[open] CAPTAIN'S LOG 001

[coefficiently]

Who: Maureen Robinson + YOU!
When: February
Where: Various (noted in prompts)
Open/Closed: Open
Applicable Warnings: TDM Warnings apply; anything additional that comes up will be noted in the subject line.

→HAVEN STREET, BLOCKADED (smoke gets in your eyes)

It's a problem not being able to get to the so-called 'Sector 1.' It's less to do with the food situation—dry cereal and canned food may not exactly shake out to a particularly luxurious lifestyle, but there are worse things—, and entirely to do with a question of power.

Half way through the week, Maureen stuffs her rucksack full of miscellaneous foodstuffs raided from the kitchen, a handful of books scavenged from the household's shelves, and the tube of toothpaste from the master bath's medicine cabinet ('I'm taking this,' she'd informed Jupe, standing in the doorway of the living room with the tube in hand and the rucksack over her shoulder. 'There's baking soda in the kitchen.'), and sets off through the neighborhood.

The last time she'd been driven from the house in search of supplies, it'd been laying down snow and she'd had a so-called husband and a dog at her heels. This time when Maureen shows up on the doorstep of various neighbors, she's alone. There's smoke on the air. She has a scarf wrapped prudently around the bottom half of her face, but pulls it down when the door is answered to say—

"Can I ask for a favor?"

→AROUND SWEETWATER, POST-BLOCKADE

Maybe it's the clear air, the smoke from the fires having at last drifted away, that inspires her to clamber into the household car and go for a drive. After all, after a week stuck inside the blockaded 'sector', just buzzing around from point a to point b is a thrilling luxury.

Or maybe it's work. Certainly there's a distinct air of a woman on a mission about Maureen over the next week as she appears around town: at the hardware store, making doe-eyed apologies to the clerk helping her decipher her 'husband's shopping list', and at the library where she casually cycles through whatever city planning documents may or may not be on file, or can be found copying down the Morse Code alphabet. And here, late one evening in a diner, where Maureen has a table in the back to herself. She'd finished her dinner some time ago. By the patina of the coffee cup's interior she's been here long enough to have been on the receiving end of more than her fair share of refills.

But she needs to work something out and the confines of the house on Haven street make her want to lay down and stare at the ceiling instead of doing this: presiding over a series of little notes, presently scribbling calculations in a little booklet.

→MARJORIE'S NEOCOLONIAL (everybody's somebody's fool)

She's bad at this. Not the getting dressed part. That part she can and has done. Maybe the hair isn't quite right (who the hell designed curlers?), but the rest of 1961 house cocktail party chic Maureen has more or less managed to achieve thanks to the contents of a closet she's had almost no hand in stocking. It's the pretending part that doesn't work. It hangs uneasily about her shoulders like an ill-fitting coat. Smiles that are too briskly produced, and evaporate a shade too quickly off her face. She doesn't drink the right amount; she drinks her cocktail too quickly and has nothing to do with her hands afterward, loathe to pick up a second (overly strong, Jesus Christ) drink to replace it too soon lest it either somehow be socially unacceptable or just because the idea of being more off her game than she already is makes all the little hairs on the back of her neck that she's failed to capture in her up-do stand on end.

And when she feels moved to step outside, the excuse she gives is 'Smoke break'. It only occurs to her after she's standing in the February cold, wrapped tight in the coat wrestled back out of wherever Marjorie had stowed her guests' outerwear, that no one really cares about smoking indoors.

But the air is refreshingly biting, and the sky overhead dark and full of stars. Maureen lets herself stand on the little shadowed back step for longer than she should, her head tipped back so she can observe the sky. There is Jupiter—a bright dot in the blanket of stars—, and Auriga the chariot driver, and Canis Major, the big dog chasing Orion, with Procyon burning bright in its lesser sibling.

→WILDCARD

[ooc: Prose preferred, but brackets is also aokay with me so if you prefer to use that then go ahead and I'll reply in kind. Nothing here hooking you and/or want a custom starter? Hit me up via PM and we can plot something out.]

Comments

[workingthenumbers]

Numbers isn't expecting any visitors. He's been standing in his kitchen, staring blankly at the concerningly empty fridge when he hears the knock at the door. His head jerks to the side, eyebrows raised in surprised, before he slams the fridge shut and staggers to the entrance. Before he gets there, he takes a moment to comb his fingers through his hair and straighten his posture. With confidence, he strides forward and opens the door.

Ah. It's the...astrophysicist? Engineer? The woman from the far-flung future, according to her testimony at the dinner party. Numbers never actually introduced himself at the party--mostly because he was too preoccupied with ranting about a potential revenge plot against Norman Pollock. Numbers raises an eyebrow, tilting his head to the side. He's dressed casually, wearing a blue button-up and slacks and shoes inside the house--which might be an egregious sin for some.

"Maybe." His tone is polite and subdued. It's definitely a contrast to his previous behavior at the party. "What is it?"

[coefficiently]

He's not her ideal pick of neighbors. But his messages earlier had suggested (to the unwitting observer) that he'd—

Well. Not cooled off in the subject of revenge, really, but that he'd still posessed the capacity to type instead of being laid up half comatose somewhere. So maybe he and Lester had thought better of the whole thing in the cold light of morning. Anyway, needs must. Though from the flicker of her attention across him, Maureen has clearly been anticipating a markedly different reception from the one she actually gets.

Though she's dressed in a long winter coat, the space between it's hem and the top of her shoe suggests she has a dress on underneath it all—not, apparently, quite so anathema a wardrobe choice for her as it seems for some of the 'wives' on the block. If not for the military looking rucksack on her shoulder and the scarf pulled down from her face, she might almost pass for someone who belongs here.

Right up until she says, "I need all your tin foil."

[workingthenumbers]

"Uh--"

Numbers blinks, looking slightly befuddled. He's not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't that. He gives her a look over, as if something about her appearance might suggest a reason behind the request.

"I mean, sure. You can take it. It's not like I'm using it," he replies. He pauses for a moment, then continues. "Can I ask why? I'd like to know if I'm being complicit in shenanigans."

Not that he cares about shenanigans, legal or otherwise, but Maureen has now piqued his interest.

[coefficiently]

Great. Cue Maureen hefting the straps of her rucksack a little higher on her shoulder as she moves closer to the doorway and potentially up onto the very step of the threshold on the assumption that he might just, y'know, cede ground and let her inside the house to rifle through his kitchen drawers.

"I'm not planning to murder anyone with it if that's what you're worried about."

Ha ha ha. We have fun here.

[workingthenumbers]

Number's face doesn't change.

"Very funny," Numbers replies, flatly. He does notice her step closer, and does move to the side so Maureen can enter the house. It's cleaner than it has been in weeks--mostly because he's no longer recovering from the bitter effects of haloperidol. He closes the door behind him and vaguely gestures towards the kitchen.

"There's some in the drawer by the sink, barely used," he continues. "Seriously, though--if I give you this tin foil, am I going to be looking over my shoulder for the HOA's goons?"

[coefficiently]

Great. Inside, with a closed door at her back, is an improvement to standing in the street wondering who's watching her. Once inside, she doesn't wait to answer him. Instead, Maureen hitches her rucksack a little higher on her back and follows his gesture in the direction of the kitchen. Apparently they're going to have this conversation on the move.

"If I was in the middle of some shenanigans and the HOA asked you a few questions,"—his word, not hers—"Wouldn't it be better not to know?"

She should probably just say, 'Me, what? No. I just need it to cook with and forgot to buy a roll the last time the entire neighborhood wasn't barricaded. Silly her.'

"If anyone asks just tell them I wanted it for lining windows if the power goes out again."

[workingthenumbers]

Numbers raises his eyebrows, then puts up his hands in a resigned gesture.

"You know what? That's fair," he continues. "The less I know, the better."

He digs through the drawers and hands Maureen a largely untouched roll of aluminum foil. Clearly, he hasn't been using this.

"Here. I hope whatever you're doing'll help us get the fuck outta here."

[coefficiently]

It's a start. Both in the getting out of here goal sense, and in the aluminum foil stock sense.

"We'll see. Thanks."

She takes the roll from him, slips the bag with its JUPITER 2 ROBINSON military styled stamps across the canvas from her shoulder, and makes to smuggle the foil inside the bag with a crinkle and clanking from whatever else is living inside.

"I'm guessing you and Arthur called off having a 'conversation' with Dr. Pollock. Do you want any of this?" A can of green beans, a tube of toothpaste, an Agatha Christie novel, produced from out of the rucksack. She'd been anticipating a trade.

[workingthenumbers]

Numbers winces slightly at the mention of Dr. Pollock, seemingly a little annoyed on how it was handled.

"Uh--no, we, um. We had that 'conversation' with him. It went a lot more pleasantly for me than it did for Arthur, though."

For one, Arthur got drugged a second time while Numbers skated by trying to suck up to the doctor. Bastard. Numbers tilts his head to the side, staring at the objects offered in trade with a quizzical expression. His nose wrinkles, and he points at the book.

"What's this?"