circle7 | Introductory Communication Studies 101

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Introductory Communication Studies 101

It wasn't like any of the decor on his home planet, which was, served to say, non-existent and in the few cases where it wasn't, almost painfully efficient. 'Decor' was a foreign concept that his home society hadn't found any need for and therefore had quickly and thoughtlessly abandoned. That wasn't to say, however, that the environment was gaudy. There was an understated sense of class and style in the few furnishings that decorated the waiting lobby, noticeable in the fine color and quality of the polished wooden doors, in the understated color of the paneled walls, the low-pile textile covering the floor - not that Calibri could tell.

"My essay was about the volunteer Peace Corp mission I participated in during my senior year of Intermediary Education," said one of the other students awaiting an interview, leaning forward on his plush-cushioned seat. His tone of voice was boastful, proud. He was waving his hands animatedly while the other student listened with an air of forced interest. "It was a third-world planet, you see! They hadn't even settled on a way to collect solar energy, can you imagine?"

How curious, thought Calibri, sliding the toe of his shoe across the wine-colored carpet. What's the purpose of putting something soft under your shoes?

"Nathaniel H. Calibri," intoned the mechanical announcer, tacked to a wall adjacent to the double doors leading to the would-be-benefactor of whoever won the scholarship competition. The doors swung open automatically, wide and synchronized with each other, before the previous interviewee walked dejectedly out, dragging his feet on the carpet.

Calibri stood up as his name was called, neither intimidated nor nervous. (He only briefly wondered if that was the purpose of the plush flooring after all - friction? Maybe the generated heat was recycled and re-purposed elsewhere on the ship.) He bypassed the other students without even a glance of acknowledgement and strode through the entrance into an even more ornate office - brightly lit by glass windows covered with sheer curtains and an entirely inefficient use of space, considering how far apart all the furniture was.

He strode right up to the large desk occupying the center of the room, careful to drag his feet as much as possible as to provide the maximum friction and contribution (he might as well, while he was here). "Present, sir."

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"It means it has no effect on me," Calibri explained to Danny, his quiet voice in direct counterpoint to the boisterous shouting of Garamond's son. Now that it was revealed that the Cheeseburger specimen was not, in fact, a test of any kind, Calibri seemed to quickly lose interest in it, painstakingly wrapping it back up in its laminated paper and setting it on the table beside the metal box, which he reached for next. "Though its hyper-stimulating effects on you are rather interesting."

"Oh.." Danny said thoughtfully, turning back to Calibri as he received an answer. He let that sink in before suddenly looking horrified, all eyes wide and mouth gaping. "You mean you don't think it's yummy? What is wrong with you?!"

"He's like that all the time, actually," Garamond laughed. "Cheeseburger or not."

"Oh," said Calibri, gaze floating between father and son. Ultimately, it settled on the latch of the metal box, deferring and polite, which was a good thing, considering what he said was, "That is indeed unfortunate."

The bow opened to reveal an interior lined with black velvet, dark as night. There were grooves and comartments carved into the solid insides, where vials of suspicious-looking liquids and clear cases of equally suspicious powders lay at rest, some thick and opaque, moving about their containers like mercury, and some so transparent and light, it looked like their containers held nothing but air at all. Calibri sucked in a breath, eyes widening.

Danny leaned curiously over the surface of the desk as Calibri opened the case. His eyes widened at all the different colored liquids. Not knowing what they were (or what they would do to the human body if consumed or touched) his first thought was, of course, that they looked delicious.

"I'm thirsty..." Danny said, reaching out to poke one of the vials. "Is that juice? Can I drink it, Boss?"

With a sweep of the hand, Garamond casually pushed Danny away from the case a good five steps. He held onto a pleasant smile. "That wouldn't be a good idea, Danny," he said. "Most of those will kill you if you drink them. And not an entirely painless way, either. Why don't you get some juice from the cabinet, hm?"

Calibri ran his fingers over the smooth bumps of the glass containers, picking out one after another - a small test tube of clear, colorless liquid, only slightly more viscous than water, a watery dark substance that resembled black ink, clinging to the walls of its container in spiderweb patterns whenever it was jostled, a transparent yellow-green mixture with specks of something fine and glittery mixed evenly throughout. He held each of these up to the light and examined them closely. "These won't kill you, if you're interested," he said to Danny, ever so helpfully.

He turned his eyes up to Garamond, curious. "Are you giving me them?"

Danny stumbled back as he was pushed, disappearing behind the desk again as he stepped off the drawer back onto the carpet. His eyes widened at the mention that the liquids in the case could hurt him and shrank back a few more steps with a whine.

Following his father's advice (and rather wanting to put some distance between himself and that case), he walked back to a large liquor cabinet against the far wall. With a bit of difficulty he pulled open one of the large double doors. Inside the cabinet was an array of bottles filled with liquids as strange and varied as the ones in Calibri's case. Of course, Danny wasn't interested in any of these. He reached onto the third shelf from the bottom and procured from amidst the alcohol a Super Juicy™ 100% Tangy Amora Fruit with Vitamin C for Healthy Kids! juice box. Score.

"I planned on it," Garamond said with a smile. "I'd like to see you expand your research. Unfortunately I couldn't get the clearance for you to leave with them on your flight, but I can pull a few strings and have them mailed. Just don't let anyone catch you with them. That'd get me in a bit of trouble, you know."

Wordlessly, Calibri looked from the garishly bright-colored juice box in Danny's hand to Danny himself, then to his father and finally at the questionable gift of highly lethal substances he had just been gifted. After only a moment, his hand shut the metal-plated box with a cushioned 'thud.'

"Oh," he said, looking so intently at the Amora Fruit Juice that it might as well have been the Vitamin C high-fructose liquid he was speaking to. "You're criminals."

For a moment the only sound in the room was the slurping of liquid through the small plastic juicebox straw. Danny frowned, looking at Calibri like he'd said something moronic. "Criniminals are bad guys, idiot!! We aren't bad guys."

“I prefer to call it above the government,” Garamond said pleasantly, sliding the box back to his side of the table. “Of course, if you don’t want the gift, that’s fine too. What we’re doing here is purely an act of generosity, I can assure you that much. We like to see bright children climb the ladder up to high society. You are our future, after all."

A hand shot out and slapped down on the surface of the box in mid-slide with a surprising amount of force. Calibri may not have looked intimidating in stature and appearance - soft-spoken, perfectly groomed and not exactly tall or largely built for his age, but the entire table still rattled with the force of the impact, even if the owner of said hand still didn't have a hair out of place.

"Please don't misunderstand," he said mildly, the incline of his head making the artificial lighting of the room glance off his glasses, hiding one of his eyes from view from underneath that blond fringe. "I was merely making an objective statement, sir."

Danny jumped as Calibri slammed his hand on the case. As he looked up at Calibri's face, glasses glinting and eye obscured, a chill ran through his body and he suddenly decided it seemed like a better idea to watch the exchange from behind the safety of his father's chair. This guy had a creepy face AND hated cheeseburgers... There had to be something wrong with him.

A smirk tugged on Garamond's lips as the box was locked under the anchoring weight of Calibri's hands. He relented his grip, rolling a subtle shrug off of his shoulders, and the small rumble that shook his chest suggested he was laughing. It wasn't the usual guffaw. It was muted. This boy, he thought, was interesting. The essay had said as much, but Calibri somehow exceeded the impression he had left in his written words. This boy was either a genius or a psychopath.

"You are smart," Garamond said, amused.

If Danny thought the obscured eyes were scary, then the small smirk that just barely quirked the corners of his mouth up must have been more so. It was the first show of obvious emotion on the teenager's face since beginning the interview, and upon catching sight of Danny hiding behind his father's chair, it became a fraction more pronounced.

"Now that," he said, sliding the box of poisons back to his side of the table, "was a prerequisite, I believe."

(This boy could have been both.)

If anyone was a criminal, it was definitely this guy. Danny was sure of it. He gulped as Calibri's smirk settled on him.

"Boss," he whispered, though not nearly quietly enough to keep Calibri from hearing, "he gives me the creeps."

"Nothing to be scared of," Garamond reassured Danny. "There's no need to be rude to Calibri. In fact, I think he's shown himself to be a very promising candidate."

He turned his eye on Calibri.

"About that contract," he said. "Have you reached a decision?"

"I'm not a criminal," he informed Danny shortly. "The Borinian Embassy Chlorophide-Amphemine incident was an accident." And he had made sure it had been scrubbed from his record before applying to any universities to begin with.

"I accept the terms of your arrangement," Calibri answered Garamond, latching the box shut now and carefully gathering it to his chest. It seemed large and bulky against his frame in comparison, like his thin arms weren't strong enough to carry the weight of it, but his embrace held tight and firm regardless. "In return for a covered tuition to any university of my choice, I will be under contract for you upon graduation."

Danny narrowed his eyes skeptically. He had no clue whatever Calibri'd said second, but the only way he could look more suspicious is if he had a curly mustache and a cape. That was saying a lot, considering that "suspicious" was a regular descriptor for the people who Danny encountered on a regular basis. It seemed like Calibri would be here to stay, though... Danny would just have to trust his father's normally decent judge of character.... And maybe be careful around this guy too.

Garamond did not press the issue of Calibri's "accident." As far as he saw things, hardly anyone was without a few skeletons in their closet (Of course, with Garamond, there was more skeleton than closet). He offered Calibri an agreeable nod and gestured toward the tablet and its pen.

"Good," He said. "All I need is a signature."

A white packet appeared in front of Calibri. Garamond affixed it with a signature of his own, pushing it like a hockey puck across to Calibri's side of the desk. "Bring that to a bank," Garamond advised. "It's an advance of 5,000.

"Oh, and... you do know you can't bring that back with you on the shuttle," he added, looking pointedly at thr case of poisons.

Before it could slide off the desk, Calibri stopped it with his hand, although this time he didn't apply enough force to even send a tremor down the table - it was only just enough to stop the mass of papers from slipping right off the surface. Before he could sign it though, his head snapped up, expression mildly (and very mildly at that) alarmed.

"I can't smuggle it?" he asked, looking longingly at the poisons.

"Can't you just do what you did last time, Boss?" Danny suggested, helpfully revealing illegal activity to a stranger he decided moments ago was scary and totally untrustworthy. "When you sent that weird bug thing to those cat people or whatever but you couldn't just send it the normal way."

"Well, a concealer chip is very expensive," Garamond explained, crossing his hands in front of him. "And even then, Calibri here could be apprehended if they decide, for some reason, to do a luggage search. That would bring an unfortunate end to our partnership. Though If you think you can get away with it, it is not my place to stop you."

A smile.

"I didn't imagine our little gift would make such an impression on you."

"They're useful," Calibri answered distractedly, although as to why a sixteen-year-old going into university would think a box of lethal substances was useful was a question in it of itself.

He had spread the box open again, undoing the metal latches with a swift flick, and was now running a measuring eye over its contents with a thoughtful frown. At length, he picked one or two small vials up, murmuring something quietly to himself about how they could be easily extracted from a living organism even after ingestion, which, all things considered, was not really the best line of thought for a sane person to go down.

"May I borrow a mammalian creature of any kind?"

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Random thought: does Calibri speak bug language

A good question

Yes. He does.

clicklickclickclickclick click chirp

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please imagine this scenario for yourselves while i casually pass out

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