Having trouble with my longer, plotted stories, I fooled with Ban & Ginji to jumpstart my muse. Don't read this expecting anything to happen, because nothing does.
A Thousand Thousand Years
X-parrot
"Hey, Ban-chan, were dinosaurs really that big?"
Yesterday evening, stopping for burgers at a mall's esplanade, they had caught a public showing of Jurassic Park, which Ginji had never seen before. Ginji had seen very few movies, and generally Ban tried to expose him to something more sophisticated when they did have the chance--guy needed all the culture he could get, and besides, Ginji was bored by Godzilla and its ilk. Even the best special effects lose their luster to someone raised in a world only half real, and Ginji had seen too much to be frightened by two dimensions on a screen. He loved comedies, the dumber the better, and he unexpectedly had a taste for drama, would get completely wrapped up in imaginary peoples' relationships--Ban had determined some time before never to let him near a soap opera.
But he had watched Jurassic Park with interest, not jumping at the scary bits, but nevertheless fascinated by the computer-generated and robotic dinosaurs, enough so that next morning he was still asking about them. "Were dinosaurs actually that fast? Or that smart?"
Ban shrugged. "They're not sure of all of that. But when they made that movie it was about as accurate as it could be, given what science knew at the time. They might've learned new stuff since then, I don't know."
"How much do you know about dinosaurs, Ban-chan?"
Ban sipped his coffee--their retrieval the day before had gone very well, and with the balmy weather they had opted to sleep in the car and save the money for food, rather than blow it on a room. Food, and coffee. Paul had been sulking about their debt of late, making noises about paying at least ten percent or else they'd see if they set foot inside his premises again. With spring's arrival it was a great time to make the GetBackers' presence known elsewhere in the city, Ban had declared. So we're avoiding the Honky Tonk? Ginji had asked. Until they miss us, Ban had grudgingly admitted.
But going without a morning coffee was a pain in the neck, and none of the cafes in this area would put it on a tab. He savored the steam rising from his rich, black, hot dose of caffeine while listening to Ginji jabber, took a long, blissful sip before answering, "Not much. When I was a kid I liked dinosaurs, I guess most kids do. Read some books, but I don't remember most of it." He had a momentary flashback of begging his grandmother to take him to Berlin's natural history museum, rather than the German Guggenheim, he'd had enough of dull paintings by dead guys and wanted to see things dead far longer...and she had, though now all that he could recall of the museum was high ceilings and golden-brown bones.
"Makubex was really into them, for about a month." Ginji licked the last glazed sugar from his donut off his fingers. "I think because he knew that, that kids outside liked them. He went and found all the dinosaur sites online that he could, and he talked to me about them, but I don't really remember anything either."
Of course he didn't; Raitei had other things on his mind than obscure facts about long-extinct animals. But Ban didn't comment, just finished his coffee as Ginji went on, "But they are cool, if they really were like that. There aren't any animals that big anymore, are there?"
"No, except for whales and things in the sea."
"Isn't it kind of strange, that there aren't? They were so powerful and now they're all gone. I mean, I knew that dinosaurs were extinct, but I never thought about it before, what that meant. It's weird, that they haven't existed for so long, but we know about them anyway..."
He continued like that for the rest of the morning, only stopping asking questions when it became clear Ban couldn't answer them, and Ban was getting irritated with it. What actually annoyed him the most was that he didn't know, because Ginji was always asking questions, and Ban was used to answering more of them than he didn't. And he could have made something up, not like Ginji would know the difference, but then they'd both look stupid later if they met someone who knew the real facts.
So dinosaurs were dropped as a conversation topic, but a few days later Ban took them for a drive to Ueno. Ginji, thinking they were on their way to meet a client, bounced excitedly up the steps of the National Science Museum, peering around for their nonexistent employer. He was surprised when Ban pushed him through the double doors into the cool museum foyer, and even moreso when his partner got out his wallet and stepped up to the counter. "Ban-chan?"
"No job today," Ban said, "and probably no one would come around anyway. Besides, it looks like it might rain and I don't want to sit in the car all day."
"But, Ban-chan, do we have the cash--"
"It's fine, we still got plenty left." Assuming they got a job...tomorrow. Which he was assuming. Paul must be ready to let them back by now, and Hevn had been conspicuously absent; she probably was getting together something big. And the museum was cheaper than he had expected . Price of admission would only get him a cup or two of coffee anyway, a couple packs of cigarettes to cover Ginji's entrance. No problem.
And all worth it anyway, to see Ginji's eyes go round and wide as any little boy's, as he stared up at the huge, gangly Apatosaurus skeleton, its neck stretching out the length of a bus, its tail just as long behind it. "Wow," he said, not loud like the gaggle of uniformed school kids parading around the hall, but hushed. "They really were that big!"
"Averaging twenty-five meters in length," Ban read off the informational plaque, "living in the late Jurassic period, 150 million years ago. This slow-moving herbivore--"
"Herbivore?"
"Vegetarian. Eats only plants."
"How does anyone know?"
"They can tell from the teeth. 'This slow-moving herbivore, found in ancient North America, ate conifers and ferns, since grasses had not yet evolved. Despite its long neck, evidence suggests it could not lift its head more than three or four meters above the ground. Compared to its size, Apatosaurus had one of the smallest brains of any dinosaur... '"
"I get it."
"Eh?"
"From the teeth--look at that one." Ginji was across the hall, staring up at another looming skeleton, smaller but still towering over a man, and the teeth in its massive head were like a rack of knives. "He ate meat."
"Yeah. That's a T. Rex?"
"No, an Allosaurus." Ginji indicated the plaque. "They ate Apatosaurus, it says. Maybe that one even ate that one," and pointed back to their previous interest.
"I doubt it. They could've lived a million years apart."
"How long's a million years, Ban-chan?"
"How long--you know. A year. Only a million of them."
"But...that's so long. I can't even think of how long it is."
Ban leaned on the railing, stretched out his right hand and compared it to the huge splayed talons of the Allosaurus's feet. "Longer than people have been around. Human beings aren't a million years old. It's fifty thousand times longer than you or I've been alive."
"Fifty...thousand." Ginji shook his head. "No, it's too big. I know how long a year is, or a hundred years. But that's too much." He put his hands behind his head, arched back his neck to stare up at the Allosaurus's gaping jaws. "They must be really awesome."
"Who? The dinosaurs?"
"No. The scientists who dig them up. They're retrievers, too, aren't they, Ban-chan? Only they're retrieving the past."
Ban glanced over at his partner. "How's that?"
"Remember that guy whose memory we got back? That was only a lifetime. Only a little bit of time, for only one person. This--this is everything. All those millions of years, and they're getting them back. Finding all the little pieces everywhere, and putting them together so they make sense. So everyone can understand."
"Hmm. Guess it's kind of like that."
"They have to be awesome, to be able to do that. No one can tell them what they're looking for, they just have to know it when they find it. And then once they find a piece, they have to figure out what it is, and where it goes. They must be so smart. I could never do anything like that, I'm too dumb."
Ban cuffed him lightly upside the head. "Hey. Who says you're dumb?"
"Uh--you do, Ban-chan. All the time."
"No I don't." Ban considered. "Well, yes I do, but that's only because you're an idiot, and you do dumb things a lot. But you're not stupid, Ginji."
Ginji laughed, a little light chuckle. "I don't mind, Ban-chan. I know I'm not smart. I still can't remember which one's the Venus and which one's the Statue of Liberty, and I can't figure out how long a million years is--"
"That doesn't make you stupid. Most people learned about the Venus de Milo and the Statue of Liberty in school, that's the only reason they know, unless they've seen them, like I have. And a million years--it's a damn long time. That's all I can think of it as. I don't understand how long it is either, I just don't think about it."
"Ban-chan--"
"Geeze. And you could be a paleontologist if you wanted to be. You'd just have to learn how, and then you could. It's not like they're anything special. They just get taught all the things that other people figured out before, and then they go do exactly what their teachers do. Once in a while one of them might stumble across something new, if they're lucky, and then that gets taught to all the others. That's how science goes."
"Ban-chan." Ginji bumped his shoulder, maybe just accidentally as he turned around, since they were standing next to each other. "I don't want to be a paleo--whatever you said. A dinosaur scientist. I think they're amazing, but I don't want to learn to be one. I just want to be a retriever."
"Well, good." Ban stuck his hands in his pockets. "Paleontologists don't make much money anyway."
"Er, Ban-chan, we don't really--"
"Shut up. They've got more dinosaurs in the next room, want to go check them out?"
"Sure!" And Ginji was off, Ban trailing behind him.
After the initial marvel of the dinosaurs, he thought Ginji might get bored with the exhibits, still dioramas and panels of text, but late in the afternoon Ban actually had to remind his partner that they hadn't had lunch yet, and he was eager to finish their insanely overpriced sandwiches and get back to exploring. The wings on contemporary flora and fauna and geology interested him, but not as much as the paleontology. He really was fascinated by those possible recreations of a past long before humans had existed to think about the world at all.
"Look at this, Ban-chan--this is what birds started as, it says. Do you think that really could be a bird? Looks more like a lizard with feathers. Oh, over there, Ban-chan, it's prehistoric man, before they were human--did Himiko get that perfume from something like this?" And on, and on, until Ban had to be reading all the plates, too, because he didn't know a lot of this himself and Ginji might ask him about it later, or want to talk about it, and no good if they had both forgotten it. Besides, in their business it never hurt to know as much as you could about anything. Though he was a bit glad he read faster than Ginji, so when his partner was still studying the displays, he could study his partner.
Wonder was an expression Ban was used to seeing in Ginji. When he had first left Mugenjou positively everything had amazed him; his rubbernecking had been downright exhausting, anything from ice cream cones to department store windows the subject of excited interest. Bit by bit he had gotten used to things, so while he still appreciated many aspects of normal life that most people took for granted, he was no longer astonished by something as simple as the variety a flowershop might offer. But there were still flashes of it, now and again, and secretly Ban watched for them, would occasionally seek out something small and unexpected for the chance to glimpse that brightness, a shining in the depths which was only visible when those brown eyes opened widest.
He was used to it, but it wasn't something he could get tired of seeing, ever. Sometimes Ban wished they were more successful, just so they would have money enough to travel. Go around the world and show Ginji everything he had seen before that had impressed him, and everything he had always wanted to see himself, and bask in that light every day. He would like to climb all the Statue of Liberty's steps with him, stand beside him before the real Venus de Milo and see Ginji understand, because Ginji couldn't recognize any artist's work but he appreciated genius.
Though it made Ban nervous, a little, because there were still times that something he did could bring out the wonder in Ginji's eyes, and he was too selfish to willingly give that up. And the more Ginji saw today, the less would be left for tomorrow, and the less he could be amazed by those little things that didn't matter, or wouldn't, if it weren't him.
Come evening the loudspeaker announced that the doors would be closing in half an hour, and they made their way to the exit, stopping at the giftshop at Ginji's insistence. "Come on," Ban told him impatiently, "we don't have enough cash to blow on any of that stuff anyway."
"Maybe they'll have something for sale--I just want to look at the books on dinosaurs, Ban-chan. Makubex can't come here, but if we could give him one I think he'd like it."
Makubex probably didn't own a single book; all the wired genius kid's learning was from transient network bytes. There was something to be said for hard copy. And he was still a kid, lord of Lower Town or not. Kids all liked dinosaurs. He would only need to be reminded to be back into them all over again.
On the far back table they found a book, half-price, probably because it had more text than pictures, but Makubex might prefer that anyway. They had just enough--Ginji went through all his pockets to unearth the last yen needed to cover taxes. Paul better be ready to welcome them back, or it was going to be a long night--should've had more for lunch. But then they wouldn't have been able to afford the book.
The sun had set by the time they made it outside, and it was drizzling, so they hurried back to the car--luckily it was still there, no ticket on the windshield, even. Ban dug into his jeans for the key, had just found it when a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind, squeezed his ribs and let go.
He looked back at Ginji. "What was that for?"
"Nothing." His partner was grinning as he made his way around to the passenger door, paper bag with the book tucked under his vest where it wouldn't get wet. "Just, thanks, Ban-chan. I had a great time."
"Yeah. Me, too," Ban said as they got in the car. "We can come again, next time we have the cash. If you want."
"That'd be fun. Or maybe we could go to another museum. You know where the ones with art are, right, Ban-chan? We wouldn't even have to read the displays for the paintings, you could just tell me about them."
"I don't know that much about art. Though the best paintings, you don't need to know anything about them anyway," Ban said. "Though sometimes you can see more if you do...well, yeah. We could go to one of the art museums."
"Great!" He beamed like a flashbulb, any brighter and he might short out the car's circuits.
Ban just rolled his eyes, and started the car, and considered that maybe he was the real idiot. Because in a world this big, with so many things to amaze Ginji, how could it ever run out? Not in a million years.
However long that actually was, anyway.