thisavrou_log | ( OPEN ) what you don't know won't hurt you

Entry tags:

( OPEN ) what you don't know won't hurt you

Who: Ivan Vorpatril & VARIOUS (including YOU)
When: the month of march (and stuff backdated into feb.)
Where: all around the ship
What: catch all log post and OPEN LOG
Warnings: none!

I. BAR

If his cousin is bartending, and even when he’s not, Ivan can be found at the bar most evenings. Some days just for a quick drink in passing, other nights he’s there until late in various states of inebriation, never crossing the lie into intolerably so. Affable and open, it’s no hardship to start a conversation with him; get near him and he might just start up one himself.

II. ON THE JOB

Ivan’s job is the least demanding on the entire ship, and he likes it like that. There’s days he fills with playing the non-terrifying games on his MID, at least between running around and making sure Navigation and Communications aren’t at odds with each other. Which they don’t ever seem to be, which makes his job that much easier.

Most days he can be found at his desk, slowly working on whatever demands have been made of him to stretch out his workday. The mealtimes that he doesn’t run off to the mess hall for, he takes in Navigation — munching on whatever food they managed to cough up while watching the stars pass them. Either way, it’s quite easy to pull his attention from his job should someone require it.

(( if you want something more specific, please feel free to PM me or PP @

robutts ))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The bar is his normal haunt after he gets off from work but rarely does he have the promise of company. Not for lack of effort, honestly, but he’s dealing with a limited population here. That and it’s easier to go out for drinks with a pack of officers from Ops HQ back home than it is here. Miles isn’t Ops, Gregor is— well, Gregor is Gregor. And Aunt Cordelia and Bel Thorne are out of the question. But he fancied he’d hit it off well enough with Dutch, hoped that would continue into the near future. This whole experience in ship duty was going to slowly kill his social life, he just knows it.

But he’s there in the bar at their agreed time, having dug behind the bar for the best options that Miles keeps squirreled away. Maple mead is right out, but there’s something that tastes like brandy and decent wine. Either way, Ivan’s eschewed his ship uniform for his Barrayaran one because he knows what works, damn it, and while he fills out his Moira gear just fine, there’s something about his undress greens. Put his best jackbooted foot forward, as it were. He — very successfully, he might add — doesn’t continually check his MID for the time, just taps his fingers against the counter in an off-rhythm patter.

The one thing Dutch credited her mother as being right about was that cultivating relationships is just as important as cultivating a skill. Unfortunately, being in a completely new place, Dutch had no relationships on the Moira. In New York City she had tons of friends and upwards of fifty people who owed her favors. She wasn’t wealthy in money, but in people? Filthy rich. It was quite a change when she came aboard this ship. That was her main motivation for trying to organize a poker game - Building up the amount of friends she called hers.

She’d been delighted when Ivan wanted to meet for drinks and it wasn’t just because it would mean that she’d made an acquaintance of some sort. He’d come off as perfectly charming and therefore the meeting seemed promising. It gave her something to look forward to.

If this had been Earth she would have been able to dress better or at least to her satisfaction, but on the Moira all she had was her uniform. Dutch primped, of course, but when she looked at her reflection before leaving for the bar she felt unsatisfied with her appearance. She was sure she looked fine, but that uniform... Well, it wasn’t the most flattering thing she’d ever worn.

When she walked into the bar there was a smile on her face. “Ivan?” She canted her head to the side as she took in his appearance. “Hello!”

He brightens at her voice, turning in his seat and waving to her. "Dutch! Hey!" His accent is warm and guttural, vaguely similar to Russian, if someone dumped a bunch of Russians on a planet and abandoned it for seven hundred years. Whatever her reasons for coming are, Ivan's just pleased to both drink with someone attractive and drink at all. Less a need for connections and more raised by a woman who knew their value and so did it without thinking about it.

She looks nice, he also notes, as much as one can being newly arrived and forced to wear whatever clothes they had shoved at them. Mail days were, Ivan decides, some of the best days.

"Glad you could make it," he adds, gesturing to the seat next to him. "There's drink menus somewhere, with what this place has and their Earth equivalent--" It makes ordering so much easier if he doesn't have to guess.

His accent is always nice to hear. It reminds her of home and of her friend Vasiliy. She always liked the way his accent seemed to thicken in moments when emotions ran high. It’s also always good to see someone who is happy too see you. Her smile brightens slightly at the realization that he’s pleased to see her.

“Of course,” Dutch smiles. “I wouldn’t miss out on a chance to spend some time with an interesting stranger. Well, almost stranger. We have spoken a bit.” She slides into the seat next to him, crossing her legs.

“Oh, of course. I suppose there would be differences in the names of cocktails in space.” She nods. If there were different names going from bar to bar in New York City for various cocktails then it made sense that there would be different names for them in different galaxies. And then who was to say alcohol was the same out here? “Do they have anything similar to a martini?” She paused a moment, then winced. “Oh, I’m sorry, do you know what a martini is? I just sort of... Assumed. I shouldn’t have.”

"Not enough, surely," Ivan adds with another easy grin. But the question about drinks makes him laugh, and he nods, pointing to something he figures is close enough to what she wants.

"Different alcohol too, but I assure you -- I've personally tested their matches." What else is he supposed to do with his time cooped up on a ship with relatives? He's just glad his mother isn't here. Some people might doubt the chances of that, but with his cousins and aunt and hanger-on in the form of Bel, Ivan's not writing anything off.

Her second question just makes his smile widen. "My planet might have been cut off from galactic civilization for seven hundred years, but if there's one thing we haven't forgotten, it's alcohol. Although we do tend towards wine rather than anything mixed."

“Oh, never enough, of course.” She laughs lightly. Getting to know people is a favorite activity of Dutch’s. She enjoys peeling back an individual’s layers almost like a detective or a psychologist might, but her motives are much more innocent and can be blamed on simple curiosity.

Dutch nods at that. “I probably should have thought of that. Some planets might not have hops, grapes, potatoes and whatnot. This space travel is all very mind-bending. It’s...” She trails off, eyebrows wrinkled together for a moment. “Well, I guess interesting is an apt word for it. There hasn’t been a moment that’s passed that hasn’t been interesting.”

“I can appreciate a good wine.” Her lips curl into a smile. “Which is it you prefer, white or red? Or do you like something more like a rosé?” Dutch knew her way around wine, she just didn’t mention that it was because she dated a wino.

Ivan's a simple man, he might not keep her busy. It's a character flaw of his, but one that he likes and encourages.

"Don't tell me you're someone else from a place where there's no space travel." He doesn't say it like it's a bad thing, just resigned to this fact. "But interesting's a good word for it. As much as I want it to be dull and boring and not exciting until we get to wherever we're supposed to go." If only, right? Life would be so much better if it were like that; it's just not the case here, he's coming to find.

Impressed, Ivan grins at her. He does so appreciate someone who knows their way around alcohol. "Red. Whites are alright, but you can't go wrong with a nice red."

Dutch doesn’t mind simplistic personalities, so long as the person they belong to treat her nice enough. She’s kind to those who are kind to her and doesn’t usually grow tired of being treated well.

“Unfortunately, I’m from a planet that’s only sent up a manned mission to its moon. Other planets in our solar system have gotten unmanned missions courtesy of our space exploration program and I believe when I was brought here there was something in the works for a mission to the planet closest to us, but in comparison to the Moira our technology is rather backwards.” Dutch shrugs a little. Having been wrapped up in her own personal world, she never really paid too much attention to NASA. She only knows the things that made headlines.

“I’d probably prefer a duller trip, too. Something pleasant and uneventful. At least I’ve found myself without much work to do. The ship hasn’t come to much harm while I’ve been on board.” She smiles a little and gives a facial shrug.

“I knew someone who taught me a lot of recipes that call for full bodied red wines. They really add something to a meal, as part of the food or drank with it.” And in that moment she really craved coq au vin. “Whites are nice when you want something lighter and dryer.”

Ivan knows enough about history to pinpoint which planet she's talking about. Or at least make an educated guess. "Earth then, huh? Don't worry -- if it's anything like my universe you'll get there eventually. It's 3097, or thereabouts, where I'm from." And they really only got started on space travel in the 2100s. And then the United States got nuked, and, well. His year in London wasn't so bad.

As for it not coming to much harm, well. "Don't hold your breath for that to last. Although the last time something went wrong on the ship we almost froze to death or ended up dead at the hands of a walking skeleton. And uh. Not the short one wearing the hoodie over his crew uniform." Just so they're clear.

Dutch's words make Ivan smile. "You sound like m'mother. It's the sort of thing that's important to her -- that and what you can get out of serving what sort of wine to the right person, seating arrangements, everything like that." Lady Alys Vorpatril, social barracuda of Vorbarr Sultana's military caste and aristocracy. He's terrified of her, but then again: so is everyone else.

“Earth,” She echoes and nods. “Are we famous for our seemingly backwards space travel program?” Dutch smiles playfully. There’s no harm in joking about it since neither of them are involved with it, she figures. Hell, he’s apparently not even from the same planet as her.

Dutch winces hearing about the incident where the crew almost froze to death. “Here I was under the impression we were mostly safe.” As soon as she says it she thinks she’s a little dumb for uttering the words. Every science fiction movie she’s ever seen that involves space travel has involved some sort of life or death crisis. She switches the subject. “I’ve met him. The one in the hoodie. First person I met on the ship, actually. Greeted me with a knock-knock joke.” She grins, remembering.

“Your mother sounds like a proper socialite!” She smiles. Dutch isn’t the type to really care about who runs in which circle, but she has some respect for the people who put a lot of energy into their social lives. It’s an interesting world to her, almost like a secret society. The dinner parties, brunches... She’ll never be a part of it, but she can observe from the outside.

"More of the whole where it all began than that. Humanity's come a long way, technologically and geographically from my point of view." He grins, fishing out a wine from over the counter with an ease that betrays how often he's here, and fishes up two glasses, holding one out to her in a question. She mentioned something about mixed drinks earlier -- he'll get to that if she refuses. "I just finished up a year of Embassy duty in London."

Yeah, not so. Ivan wishes that were the case, keeps his head down enough to attempt to avoid it as best he can. But her remark about Sans makes his momentarily fallen face brighten. "That's the one. He came in looking for a drink. I didn't know he could, and it was a waste of a good drink." But Sans is pretty-- well, he's pretty okay overall. Ivan likes him.

At the remark about his mother, though, Ivan nods. "She runs the Emperor's social life singlehandedly." Wifeless, motherless, sisterless Ezar Gregor Vorbarra.

Dutch nods at the wine. Usually she prefers vodka, but she likes to spice things up now and then and all of their talk about wine has her craving the beverage. She could do with a glass right then. “London!” She smiles. “I moved there when I was fifteen. Lovely city.”

“He’s actually the one who pointed me in the direction of this place.” She smiles, remembering. “Told me it was a free bar and to enjoy the most expensive liquor I could find. Good tip, I suppose. I’ve done my fair share of sampling the alcohol since then.” Dutch smirks a little. “Now I’ve gone and made myself sound like a lush. I do drink in moderation.”

“My,” Her eyebrows raise, impressed. “I’m sure it must be difficult to handle the social calendar of royalty. At least more so than that of an average person. They seem to have more events to host and attend.”

“Is that the kind of thing you did back home? Living a life similar to your mother’s?” Dutch doesn’t mean to pry, of course, she’s only curious. It’s in her nature.

"It wasn't too bad, all things considered." Kidnapping and near death puts a damper on fondness for a particular city, what can he say? Moving on from those particular memories. Pouring her a glass, Ivan can't help but grin wider. "There's no threat of that with me, I'm Vor. Drinking is what we do. Well, one of the things." Often, and to excess. In public. The members of the military aristocracy have to occupy themselves somehow.

Holding out the wine to her, Ivan slides back into his seat - leaning back with a practiced, casual ease. "Oh yeah, he's got a lot on his plate at any given time. But m'mother doesn't seem to act like it's any more difficult than what the Emperor or Uncle Aral do. She just does it." As for what he does? "No, I'm a Lieutenant in the Imperial Service. Desk jockeying, but I don't mind."

It sounds like his experience with London wasn’t all that fantastic, so she doesn’t press for details. She does pick up on an unfamiliar word, though - Vor. “Vor,” She echoes. “Is that a... Race? It allows you to drink all you want?” If it does, Dutch is genuinely jealous. If she drank all she would like to drink her liver would pay the price. She might even die of cirrhosis. Such was the fate of someone who liked alcohol a little too much.

Dutch takes the glass and immediately sips at the beverage, raising her eyebrows in apparent approval. “Jobs behind desks can be just as interesting as any other job. My father never left his office and he used to tell me that every day was an adventure.” She smiles a little brighter when she brings up her father. Dutch misses him something fierce. He is the reason she took such a keen interest in computers, after all, even if that isn’t her job here on the Moira. She takes another slow sip of her wine.

Ivan laughs at that, and shakes his head. "No, I'm as human as you. It's--" Difficult to explain, and something that Miles and Gregor could do a much better job at explaining than Ivan. "The Vor are a military caste on my planet. But it goes beyond that, into something cultural." The ideals of sacrifice and service, of putting something before yourself every day of your life. Things that, again, his cousins are not only better at explaining but better at doing. "And the entire lot of us are famous on our planet for drinking to excess at the smallest excuse. Vorishly drunk means wandering around at the end of a party, vomiting into the bushes in the dark."

The mention of an interesting desk job makes him grin, shaking his head. "I'm fine with as minimal excitement as possible, thank you." Life is hard when you're third in line for absolute power. Head down, keep out of trouble, that's how Ivan works. "Yeah? What did he do?" She looks happier when she mentions her father, so he might as well ask.

“Ahhh.” Dutch nods, feeling only slightly foolish for the confusion. “I had an uncle that could’ve easily fit in with you lot, at least in that respect.” She jokes with a smirk on her face. “He was military, too. I didn’t know him very well. He lived on the opposite coast. Only ever met him at my father’s funeral, but my dad talked about him a lot.”

“So, is that something you find yourself doing very often?” Dutch tilts her head and eyes him curiously. “Vomiting into the bushes in the dark?”

She welcomes questions about her father. He’s someone she enjoys talking about. Even though he’s gone it’s never really painful sharing stories involving him. “He started out working for a phone company, but he found his niche in web security. When I was a little girl he took me to all of these hacking conventions meaning to get to know the enemy.” She puts special inflection on the words because they’re his, not hers. “He wound up respecting the people he was working against.”

So she's got a dead father as well. Ivan mentally raises a toast in his head for the both of them, but nods, understanding. Not that his uncle talked about his father, or his mother mentioning him more than in passing. As for her question, he grins. "No, because I know how to hold my wine." Unlike said uncle, thankfully.

Hacking convention? "Not to sound unknowing or anything but-- hacking?" For someone in the future, Ivan's grasp of technology sure does hover around things someone in the eighties could have imagined.

“An enviable talent! Not to mention a good one to have if one is to drink very often.” With that, she takes a sip of her wine as if talking about drinking reminded her that the glass was in her hand. “I suppose I’m fairly good at that, as well. I can’t remember the last time my night ended with me, well, you know. I do get hangovers from time to time, though.”

Surprise shows in Dutch’s expression. “Really? That term hasn’t stood the test of time? Huh. I suppose things do change... Well, hacking is sort of like manipulating a computer, usually through the internet-- Is the internet still a thing?” She wrinkles her eyebrows slightly. For all she knows ‘internet’ could be as outdated to Ivan as ‘ARPANET’ is to her.

"They don't have instant hangover cure pills where you're from? They're not perfect -- partly because I think doctors want us to suffer the consequences out of some twisted idea of deserving it. But they're good when I have to go into work the next day." Doing Ops work, even paperwork, is never pleasant when your head can't stop pounding.

Her question makes him remember the discussion he had with Allison earlier, and he shakes his head. "We don't have it. It could work in our universe on a planetary level, but if Captain Illyan got word of it he'd first have a fit and then aim to control it with an iron fist and succeed." The casualness with which Ivan makes this statement indicates that he sees approximately nothing wrong with that idea. "We've got security in place to prevent people from digging where they're not supposed to with closed networks, if that's similar." So then hacking would be getting around that? Maybe it's a good thing that doesn't happen regularly, or there'd be a lot more people spending time in ImpSec HQ.

Although Ivan's heard that the cells have been recently renovated into something that isn't obviously dungeon-like. Nice.

Dutch’s eyes go wide and her jaw drops for a moment. “Instant what now??” She leans forward just slightly. “You have instant hangover cure pills?” A big smile spreads across her face. “Oh, Ivan, I am jealous of you.” All she could think of were the miserable mornings after she could have avoided if she could have only gotten her hands on some of those pills. Of course, it sounded like there were some side effects to taking them, but there were side effects to everything, it seemed.

“Simply put, yeah, hacking would be people digging where they’re not supposed to. My dad worked against that, trying to patch holes and keep people out, so to speak. He’s the reason I got into technology.” She smiles faintly. Her father probably wouldn’t have been so proud of some of the things she’d done back home. Planting malware in the fiber optics center to all but shut down the internet in New York City for a time... It hadn’t been Dutch’s finest moment. She’s grown since then, though, and look at her, now! Patching holes in spaceships and sharing wine with wonderful almost-strangers!

“I can’t imagine a world without the internet. It must be so different from the one I live in.” Dutch finds herself staring off into space as she sips at her wine. After a moment she snaps back to reality, looking to Ivan with a charming smile. “I bet it’s amazing in some ways.”

He grins, laughing at her expression. "I'm from the future," he says by way of explanation, spreading his hands and arms out. "We've got to have something besides the flying cars." Which they also have, thank you. As for her father, well, "He seems like the sort of guy you'd want to have around."

At least on Barrayar. And, speaking of Barrayar -- "We've got comm consoles, secured and unsecured. And access to information in various databases if you know where to look on the secured ones. But Barrayar itself?" Hm. How to describe his home planet... "It's different than most of the galaxy. We were isolated from the rest of the Nexus for seven hundred years, see."

And then they got rediscovered and then were thrown into a twenty year long occupation against a planetary force using nukes while they still used a horse calvary.

“You lucky dog.” She gives him a playful shove. “I was truly born in the wrong era.” Dutch gives a jokingly woeful sigh and shakes her sigh, but then nods her head at the comment about her father. “He certainly was very good at his job. Very passionate. His superiors loved him.” There’s a nostalgic smile on her face. She was only a child when he died, but her memories of him are very vivid.

“Was that isolation a good thing or a bad thing?” Her eyebrows wrinkle slightly as she listens, quite interested in learning more about all of it - his world, his era. Ivan didn’t seem all that different from many of the people Dutch had met on Earth, but his world sounded incredibly different. It amazed her.

Ivan grins wider, laughing. "Well we've got ways for you to survive into the future, if you're careful. Although I wouldn't recommend cryofreezing yourself for no good reason." Part of him wonders if he should ask what happened to her father -- although if she turned it around on him he's not sure he'd like mentioning it in detail. Better leave that, then.

"Depends on who you ask," he says, as apolitically as possible. He didn't survive to twenty-five by blabbing about his Progressive leanings, although Ivan's not sure what the rest of his planet expects from him. He's a Vorpatril, he's related to the most progressive Regent they've ever had. Not to mention the most progressive Emperor. "The Conservatives like the way things were back then, socially -- mostly because I don't think even they'd have a leg to stand on if they tried to argue that horses were better than lightflyers, or that we should continue using swords while the rest of the galaxy has nerve disrupters. The Progressives tend to embrace galactic culture as a whole, picking up the parts of it to use for Barrayar's benefit." Ivan shrugs, considering. "The Time of Isolation is what it is, Bloody Centuries and all. You'd have to ask a historian for an expert opinion."

“Cryofreezing. You really have everything, don’t you?” She waggles her eyebrows. Dutch is jealous, of course. She’s always been on the pulse of new things. What else can one expect from a person whose career is centered in technology? Still, she takes comfort in knowing that Ivan doesn’t have the internet like she does.

“I suppose that’s how it is with most things. Everyone has an opinion. There are at least two sides to every issue.” She shrugs and takes a sip of her wine. “I’m not sure how I’d get along in your time. I’ve always leaned more towards liberalism politically and I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I’ve known many people who have told me that’s a fault, but I’ve never managed to correct it.” Dutch sighs. It’s the truth. Saying too much or saying the wrong thing has gotten her into many a fix. Surprisingly, even though it’s still true to this moment, she’s gotten better. She’s more tactful than she was as a teenager. Perhaps once she hits thirty she’ll be alright.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( OPEN ) what you don't know won't hurt you

DUTCH

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject