Heaven must be missing an angel. ...Actually, two. [Open]
Who: Aziraphale and Crowley. Open.
What: Aziraphale’s discovered Tarqeq’s knowledge banks! ...Only he didn’t realize they were electronic.
Where: The nearest bank of knowledge to Washu’s lab.
When: Almost immediately after being let loose from Washu’s lab, we’ll say about midday.
Warnings: Aziraphale does not like technology. Or Bebop. But he does enjoy miss-typed Bibles.
It had been a fascinating morning. Although it didn’t feel like a true morning without flipping the ‘open’ sign on his book collection and checking for dust that would never be there. Of course, then the ‘open’ sign would immediately be flipped back to ‘closed’ when the humans actually started walking by, and would be flipped back to ‘open’ when their work day started.
Regardless, it had been a fascinating morning filled with desperately trying to get a grip on exactly how it was possible to live amongst so much unnecessary and truly dreadful technology. To the world’s credit, the technology didn’t look daunting in any way except in that it existed and so far it all seemed to run itself so that Aziraphale didn’t have to struggle without mechanical help for long, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t expecting some inane piece of supposedly self-explanatory equipment to completely stump him in the near future in such an epic way that Agnes Nutter surely would have included it in her book should her memories of the future extend to other dimensions.
[In fact, Agnes had not foreseen what would happen in the world, but had remembered what Aziraphale would be like upon returning to their dimension and though she could not be certain, had attributed it in her mind to the shiny things that move themselves and always seemed to fluster the angel without fail.]
So Aziraphale was truly looking now for something he could call familiar in this completely foreign place. Somewhere that he might settle down and wait it out for whenever Adam decided to have them back. Someplace that could entertain him for the time being without temptation, as he was sure that was what Crowley would be aiming for if he could get away with it, for extended periods of peace, tranquility, and thought.
The knowledge banks seemed like the perfect place. The moment he had been introduced to the buildings amongst the onslaught of other Tarqeq Tourist Attractions for Travelers he decided they were places he wanted to go. Libraries, he thought. Countless books upon countless books of history and literature and art; surely even Crowley could find something in a library he would like.
...Aziraphale re-thought over that, and wondered if he wasn’t damning himself to this world’s bebop by offering Crowley access to an entire culture’s memory.
Surely it couldn’t be too bad. It would be worth the risk.
...Maybe.
Nevertheless, he resolutely made his way to the nearest one and smiled upon seeing it, walking through the front door as if he were coming home. Briefly he wondered if he would be needing some sort of rental card or registration number but decided to chance simply walking up to the shelves without one and felt his wariness recede when nobody stopped him.
The angel eyed the spines with interest that quickly turned into confusion when he noticed that none of the books had a title. Or Author. Or anything, really.
He plucked a ‘book,’ he thought it was, off the shelf and opened it curiously... only to be greeted with a pair of twin screens instead of paper pages.
Without a second thought, Aziraphale shoved the ‘book’ back on the shelf and left it there, searching instead for a shelf of true books, because surely the entire bank was not electronic and there must be paper somewhere. He spotted a shelf half-empty, where several books had been removed, and optimistically thought that the only shelf there worth removing books from was a shelf of true books.
Of course he was entirely mistaken and the first, second, and third ‘books’ he pulled from the shelf all contained identical twin screens. With a frustrated sigh, Aziraphale pushed his last try back on the shelf and turned with a disappointed air to Crowley, debated whining at him, then decided it didn’t count as whining when it was a friend.
“I know I’ve only looked at two out of many shelves,” He began solemnly, “but I don’t think there’s a single real book in here.”