View source for Logs:Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth

{{ Logs
| cast = [[Kitty]], [[Leo]], [[Skye]]
| summary = "Grass is always greener on the other side of the Universe."
| gamedate = 2020-09-25
| gamedatename = 
| subtitle = 
| location = <NYC> Native Woodland Garden - Greenwich Village
| categories = Kitty, Leo, Skye, Mutants, Mutates, NYU
| log = 
It's not a large space, a small green oasis just around the corner from the much ''larger'' one found in Washington Square, several large steelwork sculptures scattered through a peaceful arrangement of trees and shrubs. It has up until very recently been quite packed, a cluster of students gathered under the still-green shade of the canopy overhead for an international students' welcome, complete with lunch and cheesy icebreakers. It's mostly tapering off now, though a few people still linger over soda and pizza.

Tucked over against the twisted knot of some abstract sculpture with laptop on his lap, in daisy yellow short-sleeve button-down with a subtle windowpane pattern, dark indigo jeans with yellow contrast stitching, black loafers, Leo doesn't ''quite'' look wide-eyed and lost enough to be one of the incoming new students. He ''has'' snagged himself a cup of soda and piece of the pizza -- though, untouched, his has long since gone cold. Nominally, maybe, he's working, but he hasn't really looked at his computer in a while, just sitting with his back to the metal, face slightly too pale where it turns up to the pleasant fall sunshine. "I do miss my dogs," he says, wistfully. "Last year I was walking dogs. They liked me."

Sitting half on the sculpture itself and half turned to face Leo, Skye also doesn't look like a new student. She's wearing a fitted brown t-shirt depicting an owl made of words exploding from a book, slim blue jeans, and sturdy black lace-up boots. She has no makeup on and the only obvious jewelry she wears is a rainbow silicone bead bracelet and a choker in the vibrant colors of the bisexual pride flag. Her long hair is -- unusually -- bound up in a tight single braid. "Dogs ''are'' pretty great," she says. "I'm sorry, man. Shit's fucked up." She's quiet a moment. "I know that wasn't your point, but my mom's getting a therapy dog. You're be welcome to come by and get pup snuggles while she cooks you way too much food."

As the last of the new international students in her group finally break away, Kitty’s artificial smile fades into a more relaxed expression. There is a lone can of San Pellingrino left on the table that she grabs, lingering just long enough to seem like she isn’t trying to bail as quickly as possible. She’s dressed up for once: ‘natural’ makeup, blue blazer and matching slacks, black Chelsea boots with a bit of a heel and a black and white checked blouse. A metal name tag rests on her lapel: “KATHERINE PRYDE, ASTROPHYSICS.” Her lipstick is fading now, and as she walks away from the event Kitty is letting her hair out from the duress of many bobby pins. 

She looks around briefly, then makes her way to the statue. “Leo?” She asks cautiously. “Though I saw you at the pizza earlier. Joining us at NYU?” Kitty glances at Skye, gives her a little wave. “Or is your friend?”

The series of changes Leo goes through at the sound of his name is swift -- sitting up rapidly with a small but noticeable tensing of his shoulders that fades into a very ''fixed'' polite smile as his eyes light on Kitty that breaks, a brief moment later, into a softer breath and an easier smile. "Oh! Oh. It's Kitty, right? You look -- At first I didn't --" A faint flush creeps up into his cheeks. "Sorry. Hi. No. I'm not in school --" A small hesitation. "-- here. I just come for the..." He glances down at his hands, flattening them against his thighs. "Pizza?"

The uncertain uptick of his tone is Highly Convincing. 

"Oh! Sorry. Skye, this is Kitty. Kitty, Skye. We're friends. She's keeping me alive today. Thankfully, not hard so far. Worst danger has been a very intrepid late-season mosquito. Which, honestly, rude."

Skye sits up abruptly straighter at the sound of Leo's name, dropping both her feet down to the ground. Her expression more sedate than Leo's but still clearly alert. "Hey," she says when Leo introduces her. "I'm pretty good at dispatching late-season mosquitoes, luckily. Are you a..." She studies Kitty's badge. "Teacher? Or...sorry, ''professor''?"

“Yeah, that’s me,” Kitty says, pleased at the recognition. She glances at the sad slice beside Leo, one eyebrow raised but a smile dancing on her face. “The best kind of wasted pizza is the pizza you get for free,” she says with mock solemnity. It doesn’t seem like she’s convinced, but she’s not prying, either. 

She gives Skye a nod. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for protecting Leo against the mosquitoes.” Kitty still has a light tone to her voice, but doubt creeps in on the last word. “Oh jeez, no.” Kitty undoes the badge and slips it into a pocket. “PhD candidate. And apparently, also the welcome committee for the first Post-COVID cohort.” Her eyes flick to Leo as she says that.

Leo's blush deepens as his eyes drop to his pizza, but there's something grateful in his smile at Kitty's joke. "I probably won't break NYU's bank." He glances back toward the last few lingering undergrads mingling under the trees, squeezing down at his thighs. "Oh. Hopefully I'll be there, one day." With a hasty clarification: "Candidacy, ''not'' starting undergrad again."

He plucks a small flake of baked-hard cheese off the crust of his pizza, nibbling at it, though this is as far as his foray into Eating gets. "Is it weird? Do you think it's weird? What do you ''tell'' them? I feel like if I were coming to America -- coming to ''here'' -- all over again for the first time, right ''now''." His lips compress. "Well, I wouldn't, but if I did. Which part would be the biggest shock?"

"Yeah I'm also guilty," Skye says, grinning, "but I stuffed it in my face real quick just in case anyone ''did'' object." She crosses one leg over the other again. "I mean, it probably depends where they're coming from, right? Some places got this stuff pretty well under control. I mean. Not ''as'' under control as here, I guess, but you know."

Kitty laughs. “NYU can afford to feed both of you, I’m pretty sure.” Her eyes widen slightly when Leo mentions candidacy. “I’m sure you’ll survive comps,” she says. She looks as though she might ask a question, but Leo and Skye have jumped to the next thing. “There was someone from Vietnam who was thoroughly unimpressed with us,” Kitty recalls, “but the Italians seem happy to be here.” She shrugs. “I think a lot of them don’t understand why it’s ''just'' New York that’s safe. Not as many questions about you as Admin thought there would be.” She purses her lips, thinking.

Leo's hands keep smoothing at his jeans, slow and repetitive. "It ''is'' a little confusing. I --" His lips thin, eyes shifting up towards the leaves overhead. "Would probably have taken cared of it differently, if circumstances allowed." He looks back up with a very small smile. "I probably will. Have survived worse -- though I have better people shepherding me through." He looks at Kitty's name tag. Back to her face. Back to the trees. "How close are you to through?"

"Circumstances were pretty fucked," Skye says eyes widening slightly. "You did better by us than the wholeass government, local or federal. Maybe people overseas are better at reading the news than Americans, so they already knew about what Leo pulled off." She gives a small shrug. "Maybe foreign news sources also didn't try to downplay or twist it around so much, either."

Kitty nods along with Skye’s assessment. “Depends where they’re from. Some places like mutants even less than here, somehow. But mostly...” she gives them both a soft look. “International press is doing better by ''you'' than this whole country.” Her hands spread apart into a shrug, as if to say ''nu, what can you do?'' Kitty blinks, suddenly a little off balance. “Uh, well, I did my comps last June, so I probably got... two? More years?” She doesn’t sound certain.

"It's more than just COVID, though." Leo's voice is softer. "Would either of ''you'' move to America now?" He half seems to be talking up to the trees for all the quiet abstraction of his voice; he shakes his head quickly, looking back to the others with a more ''present'' smile. "I don't think this government does all that well by ''anyone''. Sometimes, disappearing into the stars seems very appealing."

Skye frowns. "Maybe...they mostly don't plan on staying, so they don't expect it to affect them so much?" Her shoulders give a small, abortive shrug. "''I'' wouldn't come here now, if I were somewhere else. Wasn't given a choice, first time around. Parents made it out like it was gonna be a grand adventure." Her lips twitch sardonically. "I don't think she gets to disappear into the stars anymore than you get to disappear into the sea, though." Though she adds after a beat, "I mean. Maybe you ''do'' that, a little bit?"

Kitty's brow furrows, considering the question a moment. "I think it might be some... I don't know. Enduring remnant of the marketing, for the undergrads. Grad students looking for names of Big research groups, which are all here." She looks at Skye for a moment, biting her lip. "I guess I don't know. Born and raised American, for better or," the side of her mouth twitches, "for all of this worse. And the stars," she smiles, but with some sadness, "are not that great a distraction."

"Of course I do that. The ocean is its own different world. I just assumed ''you'' did that, too. Jack in to cyberspace, upload your brain to the Matrix." Leo's eyes are just slightly wider, his tone Very Earnest. He reaches for his Coke, balancing it on his knee. "Maybe that's for the best," is not unsympathetic, and comes with a pensive dip of brows. "Enough people are looking away already. Why ''did'' you get into them? The stars, I mean?"

Skye nods slowly. "Yeah, maybe." Though after this her smile returns. "I guess when I really get on a roll coding it's ''kind'' of like. Not that I actually know what it's like to be swallowed in the sea, or the vastness of space." Her head shakes, slow. "Even my escape is pretty grounded in -- well, you know. The human stuff. But I guess the same goes for any field that's ''living''."

Kitty laughs. "I think you guys are vastly overestimating the amount of time i spend looking at space. Or in it. Which has been a total of zero hours." She twists the name tag in her pocket. "I wanted to be an astronaut. Got really into gravitational problem solving and planet formation after that. It's in this neat space of being theoretical and fantastical, I guess?" She shrugs. "Compsci and marine science both seem more grounded, to me. You can touch the ocean, the computer gives you an output. More tangible." A beat. "I don't really do tangibility."

"I used to think of computers as a very lonely sort of pursuit." Leo glances, briefly, down to his own. "They definitely feel much more like connection, now." He gives Kitty a sheepish half-smile that comes with a small duck of his head. "Probably, vastly. I don't know very much about astrophysics. ''Everyone'' else's fields always seem very romantic to me. Then I talk to them and find out they're chugging coffee and staring at endless tables just as much as I am."

"Grass is always greener on the other side of the Universe," Skye suggests cheerfully. "But yeah, computers are all about connections, both technically and socially. And I mean...data is data, right? Wherever you get it from. Maybe it's as tangible as you want to think of it, thought..." She admits. "You can touch computers, too." She snaps her fingers at Leo's coffee-and-tables summation. "Yep! That sounds pretty much exactly right."

"Buddy, ''I'' don't know shit about astrophysics." Kitty laughs again. "Or at least, it feels like I don't." Her head bobs along with both of their arguments. "In the end, it's all coffee and data table, isn't it? Grad school and life, kind of. Coffee and data tables and stress."

Leo's laugh echoes Kitty's, though he hides it behind a loose-curled fist. "Just enough time to start recognizing ''all'' you don't know, huh?" He leans back against the sun-warmed sculpture once more. "It isn't ''all'' coffee and tables and stress. Just every once in a while," his tone is very serious, though his smile is quick and bright, "it's cheap pizza, too."
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