IC INBOX for The Last Voyages

[magician_king]

You know what to do.

Comments

[credere]

"If he came here I would kill him. Every day. So he couldn't bother you."

Credence says, matter-of-factly. Loyal, if not entirely practical.

[magician_king]

He grins- and steals his hot chocolate, just for a sip.

"Please don't- but please keep wanting to just a little bit. But no murder, I want you to graduate some day."

[credere]

"Even a good person would want to kill him every day," Credence says, quietly, reaching for his hot chocolate so he can have some too. "But I won't."

In his capacity as a bad person. Because Quentin asked.

[magician_king]

"Weird calibration question that I need your help with, as my friend who can be honest with me. Did you really not know I was staying when I kind of... didn't leave for so long? Like I don't remember what I said, but it seem like I was about to go?"

[credere]

Credence stares down into his mug.

"...I wasn't sure. I worried every day that you might go."

Guess how good for him that was.

[magician_king]

"I'm so sorry. I was being a jackass. I have a bad habit of deciding not to think about things that stress me out, and I- forgot. That other people were hinging on me knowing what the fuck I was doing. Normally it's just me."

He says, and clears his throat.

"I'm really, really sorry. And I'm for sure staying. At least until it starts to feel unhealthy, and if it does I promise to talk about it well in advance of just vanishing. Unless the Admiral fires me, obviously."

[credere]

"...I worry about what I'll do if that happens. If you or Shiro disappear. I don't know that I'll want to - be in control."

He still really has no realistic outlet for anger or grief.

[magician_king]

"What do you hope would happen to me, if I lost you and Jedao suddenly?"

He asks, because sometimes it's easier to imagine these things outside yourself.

"I'd be fucking- I'd be destroyed, I'd burn this boat down. What would you tell me I should do?"

[credere]

"I - I don't know. I'd want you to keep going. Or - go home, maybe, if you didn't want to be here any more."

[magician_king]

"Yeah, but- if I can't. How would you go about becoming okay here?"

He's not sure if this makes sense, and not sure what he's driving at, exactly.

[kissthatgoodbye]

"No, but if we were going to do anything together in this environment that might potentially involve other people, we should at least be able to work together."

So in a way, yes, they're perfect as an emblem of the Barge and its inability to unify.

"Tell me what you're thinking, and I'll weigh in after."

[magician_king]

"Has either of us ever well with others in a normal environment?"

He asks, but he's just stalling so he can think that through.

What would he want to do?

"I'd like there to be a book."

[kissthatgoodbye]

He's shocked. No really, look at this face.

"An entire book."

[magician_king]

"Those pamphlets are fucking anemic, and they contain zero contingencies and negative numbers of citations."

He defends, aggrieved.

"Books are useful for people who don't want to deal with how shitty other people are at explaining things."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"Books are useful for people with wobbly tables." Alec does not believe this and spends too much time picking up and dropping off books in the library to even pretend, but Quentin does best when he's annoyed.

Okay but no seriously: "The pamphlets are anemic because of the inconsistency of the environment and the small sample group. The few patterns that hold are so inconsistent and generalized as to be useless, or dependent on the Admiral, or both."

[magician_king]

"I feel like a series of case studies would be a useful way to approach the situation."

He says, and then finds his eyebrows raising.

Huh.

"You're a data geek, right?"

[kissthatgoodbye]

Alec's eyebrows, meanwhile, draw together.

"No," he says primly. "I'm good at multitasking and processing."

[magician_king]

"Blow me. I mean you actually keep a mental tab on who's on board? Like you know how many inmates and wardens there are right now, and you can match names to faces and everything?"

Says Quentin, who has only recently figured out that Mikodez and Nico are different people.

[kissthatgoodbye]

"If you want," Alec replies casually, popping a piece of fruit into his mouth.

Then pausing halfway through chewing before finishing. "Okay, one: yes I do and yes I can. Two, that doesn't qualify me for being a data geek, that qualifies me for having eyes that work."

[magician_king]

Quentin chokes ever so slightly on his sip of coffee. But it keeps his feathers ever so slightly ruffled, he'll give Alec that.

"So do you know the approximate graduation rate?"

[kissthatgoodbye]

Alec, picking up his orange juice, mutters into drinking it: "How do you want that categorized?"

He's not a geek, you're a geek, shut up.

[magician_king]

"Number of inmates who enter into the system. Amount of them who eventually graduate. Amount of them who leave without graduating. We should probably track the average timespan of the stay of both populations."

He says, swaying his head side to side as he thinks of other measures, ticking off each point mentally.

"Number of wardens who enter the system. Number who leave without achieving a permanent pairing. Number who leave without graduating their permanent. Number who succeed in getting a deal. Average timespan of each. Number of wardens who've gone on to multiple deals."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"Oh, is that all?" Alec asks drily.

Then he pulls his communicator out of his pocket, pulls up a private message to himself, and slides it across to Quentin.

There are a lot of numbers and not much else, arranged with a series of symbols and in an order that only someone that does physics for fun would be able to translate to not every one of those data points, but the necessary figures to work with to get the ones that are missing.

"The last row are percentages of probability for the current population."

[magician_king]

He reads it, and makes the inferences easily, looking up from it to him and smiling.

"Can I publish this? Not the current stuff, the historical data."

[kissthatgoodbye]

Alec nods, holding out his hand so he can forward the appropriate pieces to Quentin's communicator.

"I don't want credit though. Anyone with enough time on their hands and an entrepreneurial spirit can find this."