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

[whatdidisay]

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 ))

Comments

[curiousnotmalicious]

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.”

[whatdidisay]

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.

[curiousnotmalicious]

“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.

[whatdidisay]

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."

[curiousnotmalicious]

“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.