Another installment of my pondering over the question of how Tracy Island works, like really- logistics!!! Pippa has arrived and now has the unenviable task of trying to make sense of it all. Wish her luck
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part3/ Part 4 / Part 5/ Part 6&7 / Part 8 AO3
Pippa sat down opposite the bespectacled man in his tidy lab space. The bright lighting was probably doing a number of unflattering things to her slightly jetlagged appearance , but she got the feeling that he wouldn’t judge her for it. He pushed a mug of coffee towards her as he set down his own. She glanced down and read the colourful slogans. You could tell a lot about a person from their mug choices…..
“Engineer : turning caffeine into solutions”
“I’m an engineer, id explain it to you but im all out of puppets and crayons”
….. Yep, they were going to get on ok.
“So, firstly thank you for your time, I appreciate that you have a lot of demands on your time. But I am hoping that after this meeting I might be able to take a few things off your list and free up some of your time.”
“Oh well, I don’t know that theres that much really,” he looked a little bashful, and then scribbled a quick note on a data pad to his side, something having just occurred to him. “Sorry, I, I just have to make a note when I think of it or I’ll forget. You were saying?”
“Oh I’m absolutely the same,” she picked up her note book and gave it a little wave so the post-it notes sticking out flapped jauntily. “But I was saying you have a lot on your pad, and I hope I can help lighten some of that. Give me all your domestic stuff, all the non-classified stuff, I’ll take it off your hands.” she went with some grabby hands for emphasis and what she hoped was a winning smile and not a manic grin.
He looked thoughtful for a minute, and then shrugged a little hopelessly.
“How about we imagine walking through the main dwelling. Windows, are they on a cleaning schedule, do they need maintenance?”
“Oh the bots do that,”
And do the bots need servicing? Is that a specialist task or something we can outsource to free up time?
“Um, they were standard models, we just programmed them for the terrain. Yes I suppose I do check them over once a year.”
“Fantastic, send me the model details, I’ll sort it and set it on a schedule. Next, floors? More bots? Same deal? Great. Mechanical airflow?” A thought struck her and she flipped to a fresh page in her note book. “In fact, is there a building pack from the initial build, I could collate something off that, and then just come back to you to review. How does that sound?”
Brains mostly looked relieved, nodded, and settled into his chair a little further.
“How about reactive works, what usually happens with that?”
“Well someone usually goes ‘Brains can you take a look at that?’ and I add it to the list.”
“Yep, no. I think I’ll just push myself in there to start with, and hopefully I can filter out the purely domestic or commercial and save you as the big guns for the truly specialist and complicated. Would that be ok?” another nod “Ok, it’s a plan. But if we find a process doesn’t work, we can just change it, we will probably have a few false starts as we all settle into it, but it’s all a learning curve. So please feel free to tell me if anything I suggest is stupid and just won't work, its the only way I will learn and hopefully we can find a way to be of best use to everyone. Does that sound fair?”
“Uh huh,” Brains replied around a slurp of coffee
“Ok, well I will get back to you ASAP. So we now have 20 minutes left, so I can either give you that time back in your day, or - we can just crack open the chocolate digestives and you get me up to speed on the island gossip. Your choice, but I’m just going to leave this open packet here.” She fished a packet of chocolate biscuits out of her handbag and slid them across the table.
“C-chocolate you say…. Let me get you a top up on that coffee.”
Just a tiny update this time. Another snippet of Pippa my OC settling into her new job on Tracy Island. This isn't so much an OC centric story, as a logistics focused fic.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part3/ Part 4 / Part 5/ Part 6&7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 AO3
Pippa grabbed her bag and looped it across her body. The notebook was shoved into her back pocket and a pair of sunnies were popped on the top of her head, sorted.
She checked the time, and set off at a brisk walk, down the bayside path from her little hut towards the palmtree lined runway. Shoes crunching furiously on the gravel she swerved a tight right turn when she hit the runway and ducked in through a well concealed side door into the hangars. A quick glance at her phone, why was she always convinced that everywhere on this island was only a ten minute walk, some of it quite clearly wasn’t, and that was before the uphill bits that were clearly just out to get her and make sure that she arrived at every meeting sweaty and slightly out of breath, it was obviously personal.
Just inside the door was a large red plastic basket on wheels, “ah ha!” the last postal delivery thanks to the adorable little island hopping post plane, she thought she had heard it zipping about. A quick rummage and 4 large flat oblong parcels got tucked under her arm. A little shuffle to shift the weight onto her hip and she was off again, this time straight to the lift, because those treacherous stairs weren’t going to catch her a second time!
A smooth and blissfully air conditioned ride up to the main villa was unfortunately too short to let her fully get her breath back, but never mind. Out the doors and down the hallway, shoes squeaking on the hardwood. Last door on the left….. There it was. Three sharp knocks, and just enough time to shuffle the parcels on her hip again before the door was opened.
“Pippa! Right on time, come on in.” Sally ushered Pippa into the room. There was a lounge area with full length windows and a beautiful view of sparkling blue sea.
“Soooooo, as promised, I have samples!” Pippa stacked the parcels on the coffee table overlooking the sea. Digging into her bag she pulled out a multi tool and sliced open the first package. A few more parcels opened and the coffee table was soon covered in a sea of purples, laminate, vinyl, carpet, damask, velvet, voile. Squares of wall colours, snippets of wall papers, all of them in shades of lavender, lilac, indigo, amethyst, violet.
“So, what takes your fancy!” Pippa shuffled the samples around on the table, fanning them out like an oversized deck of cards.
“Ha, I’m not sure we should be putting that on the walls!” Sally cackled in a way that could only be described as filthy.
Pippa slipped a last thin parcel out from under the purple landslide, and handed it across to Sally with a wink.
When Sally tore the package open, a full colour Kip Harris calendar slid out. Sally erupted into floods of laughter. “This will definitely brighten up the room!” she grinned.
The idea of reporting back to Scott that she had been able to complete the refurbishment on his Grandmothers rooms for a grand total of of £12.99 + p&p was definitely entertaining.
Another tiny insight into how Tracy island keeps running. Now we get to see Scott Tracy through an outsiders eyes.
once again, if you are looking for big dramatic rescues, then this might not be the fic for you. However, if you're here for the domestic fluff (and in this instance a tired Scott) then this might just be the place for you.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part3/ Part 4 / Part 5/ Part 6&7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 A03
A gentle sea breeze was blowing in from the patio, the living area was void of all active life. Which wasn’t to say there was nobody there, but the only occupant appeared to have atrophied into the desk, a glassy expression fixed on his face. Even the slow blink wasn’t quite enough to convince Pippa that they were an example of sentient life.
Pippa eyed up her prey. She had been trying to catch Mr Scott Tracy for a while now, but his day was more crammed than her sons laundry bag when he came home from university. Well, there was no time like the present. Also probably no point in being subtle.
Picking up the piano stool and awkwardly waddling over, she set it down right in front of the desk, parked her bottom on it and pulled out her notebook from her back pocket. Even with all that it took a good 30 seconds before she saw any sign of recognition in those glassy eyes, and a further 5 seconds before that morphed through surprised and out the other side into an approximation of attentiveness.
He blinked twice, slightly quicker than before, pulled his spine back into a vertical position and shook his head a little.
“Um h -” he coughed, a little croaky “Hi Pippa. How can I help?”
“Well, you look like you could do with a screen break, so would this be a good time to talk about Renovations!” yes there were jazz hands, it was a free country… or free island, probably, she wasn’t quite sure how that worked, but she was committed to the gesture now and confident that nobody was going to stop her.
“Oh, right,” he pulled himself up a little bit more, squaring his shoulders, ready for whatever was about to come. “ What do you need from me?” Scott pulled on a convincing smile.
“It’s more, what can I do for you? Any renovations or improvements currently on your wish list?”
“Umm, I don't think so.” then inspiration sparked in his eyes, “Oh, well it might be nice to refresh Grandmas rooms.”
“Oh you are the sweetest,” she scribbled a note down, “consider it done. I’ll draw up a proposal and costings and, do I bring it back to you?”
“Whatever Grandma likes is fine,” Scott shrugged. The proverbial ‘blank cheque’ I guess trying to value manage the plans for your grandmothers bedroom wouldn’t make you grandson of the year.
“Ok, anywhere else, because we might as well make it enough work to entice a decent crew out here.”
“Well the gym could probably do with freshening up.”
“Aesthetic or kit upgrades too?”
He shrugged “…..ummm, both?”
Scribbled notes: “Ok, any best end users to consult?”
Scott thought for a minute, “Gordon and Kayo.” Pippa made more notes.
“Ok, now we are cooking! I’m going to do a general snagging list for the main villa too, roll it all up into a full package and see what we're looking at then. How does that sound?”
“Exhausting?”
“Ha! Give me a few weeks and I will be back and you can see what you think, is that ok?”
Scott nodded, then rolled his shoulder, which let out an audible crack.
Pippa winced, she nodded toward the shoulder “You know I’m only covering off domestic maintenance, if that drops off you’re on your own.”
Scott laughed, and stood up, stretching his whole back out, accompanied by some more popping sounds.
“And I don’t think any of that will be covered under reasonable wear and tear.” Pippa carried on, “Although it does remind me, Gordon did send me a request for an industrial popcorn machine to be installed next to his hot tub. I don’t want to over step, but was going to assume that was probably best declined.”
“Absolutely.” Scott nodded “Especially as he hasn’t got a hot tub, he's been after one on his balcony for years.”
Pippa squinted slightly, trying to picture the domestic balconies, particularly in relation to the water feeds running through the villa. Adding to that the thought about the additional stresses that kind of weight would put on the cantilevered balconies. “....I’m not sure that….”
“Oh we know it wouldn’t work, Virgil has explained it in so much detail, there was even a full slide deck explaining structural stresses, it was quite good actually, he drew little cartoons for it.” Scott looked more alive now he was talking about his siblings, probably equal parts exasperation and fondness. “But Gordon keeps trying, guess you’ve gotta be impressed by his optimism, one day the laws of physics might just change if he perseveres.”
Pippa nodded, and wisely kept her mouth shut, refusing to make any comment about the genetic prevalence of muleheaded stubbornness.
“Right,” Pippa clapped her hands together and got to her feet. “on that note, I shall get out of your hair.” She bent to pick up the piano stool but her attempts were thwarted as Scott came zooming around the desk to scoop up the furniture. God bless their Grandma for raising these boys right. “Thank you!” and she was rewarded with a little two finger salute as Scott deposited the stool back by the piano before heading back to his post at the desk.
