"You are so boorish!"
They were not successful in establishing peace at lunch.
"I'd rather be considered uncouth than mistaken for the likes of you."
Now dinner was going even worse. Jim was beginning to wonder how they ever convinced themselves that the two could get along.
"Oh, I assure you, no one would ever possibly mistake you for having refinement and manners." Zephyr answered irritably.
"Zephyr, please," Sy pleaded haplessly. "Just ignore him."
"Trust me, I'm glad I don't have your breeding. I've seen what it does. I'm much happier being an actual person, not whatever marionette they've turned you into. It's a shame you'll never be real, just a fake reflection of their achievements." Braxton retaliated before digging into his dinner.
"That's enough, Braxton," Matt told him firmly. He was seated between the feuding boys, but it was doing little to help quell their arguments.
"I'm not the one that asked him to stick around," Braxton shot back. "He's the one that chose to sit here with us."
"You think I want to be here?" Zephyr pivoted in his seat to see him better. "You think I enjoy babysitting you? I should be preparing for my senior mission, but I got stuck on juvi patrol because you don't know how to handle something as basics as a disagreement"
"Hey! I know how to handle disagreements! It's not my fault you stiffs don't think it's a valid method."
"Because it isn't! You're in the military, Rudforest! You will be representing the entire Intergalactic federation! You will be an ambassador of peace, and compassion, and kindness to all! And you haven't the faintest clue' how to do any of that."
"Now that's just not fair. I know about being kind to everyone. I don't wish ill will on anyone except Gray and you."
"Not even Stalkenew?" Jim interjected curiously.
Braxton broke out into a bright smile. "What? No way. I love Stalkenew! He's an awesome mortal enemy. Can't live without him. Our rivalry is exhilarating and absolutely necessary for good character development."
"'Mortal enemy'?" Zephyr mocked. "And just which one of you is the "good" and which the "evil" do you think, hmmmm?"
"See, that's the fun part. We both are. Just depends on whose side you're looking at it from." Braxton shook his head and gave Zephyr a reproachful look. "Sheesh, it's like you've never encountered complex reasoning or had to consider a different point of view before. 'Ambassador of compassion' my foot. You never even considered he might have people supporting him, too. What a joke."
"He is not the one I was referring to as evil!"
"Sure, sure, walk it back. I see how it is." Braxton smirked widely, clearly enjoying himself.
"I can not stand you."
"You're welcome to sit down."
"Argh!" Zephyr stood up. "I can not put up with this any longer!"
"You can't leave me," Braxton answered in a sing song voice. "Granddaddy asked you to babysit me, remember? Can't have me punching another staff member on your watch, after all."
The muscles in Zephyr's neck tensed, and he clenched his fists as he closed his eyes to take several deep breaths. With visible reluctance, he sat down once again. "Do not say another word to me. As soon as you have finished eating, you are returning to your room for the night so I can finally get away from you."
"Fine by me. I'll be glad to get some space from you."
Matt sighed heavily. Pointedly ignoring them both now, he turned towards Hogarth and Varian. "How's your research going?"
"On which project?" Varian asked hesitantly. He was still giving Braxton and Zephyr both cautious looks. While it could be fun to occasionally talk about poking at the bear when they were alone, the young alchemist tended to be rather conflict adverse in practice. Said something about learning his lesson young not to fight with the elite class, and not to judge others' intentions through only the lenses of your own experiences.
"Any project," Matt requested desperately. "Whatever project you can talk the most and longest about. Please."
For a brief moment annoyance flashed across Varian's face. Who wanted to be used as a white noise machine, after all? But the temptation of being able to speak about his passions without interruption was just too much to resist.
"Hogarth and I are currently working on a portable device that would be able to handle transmitting conversations across distances of any length within the same atmospheric conditions. His home planet doesn't have the technology yet, and mine certainly doesn't, but we're hoping to be able to find something that we can both introduce to our worlds!"
"That seems like an amazing concept," Sy praised enthusiastically.
"We're basing it off of the telephones in my world," Hogarth chimed in brightly. "Currently we have a…well, it's portable, but not practically. Truthfully, it's still rather large to carry around. We're reverse engineering our tablets to try and figure out how to manage a device that doesn't need to be plugged into something at all times, as well as expanding upon the telephone so we have a baseline for the technology we're working with and the systems it runs on."
"And you just happen have a telephone with you?" Jim asked in a puzzled voice. Why would Hogarth have brought a device that wasn't useful on this planet?
"I do now! I wrote my mother and asked her to send me one."
"It really is quite the marvel of technology," Varian added eagerly. "You just enter a short series of numbers, and you can contact just about anyone. All you need to know is their personal number code."
"Wait," Matt was looking uncomfortable. "Everyone on your planet is assigned their own number code? Who organizes this? And how is that regulated?"
"The government?" Jim guessed. "It would make the most sense." Matt looked even more uncomfortable at that suggestion.
Hogarth shook his head. "Oh, no. Telephone numbers are assigned to the telephone, not the person. The company that makes the phones assigns the number to the device, and the enters it into a system that they all use to keep track of it. I don't know all the details, as I don't work in the field, but the government isn't involved in that process."
Matt sighed with relief. "Oh, that's good. I suppose that makes sense. As long as the government isn't handing out numbers."
"Oh, they do that, too. We all have social security numbers, or, at least, I think we all do. You gotta put in an application, but most of us have one. Mom applied for mine at the same time as hers. That was when she started working and needed one for all that."
Varian glanced over at Matt's expression and quickly rerouted the topic back to what they had been discussing earlier. "We're not sure if we'll stick with the numbering system for how to contact people, but it's the system we're working with now, since we're modifying Hogarth's planet's current technology. My concern with numbering systems is that they're limited in how many combinations can be made within the designated amount of digits."
"What?" Sy glanced around the table to see if anyone else was confused.
"Well, say that you decide to have four digit codes, yeah?" Hogarth offered. "You can only have ten options per digits before you start repeating numbers."
Sy nodded. "Oh, I think I see what you're saying."
Varian nodded. "So we'd run out of numbers if we don't pick a long enough string. But if we have too long of a string, it'll be hard to memorize what your personal code is, making it inconvenient. We haven't tested out the maximum number of digits a person can easily memorize, though, so we still have some time to decide what our limitation is."
"Well, actually," Hogarth interjected, "We did try to test it once. Wrote down a bunch of numbers of varying lengths and asked our subject to see what the longest one they could memorize after looking at them for a minute. It just turns out that, well…" He glanced at Matt with a sheepish smile.
"You picked the individual with a photographic memory?" Braxton started laughing.
"A minor oversight! We'll fix it!" Varian insisted.
"So what's challenge are you facing currently that you're struggling with the most?" Jim asked curiously.
The boys fell into easy conversation, once again restoring a sense of normalcy to the table. You just had to ignore the subtle sense of unease brought about by two members of the group refusing to say a single word to each other. And in Zephyr's case, to anyone at all.