fandomhigh | SCIENCE! Club, Monday After Classes

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SCIENCE! Club, Monday After Classes

Today when the Science! Club members walked into the Danger Shop, they'd see the place was set up to resemble a biology lab... in the middle of a greenhouse. Every which way they looked, there were plants of all persuasions, from a towering sycamore to the lowly potato.

... Sorry, GLaDOS.

"Hey, guys," Evan greeted, looking about as chipper as always. "Today we're going to do things with plants. Um... pretty much anything you can think to do with them, actually. Since they're, you know, plants and all."

That was helpful, Evan, thank you.

"I am not an expert on biology," Liara supplied needlessly. "But I believe there are several experiments we could focus on. For example, we could use the microscopes to examine the structure of Earth plants." She glanced towards... Evan, yes. Not GLaDOS. Evan. "I also have reason to believe we could turn certain vegetables into batteries..."

"Which we can, um... you know, do." Evan? Was looking at Liara. And also not at GLaDOS. "Because we brought the stuff." A beat. "Or you could poke toothpicks into an avocado pit to try to grow a tree? You know. If you don't want to make a... vegetable battery."

Nondescript vegetable, right there. Yessir.

"Yes," Liara said, looking terribly earnest. "Also, I believe that if you put certain types of Earth flowers in liquid infused with color, the blossom assumes that color. Sometimes even several, if you slice the..." She glanced down at the sheet of paper in her hand. "Stem?"

Seriously! Not a biology expert!

"Stem," Evan agreed, smiling an earnest smile to match. "Or, if you don't want to do any of that, you can just feed bugs to the carnivorous plants for the rest of the meeting. And take one home with you if you want. No, you can't make a potato battery out of those, though."

... Wait! No! He hadn't meant to actually say that!

"Vegetable battery," Liara said ~~very quickly~~ sagely.

Battery of nondescript vegetable.

[Open!]

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"Yeah, it can be hard to tell when we aren't downloading our personalities into potatoes," Victor told Liara. He wasn't exactly enjoying her obvious discomfort, but neither was he going out of his way to comfort her. "Look, I know there are some whacked-out AIs out there, but there are some real jerk aliens too, and I don't go around telling everybody aliens can't behave themselves."

"I'm sorry," Liara repeated. She had had her reasons to believe as she had - but ignorance and cultural influence were not sensible arguments to put forward to someone you had just offended, and anyway, she mostly just wanted to soothe any hurt she might have caused.

In shorter terms, she was flailing.

"I should not have said that."

It wasn't Evan's place to accept that apology. He'd been carrying half of the conversation until Victor had spoken up, and was relieved as anything that the more hurtful parts were over, now. But the apology was Victor's to accept, not his, even if the conversation had brushed against a few personal issues that he was probably going to have to cuddle a puppy over, later.

"None of us are home right now," he said, instead. "A lot of things here are different from anything any of us are used to, right? But maybe that just means that we have to... be willing to look at things a little differently than we're used to, too. Something isn't always true just because you've never found an example to the contrary. It's a really big multiverse out there."

"You shouldn't have," Victor said to Liara, which was as close as he was going to get to apology accepted just then. (He maybe had a couple personal issues about this stuff too.)

He took a few steadying breaths as he loosened his grip on the workbench, reminding himself to calm down. "But -- Evan's right. It's a big multiverse out there. We're all going to get in trouble if we believe everything from home is going to be true here."

Liara's head lifted up a little after that.

"I was wrong about this-- and I am truly sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Victor. I am so, so sorry." It was possible she might not be able to say much else to Victor for a while.

She fixed her eyes on Evan. "But I am the only one of my species here, surrounded by a culture I have only known about for four months, and which certainly doesn't know a thing about me or my people," she said. "So don't lecture me on having to look at things differently when I spend so much time doing so out of pure necessity that I am starting to feel as if I might go cross-eyed!"

She slammed her mouth shut the moment those last few words came out.

Well, there was certainly that. Evan blinked, chewing the inside of his cheek while he groped about for words, but very little seemed quite right. What could be said about that?

"I know it's not even at all the same thing," he offered, softly, "but nothing at all has been much like home since I left, either. People are..."

They were cruel. He'd never known cruelty first-hand until he left home. Not once.

"... I just mean..." He frowned a little. "I'd like to learn about your people. And... maybe we can figure out ways to meet in the middle on... certain things."

Victor's mouth twitched, though it wasn't quite a smile. "I don't see a lot of middle ground with somebody who's still trying to convince herself I'm not just waiting for a chance to kill everybody," he pointed out. "But that's me. I do get that Liara has more to adjust to than maybe I do, so ..."

He sucked in a breath. "I'll keep that in mind, I guess? And if there's stuff to her culture that isn't about robots being evil, I'd love to hear it."

"I'm sorry," Liara muttered again, rubbing at her forehead. By now she wasn't entirely clear on whether she was apologizing to Evan for the outburst, to Victor again for the... everything, or just apologizing to whatever spirit of twined embarrassment and frustration had settled down on her today.

It was probably somewhere in the middle.

"And I do not think you are waiting for a chance to kill us all," she added. "You let me prattle on insulting your people like a fool for several minutes without once giving in to the urge to shoot me."

Humor worked on humans, right? That was the lesson she had been learning recently. Perhaps it worked on their AIs, too.

Edited 2012-11-12 20:41 (UTC)

... "I can't picture Victor shooting anybody," Evan offered, after a moment taken to actually try.

It probably had something to do with Victor being one of those people who seemed to know who he looked like, but didn't seem to care.

"Not unless the other person shoots me first," Victor said, more easily. Humor worked on him just fine. "Anyhow, I spent a couple months living with somebody who pretty much thought I was a pretentious blender. Next to that you were fine, Liara."

Though he was glad Xavin and Liara were not at all likely to ever meet. They'd come up with Ideas. Non-android-friendly Ideas.

Well, Liara wasn't terribly likely to suggest shoving Victor out an airlock, at least, which put her above some parties in her universe?

She rubbed the back of her neck. "Well, I should probably get back to my books before I stick my foot in my mouth again," she said. "Perhaps we can talk again soon."

But hopefully a far away enough soon that she could find the time to freak out about how exactly that kind of social interaction worked anyway.

"Soon," Evan agreed, scuffing his toe and poking at his flytrap just one more time. And then he looked toward Victor, and gave him a little, apologetic smile. "I'm... sorry that came up. I don't like putting anyone into a position like that."

He scuffed his toe against the floor again.

"It's not really something people like to listen to."

"See you later," Victor told Liara a bit dismissively, before turning his attention to Evan. (He wasn't angry at Liara, exactly, but he was going to need more time to cool down.)

"You don't have anything to apologize for," he said more softly. "I wasn't listening to every single word, but I could tell you were doing your best to talk to her. It's not your fault her world is nuts. Just makes me glad I don't have to live there, you know?"

"I think there are some things that are kind of universal," Evan noted, looking up at Victor and setting his poor little poked-at flytrap down. "The victims of it change, maybe, but hate and fear... We've got plenty of that back in our world, too."

Which is why Evan had been so adamant that people were people.

"I mean, they're afraid of the geth. People like me have to worry about sentinels."

"Those things are creepy," Victor observed. Just in case Evan wasn't aware of that.

And then it was his turn to pick up a potted plant for something to do with his hands.

"I hate what our world does to mutants," he said, turning the pot in his hands. "You're right, there's plenty of hate and fear to go around everywhere. Just always feels a little different when it's aimed at you."

"It's harder to ignore," Evan sighed. "People really like ignoring things that don't have anything to do with them. And... that's how things get so bad. You get so used to turning a blind eye that when you turn back again, you're not quite sure how so many people got so badly hurt while you were busy blinking."

If he had any say in the matter, the world wouldn't be like that. But ... he kind of didn't have any say in the matter, so he'd just do whatever he could, when he could do it.

"Okay, that's deep," Victor muttered. "So what do we do to make sure we don't take a nap and wake up to find everybody in a concentration camp?"

He helped as much as he could. But Evan was making him feel like maybe it wasn't enough.

And that was about the point where Evan's face fell and he made a reach for his flytrap again.

"I wish I knew," he admitted. "You can't just change everybody. It takes big, sweeping change, and a lot of open minds and... People. People willing to accept that people are people."

"Yeah," Victor said, his face falling too. "Uh, I don't suppose you really, really want to talk about plants instead right about now--?"

"Plants are pretty awesome," Evan decided, holding up his venus flytrap for Victor to see. Because... that was exciting, right? "And this kind is actually sort of cute, if you can get past the fact that they're carnivores. Aren't they?"

Yes, Evan was just as willing to embrace a good distraction as the next guy, after a long, tiring conversation.

"I've always liked the pink part at the center of the leaves," Victor ventured, sounding relieved by the distraction. "Like hi, bug, welcome home -- and now I'm going to eat you."

"I kind of... when I give this one a bug, I keep thinking these 'omnomnom' noises when it claps down," Evan offered. And then blushed, because wow, that was kind of ridiculous, wasn't it? "I got a few, so if you want to keep one, that would be fine. You can get bugs for them at the pet store, and you just feed them once a week."

Way less demanding than his puppy was!

"So it's like the easiest pet ever," Victor said. "Sure, I can keep one. I think that's about my speed in terms of commitment right now."

He smiled as he reached for another Venus Fly Trap, setting down the plant he was holding. "Do I need to give it a name?"

"You can," Evan replied, laughing a little. "I mean, it has chompy leaves and everything, so why not give it a name? He's too cute to not name."

Yep. Evan had decided that Victor's plant was a boy plant.

Victor was welcome to change its gender designation as he saw fit, of course.

"Sure," Victor said, a bit dubious, and held up his plant to get a good look. "I dub thee ... Gomez."

Raul was a good name for a plant that ate bugs, right?

"What's yours called?"

SCIENCE! Club, Monday After Classes

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