[ closed ] out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field

[fussiest]

WHO: (fussiest) & (justscribing)
WHAT: roommates gonna roommate
WHERE: in the lobby of some apartment building of alhaitham's choice! kaveh doesn't have a choice in this.
WHEN: sometime during the arrivals...? july!
WARNINGS: n/A

Comments

[fussiest]

[ apartments, says alhaitham, tossed like an ultimatum. kaveh stares. it follows, kaveh thinks, that alhaitham would pick the most generic of buildings to scrape the skies here in a city that wends a little like a post-modern maze. part of kaveh wants to attribute this to alhaitham being difficult, and he likely is - but also, this is alhaitham. a waste of kaveh's time is also a waste of alhaitham's time, time that isn't spent figuring out the inner workings of a world that he knows is likely piquing all kinds of interest in the back of alhaitham's mind, and so this puzzle has a set solution. kaveh begins to think.

from the quick aerial survey that kaveh performed on the roof of the tallest building he could find and climb earlier in the day, there are ten obvious apartment buildings meant to house individuals - five in what kaveh is calling the round district and four in the district that looks a little like a toothless avidyan spinocrocodile. kaveh does not know when alhaitham arrived, but he surmises it can't have been too long apart from his own arrival lest kaveh would have noticed that his roommate hadn't been around for some time. a general search pattern typically blooms out in a spiral shape starting from the centre, but this is alhaitham, who is known towards the eclectic, and would know that, thereby actively circumventing it so that he's able to find what nobody wants him to find. but this is also alhaitham, who can't be bothered to move the mint plant out of the way in the hallway when making his way to the bathroom in the morning, so whichever apartment he picked can't be too far out of the way. kaveh consults the sketch of the thematic map he'd scribbled down in his sketchpad. there is a confluence of two of those large underground tunnels that house the trains in the east quadrant of the round district, because why would you walk if you could test the transportation network at the same time? they corral two apartments equidistant to station tracks. of the two, the chances of alhaitham being in either one seems equally likely.

the rest: kaveh searches on foot. the first lobby is empty. climbing each floor to peer into the long length of empty hallways just in case obtains nothing, though kaveh considers and discards the possibility that alhaitham's sitting in a room somewhere because this is a solvable puzzle. it's fifteen minutes later - forty minutes in total of searching - that kaveh walks in through the sliding doors of the next apartment complex, and groans at the sight of alhaitham sitting on a cushioned couch in the lobby. with a book, because of course there is a book. ]

And there's you. [ it hadn't been a significant amount of walking, but kaveh lets natural dramatics fuel the flop of his limbs as he sits down heavily next to alhaitham. his legs sprawl. the weight of his body is caught by the backwards push of his arms. kaveh tips his head up towards the ceiling, and sighs. ] You could have been a bit more descriptive. Apartments? Really? There are at least ten of those; even a directional heading would have been better. If it had taken more than an hour, I would have left you here.

[ but there's relief there as kaveh stretches his legs, his head canting just so so that he observe the line of alhaitham's silhouette. he seems well; if he's gotten into any fights, kaveh can't tell, which, all in all, might be a good sign. ] What book is that? One of yours, or one of the ones from here?