Fourth Floor Common Room, All Day Wednesday

[endsthegame]

It was Ender's turn to run the coffee cart. Official business meant a good opportunity for him to get out and look as normal as he could (and wouldn't Valentine laugh about that; he was having trouble not doing so himself). Coffee, cocoa and snacks -- Ender made sure they were all laid out at the start of the day, then sat back.

Add that to the list of things no one back home could see him doing. He found the irony took the edge off the boredom, at least.

[ and come get your coffee, kids! ]

Comments

[endsthegame]

"Word of mouth is pretty effective if you go grassroots," Ender finished, solemnly. It'd taken him a year, but he'd finally grasped some of the local banter. The effort gave him something to do.

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"And probably the best strategy for what you're going for, anyway," Mac agreed. "I'm not really a politician, in any sense."

[endsthegame]

"Me neither," said Ender, leaning back a little, "But I think I play one on TV."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

Mac raised an eyebrow, not quite sure if he was kidding or not. It was difficult to tell with this one.

"I'm going to consider that 'a sense'," she decided, quirking a bit of a smile.

[endsthegame]

"In any event, I'm the one serving you political coffee," Ender confided. "Any graduation plans?"

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"Looking at this internship back home for the summer," Mac answered. "There's a big software company - Kane software - and I've applied so... I guess we'll see."

[endsthegame]

"So you're good with computers," he noted. So was Ender.

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"You could say that," Mac agreed with a grin. "Everyone has their thing, right?" That was hers.

"You got your summer all planned out?" she asked.

[endsthegame]

"I'm seeing if I can't get a ticket home," he said. Not that Ben would ever hear about that. "I'll be doing a lot of research, either way."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"Where's home for you?" she asked, sipping at her coffee.

[endsthegame]

"Earth," he answered, "About two hundred years from now, to be exact. Although I'm thinking about heading into space."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"Only around here do you have to clarify that you live on earth," Mac remarked, with a dose of amusement. "I might actually miss that."

[endsthegame]

"It's pretty quaint, isn't it?" Or interesting, anyway, to a point. "A plain old 'USA' used to do."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"That true of earth in a couple of hundred years?" she asked curiously. "You were talking about living in space, so..." He could've been used to that before, of course.

[endsthegame]

"Space is a relatively new development for us," he said, snagging a sandwich from the cart. "They're just starting to form the first new colonies."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"I guess it would be kind of exciting to be one of the first to experience a life out somewhere so completely different like that," she mused, sipping at her coffee.

[endsthegame]

"I wouldn't be the first, at this point," he said, taking a bite out of his sandwich. "Some of the alternate dimensions here seem to have faster-than-light travel, but we still like to stick to Einstein's law back home. It'll be many years before a ship reaches the colonies."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

Mac nodded, "So you're planning for the more local -- well comparatively so, you know-- kind of space living? Or just really early planning?"

[endsthegame]

"If I'm going to be useful in a colony, I might as well grow up first," he pointed out. "We're not talking centuries here-- we do have close to lightspeed travel. But even that just warps decades into single years. I'd be twenty before I got anywhere."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"So, more a case of the forward planning," she guessed. "Which makes a lot of sense."

"I'm just used to present day space travel, which is pretty limited, when you think about it."

[endsthegame]

"The development of space travel just depends on when governments find the right push to reallocate resources," Ender noted, "Or a convenient alien species wanders along."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"Or if they only knew about this island."

Mac thought about that. "I'm glad they don't, if I'm honest." After three and a half years here, she was a little protective of the place.

[endsthegame]

"If the government ever fully grasped the reality of the island, it might make things a little complicated for the multiverse," he said, thoughtfully. "Maybe the weirdness on the island is a defense mechanism-- make us love its whims, so we won't share its secrets."

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

"Wouldn't put it past the place," Mac said, smiling over her mug of coffee. "I'm pretty sure it does actually have some kind of weird thought process."

[endsthegame]

"A method to the madness?" Ender asked, taking another bite of his sandwich. "That's an interesting idea."