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From Candlewood, Henry could hear the party going on northeast of town, the thud of distance bass and the pop of fireworks and the shrill of cars put to the test. And how shit was that?
He texted Blue, first. A soft, subtle inquiry, a joke of an invitation, but a broad one. One for all of them. He remembered Ronan's arm in that cast, and him saying it was from Kavinsky, and Henry had no duty to them, but it would be good to keep all of them away from the mess that was going on at that party outside of town. None of them had to come, of course. They were all their own people, adults--and a ghost who was as good as one, in Henry's eyes--and they were each allowed their own decisions.
So Henry texted Any plans for the 4th Wendybird? And then he followed it up, even before she could answer, I think my place could use some Virginian charms.
He had no decorations. Fourth of July over the past two years had become a thing tainted by Joseph Kavinsky. But he could, easily, go down a couple blocks and buy more two-liter bottles of Pipsy and lemon-lime soda than he could possibly need, and some liquor and mixers, and chips and dip. If he didn't use it all up, he'd bring it to Panoptes. And that seemed like a good enough way to ignore that Joseph Kavinsky was trying to blow himself up, to him.
[Running as a gathering]
He texted Blue, first. A soft, subtle inquiry, a joke of an invitation, but a broad one. One for all of them. He remembered Ronan's arm in that cast, and him saying it was from Kavinsky, and Henry had no duty to them, but it would be good to keep all of them away from the mess that was going on at that party outside of town. None of them had to come, of course. They were all their own people, adults--and a ghost who was as good as one, in Henry's eyes--and they were each allowed their own decisions.
So Henry texted Any plans for the 4th Wendybird? And then he followed it up, even before she could answer, I think my place could use some Virginian charms.
He had no decorations. Fourth of July over the past two years had become a thing tainted by Joseph Kavinsky. But he could, easily, go down a couple blocks and buy more two-liter bottles of Pipsy and lemon-lime soda than he could possibly need, and some liquor and mixers, and chips and dip. If he didn't use it all up, he'd bring it to Panoptes. And that seemed like a good enough way to ignore that Joseph Kavinsky was trying to blow himself up, to him.
[Running as a gathering]
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Date: 2016-07-10 02:11 am (UTC)"It was a bee," Henry said, but shook his head. "It was a robot of a bee. He told Seondeok, my mother, about it, and then he came to meet her before she bought it. I don't think he--" He stopped and breathed a laugh, shook his head. "He showed her one that day, showed us both one, but it was not my RoboBee. Later, when she went to get them, he had two.
"One was the one he had shown her: just a drone basically, it responds to particular radio signals. The other one was for me."
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Date: 2016-07-10 06:59 am (UTC)It doesn't make much sense for Cheng to lie about something like this. What the fuck good is there in lying about a robotic bee? All the same, it seems fucking bizarre and not just because Ronan's spent so much of the past several years dreaming up ways to resist actual bees.
And his father was dreaming new ones. Mechanical ones.
"So what did it do?" he asks, curiosity getting the better of him now. "Was it like a pet? I never saw you with it at Aglionby."
Then again, for that Ronan would've had to have actually been at Aglionby and paying attention.
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Date: 2016-07-10 07:47 am (UTC)All he could do was explain what made sense without a demonstration. "It was touch-activated, and then it would respond to the thoughts of that person. My RoboBee responds best to my thoughts over others because I--I think rather loudly. I think better than I speak, and I always have. I didn't speak at all, when my mother bought them from your father."
Henry held his hand up, as if RoboBee might appear, flying in and land on his palm. "I created an interface that took that RoboBee could see and hear and understand, and then, it and I could communicate. And it helped me. So, yes, a little like a pet. But more like--more like a service animal. Service robot. Powered by my own thoughts."
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Date: 2016-07-10 05:11 pm (UTC)He glances at Henry's upturned hand, finds himself wondering just how big this bee was, what all it could do, how long it took his father to dream it up and the size of the price tag.
Then he looks at Henry's face again, eyebrow arched. "A service bee. This have something to do with that hole in the ground?"
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Date: 2016-07-10 10:18 pm (UTC)Ronan was being flippant, dismissive, but Henry nodded. Rather, the bee had caused the hole in the ground, and then the hole in the ground had caused the program, and then--then, Henry had improved.
"I didn't speak, as a child," he confessed. "I spoke, after some time with RoboBee."
Now, Henry was sure, that in Ronan Lynch's opinion he spoke too much.
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Date: 2016-07-11 03:12 pm (UTC)"Hey, calm the fuck down," he says, words sharp but tone uncharacteristically soft. At least as far as Henry Cheng is concerned. "I'm not judging you, man. I'm impressed. I didn't know you could do that shit."
For the first time possibly ever, it makes Ronan what else he can do, what other little tricks he has hidden up his sleeves. If maybe that's why Gansey was, supposedly, so eager to pull Cheng into their group back home. If he helped the search for Glendower somehow. Noah hadn't said anything about it, but Noah's been notoriously and frustratingly vague about everything lately.
His lips quirk then, nearly a smile. "RoboBee, huh. That's creative. How old were you?"
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Date: 2016-07-12 12:00 am (UTC)Ronan was giving him a slightly speculative look for a moment, considering, and Henry met his gaze. He wondered what it was he was considering, exactly. If he knew something that Henry didn't, somehow--that would be an interesting twist, some strange circuity to everything. It would serve Henry right.
"Nearly ten," Henry deadpanned. "I was still learning English."
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Date: 2016-07-12 03:43 am (UTC)He pauses for another moment, considering Cheng and Cheng considers him. Then, "You created a program to control a robotic bee with your mind before you even knew English."
It's a question even if it comes out as a statement and he lets out a laugh before Cheng can say anything else, shaking his head. "So was that it then? Is this fucking Robobee why Gansey decided he liked you? Because it was the one bee in the whole world that wouldn't kill him?"
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Date: 2016-07-12 05:57 am (UTC)It also helped to cover the smart of discomfort that bringing up Gansey put in Henry's chest. He and Gansey had been casual acquaintances at school long before those past days before Henry's arrival. But the shift--the hopeful shift--was a deliberate one.
"Because I gave him all my secrets," Henry said, meeting Ronan's gaze, because that seemed terribly important right now. A test. "And asked nothing more valuable of him than trust. I stood in a hole in the ground, barely big enough for him and I, and told him about being held in a hole in the ground because awful men who hated my mother water RoboBee, because your father hadn't sold it to them. He held the tangible link, a thing that looks most terrifying to him. And I--knowing he would tell you all everything I told him in that hole, knowing he would give you my secrets--asked him if he could trust me."
Henry shrugged. "But I was here, in Darrow, before he could say. And he is not. So now, I work for it."
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Date: 2016-07-12 03:03 pm (UTC)Gansey's always been better with people than Ronan. All that fucking diplomacy.
"Working for what?" he asks, his tone sharp again. "His trust? He's not here, Cheng. Figured you fucking noticed that by now. You're too late."
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Date: 2016-07-12 04:52 pm (UTC)"Yes, thank you, I had cottoned on to that."
Because Ronan was either deliberately missing the point--that Gansey would have given away these secrets, as freely as Henry was trying to--or he just didn't care for them. They meant nothing, either way. Because, of course, Gansey wasn't here.
"You can't stop me from talking to them," Henry said, honest but not threatening. "But I am not trying to take them from you."
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Date: 2016-07-13 06:02 am (UTC)Hand still wrapped around his beer, he holds his arm out, vaguely indicating the expanse of Cheng's living room. The fact that he's here he figures says something. And he hadn't even bitched all that much about coming.
Which hasn't stopped all three of them from shooting Ronan looks all night, each of them clearly expecting him to do something. Not that Ronan has a fucking clue what. He may not trust Cheng so readily as Noah and Blue, may not be so willing to give him a chance as Adam, but of all the fucking Aglionby dickbags that could've shown up, Cheng is one of the least dangerous.
Until someone hands him a clipboard.
"I'm not just gonna fall to my knees and start sucking your dick, man. I don't care how much Gansey liked you. I don't care what you did in some other dimension. None of that shit matters here. And you said it yourself," Ronan adds, tipping his head back for a quick drink of his beer, his smile all teeth then. "You have to work for it."
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Date: 2016-07-13 11:53 pm (UTC)But, here they were. Ronan begrudgingly standing in Henry's apartment, not starting shit--with him, or going out to start shit with Kavinsky--and that may or may not have been part of this harebrained idea in the first place.
The choice of analogy that Ronan went for didn't surprise Henry, for all its crudeness, but it still made his ears hot with distraction. He scoffed a little, arms a little tighter wound across his chest.
"I think Noah's the only one I haven't been working for," Henry confessed. His chipper camaraderie had fallen easily and unexpectedly on Henry's shoulders. Henry shook his head. There was no point placing that at Ronan's feet.
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Date: 2016-07-14 04:17 pm (UTC)Or at least not too aggressive.
"And, apparently, he fucking remembers you. Somehow. I still don't get it, but it's some ghost, time thing. I remember you, but only as an annoying little shit forcing people to sign useless petitions. You're not the worst Aglionby shitstain by far, but you're still not the first person I'd choose to be stuck with in a shitty magical city. Something tells me the feeling there is at least fucking mutual."
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Date: 2016-07-15 05:11 am (UTC)"Asking people, and they weren't useless. Or they wouldn't be, if people would take them seriously, instead of writing 'anarchy' across three slots of a petition form." That was after the summer, though, after when Noah had said Ronan was from. He still gave Ronan a look for it, because Ronan had never been respectful of the process.
Being told, though, how he ought to feel about who was or was not here grated at him. Henry did his best to shrug it off and away. "I'd prefer none of us were stuck in a shitty multidimensional pocket universe, you're right."
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Date: 2016-07-18 04:33 pm (UTC)"How very magnanimous of you," Ronan says instead, steering the conversation away from thoughts of Kavinsky with a dry tone. "You can't tell me that you'd want fucking anything to do with me if these three losers weren't here. I just come with the package."
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Date: 2016-07-18 06:24 pm (UTC)"The package helps. I know how to talk to the three of them, and generally not step on toes," he admitted, but he shrugged that off as well. "That isn't what you asked me, anyway. I know I'm not who you want here, but I can't change that I am, so it would be better if none of us were. In the meantime, I suppose I'll enjoy that I can drink without being carded."
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Date: 2016-07-20 07:11 pm (UTC)It's pretty shit, honestly, to want Gansey here. Aside from Adam, it's Gansey who has the most to lose by being stuck here. There is no Glendower, of that Ronan is pretty fucking certain. If he was, Gansey would've found him the last time or, at the very least, would've found some lead, some clue.
There's nothing here. Nothing for any of them, but especially not Gansey or Parrish.
Despite himself, his lips twitch into nearly a grin. "Take your wins where you fucking can, right? And weed's legal here. Noah's pretty happy about that one."
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Date: 2016-07-21 04:17 am (UTC)"Ryang and Rutherford would have gotten on with Noah well. Just for the weed, if nothing else. And the skateboarding." Henry rubbed the back of his neck. Darrow was good, at least, because Noah seemed bright and happy, and Henry didn't know, didn't know how to ask, if he had been like that back in Henrietta.
"Maybe we'll go home soon," he said with a shrug. "Or at least figure out a way to talk with home. Know everyone's alright."
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Date: 2016-07-21 05:24 pm (UTC)He frowns a little at Cheng's idea, head cocking curiously. "You think that's possible? To be able to talk to people back home?"
Because Ronan's been here well over a year now with no luck. He hasn't tried all that hard in months, hasn't since well before Gansey disappeared. Couldn't even fucking dream anything. But shit, if Cheng can create software to better understand a robotic fucking bee, maybe he can figure out something.
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Date: 2016-07-21 05:42 pm (UTC)The edge of curiosity in Ronan's voice made Henry perk, just a little. While his brief, earlier prattle about coding languages had been dismissed out of hand, this was another small thing that, at least, he could theoretically discuss.
"Well, there's that cable programming--the one that gets channels from all over, all those fucking ridiculous things, mostly, but--theoretically, with some sort of reverse algorithm, someone could use the signal that's coming in to go out. It would be a bit of an imperfect system, I think. There's delays on programming we receive. Out of space and time."
Henry shrugged. "It might be something worth bringing up at work. What's the worst that could happen? Wormholes, probably."
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Date: 2016-07-25 03:40 pm (UTC)But Cheng's idea is intriguing. And probably a little optimistic.
His eyebrow twitches as Cheng answers his own question, tone light enough, offhand enough, to nearly make Ronan grin. "Could argue we've already hit one of those," he points out. "And isn't it easier to pull in frequencies than to broadcast? What fucking direction do we send them anyway? And how would we know if they're getting anywhere useful?"
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Date: 2016-07-26 01:30 am (UTC)"And broadcasting isn't hard at all. We're all constantly broadcasting. Radio signals, microwaves, natural and artificial radiations, whatever. It would be a little more difficult to figure out how to direct it, how to tell if a signal got picked up--less radio signal, more phone call?"
Henry stared into his cup and shrugged.
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Date: 2016-07-26 05:12 am (UTC)"But you think it's possible," he says again, not looking away even as Cheng does, curious despite himself. "Just-- what, hijack the cable signal and throw a mirror on it to send it back wherever it came from?"
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Date: 2016-07-27 12:46 am (UTC)"I mean, I haven't thought on the technicalities, really. But I was thinking less just flipping the signal back around and more--more using the signal to trace back to where it had come from? If we could find one from home, somehow, we could embed something into the signal?"
Henry snorted. "But that also makes me sound like a full blown crazy sort."
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