fandomtownies | The Perk, Sat morning 5/10

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The Perk, Sat morning 5/10

First full day at Fandom. And already Murdock had found a spot of weirdness. Tiny, gold tortoises. Hundreds of them everywhere. Of course he'd picked one up. He just happened to have half of an animal cracker in his pocket and fed it to his new wee little friend.

And then it talked.

Murdock was ecstatic. Finally, an animal that actually talked back! This was truly a momentous occasion. He found The Perk and had settled himself into a booth with a large cup of coffee and a whole lot of sugar. The tortoise was sitting in the middle of the table, happily munching away at the bits of sugar Murdock fed it.

After each bite, it would speak.

Murdock was in heaven.

(ooc: open! come have coffee! bring your pet tortoise!)

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By now, Charlotte had known to not leave her apartment without at least a little bit of consideration for something strange or odd happening, but that still didn't prepare her for the swarm of tiny little tortoises that accosted her. At first, they were cute. At first, there were only a few of them, as she started on her way to the Perk to grab a latte and work on some things for the gallery. And then their numbers had increased and the next thing she knew, she was rushing as fast as one could in a pair of pumps down the sidewalk.

Finally, she managed to get through the door to the Perk, quickly closing it behind her to block the process of the swarming tortoises. Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk: the sound of a bunch of them ceasing movement as they ran straight into the door and Charlotte, laptop clutched to her chest as her back pressed against the door, let out a sigh of relief.

And then realized that there were tortoises in here, too.

Yeah. She told the barista that she'd better make it an extra shot today.

Murdock looked up from his wee buddy at the sound of thunking against the door. "Awww, looks like your little friends might be missin' you," he told his tortoise. He fed it another shot of sugar.

"And when in Rome, never forget your socks," it wisely replied.

"Good advice! Thanks dude!"

It was then he finally noticed the other customer. "Hey there! How's it hangin' for ya?"

"I'm being assaulted by little tiny turtles!"

For Charlotte, that...really covered it quite nicely.

"Ain't it cool! They're just so darn cute!"

And that pretty much covered it for him.

"I think he needs a name." He stared at *his* tortoise. "What's a good name for a philosophical turtle?"

"But there's so many of them!" Charlotte said, still worried about how the heck she was going to get back to her apartment without them swarming again.

But...removed from the horde outside, she supposed they were kind of cute.

"Maybe you should call him Nietzsche," she offered with a small smile.

"The more the merrier," he absently quoted. "Birds of feather flock together and all that jazz."

"Hmm." Murdock considered her suggestion. "You know, he does kinda look like a Nietzsche. He certainly sounds like one." He fed it another dose of sugar.

"The universe is finite, only those who swim will find the deep gray."

"Wow." He grinned up at her. "He's smart!"

"The deep gray what?" Charlotte wondered out loud, tilting her head with a small frown.

"I dunno," he shrugged. "You'd have to ask him what it means." He pointed to the tortoise.

Charlotte eyed the tortoise a little bit, as she sipped her latte. She didn't quite know how she felt, at first, about talking to a tortoise, but, as soon as she looked at it and was reminded how adorable it was, she changed her mind, bending down so she could talk to the little guy.

"Hey, there, little Nietzsche. What did you mean, the deep gray what?"

Of course, having received no treats in the matter, the tortoise didn't exactly respond, and Charlotte frowned, straightening up slightly.

"Maybe he doesn't like me..."

"Aww, don't be like that, Nietzsche. She seems like a real nice lady and..." Murdock paused and looked up at her. "Oh. I should've asked what your name is. I'm Murdock. You already know little Nietzsche."

Nietzsche took advantage of Murdock's distraction to swipe some sugar off his fingers.

"The sky spins and ice cream is best soaring through dirt."

And the tortoise? Was starting to look a mite bit wired. Probably all that sugar he'd been chomping down.

"Oh, I'm Charlotte, hi," she gave Murdock a nod. "And, I have to admit, I think I'm going to have to disagree with Nietzsche a bit on that one. He is very cute, though."

"Hey Charlotte," he smiled, "That's a beautiful name."

He glanced back at Nietzsche. "Well, I can understand the bit about the ice cream. Who wants to eat it covered in dirt? But he does have a point about the sky. It does spin. Or rather, the Earth spins, therefore the sky spins by default."

"He is a cute little guy, ain't he? I think I should keep him."

Charlotte had to smile a little bit at the compliment to her name. It wasn't as if she chose it or anything, really, but it was always nice to be associated with something beautiful. But her head tilted with a frowning forehead as he continued to deconstruct Nietzsche's philosophy.

"I don't think it works that way," she said slowly. "I mean, science was never my subject, but they can't both spin. The sky only would seem to because it's stationary."

Or something.

Great. Now she was confused.

"It depends upon how you look at it," he reasoned. "The atmosphere is made up of gases that are constantly in motion due to the wind currents. It's only blue in color because of those same gases. Since the gases and other particles are always in constant motion, one could say that technically, the sky does spin."

Charlotte was quite impressed.

"Touché," she remarked, and then nodded toward the tortoise. "No wonder you two get along so well."

"'Tis nothin'," he shrugged. "I think Nietzsche's a pretty cool dude. I'm thinkin' about keeping him. Be nice to have a pet. Been a long time since I had one." Especially since the VA frowned on animals in the hospital. Unless it was part of therapy, of course.

"So what do you do, Charlotte? Are you a teacher at the school too?"

"Oh, no," Charlotte shook her head and chuckled a little like the idea of her teaching anything was absolutely ludicrous. "Nothing like that. I just own the little gallery over by the docks, that's all." She tapped her laptop a little to indicate that she'd come here with work on the brain, not that she minded the interruption. "You said 'too,' though. I take you are teaching?"

"A gallery? I worked for one once." Sorta. "I'll have to make sure to check yours out." He nodded at her question. "Yep, I'm teaching alright. Funny in a way, though. Most people probably wouldn't let me teach anything. Figure I wouldn't know what I was talkin' about or something."

He eyed the strange box she tapped. "What's that? Some kind of portable art setup?"

"This coming Wednesday's a new exhibit opening!" Charlotte informed him with a cheerful chirp, and then she followed his eyes. "Oh, this? It's just my laptop. I was going to do a bit of correspondence, make sure that the pieces of the last exhibit got to where they needed to and that the ones for this next one are on their way."

"I'll definitly be there!" he grinned.

After the mention of the new exhibit, he was lost. That confusion Charlotte had moments before? Now it was all over Murdock.

Something about moving pieces, okaaay. He followed that a little, but then frowned. "What's a laptop?"

"Um, this is," Charlotte said, very helpfully holding out the machine. "It's a portable computer..." she tried, seeing if that rang any bells.

It rang some bells. And it also raised Murdock's eyebrows. "That's a computer?! How the heck did it get so durned small? Ain't those things usually bigger?"

Charlotte chuckled. "Technological advances are a wonderful thing," she explained brightly.

"Well, I suppose." Murdock still seemed a bit confused by the whole thing. "But..." he studied it for a moment. "How does it work? I don't know much about computers, myself. I play some video games here and there, that's about all I know about that kind of stuff."

"Mind if I sit down?" Charlotte asked. "I can show you."

"Please do!" he grinned. "I'd love it if you could join me! And I'm really curious about that thing. So I'll take that offer."

He thought for a moment. "That is if you have the time. You seem busy and all..."

Meanwhile, Nietzsche started creeping slowly across the table. The big noisy creatures were ignoring him. And he wanted more sugar, dangit!

"Oh," Charlotte waved a dismissive hand, setting down her drink so that she could pull out a chair and have a seat. "Plenty of time in the day." She set the laptop in front of her and opened it up. "It's really simple, anyway. I mean, I'm not exactly all that technologically inclined, and I can still use it well enough. It's battery run, see? And then you just turn it on..."

She smoothly pushed the switch so that her laptop could start booting up.

He grinned back. "Thanks, Charlotte. I really appreciate this."

Watching with interest as she opened it up and nodding. Then his eyes went wide as the screen exploded in colors. "Whoa."

Charlotte chuckled a little bit at the response. "And this is just the load-up screen!" she commented with amusement.

"What's a load-up screen?" He watched it some more as it did other...flashy bits. "That. Is. Way. Cool!"

Yes, first time he's ever seen a laptop. Probably pretty obvious by now.

Charlotte didn't seem to mind. In fact, she was finding it all rather amusing.

"It's the screen that...shows when it loads up," she explained helpfully. "It's, you know, taking all the files inside and bring them up so we can use them!"

Or something. Charlotte wasn't exactly the best to be teaching anyone about computers.

"Oh. That makes more sense." Or perhaps not, but Murdock was willing to go with it.

He continued to watch in fascination as the laptop did more...things. If he stared any harder, his eyes would probably pop out of his head.

"Okay, so, this is the desktop," Charlotte continued. Her desktop background, it might be noted, was of cute fluffy kittens. With bows. "You get to everything from here..."

She glided her cursor up to a folder and clicked it open. "See? This one has my address book. If I need a phone number or an address, I can just pull it up right here."

"That's really cute," he remarked, pointing at the kittens.

He nodded as she explained all the...stuff. "So you don't have to worry about losing a book of names? That's a nice idea."

Nietzsche had finally reached the sugar and gladly helped himself.

"Off is never and some equals two."

"I'll bet," he absently told the tortoise.

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The Perk, Sat morning 5/10

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