nysalogs | [open]

Who: Jed Bartlet (

iamthelordthygod) & you!
What: Jed acclimates to Thesa and Olympia and finds new people to annoy.
When: Before the beach party for the Thesa prompt, and a few days after for the Olympia prompt!
Where: Thesa Station and Olympia’s Market District.
Warning(s): None applicable!

1. Thesa Station - lounge areas

[The world as he knows it is gone, consumed by the storm that’d brought three days of darkness with it. His loved ones are in cryostasis, and he can’t possibly know if they’ll ever wake up.

That alone is enough to put Jed in a somber mood. It hangs over him like a cloud as he walks the station, head bowed, hands in his pockets.

(It felt like something you’d put on the stage. It’d be a cheap shot to compare it to Wagner, but he wonders, not for the first time, what he could have done differently. Take them to DEFCON 2 and get the Joint Chiefs of Staff together? Get the PCAST in the Oval Office? Call an emergency session of Congress and federalize the Air National Guard?

It’s hard not to feel like he could’ve done something.)

He hasn’t been able to find out much about this new world. There’s Thesa Station, which he’s on board now, and then there is Olympia and Wyver on the planet down below. What information he’s received beyond that is sparse.

(Very well. “All Gaul is divided into three parts”. Its politics will come to him later.)

The station has enough chessboards to go around, at least. He might not have looked like much when you sat down across from him, but he plays a mean game - aggressive, yet methodical, daring, yet mindful.

It’s the endgame. He ponders his next move deliberately, but doesn’t make his opponent wait - indeed, when he acts, he does so decisively, plopping down a piece with purpose and precision. Perhaps he saw an opening you were hoping he didn’t. Perhaps he blindsided you. Either way, his pronouncement comes with no small measure of confidence:]

Checkmate.

[Now, finally - there’s a hint of a smile on his face.

It’s a triumph. Small, but enough.]

2. Olympia - market district

[There’s one good thing to come out of all this: anonymity.

A running joke among presidents is that the White House is the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system. And there’s a point to it - back home, Bartlet was the centerpiece of a three-ring security circus wherever he went, surrounded on all sides by Secret Service agents. Any trace of spontaneity his life had died a slow and tragic death, to be replaced with round-the-clock down-to-the second scheduling and security so tight it was suffocating.

Here, there’s none of that. He’s free to wander about much as he did when he was a private citizen, without fear of some crazed gunman or reporter tromping up to him and shooting him, or - worse - hollering some question at him about tax reform. And he’s taken quite a liking to the market district of Olympia, from its flea markets to its malls. Indeed, he’s taken an afternoon off from settling in to his housing block just to walk around and take in the sights and wares.

In particular, he’s taken a shining to a bookstore in one of the more upscale sections of the market. You might find him in the fiction aisles, but your odds are better in the history or economics sections. He looks for all the world like a college professor doing off-the-cuff research, reading glasses perched atop his nose as he works his way through tomes that range in size from “paperweight” to “drop to stun small mammal”.

(Yeah, he’s one of those people who read in the middle of the aisle. What a dick.)

Perhaps you bump into him making your way down the aisle. Or perhaps you find him eyeing a particularly attractive volume that's just out of his reach - he is, after all, on the shorter side of things.]

3. Wildcard

[Contact info is in my profile and app if you’d like to work something else out!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Charles has taken to wandering the station at times. As much as he enjoys the planet, the station itself is more fascinating, full of ideas and technologies he had never dreamed of. At times, he finds himself missing Cerebro, missing that connection that made it so easy to breathe and laugh and enjoy everything the world had to offer.

But Charles has learned to make do. So when he spots the chess game and the opponent leaves, there is no shyness as he wheels closer. ]

Care for a round?

[Jed watches them as they leave - in a huff, it seems like. So much the better; poor sports make poor competition. He's quick to shift his attention to Charles and offer a quick smile when the prospect of a new game beckons.]

Sure.

[He sets about cleaning the board up and setting it back up for another game. Get all their pawns in a line, rooks go here, bishops there-]

White, black, got a preference?

I'll go white, since I've yet to prove my skill.

[ Even if Charles is an excellent chess player, he mostly played against one opponent. Perhaps now is the time to diversify. ]

White it is.

[And black for Jed, then! Soon, all the pieces are in place, and he nods to Charles.]

Whenever you're ready.

[ Charles starts with a knight. A good way to test the waters first. ]

I'm surprised that there was a chess set here to begin with.

[ Max is not much of a reader, having found her literacy more useful for ledgers and accounts than for storybooks, and in most cases she would prefer to gain her understanding of the world from the people in it, rather than through words on dead pages that few of those on the street may have read. She is at a disadvantage here, however, an immigrant from colonies she's never seen, settling in an empire so sprawling its reputation is known to all except her. Common knowledge is not a subject she can afford to learn through missteps.

And so today, her fingers dance light across the spines of books in the history section of a small bookstore off the market. Reaching to the shelf just above eye level, she comes to pause at the empty space where Glorious Empire: A History of Olympia ought to reside. Her eyes track to the man standing in the aisle. Aha.

(Has she seen his face before? Did they pass each other in Thesa Station's cold halls? It's so difficult to tell, and dangerous to confirm.) ]

How much of that, do you think, is pure propaganda?

[Jed's used to reading histories. Not as used to reading them as he is to economic treatises, but he likes to think he's conversant in the classics - Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, what-have-you. He knows what the real McCoy reads like - there's a weight to their accounts, real meat on the figurative bones, and while there's the occasional flight of fancy or figure that any sensible modern reader knows to be exaggerated, there's a sense their authors know what they're talking about.

This? This reads like chugging a liter of Diet Coke must taste - unfulfilling, sickeningly sweet, and while he doesn't quite have the urge to vomit, he's getting there. Half of the book has been so verbose and overflowing with purple prose that he can barely make sense of the other half.]

I'd go so far as to say the dust cover is the only credible source in the whole thing, but I think I caught a typo or two on it.

[He looks up at Max over the rim of his reading glasses before hefting the volume back up to its rightful place. Is that a sigh of relief? Perhaps - you'd sigh too if you saw what passed for historiography and academia in these parts.]

Nothing new, of course, [he says, tucking his reading glasses into his breast pocket.] Many autocratic regimes throughout history have bent and twisted their past to suit their purposes. Sometimes an ideology doesn't take kindly to facts.

[It's loaded with just enough dryness and sarcasm to let Max know just what he thinks of that. A quick glance at her doesn't spark any kind of recognition, and so he holds out a hand for Max to shake, should she be inclined.]

Don't believe I've had the pleasure. Jed Bartlet.

[It feels weird to have to introduce himself. It felt weird when he first came here, and it feels weird now - sure, it's custom, but he's used to having people at least recognize him, if not know him.]

[ That he's well-educated enough to be casually confident in it doesn't escape her notice, even if typo holds no particular meaning for her aside from context. Interesting. His sarcasm draws a thin, knowing smile from her in turn. She can think of one or two such regimes. ]

Sometimes the stories an empire tells about itself are nearly as important as fact — although not, I think, in its complete absence.

[ This book doesn't do either of them much good on its own. As one piece in a larger puzzle, however... ]

Max, [ she offers genially, accepting his hand with a light handshake. ] Forgive me, I have not been here in the capital long enough to yet acquire many facts.

Aw, man, clearly I'm even more out of practice than I thought.

[ Boredom in this place leads to overthinking things, and Ariadne does not want to overthink things. So when she saw a guy setting up a chessboard - well, why not? Even if she is a few years out of practice.

Still, she's not bad at it - her style is by turns whimsical and calculating, creative and yet thoughtful. Still, she's no match for him. ]

Well - good game. I'm not a sore loser.

You put up a good fight.

[It's the truth - he can see potential in Ariadne. It's the same potential he saw in so many of his staffers: bright, curious, articulate, with a palpable desire to reach for the stars and make them theirs. He doesn't doubt she was doing great things in her world - before the Storm hit.

He's got time to spare, and he's feeling generous, so he'll begin to re-arrange the pieces on the board for another game.]

Care for a rematch?

[It's perfectly fine if she's not feeling it. He could go either way at this point.]

Heck yeah, are you kidding?

[ She laughs a little. Yeah, no, Ariadne is never one to turn down a challenge. ]

You know it's now my goal in life to beat you, fair and square.

[ She gives him a faint smile. ]

My name's Ariadne, by the way.

[ The bookstore is one that Elena has wandered into many times since arriving in Olympia. Books have always been a safe haven in her life, and she takes comfort from the smell of paper in the air and the sight of the shelves lined with those beautiful tomes. She pats the pocket of her pants as she meanders down one of those aisles, assuring herself that her hard-earned money is still securely where she placed it, and only pauses when she notices a man looking upward with focused intent. ]

Do you need help reaching something?

[ They're the same height, but she says it with an obvious implication of her providing said help if he needs it. ]

[Jed Bartlet is a small man, but he is a determined man. He wouldn't have gotten as far as he did in life if he'd been one to give up easily. He stuck it out through the House races, through the gubernatorial races, through the primaries, and through the general election, and by God, he will not be defeated by something as insignificant as a shelf that's just a touch out of reach.

(Except it looks like he will.)]

Looks like it.

[He says it a bit reluctantly; he has his pride, after all, and he doesn't much like asking for help. He sighs, tucking his reading glasses into his breast pocket.]

That copy of Her Majesty's Power: The Olympian World Order. I saw a stepladder around here earlier, but it's vanished since then.

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