Ellen eases the door open before ducking swiftly through and slamming it shut. "Oh, thank God," she says to no one in particular. "I was starting to think I wouldn't find it here
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"Not that it's any of my business, but I have to ask." The voice has a rough, metallic quality, and belongs to an avian humanoid in blue armor sitting over at the next table. "Bad fight or good party?"
"On my side of the door it's been a few months," Ellen says. "On this side, a year and change. I think. I'm not always good at keeping track of the calendar here."
"If you cut it down to the root, this place is basically an exclusive country club with a wide range of clientele. Even with the atomic chronometer on my heads up display," he taps his the visor that reaches down over his left eye, "I have trouble enough remembering what day of the week it is, let alone trying to keep track of the non-Euclidean time frame of some inexplicable trans-dimensional nexus. There's no argument for it."
"I'd say it's all like something out of an old Captain Cosmos vid, but I'm pretty sure most of those had a limited cast and nothing like this place's level of weirdness," Ellen agrees. "My Pip-Boy clock and calendar just stop working here. They're not atomically synched or anything, though."
She indicates the glass and metal bracer on her left forearm when she mentiions the Pip-Boy.
"On the bright side, at least I can get supplies here no matter *what* the calendar's doing."
"The service is impressive." Garrus pops what looks like a large, silvery grape into his mouth. "Strange and oddly unsettling, but impressive. I've been to a few places that had quality food for both humans and Turians, but none of them also had high explosives or weapon modifications on the menu."
Ellen nods. Of course alien species have different food from humans. The little green ones had the worm stuff and the plates full of tentacles, didn't they? It was technically edible for her and the other humans, but... well, anyway, the point is that she's quite at ease with the idea that humans eat some things, and aliens eat other things. "I have no idea where they keep the fabricators," she says. "Or the supply warehouse, because they've got to have a big one to offer so many options. But they've come in really handy when I've needed to replace or upgrade weapon components- the bar doesn't hand out radioactive materials, but short of that I can get most parts here as long as I have the caps to pay for it."
"Whatever currency we spend here, it's not worth anything anywhere other than our own worlds," says Garrus. "So what does the bar do with the money we give it...?"
"No idea," Ellen admits. "But there's a Barman and some kind of cleaning staff that isn't robots. There must be some kind of arrangement to swap the currency for supplies in worlds where it counts for more, or for commodities that they use to pay for the staff and the supplies."
"Water's cheap here," Ellen says. "Water's very hard to come by back home. People back home have an awful lot of guns and armor, and the ones who don't usually can't afford it or don't need it. People here are willing to pay quite a lot for good body armor, and some of them don't even try to haggle if you ask for twice its weight in water as payment. Then it's just a matter of getting the water home and selling it off at a reasonable price..."
Paying in water for guns and armor sounds... different, but Garrus isn't about to get into an argument about economics. He could give his father a call if he wanted one of those.
He quirks a mandible jokingly. "I take it you've never been to a water park before."
"Well... it's like a... a really big park. They have huge slides that twist and turn everywhere, with water pouring down them. Then there's pools with wave generators, and... jungle gyms in the water. In the summer, before I went into basic, my mother always made a point of taking me and my two little sisters to one near where we lived. I swear I damn near drowned a dozen times, but at the time I didn't mind." The Turian rubs his cowl thoughtfully. "I haven't been to a water park in ages. They probably closed the one by where I used to live."
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(OOC: I'll be at work for the next while.)
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"On my side of the door it's been a few months," Ellen says. "On this side, a year and change. I think. I'm not always good at keeping track of the calendar here."
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She indicates the glass and metal bracer on her left forearm when she mentiions the Pip-Boy.
"On the bright side, at least I can get supplies here no matter *what* the calendar's doing."
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He quirks a mandible jokingly. "I take it you've never been to a water park before."
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