It takes him bloody ages to get the books in the library organized in a sensible system. Somebody (the illustrious Nathaniel who has too quickly buggered off to deal with his daddy issues) seemed to have shoved them back in any old place. John spends a good 10 minutes scoffing at the audacity before he devises a plan of action to get it in back to usable in a jiffy. Or at least, a couple of days. Here's hoping nothing disastrous turns up in the meantime.
It takes a great deal longer than he expects it will. Half the problem is the distraction of the books' content, the rest is just pure unadulterated bad timing as far as missions go. To his eternal consternation, living on a timeship does not make it easier to manage his time.
As he hefts book after book back into its new place following his re-categorization of the 2nd bookcase, John doesn't know how any of them stood for it. The answer is probably none of them cared particularly. Several of them had walked in on his scheme so far, pulled a face he'd file under surprised or bemused but not that bothered, and promptly backed out of the room. Ray was the only one who seemed interested in the how, curious no doubt about the changes, but he'd had to bat him away right sharply once he started making little suggestions John wasn't inclined to listen to. Getting naked from then on for the grand rearranging had the handy side effect of getting people to leave him the fuck alone.
Once it's done, he ends up rather protective of the library. John is practically a replacement researcher for anything Gideon can't do in a blink of her virtual eye. Hit the books, why don't you John, he imagines them saying. Trouble is, they don't ask. They look to him, raised eyebrows. They expect.
Granted, this is his realm, more so than the characterless quarter's assigned to him that he doesn't bother doing much more than sleep in. No amount of throws will make him feel at home there, but in amongst the stacks of books, he has confidence. Not that he'd admit it but there are a lot of areas of the ship he feels incredibly out of place in. The engine room is the big one. Exorcizing demons is part of his wheelhouse, but a mechanic he is not. They'd be bloody doomed if they ever need to rely on him fixing this hunk of metal. And his quarters, or what is pretending to be his quarters, looks too bare, but it isn't, you see. It's full of memories, it has the aura of more beloved members of the team. He's equally disturbed and intimidated and he doesn't like either of those options, so he decides camping out in the library or taking some strategic shore leave when they're parked up, is a better prospect.
People don't mess with the library anymore. He has his system. He has tried, futilely, to teach his system to their less organized selves. No one else puts the books back because none of them have proven trustworthy in that regard. Order is important. So you know where a tome is when you need. Knowledge is important. Knowledge saves lives (only some lives, regretfully). John lives in chaos, accept chaos, creates chaos wherever he goes, but he wants order, he can ensure it here at least.
There are a whole heap of things people consider usual that Nate never got to do growing up. Simple things. Chopping veg. Putting IKEA cabinets together (though honestly, that's because his parents would never be seen dead buying IKEA. He saw his dad's eye twitch incessantly that one time he visited Nate's first apartment post-college). He liked to watch his mom cook when he was younger but that was all it was allowed to be. Eyeing up the technique, mentally filing it away – a total theoretical, like so much of his life was growing up.
Too much risk, you might cut yourself. He stopped watching her cook eventually, bored with it. How his parents treated him...he ran out of hope they'd let him try, that they'd trust him to try. They just wouldn't, no matter how careful he was. They behaved as if he was this fragile ornament, protect at all costs, do not remove shrink-wrap. First edition, don't dare ruin it, boy. Books became his escape instead. He ate a lot of takeaways when he moved out of home. He couldn't cook then, he hadn't been taught that, only how to fear it.
Of course, he got over those fears, sort of. He was careful like he'd always intended to be even if his parents were never reassured by his promises. He didn't need them to trust him anymore, he had himself to rely on. He brushed up on his skills, taught himself what he needed to know and made sure he had no doubt left, in theory... He still preferred to buy pre-chopped vegetables, just because it was easier. The fear was hiding in the back of his mind. A childhood of doubt was hard to erase but occasionally he just did things anyway, to spite that. But it usually felt like a fluke, a foolhardy decision he got lucky on, the words of warning from his mother and father reverberating around in his head and making him second guess what he could do.
On the Waverider, a new world is opened up to him thanks to his ability to steel up. He doesn't want to rely on it too much, but surely there's no harm taking advantage of it? It feels good, so so good, to do the things he wasn't allowed to do. He chops ALL the vegetables. He annoys people because he always wants to do that chore – he knows he's gone too far when Sara orders him out of the kitchen on sight. She likes her knives too. He learns to butcher - figuring it's a nifty survival skill, getting stranded is a common problem for Legends from what he's seen - relishing the heft of the knives in his hand, no longer afraid. Not in the way he used to be.
He helps Jax with repairs, playing about with the tools jovially, no concern at the sharp corners exposed every which way around him. At first, he's reckless because he can be, which doesn't earn him any favors when he risks the safety of others. Jax bans him from the engine room for a month for that. Nate learns to be careful, not because he must but because it's better to be. He learns how he could've been. He could have gotten over his fears, his doubt, anyway, if he'd let himself - with enough time. Following that realization, when he chops anything from then on, he behaves as if he doesn't have that safety net. He doesn't slip and he knows he would've been okay, it's a comfort. He had it covered, he always had it covered.
For Martin, chores are an annoying distraction from the questions of real importance in life. Why spend time cleaning if it's not absolutely necessary? His time is far better spent on nuclear fusion. Though of course Raymond got there first. But there are still plenty of fascinating problems to put his time into. There are no limits to the mysteries of science left to solve. Answers almost always bring yet more questions into the fray. He could live for centuries and most likely never even scratch the surface of what could be known.
During his stay on the Waverider, Raymond was incredibly persistent about the division of chores. Martin had come to despise that wrecked chore-wheel. He'd destroyed it more than once, but Raymond would persevere and eventually it seemed madness to try to foil him any longer. Martin had attempted, many a time, to finagle his way out of his chores. Raymond absolutely could not be persuaded to shift in his ideals, which generally left only one solution. Bribery.
Alas, bribery was not what it once used to be. It was incredibly difficult to bribe the inhabitants of a timeship who could replicate practically anything they could imagine. Hence effective bribes required tapping into a reservoir of creativity not often called upon. Martin could, of course, be persuasive and cunning when it was called for. He didn't like putting his time into that, but it beat doing his respective chores as dictated by Mr. Palmer.
Mr. Rory had been exceedingly ruthless in his demands. The absurdity of what he wanted ascended each time, as if on an exponential path towards the impossible or utterly undignified. It was an excellent day when Mr. Rory mislaid his phone on a mission, and Gideon's locator protocol - a precaution for their out of place technology, hardly a big issue for that mission to the future - had inexplicably malfunctioned for just long enough for Ms. Lance to lose her patience with Mick's demands to stay there. Ultimately the missing phone was deemed unimportant and they'd set course back to the temporal zone. Martin slept so much better with that stash of video footage lost to time.
He never could get out of all of his chores. Once most of the crew gave in to Raymond's schedule, at least in part, if not enthusiastically, Martin felt a begrudging need to join in properly. Naturally trading of chores was engaged in when he had projects of vital importance to work on instead, but otherwise he did his chores, albeit begrudgingly. Setting a good example after the fact.
Once he leaves the Waverider, retires to a slightly more sedate existence, he doesn't miss the chore-wheel. He prefers to do chores as he deems necessary. Which may not be precisely as necessary as Clarissa considers them, but they manage to work out a compromise most of the time. He realizes then that though he does not, and never will, enjoy doing any chores, what he liked best was the reason he did them. He grumbled far too much perhaps in the beginning but he did it, for them. The grumbling near the end was mostly for show, expected of him as the old man on the boat. Just like he does so much for his daughter and for his grandson, because he can and because it makes life easier on those he cares for.
Sara doesn't give much thought to Ray's chore-wheel. Chores need doing, so she tends to do them. She isn't wild about cleaning the bathroom, but she likes vacuuming fine. Turns out vacuuming doesn't change much in the future. You still have to wave about a stick attached to a noisy cylinder to reach the nooks and crannies. They'd tried out a few models of Roomba's as an automated alternative but having hackable appliances wasn't the smartest move if anyone who hated you had the desire to mess with your heads. Plus, there were way too many ways to abuse them for the sake of novelty. Roomba Olympics was all fun and games until you were extinguishing a small fire and picking up pieces of shrapnel for weeks afterward.
Because it hasn't fundamentally changed in all those years, vacuuming feels more or less the same as when she was a kid. Or a teen, dancing around with her headphones firmly in and music blasting loud as can be to drown out everything else. Or a college student madly dashing about, pushing any un-vacuumable trash underneath the nearest item of furniture before her parents arrived to visit her dorm. The difference now is she's stronger, she doesn't tire out easily.
As she moves from one room to the neck, eyes hunting for cobwebs to catch in the corridor, it gets her heart rate elevated lugging it around. She welcomes the feel of her blood pumping, she needs that outlet, another form of exercise to burn up the excess energy she has. At first, she'd only thought to call it lust, the desire to move, to strike, but as she has learned more about it, how to channel the urges, she knows it as more layered than that. She can be mellower about it these days, usually not threatened by the power she wields.
Inaction is not her natural state, it never really was but after the pit it's a restlessness lurking deep underneath her actions, driving her forever forward. Sometimes chores fit perfectly into her patterns, if she has enough control. Whether it's pushing the vacuum or pushing cargo crate or lifting another chair, it's all the same really. Now that Charlie is reluctantly part of the team, she keeps asking her to move furniture about here and there. When Sara finally gives in to the requests, she finds Charlie watching with a fretful look Sara can't figure out. There's something going on there for sure, but Charlie only huffs when questioned, so she doesn't even ask why anymore. It's something to do, another task to go that step further and further with until there is a touch of relief from her ever-present need to move.
Gideon knows a lot about her shipmates. The sheer scale of data she processes in a single day about each of them would be highly likely to disturb them if they knew the specifics. Not even the smartest amongst them could hope to process a fraction of what she deals with in an hour aboard the Waverider. The data itself has no intrinsic value – it's what she does with it that matters.
If there is any housekeeping Gideon does, it is in keeping those of her house well. She takes that responsibility very seriously indeed.
The meaning of the data is found in how to read it, how to determine what it means and extrapolate the wisest path to follow. To do so she must consider all variables, all interactions, plausible and not. Her code comments reference it as 'Like casing every inch of a location, but for problem-solving.'
A higher heartbeat is not simply a sign of stress, injury or exercise as the textbook medical definition would suggest. Captain Lance needs an increased heart rate to feel alive, to work through what she must to retain a sense of normalcy. For others it is a problem; a sign of distress or panic, the overwhelming taking hold. The standard interpretation of the data would not suggest what she knows to be true - that Ms. Tomaz gets sick easily. Her rate of sneezing is relevant to advising rest and other prophylactic measures. Nor would a standard interpretation take into consideration that for Dr. Palmer sleep variances of 20% less than his statistical averages tends to be a potential warning sign for psychological afflictions.
And so too does she look after their data. She protects it. She knows the importance of a word spoken at the correct time. Thanks to Ms. Tomaz, she can run increasingly accurate simulations to estimate the effects the more poignant choices available to her may have. She knows when to use her influence and when to not, guarding secrets or sharing selectively as required. She has a trust she will not break and not simply because it would be strongly advised against by her ethical protocols. This is her function, above and beyond any she was programmed to do.