damned_institute | DAY 23: Shift 2, Game Room

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DAY 23: Shift 2, Game Room

Rukia had been about to ask Renji what that 'never mind' had been all about, but the intercom clicked on, interrupting her. Right away, the nurse approached, cheerful as always. "Okay, Shiori, would you like to go to the Sun Room, the Game Room, or the Music Room?"

Rukia stared at the woman, open-mouthed, for a moment. Hadn't the man just said that adults were to go to the showers...? And then Rukia realized that, yes, she looked like she was about 15 years old. Great. She almost protested, but, remembering her vow to be good and try to get information from the staff, she smiled, saying, "Aah, how about the Game Room? That sounds... fun."

Casting one last unreadable look at Renji, Rukia followed the nurse out of the library, to the room next door. Really, she felt like she should be trying harder to chat up the nurse, but she was still in shock over Ichigo's disappearance. And things with her and Renji...

Padding over to one of the large, brown couches, Rukia sat down. The couch was surprisingly comfortable, so she kicked off her slippers and tucked her feet up. Taking out her notebook and pen, she stared at the notes she'd made during breakfast, not really seeing them.

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"The rats were the same. The smell was the worst part, almost." And, of course, the fact that there'd been so many of them. But nightshift had ended, so it had all been okay, anyway.

The warning about the 'machine with light sword things' was duly noted and filed away. If people were thinking to warn about something, it was probably bad enough to keep an eye out for. It wasn't the warning that caught his attention, though. He'd heard about the various monsters before, but not...

"MU rooms?"

Ed nodded in agreement, wrinkling his nose at the memory. Kicking that cat, watching the automail sink into rotted flesh and mangy fur. It wasn't something he was keep to experience again.

"Every so often," he began, piecing together everything he he knew about what happened, which, admittedly, wasn't all that much. "They take people at night and do 'experiments' on them." The disgust he placed on the word was obvious and scathing. "They torture them. We were trying to rescue a friend."

He had to consider that for a bit, puzzle pieces fitting together in his head. Kurama had said that tonight would be easier because no one would be brainwashed. Was there a relationship?

"So... sometimes they make people fight, and sometimes they torture them? Do they do anything else at night?" Besides, of course, the monsters and who knew what else that roamed the halls.

"Besides send those creatures after us?" Ed asked, smirking slightly. As far as he was concerned, that was quite enough to be going on with.

He thought for a long moment before he hit on something, the smirk fading from his face. "I don't know if you read the bulletin. Sometimes... sometimes people go missing. Don't know if they're dead or what." He swallowed thickly, remembering some of what Roy and Lust had told him on his first day. "Sometimes they come back, I think but they don't remember anything about being here before. Like they said... a friend said I'd been here before, but I don't remember anything about it."

He laughed. Nothing like slightly morbid jokes to break the ice. "Besides that."

So, people randomly left. And if the Head Doctor had been telling the truth, some people they knew had already been here and been... changed somehow. Was that why people left?

Well, this conversation had gone downhill, hadn't it? Omi nodded at the cards. "Do you know any games for just two people?"

Ed sighed and leaned back in his chair, stretching his flesh arm out for a second. The massage Alfons had given him had done wonders, removing the ache from his shoulders.

"It sounds messed up, I know. But I've seen it. My brother was here but he disappeared for several days." He fixed Omi with an intent look. "But he was here again yesterday and didn't remember a thing."

The changed of subject didn't really take him by surprise. Things had been getting a little morbid. He thought for a moment, running over the card games he knew. Pontoon wouldn't work with only two, poker needed more people. "Can you play cribbage?" he asked finally. "I think i saw a board here when I came in."

"Oh. Sorry." Omi hadn't meant to pry into what was probably a sore spot. He wasn't entirely sure he had pried, but he apologized just to be safe. Wouldn't do to chase off someone he was getting along with over something so touchy.

He shook his head. "I've never heard of it. I usually play computer games when I have free time. Would you mind teaching me?"

Ed shook his head, smiling slightly for real this time. "I know he's here now, so I can protect him." And hopefully Al could work as he social side as well. Ed really sucked at being personable.

He blinked in confusion at Omi's mention of computer games, tilting his head slightly to look at the other boy. "What're computer games?" he asked after a moment. To be fair, the question should probably have been 'What's a computer', but it was the game part that was important.

Omi didn't think he'd been doing too badly. They hadn't started yelling at each other, and no one had stormed off, so all-in-all it wasn't a bad conversation.

He blinked back at Ed, confused by his confusion. "Computer games. Like MMOs and console ports and stuff like that. A lot of them you play by yourself, but the online games have team aspects, too."

He realized that description really didn't say much, so he shrugged. "I guess they're not really easy to explain. They're fun."

Ed listened intently to the explanation, his eyes widening at all of the unfamiliar terms. Never had he heard so many terms that he didn't understand in one sentence. Or at least, not since he'd very first begun learning alchemy.

"What's 'online'?" he asked curiously, and then frowned slightly. Actually, if he wanted to learn anything, he should probably ask the very basic question first of all.

"What's a computer?"

...Okay, obviously time to start from the beginning. Omi was a hacker. He could do this. Totally.

"A computer is a machine that people use for different things. They're smart machines, which means they can do a lot of things without a person telling them what to do at every step. Like, mine at home can check the weather and tell me when there's going to be a storm." That was a simple enough explanation, right? Hopefully he wouldn't have to go into all the math and stuff.

"'Online' is when a computer connects to the internet, which is a network of information that lets people from all over the world connect to each other and to the information stored on servers, which are computers dedicated just to the internet. They used to run over the phone lines, but it's gotten a lot faster."

"How don't you know what this stuff is?" He tilts his head, watching Ed. Was Ed from a different universe like the girl he'd met yesterday?

So a computer was some kind of machine which did things without being told. And it could tell you the weather. And somehow connect to a giant library through phonelines. It all sounded so incredible. So alien. Omi must be from a world in the far future or something to have such technology.

"How do they work?" he asked eagerly. "Do they run on electricity like radios do?" That was the most advanced piece of technology from his world that he could think of. Maybe it was some kind of very advanced radio. He frowned slightly, thinking of another question. "And what can they use instead of phone lines to communicate?"

He couldn't help it. The urge to ask question and learn was more than Ed could resist.

He gave Omi a slightly embarrassed look at his question. "We don't have those where I'm from," he explained. "We have phones though. And radios. And steam trains and cars. No computers though."

"Huh. So you're from the past. Or, the past from my world, anyway." That was odd and yet really really cool.

Omi had no problem at all with answering questions. He liked talking about computers, anyway.

"Like I said, they're hard to explain if you've never seen one. They run on electricity like radios, yeah, but they take a lot more power to run." He ran through the basics of computer functioning ~~which his mun must handwave because she is not a l33t h4x0r~~.

"They can use cable and fiber optics and that sort of thing instead of phone lines. They're like... really high load-bearing phone lines. Cable lines can carry images for TVs and things like that, so they're bigger to carry more bytes. Um. Units of information, I guess. It's kind of like the difference of using a straw or drinking straight from the glass. Sort of."

Breakfast was over, and still no Kaoru (and a few days with no Haruhi, for that matter). Hikaru frowned, annoyed, and allowed himself to be ushered to the next "activity" while his nurse gushed about all of the different activities in each room. He'd been here for a few days already. He knew pretty damn well what happened in each room, and he didn't need that idiot woman treating him like some sort of retarded kid, especially because she used words like "cool" and "awesome" in her descriptions. THAT irked him to no end. He was firmly of the opinion that those over the age of twenty-five should NOT talk like they were fifteen, especially in the case of nurses who were trying to "connect" with their teenaged wards.

So he told her so.

And that turned out to be a rather bad move, on his part.

The affronted nurse told the Host that if he didn't want to appreciate his choices, she'd choose for her. And so, ten minutes later, the beefy woman manhandled him into a random room (the Game Room, apparently), told him to WORK ON THOSE SOCIAL SKILLS, YOUNG MAN, and left, muttering darkly.

Well, it wasn't all bad. Sitting, less than ten feet away, was Ed--the boy Tamaki had kissed yesterday. Perfect.

Hikaru sidled over and plunked himself down, doing his best to smile pleasantly at the metal-armed kid and the guy with him. "Hey. What's up?"

"I guess," Ed said consideringly. It was definitely an odd concept to be that far in someone else's past, that they had so much more technology than his own world did. Maybe he should get Omi to explain everything to him and then when he got home he could become a great inventor. Those things couldn't be too difficult to make with alchemy, after all.

He could only stare as Omi explained about these computer things. It sounded more complex than any technology he'd ever heard of. Chips and boards and phone lines and optics and things he'd never even heard of. This was a lot more complex than making a radio. "So how common are these computer things?" he asked. They must be hugely expensive if they were so complex. And not many people had phone lines in their homes.

He looked up warily when one of the twins, Tamaki's friends, sidled up to them. He returned the smile though, gesturing to the cribbage board and cards. "We were gonna' play cribbage."

"They're pretty common. Almost everyone has one these days. I have two, a laptop and a desktop. The desktop is bigger, but it has more memory. The laptop is really small and easy to carry around." He measured out a space about the size of a large notebook to illustrate. "That's what most people have."

Except that most people didn't have access to all the programs and tech Omi had installed on his computers. He didn't figure that would need to be mentioned.

He smiled at the new arrival. "Ed was going to teach me, anyway. I don't know how much actual playing I'll be able to do. I'm Omi, by the way."

Hikaru had arrived just in time to hear the boy Ed was sitting with explaining computers and he nodded. "Yeah, my brother and I both have our own laptops and desktops. Pretty much everyone has a computer now. Your world doesn't have computers, Ed?" he asked, genuinely interested. It was weird that there were other worlds...but it sort of stood to reason that technology would be different.

"Never played," he shrugged. "But if Ed's going to teach you, I can watch. Oh, and I'm Hikaru. Nice to meet you."

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DAY 23: Shift 2, Game Room

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