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Truth told Taym was much more comfortable with Cami's suggestion that he "text and grab," as she put it, than he was with the idea of finding her in person. This was somehow--he did not understand how--further complicated by the fact that she was in Otto Graves' room. Otto occupied a strange place in Taym's hierarchy of acquaintances, in that he knew nearly nothing about the kid but liked him enormously for what he did know, while simultaneously being revolted by how close he was to Bertrand. It was not a skein of consideration he particularly wanted to confront, and so he held his breath when he knocked, hoping that A) Cami was there and B) Otto wasn't.

He'd come prepared, with the vague idea that they could walk down to the library, or find an unclaimed computer: a much-abused notebook under one arm with a gnawed-on pencil stuck in the binding; a fresh one and a pen (ungnawed, thankfully) in case she needed it, and he was disgusted but unsurprised to find that the idea of approaching the topic with someone--with having to make some kind of organized, professional plea--had him on tenterhooks and filled with the same nauseated unease he had at the prospect of speaking in public. There was nothing for it, so he knocked anyway, and not for the first time felt a dim twist of regret that he was about to try and make the argument that he was a competent, capable adult while looking like he did, which is to say corpselike, sleep-deprived, and twitchy.

He paused, watching her flurrying, watching her prepare for what she must thought was some sort of grand adventure instead of a leisurely stroll down to the library and a shared b***h-session about Caelius. Like a girl scout.

He did not answer her. Instead he simply turned, expecting her to follow, and he shot a glance at her and at her Be Prepared Backpack and said: "Do you know Konstantin Bashmet?"

It was probably for the best that he didn't notice the inflection on maybe, as he might well have found some excuse to end the meeting then and there. Probably not--but maybe. In a fashion that she would swiftly grow accustomed to if she spent much time around him, he completely disregarded the questions about Kostya, leaving the odd aside hanging unexplained.

"Yeah, well, someone taking me seriously is kind of a ********' novelty around here," he said bitterly, "so I felt like I ought to return the favor. Did you have a chance to look over the s**t I sent you when we were out in the field? I understand," he added, strained, "that I sent it right before reality collapsed in on itself repeatedly, but that's sort of a... banal ********' occurrence, around here, so I thought maybe you'd found a minute."

"Good," was his perhaps surprising reply. If there was sarcasm in it, it was well-hidden. "That means you have 100% fresh ******** eyes. It's been almost a year for me--easier for you to know what needs to be prioritized, what can wait, what can be condensed down into a bullet point and what needs immediate expanding-on." He instinctively, unthinkingly, almost without noticing, opened and held the dorm building door for her when they reached it. "So lay these good ideas on me. Breath of fresh air," he added, and for a moment it was impossible to tell whether he meant her or the sudden Island heat. Given that he almost immediately reached for a cigarette, probably the former.

She would be pleased, probably, and as surprised as everyone always was to learn swiftly that Taym was as considerate a smoker as it's possible to be for a man who insisted on lighting up anywhere and everywhere; who had once cracked jokes about expatriating to France because no one cared if you smoked at the dinner table. He turned his head away from her to exhale, and he did it as thoughtlessly as he'd held the door.

He listened intently to her ideas, with an obvious razor-sharp focus, itemizing his replies in his head for the moment when she reached the end of whatever fountain of things to say that he was reluctant to interrupt.

Instead she interrupted herself, so to speak, and he wheeled to walk backwards and face her, eyeing her over his cigarette before he came to a halt (and, again, turned his head away from her to exhale, even though he was now several feet away). "No portals?" he repeated, in a skeptical tone that begged explanation.

"I'd say that's less an issue about portals," he pointed out mildly as they resumed, "than it is an issue about knowing where portals go to, and also an issue about following Mark anywhere. I thought you'd had some sort of ********' incident with the lighthouse leave portal or something, to add to my ever-accumulating list of things to worry about."

He paused, clearly about to say something else, clearly mulling over everything he'd been given so far. He ambled, more than walked: get him alone and on his way to a job and he had the kind of brisk, brows-drawn stride that cleared Black Friday crowds at the mall, but put a cigarette in his hand and someone pleasant to walk next to and it was obvious that he was disinclined to hurry. "I want to preface this," he said, "by saying that I don't disagree with you, but anyway: you never will know what it is you're getting into. You can go in with all the intelligence in the world, have an actual helpful dossier under your belt for once, and you will still have no ******** clue what you're getting into. I went on a routine runic retrieval mission with Bix once--we were had floor plans, we had guard schedules. Easiest ******** mission in the world. We got picked up by the splinter cell and ended up--" he hesitated.

Everyone on the Island, in Taym's experience, at some point became blase about their experiences. At some point a sentence like "and then we chopped the hydra's head off and cauterized it with the remnants of the phoenix, but Smith over there managed to lose his eye" was delivered in exactly the same tone one used to order a pizza. He hadn't learned it yet. He could, if properly irritated, in a state of sufficient showboating, fake it. This was not one of those times.

"--we ended up in a bad ******** situation," he settled on instead. "And by bad I mean miles away from where we were landed, severed from our weapons, cuffed, put into cages, and eaten ********' alive. This was," he stressed, "a routine mission. Another time we were at a raffle to see who got to go on leave first after a long time without a portal and we ended up golemized and put into a televised fight to the death. To some extent what I want to do is exactly what you're saying--I want us to arm people, I want people to be informed, I want there to be preparation and foreknowledge. But that particular concern is going to need some retooling, or no one's ever going to go anywhere, because there's no such thing as a predictable mission. Although," he finished drily, "the thing about not following Mark willy-nilly probably still stands."

"Hold on to that obsession," he said, "because having a hardcopy approach is a good ******** idea. For the rest of it..."

He hesitated, thinking his way through the answer and managing to make a mess of it anyway. "At some point you go from being a helpful volunteer to being... I don't know. Upstarts are perceived as threats; undue motivation can get you into trouble or garner you a reputation, deserved or not. I do what I can for the people I depod personally--I've seriously considered asking for extra pod duty shifts, god help me--and for anyone who floats through Twitter, but it's hard to... to get your hands on these things. And I'm just one person and I lack," he said drily, "what you might call people skills."

Another pause, a deep breath: "Ideal world? We'd be coordinating with someone higher-up on this, someone motivated. But the lack of infrastructure might be a problem anyway. Ideal world we'd be having formal orientation assemblies, formal mentoring structures, and in a truly ******** ideal world we'd be handing out updates once a week, in some form or another. I'm starting out where I can--or I was; I freely ******** confess that I'd given up by the time you showed up--but I'd like to build up, yeah. If not me personally, than someone, or many someones. A one-on-one mentoring program right out of the pod, and a group orientation, that is a... god. That'd be great, wouldn't it?"

He nipped in front of her to grab the door to the computer labs also, a convenient reason for him to avert his face after having waxed painfully idealistic for a minute there.

"I'm sure you can," he said tiredly. "I'll--find some time, after I manage to switch divisions. To talk to Edith, I mean, and see what falls under Moon work and what doesn't, and what's feasible and what isn't. As far as the mentoring goes, finding willing volunteers is going to be the easy part. Screening them and matching them up and keeping them active--that's a little harder. And one of those situations," he added, "where people skills would be useful."

The computers unfortunately all occupied, Taym collapsed into the first empty chair he found that was across from another, folding immediately into a master-class slouch and flipping open the notebook, already busy on a page.

"I think your idea for a paper approach is probably feasible for freshly-depodded recruits," he said distractedly, "but probably unsustainable if we manage some kind of--some kind of regular update system. I'm not sure about the coat thing--it's a good idea; I'm just not sure; I'll have to ask around or we both can--but I think pod room is probably doable, even if quartermaster isn't. Or empty rooms, even, under the door if we have to--although canvassing the basement is an adventure in and of itself."