She barely lifted an eyebrow at "Hairdye." One of these days, people would notice something other than her natural hair color.
Or they might actually start believing her when she said it was natural in the first place
Sakura frowned, reviewing her mental list of everyone she'd spoken with so far. "They're not part of any one group," she agreed, addressing Anwei first, "Let alone moving in the same circles of friends and acquaintances. If this was targeted, I doubt it was even at us as a collective group of people known as the crew on Sta'c K'ltrrb'txft." She stumbled over Stacy's more proper name, stubbornly spitting it all out anyway.
"If it's something they bought, people aren't remembering it. Or they're lying," she conceded, looking toward Howard, "But it's still too sporadic. Coming back up should have exposed more people, or maybe even fewer."
Losing sight of the forest for the trees. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "I place my bets on something on planet. Not guided, or at the very least not premeditated. The affected aren't strategically chosen without the time-loss being transmissible. There's no evidence that it is, if you can argue the other way around. If it were based on contact alone, we'd be showing by now. Friends, family, they wouldn't just be identifying the ones losing time, they'd be showing signs themselves. Which can point toward magic or technology, too -- like you say, morphing alone should have taken care of any biological means."
She figured if someone had wanted to age everyone out of existence, they'd have had to make it transmissible. "Just after shore leave should have given us at least one person who'd never been on planet in the first place. Not everyone went," she noted, "While everyone in Quarantine has. Which brings us back around to XaXing, and what short list of things that cropped up across multiple stories." Substances, stalls, stranger merchants...
She looked down at her data pad with a frown. There was something there that she was missing. Opening up one of the detailed travel histories she'd taken, she scrolled down the list. What was it?
no subject
Or they might actually start believing her when she said it was natural in the first place
Sakura frowned, reviewing her mental list of everyone she'd spoken with so far. "They're not part of any one group," she agreed, addressing Anwei first, "Let alone moving in the same circles of friends and acquaintances. If this was targeted, I doubt it was even at us as a collective group of people known as the crew on Sta'c K'ltrrb'txft." She stumbled over Stacy's more proper name, stubbornly spitting it all out anyway.
"If it's something they bought, people aren't remembering it. Or they're lying," she conceded, looking toward Howard, "But it's still too sporadic. Coming back up should have exposed more people, or maybe even fewer."
Losing sight of the forest for the trees. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "I place my bets on something on planet. Not guided, or at the very least not premeditated. The affected aren't strategically chosen without the time-loss being transmissible. There's no evidence that it is, if you can argue the other way around. If it were based on contact alone, we'd be showing by now. Friends, family, they wouldn't just be identifying the ones losing time, they'd be showing signs themselves. Which can point toward magic or technology, too -- like you say, morphing alone should have taken care of any biological means."
She figured if someone had wanted to age everyone out of existence, they'd have had to make it transmissible. "Just after shore leave should have given us at least one person who'd never been on planet in the first place. Not everyone went," she noted, "While everyone in Quarantine has. Which brings us back around to XaXing, and what short list of things that cropped up across multiple stories." Substances, stalls, stranger merchants...
She looked down at her data pad with a frown. There was something there that she was missing. Opening up one of the detailed travel histories she'd taken, she scrolled down the list. What was it?