I was just a silent girl...

[designed2kill]

Four--well, technically Luka Petrovic now--is in a coffee shop.  She's been saving up the change she's been finding for all of today, and now she finally has enough change to buy herself a pastry.  She hasn't had one since a couple of weeks ago, when she had that picnic with Babel in the park.  Four considers her options carefully, and settles on a

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[kineticmachine]

Arlin comes into the coffeeshop a bit later, briefcase in hand. He notices Four immediately, but orders and gets his drink before walking over to her table. "May I?" he asks, nodding toward the empty chair across from her.

Really, it's just luck that she happens to be in the same place as him, but it'll give him a chance to discuss things (such as that journal entry) anyway, without having to resort to having Duncan use the journals for him -- that always feels idiotic, much as it's a tactic to keep the journals from revealing his true name.

[designed2kill]

It may not be noticeable to most of the people in the coffee shop, but Luka tenses ever so slightly when she sees Arlin come in. She doesn't tense up a lot, and it's not enough to make her stop eating her danish, but her wariness has just ratcheted up a couple of notches. Arlin was a little bit like the head trainer at the Laboratory; she didn't want to do anything to upset him for fear of punishment. Add that to the fact that she's only spent a limited amount of time with him so she's still unsure of his reactions, and you've got a recipe for one paranoid Luka. She nods for Arlin to sit down, still clutching the diminished remains of her pastry.

[kineticmachine]

Arlin sits down, keeping his stance as casual as possible; he's noticed that Four (he doesn't know to call her Luka yet) seems wary, and given the last time they were in the same room as each other he was questioning her after she attacked him, it's probably best to just play this one softly. You don't startle the scared attack dog, that sort of thing.

Thus, the lipquirk smile he gives her is nicer than he'd give to most. "I saw your journal entry," he says, taking a sip of his coffee. "My apologies; I hadn't realized you'd needed more than was offered." In fact, he'd rather epically underestimated how well Four could take care of herself, really. Granted, he had just kind of handed her off to Anka and put the whole thing out of his mind, but that was clearly an oversight on his part, to be rectified.

[designed2kill]

"I have an enhanced me-ta-bol-izm," Luka pronounces the word carefully, if slightly incorrectly, "so I need to eat lots of food."

Aside from the food issue, she's actually been getting along remarkably well, all things considered. Her wardrobe could use quite a bit of work, given that it's all poorly fitting and stolen from the Salvation Army, but it at least gets washed on a regular basis. Laundry duty for the Laboratory had been one of the chores for the CSPs, assigned because it was relatively difficult them to do anything dangerous if one of them was getting rebellious thoughts--unlike, say, cooking. And her apartment is creepily clean, because she's still somewhat afraid to move or touch things in it, even after her talk with Babel. Really, the only big issues she a has right now are the food thing and a lack of things for her to do.

[kineticmachine]

Arlin nods at her explanation. "Understandable," he says. "An oversight on my part." He pauses again, for another sip of coffee and to formulate his next sentence, because that's what Arlin does. "There is a stipend set up for you. It's not much, but being as you're a Wanderer and jobs are few and far between, we can divert some expenses into an account for you. Of course, there'll be more once we've sucessfully completed a job, but it's at least enough to buy basic staples." Never mind that it's kind of an automatic thing -- you're not necessarily on the payroll, but at least it's something to tide them over until the next job. Never let it be said that the Organization doesn't take care of its members

[designed2kill]

Luka stares at Arlin in blank incomprehension. Arlin, you're going to have to explain better than that, she barely knows what regular money is to begin with. This talk of accounts and stipends is way beyond her. Even the concept of being paid for a job is something she's never heard of before.

"I told her I worked for Aaron," Luka tells Arlin. That's not bad, right? Is she going to get punished? Four clutches the remains of her pastry tighter.

[kineticmachine]

That sort of blank incomprehension is hard to miss, though for a moment Arlin stares right back, trying to figure out what was so confusing about his statement. "You do know what money is, don't you?" he asks, trying to keep some of the acidity out of his voice. Why had none of this been explained to her by someone preferably not him? "Given that you're employed by us, and have no real means of getting a secondary, legitimate job, we can provide you with enough to live on."

At her answer, he just nods, satisfied. "Good," he says. As far as he knows, Babel has no idea what alias he's using and Aaron is a common enough name that even if she did know it, she wouldn't be able to definitively connect it with him.

[designed2kill]

"I know about paper money and coins," Luka tells Arlin, "but I don't know what you mean by accounts and stipends." Most anyone other than Luka would have been offended by Arlin's question, but she reacts to it as calmly as if she were talking about the weather.

She relaxes somewhat when Arlin isn't angry about her telling Babel that she worked for him. Cautiously, she begins to nibble at the somewhat squished pastry remains she's still holding in her hands. There's not much left, so it's quickly gone.

[kineticmachine]

Arlin sighs, resisting the urge to facepalm. He's getting very good at doing so. "The account would be a bank account set up for you when you became an employee of the company," he says, unsure whether that's even going to be an explanation or not. "To manage the money we pay you -- that's the stipend, for now, until we have a real job to do. I suppose someone will have to teach you about finances." That person will not be Arlin. Arlin does not teach. Well, not finances. Though Four wouldn't be the worst pupil he's had; he has a hunch she's probably a lot quicker on the uptake than most anyway. (Well, if he didn't suspect that, he wouldn't have 'recruited' her in the first place.)

The look of mild annoyance turns into one of mild bemusement (really, what changes is the slant of his mouth and a quirk of an eyebrow) at how fast the pastry disappears, and he takes another sip of his coffee. He doesn't say anything -- nothing to say, in his opinion -- but he's vaguely amused at how she inhaled the pastry.

[designed2kill]

Many people that come into contact with Luka want to facepalm at some point during their conversations with her. Her complete naivete about how just about everything tends to have that effect on people.

"I don't know what a bank account is," she says quietly, hoping that Arlin wouldn't be too mad at her for being stupid. The trainers tended to call her that a lot, when she didn't do something exactly right. That is, when they weren't calling her a brainless fuckup. The trainers weren't exactly known for their patience and understanding with the CSPs.

Now that the pastry is gone, Luka turns her attention to licking the remaining bits of frosting off of her fingers. It's kind of adorable, really.

[kineticmachine]

Arlin takes another sip of coffee, then sets the cup down and steeples his fingers over it, trying to think of a simple way to explain a bank account. "The bank account would be a holding place for the money we pay you, more secure than putting bills in a briefcase and handing it over." And more trackable for the O. "They manage your money, and when you need some you used a bank card to either get cash out of it, or simply skip the middle step and pay for whatever you need with the card and the bank handles the subtraction for you." He pauses. "We'll get you the card as soon as possible. And possibly someone to explain this to you with more patience than I."

Silently, he passes her a napkin. Sure, she might like licking that off, but her fingers are probably still going to be sticky.

[designed2kill]

Luka goes utterly still for a moment as she thinks, piecing together the information that Arlin has given her. After a couple seconds, she says, "Card? Little plastic thing?" She makes the shape with her fingers and makes a swiping motion, like she's swiping it through a card reader. She had been wondering about those, having seen people use them quite a bit instead of money at various places around Chicago.

Luka thinks Arlin is plenty patient. He hasn't hit her or punished her or even yelled at her at all yet! It really says something about the level of patience that she's used to from the Laboratory. "You don't yell at me like they did at the Laboratory," she says quietly, half afraid that he's going to change his tactics and punish her for speaking out of line.

She takes the napkin he handed her and carefully cleans off the remaining stickiness on her fingers.

[kineticmachine]

Arlin nods. "Yes, that. It's easier, and in some ways, safer than carrying around a lot of cash," he explains. Though much more easily tracked, which is why half the time he pays in cash anyway. "Certain expenses are probably better bought with cash, so there won't be a paper trail, but for everyday things it's harmless."

He frowns, slightly. "It's easier to lead people on a basis of respect rather than fear," he says. "Particularly if the people you're leading are as capable as you and the rest of the team are." That is probably as close to a compliment as he's ever going to give any of them, even if it is the truth.

[designed2kill]

"Paper trail?" Luka hasn't heard that metaphor before, so she's imagining a literal line of papers down the street.

"I'm not people, though. I'm an experiment, a prototype, less than a person. Not supposed to need respect because things can't feel," she tells Arlin bluntly. And once again, Four's conditioning from the Laboratory rears it's ugly head.

[kineticmachine]

"Evidence of your purchases," Arlin corrects himself. He'll get used to using utterly basic language sooner or later here, but he's not very good at explaining things to people who have absolutely no inkling of how society works. "A way for someone to track what you're buying and where. It's a saying, nothing literal."

And that. That just...makes him uneasy. It rings close to things he would rather not think about. It also vaguely reminds him of Anka, though Anka has nowhere near that level of conditioning ingrained in her and is a bit easier to manage. Or think about. "I highly doubt that you don't feel," he says, his voice coming out a bit growlier than he intended. He reigns in the underlying unease, then continues. "Here, you'll be respected as a person."

[designed2kill]

Great, Arlin, you've scared her off of using anything but cash, ever, out of lingering paranoia that the Laboratory will somehow be able to track her purchases if she uses the bank card. "Oh, I see," Luka says.

"Didn't used to feel at all, in the Laboratory," she says. "Only started to after I left. Not supposed to. It feels strange." Luckily for her, her emotions are so underdeveloped from years of being on suppressants at the Laboratory that she can't feel much of anything beyond a primitive 'like' and 'dislike' at the moment. Having to deal with more complicated emotions right now probably would have broken her brain.