IC INBOX for The Last Voyages

[magician_king]

You know what to do.

Comments

[kissthatgoodbye]

"I - was..." Alec tips his head, eyes narrowing on Quentin ever so slightly.

"For starters, I wasn't thinking about it as a project at all. This whole pattern was just an observation I've made."

[magician_king]

"I don't really think of us as emblematic of the need to unify the barge."

Doesn't matter, whatever;

"Do you want it to be a project? Or does that feel like a bad idea."

[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."

[magician_king]

"Cool cool."

Agrees Quentin, and smiles, surrendering the device back over.

"I know Jedao has some really good coma data too."

[kissthatgoodbye]

Alec frowns over his communicator screen, plugging in the last few numbers while he's at it, just for completeness sake.

"What's the subject of this book again? I feel like we've tangented off to one side."

[magician_king]

"It's about giving people the answer to their questions. Emotional interpretation is up to the individual, but we can give them the math."

The deepest gift he wishes he'd ever received.

"I need to talk to Bill, too. He tracks this stuff like crazy. If I show him your stuff I bet I can get him to give me- ergo you- his."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"Bill?" Alec makes a face, glancing across at him, but stops his kneejerk reaction because he patently hasn't given Quentin anything that wasn't already public at one time or another.

"Somehow I'm not surprised." It's not a no, anyway.

[magician_king]

"He's trying to crack some kind of morality algorithm."

He says, and shakes his head.

"Which I empathize with."

Sometimes it feels weird to him, too.

[kissthatgoodbye]

"I don't trust him, so I don't talk to him much," Alec admits. To great shock and awe, no doubt.

"He seems like one of those types you can get into trouble without even noticing."

[magician_king]

"He's totally untrustworthy."

He agrees; this has never stopped Quentin.

"I wish I could figure out how to talk him back off the weird edge he's out on, but his brand of batshit is above my paygrade."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"Mine too," Alec agrees. "I don't do hope very well, but mostly I'm just hoping he doesn't jump off that edge while I'm still here, 'cause I got basically nothing for dealing with him."