if i think i can figure things out, is that curiosity or arrogance?

"And this," Topher said, swiping his ID badge against the sensor on the door that he and Victor had just arrived at, "is the surveillance room. For watching the test subjects mess up and stuff. It's kind of also a break room, 'cause most of us eat in there and there's a fridge and a popcorn popper, but its technical purpose is surveillance."

The badge sensor was lighting up red instead of green, and Topher frowned, swiping his card again. When it lit up red again, he paused and just tried the handle. It opened.

"Guess it isn't locked." Darn. He'd felt really cool swiping his badge everywhere. "Anyway, here it is."

The room did look a lot like a break room, in that it had a number of couches and it smelled like coffee, but the flatscreen video monitor that all the couches were facing was showing a feed of a flustered-looking thirty-something man in an orange jumpsuit firing portals at a wall. Most break rooms didn't have that kind of entertainment.

"So yeah," Topher said, flopping on a couch to watch. "Questions, comments, concerns? Want popcorn?"

[[for victor!]]

In preparation for his portal tomorrow morning, Topher was cleaning his room -- no. Topher was organizing his room, and it was turning out to be a surprisingly horrifying process.

The thing was that he was, on the surface, a very neat person. His clean clothes were always folded because that's how the dry-cleaners left them and there was rarely visible stuff on the floor of his side of the room besides wires. However, that was only because all of the stuff that was on the floor inevitably got shoved under his desk or bed or into his closet so he wouldn't have to see it all the time. Having a mess was fine, but having to look at it was quite another. No, thank you.

Unfortunately, packing for the summer meant that he finally did have to deal with this mess, which led to situations like, for instance, Topher crouching beside his bed, squinting at the mess underneath it, and asking aloud, "Is that a shirt or a possum?"

He wasn't a hundred percent sure, and it was a rather alarming concern to have, so to avoid having to go near the maybe-possum, Topher decided to abandon his half-packed bags for right now and perch himself on top of his desk with his laptop in his lap, where he began modifying Broca II's code so that he could go check it out. Robot dogs were useful that way.

[[open door, open post! probably his last on-island dorm post until fall.]]

All in all, it was a good thing that Alec didn't seem to be around this week, because it allowed for Topher the gopher to sit on his bed, contentedly destroying his pillowcase.

Wait, maybe that meant that it wasn't such a good thing. But Topher appreciated it, at least. He had paws and claws and was appreciating the chance to get to use them before they went away. In fact, he was working kind of hard on using his claws to scratch up Alec's pillow in the shape of the helmet from the bad guy from Space Battles. Once he thought he had it for the most part, he squeaked for Victor's attention to show off his handiwork, tilting his little gopher head as if to ask Nice, right?

Still. He was becoming pretty bored with being a gopher. Was this going to be over soon?

[[for guess-who!]]

All things considered, there had been worse weeks on this island than just being monochromatic and really really boring. However, most of the other weeks hadn't involved being so mean to Billy (and Topher did realize that he'd been mean to Billy, whether it'd been intentional on other!him's part or not), so this one pretty much ranked as an awkward one.

Plus he was pretty damn sore from all the jogging other!him had been doing, so. There was that as well.

He mulled it over for a moment or two, decided that it was almost definitely excusable in the long run, then settled on his bed with Broca II in his lap and put on a movie on one of his laptops. Meanwhile, he took out his iPad and idly coded while the movie was playing. He wasn't sure what he was doing yet, but so far it had 'this island is batshit' written in binary, so that was a good start.

[[open!]]

So Topher's room was what one might call 'aggressively unclean' at this point, and the extremely hyper and curious robot puppy running around was probably not helping matters. However, Topher had a very good cleaning strategy to prepare for coding funtimes with Victor: kicking the majority of his stuff under his desk, into the closet, or over towards the other side of the room. It was such a great strategy, he couldn't believe no one had ever thought of it before!

Once that was taken care of, he removed his drawer of inappropriate starches from his closet and placed it beside his desk for optimal snacking, set Broca II the robot puppy on his bed to "nap," and then settled at his desk and began looking up ELIZA applications to play with. Whee, coding!

[[open, expecting one!]]

The second Topher stepped out of his portal onto the Causeway, he wanted to turn back and head back to Peter's place. That place had technology, a blissful lack of noise and visitors, and a guilt-free environment free of awkward apologies and blaming himself for stuff. Basically, it was perfect. Fandom was... not.

It was even less perfect after Topher went to class, where all that guilt-free philosophy imparted unto him by Peter was promptly zapped away by the same scarily-persuasive Wiggin rationalizing that had gotten it into his head in the first place. Weighed down by the fresh reminder of all the bad stuff he'd done that week, he trudged back to his room and without even bothering to close the door properly, strode on in, flopped on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.

Seriously, he'd love a portal back to Haiti. Even one that took him through a layover filled with giant rats would be fine. Maybe if he intentionally took one of those, the schadenfreude would be enough for Peter to let him stay a little longer?

...Whatever, he could dream.