isaysimplewords

Cal's canon, The Fix, is a fairly complicated one. It's a satire, so the plot takes a lot of twists and turns and things tend to get laid on pretty thick. This, for me, is all made more interesting by the fact that I do not have access to the entire canon. The Fix was not particularly popular when it debuted in London in 1997; the American debut was better received (as one might expect for a play about American politics), but it didn't exactly set the world on fire, either. It's very rarely staged now. As a result, it's not one of those plays where you can buy a scriptbook or find a DVD. The only part of the play that is easily accessible is the soundtrack, which is missing a couple songs and seems to vary slightly depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on when you buy it.

The play's story is not entirely told in its songs; the summary in the liner notes provides a complete enough picture to pull the story together and make sense of what you're hearing, but it's very sparing of the details. This, with the addition of a few random clips from a bootleg of the London show, gives me a strong enough portrait of Cal's character that I feel very comfortable writing him for Milliways, but it's also left me with having to extrapolate, fudge, or just plain make up a lot of stuff.

So this post is about offering information about Cal's canon for people who want it. The first cut is a copy of the liner note summary, just to give you the basics. The second cut is a hilariously futile effort on my part to make sense of The Fix's slippery timeline, compounded by my accidentally Millicanoning Cal as being probably a few years younger than he actually is at the start of the play. Oops. Don't worry, though, eventually I just gave up and started analyzing things.

( Liner notes summary. )

( Now join me in trying to apply LOGIC to all that. )

I think that's all for now - I'll edit if more things occur to me or other questions crop up. OH, and if anyone knows where I can find a full copy of The Fix, in any form? PLZ HALP. Thank you.

Cal is at a table in the middle of Milliways, as per usual. He also has his usual mug of raktajino.

Slightly less usual is the small scarlet feather he's studying, twirling it contemplatively between his fingers.

Today, Cal is vomit-free.

He has a small scarlet feather in his hair, though. He hasn't noticed it yet.

He's at a table with a cup of coffee, half-watching the crowd.

When Milliways pops up in the shelter today, Cal immediately forgoes cleaning off his shirt in favor of swapping it out for a fresh one.

He loves the shelter, but he hates when the animals puke on him.

This time, he understands what's going on right away. A dream that isn't a dream, a meeting place between worlds more tenuous than Milliways. A way to make peace with those he has lost.

He knows whose turn it is this year before he even looks, and when he does look, and sees the familiar figure in the wheelchair he remembers so vividly

(It had shifted slightly under them as Cal swung his weight into it, settling himself neatly into place facing his uncle, cradling Grahame's head not ungently in his hands. Grahame had been too thin for that chair by then. There was plenty of room for Cal.)

he's pretty sure that the outcome of this meeting isn't going to be very peaceful.

Cal has summoned the vidscreen back up and been quietly asking a few questions; now he's contemplating it in silence when Sam approaches. He takes in Cal and the vidscreen - and a room key on the Bar - and looks at Cal inquiringly, the better to let him start this particular conversation.

"She says I can get a delay on the transformation," Cal tells him, "and wait till we're upstairs. And the time limit's almost up, so it wouldn't have to be for very long." He sighs. "I'd still have to come back down to activate the screen before I can change back, though." That would seem to be non-negotiable.

Sam nods, studying Cal's face for signs of nervousness running too deep to be comfortable with. "It's your choice," he says. "I won't hold it against you if you don't want to do it. Honestly, I'm surprised you're even considering it."

Cal laughs a little at that. "Yeah, me too." He's surprised the idea stayed in his mind at all after his initial oh god no reaction. He's never liked the transformations in Milliways.

But what he's liked right from the start about Cubefall (aside from the Legos) is that the transformations are voluntary. People get to choose what to be, and they get to choose whether or not to be it at all. That makes a difference. It makes a big difference, bigger than Cal had expected it to make once he started thinking about the possibility of saying yes.

And Sam has done the female transformation before, and that was fun. And seriously, when you get right down to it, who hasn't wondered what sex is like on the other side?

Cal looks back down at the vidscreen for a long moment, tapping his fingers on the Bar. Then he takes a breath and picks up the room key.

"Not until we're inside the room, right?"

Right, says the answering napkin. Cal glances at Sam.

"Okay," he says, and touches the screen. It vanishes. Cal swallows and says to Sam,

"Let's go."

Sam smiles and reaches out to take Cal's hand, and they head for the stairs.

When Cal and Sam arrived from Milliways, they lost no time in hitting the shower: sand in the bed isn't much fun for anyone, after all.

So now the bottom of Cal's tub is finely coated with sand, but the bed is comfortably sand-free for post-coital lounging.

Shortly after his conversation with Tom Riddle, Cal leaves Milliways. His Door drops him at his original intended destination - the video store down the street.

It's the first time Cal's visited. There was a time in his life when he watched movies and television almost constantly (usually while high), but he'd lost the habit somewhere and never picked it back up. He'd been too busy once he'd decided to turn on Gliardi and spend time with his son, and then there had been Milliways. Cal can't imagine the movie that could be more interesting than just peoplewatching in Milliways, even when he'd been there long enough to be getting restless.

There's also the music. Music was part of communication on Cal's old world, with song every bit as natural as speech, and even more so at times. He's gotten used to music not being there anymore, to feeling the moment when there should be a song and reaching out to find nothing, but he still feels the wrong of it every now and then. Movies on his new world, with every word of dialogue spoken unless they were created specifically for the musical genre, serve only to remind him of the wrongness of that absence.

So he doesn't watch movies much - musicals are almost the same here, but not quite, with their theatrical flair that tells the viewer that they know they're doing things a bit differently. Today, though, he's getting a little desperate. The weather has been miserable, keeping Cal and Penny cooped up in the apartment instead of taking their customary trips to the dog park. Milliways has helped take the edge off, but Cal is beginning to feel tense and sick of looking at his apartment when he's at home, and he knows that from there it's only a short trip to his next claustrophobic attack. (Peoplewatching wasn't the only reason he preferred to spend as little time as possible in his room at Milliways.)

A movie is at least something new to look at. And since Cal skipped over a full decade when he switched worlds, there won't be any trouble finding something he hasn't seen before.

The musicals are shelved all together, which Cal discovers by chance. It sort of makes sense, he supposes - all-speech movies hadn't been unheard of on his old world, they'd just been a niche genre, much like musicals seem to be here, and they'd had their own shelves too.

After everything that happened at Milliways today, though, especially the talk with Tom Riddle, Cal really isn't in the mood to browse. He looks at the colorful DVD covers without really taking them in, his mind occupied with Hermione's situation, with Sam Winchester's (took him fucking long enough) admission, with the parallels between himself and Tom Riddle that he'd just as soon not think about

(who would want to have anything in common with a man whose alternate selves went on to become the wizarding world's answer to Hitler?)

and his gaze wanders.

Specifically, it wanders to the family movies section right next to the musical, and lands on a shelf holding a fanned-out set of five particular movies.

". . . holy shit."

It's been a full couple of days for Cal; the weather is bad at home and things at Milliways have been eventful. His primary concern at the moment is Hermione, and doing what he can for her. After his visit to her cell, he'd decided that part of that involved talking to Tom Riddle. Nothing confrontational, just - sounding him out. Making sure that his initial impression of the man as being a decent kind of person, not setting off any alarms for Cal, was correct.

So he's in Milliways as he has been for a little while now, half watching for Riddle and half sunk into thought.

Cal holds the door open for Chandler, saying,

"My dog'll probably jump on you, but don't worry, she's friendly. We're, uh, working on that." The jumping thing, that is, not the being friendly thing.

And Chandler is almost immediately, as promised, investigated by a very curious (and not very big) puggle. It's far from the first time Cal's had a visitor since getting Penny, but she has yet to figure out exactly how it is that new people manage to appear in the apartment when she knows they didn't come in through the front door.

Perhaps Chandler's trouserleg holds the answers.

Cal, more focused on Sam, isn't really paying attention to where they're going until he realizes, about ten doors past where they want to be, that he's automatically heading toward the room he used to live in.

"Shit," he says. "Turn around. Back that way."

He finds the right door without further incident, and opens it to let them both in.

"Hey, baby."

The voice in Cal's ear is warm and familiar; the body pressed against his, sheet draped loosely over both of them, is one he knows by heart. He smiles, drowsy, and turns to face her.

Tina looks subtly different from how he remembers her. She looks healthier, the heroin pallor gone from her brown skin, and a quiet seriousness in her eyes even as she smiles.

(The starker look it's replaced is one he used to ignore.)

"Tina." He touches her cheek; she closes her eyes, rubbing against his hand like a cat. "Is this - ?"

"Dream that's not a dream?" She opens her eyes. "Yeah. Took its sweet time, too. I can't do this just any day of the Milliways year. Your dad beat me to the punch last time, but this year you're all mine." She laughs and hugs him. He pulls her close - not that she needs the help - and says,

"I would've thought . . ." With all the waking time he's spent trying to come to terms with -

"What? That your pervert uncle would take this one?" Her expression hardens. "Yeah, well. He owed me big time and he fucking knew it, too." She sighs and puts a finger over his lips. "C'mon, baby. No big questions, asking where we are, what went down, none a that sad shit, okay? Let's not waste time. We only got till you wake up."

Then she grins, her eyes sparkling and sly like he hasn't seen them in a long time as she takes his hand in hers and moves it to her breast. "'Sides, you sure your uncle's the one you wanna be thinkin' about right now?"

Cal gives in, laughing as he kisses her.

*

"I love you," she says later, looking up into his eyes as she curls against him. "I always did. I -" It's Cal's turn to put a finger over her mouth.

"Shh," he says. "You did what you thought you had to do. I know."

Her eyes fill with tears. "That son of a bitch," she whispers. Cal wraps his arms tight around her, and he wakes.

Cal holds the door open for Enzo, coming in behind him.

This time, Penny is not asleep when the visitor enters. This time, Penny is wide awake, and she knows there was no one else in the apartment when Cal went through that door just a second ago.

So now Enzo is being very thoroughly sniffed.

Cal holds the door for Esfir and steps in behind her. The door is the one to his bedroom, and leads out into a short hall from which the living room - and the corner couch, and the dog sleeping on the corner couch - is visible.

(Penny remains asleep. For the moment.)

"Here it is," he says.

Before he'd even chosen a new world, Cal had planned to have a dog. To that end, he did a lot of research in the last couple of weeks. He read a book, talked to Julie and Ayuko about their dog, and, while Sam Puckett's suggestion of running an Internet search on the phrase "small dogs that don't suck" wasn't very helpful, it did point Cal to the obvious idea of searching for local breeders. He ended up with half a dozen names of people in the area who bred some of the smaller dogs (and searching for those breed names individually did, in fact, reveal which of them did not suck), which was a start. His reading had been clear, however, about the need for good, responsible, humane breeders, and Cal was a bit wary of the Internet's ability to provide this information. After some thought, he concluded that it would make sense to ask at the local animal shelter. After all, who would be more invested in sending him in the right direction than someone who dealt with what happened when pets were no longer wanted?

(Cal's logic is a beast of its own sometimes.)

He knows, of course, that the woman he's going to see, Elaine Yolland, will try to talk him into taking a dog from the shelter. He's prepared for that. He knows what he wants. He has nothing against mutts, but he wants a purebred. He wants to know exactly what he's getting, no surprises, so he can know exactly what he's doing and minimize his chances of fucking this up.

Not twenty minutes after he enters the building, Elaine is introducing him to Penny.

"Penny isn't a mutt," she's explaining, "she's a puggle, a recognized breed that's a pug-beagle cross. She fits your criteria, Cal - puggles are very friendly, smart, and do just fine in an apartment. There are some drawbacks, they tend to inherit the defects of the parent breeds, I'm afraid you won't be able to take her for long runs, but they're sweet and loyal and not the obnoxious yappy type." She chuckles knowingly. "And the fact that you're so committed to being a good owner means that you fit her criteria, too."

Cal kneels and Penny sniffs at him intently before licking his hand. He smiles, brightly pleased, and settles on the floor to pet her. She loses no time in climbing into his lap, for all the world as if they've known each other all along.

Elaine keeps talking, telling him how Penny's previous family had to leave suddenly, and how she has a solid foundation in training and socialization which Elaine thinks will be helpful to him as a first-time owner, but it's obvious to everyone in the room that the deal is already closed. Cal arranges to pick Penny up the next day, after he's bought everything he'll need to have her in the apartment.

It's another hour or so before he can even bring himself to leave.

Cal is on a couch by the fireplace today. It's getting cold back home, so the fireplace holds an extra attraction. He has his usual mug of raktajino - he's getting better with using the equipment he brought back home, but he still can't make it like Bar can - and is watching the fish swim in the flames.

After Sam leaves - Cal finds himself at something of a loss, after Sam leaves.

(It was hard not to follow him back through the door, harder to watch it close, but Cal stayed. The point of being here, after all, is to be here.)

It isn't that there's nothing to do. There's an overwhelming number of things to do, most of them boiling down to learning about his new world. He doesn't know where to start.

In Milliways, he got used to not spending much time in his room, with only his own company. So he goes out a lot, spending most of those first few days exploring the neighborhood, looking more closely at the parts he already found with Bela and Sam as well as going out further, checking out blocks he hasn't been to yet. He makes note of stores and restaurants that he'll want to go back to, and of more purely residential areas that don't hold much of interest.

(Three blocks away from his building is a small, unassuming church; maybe someday he'll look closely enough to spot the noticeboard, and the notice about the Narcotics Anonymous meetings held every week in the basement.)

On the third day, his gaze finally focuses on the sign in the coffee shop across from his building, the one that advertises free wireless internet with purchase. It comes as a relief; he's been wanting to try out the internet some more, but when he is in his apartment, he can't settle down long enough to concentrate on much of anything. He spends a few hours there that day with his laptop, and finds the the noise of the customers and machinery and ambient music helps him to focus. Another thing he got used to in Milliways.

He also meets a couple of the other tenants in the building. Next door is James, who has a four-year-old son he sees every other weekend. Julie and Ayuko live in the apartment above Cal; he hasn't met Ayuko yet, but he has a brief conversation with Julie at the front entrance, where she apologizes for the odd hours they keep and hopes they won't disturb him. They work from home, she says, doing something with computer software that makes Cal nod politely and wonder if he'd understand better if he really were from 2007. There are plenty of others, in several stories' worth of apartments. Some he'll meet later, he supposes, and some won't be interested in meeting much of anyone. The real world - any real world - isn't half so social a place as Milliways. That much Cal remembers and is expecting, and finds that people still seem friendlier here than they did at home. His old world. He wonders how much of is a difference between worlds, and how much of it has to do with the company he kept.

When he decides, finally, to make a list of things he should do - what he needs to know about the most, what can wait, where to learn about it - he discovers that those days of exploring have laid a foundation. Without even realizing it, he's already gotten started. The feeling of being overwhelmed begins to lessen, and Cal begins, at last, to believe that his life on this world will eventually click into place. It isn't home now, but, someday, maybe it will be.

Cal's been officially settled into his new apartment for about a day with the phone rings. Sam is in the shower, so for a ridiculous split second Cal thinks the sound has something to do with the running water. He hasn't been here long enough to give out his number, after all. Not that he remembers it yet. But there's a piece of paper.

He blinks at the phone for a second before remembering the next step. (Hey, it's been nearly a year since he had a phone to answer, the instinct has atrophied somewhat.) Then he reaches out and picks up the receiver, saying out of some lingering habit,

"Chandler residence."

The Door opens into Cal's living room, which features a brown leather sectional couch. The color base of the room is fairly neutral, with a few colors overlaid that emphasize the framed pictures on the wall without going overboard. In short, it looks exactly like it was decorated by someone with good taste and a substantial budget who knows Cal very well.

Cal hesitates for just a second before closing the Door behind them, then turns to Sam.

"I'm, uh, just gonna take these into the bedroom," he says, plucking the boxes out of the air, "then I'll give you the tour."

Most people, on finding themselves with a Door to the new world they were going to be living in, would open it right away, even just for a peek. Cal hasn't touched his since it appeared. The last time he had a Door, it was waiting for him to make one final visit to his home world; when he was done, it disappeared, permanently cutting him off from his home. Even after all the months he's had to deal with his losses, and the realization he's come to that his world was a cruel place in comparison to a lot of others, he still wants very badly for this Door to lead him home. But it won't. And so, rather than open it onto whatever half-familiar sight will be on the other side, in a New York he's never set foot in before, Cal has left his Door alone.

He can't put it off any longer, though. He has the paperwork for his new identity from Ianto, and Bela is finally here and ready to help him find an apartment and put that paperwork to use setting up his new life. He'd like to tell her maybe next time, but he can't, not when he's pushed himself to this point and not when she's so looking forward to it. (And not when she has minimal time left to spend on his problems before her own start coming down to the wire.)

So, with Bela's hand in his, Cal takes a breath and finally opens his Door. He almost closes his eyes as he does it, to buy himself one last second before he has to face the fact that it isn't opening to a hallway in the Chandler compound, that Grahame's study isn't just across the way and he won't find a small bathroom behind him if he should close the door and open it again, but he doesn't. His hand tightens convulsively on Bela's, but his eyes stay open.

What they see, before they step through, is wholly unremarkable - it's a relatively quieter area in Manhattan, foot traffic thin enough so they can pause to get their bearings without being slammed into. It shatters that last bit of hope Cal had been pretending he wasn't holding, and his heart drops.

Bela can tell tell this is not the easiest thing for Cal to do, even as she glances around the street, taking in as much of their surroundings as she can. So far, so good. Nothing too different. No aliens walking down the street, at any rate.

She squeezes his hand. "Hey. One step at a time gets you there, yeah?"

A woman passing by gives her an ugly look. As she and Cal walk along, with Bela doing most of the talking, chattering away trying to take his mind off as much as she can, more people stare daggers at her. How - bizarre. Bela begins to wonder whether there's a doppelganger of her somewhere on this world. Maybe a bitch diva or something.

Then she passes a newspaper stand. As she pauses to take a look at the New York Times stack closest to them - a specific date is a useful thing to have - all becomes clear:

UK REFUSES TO GROUND VALIANT

In Wake of President's Assassination by British Prime Minister, Valiant Allowed to Remain Skyborne

Interim Prime Minister cites expense

Ah. That explains it. How funny. She switches to a flawless American accent. "So we need a pawn shop first. I'll sell a piece of jewelry for enough cash to get your bank account and debit card - please let them have those here - and then we can check into a hotel. I'll take care of everything from there."

". . . what?" Cal, accustomed to Bela's accent and only half-aware of the looks she's been getting, gives her a blank stare. She raises an eyebrow and taps the front page. He scans the headline and says,

"Holy shit." Then, after a shocked pause, ". . . right. No accent. Uh. Good call."

Well. He's certainly distracted now.

"What an exciting surprise," she says with a wicked gleam in her eye. The excitement of this challenge begins to build. Bela loves this part. "I trust we'll have at least a couple more. But don't worry. You're in good hands. Let's find that pawn shop." Bela seriously doubts if there is too much this world can throw at her that she can't handle. Besides, she's got a designing job to do. Nothing is getting in the way of that.

There is, most conveniently, a pawn shop nearby. Bela pawns a diamond necklace for some quick and ready cash; Cal wanders aimlessly around the shop while she haggles. The rest of the afternoon is spent opening a bank account with the money, and finding a decent hotel. Milliways dropped them too late in the day to get much else done, so they have dinner and work up an itinerary for the next few days. There's a lot of work to do.

Profile

isaysimplewords

August 2015

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 31st, 2025 10:54 am

Recent Entries

OOC: Summary and discussion of Cal Chandler's canon, "The Fix"

(Eventually) OOM: bird song

MM: get what you see

MM: price of fame

OOM: Conversations With Dead People - (Milliways) Halloween 2010

OOM: Cubefall 2010

OOM: one of a number of visits from Sam Linnfer

OOM: Cal Chandler and the Unwanted Discovery

Not-OOM: Sam Winchester

OOM: the anti-Thanksgiving

Upstairs during Halloween. With Sam.

OOM: Conversations with Dead People - (Milliways) Halloween 2009.

OOM: Enzo's first visit.

OOM: Esfir's first visit.

OOM: ending up with more than just information.

OOM-but-not: Sam

OOM: Settling in.

OOM: Phone call with Ianto.

OOM: The transition begins.

OOM: Building a new life