Dollars and Sense

[Ilves Orpo]

"I'm more ... function over sparkle," said Ilves, with his collar blinking unironically, as he returned from his exploration of the back end of the ship.   "I'm sure the engine on the other ship is far beyond my means, but if I had bucketfuls of money to spend...."

He picked up the device from the door and studied its screen for a moment.  "It's possible, I'm not sure which city the relay this thing is using is in, or whether it has to satellite bounce to get here."  A heavy sigh, and then he hooked the thing to a clip on his belt.  "I've got the options list now, at least, so I'm running comparisons if you'd like to talk generalities about what my client is looking for."

He rested one hand on the edge of the doorhatch and appeared to look outside.  "Shall we look at the other ship then?  I'll be interested to see the differences."

[Astral]

Astral nodded at the man's statement of personal preference.  The collar thing was very distracting.  He could not help but wonder how a person could stand all that blinking going on.  Of course a Venusian was apt to be abhorred by the thought of medically embedded technology anyway.  He didn't really know anybody planetside who was into that.

"And I would be delighted to show you."  He said grandly.  He took a moment to shut down the gold ship's terminals and made sure all the lights were out before closing it up and moving on to the other one.  He had taken one final whiff of the 'new car smell' before letting the hatch seal closed.

The blue ship was actually a lot more similar to the conventional notion of a spacefaring ship.  But it was still sleek and shiny like the other one.  It had a blue hull polished to a shine with fluid racing stripes down its exterior.  It was pretty too but it didn't glow or dance with lights and it probably wouldn't blind anyone trying to get a good look at it.

It seemed like a machine designed for a person who loved speed, precision and efficiency.  It was still easy to see the little touches of Astral's personal design style here and there but this wasn't just a garish mocking display of artistic tripe cobbled together into a space ship.  This was an example of pure, intelligent engineering design.

Astral, for one, preferred the blue ship.  He thought it was a better showcase for his talents but he was glad that both ships existed.

The interface in the blue ship was a bit different, more stylized to seem like a video game's hand controllers.  It was a lot more physical and less 'pretty/flashy'.

"Of the two I've been known to borrow this one for a quick trip to Mercury."  Astral admitted with a laugh.  "You can see it's still got the basics in place but it isn't nearly as ornate."  He smiled.  "Oh but you need to hear this engine!"

He slipped into the pilot's seat and started twiddling knobs to start the vessel's power core thrumming. 

[Ilves Orpo]

The Neptunian studied the second vehicle at length before sitting down.  "I can perceive some things about your design style from the juxtaposition," he commented.  "Very useful to have the very different specifications to convey that."

In fact, Ilves had coded an agent on the fly to run cross-check analysis on traits of the two ships to distill that similarity down to something readily parseable that he could plug into his other data, but there was no sense in bothering the artiste with details like that.

After a long, oddly tense pause, in which there was little sound but the engine's rumblings, he said, "I think the word is ... purr ... yes?"

He seemed to want to change the subject, and did, rather quickly: "A question for you as an artist: would you be interested in a datafile of images of selected Neptunian megafauna?  I imagine some of the more elegantly muscular of them might be interesting inspiration for hull motifs."

Neptune: known for its crazy implanted computer shit and its sea serpents.

[Astral]

Astral bristled a bit at the word "Purr".  True it was that the engine purred like a lion on steroids but it was an awkward observation between two males in close quarters.  He started the shut down sequence.

Muscular megafauna?  Astral thought that sounded odd, but he was willing to entertain it.

"Anything you think may prove a suitable inspiration would be most welcome."  He offered.  He found himself wishing he knew more Neptunians also.  He hated to realize the breadth of his experience was so very limited.  But he was still young and he did intend to do some traveling before he was done.

He looked around himself as if he'd forgotten something.  "I think that is the extent of what I can show you here.  I can put you in touch with my assistant to conclude the necessary documents... signatures and such and to review your selections.  Have you been to Venus before?  I could show you around."  He didn't think the Neptunian looked like the sort to be interested in a spa visit.

[Ilves Orpo]

"The sea serpents are probably a bit too ... narrow to be suitable, a ship will want more breadth of beam, but some of the others might do."  Ilves seemed quite pleased to have thought of something potentially useful here.  "Probably one of the straight-up aquatic ones rather than the sort of amphibious things that pop up in the Core."  This enthusiasm chased a chain of lights around and around his necklace, like a cat pursuing a moth.

"If you have questions about my homeworld, I can endeavour to answer them; I don't know what would be of use to you as an artist.  I'm familiar with some of the problems of three-dimensional design aesthetics, at least, though my efforts are less," he paused, the collar blinked, and he concluded, "sophisticated than your work."

That being said, he glanced at his datapad thing once more and sighed faintly; apparently it was still translating the blueprint documents.  "I will be happy to handle the documents with your assistant at your convenience, of course."

The question about the planet took some thinking over, apparently; he was quiet a while before answering:  "It's nice to be somewhere with a proper climate.  Most planets are much chillier than where I grew up, and I'm afraid I haven't adapted all that well.  I haven't seen much - I had a layover here once before on a flight to Mercury, but that's about it."

[Astral]

Normally Astral didn't take such an up-front personal interest in the comfort of his clients.  Usually he left the wining and dining to Candor Metley so he could get straight to the drawing board right away.  The problem here was a simple one, he needed a bit more of a familiarity with Neptune and the people he was working for.  Admittedly, this man, Ilves was not the end-user but he seemed odd enough that Astral was nervous about putting a pen on paper just yet.

"Well, I understand if you're a busy man and have to buzz out of here right away, but it would be a shame not to take a moment to enjoy what Venus has to offer.  It's one thing to see pictures, but another thing entirely to experience it.

At a minimum he might gather something more about the man's reactions to Venus's surroundings.  This would all be so simple if the man were a bit easier to read.

But, that was half the challenge, wasn't it?  Besides, it wouldn't hurt if this very important contract was backed up by a security agent who thought Astral was one hell of a cool guy.  Yup, that would definitely be a bonus even if the odd Neptunian did tend to cramp his style.

[Ilves Orpo]

To be fair, Ilves is a bit weird, though most of his serious weird he handles in private; this was just his Neptunian-ness and his paranoia running rampant.  Fortunately for his own peace of mind, he was oblivious to the other's weirded-out-ness.

"This is the only contract I have at the moment that has any on-site.  Client is paying for me to stay as long as it takes to iron out whatever details require my services so," large rolling shrug, "this is my priority, for better or for worse."

And the monitoring stuff could run on its own and dump updates to his dropbox which he'd process through with spare cycles when the fool link managed to translate them for his onboard computing.  It was a clunky, laggy system, but it worked well enough for when he was offworld, and now there was that thing on Mars anyway which was for once less dragged out than everything else. Offworld work paid well; he had a tiny agent reminding him of that every time he got too twitchy.

And, as he said, Venus was pleasantly warm, unlike practically everywhere else in the entire frigging solar system.  He could go about without a fur coat, and really, if you're Ilves, any day that goes by without requiring a fur coat is a good day.

[Astral]

"Then it is settled.  We will tour the square.  I have things to do but they can wait."  It was true, he had no severely pressing deadlines and he couldn't do anything about the cruise liner project until he got the go-ahead from Candor Metley to make a trip by one of their suppliers on Mercury.

There was nothing quite like a Venusian afternoon.  It was temperate, and surpassingly brilliant the way the sky danced with lights and green plants seemed to burst from every possible location.  Nearly every inch of the park, the square, everything had been planned and placed to look just so.  Like the lines of trees in a Florida median strip there was a definite pattern to the layout, isosceles triangles and clusters of threes wherever one was to look.  There was nothing cluttery or messy about any of it.  There were hobos.  Trash cans were cleverly hidden into the landscapes and even the people seemed to be decorative surfaces.

Now Astral could not claim credit for any of the beautiful architecture around them, but he did take pride in his place of origin.  He was happy to point out what was new and what wasn't and name the various members of the architecture guild and their contributions.

He didn't talk about their errors and how even though they seemed to have some understanding of geometry they needed to reconsider some of their engineering decisions like proper load-bearing materials.  Of course when he started thinking like that he sounded like he was from Mercury, not Venus.  Though he was also well aware that part of the reason that the plaza had been redesigned so recently is that parts of it had started falling apart and no one would let such a lovely garden become an eyesore.

Buuut, these were but a momentary diversion of thought.  Astral smiled as he gave his tour and actually was thoughtful enough to give the Neptunian pauses to look things up over his laggy connection whenever he had a notion to.  After this Benton could not give Astral a hard time for staying in too much.

[Ilves Orpo]

The rambling about the square revealed a certain few facts about Ilves, primary among them that the man is a paranoid.  As in, probably could do with some medication paranoid.  On the other  hand, paranoia might be a positive trait in a security specialist?

He did appear to rather like the warmth, as he had commented; inquiries would reveal that he was from the Core region of Neptune, which is apparently quite warm, but had not been back there for some time.

Over time, he opened up a little more and allowed as how he had some interior design experience, though almost purely in an aesthetic sense rather than needing to reconcile aesthetics with engineering - he has apparently written a number of immersive virtual reality computer games.  He pointed out a particular building and commented, "That I'd never have come up with.  It looks tremendously exotic to Neptunian eyes, like a fantasy world, somewhere wild and unfamiliar, strange as Earth and twice as far."

Eventually his laggy connection managed to finish downloading and translating the engineering schematics that Astral had sent, and he started interspersing commentary on them randomly into the conversation when there appeared to be pauses in the tour.  The simulteneity of the business commentary and the recreational dabbling did not seem to bother him in the slightest, though it certainly made interacting with him both densely packed and full of cognitive ricochets.

[Astral]

Astral found conversation with the other man to be very stimulating at least in an intellectual way.  He was constantly having to pick up the conversation at different points as if they were having five to ten different conversations simultaneously.  It was confusing as hell and he had to struggle to keep up and catch where they were at any given moment.  It also thoroughly did not help that the other man was so very twitchy.  By the time they were done sightseeing Astral was starting to feel jumpy too.

Astral did not think on the warmth overly much.  It was simply what he was useful.  Most places were just... cold.  Home had its attractions of course, but he had seen most of them several times over.

At one point he stopped to call Benton.  The Mercurian acted, for the most part, as his assistant, handling most of the paperwork and legal essentials.  He gave Benton the go ahead to start drawing up a contract for the Neptune project and to forward the documents to Ilves.  It wasn't nearly as efficient as Ilves communicating with his agents over the network but it would do.  Benton would also notify Mr. Metley and the wheels would start turning. 

Astral did so love the design process.  He was already feeling exhilerated at starting with a new clean slate.  It was dampened only by the fact that his biggest project of all time was currently on hold.  That of course didn't mean that he couldn't start a new one but it tended to nag at him.

He did start to notice the time though and he hadn't gotten much done that he had thought he might get done that day.

"Well this concludes the tour I have time for."  Astral said with a chuckle.  "I'd hate to leave you in the lurch so you're welcome to come back by the studio if you want to see more of my designs, or I can give you some referrals for other places to visit while you're here unless you're planning to be off soon yourself.  I think I have what I need to get started though."  He smiled amicably.

[Ilves Orpo]

Neptunian multitasking: intellectually stimulating anyone who can put up with it for the last handful of generations.  Really, it makes much more sense if one doesn't have to ram it through such a low-bandwidth protocol as speech.

"Most certainly.  I will continue to be in contact as you require information about my client's desires to refine your designs, and to provide my input on the security requirements," Ilves said with formal politeness.  "My best wishes for your success in this and all your ventures."

He had put the specifications required in a datapacket and put in some notes on design elements and requirements and dropped it to the address the design notes had come from already; there was a subroutine coded to provide images of Neptunian megafauna to the same address next he had access to a good catalogue, and an unmentioned side routine about some images of crystal-and-glowing-lichen landscapes to add to interior decorating notes.  He was pretty sure that that was going to be enough to work with for now.

"If you have any specific queries about the project or interest in data that might be useful inspiration, just let me know; I'm certain I can collect that information more efficiently.  I'll get you the files on the sea serpents and other potential visual inspirations as soon as I can get ready access to Neptune's networks again.  I will probably be returning to my office on Triton in a few days, but will still be reachable through the merimies address for the duration."

[Gaius]

Astral continued to smile and offered his hand to the Neptunian to shake.  "I will definitely be in touch.  I may have some sketch concepts to share in as early as a few days.  I'm really excited about this project.  I think it will be really amazing when it's done and I certainly hope you'll agree."

His voice carried his enthusiasm well.  He wasn't one to obfuscate his emotions.  He rarely had good reasons not to express how he really felt.  Looking back on his record, things generally went his way.

His hand shake was equally energetic and pleasant.  If Ilves was one to find normal expressions odd then Astral was full of them.

"Well it's time I got back to being a busy person."  He said amusedly.  "And it really is a two-way street.  You're welcome to shoot me a message if you have any questions or need to know how the project is going.  I'm not always easy to get over computers but you're sure to be able to get my partner, Benton and he almost always knows where I am."

[Ilves Orpo]

The offered handshake produced the first moment of bona fide blatant bewilderment in Ilves's reactions, and furiously active blinking from his necklace and the datapad's crystal.  There was a long, long pause before he cautiously accepted the offered hand, with the air of someone who was not entirely certain what the hell he was doing but was making his best attempt.  (His hand was oddly bone-and-tendon, but not weak; a lot of apparent strength there for someone who lives in a computer.)

"I will be certain to be in touch.  Thank you."

He inclined his head slightly, awkwardly, and then reclaimed his hand and took a step back; this was clearly someone who was painfully inadept at normal social cueing, who wasn't sure how to gracefully leave without giving insult.

[Khalilah]

Astral was able to tell that parting ways was taking way longer than it should, more like two lingering lovers than a businessman and his client.  He was the one who broke it off with a chuckle.

"Safe travels to you Ilves."  He had a little trouble saying the name as if he wasn't exactly certain he was pronouncing it right.

And then he was gone, heading back to the hangar to catch a ride back to his studio.  Yes indeed he had a lot of work to do and as he went there was a message from Metley that popped up saying he had an impending meeting with representatives from PCUUE.  Life was about to get a lot busier.