tramitem_log | (no subject)

Who: Anakin and John Smith
What: Running into each other at a Tribology Convention – the science of movement!
When: Last Saturday
Where: A convention center
Rating/Warnings: Probably low, maybe some jokes about lubrication

Anakin was here for work, but he was still enjoying himself. The lecture today on elastohydrodynamic lubrication was… okay, he’d recorded it to listen to later in small increments. He didn’t have much of an opinion on the research presented yet.

But the showroom floor was where it was at. Anakin already had a bag full of pens, towels, and USB drives bearing logos of various companies.

He really liked the hands on displays. He was thoroughly entertained a booth for product that purported to change the coefficient of friction of various surfaces. It had on display different materials, all coated in the product, and a plethora of objects to roll, rub, push, or otherwise move across the surfaces.

He had a toy car he was rolling across wood, enjoying the juvenile thrill of watching it coast.

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By contrast, John was not here for work!

Not officially, anyway - a colleague of his from the Engineering department had managed to score a couple of badges for the convention, and had offered him one. He'd known that John was incredibly curious, and would have enjoyed the experience despite it not being his field of study. Dr. Fields had stepped into his lecture, however, and had left him to his own devices, so on John ambled into the showroom floor.

Smiling cheerily, he paused at every single booth as he went. He engaged in conversation, made jokes, and also wound up with an armful of random things that he really didn't need but liked having regardless. One could never have too many USB drives, he found.

Ultimately, though, this had some real applications in some aspects of astrophysics! Engineering relied on physics, and especially friction and movement when considering engineering vehicles meant for space travel. Still, he was a big kid at heart, so when he happened upon the toy cars, he was beyond delighted and shuffled up beside the gentleman who was already there -

"Oh! Oh hey, I know you! I think. Yes! I never forget a face!"

Anakin looked up when he realized the other man was talking to him. He listened with an open expression and smiled. Then he took out his air pods without explaining how he could still hear with them in - a power granted him by same people or entity that gave him his extra memories and his new prosthetic (which he definitely concealed with a glove). He just pocketed them to give the other man his full attention.

"Ha, I do, though," he said honestly, a problem with his ADHD. "Who are you, again?"

"Oh! I'm John - the banana sorbet guy you met on the Network. We had a chat about all that. I'm the astrophysicist!"

John smiled a bit, though he made sure not to talk too loudly about anything involving the Bureau or the Network. He knew it was meant to be all very clandestine and hush hush - otherwise, they wouldn't have wiped the memories of those who had been present when his memory had manifested.

Truly, he wasn't all that troubled that Anakin didn't appear to remember him; they had only met online briefly, after all.

Edited 2020-09-21 05:36 (UTC)

"Oh, ya, ya. Right," Anakin said, the name and job and mention of the network jogged his memory. "I remember now."

He held out his right hand so John could shake it if he wanted. Though he didn't tak the glove off. The man would learn soon enough there was nothing but metal under the glove.

"Nice to meet you in perosn."

If John was curious about the fact that he was wearing a glove indoors (he was), he didn't ask. People had their reasons for their quirks, and didn't often like having them pointed out. He himself understood a certain level of privacy; he didn't go around unloading his darkest secrets on others either. Still, he kept his smile and shook his hand warmly, not really perturbed. It was nice to meet a fellow Different out in the wild, so to speak.

"Nice to meet you as well. I think you had mentioned being in the engineering sector, now that I recall. It's Anakin, right? Unique name, hard to forget." It was entirely a compliment; he did recall that bit of their conversation. He certainly didn't expect anyone to remember something as mundane as 'John', and 'Dr. Smith' was even worse.

"Guess it's not really a surprise to find you here, though interesting. As big as the city is, it's a bit of a small old world."

"My mother was into Greek mythology," he said, with a shrug. "Better than Zeus or Hercules."

He sent another car racing across the surface, enjoying how smoothly it glided.

"Are you here for anything specific, or just looking at the showroom?"

"Oh, a coworker of mine had a spare ticket and asked me if I wanted to come along. Thought it sounded interesting, so here I am!"

John slipped his hands into his pockets and watched as Anakin's car raced along the track; he wasn't an engineer, but he appreciated its applications in his own field. A lot of his work focused on theoretical applications of it - space faring vessels, both with and without lifeforms aboard, temporal studies - so it was nice to see some of the advances in the field.

"But you're right - it is better than Zeus or Hercules. Liable to give a kid a complex with a name like that." He laughed a little, not sure if he was being rude or not.