Open RP: Please, don't hesitate to interrupt...

[we-shall-see.livejournal.com]

What would you do if you were an intelligence agent who had suddenly  been sent into the not-too-distant future, and been told that your country was going to get into some pretty hairy political situations?

That's right, newspapers are a good place to start.

Gust is in the Great Hall, with several of said papers, doing the usual juggling act that is flipping pages, smoking a cigarette, and drinking coffee.  Oh, sorry, 'americano,' at Mello's suggestion.  The spy looks nothing other than distinctly bored, when in fact, he's reading very closely.  You learn not to appear too interested, you know? 

Comments

[we-shall-see.livejournal.com]

"You came out unscathed? Did it yell 'fwiend' at you?" Good God. "Frankly, I'm surprised you're not cowering in terror. It reaffirmed my tentative atheism."

Actually, Gust pendulums back and forth on that one, depending on his mood and the time of day.

"I think there's a story about a science museum near the back. Funding cuts, though, nothing unexpected or unusual, except that intellectuals are engaged in a clawing battle with the corporate and the burocratic, as usual. The more things change..."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance sighs, a quick rough exhalation of breath. "Same story everywhere, exactly. There was this wonderful little museum in Birmingham, I remember, the Red Mountain Museum. The mayor basically killed it. He wanted a children's 'discovery center' downtown instead. The building's shut down now. God, when I think about the work they used to do there ... a whole new species of trilobite discovered." She could probably say a lot more, but mercifully opts to sip her coffee instead.

"The purple thing didn't yell anything at me, per se. It was yelling, though. Something about 'Mikaw' and 'fwowah.' I really don't know what it meant. There was this hideous little pop-eyed dog following behind it, too, and at one point it picked up the dog and put the dog in its purse." Trendy, that Tinky Winky. "It did say 'Tinky Winky' a few times, too. I guess I ought to be grateful it left me alone. How'd you get labeled 'fwiend'?"

[we-shall-see.livejournal.com]

"Those are the things that look like beetles, in rock, and no one knows how they breathe. And that's the extent of my knowledge in the field." No, really. Land before time hadn't even come out yet, and he wasn't precisely looking at history, geology, or any of that sort of science in school. Physics and math, through and through, and engineering without any regrets, except that he didn't try to skip a year when he was younger and move out of the house sooner.

"I took a chocolate. Big mistake, huge. Someone gave that thing a pet?" Good God. He hopes it can't reproduce.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Well, not much is known about the internal anatomy of trilobites, period. That includes their respiratory system if they had one. The general tendency is simply to extrapolate from what we know of present-day arthropods. But you're thinking of the right creature, yes. To be honest, I was kind of hoping your purple monster would turn out to be some kind of a dinosaur. The application goes on about Barney, so ... why not?" Chance looks a little embarrassed to admit it.

She unwraps her scone and breaks off a piece. "It's definitely not a dinosaur, whatever it is. Interesting cranial crest on it. I wonder if anyone's ever studied it. With dinosaurs, they're all dead, or ought to be -- Alan Grant would take exception to saying they're all dead -- so there's never that problem of having to deal with the danger posed by the living being in order to study it. I don't think I'd want to touch Tinky Winky with a ten-foot pole."

[we-shall-see.livejournal.com]

He catches on the 'if they had one.' It's interesting to think of how different it is possible for life forms to be. It's not often something one stops to consider. Heck, he doesn't even know if insects do breathe in the usual way, or not.

"Another dinosaur?" One for her to get to before the tabloids did, he supposed, but to be fair, that must have been extremely frustrating. "If you were ever likely to find one, it would be here. We've got a giant squid, so I'm told, out in the pond out there."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"We do, and it's a freshwater squid which you might think would be notable scientifically. Its anatomy doesn't appear distinct from the giant squid already known to science, though. At least not in any way that wouldn't require us to dissect it." Chance shoves a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "The animals known to the wizarding world are definitely enough fodder to study for lifetimes. Unicorns, centaurs, dragons, gryphons, phoenix. Not much done on the prehistory of these animals, though. Nothing in the fossil record to suggest they didn't simply diverge from some common ancestor of mundane animals, unicorns from eohippus or something like that. Because I don't get the impression that excavations or fossil digs have ever been a high priority for the wizarding world. It's way more interesting for them to figure out a charm that can give enemies a bad case of boils."

That is probably not, strictly speaking, true of all wizards, but Chance is not feeling charitable.

"Back in the day, I used to hit up the Sorting Room and ask everyone I met whether they'd heard anything about that kind of research. Should start doing that again ... since my daughter showed up I've been kind of preoccupied" (a fond small smile here, unconscious). "You meet any trained professionals lately? Who knows, maybe someone will show up who's made their life's work studying large purple monsters with rudimentary speech abilities and a weird cranial crest."