Caffeinate me

[vivalaopenpost]

☕THE CAFE MEME☕

The weather is getting cold and what's better for batting off that chill than a nice hot beverage in a place with comfy chairs and a barista who knows your favourite combo?

☕PROMPTS☕

1) Customer. You spent ages choosing your drink, lining up for it and now there are no more tables. Great. As a result, you have to look for somewhere to sit while balancing that tray laden with your drink of choice and tasty pastry in your hands. Looks like you've got no other choice than to ask that person with the spare seat at their table.

2) Barista. An employee of this fine establishment, if nothing else, knows how to brew coffee. We hope. Maybe you're the best barista in the world. Or maybe you barely know how the machine works and instead make up for it by coming up with hilarious names on people's paper cups. Either way, you work here and go through the daily grind.

3) Student. It's no secret that students congregate in droves towards coffee shops for a combination of free wifi and caffeine. Whether in a group or on your own, the laptops and papers are out in full force. Whether any work is actually getting done is another question.

4) Early Morning Rush. It's first thing and you're crabby. All you want is your coffee and you will kick, punch and claw your way for that cup of black gold. And it looks like you're not the only one feeling this way. Are you going to let that person stealthily cut in front of you?!

5) Not A Coffee Person. Maybe you just want to try coffee for the first time. Or you're a tea drinker who is rethinking their views on coffee. You're canvassing for opinions, and that can range from outright asking other customers to hovering over tables to monopolizing the barista for a good 5 minutes, holding up the line.

6) Coffee Date. Asking people out to a coffee is the easiest thing in the world. Or is it? Whether it's with a friend or something more romantic, a coffee date is a good opportunity to connect with people and talk about whatever comes to mind.

7) Late Nights. The evening sky is dark and there's hardly anybody left in the coffee shop. Closing time is not for a while yet, but a stillness has settled over everyone. It's that time of night where anything can happen.

8) Free For All. Or if all else fails, just make your own scenario!

Comments

[neverdisappointed]

[MJ's seen a lot of weirdness, but this is a different brand of weird and she's not entirely sure how to react to it, trying not to stare at the stuff coming out of this woman's mouth.]

Well... I guess that would depend on whether he knows anybody who really like reptiles and amphibians.

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

Poisonous and venomous. He used to talk in his sleep.

[She takes a deep breath, and types (it hurts too much to say)]

He had his vocal cords surgically cut.

[neverdisappointed]

[MJ frowns softly when she reads that.]

Ah... I'm just going to stop talking.

[And... maybe stop talking about talking as she rings up the transaction.]

Sorry. For what it's worth.

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

Not your fault.

[She pulls cash out, and a hefty tip. It's an apology for the whole...thing.]

Keep the gems.

[neverdisappointed]

[Honestly, she's about to cancel out the transaction and tell her to forget about payment altogether, but the offer of keeping the gems takes her by surprise, and she instinctively shakes her head.]

Hey, no. Those are yours. Like, literally yours. They came out of you. You should at least make use out of them.

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

[She laughs at that]

Trust me, I have tons of them. Guess where my obscure government agency gets a good half of it's funding from.

[neverdisappointed]

How have you not singlehandedly wrecked the economy?

[If she can just fling precious gems around as payment, their value would have diminished ages ago and there wouldn't be so many articles whining about the younger generations no longer buying diamonds.]

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

About three quarters of them are semi-precious, and the rest are usually pretty small.

[Answer: she doesn't use them as payment. She has a credit card for the drink, she's just not...worried about what's left behind.]

[neverdisappointed]

[If jewels are just spattering onto the ground whenever she speaks, someone is eventually pocketing them. So unless she's typing out 95% of her conversations, those things have to be going somewhere.]

Yeah, but spread out among enough people, you can end poverty or even destroy capitalism. That's huge.

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

[Mostly she types. She's not sure why she talked to MJ.]

Not really. You'd need an awful lot of 480s to destroy capitalism. As far as ending poverty, my sister is pretty good at business and she does run a charity that I help fund. There's a big balance that has to happen between talking, silence, and not flooding the local gem markets. Actually that's one way we track 480s; too many gems showing up? Might be someone like me.

There's not an exact science, but I get semi-precious stones or pearls around 50% of the time. Then, of course, there are the flowers. That's another good 40%, more or less. So only about 10% of the time is something truly precious coming out and, again, they're small.

[neverdisappointed]

[That's a lot of typing, so at least it proves that she's thought about this before. With a glance behind her to make sure there aren't any customers waiting to be served, MJ reads the explanation, stuck on one main point.]

480? I'm assuming that's a categorical designation?

[There are at least 480 different types of this kind of thing?]

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

It's the classification of a type of stories using the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, specifically the kind and unkind girls. There are around 2400 categories...which isn't much, when you consider how many different fairy tales are out there.

[neverdisappointed]

Mm. Not my wheelhouse, but I might have to change that.

[She's not much for fiction unless it's got some connection to reality, and she'd never considered fairy tales as having any kind of realism to them aside from maybe looking at cultural ideas through the ages.]

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

It's a good idea to get a general idea of what some of the big ones are just so that if a story tries to grab you, you've got a chance to fight it. Doesn't always work, but I know of a Rose Red who transitioned to male and he's been story free for decades.

[neverdisappointed]

I-... sorry, what? So you're saying fairy tales are like some kind of sentient disease or something rather than just something you're born into?

[Look, she already has to worry about evil androids, aliens with a skewed perception of resource management and genocide, sarcastic sorcerers, and way too many other things to have fairy tales thrown at her, too. Just let her earn her degree and then move into a log cabin in the middle of nowhere.]

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

[She gives a helpless shrug and a nod. Sorry.]

Sorry. They can be, yeah. We call them memetic incursions for a reason. The good news is that we're actually very very good at our jobs. I'd say for every million memetic incursions that start, you only get a full breakthrough once or twice.

[neverdisappointed]

That's still thousands of cases around the world. Again, that's potentially catastrophic. How allegedly good are you guys?

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

Since the Mother Goose incident of 2014 we've had a single successful incursion...and even with the Mother Goose out there actively attempting to bring incursions to pass, none of them managed.

[neverdisappointed]

[She actually laughs a little at that, because how else can a person react?]

Sorry, I think you're losing me at "the Mother Goose incident." Not that I don't believe you, but like you'd said before, it sounds unbelievable.

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

A Mother Goose is someone who is actively attempting to bring memetic incursions into the world...but, yes, I do agree that it's hard to take seriously.

[neverdisappointed]

[MJ would have been better off without knowing all of this, but that's a moot point now. Besides, living in ignorance has never been her way, if she can help it.]

Guess I've got some reading to do. Though if it's all the same, I'd probably rename some things in my head so I don't feel like I'm researching a subject made up by a five-year-old. No disrespect meant.

[jewels_pearls_and_flowers]

Makes sense to me. It took me years to get used to it. Take care, and thank you.

[neverdisappointed]

Yeah. Just... be careful, I guess?

[It doesn't exactly sound as safe as working at a coffeeshop, so it bears saying.]

Have a good one.