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I need places to drink coffee and read for a few hours at a time. I imagine our college student population will be the best to ask, but this question is for everyone: what are your top five favorite coffee shops? Alternate location suggestions are also welcome.

On that note, has anyone's echoes included any information about nanites? If so, please contact me. I have questions.

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Action:

Who: Cesar and YOU
What: Cesar's burying himself in science as a means of coping with life. It's getting excessive. Poke him about it?
Where: Espresso Yourself, a local series of hardware stores, and anywhere he can pull out a kindle and read.
When: He'll be in and out of these places all week, starting Sept 21. If you'd like to specify a date, mention it in the subject!

Option A: Espresso Yourself

He'd once been convinced that helping out in a coffee shop for a few hours would play a valuable role in keeping a man alive. His help was a convenience, but it hadn't been enough to stop L's entire plan from going catastrophically wrong, and Cesar wonders for the fifth time why he's returned to a place that's still heavy with connections to his grief. He breaths a low sigh.

Rich coffee smells fill his nostrils, and he automatically sips the cup in his hand. Well--that's one reason.

The sitting area is low on customers (thanks to an unfortunate set of tweets), and Cesar has spread out with a laptop, a kindle, and a spread of papers with notes and diagrams and big question marks written all over. There's also about two or three empty coffee cups beside him, cold and abandoned. He's been here a while.

Option B: Hardware Stores

He only stopped working through his list because it was difficult to stack anything else onto the flat cart without posing an immediate hazard to the other customers. Raw materials, specific tools, a potted plant squeezed off to one side--he'll have to make a second trip, he decides, and for now he focuses on guiding the cart through the store, and later into the parking lot. How much does he have left on his list again? He glances down to check--

Something snags, and Cesar jerks his gaze up, cringing.

"Sorry! Excuse me. I must not have been looking where I was going..."

Option C: Anywhere else.

(Cesar's just filling up spare minutes in the day by taking out his kindle and reading, including while waiting in lines. This may or may not lead to him needing to be called to attention for anything he's holding up because of it. Get creative!)

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Necessary plug for Espresso Yourself here. 'Course, I'm biased and I don't really know a lot of places from experience. There was this nice little shop down town but I think it might've been crushed by Wise Snake months back. How are you doing these days?

And among those on the job today is Sad, Morose, and Corpsey, to whom the increased stillness of the past approximate week is simultaneously a relief - it is far better than trouble - and foreboding - it's creeping about on the peripherals, air dried out just before a storm that'll rush in to try to shake the shop and everyone in it to pieces.

He can't help wandering away from his cashier post - he'll hear it if anyone's at the counter! - and he drifts not to the back but to the side, listening to the store's interior and the few who are in it. Wincing any time someone speaks up in case it's a condemnation, bracing himself on guard, though who knows for what.

And turns a more productive fixation to those who haven't presented any reason to actively fuss.

He shuffles with his posture stooped to a table that has, yes, been occupied for a bit of time. Clears his throat.

Speaks up very faintly. "...You need me to. Uhmm... Clear, um - anything away, sir? Or - "

Or would you rather he just stayed out of the way?

L doesn't step out much these days. When he does, he carries with him an invisible shield of barbed-wire. His flimsy, beaten converse sneakers have been discarded in favor of metal-toed boots, putting some weight and power into his steps. His eyes are flinty but observant focal points in his pale face; very little seems to escape their notice. Tattooed in large print across his left palm, however, is probably the most noticeable and alarming addition to his appearance: large, neatly-printed black numbers that are, in fact, his numbers.

Today he's at the store for a simple and proactive reason; he's taking the advice of months ago because he can, now. Under one thin arm is a chin-up bar, the kind that can be easily installed in a doorway. In his left hand, which now appears fully-functional, is a bottle of multivitamins, balanced on top of a large steak, the likes of which he looks like he has probably never eaten in his life.

As he moves toward the self-checkout, though, alert to every potential suspicious movement or threat in his vicinity, he spots a familiar figure with a Kindle in his hands, seemingly oblivious to the people going around him in polite exasperation.

L was never particularly polite, and recent events haven't exactly contributed positively to this tendency. He clears his throat.

"Home is where the heart is, and also the better places for reading. Can Rhett and Scarlett wait until you've purchased your groceries...?"

I'm at Espresso Yourself now, actually. :) It's too bad about that other shop. Wise Snake caused a lot of damage.

Busy. I've set up a couple of test beds in my apartment for some experiments I've begun running, and one of them keeps getting bugs in the code.

What about yourself?

It was like, Coffee Coyote or something ridiculous like that. Little family run shop. They'd sometimes give me a small coffee for free back when I was still on the streets, mighty nice people. Test bed bugs what? Eh, if you pay any attention to twitter then you've heard I came pretty close to putting a hipster's head on the end of a broom but otherwise I'm alright. Getting better at depth-perception with one eye though so that's an improvement.

Maybe they've set up shop elsewhere, and you'll get another coffee again soon.

*Cesar is rereading this part a couple of times before answering.*Not test bed bugs. Just test beds. It means I'm setting up something that I can run experiments on.

I glanced at twitter when I heard about L's incident, but I hadn't heard of this one. Was it deliberate? (By the way, every improvement counts, so good work with that.)

Maybe, if they don't hate Numbered that is. Oh alright, why didn't you say that? I don't see where bed bugs come in. [Sometimes you take things too literally Tony.]

It was the same one, I haven't really heard what they said about me but I went over the counter after the guy when he punched L. Oops? Richard's been helping so it's not been as bad as I was expecting.

Robyn wasn't exactly a regular at Espresso Yourself but she stopped by every now and again after she used the teleporter that one time. She figured it wouldn't hurt to become a semi-regular customer in exchange for traveling to the other side of the country freely.

She moved over toward the sitting area after getting a herself a hot chocolate (She's not big on coffee, sue her.) only to find Cesar hard at work on something that would probably go right over her head. That didn't stop her from getting curious though, she'll move toward her and peer over his shoulder in an attempt to figure out just what he was working on.

It's a soft voice, and the tug on Cesar's attention is so gentle that he doesn't look up at first. His eyes tear slowly away from the kindle, visibly having to detach his attention from it--

--and he stiffens in his chair, expression a mask of surprise. The young man's skin is waxy and dried, where there aren't gaping holes in it altogether. The nose is mostly gone. Lips have partially disappeared, showing jaws of teeth and grey gums.

This isn't the first time he's seen him. Cesar saw him coming in, and recognized him from the network. Cesar is being rude, now. He scrambles to collect himself.

"I. Ah." There. Empty cups. "Yes. Yes please. I'm finished with those." He reaches for the nearest cup, as though a little too hard to help.

"... What?" Cesar looks up. The hand not holding a kindle is holding a grocery basket, and he's been standing by where one of the lines used to stand for five minutes.

"... Oh." He thumbs the screen off. "Sorry. I must've lost track of time... I was reading about cellular reactions to basic medications, and the material is fascinating."

He gives a polite smile to the people routing around him, stepping to the back of the line. This puts him behind L, and he can't help but sweep the chin-up bar, steak, and vitamins with eyes that aren't nearly wide enough to be surprised. He lingers on the sight of L's hand itself.

"The surgery worked." A beat. "I never noticed how little they'd moved before until seeing them now."

It goes without saying but I think one of the best places is Espresso Yourself.Unless you favor generic and bland. Then any chain coffee ship will do.

It takes Cesar a few seconds to recognize a curious presence at his shoulder. When he does he finishes jotting down his latest symbol, and looks over with a slight (hesitant) smile. It's her. She's that girl he checked up on from the network, the one who'd been kidnapped. It's strange seeing her in person, and strange to know that she probably has no idea that she's spoken with him before.

"See anything interesting?" His hand moves out of the latest page's way, giving her a better look. The drawings are a cross between simple mechanisms and lots of little circles, all with chemical formulas scrawled out beside them. His question is genuine: he looks like he might answer questions if he's asked any.

Oh-ho, no, if there is a scramble, Anthony's the one who's being rude, it was too sudden, too underexcused - shudders internally, avoids shrinking, and...

" -- Okay, er -- " Still rather soft but with an extra cringing resonance, forces a smile that would've certainly looked polite on a complete face and perhaps it's for the best that he can't actually check how his looks now. Clears his throat, practically bows a nod. "I'll - I'll-I'll - take them - then - uhm - "

Those, he said - he takes the cup, likewise a little too hasty, too jerkily, sweeps a hand slowly over the surface of the table, and - are those two others he feels, one, two, three, is that all of them...?

Points vaguely, turns his face hard in the direction of the man's voice. " -- You - you want... uhm -- ...?"

The "uhmm" pressed helplessly out nasally. "More", is what he means to ask, come now boy that's a simple question...

Espresso Yourself does have a certain flair with its blends. Do you have any particular one you'd recommend?

L's eyes narrow as Cesar turns off his Kindle and explains his fascination with the subject material, as if trying to discern a reason why such a thing would be so pressing it would call for ignoring everything else in a very public, very prone place. Once, he might have been the type to lose his head in the clouds when his obsessions grabbed hold of him, even if he was in the middle of the road.

Of course, that's hardly the case anymore.

His gaze follows the other man as he takes his place behind him in line, ringing up his purchases with hands that are in perfect working order and gaining back strength by the day. Cesar makes his comment about them as he starts to scan his vitamins, and he pauses, rolling them in his newly-whole hands, before dropping them into the bag and reaching for his steak.

"The surgery worked," he confirms in a tone that's completely neutral and balanced. "And that's all right... I noticed enough to make up for everyone else. Doesn't matter, now. I'm glad I did this. You can't give someone hell if you can't exert a decent grip, right?"

I like either the white mocha or the caramel mocha coffee. I have a sweet tooth, and a thing for chocolate.

Cesar's hiding behind a slapdash poker face right now. He smiles back at the (frankly hideous) smile he gets, and watches as his still-partly-full cup is swept up with the rest. His mouth is open, but he can't bring himself to say anything. Then the decayed face swings his way and Cesar's expression goes professional and blank blank blank again--

"Ah, more?" he suggests, smiling again. "Yes, please, more of the same. Do you remember the order?"

As nervous as he is, the question isn't unkind.

I hadn't thought of that. Would you volunteer the information if they didn't know?

But I did. I never said there were bugs in the test bed itself, just that the program I'm using to operate it is buggy. It's flawed.

Oh. 'Oops' indeed.

Have you had to do anything like physical therapy while relearning depth perception? Or is that what Richard's been helping you with?

She catches the hesitation in his smile but doesn't put too much thought into it, she got nervous easily when it came to being social and she just wrote it off that he might have the same problem. She certainly never would have guessed that she had talked to him before, he was just a number and a wall of text when that happened.

"Kind of, I think." She glances over everything she can see but it doesn't take too long for it to feel like her head is spinning.

"Just what is all of this?" She'll start out basic and see where she goes from there, hopefully he doesn't mind.

I've tried the plain mocha, but I haven't tried either of those varieties. I'll order one the next time I go there.

Is there anywhere else you go when you need to read, or spend time organizing a lot of information at once?

Have you looked at my hair recently? Kinda hard to miss. Oh alright I get it now. Bugs means not working right, gotcha. Guess I've got a temper. Yeah that's what we've been doing. Playing catch mostly, teaches me how to see depth differently and react. I almost never walk into things anymore, unless I'm tired.

She knows 'he's' been looking into nanotechnology. If he explains, will she draw the connection?

If it were anyone else, he might see this risk as reason to lie. She's not anyone else, though, and he's found each of their past conversations to be not just stress-free, but relaxing. Somewhere in between hamburger earmuffs and enthusiasm for tiny robots she endeared herself to him, and he knows firmly that she's no danger to him.

"These are diagrams of nanomachines that current industry is trying to synthesize. These are how I think they should be doing it." He waves a hand over one set of drawings, then another. "They're similar, but otherwise different."

My condo, or the garden of said condo... Only I can't go there now since moving out of Locke. What do you usually order?

[ Even if it was only temporary, it was still upsetting for her. Especially since they needed to look like the move was permanent. ]

Usually a park or the beach too. But Espresso has a few places to hang out for quiet moments.

He's hasting, alas, and haste makes everything worse - similarly to the above he's unsure if it's for the better that he can't see looks on anyone's faces, in case it'd throw off that the tone does seem to be kind enough.

"Ah -- " Creak stop, another pull for something like a smile. " -- I-I can ask -- it's -- I'll be quick, thank you, I'm sorry..."

Phrases blending and falling together. The "thank you" really was necessary, by the by; awkward as this is, it's giving him something to do - he can at least pretend this is doing anyone any good.

Couldn't you say it's dyed?

Keep practicing. You probably haven't, but have you ever had the chance to learn to drive? Having only one eye doesn't restrict anyone from getting a license, so it's a goal you could have/

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