email in here. That’s what this envelope looking button does, I think.”
He squinted down at the button dubiously, “I don’t know how to set that up. And what is this ‘apps’ thing? I hear about them on tv all the time.”
"Oh, like a text message?" Parker had to assume that's what he meant, and she scooted the chair over so they could both look at the phone. "See this little speech bubble thingie? You press that." She poked the button to demonstrate. "And then you press the thing that looks like a pencil writing on something, 'cause you're gonna write a message..." She continued on with her explanation, demonstrating each step slowly.
It was easy for Parker to explain most things simply, because that's how she preferred to communicate. Unless she was picking a lock or a pocket, things like subtlety were a little lost on her. Despite being intelligent, even clever, she'd never finished her high school education, and she had absolutely no idea how the nuances of conversation worked.
"Apps are things that do stuff," she started, once they were done learning text messaging. "Like different little tools, all for different jobs. Like this one," she pointed to a particular icon. "It shows you what the weather's going to be like in your area."
For once in his life, Wrex felt like someone was explaining technology to him in a way he'd actually remember, later. He took to the text messaging lesson pretty easily, and made a mental note to try it in practice before she left. Just in case. He figured she'd probably be able to explain to him what he did wrong if he messed it up.
He'd never have been able to guess that she hadn't finished her education. He nodded his head a bit as Parker went into the explanation about Apps. He still wasn't sure why anyone would need a bunch of little tools for different jobs on their phone, but the weather one was actually pretty cool.
"That's... actually handy," He said, not bothering to hide the note of surprise in his voice, "Look at that, it's even got the the forecast for the week."
In an attempt to try and pick things up on his own, he pointed to one that looked like a tv screen,"So this one probably shows me ... tv or something?"
"There's a lot of useless crap but some of them are pretty handy," Parker agreed. There weren't a lot of apps that she actually used, but she liked some of the games that she had on her personal phone. Like Angry Birds. It was silly, but sending birds flying at pigs amused her to no end.
When he poked at the tv icon, she grinned. He seemed to be picking this up pretty quickly, which relieved her. She wasn't the most patient of people and that made relating to others even more frustrating and difficult, but it seemed like Wrex had just needed the right person to explain stuff. "That's youtube. I don't know why they call it 'you-tube', maybe because people upload their own videos? Anyway. It's a thing full of videos. You can basically search what you want right here," she demonstrated, "and it'll bring up a bunch of videos. Then you just pick the one you want to load and watch it."
"OKay, so I can watch videos on my phone." He had no idea what practical use that held, but he didn't spend a lot of time waiting on traffic, or stuck in airports, or generally stuck with time to spare like that. For people who needed entertainment, he supposed watching videos on the phone might be nice.
"You're the first person who's explained this stuff in a way I get," He admitted,while poking around on his phone some more. He was trying to figure out what an app did before it opened to show him. A few of them seemed pretty self explanatory. The little notepad one had a plus sign, which he thought might mean you push it to add a note. Much to his surprise, actually worked.
He poke-tapped around a bit, "I feel a little less like an ancient dinosaur."
"You never know when you'll need a good explosion video or something." It wasn't meant as a joke; she said it with complete sincerity. Just because she hadn't been in a situation where she needed a video of an explosion to get out of a jam didn't mean she wouldn't someday. That could happen, right? Maybe she'd be robbing somewhere and have to do some fancy hocus-pocus with the phone like that guy Hardison in her dreams.
That wasn't the point right now.
The sort-of compliment made her smile just a little. "People make things too complicated. They get all caught up in technical terms and junk that they forget to explain what stuff actually does." She shrugged. "I don't really need to know why something does something, just how to make it do whatever it is I want it to do." That was a confusing sentence grammatically.
When he said that he felt like less of a dinosaur, though, she looked at him with surprise. "Why would you want that?" Again, it wasn't meant as a joke. "Dinosaurs are AWESOME." When Parker dubbed him 'Mr. Dinosaur' in her head, she hadn't meant it in an age way. Just in relation to his name (like a tyrannosaurus rex!). Why would anyone NOT want to be a dinosaur?
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged at the suggestion that someone might someday, at sometime, need to use a big explosion video. Not because he didn't agree, but because to be honest, he'd never even thought of that. His head started to fill with the many ways in which he could startle the staff and kids by sneaking up on them with explosions on his phone and pressing play. It was immature, but hysterical.
There was actually a bit of a smirk on his face as responded, "Well the real Dinosaurs ARE awesome. But feeling like an ancient thing that went extinct long ago isn't as awesome. My old computer could probably kill you if it fell on you. My old phone could have, too. The world is moving forward way too quickly. I can't catch up as fast as I'd like."
He glanced down at his phone, "I feel like I'm going to break this thing."
Parker thought about that for a long moment. She didn't really think of him as outdated in the least, just bad with technology. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing; lots of technology was distracting and she was guilty of falling prey to that distraction from time to time. Her mind drifted back to another one of her dreams. She'd been stealing cars, teaching a young girl how to jimmy a lock. 'Tune out the distractions. Focus on the problem.'
"Dinosaurs never should have gone extinct," she stated eventually, in a matter-of-fact voice. "And I think that old things aren't always bad. If they still work, why get rid of them? I mean, they still use–" wait, maybe saying vintage safes in banks wasn't the best idea. "–wheels on cars, right? And the wheel has been around for like, a billion years or something."
When he mentioned feeling like he was going to break the phone, her face lit up. "Ooh, I know! You need a case." Reaching into her pocket she pulled out her own phone, safe and sound in a thick black case. The case itself was scuffed and worn, but the phone inside was fine. "I think this thing could survive a small nuclear war. I've dropped it from the uneven bars and the rings at the gym and it's been fine."
Wrex took a long look at the case she had on her phone. It was, indeed, scuffed and worn, and he fell in love with it instantly. He needed one of those cases on his own phone, as quickly as he could get one. Because whatever she put her phone through? Uneven bars and rings at the gym were pretty far up, and that phone was still alive? He was bound to do stuff like that to his own phone.
“Where did you get that? I definitely need to buy one of those. As quickly as humanly possible. But not on the internet. You don’t want me trying to find it on the internet.”
As for the dinosaur comment, he chuckled, and added, “If they hadn’t, we’d probably all be dead. But you’re right. Some old things are worth holding onto. I don’t think Tali would agree that my old computer was one of them, but everyone seems to think I am.”
He shrugged, like ‘what’s a guy to do? nothing, that’s what’.
"It's called an Otter-Box." Parker explained, turning the phone over to show him the brand stamped on the back. "You can get them from those little kiosks at the mall where they try to sell you a bunch of crap you don't need. That's where I found mine. I don't remember how much they cost, though." Mostly because she hadn't bought hers. Instead, she'd lifted it from one of those kiosks she'd mentioned. It was something she'd actually intended to buy, but they'd tried to push at least four different accessories on her, so she'd just slid the display model into her pocket when they weren't looking in an effort to get away from the awkward social situation that much sooner.
Maybe they all would be dead if the dinosaurs still existed, but that didn't stop her from keeping the dream alive. "Or we'd adapt and be riding velociraptors to work which would be SO awesome. Or those things with the horns! Those weird armored rhino-things. Tri-something." She gave up looking for the word in her brain after a moment, shrugging. "But maybe we'd be dead. I dunno."
His comment about him being an old outdated thing made her frown. "You should stick around." Suddenly, she felt awkward and strange, and her body posture tensed to reflect it. This was something she wasn't good at, or used to, but she felt like it was important to say. "I mean, I'm not a good judge-- but there's a lot of bad stuff out there and you help kids that'd be in the system, and the system's a bad place." Put kids like that in the system, and they were going to turn out like her. Not good people.
“Otter … Box...” Wrex mumbled the name to himself as he used his newfound phone knowledge to tap himself out a note. He added next to that, that it was a phone case, in case he forgot the reason it was that he’d bothered to type out ‘otter box’ in his note app.
The idea of riding a Dinosaur around was actually pretty awesome, and he grinned, “Triceratops? That would be fun. Heh. I never thought about that, but maybe we WOULD adapt. It beats the hell out of dying, anyway.”
He could sense the uncomfortableness, but was happy she’d opened up at all. Casually, he shrugged his shoulders, “The system produced me, too. I had ‘problems with authority’ in the military, and ended up working most of those out on arabian guys with guns. So I thought... kids need some help with this so they don’t end up shooting guys in afghanistan. Shepard asked me what the hell I was waiting for, and here I am.”
He finished his coffee and grunted, “Not that I ended up horrible. But I wasted a lot of time being misguided. I don’t want these kids to wake up at 30 and realise their life’s gone to shit with no way out.”
When Wrex told her his story, Parker just listened quietly. She marveled that he'd turned out so seemingly normal, even after all that bad stuff. It was weird for her to be even talking about this sort of thing, since she hadn't ever really told anyone about it. The fact that she'd had a troubled childhood was pretty clear to most people just from her general lack of social skills, but to actually all but admit she'd been in the system? That was a little terrifying, and she stared intently at the table.
"I ran away and joined the circus." She reiterated after a long moment of silence, not sure how to respond. Joining the circus and meeting Archie were the start of the few happy memories she had, and they certainly weren't "normal". After all, he'd trained her to be a pickpocket and that wasn't exactly most people's idea of 'quality bonding'. "Maybe if there had been a place like this I would've been..." Parker wasn't quite sure how to finish that sentence. 'Normal'? 'Not a criminal'?
"Maybe I could've been okay."
This was one of those conversations that Wrex felt needed to be handled delicately. Parker was obviously really uncomfortable with the subject matter but also felt she needed to share. He was glad that she was sharing, but he didn't want to scare her away, either.
He looked down at his phone, still acting casual, like he had discussions like this every day with his kids. He'd just discovered the app store, and started poking around it a bit, while formulating a response.
"It takes a lot of courage to run away from the things you know and go find another life somewhere else. Circus, or whatever, you still did that. Maybe you think it wasn't a normal life," Wrex shrugged one shoulder while clicking on an icon that looked like a furious bird, and wrinkled his brow a bit, "Normal lives are for lemmings and cubicle rats. You're good at what you do, and you seem like you turned out fine to me. You've got all your limbs, you're clever and resourceful, you do that acrobatics stuff, you're great with these kids, and you know how to teach a grumpy old man to use his phone."
It was only a buck. What did he have to lose? He clicked on buy and started fiddling around with the passwords and things.
"Just saying. You've got a lot going for you. You decide what 'okay' is, I guess, but you seem more or less okay to me. Maybe with some underlying issues, but hell, Parker. The best of us do."
It was hard for her to find something to say in response. Part of her wanted to talk about it, but the bigger part, the self-preservation instinct, was screaming at her to shut up, to keep herself in her little safe box and not let anybody in. "Not everything I've done has been– you know, I've done things that aren't really good things." That was about as far as Parker could go with sharing. The whole conversation was bringing up bad memories, and she couldn't exactly tell Wrex what she'd been doing for years now. Things were awkward enough and it wasn't like she could run and hide if the conversation turned sour. Hell, she wanted to run NOW, but she knew she'd just wind up coming back without meaning to, just like the last hundred times she'd tried it.
Instead, she pushed her fingers through her hair and leaned over to see what Wrex was poking at on his phone. Not that she was particularly concerned, as he seemed to be picking things up just fine, but it gave her something to focus on that wasn't her own feelings. "Oh, Angry Birds!" She exclaimed with a grin, changing the topic entirely. "I love that game. You fling these birds at pigs in crappily constructed forts." Really, the pigs ought to fortify themselves more. Clearly the whole 'wood and glass and stone' thing wasn't working out for them.
Noting the subject change and deciding to leave it the way it was for now, Wrex looked the current level over and nodded his head in agreement.
“These are piss poor defenses. It’s like they don’t really care at all about the defense of their eggs or the fact that birds are coming to kill them. You’d think the pigs would be angrier.”
He sent a big red bird flying, and tried not to look so amused as it went ‘WEEEEEEEEEEEE!’ through the air and took down some wood. OKay, this game. This game was awesome.
Focusing on something silly like Angry Birds seemed to put Parker back into her relaxed state. "Right? You'd think they'd at least install an alarm system. Or turrets. Maybe a cannon or two. No, they just let the birds bombard the crap out of them and don't even fight back. They're not very smart pigs."
This place wasn't so bad, she decided. Maybe being stuck wouldn't be a terrible experience after all.