text | un: Nero

[cadiastands]

[Did it take Mira like 20 minutes to enter a username because she expected the system to assign her one and then froze up in fear of doing it wrong when she had to choose it herself? Maybe.]

If someone is qualified to teach me the proper rituals for the use of these devices, I would appreciate it.

[tl;dr Mira, despite being from a space empire in the 401st century, thinks there are animist spirits inside her phone and terminal that will get mad and refuse to work if she does the wrong thing.]

Comments

un: yudonta

[yondu]

I could. There aren't any rituals besides pressing the right pictures, though. Depending on whether you're being serious or joking about that word choice in particular.

[Yondu doesn't know. He's from a world where science and magic are a thing in combination.]

[cadiastands]

Quite serious.

[What, don't you know about machine spirits???]

[yondu]

Alright. Where can I find you at?

[Nope, but he's met Asgardians and he worked with a sorcerer and he'll buy it.]

[cadiastands]

Room 301.

[The phone keyboard is too tiny and she doesn't like it, so she's at the terminal, hunting and pecking.]

[yondu]

[And a couple of minutes later? She gets a knock on her door by a blue guy. Also not any sort of tech priest or wizard or any sort of religious folk. Just a normal guy with an implant in his head and a strange color compared to everyone else in the building.]

It's Yondu. I'm here to take a look at your computer an' phone. [He taps lightly on the door.]

cw: space racism

[cadiastands]

A moment.

[Mira's voice is pleasant, muffled somewhat by the door, but still loud enough to carry. The expression on her face, however, goes from neutrally polite to unconcealed disdain bordering on disgust the moment her eyes focus on Yondu.]

Ah. Well, make it quick.

[yondu]

[Now what the hell has he done to deserve that? He just showed up. He's not been offensive on purpose or anything. What the hell?]

[But she's got him curious, so rather than just never-minding-the-fuck-off he comes right in and over to her computer.]

So what is it that's got you all bent outa shape?

[Besides him.]

[cadiastands]

[She was raised to be a violent xenophobe, oops. Fortunately, she thinks he's just human mutant...whom she was also raised to distrust, just not as violently. Also fortunately, she thinks it's beneath her dignity to pitch a fit.]

I've not got the field manual, so I don't know any of the proper rituals, and I don't want to test their patience. The last thing I need is machine spirits deciding they don't like me.

[Are they going to get mad that a mutant is touching them? Mira's really not sure about these theological edge cases, and she might be hovering a bit.]

[yondu]

Ain't any spirits in these. But if they start actin' funny, you got this program that can run a 'defrag'. This one that's an antivirus. [He shows her the search on how to look them up with each one.] Sometimes it's easy as runnin' a restart. Lets the software update, if it's somethin' that still even gets updates. An' with that, you click on this little symbol. Says restart right there. Click that shit an' it'll go through the motions.

[Even deep space technology has made him suffer at the hands of running updates. He chicken pecks a little, just because his language isn't quite melding with a qwerty style keyboard. He's used to something else.]

No spirits to make angry in this universe but tech always manages to piss you off if it ain't workin' right yet.

[Then he looks over at her again, and motions between 'em.] Okay, so. Do I look like some ex of yours, lifelong family enemy, or do you got somethin' against blue people? 'Cause when it comes to the stink-eye you're about makin' me need to light a match.

[cadiastands]

[For all she's a huge space racist, Mira's also an attentive pupil who's writing down everything he does in a small notebook with a double-headed eagle insignia on the cover, her neat cursive filling several pages over the course of the lesson.]

You would be... [dead] ...an unusual sight in the Imperium.

[A lifetime of indoctrination is warring with her upper-class manners, and she's trying very hard not to let the the former win. He did help her.]

[yondu]

Startin' to gather I'm the severe minority in most places. Funny, seein' as how Terrans are in mine. Is that what you are?

[He holds out his hand for the second bit of help.]

Let me see your phone. Gonna show you how to lock an' unlock it.

[cadiastands]

I'm Cadian, not Terran.

[The Imperium of Man is so old and so sprawling that calling humans by their original homeworld hasn't been a thing for basically all of recorded history, and Mira corrects him like someone saying they're from Boston, not New York.]

I know how to unlock it. The instructions are right there on the screen.

[A little huffy--she's a layman, not an idiot. (Let's not talk about how many tries it took her to figure out what "swipe" meant.) Still, she unplugs the phone and hands it over.]

[yondu]

Well, glad you got your priorities straight.

[He boggles briefly, before showing her the phone again.] Not talkin' about just swipin'. I'm talkin' about goin' into settin's and doing passwords and prints an' stuff. That way if someone steals your phone, they cain't read all your private conversations.

Not like the government isn't doin' that already but you don't want your average Joe or Dick takin' a peek at your daily schedule.