Inbox

[skeletonkeay]

INBOX OF GERARD KEAY

Point of contact for Pumpkin Hollow. Gerry can be reached by phone, mail, or a visit to his shop during business hours. Pinhole Printing and Binding is open from 11am to 6pm every day except Tuesday, because fuck Tuesday, or unless Gerry deigns otherwise.

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[tisnotthehouse]

To make a budget, one must know how much one wishes to spend. Tarantulas's memory is good, but even Cybertronians know better than to rely solely on their own minds for sensitive data, and he does not wish to overextend his trust towards his new, mostly-organic brain. So, the print shop: he's here to window shop, and price-check the blank journals. One hopes they are of a decent quality.

Tarantulas himself is wearing his humanoid body, extra legs tucked decently under his coat. No covering up his six extra eyes, though; they survey the showroom calmly, as he decides where to start looking first.

[skeletonkeay]

The bell attached to Gerry's door jingles loudly, and he looks up from where he was working. He has a book tightly clamped in a wooden apparatus and is running an odd-looking blade over the top. There are shreds of paper littering his work station in little white coiling ribbons.

The minute he lays eyes on Tarantulas, though, he can see exactly what's up. Not only does the spider body fail to escape his notice, he can see the marks all over this guy. Ironically the most prominent among them is the Spiral.

Oh hell no. Nope. Absolutely not.

In an act of blatant defiance and incredible rudeness, Gerry shakes his head and goes back to trimming the edges of his book. He wasn't going to turn away a client, but no way in hell was he giving his barely-passable customer service to some wackadoo who was in here spidering up the place.

[tisnotthehouse]

Well! That's not very friendly, now is it? It's not as though Tarantulas expected the shopkeeper to follow him around making small talk -- in fact he'd prefer it they stayed quiet and out of the way until he has a question, like the chatbots you'd see attached the digital storefronts on Cybertron's datanet. Ah, he misses online shopping. But to be dismissed so suddenly, before he's said a single word...that's annoying.

Luckily Tarantulas has almost no sense of shame. He merely sniffs disapprovingly and goes about his business, studying the wares on offer until he discovers...a discrepancy.

In his left hand, a blank journal with white pages, bound in leather with the silhouette of a horse worked on the cover. In his right hand, a blank journal with white pages, bound in leather with the silhouette of several birds in flight on the cover. Nearly identical apart from their chosen motif, but the horse-journal costs nearly twice as much. Why?

"Excuse me," he says, not exactly impolitely but very firmly as he approaches the counter. "Can you tell me about these books? Why is one more expensive than the other?" And don't even think about trying to ignore him now, fleshsack.

[skeletonkeay]

Oh, bloody fantastic.

He stifles a sigh. "Sturdier paper. One's made of recycled fabric, the other is standard wood pulp. The fabric paper is stronger. Also harder to come by. Higher quality, scarcer materials, higher price. Make sense?"

To illustrate his point, he passes Tarantulas two sheets of paper. "You can get a better look, if you like. Try tearing them. See the difference."

He still doesn't really want to talk to this Spiral-and-Web-addled nightmare. But he has pride in his work.

[tisnotthehouse]

"This is cloth?" Tarantulas accepts the two sheets and studies them carefully. He tears off a tiny corner of each sheet, worries the torn edge with his fingertips, and even smells it, just in case that turns out to be useful data in the future. "Interesting."

He does not have time to become an expert on papermaking, he reminds himself wistfully. At least not right now. He has to budget his time carefully, at least until they've either destroyed or driven off the demons that make life on this island so hazardous.

"But which type is more useful?" he wonders out loud, and refocuses his attention on Gerry. "To be more precise, which type of paper is less liable to smear when written on with pencil or ink? I keep very precise notes, and I don't care to have my research compromised by something so pedestrian as smudging."

[skeletonkeay]

"Generally the cloth." Gerry sets down his tools, giving the conversation his full attention now because fuck it, why not. "To some extent, that depends on the tooth of the paper and the implement you're writing with, but given that cotton fiber absorbs ink better, you'll have the best luck with the cloth-based paper and a good ink pen. Pencil's hit or miss, it tends to smudge no matter what you put it on unless you seal it."

[tisnotthehouse]

"'Seal it?'" Tarantulas can't keep the confused look off his face. He hadn't intended to betray the depths of his ignorance when he entered the shop, but...then again, he hadn't realize just how far down that ignorance extended. He sighs and says, "Pretend for a moment I come from an entirely digital culture, and then explain what you mean by that. Please."

[skeletonkeay]

Oh, there's no pretending involved. Gerry doesn't need true sight gifted by the Ceaseless Watcher to pick up on context clues.

"As in with a coat of something protective. Like, uh---" Fuck. This guy won't know what Mod Podge is. Poor, deprived sod. Hair spray? Hard maybe. Paint??? "Like a clear varnish."

[tisnotthehouse]

"Ah!" The connection to varnish works -- Tarantulas is still a Cybertronian at spark, after all, and paint and varnish are an important part of the culture. "So the 'varnish' locks the pencil markings into place and stops them from smearing?" He frowns again at the paper. "Won't the varnish eventually cause the organic compounds making up the paper to deteriorate, though? What's the average lifespan for this medium?"

[skeletonkeay]

"There's varnishes specifically for paper, and I honestly am not sure about an average lifespan. It can be destroyed in literally two seconds from tearing or flame, or it can last for centuries if stored safely. So your guess is as good as mine."

[tisnotthehouse]

"Hm." A little disappointing, but it's fine. "I'll have to remember to look into that, if I end up staying in this world that long," he says casually -- because he most likely will be. It takes time to invent devices that can pierce the boundaries between parallel universes, all right?

"I'll take both, then. And do you have any of that paper varnish?"