Welcome to Gaia! ::

"I prefer dicks," Jordan said solemnly. "But the alternative is certainly interesting in its own way." He took a contemplative mouthful of whiskey and rolled it over his tongue before answering. "Kind of like a Rubik's cube, I guess. Complicated."

He slid a sidewise, sly glance at Cee. "Okay," he agreed, amiably.

"Weird s**t happens here. Also golems." Jordan made a sour face. "I swear I'm starting to think some joker in Life has my file marked for female golems somehow. It's supposed to be random for the single-mission ones, but," he gestured frustration with the bottle. "Like, ninety percent of the time, tits."

He angled an eyebrow at her. "It's not so bad. There's, like, angles. You'll probably find out. It's always temporary, though, thank God." He paused. "No offense. I just don't feel right not being a guy."

"Yeah, it's worth checking out how the other half lives, so to speak. Get a sense for why they think how they think." Jordan's tone had turned from frustration to a more relaxed contemplation, the irritable aggression flowing away. "Congratulations," he told Cee, smiling and offering a fistbump with the hand not occupied with a liquor bottle. "Welcome to being the responsible one." Responsible was said with a touch of dry humor.

"Nominally responsible. And or responsible for the disasters." Jordan leaned back against the wall and crossed his ankles, taking another drink. He was getting a little more used to it, he decided. He refused to categorize that as a good or bad thing.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed. "It's pretty cool. You know how Ferros is a huge-a** weapon -- turns out he's a huge-a** golem, too. Like, pushing seven feet. He doesn't like doorframes, doesn't fit real well on furniture either. You thinking of getting Snap out for a while?"

Jordan leaned over to take a look at the picture. "Huh," he said, because the woman in the picture was recognizably the woman he'd known. "Does she remember it? All the other hunters we knew in that world had their weapons with them in some way too. There's, like, constants. Between worlds we see." He half-shrugged, took a thoughtful drink. "Maybe there's other ones we don't see 'cause they're too different, but the ones we see, there's patterns. People we know, people we love, people we hate. And them, too." He tapped a finger on Ferros's ring. "One way or another."

Jordan's eyes unfocused briefly as he conferred wordlessly with Ferros. "If he dreamed, he doesn't remember it," he reported after a moment. "But we didn't have anything weird happen while I was podded, so I dunno, might not be the same."

He accepted the joint and took a drag, inhaling the smoke and holding it as he passed the joint back, then breathing out a plume of smoke. This was something he'd tried before, at least; it would have been embarrassing to admit to not knowing how. "Thanks."

The corner of his mouth quirked up at the questions. If they were going to have an evening drunk and stoned, they were gonna do it traditionally, it seemed. "Asking the big questions," he said, relaxed, and considered it. "Used to be a good Catholic kid, if you can believe that," he confessed. "God, not so much any more. Not in the sense that we get taught as kids, y'know?" He set the bottle down carefully beside his thigh, between them, and slouched back against the wall, lacing his fingers loosely together across his ribs. "Whole lot that the church was just plain wrong about, in a concrete and provable sense, so I kinda, hm, suspend faith in that. We know human emotional energy creates stuff, though. So maybe there's something, and I can't prove there's nothing. So maybe call me, like, agnostic."

He put the sole of one foot flat on the roof. "Fate, I don't know. Didn't used to think so, but ... " He licked his lips and took a moment to select his phrasing; his thoughts were moving in a comfortably sluggish flow, like creeping lava. "Keep seeing other versions of me, and the ones I've seen, they're still, like, me. Differences from the different ways I coulda grown up, but still. And usually it's the same people I'm around. Friends, family. Ferros, too, some way or other." He looked up into the sky, considering it. "I mean, there's other explanations? Like, infinite number of universes, there's going to be, to be sheaves, right, that's the word, where things are mostly the same, just small changes in what we know. And maybe that's why we get a look at those ones, 'cause they're close enough to what happened here, some kinda resonance. Does that count as fate?" He shrugged and looked back at Cee. "Beats me. Maybe. But I figure, y'know, might as well act like we got choices. If we do, then we do, and if we don't, well, then we chose the way we were supposed to and we'll never know."

"You two doing okay?" Jordan asked, waving a hand vaguely at the bracelet that was Snap. Ferros's ring lit briefly from within, a quick blink of red glow. "Y'seem more comfortable."

He nodded solemnly. "No reason why not," he agreed. "I got no problem with that. Guess we'll all find out eventually, y'know?"