driftfleet | You can check out anytime you'd like.. [Hotel Corona Mingle]

You can check out anytime you'd like.. [Hotel Corona Mingle]

Who: The Fleet!
Broadcast: If you want
Action: Hotel Corona or Planet Ikke
When: December 7th onward

a wheel-shaped space station

[After the mystery and isolation of their last destination, the Marsiva seems determined to head to brighter, busier territory. After a long journey through remote, nebula-painted space, speeding along at a brisk pace for the Host ship, the Marsiva brings her Fleet to a sudden and prominent point of traffic.

It seems that the Fleet has happened upon some sort of vacation destination! Maybe Atroma thinks that the passengers deserve some rest and relaxation... or just wants to distract them with something huge and shiny.

Welcome to Hotel Corona! Feel free to enjoy yourselves and enjoy the sites! If a hotel resort isn't your thing, you can head on over to the nearby planet and explore it's icy wonders.

In order words: it's a mingle!! Everyone get in! ]

[>> Plot Post]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ he multi-tasks, looks at the book one moment, at her the next. he's never really seen her like this before. evidently, he's more than a bit fascinated. ]

Right, I think I got it -

[ that and something that he thinks is meant to be a cheeseburger of a sort. ]

Anything else?

Whiskey.

[ -- because she damn well needs a stiff drink. ] I'll settle for some sort of lager, if need be. Heavens, I'll even drink wine.

[ even if she'd rather not. the only wine she's ever liked came from jason wilkes's still. ]

They have a - very big selection of those, too.

[ he says, catches her eyes in the mirror and smiles. ]

I think I found the one that is supposed to pass for a Whiskey - can't be sure what they make these things from, but.

[ bold and daring, right? ]

[ -- were he anyone else, she might have hated him for his easy smile. but she meets his eye in the mirror, arches a brow, and then turns 'round to face him and his half of the room. ]

It'll be an adventure.

[ as much of one as the room is bound to see, tonight. ]

I guess we're going to see that droid again.

[ the one who escorted them here to begin with. and to think, this whole thing began as a quiet, peaceful afternoon.

And then, Romanoff's ploy unfolded itself and while he doesn't really complain, not nearly, the whole evening turned out to be more than a bit eventful. ]

Bastard.

[ -- soft. almost under her breath. peggy re-crosses the room, striding close to him. but not so close that they touch or brush or bump. somewhere in her bones, she craves that touch. before today, peggy would have ceded to that craving in a way she would have described as thoughtless. but these last few hours have flensed away the thick veneer of thoughtlessness. since their first kiss, here in the fleet, she's always been battling a subconscious hunger. nothing purely sexual -- nothing so simple! but she'd been hungry for him, his company, and his love for so long. a smile leads to a kiss leads to a conversation leads to...whatever-the-bloody-hell-this-is.

uncertainty about who they could be for one another. and to what lengths. a fella and his best girl. lovers. soulmates.

wound tight (still) and perfunctory in her movements, peggy begins the make-busy work of clearing the small table that will serve for their supper. ]

I don't like him.

[ the droid, apparently. ]

-- The droid?

[ of all the things to be confused about. he watches her with an arched eyebrow and a hint of a smile. honestly, for a moment there, he almost imagined that - ]

did you call the droid a bastard?

[ this has to be the weirdest thing that happened tonight. ]

[ she pauses -- leaning over the table. ] It's smarmy. The droid is smarmy. What kind of sadist programs their concierge to be smarmy? Aren't all the living concierges smarmy enough? Surely they should be looking to improve upon the formula, not make it worse.

[ ok so we're doing this. ]

I think you're being a little too harsh on it.

[ is he joking, is he seriously humoring this complaint, it's hard to tell until he shrugs, easy as that and adds, ]

It might be having an off day.

[ get it. off. because it's a robot. ]

[ she doesn't laugh. but an arch of her brow suggests she caught the joke. instead, she twists her attention around a different spiral. ]

I can't help but think about the person who made the decisions that help the droid decide what it says and how it says it. Were they feeling particularly misanthropic on the day? Or maybe lazy -- because I could imagine the droid's lack of warmth could originate in lazy, undetailed code.

[ this is winn's fault. scratch the surface, and steve will find that she's been thinking a lot of about coding. the languages are like fresh nuts to crack. new puzzles to solve. and she's taken to it with a comfortable ease. ]

Tony would be able to answer that.

[ if there ever was an expert on robotics. ]

Most of his are very pleasant.

[ with the notorious exception of Ultron. ]

[ a half-shake of her head. ] I wouldn't ask him about it; he'd be insufferable.

[ peggy's a little insufferable herself -- picky and choosy with the people of whom she asks her questions. asking tony about ai codes would be like asking howard about any number of things. her ears would stop up and her eyes would roll. ]

-- Yeah, he would. I never actually asked him how he does what he does. All I know is that nine times out of ten, those systems make the job much simpler.

[ again, with the exception of Ultron and then with a sudden, rare sort of pride, ]

He once told me I'm not wrong about one of those technical things, couldn't understand a word he was saying, though.

So far, the only job I've been able to simplify is putting words on screens. [ little useless programs that generate text or do algebraic equations. nothing wild. ] Which, arguably, isn't really a task that needed simplifying.

Hey, it took me a few days to even get used to a touch screen.

[ not even kidding. ]

Though everyone were really eager to help.

[ still, it's so very awkward having a group of people who are all excited to teach Captain America what a swipe is. ]

The augment helped. [ her, she means. upon her arrival here. a lot of the harder bits to swallow had come easier because the augment wanted her to know them. parts of the technology, the interfaces, the communications arrays. ] I wasn't quite so thrust into the open unknown as you were, I think.

It was a good way to handle it all, back then. Fill the time - had to make a list of things people told me are absolutely necessary, anything from movies to music and Mexican food - it was all very illuminating.

[ for better of for worse. ]

[ by degrees, she's calmer. peggy takes a seat and asks, ] What have you found most worthy of its place on your list?

[ what would he insist she add to her own hypothetical list, that is. ]

The books were really good, some of those historians write differently than those I used to read, a little lighter.

[ of course it will start with books, ]

and the internet, I mean. You can find just about anything there. Anything I couldn't understand, I'd find out about in less than a minute, they have slang dictionaries nowadays, really helpful.

Dictionaries. For slang. [ it's not that she doesn't believe him. merely that she's sitting here, trying to imagine him scrolling through bloody dictionary entries. ]

Hey, those come in handy. Some things really don't make sense in a conversation without them, especially when you're talking to Tony.

[ the popular culture references might be lost on him but the slang he can at least learn. ]

I mean, people can tell you that you're snatched and you won't know it's a compliment - and if you slayed, that's good too.

[ LOOK, ok, it's all very important. ]

Good Lord. You don't need a dictionary; you just need context.

[ slang is code in its simplest form. ]

They tend to use six or seven of those in one line of conversation. I admit, some times, I couldn't even figure out the context.

[ again, see: tony stark ]

They use abbreviations of texting, too. That took a while.

[ but then, that's right up her alley, too. ]

[ a quirk of her lips. ]

And all the soldiers back during the war had their bloody awful postal acronyms. SWALK and BURMA and ITALY. [ she shakes her head. despite the pitfalls already found in assuming things about one another, she's fairly certain he hasn't had much opportunity to use them. ] Not that different from what I've heard about modern texting.

At least most of those were actual words.

[ that didn't quite mean that they appeared to mean but still, words. ]

Now there are numbers and some of those words I can't even pronounce. People like cell phones - they have everything in there. It's useful, I guess.

[ but as an afterthought, he adds, ]

Still think they should look up from those every now and then, it gotten a lot harder to start conversations with everyone staring at those things.

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