come_sailaway | We're wide awake now, our eyes are wide open. We're running this world, we keeping it turning

Her fatal human flaw will always be awe. Clarke's gaze may start off on his hands, watching the neat, well practiced way he shuffled — but she's got that prey-like drive to look people in the eye in order to best discern if they meant her harm. Besides, most lies had tells somewhere about the face, right? And she's still trying to figure out Maximilien's face at that — is it a mask? Full robotics? What purpose did the smattering of red dots across his forehead serve?

...should she look at him as a human? He was talking like one. It's really much of the same issue she ran into when deciding if Friday had any personal autonomy or was just the Captain's glorified mouthpiece...

Either way, thanks to some undigested human superiority complex, Clarke's distracted. She misses the origin of the cards and looks around the table carefully for a beat trying to figure out what was out of place.

"No, I didn't. What'd you do?"

He gives a pleased hum, glad to know he's still got it. Not that he routinely cheats at cards, but it's good to know that's still an option should he choose so.

"Watch my hands, I'll do it again." He gathers their cards up, sliding them all together and shuffling them. Nothing looks too off about the shuffling other then he's resting them flat against the table rather than arched in his hands like before. And then he deals them out, two for her from the top, two for him from the bottom. Another ten card.

"Third times a charm." He sounds so pleased with himself about pulling it off twice in a row. "If I was actually trying to cheat you I would have made the ten my face down card, but the strategy still stands. Did you see it this time?"

This may well be the first time on board this hell-ship that Clarke's followed a direction without any form of argument. Her focus is so keenly fixated on his hands she couldn't even tell you what the song thumping in the background was about. Both arms fold along the edge of the table, and she's leaning in uncomfortable close to stare at the arch and shuffle of cards in his hands. And when it finally comes time to deal, and she catches that their cards come from two opposite ends of the deck, the sudden surprised arch of blonde eyebrows announces Clarke's realization.

"Oh."

Only thing is, she never expects she'll be allowed to deal. And, if at some point in the future she gets to sit opposite the Captain and play a game for their souls, figures there's nothing much she'd be able to do if he decided to cheat. So this is fascinating regardless.

"Yeah, I saw it. Literally the definition of underhanded, but an advantage is an advantage." And at this point, an arm unfurls from the edge of the table, extending across the playing space palm-up and expectant. One can't learn the full measure of a game while sitting on just one side of the table. "Let me try."

Gathering the cards back up he hands them over, no reason for her not to get some practice in. Maybe she'll be able to pull one over on the invisible dealers in the casino. He has no idea she has grander opponents in mind.

"In a game that's about statistical odds, any advantage helps. For example if you were playing at an actual casino, you have better odds at a table that uses six decks, then one that uses two. Generally they won't use a single deck because then it's too easy to count cards and be able to estimate what the dealers face down card is. It's a battle of sorts, the house wants your money, but also wants you to keep playing. And you want all the houses money in the fewest amount of games."

It's actually a fascinating conundrum to him - the psychological aspects of how you get people to keep playing when they're clearly losing, balanced with those who know how to win jackpots.

If he enjoys watching people at their lowest, desperately scratching the walls of their grave for some reprieve from darkness, starving for hope, and holding out for a better future than the hand they'd currently been dealt — then Max is in luck, that's essentially how Clarke's lived for the last two years, and that determined approach to survival doesn't ebb just because she's suddenly not in an irradiated wasteland. Yeah, that's not cards. But she's very quickly going to learn that panic tastes the same if it's over losing games of chance as it does when losing wars — it's all about how invested you get in the outcome.

She's... struggling to shuffle the cards. Trying to pull some of the fancy bridging she'd watched him do and ultimately just splattering cards across the tabletop. A moments pause, a sigh, and then the dutiful regathering of cards interspersed with near-casual conversation.

"So what's the most you've ever lost in a card game?"

He'll let her try a few times before grabbing another deck and demonstrating what he does, but slower. It's still something that takes a lot of practice, but knowing how to start it helps.

"A Lamborghini. Brand new too." He sighs sulkily, he'd liked that car. But he's rich enough that it's more a minor inconvenience than any sort of catastrophe.

He pauses before continuing, debating how much to say. He's not someone who shares personal details, "That's the most monetarily anyway. But some things are worth more when you have less."

Shrugging, that's all in the past now.

True to her elevator pitch, Clarke's a quick enough study. She watches his hands carefully once again, fumbles with placing her fingers in the exact same spots along the cards backings as Max does, and in the end eventually manages a decent shuffle. No cards go flying across the table at least, and it's nothing fancy but those cards are heckin' shuffled and Clarke will begin slowly, purposefully dealing them out.

Two up for him, one up and one down for her. It's an almost instantaneous realization that she'd much rather be the dealer in this situation, and she's rubbing a finger across the remaining cards in her hand like she would the safety of a gun.

"I said most, not most expensive."

There's no concept of money in her world. Not really, at least. Resources are either a basic human right, or something paid for with a blood price. No in-between. Social status was earned through the luck of the draw for parents, the color of your blood and the amount of deaths weighing on your conscious. Clarke can't picture what a Lamborghini looks like, but doesn't buy his grief over that loss.

Cards dealt, and noting her own face up is a 2 of spades, her gaze finally returns to Max's face and watches for... who really knows. Micro-expressions on a metal face? A shift in his focus? Where slight of hand failed, slight of tongue could make up for with miles to spare — she's always been better at talking, and palpating peoples worst insecurities and most painful emotional wounds than she's been at playing games.

"Hmm." He looks down at his cards, the apertures of his eyes briefly narrowing, considering.

Not if he's going to take another card, he is because he only has a four and a ten and he's already calculated the odds of the next card he needs. No, he's considering actually telling her what his worst loss was. Because it's not actually a loss, it's more.. well, embarrassing.

"I lost a game to another Omnic, and the bet was that I had to do his job the next day. Most humans can't tell us apart and that was before I was able to do, all of this." Gesturing with his hand and flexing his fingers to indicate all the silver and gold joints and the black tungsten plating covering most of his body. "He was a bartender at an extremely exclusive club."

And serving drinks to rich people who thought of him as an appliance was not a good time for him. And he wasn't in the situation he's in now where he could just crack a bottle over their head and leave. His eyes go back up to her, wondering why she's interested, and a little suspicious.

"In any case, I'll take another card."

Clarke's inappropriate level of interest in each and every passenger she comes across is... both personal, and impersonal. She's somehow managed to take people watching to a whole new level, making snap judgements about who is useful here and who would end up being a liability if they went to war. The constant lookout for new potential allies is admittedly a bit exhausting — and she won't lie, it's hard to rely on the same tricks when sat across from someone distinctly not human. She'd struggled over deciding to trust Gal Friday because she couldn't gauge the amount of honesty or pain behind eyes that she wasn't built with.

She's looking for flecks of a soul in the piercing red lights inset into his helmet, and thoughtfully tilting her head to the side a bit.

"Is that what you're called? An Omnic?"

With that follow-up line of inquiry hanging in the air between them, and some semblance of eye contact established, Clarke very casually deals him that other card he'd asked for.

It's an eight. From the bottom of the deck.

He steeples his fingers because he saw that. Now to decide if he should call her on it.

"Yes, in my world that's what I am. An Omnic. It's not exactly a great name, it's because the factories are called Omniums, by the Omnica Corporation. But it is what it is I suppose."

Better than being called a bot or a robot honestly. That's usually accompanied by angry crowds of humans who want to rip them apart and melt them down to make toasters.

He's feeling generous today, he will let it slide, "It appears you win the round."

Look, don't ask any teenager to keep themselves perfectly contained when they feel like they've gotten the better of an adult in a competitive setting. Does she know how old Max is? Nope, but he seems like an authority on card games, and Clarke can't read the tells across his metal visage that would give away he'd caught her cheat and was simply letting it slide. So that's two wins — one on each side the table — and a little boost to her pride.

Sometimes a girl just needs a win...

She's flipping her own cards over, revealing a grand total of eleven. If she's supposed to hit her own hand again or not, Clarke doesn't know and thus just gathers the deck together before offering it back to him. Go again, the unspoken challenge. She'd meant it earlier, and would play hand after hand until Max gets tired of her company or something more pressing arises.

"Interesting." Is it? From a world running on the fumes of technology and constantly on the precipice of endings, yeah. Robots are objectively pretty interesting. Clarke's just doing her best to roll with the punches on this ship, not getting caught up on things like magic, vampires, and gods.

"So what year are you from?"

This Omnic has been mentally a sixty year old man since the day he was activated. He's actually fourty-one which is ancient to a teenager.

She is supposed to hit again until at least seventeen, but it doesn't matter since Max automatically loses with his hand. And he doesn't need to get into that level of technicality for a casual game.

He takes the deck back from her shuffling it himself, "2076. I'm from Monaco if you happen to be from Earth and know where that is. And you?"

Well, color Clarke successfully distracted from the game before them for the first since she'd sat down. Fully, and entirely distracted, because hey — that's actually almost recent to her timeline. At least in comparison to everyone else hailing from the late 1990's and early 2010's so far. She's not watching him shuffle this time, not trying to pick up tricks or arts of the trade in preparation for one day facing down against their captor. No, she's doing some quick math, failing at quick geography, and then flirting with a headache when it came to comprehending the space-time continuum.

"2149. Also from Earth, I guess, and from somewhere in what's technically Virginia. But — "

Yanno, the apocalypse happened.

"...in my histories, the world ended in 2052. There weren't any corporations or factories left standing."

Edited 2022-05-13 02:22 (UTC)

Well that is interesting, he hadn't met anyone further in the future than he is. Well César maybe, considering his knowledge of technology, but he hadn't inquired when he was from.

"Interesting. In mine there was a giant war in 2045 that decimated a lot of things, and did destroy many factories. What caused yours?"

Because in his it was Omnics. Not him, he's not a military unit, but more tactical war centered Omnics who murdered tens of millions of people before being put down.

That's always a hard story to explain right, because how does one go about retelling the hardships of billions of people counter imposed against the thought that the only way to save humanity was to cull the herd? Does she start introducing the scientist both responsible for the death of the world, and the existence of the few survivors who'd managed to make it this far? Clarke's just going to take it in stride that she doesn't have to explain nuclear bombs to a man literally made out of metal and circuitry, but that's been a sticking point for a lot of people on board thus far.

"The first time, an A.I. got hold of the launch code for every nuclear weapon on Earth, and fired them simultaneously."

He is going to take that so much better than literally everyone else on board.

"Oh. Then it's disturbingly similar to what happened to my world. An AI infected the Omnic factories and churned out thousands of weapons grade Omnics, not me you understand but the military ballistic type, and they attacked everyone. And to deal with the problem the humans exploded nuclear reactors and made half the planet unlivable. Well.. for them anyway. But I suppose it ended that war so it worked out for them."

It's a distinctly weird feeling — to look into a mirror that isn't really a mirror after all, just the shiny plating of a robot who managed to be more personable than most the people on this ship, and find some strand of similarity. Maximilien is the first she's told the bare bones story of the destruction of Earth to, who didn't immediately turn around and offer platitudes. I'm so sorry, or that sounds so awful.

It's not all fun and games and familiarization, though. Clarke almost scoffs.

"So it doesn't matter where. Nuclear weapons are always a manmade death sentence..."

A pause — a beat, focused on her own loathing for the human race, before remembering she's supposed to do everything in her power to save them. (And maybe failed, but would never know for certain.)

"A.L.I.E. only meant to kill off a portion of the population, but left the entire world simmering in radiation for almost 100 years. There were a few survivors, but... We didn't have anything like an Omnic."

Unlivable for them — don't think she didn't catch that, and is left (biased about) wondering what could have possibly walked the planet in the absence of humans.

"If you give people the option of wholesale destruction, there's no way they won't use it when they deem it necessary. And the standards for what makes it necessary will keep getting lower. It happens again and again. I'm not even that old and I've seen it multiple times."

He's lived through too many wars as it is. People just can't seem to stop killing each other, and since that's the case, there will always be people like Max that will profit off of it. If they're going to start wars, someone might as well benefit. Why not him?

"What did people do for 100 years? Live in bunkers?"

Well, safe to say Max would have loved her world. The second Clarke had set foot on Earth, it had been all war all the time, until the final battle all of humanity couldn't defeat — a second death wave of radiation burning the planet to a husk. And even then the infighting hadn't stopped. If anything, it'd gotten worse.

"Some in bunkers. Some lived past the initial blast, genetically enhanced themselves to survive higher radiation levels, and scraped out a living on the Earth's surface." The Mountain Men (all dead), and then Grounders (most dead). If he's dealt out their next hand, Clarke isn't touching it just yet.

"My people are the descendants of every astronaut who happened to be in space when the world burnt. Twelve space stations from different nations came together, and we just focused on surviving. And hoped one day the Earth would be livable again. But even when we made it back, livable was a stretch."

"That sounds rather miserable. Though all wars are even for the winners. But it sounds like there were no winners in your scenario." He can't imagine being trapped in a bunker or a space station with the same people for years while the earth burned. He's not doing so well on a boat with a few handfulls of people as it is.

"Is the hope that you'll rebuild all of civilization?"

No pressure or anything.

For a girl who no longer believes in fairytale beginnings, middles, or endings, the answer is still —

"Once upon a time it might have been. But I don't know if humanity survived the second wave of nuclear damage and now... Even if we could, I don't know if what we'd manage to rebuild could even be called civilized."

What if the fight is all we are? Sitting an opposite a robot who seems to lean towards human's self-destructive nature as their main feature, optimism drains like water through a sieve.

Clarke finally drops her gaze, hiding a sniff behind a business-like cough, and finally reaching for whatever cards had been dealt in her direction.

"Sorry. We were playing a game."

He watches her, processing what she's saying but also looking at her face, how she masks every emotion. Max is poor at reading those anyway, unless they're strikingly obvious, but even he can be impressed at how well she holds it together.

"It will be something though. Something that isn't endless fighting and destruction. I assume that's the hope anyway? Or are you desiring something different?"

Maybe she enjoys the fighting, some people did. In his world he can't imagine Reinhardt retiring and tending to a garden in his spare time. He lived for battle, he was nothing without it.

"We were, but we do not have to."

She hates fighting, but it's no longer a matter of what she loathes and what she loves. Fighting has become as necessary to survive as breathing, and Clarke's dug herself so deep into the pit of wartime leadership that she no longer knows if she's capable of peace. The dreams of it are nice, but what if the fight is all she is anymore? Survive first, then find your humanity again. That'd been the rule, but what if there wasn't much left when she finally had the opportunity to look.

For being marketed as a vacation, life on board the Serena Eterna hasn't exactly proven to be a place to rest, breathe, and reassess one's life. Even in the middle of a party, Clarke's sought out yet another person to use as a ladder rung towards what she can only see as a final confrontation with their Captain, and pushed him into teaching her how to play (and cheat) at cards. There's no peace here, just impermanent death and the number twenty-one so far as she's concerned. Maximilien offers an out for their card game, and she's so tired of everything. But still resolutely shakes her head.

"No, I have to. Let's bet on something this time — not the chips, something that means something, even if it's small."

This had been the exact opposite of a vacation for Max. He'd gone from a place of power and prestige that he'd clawed his way into after years of fighting and subterfuge, to here where there wasn't an economy and he had none of the respect to back him up that he had in his world. To say he hated it was an understatement.

But he also wasn't interested in why they were here, or solving mysteries, or even acknowledging the Captain was a real thing that existed. He wanted to leave, he just didn't want to do any of the work to make it happen. Normally he had lackeys for that.

"You have to?" his voice conveying just how strange a statement that is. "Why?"

Similarly, despite all the creature comforts — plentiful food and medicine, sunshine, decadence, clean clothes, a shower she could stand in for hours without worrying about exhausting a water ration, even some semblance of safety in the eye between storms — Clarke would also like to return home. She'd maybe been dying alone on an irradiated planet, but still felt like there was business there to attend to. Perhaps most pressing, she simply can't stomach the thought of being under the thumb of something with no tangible body to fight.

So Max, meet a potential lackey. Just don't call her that to her face, it's a bit insulting.

A picturesque example of contrarian, Clarke's got topics she'd bare her soul over, and those she'd rather bury beneath her own heart and never speak of. Secrets she'd share, and those she'd take to her grave over and over and over, until finally digging the final one. And her intention of following in Pirate Jenny's footsteps — hopefully with better results — teeter totters between the two. He asks why?, and there's absolutely no desire to answer honestly, but at the same time... she always has to wonder, to weigh, if it would help to bring more people into her plans. At least she's no real connection with Maximilien, and thus shouldn't care if he gets hurt in the crossfire, right? So —

"...I think everything here might end in a game of chance. Maybe even a card game. So I need to learn the rules."

Edited 2022-05-16 03:45 (UTC)

We're wide awake now, our eyes are wide open. We're running this world, we keeping it turning

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