Plastic Tubes and Pots and Pans

[earlofpudding]

Characters: Lloyd and all these meddling kids.
Format: Starting action, but pick your poison.
This log is: OPEN
Location: THE LAB actually it's just a workroom he's taken over but shut up
Summary: Lloyd's been scarce around the campus since the round change! Because he's been working in his new lab or whatever.
Warnings: lloydness.

[One of the once-empty school workrooms -- one with an outside facing door rather than it being connected inwardly to a hall -- has had it's windows taped over entirely. One of the double doors has a doorstop (that is, a rock) wedged between them to let some air in and from that crack in the door, light is visible.

Past the doors? The room looks like it got hit by a whirlwind of junk. The worktables are covered with all sorts of scrap parts and wires pilfered and dismantled from whatever device could go missing without too much notice. The entire lighting setup has been changed and that's terribly obvious, because the person who changed it hasn't put the ceiling tiles back in place yet. A computer has found it's way from the computer lab to what should have been the teacher's desk. A second one is partially pulled apart nearby.

And so on and so on. What a mess.

Lloyd is at the desk as well, crouched over whatever it is he's working on, a lamp that's been attached to the desktop pulled down close to keep it well lit.]

Comments

[summerstars]

We don't use that word anymore. We'd have to use it for everybody then, and that'd just be silly... [Grenn quietens and stares. How much should she say? She supposed she can say what she's said before, to Gino and Yuki...]

Permanent expedition to Mars... livable space stations. [She's not gonna say anything about terraforming, or how far beyond the solar-system they had got.]

[earlofpudding]

Oh? [Those revelations don't even get him to look up from his work. As thrilling as those things are, they were in some distant alternate dimension. But Grenn was here, so...] How did they figure out the distance problem? Did they finally build a ship fast enough to get to Mars in a shorter span of time?

[summerstars]

... Distance isn't a problem any longer. [She pauses to give him a look, even if he's not looking at her, but concentrated on his lock.]

The right sort of fuel and a few discoveries... But do you actually think I'm going to tell you anything even remotely precise, considering what you're doing with this? [Gesture around the room to all the pilfered technology.]

If you actually remember what I'd tell you when you go back to your home, you'd be able to change things... Maybe those things would have come up anyway, but I'm not taking the risk.

[She may be bad at thinking on her feet, and lying isn't her strong suit, but anyone can keep their mouth shut.]

[earlofpudding]

[Lloyd stops tinkering and gives Grenn an injured look. Really now.]

How unneighborly! [He looks around at the room of stolen bits and pieces. What was that supposed to mean?] Inventing? Building? I don't see how that should paint me as untrustworthy.

[What do you mean stealing things paints people as untrustworthy, that is crazy talk.]

Bah. [Back to work.] The 'altering realities' argument.

[summerstars]

Yeah, the 'altering reality', argument. [Grenn's voice was faintly mocking as she repeats those words.] I think it's pretty pertinent. Especially considering you'd maybe be able to extrapolate from any general info I give you about our technical advances and then back-engineer it or something.

[And no matter what very possibly amoral scientists thinks, she's not gonna help in altering someone else's reality.]

[earlofpudding]

It isn't as if it would ever effect you. You'd be in a different reality.

[summerstars]

Yeah, but it would affect your reality, and even if I'd never know what happened, I'd still be responsible!

[... Why was she arguing this? he was obviously the sort of scientist who saw no problem in 'bettering' technology at the potential pain and exploitation of others, just like--- Something. At home. Grenn refexively, unconciously grabbed the back of her neck, but there was nothing there.

Why had she done that?]

[earlofpudding]

Fine, fine. [SUCH A DRAMATIC SIGH.] Have it your way.

[He falls to humming idly while he works instead]