everythinglost | IC Inbox

everythinglost

Call for a good time

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From:

transfundere

I am decidedly tiger neutral.

[ Said with a straight face. ]

Then let me pose one, potentially last question, as you are so very unsociable I doubt I will ever see you about by chance. [ Yeah, he didn't actually buy that, I hope you know. ]

Do you not want assistance, or do you merely think I cannot possibly help you?

From:

everythinglost

For shame. Don't you know there are some topics where you gotta take a stand? Or possibly a run at climbing some trees?

[He doesn't see any reason a person can't be unsociable and hang out in public spaces. It's a state of mind. Admittedly, perhaps not his, depending on the day but still a state of mind.]

I try to make assumptions, generally, but it can be difficult here, so I wouldn't want to say what you might be capable of.

From:

transfundere

Absolutely, sir. But I'd hate to stereotype the tiger, you see. If he's polite and friendly, I might quite like to be in a pit with him but if he hasn't any manners, I could certainly do without.

[ Dry as a bone. ]

Then I will assume the answer is 'assistance unwanted'. Inform me if that changes, will you?

From:

everythinglost

Considering the spikes they stick in those, if the tiger is at top manners, there's clearly something else very wrong with him.

It's the nicer assumption, so I'm glad to go with that. Enjoy your new job and so on.

From:

transfundere

Now you've added spikes. Do they put spikes in those pits? Or is that just what they show in the newspaper cartoons.

Now I feel woefully undereducated on the matter of tiger pits.

From:

everythinglost

There have always been spikes. How do you know it's a tiger pit if there aren't any spikes? It could be for anything, elsewise. A cellar people have been too lazy to get much work done on. A burrow for giant mole like aliens. A barque pit made by someone who didn't understand the assignment.

From:

transfundere

I would think 'because there is a tiger in it'.

As I'd assume that a spike pit would have spikes. Are you sure this isn't some strange modern innovation? It feels terribly modern: a tiger and spikes.

From:

everythinglost

The existence of a tiger doesn't tell you anything. If a tiger's inside your house does that make it a tiger pit?

I don't know, what year are you from?

From:

transfundere

It would certainly make the house the tiger's at that point, I should think. Though I point out it wouldn't make it a pit. Just as adding spikes to a house wouldn't make it a spike pit.

And I came from 1918, the end of the Great War.

From:

everythinglost

So you do take a stance on tigers.

Bad year. As so many of 'em are. Then I think it's probably an old invention, you just don't run in the right type of forests. Jungles. In the future there's likely someone who complains about tiger pits having spikes.

From:

transfundere

It's hardly a stance. Why else would it be there, if it wasn't it's home? Is it a visiting tiger? Do you have those in the future?

From:

everythinglost

Depends on what planet you're on. Or how far in the future.

From:

transfundere

So which planets have visiting tigers? I'd really like to know for no particular reason which might make one believe I have a stance.

From:

everythinglost

Hitchemus, for one. And I think there's this whole thing with intelligent animals on Earth in the 26th century. Maybe the 27th.

From:

transfundere

And where is that, exactly? Hitchemus, I mean.

Earth I'm familiar with.

From:

everythinglost

No idea. Chara was its sun, which I'd also never heard of and probably couldn't point to on a space map.

Nice place, unfortunate number of tigers.

From:

transfundere

So is it the density of tigers that causes all the visiting?

From:

everythinglost

Exactly. You couldn't walk into a library without having to step over a tiger. Which was fine until they started killing people.

From:

transfundere

Which has me wondering what the tigers were doing before that.

From:

everythinglost

It's actually sort of interesting. They had this cycle of 'intelligence' where one generation was smart and the next stupid and there was this whole political thing. But I almost died so I decided not care about that.

From:

transfundere

Was there some means of transference or-

I can't even imagine how that would work. [ A sigh. ]

Almost died?

From:

everythinglost

I can't say I got passing marks in biology, and that was on Earth. There's someone out there who has some idea about how this stuff works, but it's definitely not me.

Have you ever been chased by a tiger? Not for those without a second set of trousers. Luckily, she hated humans too much to learn what 'warning: electricity' means. A moral about prejudice. Though in case you get the wrong impression, it's important to be clear that I had no idea about that at the time. On her death bed my old mum admitted that she'd dropped me on my head quite a bit as a child, and evidence continues to mount up.

Edited Date: 2023-03-28 02:01 am (UTC)

From:

transfundere

[ There is a lot there. Quite a lot. He'll focus on the tiger; that seems safest. ]

So did you fall into a tiger pit? Are those electrified in that time?