Fuck. Yes.

( I have an apartment! )

The apartment was abysmally small. One room with a small kitchenette at one end and a bathroom rather than a closet, with a table, two chairs and a battered old futon. But it was his, and no one else's, and for the first time in his life he could go home to peace.

By shoving the futon around and making it couch-sized, he'd made enough room for a desk, he thought. And he could get some shelves to put books up on the wall, that'd be good. With barely enough money for food as it was, though, he couldn't exactly call IKEA. And so he hopped on his skateboard and engaged in the time-honored tradition of dumpster diving.

Once everything is set up, it will look something like this:
( click! )

((time is being handwaved a bit, here.))

Weeks of summer crept by, filled up with minimum wage jobs and that damned musical, until finally, FINALLY, Anthony stuffed his spare belongings into a rucksack and headed to the city for the oasis of his internship.

That was a week ago. Now it is today.

It's noon now, and he squints up at the hot sun as if affronted. His body is craving dinner, not lunch, but then time has lost absolutely all meaning for Anthony. The sun is an abstract concept to him, its motions obscure and detached. His life is instead ruled by the spin of the centrifuge, the growth of cultures like short seasons until harvest. Seconds are measured in how long it takes enzymes to break down, hours recorded away in meticulous cabinets.

He shuns the standard program, designed to get promising children's feet wet while giving them the thrill of being away from home in a large city. The city means nothing to Anthony. Those assigned tasks are finished without a thought and the researchers and residents find a thin, hungry shadow following them around, demanding more. And more, until he fills up every hour with some useful activity. He is like a ghost. He scares them. Except for Professor Slughorn, who sees not a soulless thing but a fire. Slughorn finds out what feeds that fire, figures out what Anthony really wants and pushes.

It came as some surprise, therefore, when his phone reminded him that it existed, and it needed to be charged. And once it had been fed, it insisted that there were still people outside of the insular little universe he'd walled himself up in.

He stuns the resident researchers by taking his lunch. There are messages, missed calls. He returns them.

"Luke?"

In a yellowing office downtown, there is a man at a desk being stared at by a greasy, angry teenager. The man at the desk has found it his life's work to deal with greasy, angry teenagers, which is so far a cry from his youthful dream of becoming an astronaut as to convince him that there is no God and that atheism was the way to go. This particular greasy, angry teenager has gone a step further, re-kindling his belief in religion, but only because there HAD to be a God and that God had to be a malicious bastard to land the should-be-astronaut with this gig, and if he could just get a clue as to what he did to deserve this, he'd never do it again, he swears.

"You're fucking KIDDING me."
"No, Anthony, I'm not. Every time you come in here you ask me when you can move out, and you need community service for that."
"How the fuck does being in a play count as community service?"
"Language. It's a community theatre, Anthony. Would you rather pick up trash all summer?"
"I'm going to Philadelphia this summer. I have a scholarship."
"And you won't be able to take advantage of that if you're wearing an orange vest and walking along I-85."
"..."
"You don't have to have speaking part. Just get your name in the playbill. And thank me for working my ass off for you."
"You're getting paid. ...And thank you." The 'for nothing' is self-evident.

The should-be-astronaut watches the kid stalk out and opens the envelope he'd left. It contains pay stubs, and - ah. At the back, a little something extra. There would be a bottle of wine tonight, yes, and a toast to his most difficult charge's lucrative 'tutoring business.' He hated the kid, sure, but at least the little shit understood the value of his time.

I'm back, if anyone reads this.

Someone made me a wallet. Thank you.

There are like-minded people here after all. Excellent.

Now I just have to decide between the lady and the tiger, and we'll see how we shall proceed.

((Before all this, they talked for a while about extremely geeky rp things))

( Behind the cut and the 4th Wall )

((private))

( I don't know what to make of anyone in this damn town. )

Everyone at this school is insane. Except for Dr. Holland, or at least he's insane in an understandable way.

I need a laptop and a cellphone. Then I'd never have to come home. The IRC chat was interesting, but it means the old fuck knows where I am, and this doesn't "count" as doing useful work. An attitude which is going to be a laugh a minute when I start having papers to do, you drooling moron.

A few of the kids seemed decent enough. One asshole ran me over like a dog on the street, though. And of course this was somehow my fault, don't ask me how these self-important idiots go through life blaming everything else in the world for their own clumsiness and fuck ups. Must be nice to be rich enough to not be human.

Personally, I'd rather be smart enough to not be human. Fucking monkeys.

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)