|
Quinn has many habits that are very predictable. His penchant for writing on walls is one of them. He has staked out a sunroom in the house that has a wide, expansive back wall; the trinkets and art hanging there have been stripped away, and he's converted the wall into another workspace. Half of the wall has been tiled in corkboard; the other is painted with several coats of whiteboard paint. He's there now, puttering over rat spirits. It's pretty clear he hasn't slept in a few days; his hair is rumpled, and he even has the start of a shadowy beard. He's wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of baggy blue scrub bottoms - as he calls them, his thinking pants.
River's habits, on the other hand, are completely unpredictable. She once brushed her teeth three times in a row because she had a funny feeling she wouldn't get a chance to for the rest of the day, as she had calmly explained to Quinn while he watched, towel over his arm. She's padding around barefoot, also in a particular pair of paints: they're black lounge pants that have Stitch (a la Lilo & Stitch) on them, surfing on a rainbow, complemented by a simple heather grey v-neck shirt and her raven pendant hanging from her neck. She comes upon Quinn's sunroom and whistles lowly. "Niiiice hair," she praises as she enters, ambling over and finding something to lean down against or flop on. "You, uh, you look a little," she scratches her cheek with her nails, painted black and flecked with gold. "Awake. 'Sup?"
Quinn bobs his head; he has all kinds of notes scrawled across the whiteboard on spirits, anything he can think of thrown up on the board so he can look at the whole picture, step back and visualize the entire life cycle of Beshilu. He steps back and pushes his glasses up on his nose, surveying his work. "I have been awake for some time," he confesses. "It is a habit of mine that I cannot sleep until I finish what I started." He gestures at the wall. "I feel like I will reach a breakthrough." He looks at River and blinks, almost startled - as if he's catching up to the fact there's another person in the room. "Oh, River." He gives her a dimpled smile, gaze resting on Stitch. "I like him."
River snaps her head down, like she's already forgotten what she's wearing, and smiles. "Right? Me too. I kind of identify with him a little, to be honest." She scratches one of her manicured fingers on the animated alien's brow. She tilts back and eyes the whiteboard he's been working at. "Mmm. The rats." She sucks the back of her teeth. "I wish I could help. But, uh, the thing is," she wrinkles her nose. "I took a peek at the possibilities and this is one of those things where, well, it's better if I don't get involved." She raises her shoulders in an apologetic shrug. "Maybe you should take a break. Or a nap." She sniffs. "Or a shower."
"Fate is fate," Quinn summarizes, as if that settles it. "You know what is best for your path; I wouldn't argue with you on that. Not ever." He tosses a smile towards her, but then his brow furrows as she sniffs. "Oh. I could do that, yes. What day is it? I do not think I have been absorbed in this for terribly long. Yes - I saw people yesterday, in fact." He lifts his arm to take a curious sniff. "...It's not that bad."
"It's Saturday," she chirps, gesturing at the whiteboard. "Why don't you, er, take a break on this stuff and clean yourself up, we'll get some food and I'll show you this thing I'm trying to make. It's called a quantum clock. I thought I'd use your workshop for it. You wanna see?"
He perks up, giving her an owlish look of eagerness. He tosses the dry erase marker back into the basket. "Lead on, MacDuff," he declares. "I can be cleaned up in five minutes. Meet you in the shed?"
"Take, take your time," River insists. "Get behind your ears and all of that. I'll see you in the shed. It'll be fun," she assures him. "And maybe safe!"
"Only maybe?" He smiles, though; he's used to this from the Acanthus. "I will return wholly refreshed and with accurate and acceptable ablutions performed."
When Quinn makes his way back to the shed, River is already in there, and she seems to have made herself at home. She has books - tons, and tons, and tons of fucking books, and they are littered in irregular piles and stuffed on attendant bookshelves. Anyone with an organizational compulsion would twitch, and possibly stroke out, to see it. And then there's the components. Those are at least a bit more orderly, but probably, by the look of the cardboard delivery boxes on the ground, because they've only just arrived.
Quinn has a somewhat interesting reaction to River making space for herself; as he enters the shed, his features light up with delight. Sure, she's messy. Sure, she has no organizational method that he can discern. But it's River, and the affection on Quinn's features make it clear that she can do whatever the hell she wants.
"There's the guy," River buzzes, waving him into the controlled chaos. "Are you hungry? We can order food. I would've gone ahead, I'm just not sure what you'd like. Come here, sit down, look at this." The questions and instructions rattle out of her back to back, and she pats the seat in front of the great drawing desk where the designs are laid out.
"So. This is a very, very basic quantum clock. They're a mite bit tricky to get ahold of; the plans, a bit easier. A quantum clock is a specific type of atomic clock that forces two ions that don't want to hang out together, to hang out together, and you can measure time by how quickly these little ions get pissed at eachother, and try to run away from each other, how quickly they oscillate, basically. So it's a very, very exact type of clock. So far so good?"
"I ordered curry for us," he says, moving to hop up on one of the long tables; he perches there, watching River intently while avoiding her gaze. He listens with a faint crease in his brow, processing it all. "I believe I understand, yes. I have heard of atomic clocks."
"Oh, nice, I love curry," she chirps back. "Great! So," she leans over the designs and taps on one panel that shows two of the devices, one raised and suspended by some couple feet above the other.
"If you take two of them, and then you put them together, with one raised higher than the other, then you can recreate gravitational time dilation. That means that the clock that is lower, or closer to the earth's core, will be slower, by a degree so small it can only be measured by this type of clock. My hope is that if I can reproduce a natural time dilation, I'll be able to better understand what I'm capable of doing with my Time Arcanum that is... outside the ordinary curriculum, if you take my meaning," she cheeses with a broad grin.
"Of course," he replies, laughing a little. "You cannot stick to the curriculum; it is too small for you." His tone is admiring, as if that's a high compliment. "With this time dilation, you can slow things down - could you also speed them up?"
"I don't see why not," she shrugs. "The clocks will only observe the phenomenon; it's happening already. But if I can measure it myself and see how much I can bend those dilations, I think I will get a better sense of my limits, and maybe even some things I didn't know were possible because, well, there just aren't a lot of Acanthus theoretical physicists in town." She scratches at the side of her head. "None that I've found, anyway."
"Well, you will have to set the trend," he declares, folding his arms against his chest. "I want to help. Maybe I can learn something about the Time arcanum in the process, and I certainly like to learn new things."
He eagerly scoots over to the plans, leaning over them with a critical eye. He dissolves into the analytical side of himself, the cold and vast intellect unfurling over these plans. He reaches to grab a blue pencil, starting to make notes here and there. "The construct is exemplary," he murmurs, nodding. He tucks the pencil over his ear, fingers pattering against his lips. "Have you talked to Liezel about materials?"
Quinn devotes his entire attention to the diagrams, working in utter silence as he does. It's clear at times that he's forgotten River is there; he'll be startled by her speaking, or moving past him. Otherwise, he works with his head bent, gaze on his work, writing notes in his tiny, cramped handwriting to assemble the quantam clock.
River hands Quinn tools, even when he forgets she's there, and at one point disappears for a few minutes, returning with a few bottles of water, which she keeps away from the blueprints because then it would just be tempting Fate, and even she knows better. After some time, and some curry, and several bottles of water, most of which is consumed by River, the quantum clock hums is pieced together, meticulously, and the sun outside is hanging quite low in the sky. River claps a hand on Quinn's back. "That's amazing!" she praises. "I think... now we just turn it on and see... if it works."
Quinn frowns thoughtfully at the clock, scratching his temple absently with a screwdriver. "What happens if it works? It's not going to open a wormhole or something, right? Dandelion will not be happy with us if we do that."
"No, no, no, no," River laughs, waving a hand. "No, look," she points in through a small glass magnification lens. "This laser is going to strip one ion and isolate it in that chamber, and then introduce another, and they will oscillate back and forth. We've got two chambers, one on top, and one on the bottom. So, we turn it on, we let it run, and then we come back and check the readouts, and see how much of a time dilation there is. And then I'll fuck with it," she punctuates, reaching out to flick the machine on.
"I see, right," Quinn nods, fidgeting with the screwdriver. "It's that last part I just want to be sure of. We don't want to make the house into a TARDIS." He pauses, brow furrowing. "Wait, what am I saying; of course we do. Okay. I am ready."
"Are you sure we don't want to make the house into a TARDIS? Think about how cool that would be," River insists, but then she hits the switch, and both chambers make a small, thrumming noise as their lasers activate and begin to isolate one, and then two ions each. It is fairly anti-climactic, but the clocks start clicking down seconds on either chamber. "Okay! So, it will probably take," she checks her own watch, "A couple of days of running to detect a natural dilation."
Quinn leans down, hands on his knees to peer at the clock like it's a goldfish in a bowl. "Do we just..leave it alone until then?"
River picks up the instructions and, worryingly, turns them over to study the back, and then the front again. "Uh.... yeah, pretty sure."
"Are we supposed to watch it? Can you see the time dilation?"
River shakes her head. "It's not magic. It's just... science. We'll see the dilation as it's expressed on the clock, and then I'll try speeding the ions themselves up, or down, and see what that does, or how slow I can make it, or how fast," she returns, glancing back at the dual-readouts on the chambers.
He nods, lifting a mug of tea to his lips; he regards the clock over the rim. It's a brief pause - and then it's clear he's had some sort of curiosity or revelation, the way his eyes widen and brows lift. "Do you think it has a spirit?"
River blinks. "Do I think what has a spirit? The clock?"
"Yeah." He looks at the clock, rubbing his jawline. "I wonder if it has a spirit, and if it does, could I talk to it."
River ponders that. "I... honestly don't know. It... it might not, yet? I'm not sure what gives something a spirit or not, or becomes a spirit, or manifests one. I didn't quite cover that in my week with the Exorcist's Eye spell, and the Familiar I borrowed," she smiles. "How would you be able to tell if it did?"
"Cast Exorcist's Eye on it, I suppose," he laughs, folding his arms. "I'm not sure anything would come of it, anyway. I do want to learn more about spirits, though. What I have learned thus far has been fascinating, River. The world, everything in creation is alive in it's own way, both animate and inanimate. It is remarkable. Exhilirating, even."
River beams a smile at him. "Good! I hope it helped get your mind off that scary, Always-Sunny looking whiteboard situation you have going in the sunroom. And, I really appreciate your help. This would have taken me a long time, and probably a lot of Time spells to undo wrong moves," she laughs, "If it had just been me."
"Oh, I'm glad you asked," he admits, moving to lean against a table beside her; he seems comfortable, not adhering to his typical bubble of space. "I love building things. I had chances when I was younger to build things with my hands, and they were among my happiest times, I think. Even before I was an ar- a conservator," he explains, hugging his arms tight against his chest.
River arches one of her meticulously manicured eyebrows at Quinn's slip and correction, but otherwise makes no indication over it. "I think I spent most of my childhood running after shiny things," she admits with an easy grin, leaning back and melting into some of the available seating and kicking her feet out, crossing one over the other.
He laughs a little, gaze still honed on the clock. "Did you ever catch them?" He turns his head, gaze somewhere on her shoulder. "Or was it the thrill of the chase that mattered?"
"Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, no," River admits, apparently unbothered by his inability to make eye contact.
"What is your best memory of those activities? The most favorite time you chased something shiny."
River curves her features into a smile. "Ah, well, one time I followed a bird for thirty nine blocks and got lost, and wandered off the sidewalk over a small canal and hung out under a bridge with some ducks all day. There was graffiti. It wasn't until I revisited the memory much, much later that I realized most of the graffiti was extremely pornographic in nature. The whole thing was impossibly dingy and even kind of gross, but I was a kid, I thought it was magical. It was a great day."
|