Creative Problem Solving, Tuesday, period 3

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

[Class #8: The Prairie Dog Maze Job!]

“Welcome back! I hope you guys had as much fun as we did on break.” Parker was looking manically pleased with herself about that job. “And I hope you didn't get arrested in Mexico.”

"Though if you did, you clearly got back out," Eliot said with a shrug. "So see it as a learnin' experience."

Parker had to nod in agreement on that point, then went on, gesturing to this week’s Danger Shop set-up: what looked like a high-tech cubicle farm, with people working on computers and phones, ignoring the newcomers, except to pop a head over a divider every once in a while. Floor-to-ceiling windows comprised two walls, and there were clearly marked exits.

“Your job is to get out of this building. It’s 55 stories, and the elevators may not work for you. You aren't suppose to be here. Also, there are security guys roaming around, and they've been told to hang onto anyone who isn't cleared. Those exits? Go to other rooms like this one. So you better be able to remember where you've been before.”

"Basically," Eliot said, looking juuuuust a little too pleased with himself. "It's a giant maze. That really wants to put you in jail."

“So! Pair up, or triple up, or go it on your own, and try to get out.” Parker beamed at them all. “Do it with computers, do it with smarts, do it with punching people. There’s popcorn of all kinds once you get out, so you can watch other people try.”

Comments

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

Eliot smirked a little. "Ask Parker to show you lock pickin' tricks sometime. She does it like other people knit."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"I should," Kathy mused. "I mean, I'm getting better, but it still takes me a long time to get even easy padlocks open."

Conversations with an authority figure she never thought she'd have for $1000 please, Alex?

"Umm, can I tell you how I got all the supplies?" she asked, tentative.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

Eliot shrugged. "If you want to. I ain't here to judge."

Well, he was a teacher, so he was actually here to judge things like her performance in class. But that wasn't the point.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

And he'd already told her how much stock he put in grades!

"Oh, sorry, I meant if you were interested," she explained, since it had been whole minutes since she'd apologized for something. "I don't mean to keep you or anything."

Or bore him.

Oh, Kathy.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"Pretty sure listenin' to the students is part of the point of me bein' here," Eliot said. That part of being a teacher, he could do. "Go on, now I'm all curious."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"There was no way I could afford all those supplies with what I had on me," she explained, unconsciously wringing her hands a bit. "And there's no way they would have let me get the painkillers and penicillin without a prescription. So, I...I kinda robbed a store. I mean, I left as much money behind as I had, but that doesn't change facts."

She described to him the events of the robbery, from the realization she could use her bloodsoaked uniform to good advantage all the way to kicking the chair out of the way of the door and fleeing into the night.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

Eliot nodded along, impressed. "You came up with that on the fly, huh? Nice. I probably woulda let him stew in the store room longer, though. Never know when a guy's gonna think he's Ratman and go after ya."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"I figured I'm faster than he is," Kathy said, perking up like a flower after rain with his approval. "Though, I guess that wouldn't have mattered if he'd had, like, a weapon..."

That hadn't occurred to her at the time.

"But I wasn't sure when I'd be able to go back and get him and it seemed cruel to leave him in there overnight."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"Most times that won't be a problem. Employees are told not to chase shoplifters anymore -- it's a whole insurance thing." The insurance industry was actually quite a boon to thieves, so long as they didn't employ crazed geniuses to chase them down. "But yeah, you never know when you're gonna find an outlier. 'Course, best way to deal with that is to make sure the employees never know what's happening at all."

You were hoping for a lesson in being a better con artist/thief, right, Kathy?

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

...Yeah, kinda actually.

"I don't think I could take hidden everything I needed without some kind of bag of holding," Kathy said, dubious.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"You'd be surprised by what people don't notice. You distract someone properly, and you could literally turn into a different person without them noticing."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"How would you have done it?" Kathy asked.

It was all she could do not to pull out a notebook and start taking notes.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"Well, I got a team," Eliot said. "So probably I woulda roped the guy into conversation while Parker came in and cleaned 'em out. If I was on my own though?" He probably shouldn't tell her he'd've just knocked the guy out and cleaned out the place, huh. "Maybe get him fetching things for me while I grabbed things. Tuck some of it away, stick some in a bag, let him gather up just enough that I'm payin' for to throw him off the scent. Odds are they don't even pick up on the fact they've been robbed until they're doing inventory, by which point you're long gone."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Which is probably better than what I did, which was leave a stack of cash on the counter and hope for the best," Kathy admitted, laughing. "Though I'm still not sure that it would have worked for the prescription drugs. I had to hop over the counter and try to find the stuff I needed amongst a bunch of shelves of pills."

Pharmacies were set up very oddly. Possibly as a theft-deterrent, not that she thought of it.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"That's when it's good to have a back stock of prescription pads." Yeah, he wasn't even pretending he wasn't teaching a student how to be a criminal, now.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"I wonder if the clinic--" Kathy realized what she was saying and stopped, blushing furiously. "I...Err...I just meant in case something like this ever happened again."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"Right," Eliot said, nodding slowly. "This entire conversation has of course been totally hypothetical."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Except for maybe that offer of coaching?" Kathy asked. "It would be really cool if that were real."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"I think we can see our way to somethin' like that," Eliot said. "Purely in self-defense, of course."

The best defense was a good offense.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're a really great teacher, did you know that?" Kathy asked, beaming at him. "Just as a warning, I'm probably going to ask you to write me a letter of recommendation for college, too. Because I didn't owe you enough already or something."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

Eliot actually got kind of a deer-in-the-headlights look at that. The hell did he know about college?

"Uh, yeah, sure."

Maybe he could get Hardison to write it for him.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy tried not to grin at his expression. Eliot was normally so calm and on top of everything that seeing him taken aback was funnier than it ought to be.

"All you have to do is assure the board that I'm a good student and that you recommend me for their school," she said, trying to comfort him. "And if that's not something that you feel like you can do--or even just don't want to!--you can always say no."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"Nah. I could -- I could do that."

Try to sound a little more certain on that one next time, Eliot.

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[spin_kick_snap]

"You sure?" Kathy was more concerned with his obvious discomfort than the quality of her college letter right now. "It's really okay if you don't want to."

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

[vdistinctive]

"Yeah . . . I kinda skipped the whole college experience thing," Eliot explained. Being planted in a freshman year psych experiment on veterans run by the CIA aside. "But I could figure something out."