It doesn't take much to wake Higgs, though maybe that's not a surprise when any porter who spends significant time on the surface learns to be a light sleeper in a hurry. He sits up, eyeing Sam and Lou carefully. Sam's got this, probably, but at least he's awake if Sam decides Higgs really needs baby duty, too.
Probably not, though. The kid isn't going to trust Higgs, and he doesn't doubt for a moment that she remembers him well. He watches Sam drowsily, but doesn't offer much more than acknowledgement.
The kid does not, and she tries to make that as clear as she can. Wailing at the top of her tiny lungs, flailing her fists even as Sam tries to calm her down. "Hey, hey, come on," Sam murmurs at her, kissing the top of her head, rubbing her back.
He's not much of a singer, but he tries anyway. "See the sun set, the day is ending..." Lou seems surprised more than pleased, but it gets her to stop crying for the moment. "There we go. Let that yawn out, there's no pretending... you okay now, Lou?"
She catches sight of Higgs again, and while she doesn't start wailing like she was before, she does make a disgruntled noise as she curls up against Sam's chest. "Okay. There we go. No crisis, okay?"
Higgs can't help the smile, even as the kid starts to calm. He'll try and make it up for her, if he can. Show her that he's a different person without the Extinction Entity pulling his strings.
"A big new bed all for you. How about that, kiddo? And blankets. And clothes. Buncha little onesies for you, so you're all snug."
The noises she's making are closer to contented than before, so he takes that as a good sign. "Sorry we woke you," he says to Higgs, still swaying with Lou in his arms, still rubbing at her back. "You wanna start putting in an order for breakfast, and maybe some stuff for her? I can get her formula started."
Sam sure knows what he's doing. Higgs kinda likes it, honestly. He's confident that they might actually be able to do something with this shelter he barely considered a home.
Sam words it like a request, but Higgs can't help sitting up a little straighter at it just the same. It's something to do, something to keep his mind off the fact that he's not sure what to do with himself anymore. "Certainly. Gal's gotta be comfy around here."
It's something, at least. It's been a long time since he's felt like he has something approaching a real plan. He sits at the computers, getting to work. "So what would you like for breakfast, Sammy?"
Well he can fake it, at least. He knows he needs to take care of Lou, everything else comes second. And Higgs seems to be agreeable to that notion, anyway. So Sam will keep trying to think of what they might need if they're going to be here long term and gives Higgs lists as they come to him. Breakfast and baby stuff seems good for now.
He settles Lou on her little bundle bed and sits on the floor next to her, mixing water from his canteen with the powdered formula he has that someone slipped into his pack before he left. He suspects he has Deadman to thank for that one.
"Uh, anything but chyrobiotes." He's been living off those the past few days. They're not terrible, but he misses real food.
He laughs quietly. "Don't have to worry about that," he says. "Ain't gonna order those unless one of us gets sick." Useful, if you've got some DOOMS-adjacent illness, otherwise Higgs can't imagine eating them. So he puts in the order. It's a strange set of orders, but given the background Peter Englert had given Bridges, it doesn't come across as unusually outlandish.
"Here's to the porter who picks it up not taking all damn day."
Hell, Peter's had an ailing sister, a dying father, a wife -- all manner of family down here. All of whom love pizza. Why not an infant, too? Though it might be harder to argue for pizza for a baby. But hey, Higgs has a way with words, who knows.
"Thanks for setting all that up. I'd pay you back, but I'm not sure a dead man has access to his likes anymore. But I'll... think of something."
Higgs shakes his head. "Don't worry about it. Even if you had access to them, it would alert Bridges to your activity. Might even be able to narrow down to where you were changin' funds around." He probably sounds overly paranoid, but Higgs had been a separatist.
He leans up against his desk awkwardly, back to the computers so he's facing Sam. "Bridges never realized I was livin' so close to a major Knot City, so I doubt they'll notice anything off. Not right away, at least."
"They've got more to worry about anyway, right now, than the two of us. The post-inauguration stuff will keep them busy for a few weeks. Reshuffling staff, all of that. Rebooting the country, or whatever the hell it is they plan on doing. We can probably get away with a little more while they're distracted before we have to worry about keeping more quiet."
Higgs snorts. "The Bossman in the mask is the President now? The UCA ain't gonna last very long at all." A shame, maybe.
He doesn't care, though, because it means that it'll be easier for them to lie under the radar. "Good for us, at least, and anyone else who's laying especially low."
Sam snorts derisively and sets Lou back down into her little nest for the time being. Until they get the crib here and set up.
"President Diehard-Man. Can you believe it. No fuck that, I can. They just want to keep things going the way she would have wanted them. In loving memory, or whatever bullshit."
That's so ridiculous, Higgs can't help but laugh. "Create a hero out of a monster, hm? Figures. If people knew the truth, they might decide to leave the UCA."
...maybe it's best not to dwell on that. After all, Peter Englert is a member. "It's not like he can wave as much power as the presidents of old. The UCA is goddamn tiny."
Stretched out across an entire continent, sure, but there aren't many people living in the cities, not like they used to anyway. "Since I don't have any places to cook, I thought I'd go ahead and get us already cooked stuff. It'd better not arrive cold."
Sam had wondered about that. He'd probably joined, best as Sam can figure, to get full access to everything the chiral network has to offer. He decides not to comment on it, and instead concentrate on the cooking aspect of the conversation.
"We could get one of those little hotplate things. Just a single burner, set it up somewhere on the desk -- away from computers and books. That way we don't have to wait for a porter whenever we want food."
Well, he'd actually set "Peter Englert" to auto-join after he'd already resigned himself to an eternity on the Beach. It had been a parting gift to Sam, some tiny bit of an olive branch. That final, annoying prepper who always asked too much of him deciding the UCA wasn't so bad after all.
Even in the depths of his insanity and scrawling hatred of Sam all over his journal and walls, it had never really been personal.
He doesn't say anything about that, though, just looks at Sam thoughtfully. "Sure. Whatever you want to get. You can put the order in now, if you'd like."
The FUCK YOU SAM!!! messages on the wall is slightly distracting, but he's able to ignore it well enough. It's a complex relationship, they have.
It takes a little bit of poking. He's more used to be on the other side of the terminal, picking up orders and dropping them off. But he does find what he's looking for and puts an order in for it. Just a simple little hotplate, a pot, a pan, and some basic nonperishable food items. Something to get them started.
Well, Higgs should. It's not exactly a great environment for anyone to be in.
He's starting to accept that this is permanent. It's not a dream, not some elaborate DOOMS-related hallucination. Why Sam is even bothering, he's not sure, but neither of them are the sort to say something they don't mean. "I used to spend a lot of time in here just waiting around. I got pretty good at predicting how long it would take certain porters. You were easy, 'cause you're always so goddamn fast."
"That's me. The Great Deliverer." It's said with a healthy dose of dryness as he sends off his new order. Sam always pushed himself hard. Harder than he should, probably. He has scars on his back and shoulders from where the pack dug in. His feet are always beat to shit, despite the BRIDGES tech boots he wears. They're just not made for how hard and how far Sam goes.
Honestly, he might as well make this his permanent base; Higgs isn't trustworthy, not yet, but he's honest. He'd tell Sam to his face that he was going to turn him in, rather than go behind his back to do it. There's an odd sort of comfort in that.
"You're not worried at all about Porter Syndrome?" It's a joke. Mostly. But he's heard of those lifers who get restless when they try to settle down and end up going straight back to the delivering. And then there are MULEs, which are a whole other problem.
Higgs laughs. "I hear it's not as big of a problem as it used to be. Bridges does all sorts of blood-chiralium tests for people it thinks might be at risk. Creepy, eh?" He shrugs, though, clearly not actually bothered by the idea.
"Maybe they'll actually send out one of those robot things instead of a person."
Well they stole enough of his fucking blood while he slept that the idea doesn't seemed farfetched at all.
"I tried sending out a robot a couple times. Always came back with Cs, I think maybe one B. They're far from perfect, and some things need a delicate touch. Let's hope our breakfast comes with a human."
Higgs snorts. "The one I saw did look pretty damn delicate." Whose brilliant idea had it been, anyway? Leave it to Bridges to take the person out of a job that involves contact with other humans.
He falls quiet after that, though, clearly not sure what to do with himself. This is so new to him. He's never talked so much with somebody, as far as he remembers. Maybe when he was quiet young, but even then he's not sure.
"They've got little boots. Little Bridges boots. Not sure why." Sam has always been more of a listener than a talker, but then again he hadn't had a lot of people willing to listen to him. He feels like he's making up for years of being talked at by being the one doing the talking.
There's an alert that one of their deliveries is here, and Sam gestures for Higgs to take over the computer and accept the order.
He'd never gotten close enough to one of them to notice anything so ridiculous. But as the delivery alert sounds, he's back to knowing what to do.
He taps at the computer for a couple of minutes. "Oh, good. Breakfast's here." He accepts the order, giving the porter a specifically eccentric amount of likes, just as Peter Englert always does.
There are advantages to making it a habit of never showing your face; people tend not to think anything of it.
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Probably not, though. The kid isn't going to trust Higgs, and he doesn't doubt for a moment that she remembers him well. He watches Sam drowsily, but doesn't offer much more than acknowledgement.
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He's not much of a singer, but he tries anyway. "See the sun set, the day is ending..." Lou seems surprised more than pleased, but it gets her to stop crying for the moment. "There we go. Let that yawn out, there's no pretending... you okay now, Lou?"
She catches sight of Higgs again, and while she doesn't start wailing like she was before, she does make a disgruntled noise as she curls up against Sam's chest. "Okay. There we go. No crisis, okay?"
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Higgs can't help the smile, even as the kid starts to calm. He'll try and make it up for her, if he can. Show her that he's a different person without the Extinction Entity pulling his strings.
"We gotta give her a nice, fancy bed."
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The noises she's making are closer to contented than before, so he takes that as a good sign. "Sorry we woke you," he says to Higgs, still swaying with Lou in his arms, still rubbing at her back. "You wanna start putting in an order for breakfast, and maybe some stuff for her? I can get her formula started."
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Sam words it like a request, but Higgs can't help sitting up a little straighter at it just the same. It's something to do, something to keep his mind off the fact that he's not sure what to do with himself anymore. "Certainly. Gal's gotta be comfy around here."
It's something, at least. It's been a long time since he's felt like he has something approaching a real plan. He sits at the computers, getting to work. "So what would you like for breakfast, Sammy?"
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He settles Lou on her little bundle bed and sits on the floor next to her, mixing water from his canteen with the powdered formula he has that someone slipped into his pack before he left. He suspects he has Deadman to thank for that one.
"Uh, anything but chyrobiotes." He's been living off those the past few days. They're not terrible, but he misses real food.
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"Here's to the porter who picks it up not taking all damn day."
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"Thanks for setting all that up. I'd pay you back, but I'm not sure a dead man has access to his likes anymore. But I'll... think of something."
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He leans up against his desk awkwardly, back to the computers so he's facing Sam. "Bridges never realized I was livin' so close to a major Knot City, so I doubt they'll notice anything off. Not right away, at least."
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He doesn't care, though, because it means that it'll be easier for them to lie under the radar. "Good for us, at least, and anyone else who's laying especially low."
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"President Diehard-Man. Can you believe it. No fuck that, I can. They just want to keep things going the way she would have wanted them. In loving memory, or whatever bullshit."
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...maybe it's best not to dwell on that. After all, Peter Englert is a member. "It's not like he can wave as much power as the presidents of old. The UCA is goddamn tiny."
Stretched out across an entire continent, sure, but there aren't many people living in the cities, not like they used to anyway. "Since I don't have any places to cook, I thought I'd go ahead and get us already cooked stuff. It'd better not arrive cold."
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"We could get one of those little hotplate things. Just a single burner, set it up somewhere on the desk -- away from computers and books. That way we don't have to wait for a porter whenever we want food."
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Even in the depths of his insanity and scrawling hatred of Sam all over his journal and walls, it had never really been personal.
He doesn't say anything about that, though, just looks at Sam thoughtfully. "Sure. Whatever you want to get. You can put the order in now, if you'd like."
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It takes a little bit of poking. He's more used to be on the other side of the terminal, picking up orders and dropping them off. But he does find what he's looking for and puts an order in for it. Just a simple little hotplate, a pot, a pan, and some basic nonperishable food items. Something to get them started.
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Well, Higgs should. It's not exactly a great environment for anyone to be in.
He's starting to accept that this is permanent. It's not a dream, not some elaborate DOOMS-related hallucination. Why Sam is even bothering, he's not sure, but neither of them are the sort to say something they don't mean. "I used to spend a lot of time in here just waiting around. I got pretty good at predicting how long it would take certain porters. You were easy, 'cause you're always so goddamn fast."
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Honestly, he might as well make this his permanent base; Higgs isn't trustworthy, not yet, but he's honest. He'd tell Sam to his face that he was going to turn him in, rather than go behind his back to do it. There's an odd sort of comfort in that.
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Being a porter is a shit job, and so many people aren't even grateful at the end of the day.
"We can leave the work to the fools who haven't realized Bridges doesn't pay them worth a shit yet, right?"
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"Maybe they'll actually send out one of those robot things instead of a person."
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"I tried sending out a robot a couple times. Always came back with Cs, I think maybe one B. They're far from perfect, and some things need a delicate touch. Let's hope our breakfast comes with a human."
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He falls quiet after that, though, clearly not sure what to do with himself. This is so new to him. He's never talked so much with somebody, as far as he remembers. Maybe when he was quiet young, but even then he's not sure.
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There's an alert that one of their deliveries is here, and Sam gestures for Higgs to take over the computer and accept the order.
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He'd never gotten close enough to one of them to notice anything so ridiculous. But as the delivery alert sounds, he's back to knowing what to do.
He taps at the computer for a couple of minutes. "Oh, good. Breakfast's here." He accepts the order, giving the porter a specifically eccentric amount of likes, just as Peter Englert always does.
There are advantages to making it a habit of never showing your face; people tend not to think anything of it.
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