Claire and Brick Descriptions

There were some strangers that made a lasting impression, due to some uncommon quality of their presence. The stranger who entered now was such a person.

He was well-dressed, at least he had quality clothes, but there was a sloppiness how he wore them. His tie was loose. He had stubble on his face, a slightly irregular stubble; he was probably someone who was used to being clean shaven but had neglected it for a few days.

He had dark eyes, and dark bags beneath them. Though the menu was in front of him, he hadn’t started reading it yet.

Hey had a long coat, charcoal with a hint of brown. The bottom of the coat had mud splatters on it.

He was older: forty, maybe. But it was hard to tell. He might have been young, but had simply seen better days. There were bits of grey in his short hair and stubble.

He looked around a lot, in a way that suggested he had never been there before and was taking in the sights. There weren’t a lot of sights to take in however. Some odd mismatched lamps, the dark wall of the oblong room, a dark window, no other customers.

This was a night when there had been no customers at all after midnight.

It was nights like this when she questioned why she thought a job like this was safe. To even get to the diner, Claire had to walk six blocks alone, the last two being relatively empty and dark.

Though Vermilion was part of the same city as the rest of New Alexandria, police were sparse here. If there was ever any larger-scale emergency, more officers could come in from one of the more central districts. But they would have to take the train. This was relatively quick for commuting purposes, but poor in an emergency. If officers were needed, it would be a 30 minute delay between your call and their arrival in Vermilion. That is, if they considered your reason for calling worthwhile at all. Immediate response from police was unheard of.

This worked well enough in Vermilion since its Construct population generally had a preference for settling matters among themselves. This meant though, that humans in Vermilion had no efficient recourse to deal with immediate danger.

This was a fact Claire was always aware of. She didn’t consider herself a fearful person, but there were certain facts to consider. That was one of them. Another was brought to the surface by the presence of this lone man in the diner. He was a big man. Not fat, but tall and relatively fit. This was perhaps exaggerated by his long, dark coat.

Claire was small. Barely five feet tall and skinny. When she approached the man to take his order, she felt even smaller. Even though he was sitting down, he matched her height, and when she spoke “Hi,” he looked her straight in the eyes. His dark eyes had a strange intensity about them. He seemed tired but at the same time on edge. Keen and alert, sizing her up. And her smallness felt (to her) all too obvious.

Her appearance and personal style made her seem even younger. She was 19. She had semi-short blonde hair which came just below her ears. She wore a yellow dress, and a small blue bow in her hair. One lock of hair was dyed orangish-pink.

She wore a simple, long frilled black skirt along with yellow-and-black striped knee socks. Her top was a white collared button-down shirt, with a thin black ribbon tie at the neck. Long sleeves, with oversized black buttons and black nail polish.

She wore simple converse-style tennis shoes. Spending all day on her feet in heels wasn’t worth it, and people who thought otherwise were crazy.

One of her ears was adorned with many piercings. Between this, the striped socks, and the dressy-shirt, her style seemed almost undecided between classy waitstaff and punk teen, though it somehow worked — at least, she thought so.

The man had large, weathered hands. The way he looked at her made her uncomfortable, although she decided, it wasn’t necessarily a sign of ill intent. He simply seemed intensely aware of his surroundings, and at least he gave the impression of being able to read her thoughts.

Aside from Claire’s size, there was also the fact that Constructs were significantly stronger than humans. They weren’t created with as much strength as possible because it would have increased the manufacturing cost too much and reduced energy efficiency, but also because it would have frightened their human owners. While people learned to see strength surpassing a human’s as a convenience, to lift heavy boxes for instance, too much would have exacerbated fears of a robot apocalypse. The compromise nonetheless left constructs with two to three times the strength of a human of similar size.

All this meant that while walking to work, or staffing the diner alone, Claire at times felt exceedingly tiny and vulnerable. Most of the time, she didn’t think about it, and it didn’t bother her to be in the presence of beings so much physically stronger than herself. But there were times when she was acutely aware of it, and it made her tense up. This was one of those times.