(Untitled)

[shortofcrazy]

Riley is going back to DC soon. Really and truly. He's even dressed as he was -- jeans, sneakers, dark T-shirt, maroon and brown-striped shirt (left unbuttoned), and a dark brown crushed velvet blazer -- when he stepped through the door a week or two ago. He's sitting at the bar with a half-drank can of Red Bull, a folded-up pair of designer

Comments

[stopped_signal]

"Ohhh, it's got you now."

Says the guy with the laptop and bag of what appears to be snack chips of some description. He has seen that look before. (Occasionally in the mirror.)

Shaking his head, "Let me know if I need to stage an intervention. Orrr, let me guess: You can quit any time you want to."

[shortofcrazy]

"Look, man, I can quit any time I want--" Riley looks up. Blinks. (He may not have connected the guy to the first night that he came here, but he remembers the laptop.) "To," he finishes lamely. "Hi. We've met, right? Guy-with-robots-and-a-moon?"

[stopped_signal]

Mr. Universe blinks.

Then, slowly, he grins.

"You know ... I think we just may have." A thoughtful pause-- or at least a pause, which could be mistaken for thoughtful by the generous. "It's, uh, something R, right? Ryan, Ryle, Ringo ...? Help me out here."

[shortofcrazy]

He snorts. "I don't have the hair to be a Ringo." He looks thoughtful, too, in turn. "Ryan's not bad, though. But--" he says, and he clicks a box only to see the screen light up with death X's.

He sighs. "--It's Riley. Hey."

[stopped_signal]

"Riley." Mr. Universe snaps his fingers. "Okay, okay, I was close."

He glances at the screen, smile spreading a little in the direction of smug.

"Luckily, when I miss by a syllable or two, tiny bombs don't go off all over the room. Or, who knows; they might be about to."

For a man facing imminent death by inaccuracy-triggered explosion, he doesn't look all that concerned.

[shortofcrazy]

"--If tiny bombs went off all over the room every time I forgot or mispronounced someone's name, I'd be a smoking pile of debris by now," says Riley. "A couple of times over."

He looks awfully amused by the idea, for a smoking pile of debris.

[stopped_signal]

"Isn't it always the way?" Mr. Universe asks, sadly and rhetorically. He grins again. "Occupational hazard of rubbing elbows with the occupants of the known and unknown universes. And it does go that extra mile in providing explosion-themed ambience."

A casual jerk of his thumb towards the observation window, where a great quantity of stars do in fact appear to be undergoing some epic supernovas.

[shortofcrazy]

"I'm just bad with names in general," Riley admits. "That's a great excuse here, but not much of one on Earth. Remembering 'Mike Smith' isn't exactly rocket science; not like -- aliens and stuff, here."

[stopped_signal]

Mr. Universe is pretty good at remembering names, as a general rule; sometimes, however, that particular space in his head gets coopted for the storage of long sequences of code.

"The aliens are pretty memorable," he observes, in the tones of One Who Knows. "Especially the ones going with a coniferous kind of look. Although now that I think about it ... I can't really remember their names either."

Probably this is because he was convinced that Filif was a figment of his imagination and decided to rename him 'Mal.'

[shortofcrazy]

Riley pauses with a clear '...wtf'-type expression, and then he says, "I didn't know there were aliens with pine cones growing out of them here." Beat. "Not that I should probably be that surprised.

[stopped_signal]

"Probably not," Mr. Universe agrees pleasantly. "But even the best of us one day come head to head-- figuratively speaking, anyway-- with pine-scented weirdness in the form of walking, talking tree aliens. Apparently, the politically correct term is Demisiv. And ... they're not actually trees."

Who knew, right?

[shortofcrazy]

After a noticeable silence, Riley has only one vital question.

"Were they wearing tinsel?"

[stopped_signal]

Mr. Universe ponders this.

"... Not that I could tell. Kind of a hat, though."

Maybe hats count?

[shortofcrazy]

The pause is even longer this time.

"In the shape of an angel or a star?"

[stopped_signal]

"I have to say, it didn't so much remind me of either an angel or a star. More like ... a hat. With a brim?"

[shortofcrazy]

"Right," says Riley. "The extra level of absurdity that things would reach if it was actually a walking, talking Christmas tree has been avoided, then."