fandomhigh | Library [2.19]

"Then it's a good thing I dragged you away from your reading for help rather than just brave the adventure myself, right?"

"Yes. If the books ate you, I'd cry," she said sadly.

"SO!" Clapping loudly, Anemone grinned at him. "In the interests of you not being eaten by the meanies, how can I be of assistance? Still working with Andrew on the inventing class?"

A.J. met her sad commiseration about his potential fate with a matching expression that was trying hard to not be a grin. It was nice to know that at least someone would be sad. Then the grin broke through and he explained, "A little bit, but not as directly. It's....kind of a cop-out and not at all along the lines of the brilliant invention I wanted to cook up, but I finally did settle on something and so now I want to pick up a book or two on some mechanics to make sure I'm headed in the right direction."

"Andrew built an awesome bomb in ethics last week, he's really good at big boom. You should have seen the way we smashed up the droids." Tossing her book to the side, Anemone turned her attention to the computer. "Okies, what kind of mechanics does the brilliant inventor A.J. need today? Steam-powered robots? Clockwork dancing bears? Car stereo systems? You name it, I find it."

A.J. gave a wry, slightly uncomfortable grin at Anemone's exuberant explanation of Andrew's genius. Yeah. He never exactly had this sort of problem with almost anything, did he?

"Um, well," he said, trying to shake it off, "not exactly dancing bears specifically, but I do think I want to make it with gears and such, so something about clockwork would be good...."

"Tick-tocks!" she giggled. "Are you sure you don't want ~~whatever the meta is with Liir and Glick here~~ Wizard of Oz books instead?"

"Depends," A.J. grinned. "Do they have helpful diagrams and instructions for idiots?"

"Um, maybe as what not to do? The tick-tock people aren't always very well put together." Anemone chewed on her lip. "I don't even know how to search something like that. Let's try clockwork."

Five zillion hits later, her eyes uncrossed. "Um, something like this (http://www.amazon.com/507-Mechanical-Movements-Mechanisms-Devices/dp/0486443604/ref=pd_sim_b_title_3)?" she asked, turning the screen so he could see. "I'm not really a science-y build-y person."

Leaning over to take a look at the screen and careful not to smirk too much at the uncrossing eyes, A.J. checked it out. "Ooooooh. That sounds nearly perfect."

Anemone let out a small whoop of joy. "Yay, victory!" Grabbing a pencil, she jotted down the location for A.J., along with two (http://www.amazon.com/Gear-Design-Simplified-Franklin-Jones/dp/0831111593/ref=pd_sim_b_title_1) other (http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Applied-Theory-Faydor-Litvin/dp/0521815177/ref=pd_sim_b_title_4) books. "Those should all be in the same area. Do you know what you're making yet? What's it going to do?"

"Thanks, Anemone," A.J. gave a light grin as he took a look at the paper. "And, uh, yeah, I...I know what it is, but...it's..." He shook his head, fidgeting, "it's nothing big. Silly, even. It wasn't even my idea; Beauty's the one who thought of it."

"I like silly!" she declared, poking at his arm. "Tell! Unless it's supposed to be a surprise, then I'll just need to verify that you aren't going to hide away in a lab somewhere and become an evil scientist. I've filled my quota of evil scientists, okay?"

"It's really stupid," A.J. submitted again, building up the defense against Anemone's surely inevitable thought of why he was even bothering with something like that. "And definitely not evil scientist-y in the slightest." Well, maybe it could be used by evil scientists; he didn't know, not being one himself. "It's, uh...well, uh, hopefully, it'll be, uh..." He ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck, "um, a little automatic book page turner holder...thing. Like, so that you can do other things, like hold onto a coffee mug, or eat a sandwich, or dry your nails," or cuddle your boyfriend... "while you read and not have to worry about not having the hands to turn the page, because it does it for you..."

He told her it was stupid....

"Can it hold my homework instead?" she asked. "I know where I need to flip to when I'm looking for something, but I keep loosing my notes in the shuffle. Oooo...unless it can take voice commands? Then I could tell it what chapter I wanted! That would be spiffy."

A.J.'s eyes got a little wide. "It could do homework, too, yeah," he said, "but I think voice commands might be a little beyond my ability....."

His head tilted. Maybe not. Maybe if they were simple enough...

"I know that face, that's a pondering face!" Anemone accused gleefully. "You're trying to be all sneaky! 'Oh, it's no good, Anemone'...whatever. Fibber." She poked at him and laughed. "I know I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box, but you don't have to try and spare my feelings. If you think I'm not going to understand how it works, just say so."

A.J.'s jaw dropped. "That's not it at all, Anemone!" he argued defensively. "Really! I don't think I'm going to understand it, here, not you. You'd have a better chance of making it work than I would, I'd bet."

She blinked, confusion written across her face at the outburst. "Huh? A.J., it took me almost two weeks to figure out how to use a telephone. I still don't get how a computer works. Why would I know anything about something like that? You're way smarter than me with making-things."

"Some things," A.J. amended, and then blinked. "It really took you almost two weeks to figure out a phone?"

Although A.J. had to admit that he still didn't know all the functions on his own brand new, modern shiny twenty-first century cell...but he did know how to use it.

"How was I supposed to know that there's such a thing as voicemail?" she complained. "I grew up with radio. You click the button and you talk. No dialing a number, no voicemail. Texting? I still don't get texting. There's supposedly games on my phone somewhere, John said so when he bought it for me, but I don't understand where they are. How can you fit a board game in a phone? It's too tiny!"

A.J. looked at Anemone for a moment, and then grinned. "I gotta show you my GameBoy one of these days," he decided.

"Is that like Bart's game-box thing? The one that hooks up to the television and we play the games on? I liked playing those games." Anemone reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone (http://www.dreamkitty.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000002/K-EM571701_l.jpg). "How would I hook this up to the television? There's no plug small enough."

"You don't hook it up to anything," A.J. explained, "but, yeah, it's kind of like the game-box things. Are you honestly telling me that you don't have video games in the fu-- Whoathat'sapinkphone."

"It was a present," she said, grinning. "John likes to think he's funny. He's not as clever as he thinks he is, but my revenge will be swift and brutal, oh yes."

"I'm pretty sure there's video games, I know I did some training in a flight simulator, but they're more for civilians." Anemone shrugged and poked suspiciously at the buttons on her phone. "The military frowned on 'frivolous' things like that. If you had time to be playing games, you had time to be training."

A.J. frowned at that, wrinkling his nose a little. "That's lame," he muttered. "Don't know if I can help you get to the games on your phone. If they're anything like it looks, I don't know if I want to." He smirked a little. "I haven't figured out mine yet, either. GameBoy's easier. It's just for games, just pop in a cartage, turn it on, and you're good to go."

He wondered if he should introduce Anemone to Tetris, or if that would just be too evil.

"Yeah, but while civilian kids were playing games about fighting aliens, I got to drive a real, live, giant robot, blow up rebels, and destroy an alien race." Anemone's smirk got a bit wider. "I think my version was cooler."

"Soooo...this Gameboy-thing has lots of games? You can pick one?" Evil glint? Anemone? Pffft. Not plotting to raid A.J.'s room. Nope. Not her. "What kind of games?"

"...Okay, fine, you win. Maybe I shouldn't bother, though, telling you anything more. Clearly, you'll just be bored by it, you with all your giant robots and rebels and alien races..."

"But I'm not allowed to beat-up anyone here!" she whined, reaching over to tug on his sleeve. "A.J.! No faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiir!"

A.J. winced, failing to perfectly hide a chuckle. "What's not faaaaaaaaiiir is you whining like that. You girls know my weaknesses all too well."

"Wait, whining is a weakness of yours?" Her entire face lit up with this revelation. "See, you shouldn't tell me these things. I generally just sulk at people until they give in. If it's a special weakness...now I'll have to be more careful in my use of it."

"I wouldn't say it's a special weakness," A.J., laughing, shook his head. "Don't get too excited. I think it's just an overall weakness that all guys have when dealing with cute girls."

He just had a particular lack of defense against it, while other guys seem to have a whole armory.

Library [2.19]

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