museums | (no subject)

Chris is already second-guessing his agreement to work as a temporary night guard here at the museum. Mr. Daley's offer to help him get the job had seemed pretty cool at the time but his lecture on Ancient Egyptians being the original badass inventors had seemed pretty cool at the time, too, and like something Chris might want to study.

But now that it's ten o'clock, he's trapped here until six in the morning, and he's just meandering around with a Starbucks in one hand and a package of M&M's in the other, it's starting to feel less and less like a cool idea and more like a stupid one. Like, he knew Mr. Daley used to work here so maybe felt obligated to find some chump to fill this position while the museum tried to find someone permanent or something, and that chump was Chris — the only idiot in class to show some enthusiasm.

Whatever. He can just quit tomorrow.

He decides to get looking over the Egypt exhibit out of the way promptly and heads over there pretty much as soon as the doors are locked. It's not like there's anything here he can decipher on his own; he would've been better off just taking the day tour. There's a golden tablet and a sarcophagus but nothing super out-of-the-ordinary, nothing that tells Chris anything about Egypt's ingenuity. He reads the plaques but they just go on about the usual stuff, the Pyramids and grave-robbing and blah blah blah.

"Oh my God," he groans. "This is so boring."

(Little does he know if he happened to leave this exhibit and head elsewhere, he'd be able to talk to Roosevelt and tiny cowboys and dinosaurs and a really obnoxious Easter Island head.)

He turns back to study the sarcophagus. It's not under glass which seems weird to him. Like, ropes aren't gonna stop people from touching it.

...Maybe he should touch it! He leans over the ropes to look closely at its face. Did the dude inside really look like this? Is the dude actually in there? It's kinda creepy to think he's could be staring face-to-face with a dead guy, mummy or not.

Maybe touching it's a bad idea, actually. He remembers stories of people dying after messing with Egyptian artifacts.

So, yeah, no touching. Just inspecting.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ahkmenrah nods placidly, as Chris tries to shake off his title, but he's made up his mind. He has to call you something, and Guardian of Brooklyn is taken. "You study computers? that's fascinating. I would have thought they were too new to formally educate people about..."

Eighty years ago, Cambridge University was big on teaching things that had at least a few hundred years of history behind them. Ahkmenrah starts out into the corridor, his attention still fully on Chris, despite the small swarm of primitively carved figurines that are scampering past them, and the gentle hoof beats of antelope departing behind them.

"There's a computer in the lobby, but I don't really have cause to use it. The Romans like it a lot." In other words, The Romans completely hog it, and only let Ahkmenrah go on it when they want to show him how to set up an account on some new website that he then never gets to visit, "And the last night guard had a Samsung?"

He'd not been great with the Samsung either.

"Well, they're not really that new," Chris protests without much ferocity. "If you guys are museum displays, what do you even use computers for? Wait —" He lifts a hand. "Forget it. I probably don't want to know."

He rummages in his pocket and pulls out his own phone, which fortunately hadn't been ruined when he'd spilled coffee all over himself. It's the benefit of having a good, sturdy, waterproof case, which he would happily explain to anyone should they ask.

"Here, look," he says. "I have a Samsung too! Pretty cool, huh? Maybe it's a requirement for night guards. Except... Mr. Daly seems more like a Nokia kind of guy. Anyway, do you know how to use the computer in the lobby? Maybe I could teach you."

And just like that, Ahkmenrah had discovered the key to unlocking Chris's friendliness and getting his skepticism to subside, at least for a little while.