trans_9 | Shopping for LEGAL Drugs [Closed, Bendytimed]

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Shopping for LEGAL Drugs [Closed, Bendytimed]

Howard's not a team player. Back in the days of class group projects, he almost always ended up obstructing progress more than he helped with his bad attitude and critical eye, if he and Orc didn't just pressure the other kids into doing their work for them. And in the FAYZ, his role on the Council essentially devolved into aggravating Astrid and heckling public speakers.

So it's struck him with some surprise that he actually seems to fit in with the other Medical Staff so far on Stacy. Granted, he's been attentive and professional, for the most part, rather than getting in the way, so that probably helps. But more than that, the other staff seem nice, even friendly. Not trustworthy, but no one is. After over a year in the FAYZ, where friendliness was even more scarce than food and everyone was starving for both, it's a strange experience to him.

Howard's pack is empty, for the moment. He's just finished dropping off another bag full of food at his Warehouse on Stacy. Having purchased a cat (for nefarious purposes), some illegal substances (for fallback purposes), and nearly a hundred pounds of cheap bulk food (also for fallback purposes), he's only got a few credits left. Perhaps it's time to buy something more useful than backup resources during his last night here.

He sees the Sampire and Anwei each in the crowd an waves to them, gesturing for them to join him.

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Anwei was still rather disappointed at the poor quality of the computer equipment she'd been offered - come on, there was supposed to be a price point between 'latest and greatest and expensive' and 'vintage and historical and expensive.' Well, hopefully Lord Zetta would pick up some good testing equipment. And quantum cores.

She saw Howard waving and waved back. She really hadn't talked much to him, because she spent most of her time kicking the computer database into allowing entries for multiple species. But he was a hard worker, and he paid attention.

"What's up?" she asked, noting his empty back. "Didn't find what you wanted?"

Sam was enjoying the time off-ship, and Anwei's company was very pleasant indeed. He felt a bit guilty for forcing his colleagues into a more nocturnal schedule, but it was thanks to the light-sealed hotel he'd discovered that he was able to get off of the ship at all.

"Howard!" he greeted happily. He had a clipboard in his hands, with a long list of supplies he wanted to use the medbay's budget on. He wanted to be prepared for anything an interdimensional, intergalactic space ship could possibly run into. And that included several things he'd hurriedly added to the bottom of his previously-neatly-organized list. Most of it he was arranging to have delivered to their landing point, but some of it he would need help picking up. His bag, slung across his body looked heavily laden, but he didn't seem to mind. That was filled with things Sam had picked out for himself, primarily books, clothing, and a few interesting bits of technology.

"Just finished dropping it off," he says, patting his backpack. "Forty pounds of brown rice is, well, forty pounds of heavy."

He glances at Sam, and at the incredibly business-like clipboard, and at the heavy pack. "Preparing for the apocalypse, Sam Man? Or do you just not believe in making multiple trips?"

Anwei had every reason to be prepared; she'd seen the sort of havoc that battle could cut into sentient flesh, not to mention AI neural agglomerates.

"Who knows when we'll stock up again?" she said lightly.

Sam looked down a bit self-consciously. He smirked a bit sheepishly. "I don't have the opportunity to go off-ship like most other people on the ship. Out of the three shore leaves we've had since I came out of my pod, this the first time I've been able to go. I can't guarantee when I'll be able to go again.

"I want to be prepared."

"No kidding," Howard says. If anyone's preparing for famine, drought, or whatever craziness could happen if Stacy's core reactor or whatever shuts down or blows up, it's Howard. He no longer takes resources lightly. He doubts he ever will again. He raises his eyebrows a bit in alarm that there've only been three shore leaves so far, suddenly even more glad he bought so many bulk items of food.

He leans over and tries to see in Sam's bag. "So what are you preparing for, cholera outbreak? Stocking up the Med Bay? I figured I should try to find some more low-key meds for my kit, naproxen and meclizine and all that. Stuff most people are familiar with taking and know if they're allergic to."

"Ive been looking for medical databases," which were after all her area of expertise. "Unfortunately I can't find any that have any substantial information congruence with the current crew. And the freshness of the data is - questionable. But," she shrugged, "it's what I know how to evaluate."

And while she was looking, she'd been planting little messages to Horanckk here and there. If an Instance of him ever visited XaXing, he would know she had been here.

On the top of Sam's bag Howard would see, if the name on the shopping bag were translated, it would be revealed as coming from a clothing shop. "This is my personal supplies, most of the items for the ship are either being delivered to where we landed or we have to pick up later. I have to admit I've made several small pharmacies' week with my orders," he chuckled, amused.

"I've gotten some equipment, too. Some of it is redundant with what we already have, but the learning curve on that stuff is pretty high. I want some equipment that people can just pick up and use. One of my goals for us is to figure out all of that equipment."

"Can we get a database and build from the ground up?" Howard shrugs. He has absolutely zero idea how any of this works. The extent of his computer knowledge back in the day was MMORPGs and Bittorrent.

"Wow. What kind of budget do we have? Is it enough to get some regular old blood pressure cuffs, because I don't think half of the patients trust the tentacles, and I don't even know how to use some of the creepier things in there."

"Medical database work is what I did at my previous job. I even have some samples that came aboard Stacy with me, and since it's a framework that's already designed for multi-species, multi-injuries entries, it seems to make sense for me to try and merge it with what has already been put in place."

"Maybe we could run the Emergency Medical Hologram as a training program to explain some of the 'creepier things'," she said thoughtfully. "If he was willing, of course."

He sighed, mildly exasperated. "That's the problem. I might need Dr. Faiza or Dr. Levy to take that project on. The Hologram doesn't take me seriously at all. He has access to my file and everything, and he still doesn't coop--"

But his look changed and something off to one side seemed to catch his attention. He looked surprised, and turned off toward a stall without preamble. The proprietor was a vampire, he knew, and he acknowledged him with a slight nod of the head. There was a myriad of vampire-specific merchandise in his cart, some of which he couldn't discern the purpose for. But sitting in a large galvanized bucket of ice was a bottle, red glass, with a red liquid inside. He read the label, and his eyes went wide. "Synthetic blood?" He looked up at the tall, gaunt vampire without quite meeting his eyes. That'd be disrespectful.

"Too bad we can't trade the Hologram a foot massage for some basic training. I'm pretty sure he won't talk to me neither."

Howard takes a quick cue from Sam's body language and avoids making eye contact - not that that's hard, given that he's creeped out and trying to restrain himself from doing a Dracula impression. "So I'm guessing this place is just opening while it's closing time everywhere else," he says.

Anwei turned her head slightly to one side and dropped her upper lip - body language for 'I will not hunt in your territory.' Then she turned back and let her eyes examine the merchandise, leaving Sam to talk to the vampire.

Interesting. Earth's vampire culture (that she had seen) had nothing as elaborate as this. Of course that might be a different Earth than where Sam was from.

The older vampire barely seemed to acknowledge the other two, his eyes were on Sam. "Yes," he replied simply in a gravelly voice. There was a slight note of "Duh" in the tone.

But Sam didn't seem to notice. He was busy picking out a couple of each blood type and getting his money out. "Scientists have been working on this in my world for decades. I can't believe this." He paid the man, and took his change. With another nod, he turned to leave, heading for the nearest bench to inspect his prizes. He read the bottle quickly before cracking it open and trying some. He considered a moment, and smiled. His fangs were out a bit. "It'd be better warm, but it's for real."

"So what, you just down these like a shot of Red Bull?" Howard cocks his head, squinting at the red bottle. He's plenty happy having gotten away from that creepy booth, although admittedly he did run into creepier on the black market. "Can you figure out how to replicate it?"

Even if he's fond of Sampire (as fond as Howard gets with people who aren't Orc), he does look a bit wary as he watches Sam's teeth. Fangs are always to be treated with reverence.

"What, and violate the trademark?" Anwei joked. She wondered how well the synthetic responded to its environment. "I wonder if you oxygenate it, or if it stays enriched in the bottle."

Actually, if it was suitable for transfusion as well as ingestion, it would be extremely useful if they could synthesize it.

He took another sip, and his fangs reverted to a normal, human size. He seemed to be considering it on different qualities now. "It seems.... just as it should be right now. Not as..." he searched for a word, "rich, maybe as it should be?" As if the other two had any way to relate. He screwed the cap back on and stowed it into an outside mesh pocket of his bag like most people would a bottle of water. "It could be useful for transfusions, too."

"Or we could make a fondue fountain out of it around Halloween." Howard would suspect he's ingested worse substances than blood during the harsher times of the FAYZ, though he's not exactly lining up to try it. Leave that to the people that want and need it; some things will always just seem gross. "Can you tell what type it is by taste?"

"We can test a few samples. If it will keep at room temperature, that would be enough to be useful right there." Rather than freezing and unthawing blood, they could just store it on a shelf somewhere.

Anwei thought of what would be nice to dip in a blood fountain. Maybe frozen marrow puffs, the hot red glaze melting into the fat?

Sam was slow to reply as he was running all of these possibilities through his mind. He finally tucked the bottle away. "It claims to be O positive. I haven't had the opportunity to compare." He didn't address the fountain comment. "But I think I've got a new project when we get back on the ship," he said, looking rather pleased with himself.

"O-pos is good for anyone with a positive sign, right?" He's been paying attention to the training after all. "Personally, I'll be leaving that in your capable hands, Doc. I still got to figure out how to use a microscope without cracking the slide."

"Should we look for raw materials while we are here? Or laboratory equipment?" If the synthetic blood was manufactured on-planet, this would be the best place to look for ways to make it.

She flicked one eye to look at Howard. "I'd probably do the same - I'm more used to typing up the results of lab work than actually doing it. Plus I'm used to - different equipment." Better equipment she meant; AIs that could see on the atomic level, scanning and collating thousands of dataviews at once and presenting a neat summary at a word.

If only Stacy was healthy, she thought to herself. She could do so much!

He shook his head. "No, I think between Medbay and Dr. Sera's equipment, I'll have what I need." He smiled at the gift of a development that had just dropped into his lap. He felt satisfied, proud even. He marveled at this feeling for a moment, it wasn't one he'd felt in a while. It was kind of exhilarating. Aside from having it for consumption by the vampire populace, there were of course, wider uses for it that went without explaining. He couldn't wait to get back in the lab.

"Man, Doctor Sam here looks like he just won the lottery," Howard teases. "So much for hunting for aspirin and benadryl."

Anwei smiled as well. It was good to see the Doctor looking forward to something positive.

"Or maybe - that synthetic doesn't have any intoxicants included, does it?" It could be for recreation as well as food, which would mean they'd have to rearrange the formula a little before they started using it in Med Bay. Probably not a good thing to get patients too euphoric - unless they were dying anyway, of course.

Sam turned a little pink, and looked away from them. "Uh, sorry. I didn't mean to get all creepy bloodsucker on you guys." He hitched the strap of his hevily-laden bag up a bit higher onto his shoulder.

Howard shrugs with both shoulders and hands. "Whatever, man, I've eaten worse. No, seriously, I have."

It's not that Howard doesn't think it's gross, it just that even if he does he doesn't really care. Besides, if it's a boon to the medical department, who cares if Sam's taste testing it?

Plenty of things in life were worse than a nice, fresh-smelling cup of blood. But she'd wait to see if Sam could synthesize it before doing a taste test for herself. He needed it; for her it would only be a luxury. A badly missed luxury, maybe, but still.

"Nothing creepy about being enthusiastic for your work, Doctor."

"Thanks," he replied. He scratched at the back of his neck out of a nervous habit. He reached for a change of subject. "A-anyway, we've all got our shopping lists of specific things we're looking for, but what about things that don't exist in our worlds that might be useful? Like... Like this," he patted his bag, meaning the synthetic blood in general. "Of course we have to be wary of scams, but there may be a boon to us here."

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Shopping for LEGAL Drugs [Closed, Bendytimed]

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