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[willimprovise]

A lot had happened in the past day that was unexpected, but Sam was pretty sure this topped the list. The page Alan got was, comparatively speaking, a small matter; being suddenly transported to the world inside the computer designed by his father had been a shock, but still made a certain kind of sense. He'd grown up hearing stories about the Grid

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[fakejaded]

Britta glanced over, dubious, looking from the guy to the table, then shrugged. "Why not?" she said, getting to her feet from where she'd been crouching near the records. Looking for half-decent music could be time-consuming if she let it, which she usually did, just because there was so little for her to do so much of the time. She hadn't planned on playing pool, least of all against some guy she didn't know, but that had never before in her life stopped her. Heading over, she reached for a cue. "But I should warn you, I haven't played in a while and I'm not that good. I'm Britta."

[willimprovise]

"Hey, Britta," Sam said with a crooked smile, pleased enough to have someone to play against that it made no difference whether or not she was that good. It was company, it was something fun to do, and that was the important part, almost like falling back into old habits, except he'd never actually had a chance to break them before he showed up here. "I'm Sam, it's nice to meet you. And don't worry about being any good or not, I won't hold it against you if you aren't."

[fakejaded]

Personally, Britta preferred an easy win. At least, she did in theory. She hadn't had enough of them to be sure. Competitive though she could be, it usually took a cause, not a person, to bring that side out of her (there were a couple exceptions, one very obvious one. Picking stupid fights was one thing; actively wanting to do better than or beat someone was another. She'd usually settle just for not failing if she could somehow manage to hold onto it). "I just thought it might be a little less fun to win so easily," she said. "But I'm game if you are, Sam."

[willimprovise]

"Yeah, I'm mostly just looking for something to do," Sam explained with a shrug, seeing no reason to be anything other than straightforward on the matter. The way he understood it, that was nothing uncommon around here, anyway, all of them in the same boat. His own circumstances might have been a little unusual, but when that apparently made no difference, there was no reason to go laying all of that on a stranger. Finishing setting up the table, he put the triangle away, then gestured down at the table. "You wanna break?"

[fakejaded]

He struck Britta as kind of terse. That probably should have annoyed her, but she preferred it, honestly, to people who were overly enthusiastic (which didn't explain her cohabiting with Annie, but that was different). "Sure," she said, leaning forward to make sure everything was in place and lifting the triangle away before she set up the shot. At least this one didn't take much in the way of precision. "Everyone is, around here. Looking for something to do, I mean. There's... not a whole lot to be found." She bit her lip, glanced down, took a minute, slammed the cue into the ball and watched them scatter. For a moment, she thought she'd actually manage not to sink anything. "Stripes."

[willimprovise]

"Stripes it is," Sam said, stepping back to leave the full perimeter of the table open to her. Absently swinging his own cue from one hand to the other, with the bottom of it resting against the floor, he watched with casual sort of interest - not invested so much in the game itself, the placement of the balls on the table, but in the fact that they were playing at all. The confirmation of what he'd been told already in her words was something that he wasn't sure was comforting or frustrating, but it was something, and he tipped his head to the side in acknowledgment. "And yeah, that's what I've heard. I've only been here a couple hours, though, so I'm still just starting to see it." He was supposed to actually change the world, and now he didn't even know what world he was in. At the very least, there was a certain kind of irony in that.

[fakejaded]

"Jeez, you move fast," Britta said wryly. "I'm pretty sure a couple hours after I got here, I was still convinced I was hallucinating everything and I could just sit around and do nothing until it wore off." She only remembered it was her turn when she finished talking, moving to line up a shot as if that had been entirely her intention to begin with. That night had been a nightmare to begin with, to the point that showing up here, even if it had marked her as totally crazy, had been a relief. Now that she was sure it was all real, she didn't know what to think, so she was just taking it in stride as best she could.

The ball she hit clacked into others, and those bounced off each other and the walls, and eventually one of them spun toward a pocket without sinking. Wrinkling her nose, she straightened up. "All yours."

[willimprovise]

"I did consider the possibility," Sam admitted, head tipping to the side as he took a few slow steps around the table, looking for the best shot to take. The thought had lasted all of a second, put in context of what the ENCOM board members would have to say about that, but he couldn't deny that it had at least crossed his mind, however unlikely the prospect seemed. It was too detailed, too real, and having been in one other world already in the past day, who was to say that there couldn't be another? There was just a distinct lack of explanation for this, making it a hell of a lot weirder.

Finally lining one up, he took a shot, the ball he hit sending a few others spinning away from it and ricocheting off a wall before knocking one into a pocket. "Then I figured I should probably just get a head start on settling in. Gonna have to do it eventually, right?"

[fakejaded]

"Well, it's that or spend months kicking and screaming," Britta said. "Maybe years. You know some people have been here over five years?" Five and a half years. She hadn't lived in one place that long since she quit high school. The same city, yes, but not always the same part, often not the same apartment, and there had been plenty of breaks with her trying other places, joining the Peace Corps, being absurdly nomadic and getting nothing for it. A couple years was doable, five and a half felt like a nightmare. That said, it still currently beat the alternative of letting Jeff know what she'd said the night she left. "So you probably have the right plan."

[willimprovise]

"Five years, Jesus," Sam said, eyes widening slightly. He hadn't actually been told as much before, but he wasn't surprised, either. If there really was no way to leave, and he doubted Quorra would have been misinformed on that front, then it only stood to reason that years would pass for some people. The difficult part was imagining himself here for that long when he finally had something resembling direction. A day ago, he'd have been almost glad to buy himself the extra time free of obligation; now, he actually wanted to be running the company. Convincing himself that it didn't matter was, it turned out, easier said than done. "Yeah, I don't really want to spend five years questioning my sanity."

[fakejaded]

"I know," Britta said, rolling her eyes. "I already spent one doing that, and that was before I got here." She stopped, looking up, her brow raising as her words slowed. "Not that I... am actually crazy in any way, just I... I went back to college. It wasn't pretty." (Okay, yes, every time she admitted where she'd been before she got here, she felt she had one up on Jeff, so what?) "It gets hard to tell sometimes around here, things get pretty nuts."

[willimprovise]

"Back to college, wow," Sam said, eyebrows raising, though he meant nothing serious by the apparent agreement. Crazy might not have been an inaccurate assessment, as far as his opinions on college went, but impressive would have served just as well. He never would have done it, after all (had gone mostly for his father's sake, strange as that was to admit when he'd been absent at the time). "I can see how it wouldn't be. Pretty, I mean. I barely got through two years before I dropped out."

[fakejaded]

"Further than I made it the first time around," Britta admitted wryly. She wrinkled up her nose, and God, she really didn't know why she was telling him this, but there wasn't any harm either when it was no less than she'd told Jeff the first time day they met (okay, comparing anyone to Jeff was unfair on so many levels). "I didn't even make it through high school. Got my GED later, but... where did you go? When you were... going."

[willimprovise]

"Cal Tech," Sam answered, lining up another shot. With someone else, someone who didn't know him, it seemed ridiculous to say that he'd gone because it was his father's school, that he'd left, in part, because the same reason made it pointless to stay. Over the past night, everything had changed, but he couldn't do the same so quickly; he was no less inclined to talk about his so-called issues than he'd been when Alan paid him a visit. "Just didn't wind up being worth staying."

[fakejaded]

"It's not everyone's thing," Britta said with a shrug. She couldn't even make it through high school, and the only thing Greendale had going for it at times was that it was such a joke, sometimes no one noticed she was, too. "And it wouldn't've done you any good here anyway."

[willimprovise]

"No, it really wouldn't have," Sam agreed, shaking his head. There was a lot that wouldn't do him any good here, a lot that had already happened, but school just might have been chief among them. Most of what he would have been going for, he already knew, anyway; when it came to computers, maybe he'd never gotten to learn from his father firsthand, but he'd always had the same knack for them. "So there really is that little to do around here?"