Modern Life

[Malkavian Riddler]

Cain blinked and then looked thoughtfully after the young woman as she flounced off to deliver the order of their meal.  Her actions had spoken volumes, causing Cain to understand that her thoughts had been manipulated.  He wondered if she would ever know, and then wondered if Romain had done something similar to him.  It wasn\'t like he\'d behaved any differently to how he normally would, but it did raise the question of why he couldn\'t just pluck information out of people\'s heads if he could give them false information to believe.  Maybe such a feat was more difficult?

The question of store security arose and he pondered it.

"Alarms maybe?  They wouldn\'t be silent though," he said after a moment, discounting his initial guess.  "You did that kind of trick with them?" he asked, pointing at the empty spot on the table where the waittress had pretended to pick something up.  "Were there cameras?" he asked, then realised that Romain probably didn\'t know what a camera was - or did he?  "They hide cameras in black... half-globes now," he described, the word \'sphere\' escaping his vocabulary for the moment.

[Existentially Odd]

"Cameras?" Romain frowned, thinking of the broad, popping bulbs used to capture imagines of movie stars back when he\'d gone to sleep.  He couldn\'t associate them with something hidden inside a black half globe.  "For taking pictures of things?" he continued, obviously baffled and needing clarification to even begin to see what Cain was telling him.  "Why would there be cameras at a clothing store?"

[Malkavian Riddler]

"Because shoplifting is a problem, I guess.  I\'d say it costs a store less to put in a few cameras and monitors than lose merchandise for years and years.  You hardly see those funky circle mirrors anymore," he explained, figuring that even way back shopkeepers must\'ve used mirrors to keep an eye on their stuff.

He looked around the diner but didn\'t see any cameras immediately, though after some shuffling in the booth he eventually pointed out a silver sphere fixed on the roof near the cash register.

"There\'s probably a camera in that, pointing at the door or maybe at the register."  He signalled at it, attracting a stare from a passing waiter, who was eyeing them off with a great deal more suspicion now.  Cain stopped gesturing.  "It\'d look weird if you walked up to someone and they just handed you stuff."

[Existentially Odd]

Romain was still frowning, utterly confused by what Cain was telling him.  He didn\'t make the connection with the little bubble in the ceiling until he gave up listening and watched the mortal\'s thoughts.  Finally, when he imagined a bank of monitors showing store feeds and - in Cain\'s imagination - Romain being shown in one of those monitors walking up to someone and then walking away with a bag in his hand, the vampire was able to deduce what the boy meant.

"Ohh!" he exclaimed, seeing the light at last.  "You mean movie cameras, that film people.  That explains it!"  He smiled winningly at the mortal across from him, realising that yes, there probably had been cameras in those stores and people could have watched him walk out without paying and found it suspicious, with the store salesperson being the only one effected by him.  He uttered a rapid string of laughing French then, tapping himself lightly on the head as he cursed his own stupidity.

"Thank you," he told the boy sincerely, leaning forward towards him to show how much he meant these words.  That had plagued him for nearly a year now.  He supposed he\'d better learn to look for bubbles from now on!

[Malkavian Riddler]

Cain responded to Romain\'s moving forward by doing so himself, thinking that there was going to be more to the motion than there actually was, but managing a smile anyway, liking the fact that the vampire was so thankful, to him.

"You must have a lot of money," Cain said, figuring that if Romain had opened a bank account a long time ago, that he would\'ve amassed a fortune, especially since he didn\'t actually use any money.  The idea that Romain had no need for it didn\'t even really enter his mind, even though he\'d seen evidence of this via the waittress.  "Have you done that to me yet?  That mind swipe thing?  Would I feel anything?"

He wondered if it would be of a similar concept to being drunk from - his mind altered with something that would make him happy.  The waittress had sure been happy when she\'d left, which reminded him of something else.

"Oh, you usually pay for meals after you\'ve eaten, by the way.  The only place you pay in advance is at a takeaway or all-you-can-eat."  He shrugged and gave his reason to why.  "Tips have to be figured out, I guess."

[Existentially Odd]

Romain blinked, a little dazzled by Cain\'s rapid comments and questions.  The topic jumping was not something he was used to, and it took him a moment to ground himself.

"No, I don\'t have much money at all, actually.  I take everything I need because I generally don\'t need much.  I have some but I try not to use it, it\'s only a couple of thousands of dollars," he admitted.  "And I know you usually pay at the end of the meal, but I convinced the girl that she was offered a twenty dollar note already and that included a good tip, so I did it early, so we can just leave when you have finished eating," the Frenchman explained patiently.

"And no, I haven\'t altered your mind, though I have read it a great deal.  You don\'t feel it, I am too experienced for that," he added arrogantly, his head tilting upward ever so slightly.  "The only reason I understood your camera reference was that I saw you picturing screens with people watching me shop in a store, just now.  I generally don\'t bother messing with minds unless it is absolutely necessary, though.  Your mind, I prefer to leave untainted.  I like your innocence."

[Malkavian Riddler]

Cain was appropriately awed by Romain\'s admission of his superior and expert powers, and he gazed upon the vampire with a sense of admiration that likely wasn\'t lost on the Ancient.

"Innocence?" Cain repeated, struggling with the word used for him.  He scratched behind his ear in a way that made him look younger than his already youthful seventeen years and grinned.  "Nobody\'s ever thought of me as an innocent before.  Not even me."

It was plain to see though, that he didn\'t mind it.

[Existentially Odd]

Romain cocked his head all the way to the left, considering his mortal companion seriously.

"Perhaps innocent is the wrong word, then.  I can\'t think of the right one in English, though... um... you are... honest?  Open?  Sincere, perhaps.  I like that you are not deceptive and what you think and say, you do, without any dishonesty," the vampire asserted, nodding to himself as he said it, thinking it through.

"There are not many people in the world today who are like that, judging from what thoughts I have scanned."

[Malkavian Riddler]

It took Cain a moment but he thought he knew the word Romain was looking for to describe him.

"Trustworthy," he hazarded, knowing that he was trustworthy so it wasn\'t an egotistical leap for him.  He worked at being trustworthy, it was something controllable.  He didn\'t set out to betray people, nor did he ever want to.  He disliked duplicity as much as it seemed Romain did.  "What you see is what you get," he told Romain, warming up to talking about himself, but it wasn\'t common for him to focus on himself when there was a vampire in front of him.  "I don\'t like it when people don\'t say what they really mean either," he admitted, and screwed up his nose for a short moment before grinning at Romain.

It was around this time that his dinner arrived and he sat back in order for the waittress to place the huge filled plate in front of him, followed by the drink that she informed him would have free refills.  He thanked her and then grinned and thanked Romain before picking up the burger and taking a huge bite out of it, making a messy display of eating.

[Existentially Odd]

Romain merely stared at Cain thoughtfully, his gaze focussed intently on the way the skin around his nose wrinkled so flexibly when he made his little facial gestures.  It baffled him, really, how the boy\'s simplicity amused him, rather than grated.  He\'d existed in his early years surrounded by men of zeal and earnest passion, every day had been a matter of fighting and survival, to the point where bedding down at the dawn was a thrill and waking up wasn\'t a guaranteed circumstance.

Now, his life was completely devoid of passion and he floated through an unfamiliar world.  Perhaps his indulgence of Cain was due to the fact that the boy was his key to unlocking where the modern fires burned, his route to finding his way back to control and adrenalin again.  Perhaps it was the fact that the mortal was trustworthy... and attractive.  Perhaps he\'d just grown too old and lax to be as particular as he once was.  Whatever it was (he suspected all three, really), he felt an unusual surge of contentment as he looked at the boy that was both unnerving and comforting.

Cain was trustworthy and he was beginning to trust, even if it was his habit to rely on no-one.

He looked away when the mortal began eating, finding it both impolite and strange to watch such a thing.  Instead, he glanced around the room, observing others within it and considering the camera he\'d had pointed out to him.  He didn\'t know what he would do if there was such a security measure in the store they were about to head to, but he anticipated there might be trouble.  Alone, he could deal with such a thing but having Cain with him... the thought made him uneasy.  The boy was a vampire fan however, surely he\'d witnessed them obtain whatever they wanted by any means necessary and wouln\'t be spooked by a little bloodshed?  He would no doubt find out.

He said nothing more until Cain\'s meal was consumed and then they left the diner.  Romain was half worried that they might even be pursued out of the restaurant because they hadn\'t actually paid, but they reached the next block without incident and he relaxed with every step after that.  "Where should we go to find one of these machines?" he prompted Cain, indicating that it was now the mortal\'s turn to take the lead.

[Malkavian Riddler]

"Electronics store, but I know department stores have them too."  He tried to think of more places, but because he wasn\'t really an expert in buying computers he didn\'t really know.  He was looking in the windows of stores they passed as well as what was coming up.  "Hey, an electronic superstore is bound to have it," he said with glee as they approached a large building that was painted a ghastly lemon yellow.

Without preamble, he gripped Romain\'s hand to lead him up to the pedestrian crossing and pressed the walk button in order to show Romain this course of action.  Usually he\'d just jaywalk, but now he wanted to show off all the conveniences of the future.  The lights turned amber and then red fairly quickly, stopping traffic before the walk box buzzed and the green pedestrian light turned on.  Cain explained that the noise was for those people not paying attention before adding belatedly that the blind would find it a handy convenience also.

They went inside the glass double doors that slid open for them automatically and Cain consulted the directory that was ahead of them, showing different floors containing whitegoods, appliances, media, computers and other electronics.  The latter was on the third floor, and Cain was soon leading the way to the escalators.

[Existentially Odd]

Romain stopped dead at the sight of steel stairs moving upward in an ever-revolving whirl of appearance and disappearance.  It was likely a convenient time for him to pull out of Cain\'s grasp but instinct had his hand curling tightly around the mortal\'s instead.

"I don\'t like these things," he admitted, glancing up at the next floor, seeing that mortals rode the moving stairway calmly but knowing he would not.  It wasn\'t that he\'d never seen them before but he\'d always found them unnerving and had never tried using them.  There were always stairs around somewhere that he could use instead.

"Let\'s find the unmoving kind," he insisted, looking at Cain now.

[Malkavian Riddler]

The tightness of Romain\'s grip caused some pain but Cain didn\'t want to make too big a deal of it, considering what the vampire had told him about touching him - but at the same time, how would he learn to control his strength if he wasn\'t told what hurt and what didn\'t?

"Does that feel to you like you could be holding my hand pretty tight?" Cain asked, not addressing the escalators for the moment because he wanted to focus on this first.

[Existentially Odd]

Romain blinked and looked down at their joined hands, releasing his grip automatically before directing his pale gold gaze back up to Cain\'s.  He made a move to withdraw his hand but it wasn\'t an overt shaking off this time, it was a slight, testing tug, to see if Cain let him go.  If he didn\'t, he wouldn\'t make a grand fuss over it.

"No.  It felt like I was applying some pressure, though.  Holding it... firmly.  Was I?" he answered cautiously.

[Malkavian Riddler]

"Just a little over firmly," Cain said, not letting Romain go immediately at the tug, but when the vampire didn\'t try again he released his hand, thinking he would be rude to keep holding it.  "Was uncomfortable, rather than painful," he explained, though the discomfort had been because of a minute amount of pain, he wanted to downplay it.

He took a moment to smile reassuringly at Romain before turning his head and looking around the store, not seeing what he wanted before going back to the directory after telling Romain that they would find some non-moving stairs.

In the far corner there were stairs labelled, and hopefully there wasn\'t a fire door keeping them at bay.  After walking there, they found that the doors, though thick and heavy, didn\'t have a fire door warning, and so they went inside and up three flights before exiting into the computer area.  They came out near the printers, so Cain moved past these aisles and found himself in the computers area, surrounded by laptops and personal computers, before being approached by a salesperson who asked if they could help them.

Cain took advantage and asked for something that would access the internet without having to wait for ages.  The pair of them were shown a couple of computers, and after a bunch of questions about broadband and finding out that Cain didn\'t really have a clue to set it up, they were sold a computer, an installation and broadband package, and were given a phone number to ring to make an appointment for cabling up their house.

All of this cost thousands of dollars, and when the salesperson ran off to get them their much needed cables and other things that Cain wasn\'t too sure about, he took a moment to explain payment to Romain.

"You know, if you got yourself a bit of plastic that looks like a credit card, that would fool the cameras into thinking that you\'re paying when you\'re not, because they\'ll still see the swipe and the signing.  Or maybe get someone\'s expired credit card, so that the machine spits out a bit of paper.  Doesn\'t matter if it says \'declined\'."  Cain was on a brainwave now.  "All you have to do is make them think the slip is right."

There was only one problem to doing such a thing now - where to get a credit card.  It would have to be put into practise later.