Fandom Island and Town

Sam was a pushover. She knew this and so did most everyone who knew her well. But rarely had this been made more clear through a single experience than it had as a result of the events of this morning: specifically, her spontaneous adoption of a small dog with floppy ears and huge, adorable eyes.

She would gladly blame the woman at the shelter, but the truth was that she'd barely had to say a word to persuade Sam.

She'd splurged on supplies, including a dog bed, a collar and leash, plenty of food and treats and no small helping of toys, dropped most of those things off at her house, and now she was taking the excitable little pup on a walk through town. The shame of having been so easily persuaded to adopt the dog hadn't quite set in yet, but she was sure it would soon. Now she just had to decide what to call her.

[[so open!]]

By now, Sam had gotten pretty good at making all the local modifications and precautions that one needed to make for visitors' weekends when portal traffic to the Fandom area was expected to be high. Since a new crop of students and teachers was due to arrive on Saturday - though not, she expected, in anywhere near the numbers that the island saw during Homecoming, for example - and she didn't have any other major projects to work on, today Sam set to work programming a similar set of modifications for a wider radius that would include Baltimore as well. It was repetitive, relaxing work, and all the more relaxing because she knew that it would mean a far smaller likelihood of having to solve last-minute crises on Saturday. That was, in Sam's opinion, pretty wonderful.

Sam was absolutely in the office today, regardless of the recent decline in people's attendance at their jobs all over town. The way she saw it, Portalocity certainly had its failings, but she still counted on this company being her best shot at getting off the island if she got spooked, and she wasn't discounting the possibility that that still might happen.

Although if she was really honest, she was kind of proud of herself for managing to make it through all the purple madness yesterday. (Literally.) Maybe she wasn't as inept in pressured situations as she'd thought.

Today Sam could be found behind the counter of the Portalocity office, squinting at an email in bemusement.

"'We will now be offering a new premium service to gold and platinum-level (or universal fine metal equivalent),'" she read aloud, "'reducing travel time within trips. No more walking to Starbucks! Customers need only tell us when to schedule their intra-trip portals to the tourist destinations that they would like to visit, and learning other cities' and planets' metro systems will be a thing of the past. 72 hours' advance notice required.'"

Then there was a breakdown of the pricing.

"Riiiight," Sam said.

Sometimes, Sam just needed to go for a walk, intemperate weather and allergies be damned. If that need for a walk sometimes happened to coincide with one of the interdimensional portal servers crashing and leaving hundreds of travelers stranded at halfway points, well, who could blame her for needing the air, really?

So Sam locked up and went for a walk in the park, having wisely chosen to leave her cell phone at her desk and her omni-tool display turned off. She was going to get some air and maybe a gallon of coffee, and afterwards, she'd be capable of sitting at her desk again and dealing with infuriated customers for another few hours. That was the plan, anyway.

[[open, expecting... uh, four, and up early for timezones and school and stuff. it's N7 day!]]

Was it any surprise that this week of all weeks, the portals to some of the most famous tourist destinations in the world were inoperable? Apparently there was a problem with heavy traffic.

So Sam, who had planned to portal to Italy for some sightseeing herself this week, was stuck behind the desk, drumming her fingers on the table very rhythmically and feeling quite resentful of the technicians at corporate who obviously hadn't a clue what they were doing. If only Sam had any way to get there, she would be more than happy to assist with the repairs, but unfortunately, Portalocity corporate headquarters was among the affected destinations.

Urgh.

Sam's week was proving to be interesting. In some ways, that was good (the encounter with Tamsin yesterday being one example) but in other ways, such as a really mortifying attempt at flirting with a woman in line for coffee this morning, not so much.

However, there were discount packages to advertise and work to be done, so here she was, only blushing a little as she thought some more about the coffee encounter. Seriously, it was bad.

"Well, let's see, then," Sam said, retrieving the long roll of tickets out of the printer and examining them. She was finding it extremely difficult to keep a straight face as she brought the many sheets of paper back over to the customer. "Everything should be in order for your honeymoon, sir. One direct portal to Peppermint Forest, followed by a portal to the Lollipop Woods with a connection in the Gumdrop Mountains, and as soon as you complete your hike through the Chocolate Swamp, a portal will be waiting for you to take you and your husband to Candy Castle."

The customer thanked her, and Sam smiled -- a sincere, slightly overly amused smile. She handed the man his tickets. "If you need anything, my name is Sam Traynor, and I'll shoot you an email with my contact information just in case," she said. "Your first portal will pick you up on the Fandom side of the causeway. Enjoy your trip to Candyland!"

It wasn't until the door shut behind him that she added quite pointedly, "Not that I understand why any adult would want to go there."

Honestly.

The air-conditioning at Portalocity was on the fritz today, leaving the office quite a bit hotter than the temperature outside. Sam fiddled with the machinery after a while -- it was hot, and her uniform was rather heavy and made it even hotter -- but it didn't seem to budge. Naturally, she called a technician, who would apparently be here... at nine tomorrow. Wonderful.

After a while, despairing because of the heat, Sam took her lunch break and bought two desk fans, then ran home and quickly changed into civvies. A skirt and a sheer top, to be exact. Wearing her Alliance uniform at Portalocity had always been more of a personal choice, anyway, and today she was making the personal choice to not burn to death.

She set back up at her desk and switched on both fans, feeling like she'd handled this situation pretty well.

The most badly-written part of Sam being at the desk at the Portalocity office today wasn't the fact that it was Sunday and not Thursday -- no, Sam actually tended to be in the office most days regardless of what days the posts actually went up. No, the truly terrible part was the fact that as she sat at the desk, her fingers were flying across her omni-tool as she detected all kinds of signals of ships the Admirals should be aware of, and all without even needing to use a proper terminal.

In between firing off emails right and left to alert the necessary parties to what she'd discovered, Sam paused every so often and slid a piece across the chessboard she was playing with.

What, a complete and total Mary Sue woman couldn't multi-task? Please.

[[primarily for one, but open, and OCD-free!]]

Sam. Park bench. Chess. It was a normal, refreshingly not disgustingly hot afternoon.

Okay, slightly abnormal in that she had played against an NPC interesting fellow a little while ago who had made the mistake of insisting on putting money on the game and then stormed off in a huff when Sam beat him in twenty moves, but other than that, everything was normal.

And Sam was about to win this game against herself, so there was even tension in the air. Oooh.

[[mainly for one, but open, suresies.]]

After a frustratingly poor night of sleep, Sam was in the office for barely two minutes today before she realized there was something wrong with the server. Not only were their systems not working quite right, but the number of angry emails she had received at her Portalocity email in the time since she'd last checked her omni-tool was in the thousands rather than the hundreds, which was much more typical. Clearly they had been hacked, and after huffing quietly to herself and sweeping her hair behind her ears so as not to lose focus, Sam got to work investigating the damage and trying to correct it.

In addition to general but easily resolvable... hacker damage, it seemed that every customer who had ever used this Portalocity branch had gotten some kind of spam email at some point during the week, if not more than one. After sighing heavily into her hands for a moment, Sam began typing up an apology email that promised discounts to anyone who had been affected. Then, for good measure, she set up a sign on the door.