(Untitled)

[gate_expert]

Sam had spent the morning working. It had been a good, fairly productive morning, and she thought that she might actually be getting somewhere instead of the futile banging her head against a wall that she'd been doing for some time now. It felt good to be working with numbers and equations and theories after a year of forced absence from anything

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[colbert_bump]

Stephen walked in and immediately went to flop himself onto a couch. He nearly always hated life on the island, but that hate had been even stronger in the past couple of weeks. Therefore, he wasn't his usual oh-so-charming self when he noticed some of the book titles.

"Ugh," he said. Loudly. Then he said it again, just because.

[gate_expert]

Sam turned to see who was ugh-ing at the bookshelf, and when she did she grinned a little. Stephen Colbert? Seriously? "Yeah, my thoughts exactly," she said, mirroring his tone of general disgust.

[colbert_bump]

The fact that the perky looking female actually seemed to agree with him gave Stephen pause. He went through a couple suspicious ideas of what she could be getting at, then decided to take her at face value. He used to do that all the time, back home.

"As if anyone can be happy. Here," he added after a pause.

[gate_expert]

"Well, I think a lot of people are," Sam said. "And at times, maybe it's not so bad. But right now?" She nodded at the bookshelf. "That kind of sucks."

There were other things about this island that also sucked, but she wasn't going to think about those right now.

[headofaccounts]

"That damned thing is never useful when you need it to be," Pete remarked, sympathetic. His own encounters with it had only been even remotely fruitful when it came to trying to pick out a couple of good records, and even then they'd only been attempts at expanding his horizon as opposed to whatever music he'd been looking for.

[gate_expert]

"Actually, I've had good luck with it so far," Sam said. "I usually manage to get what I want from it. But today, it's just being obnoxious." She was doing it again, attributing sentient qualities to an inanimate object, which she had sworn she wasn't going to do, but a person tended to pick up on the way everyone else did it a little like osmosis after a while.

[headofaccounts]

"Really!" Offering up a half-surprised expression, Pete turned back to the bookcase, pulling out a small volume labeled The Little Book of Calm. "I don't think I've ever seen so many self-help books."

A beat, and then: "They might make for a good bonfire."

[gate_expert]

The idea of burning books made Sam twitch a little, no matter how dull the books were. "Eh, someone might actually need these," she said reluctantly. "Or at least think they do. I don't, though."

Or did she? Sam considered herself perfectly happy, but was she really? Yes, of course she was.

[bennet_beauty]

Jane saw the woman's show of frustration and could not help her curiosity in wondering what was sparking it to be so terrible. She eased away from the kitchen and her dinner-preparations for Carwood in other to approach her. "I do not think that bad romance novels have ever been wished for so adamantly," she remarked gently.

[gate_expert]

"They would be better than the kind of books it's handing out right now," Sam said, a little wry. "Apparently, I'm in dire need of self-help and lessons on how to be happy." Which was pretty strange considering that at the moment she was the happiest she'd been since leaving Atlantis, even if there were still things about this island that still made her uncomfortable.

[bennet_beauty]

"And a book will tell you how to be such a thing?" Jane wondered, utterly confused by such a concept when she thought that happiness could only be derived from one's own self and their life. She approached and took one of the books with light hands, studying it curiously. "Is there any particular reason you may be distraught?"

[gate_expert]

"I don't think a book can tell you how to be happy," Sam said thoughtfully. "I think that's one of those things you have to figure out for yourself. But apparently there are a lot of people who think they know the secret to happiness and like to write about it. Publishing is big money, apparently."

[sgmitchell]

"Now, if it's bad romance novels you want, I might be able to help." At this point, it was probably the best he could hope from the bookcase. It was the best he could hope from the jukebox. Some might have questioned his practicality, opening himself up to the mockery of the rec room so soon after Morgan's vanishing. While he still felt like an idiot about Wanda, even.

Maybe he was. But all that ever seemed to get it over with was to let it out of its system. Speeding that along as soon as he could bear to face it...it was best. It was best if he not draw out Morgan's vanishing. She'd have expected him to pick up, and he refused to disappoint her wherever she was.

[gate_expert]

"Ha, no," Sam laughed. "I don't, really, even if they'd be better than all these self-help books. Apparently, someone thinks I need advice on how to be happy and have a more fulfilling life." Sam was pretty certain the only way her life could be more fulfilling would be if she could actually get back to the life she had, oh, a year or so ago, with the addition of a thing or two she'd learned here.

[sgmitchell]

He shook his head, and squinted at the shelf. They were innocent self-help books, but he knew as soon as someone blinked, it'd be stocked full of 'dealing with grief' or whatever the bookcase thought up this time. Last time, there were Titanic novelizations. There was a zombie Titanic one, even. He'd almost taken that one, just for Reese's sake.

"Yeah, sure." He dig his free hand into his pocket, and snorted. "Maybe it should start with apologizing, and letting us go."

[gate_expert]

"Still working on that," Sam assured him. "I haven't given up yet, just so you know." Sometimes it felt really futile and then sometimes, like today, she felt like she was so close she could almost reach out and grab the answer.