Topic: Lunch With Leonel

Caroline Granger

Date: 2012-05-14 13:59 EST
It wasn't often that Caroline got a phonecall out of the blue from a cousin she hadn't seen in over a decade, much less one that included an invitation to lunch. She did, however, jump at the chance. She loved her grandfather, and her cousin Jon, but get them in the same house and focused on a discussion, and it could take hours just to be able to get them aware of anyone else around. She had no idea how Vicki put up with it so calmly. Of course, Caroline had hormones to contend with herself, and with her fiance out at sea making money the way he most enjoyed, she jumped at the chance to get out of the Grove.

Arriving early at the cafe, she settled herself down at a table by the window, absent-mindedly drumming her fingers on the gentle swell of her belly. She wasn't going to be able to keep the baby a secret very much longer, but hopefully the sight of her pregnancy wasn't going to turn Leonel into a gibbering mess as it seemed to do with every other male in their family.

Leo was actually a bit late. If anyone would care to take a guess, they would probably very easily deduce that he had been having second thoughts about this meeting with his cousin and it had taken a very strong, very stubborn woman to push him out the door before he decided to go through with it. Thus, he shuffled into the cafe and asked around for his cousin before being directed to her table by the window. He approached with his hands held together in front of his chest as though he didn't know what to do with them as he squinted down at the woman who he hadn't seen in...oh, years and years. He didn't keep track of things like that.

"Caroline," he greeted her with the faint undertone of discomfort just barely evident in his voice as he squinted at her from behind his glasses.

He hadn't changed that much from the last time they'd seen each other, Caroline decided as her eyes looked her cousin over. A little more brawny, a little grayer, but still definitely Leonel. "Hello, Leon," she smiled to him, remembering as always the grumpy teenager who'd had to babysit her during her adolescence. She stood to greet him, offering a hand for him to shake even as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. Family, not strangers.

His own smile was somewhat reserved and lacking as he leaned over to shake her hand, only blinking once in surprise at the familiar way she greeted him. He never understood that about people. "It's uh, good to see you. You're looking..." his gaze flicked over her briefly, noticing the small swell of her belly, "well."

She glanced down, laughing a little. "Ignore it, I do," she suggested, lowering into a seat and gesturing for him to take the other. "You're looking tired, but I have to admit the broader-shouldered look suits you more than the skinny one ever did. How have you been?"

He slowly lowered to sit across from her and nodded slowly, reaching up to remove his glasses so he could wipe a smudge off on his shirt. "Tired, that's a given. I don't sleep much. Been very busy. Good, but very busy."

She smiled, glancing up as a waitress brought them a jug of iced water and two glasses, leaving menus on the table with them before leaving. "You dropped off the radar for a while there," Caroline said quietly, pouring from the jug into both glasses. "No trouble, I hope?"

"Oh, well...I got wrapped up in work at the hospital. Then I quit that job, went back to school. Now I'm teaching at the university and working at smaller clinics part time, I haven't had much time in the last decade to drop by and visit anyone." He poured himself a glass of water and lifted it to his lips for a long drink. "What about you? What have you been doing?"

His cousin's smile deepened in a sefl-deprecating manner. "You're going to laugh yourself silly," she predicted mildly. Leonel had been witness to several insistent rants when she was a child on the subject of never, ever working for the Guild, ever at all. "I ended up working transport for the Guild for a while, then Humph got me chauffeuring him around. And then last year, he retired and made me CEO of the whole damned company." She leaned back with a roll of her eyes.

"Yes, I had heard you were the new CEO." Leo's smile came a little more easily as he remembered her insistence from the past. "How's all the responsibility treating you so far?"

"Well, let's just say I know now why Humph's always had such a bad reputation for being grumpy and difficult," she snorted with laughter, shaking her head. "Mind you, with Brynne for my P.A., I have a lot more help than he did, and once news of this -" she gestured to her belly "- breaks out, people will start falling over themselves to delegate and take over tasks. I'd still rather spend all my time on the boat, though."

"The boat?" he asked with an arch of a brow. "You have a boat now?"

"My fiance does," she clarified with a faint smile. "Richmond owns the Whispering Wind, down in the harbor, and he hires her out with himself as captain for pleasure cruises and fishing trips. I'd never ask him to stop, he loves it too much, but it does mean I'm back living at the big house during the tourist season."

"Fiance, huh?" He took another sip of his water and set it down, now contemplating a stronger drink. "Well. That's good. How long has this been going on?"

"About a month," she chuckled, eyeing her cousin thoughtfully. "Are you making small talk, Leon' Because you've never been interested in any of us."

Caroline Granger

Date: 2012-05-14 14:02 EST
"It could be safely assumed that I've been more interested in you than most of the family," he argued. "I did have to take care of you a lot, after all."

"You had Blue on your hands, too," she grinned back at him, shaking her head. Her eyes flickered down to the menu, but she already knew what she would order, if it turned out that Leonel was actually here to eat as well as talk. "Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," he replied with a small nod as he scooped up a menu. "I've never been here before, though."

Caroline chuckled. "Well, you should be familiar with Italian food," she smiled, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. "It's a pretty safe bet for lunch, I thought."

He chewed on his lip for a moment before nodding. "Well, I suppose I'll try the gnocchi."

"As enthusiastic as ever about anything not science, I see," she teased him lightly, lifting her head to place her own order with the waitress. "I'll have the Cozze Pomodoro, please."

"I'm married to my work, what can I say?" he shrugged as he set the menu aside and turned to face his cousin again.

"Are you ever unfaithful?" It could have been an innocent question, but no ....Caroline was fishing for details about his love life. Of course she was.

He flashed her a knowing smirk. "Ask direct questions, please."

She laughed, taking a sip from her water. "All right," she grinned. "Who's the biker chick?"

"Heard about her, did you?" he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Salem Renwick is her name. She's apparently from the future."

"I have my ways," Caroline laughed quietly before sobering for his benefit. "Well, what?s so odd about that' People appear from all sorts of different time periods through the Nexus, you know that."

"Because she was sent back here specifically to meet with me and help me with some scientific breakthrough that will apparently revolutionize the medical world."

Caroline's brows rose in surprise. "That's ....Wow, that's pretty specialised tech to get her here at this time and space. What's the breakthrough?"

He chuckled. "I don't quite know exactly. She won't tell me everything, just shows me some code that's similar to mine and says that it all links up in the end. At the moment I'm working on prosthetic limbs that work better than any I've seen so far; I can link them to the nerve endings in a missing limb and give them artificial muscle, blood vessels, etcetera. This code is helping speed up the advancement of my research."

"Well, you know, it stands to reason she wouldn't tell you everything," his cousin mused thoughtfully. "If she did, she might change the timeline, and then she wouldn't be able to come back and help you make the breakthrough that means she'd have to come back and help you ..." She frowned, rubbing her temple. "Time travel gives me a headache."

He laughed quietly and nodded. "Yes, time travel opens up a plethora of possible convoluted paradoxes. I just nodded and started prodding her for information."

She laughed. "It doesn't sound as though you got much out of her."

"Well, I've gotten a fair amount. Not information about what my work leads to, but information on how to advance my current projects. Already I'm working on a new design and I just finished one a week ago."

"I see." Caroline leaned back as the waitress brought their meal to them, smiling in thanks. As she turned her attention to shelling her mussels into the chilli sauce and rice on her plate, she glanced up at Leonel. "What makes your prosthetics so much more effective than the ones already on the market?"

"The metals are less harmful, for one. The artificial cardio-vascular systems implemented are more effective than the other prosthetics and so far have lasted longer. They feel more natural, are more flexible and life-like. The biggest advantage, however, is simply that to this day, none of the patients who have received these limbs have suffered from any form of rejection. Their bodies adapt and take to them with very few complications, all of which are short term."

Caroline frowned thoughtfully as she listened, taking in everything he was saying and realising that he'd been dumbing down for her. She smirked faintly. "So it's not prosthetics," she said calmly. "You're experimenting with cybernetics. So I assume this Salem person is, what, a cyborg from the future?"

He chuckled. "Basically, yes. She was in a brain dead coma but apparently the work I did led to the advancement in neurosciences that let doctors recreate her consciousness to the dot as an artificial intelligence and implant it into her brain, along with replacing several damaged limbs."

Caroline Granger

Date: 2012-05-14 14:07 EST
"How do you know it was you?" she asked curiously, licking her fork clean as she ate. "Obviously you have her word for it, but is there anything in what she's saying that you can corroborate in any way?"

"Well, I've looked at a lot of the codes and algorithms in the chip that makes up her conscious mind and there are several very obvious traces of the code I use for the limbs today, and a lot of it is very similar to Lydia, as well."

She blinked, her brows rising in confusion. "Lydia?"

"Oh, right. You haven't met Lydia. Lydia is a semi sentient virtual intelligence that I developed to act as an automatic lab assistant for my research."

"So ....Salem is what Lydia will be?" Caroline ventured slowly, her brow furrowing as she tried to settle this in mind and make sense of it all. "Have I got that right?"

"I believe Salem is a combination of a logical advancement in the programming used to design Lydia and the programming used to develop and implement the cybernetic limbs."

"Is she actually human at all" It sounds like she's been constructed, rather than born." Caroline shook her head. Anything more scientific than an engine was usually completely beyond her, but over the last year, she'd learned how to ask the right questions, no matter how out of her depth she was.

"Oh, she's very human," Leonel replied. He knew from personal experience. "Her mind is artificial, but it's conscious like a human mind, operates and acts like one. Her limbs are cybernetic, but the rest of her is flesh and blood."

"So she's a paraplegic with a motherboard in her head?" That might have been oversimplifying things overly much, but Caroline wanted to be sure she understand what it was Leonel was working towards. "And your research means that she's alive and kicking and upright, yes?"

"Well...not exactly, but I suppose that's a good enough explanation for now," he shrugged. "And yes, that's how things appear to be. I've studied a lot of the code in the limbs and implants and it all points to my research."

"And you're looking for funding." It wasn't a question; Caroline could spot a plea for cash at twenty paces these days.

"Salem's idea," he replied quickly, immediately reverting to apparent discomfort. "But yes, I could work a lot faster and a lot more efficiently if I wasn't having to pay out of pocket for everything."

Caroline rubbed the back of her neck lightly as she leaned back, pushing her empty plate away. "Well," she said thoughtfully, "I was looking over the family accounts a couple of weeks ago. Did you know you have allowance account that you've never dipped into' That's more than twenty years' worth of accumulated allowance straight from the profits of the Guild."

"I do?" he arched a brow. "Since when did I have anything of the sort' It was made clear pretty early on that anything I did would have very little to do with the Guild, and after I went to medical school, mom and dad both accepted the fact that I wanted very little to do with...well, all of you."

"Yeah, well, Humph doesn't seem to have paid much attention to anything your parents, or Junior, or anyone who behaves like them has ever said or done," Caroline chuckled lightly. "He kept all the accounts open, even if you didn't have access to them. As far as he's concerned, the money's yours, even if you haven't been using it."

"Well then...how exactly do I get hold of all of this money that apparently belongs to me?"

His cousin smiled gently. "You take some ID down to the Goblin Bank and request access to your GrangerGuild account," she explained. "They'll call Uncle Hubert, or one of his people in accounts, and the account will be opened up to you."

"Well, this is all just terribly convenient, huh?" He scratched his head. "Obviously, I don't expect it to be a huge amount given how little I've had to do with the Guild in the past. Do you know what the percentage of the profits go into the account?"

"Into your account' No, I don't," she shrugged. "I do know that something like 11.2% of all GG profits go into the family accounts, which seems to average out eventually into something you can live off."

"11.2% over twenty plus years? That should fund a few years of research," he chuckled quietly. "Fantastic."

She laughed. "Oh, well, I'm glad to have been of help," she grinned, sipping her water once again. "Can't help wondering who your back up option would have been, if I hadn't been able to help you out, though."

"That awful GAC," he replied with a dismissive wave. "I probably would have given up and gone to the university for help."

Caroline laughed aloud once again. "I'm on that awful GAC, you know," she told him in amusement. "I know it seems as though all we do is talk, but we do actually get things done, too."

Caroline Granger

Date: 2012-05-14 14:10 EST
"That only makes it slightly less awful, Caroline," he shook his head and plucked up his glass for a sip.

"You've never been to a meeting, or seen the after effects of what is decided upon," she chuckled, glancing up as their plates were collected and taken away. "You're in no position to be forming an opinion, negative or otherwise."

"Oh, I just don't like it because of all the people. I'm not a fan of people."

"You were born into the wrong family, then," she snorted with laughter, shaking her head. "Look, I've got your number now. I'll get the account number from Hubert in the morning and send it to you, and I'll get him to open the access, too."

"That would be great. Thank you," he nodded slowly, pushing back to slide from his seat.

"And now you're leaving." Caroline rolled her eyes, laughing still. "Leon, I actually think your social skills have gotten worse in the last ten years."

"I...thought...you sounded like you were ready to go' Are we not done?" he paused, frowning with confusion as he slumped back into the chair. "Most of my social contact has been with my students and computer."

"I'm sure your friend Salem is thoroughly enjoying that fact, too," his cousin smiled. "If you want to go, that is fine," she added in assurance. "It's just a little abrupt to leap out of your chair the moment you have what you wanted confirmed."

"Well, no. It's nice catching up, and I don't want you to think I only care about money and all...you know I've never been good at these things."

"Of course I know that," her smile softened as she leaned onto the table. "Why do you think I didn't invite you to the Grove" Not only would you have had to be friendly to Jon and his fiance - who is lovely, but a little blunt for a first meeting with a social inadequate - but you'd have to shoot the breeze with Humph, and that can take hours."

"Jon's engaged, too?" he rolled his eyes. "All of you getting married off, huh' Pretty soon I'll be the last single Granger in the city."

"Well, I am up the duff," she grinned at her cousin. "Jon's had a very strange eighteen months, though. He was engaged to Nikki, that got called off; then he went with Correy for a while - yes, our Correy; they got engaged, but that sort of fell apart after Jon was shot in the head and lost a huge amount of his memories. And there was something with vampires in autumn. But the upshot is that he's been with Vicki since the autumn, and it really seems to be a keeper."

He simply stared at her, shaking his head every time she explained something new in Jon's life. "See" People are bad news. I don't deal with any of that drama because until recently the only person in my life has been an VI of my own design."

"So you think Salem's hanging around, then?" she asked with a smile. "She's not going back to the future or whatever?"

"She doesn't have the ability to."

"Ah. That does rather take the significance of her staying out of the situation." Caroline shrugged, catching the eye of the waitress to have the bill delivered to their table. "Are you still in that pokey little apartment?"

"Significance?" He asked with an arched brow. "The one by WestEnd" Yeah, I am. I mostly sleep at the lab."

"Oh, I'll have to remember to get you a roll of coins and a ring," she said suddenly. "Magic back up for tight spots."

"I...I'm what?"

"Look." She pulled a chain out from underneath her shirt, showing him the ring hanging there. "This is a locator. If you're in trouble, you press the stone in, and we can send people to help you out fast. And these ..." Leaning down, she pulled a roll of copper coins from her bag. "If you break one of these, it'll translocate you to a sealed and hidden room in the Grove. Almost everyone has them, I just need to get some more made by the mages."

"Magic." He made a face at the thought. "You know I don't like magic, Caroline."

"Until you can come up with something technological to do the same job and be undetectable, magic is it, Leon. I don't insist on much, but I do insist on this." Her expression was stern as she spoke, a dark memory driving her to make this completely clear.

He blew out a resigned sigh and nodded. "Fine, I'll get your magic ring or whatever."

"Thank you." She tucked her ring and roll away, relief coloring her eyes as she nodded to him. "I know you don't like it, but it's necessary."

He offered her a slightly uncomfortable smile. "So...how's your brother doing?"

Caroline Granger

Date: 2012-05-14 14:12 EST
Her face fell, brown eyes lowering to the table for a moment. "I don't know," she said very quietly. "He went to Earth with some model he'd picked up over a year go now, and I haven't heard from him since."

"Sterling with a model?" he snorted. "Well, I'm sure he's alright."

"Well, I assume she actually exists," Caroline shrugged with a faint smirk. "I think if he was making her up, he'd have come up with a more generic name for her than Nanette. I know he's fine, I just miss him. He's missing a lot, being away. At this rate, the next time I see him, I'm going to be able to introduce him to my husband and my child."

"Do you have any idea where he's at on Earth?"

"He said something about Milan," she said, "but that was over a year ago, he could be anywhere by now."

"Well, have you tried contacting him at all?"

She leaned forward, her expression smiling but pointed. "How do you contact someone who deliberately left his phone behind and who apparently hasn't logged into his email account in months?"

He flashed her a small smile. "You use Lydia. I'll have her find him."

She laughed softly. "Well, I trust your computer more than I trust private dicks," she agreed with a nod. "I'd just like to know he's still alive, really."

"If anyone can find him, she can," he assured her. "I'm sure he hasn't forgotten about you. He's probably just been very busy."

"Knowing him, he's probably been kidnapped for use as a sex slave somewhere," Caroline snorted with laughter. "His idea of heaven - security, regular meals, and sex as often as he can get it up."

"Well, then at least we'll know he's happy."

She chuckled, glancing at her watch. "Unfortunately, I have to go before they send out search parties," she sighed, shaking her head. "Humph's getting madly over-protective just because I've developed a bump. I think he thinks Richmond expects me to be under house arrest while he's away."

"Well...best not upset the old man," Leonel replied as he smiled at her, pushing his seat back to stand again.

This time, Caroline rose with him, leaving payment on top of the bill before hooking her bag over her shoulder. "I'm glad you're back on the radar, Leon," she told him quietly. "I worry, you know."

"It's nice to know someone does," he replied. "Thank you for the help, Caroline. It was good to see you."

"Well, you know where I am," she told him firmly, reaching up to give him the hug she'd held back from when he'd first walked in. "If I can help, I will."

Awkwardly, his arm rose to return the hug before he stepped back and smiled faintly. "I'll try and be better about keeping in touch."

"I have your phone number now," she warned him. "Leave it too long, and I'll call you." Eyes sparkling as she grinned, she released him, moving toward the door. "Or I could really cheat, and introduce myself to Salem."

"I would rather you two not meet without me there to act as a buffer..."

"Oh, really' That is hardly going to prevent me from going ahead with it, Leon." Caroline laughed again as she opened the door, stepping out onto the street. For a man who didn't socialise out of choice, this seemed to have been a very successful meeting.

((Thank you, Leonel, for the scene!))