August 12 | 10:45 PM | The holodeck, open to everyone.

[wise_ass]

It's late, but still a fairly respectable time to be up and about. He passes a few people on his way up to the holodeck but thankfully, when he gets to the door, he finds there's nobody else in sight. He lights up a cigarette and stands in the center of the dimly lit room, a blank page waiting impassively for his command. Bert takes a long, easy breath and sighs; the cigarette smoke is toasty, familiar, divine. The first one he's had in days.

"You wouldn't happen to know Mejis, would you?" he asks. His tone is polite-- it sounds like he's already forgiven the computer for not having the first fucking clue about where Mejis is, but before he can explain himself, the room has already started coming to life.

It flickers a few times through scenes Bert's not sure he recognizes as even from his world, but when it finally settles, he finds himself standing on one of the rolling hills overlooking the little town. The oil derricks, far over the hills to his left, are backlit by a fiercely beautiful sunset. On his right he can see a wide, treeless horizon that tells him he's not far from the Clean Sea.

It must have been a market day. The people below are packing up their stalls and loading up their carts. There's a tense moment where he's terrified he'll see something, someone he'll recognize before he realizes that the computer's brought him to a Mejis about fifty years prior to his ka-tet's infamous visit.

He heads down the hill and wanders a bit, trying to stay out of people's way, but enjoying, as he usually does, the novelty of secret immersion, not even minding when a woman gives him the obligatory small-town stink eye reserved for unfamiliar, unaccompanied young men. In fact, it makes him smile. It doesn't seem to improve her opinion of him any, but he can't help it. He walks through the market with that shit-eating grin, hands stuffed in his pockets, enjoying the alien quaintness of it all with a bizarre brand of contentment he figures can only be enjoyed by holidaymakers in other worlds.

He's in another world even now, though, isn't he? The station? The idea is an uncomfortable but not unwelcome knot at the base of his skull. He's spent nearly all of his time here doing penance, even if he hasn't realized it, but the last month has actually been penance in earnest. Bert had been drinking whiskey when zombi Alain had helpfully suggested he eat a bullet to better cope with his guilt, and mayhap it was a blessing, because the stuff just hadn't tasted the same after that. Or mayhap it was his own self-pity that didn't go down sweet anymore.

Cuthbert wasn't sure what he'd expected to feel, standing in the red dirt of Lower Market, surrounded by the smells and sights and sounds he's spent the last seven or so years trying to smother from memory. And mayhap it'd be different if he'd been dropped in at the right time and seen ole Kimba Rimer or Cordelia Delgado strutting through town. Mayhap.

But right now, the air feels clean, and somewhere a hundred wheels away, Cuthbert Allgood hasn't even been born yet. He closes his eyes and lets the idea sink in.

Behind him, the holodeck door opens, and he smiles-- that wide, idiot grin that says he's actually pleased for company-- and squints to see who it is.

"Hey there," he calls out, his voice warm and animated. "Just mind the cow pies."

Comments

[wise_ass]

Cuthbert wasn't sure what he'd expected the man to say, but when he'd said it, whatever generic greeting he'd had for one of their slightly suspicious new neighbors flew right out of his head. Instead, he just wagged a finger at the man, looking excited, all fired up.

"We've got two-headed cows," he began, with slightly less amazement than if the stranger had confessed himself a long lost twin. "I mean, here. Well, back home. Two heads! Creatures that aren't live stock sometimes have more. One time--"

Then came that curious, internal feeling, almost like an invisible hand on his shoulder, a presence, that always seemed to come up when he told a story that had something to do with his tet. Before that he'd laid eyes on that ghast calling itself Alain, it had been a dark feeling. Haunted. One time, me and my best friend, my brother in arms, the fella I shot to death by accident--

But just then when he'd said it, though the feeling was still there, it was less like that and more like a little conversational speedbump. It didn't choke him, just made itself known. He took a half a second to register the change, barely pausing, before he continued.

"--me and my compadres saw a three-headed deer walking on three legs." He gave the man a wide-eyed look. "Three heads. Three legs. Moved like a nightmare, poor thing. We cringed, then we laughed, then felt like asses and took pity on it. My friend Roland said we oughta shoot it." Bert huffed a laugh at the memory. "That was usually his answer to just about any quandary. I said for all we know it has self-esteem and a philosophy. Al sided with me. I think we did the right thing."

In the wake of that awkward soliloquy, Bert blinked as if coming to and swiveled to the side, sticking out a hand.

"Cuthbert Allgood. One head," he said, by way of introduction, and then fast on the heels of that: "One eye, too. I'm a minimalist."

[theoutlaw]

Minimalist was not the first word Boyd would have used to describe this young man. Then again, he could hardly point fingers in matters of verbosity, and he found the enthusiasm refreshing. It was hard to resist smiling at the excitable way in which Cuthbert relayed his mutant animal tales.

"Well, don't go cuttin' off one ear to complete the look -- there's nothing wrong with a little imbalance," he said, and shook Cuthbert's hand. "It's good to meet you, Cuthbert Allgood. I'm Boyd Crowder. One head, two eyes, but hopefully not quite as generic as that combination implies."

He had to wonder exactly what kind of world Cuthbert came from. His manner of dress, the large gun he carried, those spoke of a wild west, but two-headed animals were a staple of the post-apocalyptic genre, usually meant to be twisted remnants of a nuclear war.

"I've got a friend back home who likes to solve problems with bullets. He's something of a modern-day gunslinger: tall, laconic, has some issues with anger management." Boyd wasn't too certain how Raylan would approach the dilemma of the three-headed, three-legged deer. He could, however, easily imagine the look Raylan would give such a strange beast, having been on the receiving end of that look several times. "I'm with you, though. If Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer could overcome the discrimination he faced and find his true calling, I see no reason why your mutant deer wouldn't."

[wise_ass]

Boyd's response is funny, charming, and it all seems to come easy to him. It's a solid handshake, but Bert regrets that he feels a shard of suspicion just as he lets go of it. He's not sure what it is, if he's surprised to find a smooth-talker with social skills among the upstairs neighbors (who, by Bert's count, are not by and large a very friendly bunch) or, hell, maybe the Hambry setting has him on edge after all. Either way, it's diminished just a few seconds later when Boyd offers up a personal anecdote that Bert absolutely buys.

Maybe he just knows exactly the type Boyd means. And Cuthbert's never heard of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, but he knows a joke when he hears one. He cracks a smile.

"My olden-day gunslinger is also tall, also laconic, and I imagine if he really tried all day and all night to feel an emotion, it might be anger. But it might also be hunger. Roland doesn't spend a lot of time on feelings," he summed up quickly. "I'm sure he shed a tear or two when I bit it, but only because he'd've found I'd already smoked all my tobacco before shuffling off. Downright inconsiderate way for a man to die, but I hadn't exactly been planning on it."

[theoutlaw]

By now, Boyd had met more than his share of dead men and women walking, but he honored Cuthbert's casual, almost flippant mention of his death with a moment of silence anyway.

"Well, maybe your gunslinger friend really is an emotionless killin' machine," he allowed, "but I'm willing to wager he felt more than cigarette deprivation at your demise."

Boyd wasn't entirely sure whether he was being truthful or simply trying to offer a little reassurance, but he felt reasonably secure in his estimate. And even if he was wrong, did it truly matter? For Cuthbert, this was the afterlife. He wasn't going back home, not outside this illusion of light and sound.

Boyd hadn't died back in his world, but he was dead to it, and he found a small comfort in thinking that maybe, in his own way, Raylan missed him.

"I like to think of their kind as somewhere between emotionally challenged and emotionally illiterate. It don't make them any easier to deal with, but it leaves a glimmer of hope to go along with the endless frustration."

He let out a long breath, watching the dwindling crowd of suppliers and demanders. For a time-and-space traveler, he blended into the scenery reasonably well, looking like an outsider but not an alien. Not much unlike Cuthbert, really.

"Were you headed someplace, or just sightseein'?"

[wise_ass]

Bert smiled at Boyd's reassurance and then his diagnosis, actually huffing a laugh at emotionally illiterate, cigarette smoke pouring out with it in a staccato stream.

"I like that. That's not bad at all."

Before he could really consider next question, a hulking, burro-drawn cart rumbled through, driving them both to the edge of the road.

"Just sightseeing, I guess," he said absently, flicking ash off his cigarette and watching it pass. "Been here before, a long time ago. I wanted to see if the years did anything to improve my poor opinion of the place."

Nearby, a be-bonneted young lady nearly Bert's age was loading up a wagon with empty milk bottles; at this last pronouncement she fixed him with a withering look, slamming the back end of it shut with a bang.

[theoutlaw]

"You'll have to excuse our manners, Miss," Boyd told the affronted bonnet lady, sounding quite sincere. "We have simply yet to experience the many charms this town surely has to offer."

She didn't seem particularly appeased by his words, offering no acknowledgment as she took her cart and business elsewhere.

"Of course, one of the greatest charms of a small town is its hospitality," Boyd continued, turning back to Cuthbert with one corner of his mouth upturned. "You're either born to it or you're forever an outsider, to be chased away with shotguns and pitchforks if the need arises... or if the mood strikes."

As a son of Harlan, Boyd had an intrinsic understanding of the townspeople's suspicion towards strangers. People who came to Harlan County often did so with an air of self-importance about them, with condescension on their tongues and exploitation on their minds, certain that the dumb hillbillies were no match for their superior worldly intellect. They were proven wrong time and time again, but often not without doing considerable damage first. Still, Boyd felt there was a fine line between understandable mistrust and undue hostility. He also knew that the greatest dangers of Harlan did not come from the outside world.

Besides, Harlan was home, and this wasn't.

"When I was your age, maybe a few years younger, me, my cousin Johnny, a couple of friends, we lived in a dry county so we had to drive a few towns over to the nearest drinking establishment. They didn't like us much out there in Cumberland. We'd flirt with the local girls, piss off the local boys, sometimes steal some asshole's shiny new muscle car and drive it into a lake. It often meant gettin' our asses handed to us, but it was worth it."

Those were fond recollections, taken from a simpler time.

"Now, I'm too old to be pickin' fights with the natives, but I have a feeling this place encourages just that sort of behavior."

[wise_ass]

Bert listens with a dreamy, amused look on his face.

"Ye gods, that sounds fun. Tell you the truth, I'm feeling wildly jealous just about now. We couldn't have gotten away with any of that, me and my friends. Even if we could've ridden far enough that we wouldn't have been recognized as gunslingers, one of them would've been too spooked at the thought of it getting back to our instructor, somehow. He had eyes just about everywhere." He swallows the old habit of making fun of Cort's one-eye-less-ness. "We were adults well before our time. To borrow some of the local slang, it sucked."

His mouth turns up a little; he really likes that one.

"Don't get me wrong, we found trouble, but more often than not because we crammed it into duty, and that didn't always work out s'well."

[theoutlaw]

Duty was a word that had meant little to Boyd as he was growing up. His only calling as a Crowder boy was to eventually take the reins of his father's criminal empire, and it wasn't a path he'd been ready to embrace. Rebellion was the word that had defined his teenage years. And if he was being fair, probably the two decades that followed.
 
There were two sides to adulthood: responsibility and disillusionment. In Boyd's case, the latter had outweighed the former for a good long while. It seemed to him that Cuthbert had seen his share of both too soon, and he could certainly believe that it had sucked.
 
"You may be dead but you're still young, Cuthbert Allgood," he said, feeling inspirational. "There's a whole world of trouble out there for you to explore."

It struck him after the words left his mouth that while he endorsed the message wholeheartedly, it carried unfortunate implications when confronted with reality. Their whole world was currently confined to one deadly space station, and the trouble looming on the horizon wasn't the fun sort.
 
But it was remarkably easy to put reality aside as twilight set in, painting the sky in attractive shades of red, blue and purple. 

"Night's still young, too. You sure all you want to do is take in the scenery?"

[wise_ass]

Bert gave him a relenting sort of smile, ducking his head.

"Trouble isn't quite the same when you can call it off with a command," he said, almost apologetically, but still with that far-off, preoccupied look in his eye that meant he was considering it. "But that's a nice offer. Anyway, getting all these looks makes a man want to earn them, doesn't it?"

[theoutlaw]

"World's full of self-fulfilling prophecies waitin' to happen," Boyd agreed, smiling slightly. While playing the role of the biblical serpent appealed to him on some level, he wasn't looking to push Cuthbert into any direction he didn't want to go, not even towards imaginary delinquency. His only real objective here was to get a feel of what made the kid tick, to see if he could find a weakness, a potential ally, or even a way to make him hesitate should they ever face each other with guns drawn.

But objectives aside, it seemed to him that Cuthbert could benefit from the kind of fun that didn't start and end with a bottle.

"I know what you mean, though -- it ain't the same. I guess I've just had my fill of the irreversible, deadly sort of trouble."

[wise_ass]

Bert smirked, giving Boyd a near-silent huff of amusement at his response. He hesitated, wondering what it was about this that felt familiar-- was it Boyd himself, or simply something about the conversation?

Anyway, he was feeling heavier than he wanted to. If someone had held him to his reasons for conjuring up Mejis in the first place, he'd've been pressed to admit that he'd wanted to see if it would affect him in any appreciable way. As it was, he found it had lost some of the power it had over him as an idea, even with the familiar sights and sounds and smells filling him up, even with Hambry dirt on his boots.

You were just a kid. The voice in his head was a new one that he'd been cautiously breaking in over the last few weeks; not precisely his own, but not the disheartening, fast-talking whisper that had been holding court before the incident with not-Alain, either. You were just a kid, and so was Roland. Well, as much as he ever was.

Bert pulled his eyes off the horizon and gave Boyd a belated smile, hoping he at least gave the impression he was completely present and accounted for.

"Well." He leaned up against one of the pasture posts, and took a long drag of his now stub-sized cigarette. "You going to stand there and wax philosophical or are you going to show me how it was done in Cumberland?"

He exhales the last of the smoke and grins (a slightly-less-amiable version of his standard) before grinding the butt beneath his heel.

[theoutlaw]

Now you're talkin'.

Boyd's grin was sharp, amused and a little bit dangerous, his eyes lighting up at the dare. He wished they could have met under more authentic circumstances. Maybe upstairs, maybe in another lifetime altogether.

"Well, you got the James Dean impression down, so I'd say we're off to a fine start already."

Even if Cuthbert didn't know who James Dean was, which was likely, the boy spoke the language of trouble. The posture, the well-timed execution of the cigarette, the challenging melody of the words -- the way Boyd saw it, if you couldn't do trouble with flair, you might as well skip the whole affair. Some of his companions from upstairs would undoubtedly disagree, preferring a more bare-boned experience, but to Boyd, presentation mattered.

"This ain't Cumberland," he continued, taking a look around to demonstrate his point. "Much as I appreciate your vote of confidence, my history of small-town delinquency isn't going to give me much insight onto what passes for trouble around here." He had ideas, of course, but this wasn't his show to run. "You've set the stage, cowboy. How about you show me how it's done?"