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CHARACTERS: HAL 9000 and you!!
LOCATION: One of the common areas, and it's nearby kitchen
WARNINGS: Lots of politeness! Also, awkward eating habits and long tags.
SUMMARY: HAL is investigating the whole "food" situation, and also taking some time to do some light reading.
NOTES: You can pick if you want to find him for food, or while he's sitting around reading in the common area. :)

HAL had gotten rather used to eating and drinking whenever he was hungry - which, admittedly, came about at strange times, as usually the kitchen he went to wasn't very busy. He wondered if there were specific times people should eat at; on the Discovery, Dave and Frank seemed to settle into a routine, but HAL had always thought that'd been out of necessity, not from cultural significance.

Still, that didn't stop him from being hungry, and so he'd found himself wandering to the kitchen, taking to browsing what was available to eat. He tended to wait until he was too hungry to think about what he was going to eat; it was easier that way, given that he had no idea what anything was, really. Especially considering he couldn't cook, or even begin to understand how to put food together in a way that wasn't disgusting.

But, no matter how hungry he was, he still felt compelled to look. As if he'd suddenly find something he absolutely needed to eat? Doubtful.

And later, once he'd managed to fend off hunger for another few hours, HAL settled down with his communicator in one of the common areas, deciding to do some reading while, hopefully, people-watching. Lately, he'd been desiring human contact, but he felt a bit too agoraphobic to really be able to connect. So, people-watching was his solution.

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Chell could cope with hunger. In fact, the fact that there was a kitchen with available food was a foreign concept to her. It wasn't unfamiliar, there were ghosts of memories where a man would get her something out of a refrigerator. But who even knew if that was a real memory or not.

There were times she'd forget to eat, but today wasn't one of those days. Boots clicking against the floor of the kitchen, she made herself reacquainted with what was available, and after grabbing an apple she headed towards the common area, taking a seat a few feet away from someone who was reading a book.

She stopped to look at him for a second, but seeing that he was probably occupied with something far more interesting, she shrugged to herself, raising the apple to her mouth and taking a loud hungry bite out of it.

And GLaDOS called her fat. Nope. Chell is capable of making healthy decisions when it came to food, and figures it would be an apple that she grabbed first.

Though HAL had ventured into the world of solid foods, moving up from the soups he ate almost exclusively during his first month on the ship, fruit still hadn't made it onto his menu. Not apples, at least; he was certain he'd found canned mush with all the nutrients of fruit at one point, though the taste had been a bit bitter. So, the crunch came as something of a surprise to him, and he looked up to find someone sitting nearby, eating rather loudly.

Right, common area. He shifted, looked at the sentence he was on to memorize it so that he could find his place again easily, and then said, "Hello." Because that's what you were supposed to say.

Netherlands was not a morning person. Not to say that he didn't like morning, the time when the sun came up - because he did - he just didn't function during morning, the time after he woke up. At all.

And lately, between worrying about the corridor shit and worrying over his friends, "morning" had begun to come at increasingly stranger and stranger hours for him. It was hard to tell what morning should be without the tell-tale rise and fall of the Earth's sun. And yeah, he knew the ship was running on some sort of schedule, but things had thrown him off lately, and now he was -

Well.

Shuffling to the kitchen for coffee, both ship-time and modesty be damned.

He didn't care enough to bother throwing on his jumpsuit, or his scarf, or even to fix his hair first. Coffee. Coffee came first. He was a goddamn zombie without coffee in his system.

As such he was just... kind of standing around in his underwear, yawning, chilly, and grumpy, blearily staring at the pantry, trying to remember what he was doing here. He was looking for something. It was kind of important, he should know this. He wouldn't be here for no reason, it was cold here.

HAL had some trouble understanding the exact moral and cultural reasons for why people wore clothing; he put his suit on because everyone else seemed to, but he'd never been concerned about walking around naked or in his underwear. He was a computer, after all; he'd never been programmed for modesty.

So, as it stood, when he took notice of the man shuffling into the kitchen in his underwear, it didn't strike HAL as particularly mortifying. Strange, certainly, since most people didn't do that, but not very offputting. The man looked a little disoriented, though, and was staring a little vacantly, and so HAL immediately felt the need to help. "Do you need anything?" he asked from his general position over by wherever hot water would be located.

Chell wasn't exactly expecting the stranger to initiate any sort of conversation, so there's a moment of confusion as she looked over at the "hello". There was a pause as she chewed, swallowing (though she wouldn't speak) and she gave the strange looking man a slight half-hearted wave.

Following that was another second or so as she took another bite, this time chewing a bit more quietly, and she made a motion towards the book he had been reading. She could move if you wanted to read alone.

At least, that's what it looked like she was trying to convey.

It took him a moment to register that someone was speaking, let alone speaking to him. He stifled a yawn and slowly turned to face the source of the voice, muttering a low, somewhat-garbled "What?" as he did. The question wasn't because he hadn't heard - it was just one of those ineloquent sleepy things, said to buy more time as he blinked over at this new guy. Well, new-to-his-awareness guy.

Between blankly staring and wondering which of them was in the kitchen first, he suddenly remembered what he was doing. "Uh, yeah," he said, giving his head a little shake. "Coffee."

HAL had, at one point, been immaculate when it came to reading body language. Of course, that had been when he'd had the processing power to dedicate to such a thing; nowadays, movements like the one the woman was making were quite foreign to him. He could think of a few different meanings: she could've been asking him to leave; she could've been telling him she could leave; she might've been asking him about what he was reading.

He wasn't sure which one he should choose, but the first one seemed too rude for her expression, and the last one too curious. "If you're saying you can leave," he started, assuming she wasn't speaking because she was busy chewing, "You don't have to. If you're suggesting anything else, however, I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. I'm not as proficient at body language as I used to be."

Konoe's found his way to the same common area, but enough of a look at him would tell that he's unsure if this is the place he intended to arrive at. Careful browsing of his surroundings, looking left, right, even up briefly with an occupied frown on his face, if he doesn't want to look lost now, he isn't doing so well. He's slowed to a stop, tail high in his curiosity but flicking to and fro a little in his insecurity.

He's been away an awfully long time, but needing to ask what floor he's on when he's sure he's so close is mortifying to think about. He could have followed his instincts and turned around, when this trip to his own kitchens started to feel too lengthy....

His eyes don't fallen on HAL directly on his first scan of the room, but they do now. Hesitant at first, he takes a step nearer, his tail and ears alike lowered just enough to show that he could stay out of his way if asked to leave him alone.

"Ah... sorry, do you know how far room 088 would be from here?"

Coffee?

Ah, yes. Right. HAL thought for a moment, then moved forward towards where the man was staring. "I believe it should be on the second shelf, in the tin." His memory was, thankfully, better than he'd expected it to be when he'd first become human, and since he'd already spent so much time cataloging all the items in the pantry when he'd first started venturing into the wondrous world of preparing food for oneself, he had managed to put it to good use. Well, good enough use.

HAL had been occupied more than enough to keep him from being overly distracted by the person who'd walked in; he'd caught sight of movement, but the reading he was engaged in was interesting enough to keep him from paying much mind. Besides, most people preferred to be left alone, and he was all right with doing that.

When the person actually addressed him, though, coming closer, he looked up. His eyes blinked automatically, once, at the sight of the tail and ears, but there were far stranger things in this universe than that, and he was hardly about to let them surprise or shock him. After that, he didn't seem to blink much at all.

"I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with the location of that room." He sounded politely apologetic. "Are you lost?"

HAL was probably going to think he was an idiot, because it took about five more seconds for that to kick in, another two seconds to nod, and three more to get moving again. He then proceeded to hit the door with his hip, knock over a few things, utter a few choice curses, and forget to close the pantry door once he had coffee in hand.

Mornings sucked.

"Misdirected..." Never mind that the only directions he's been following have been his own. His eyes fall again, HAL's stare so steady that he's embarrassed by it.

"It's alright. I don't know what keeps me from finding my way back."

So often, he stops himself from adding.

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Juuuust gonna handwave the differences between passenger floors yep.

hopefully you can ignore my lagging while you're at it...

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No big! I'm busy the next few days anyway.

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a latecomer...? ;u;

wow how belated can i get

LATECOMERS ARE FINE

whatever whatever we do what we want etc.

then I dropped off the face of the earth oh my god