OOM: Concert, part 2

[electro_kinetic]

The stage itself is backed by a huge screen, big enough to nearly be an IMAX presentation, and the orchestra is in front, chairs empty. They're fashionably close to the starting time, because Noriko hates being late, and she didn't want to be too early: tucking her free hand in her coat pocket she walks with Hannibal, trying to keep her heels from clicking too loudly on the floor.

The seats printed on both tickets are quite good, being the center of the closest balcony, where the sound will blend and amplify without too much distortion, and a clear view to both the screen and the plalyers, but before they see any of that, there's the lobby to get through.

"Wow," Nori says, looking up at the starburst lights. "This place is pretty huge."

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

"I wouldn't say it's really safer," Hannibal says, smiling.

[electro_kinetic]

"Can you think of anything else to talk about to kill time before the performance starts?" Noriko asks.

[cook_the_rude]

"Books," Hannibal says. "What did you read recently?"

[electro_kinetic]

"The Story of O," she teased, straight face turned towards him.

And then she grins. "I reread Jules Verne."

[cook_the_rude]

"Oh, all that optimism and belief in the possibilities of technology," Hannibal says. "Which one?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Around the World in Eighty Days," she says. The main guy always seemed....weird, though."

[cook_the_rude]

"That's on purpose," Hannibal says. "He's a stereotype of the British Eccentric as continental Europeans imagined them at the time."

[electro_kinetic]

"What, like they'd never gone over there to meet one? It's not like lions at the zoo, they're just people."

[cook_the_rude]

"Well, they knew the British people travelling on the continent, and found them very odd," Hannibal says.

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko shrugs. "The English are weird, but not quite that weird. I mean, it's a little out of the realm of imagination that some rich guy would fire his manservant for bringing him the wrong temperature water."

[cook_the_rude]

"Noriko, you sweet summer child," Hannibal says, "of course they would. If the water was icy cold, or scalding hot, a slave master of ancient Rome might have had the offending manservant flogged to death."

[electro_kinetic]

"Yeah, but it was like two degrees different," she replies. "I mean, that's just too picky, and this comes from someone who has to shave a lot more than half a face."

That white men--or English men in particular--think of themselves as the masters of ancient Rome is not a surprise at all, alas.

[cook_the_rude]

"I don't like that attitude, either," Hannibal says. "But that is what the republican French of the time thought about English aristocrats."

[electro_kinetic]

"So both of them are weird. Good to know."

[cook_the_rude]

"Everybody is weird for someone," Hannibal al says.

[electro_kinetic]

"Who're you weird to?" she asks. "Not counting me."

[cook_the_rude]

"You should ask people," Hannibal says. "They don't always tell me. That would be rude."

[electro_kinetic]

"Hell, I do," she says. "What could possibly be so rude about sharing information? Weird is not, in itself, an insult. Just a descriptor."

[cook_the_rude]

"It is rude to push your opinion about people into their faces, especially if you don't have close dealings with them," Hannibal says, in a mildly explaining voice.

[electro_kinetic]

"If they're close enough to have an opinion about you, it's close dealings," Noriko says.

[cook_the_rude]

"Oh, Noriko," Hannibal says. "Do I have to call you a sweet summer child again? For opinions, no actual knowledge of facts is needed. At all."

[electro_kinetic]

"Oh Hannibal," she replies. "Don't call me that again, because I'll have to hurt you."

[cook_the_rude]

"But you are, in this instance!"

[electro_kinetic]

"My birthday is not in the summer," she says dryly.

[cook_the_rude]

"It's a reference to a popular fictional world where both summer and winter last for dozens of years," Hannibal says.