old-school booklearnings

[eyecontact]

Date & Time: 2000
Location: Detroit
Characters: Wayne Mallow, Joey Wilson
Summary: Here to sniff out old periodicals that could have linkage to the futuretech...but oh look there's shiny things like museums
Warnings: is Wayne a warning i dont know yet


It was already a huge plus, finding himself in springtime weather. All that cold Joey had lived in for so long had thickened his blood, made these mild temperatures seem much warmer than they truly were, and he felt relieved, very relieved to shed heavy coats and feel a much kinder sun on his back.

That kindness opposed the rather lonely feeling the city streets offered; once upon a time this was a booming hub of industry and culture, but a crowd for this street could be three people walking in the same direction now. Roads shooting off that large, four-lane boulevard were lined with old homes, most in disarray and many abandoned and covered in the marks of a dozen or more colors of graffiti.

Despite this, there was beauty and life to be found: While Joey slowly took in the scene, his eyes fell to the high-pillared library on the other side of the street. That was the main target, wasn't it?

He shot a glance to his side, to the stranger who had come along, feeling his doubts resurface. With a stranger, it was harder to gauge the mood and motivations of this job – even with them spelled out in paper!

Er, typed out on a screen, anyway.

Comments

[mallarkey]

"Oh-- oh, yeah. Good thinking," Wayne said, feeling a little sheepish for not putting that together. His plan had been a little more clumsy; browse the textbooks, browse the fiction, grab whatever had a useful-sounding title or a cool looking cover.

"At least to start," he added. "Aim for a little bit of whatever we can is probably what we want to shoot for. Thick books to keep people occupied." And because they were easy to hide other things inside. If need be, at least. Wayne hoped he'd get the chance to grab a few other essentials while they were down here.

[eyecontact]

Wayne's fumblings made him, if anything, a little more relatable to Joey. The teen-adult gap was still very wide and apparent, but there was still some confidence to be had in himself, supporting this weird little mission with a good suggestion.

He nodded, clipping the pen to a corner of his little stack of paper and turning to start his search for the search engines, hardly suspect of what Wayne had in mind for encyclopedias other than learning.

It's a long, boring search. Even a kid like Joey, who never spent a day inside a school or library prior to, was susceptible to heavy eyelids and a wandering mind.

[mallarkey]

As Joey began his search, Wayne gravitated in the direction of the thicker volumes; he wanted a good combination of useful texts (he made sure to grab whatever law books he stumbled by for his own later reference) and disposable ones. Luckily, there were always plenty of thick books of arguable substance to be had, and while they were split-up seemed like the best time to seclude in a narrow row of shelves and cut into some of the pages to provide a wedge of space hidden behind the cover.

He wasn't sure how much time passed by the time he went to look for Joey again. It didn't feel like much, but he hadn't brought a watch along (ironic, in a way).

"Hey--" Though he had to keep his voice relatively quiet, even trying to get the kid's attention. "Any luck?"

[eyecontact]

The screen was filled with a high-resolution image of a landscape painting: mountains, flowers, running water...the works. Joey's finger was hovering over the clicker to load the next one when Wayne moved in; he startled, sitting up out of his slouch and whipping his head up to stare.

What-what? I'm up! Trouble?

...Oh, wait. His shoulders sagged a little, breathing out. Right. Library. Just...looking for things.

He swallowed, shaking his head a little as he looked back at the screen, closing the window and loading up the ones with links upon links of searches. He wasn't very computer-savvy, so his searches ranged from overly-detailed sentences to vaguer-than-vague two-word queries.

[mallarkey]

"Sure," Wayne said, non-judgmentally; he glanced at the computer screen but didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it, either, but he was of course not taking the mission completely to-the-letter-seriously himself.

Still, he put a couple of his finds next to Joey, simple things like a science textbook, an artbook with a Renaissance focus (Wayne had thought the cover looked cool), and a couple randomly chosen fiction pieces.

"I was thinking, can't hurt grabbing some stuff like this -- y'know, keep people from dying of boredom. The other stuff, no idea where to start. Except, well, computer's a good start."

[eyecontact]

Naturally, Joey's attention was on the art, as much out of his own curiosities as it was trying to reason...He frowned. This...isn't what we're here for, is it? Then again, precisely what they were there for hadn't been made so clear from the start.

Wayne's explanation was fair enough for him, though, except...

That's stealing :(

He tapped his pencil just beside his underline, frowning. He was already doubtful of his remark; they took food and necessities all the time, but...but those were necessities.

[mallarkey]

"Uh--"

Well... shit. True enough, but that wasn't the right impression to give. Not the one Wayne wanted to, that is. After all, he's supposed to be a lawyer, not a thief or anything else. He exhaled, looking warily at Joey and gesturing noncommittally with his hand.

"Only sort of," he said. "You're supposed to take books from a library. We can return 'em later. And they don't even have to know they were gone. Time travel, right? People still need entertainment."

[eyecontact]

Joey's mouth pursed as he fought with that, or, rather, tried to convince himself of that. It still felt like stealing, but...what about all the food and clothes they needed? Maybe it was different, or maybe it wasn't, and you could argue you didn't need books for survival, but...the whole point was getting information, wasn't it?

Carefully, he wrote again, slowly tilting his head to give Wayne a dubious, sidelong glance.

Do we get to bring them back when we're done? Right to this place?