trans_9 | Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

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Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

The upside to using paper and pen instead of data pads for taking notes on patients is that it's intuitive and you can fiddle with things. The downside is that, at the end of a shift, a lot of the notes have to be shredded for privacy reasons, and the details have to be entered into the data pads anyway. Despite his usual devotion to efficiency, Howard doesn't mind this. It's a nice way to review the day and cement anything he might have learned.

The Quarantine's mostly empty now, which is a definite plus. All those kids were getting Howard crankier and antsier than usual. He brought in a box of toys from the Warehouse, though he didn't bother to check the age ranges for them, so he hopes someone who cares a bit more will take out all the choking hazards before any of the children regress to toddlerhood. He doesn't want anything to do with children; he had enough of that back in that dystopian nightmare he called home. All they do is cry and scream and demand things and kill each other and eat all the food and lie and burn down buildings and generally make life unpleasant. Not that adults are always better, but at least someone's around to enforce order here.

He hums a snippet of Cliffs of Dover to himself, chewing on the end of a Tinker Toy, and starts typing in his notes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"She might as well be blaming God if she's going to blame her programming," Howard mutters. "It makes about the same difference to us. It's all magical forces beyond our control that she can use to excuse whatever she does."

He shakes his head. "Yeah, we had heroes, and some kids who started out crazy, and some people ended up with superpowers, but mostly it was just normal kids. A lot of kids get a lot more violent and conniving than people would think when they're desperate and, well. No food, no safety. It was everyone who had to struggle to survive, and the ones that didn't get mean got killed. So I guess...imagine a city full of your purple-haired girl, only not acting mature for her age."

"That's exactly what I mean. And the longer we stay out of the loop, not knowing who it is we can trust, th more trust we have to give to the other members of the crew. When it comes down to it, they're going to be the only ones that we can count on."

Once again,sh looked a little disturbed. "It's really hard to imagine kids doing that to each other. The little girl I'm talking about surprised me a little too: I was young when I entered the war, but she seemed to be born to do what she did. But somehow, I think what's more frightening is the idea that leaving kids to their own devices, they would get murderous for little reason."

"Just because you count on someone doesn't mean you trust them, you know. Unless it's yourself."

He nods, chewing on his lower lip. "I wouldn't say starvation is little reason, but yeah, even before that plenty of kids died because no one was around to stop them. Some kids just don't know better." His own best friend beat a girl to death because he didn't realize a baseball bat to the head could kill her. "And, you know, the crazies."

"Well I say it usually takes awhile. The worst thing about this place is that you do get to know someone, and then suddenly something in the air, or some spell happens and it changes their personality. I figure if you really get to know someone, you figure out pretty quickly something isn't on the up and up."

Kaya made a face. "That sounds like a pretty gruesome reality. I'd like to think there isn't anything quite this bad on the ship, but really, some people are just pretty bad until they realize how pointless it is to hold onto the grudges they had in their worlds."

"And so," he makes a gesture with his hands to symbolize moving from one point to another. "Don't trust anyone. Keeps you from getting let down, at least."

Howard makes a face right back. "You know, there are plenty of good reasons people are holding grudges."

"How exactly is that a valid conclusion? If you don't trust anyone, all you allow yourself to do is suffer on the ship by yourself. There are a lot of bad things that happen, but they're at least lessened when you let people in. I've learned that much in all the time I've been there."

Kaya rolls her eyes. "And there are plenty of reasons to not have them too. Grudges shouldn't mean you blind yourself to the actual situation on the ship in favor of whatever used to happen on your world. Being careful, on the other hand? Keeping tabs? Definitely a must. A grudge makes a person easy to manipulate."

"Uh huh. Sure. And yet, I'm doing fine 'suffering by myself' and I'm not getting things rubbed in my face whenever I make a bad call on who to share friendship bracelets with. Look, Bubbles, your way doesn't work for everyone, and I won't pretend mine does either, 'kay?"

He shakes his head, twisting his mouth up. "I think we've got different definitions of grudges. Being careful and keeping tabs falls in it for me."

"That's why you do your best not to," Kaya said, shrugging. "Everyone makes mistakes. I'm just saying it might be OK to give why way a shot, ok broody?"

Hey, give her points, she was starting to get into his style of humor.

Kaya nodded. "Oh, I have a grudge myself, but I'm not supposed to, when it comes down to it: then again, not every day that someone actually sustains a reason for a grudge to begin with."

He shakes his head, not willing to argue his point anymore. Kaya's, in his opinion, naive optimism will get her hurt someday, but he doesn't much care and isn't going to waste his time trying to protect her from future mistakes. His experience has been that anyone he's put trust in, from his parents to the best friend he did everything for, has either left or hurt him, and there's no good reason to start lending out that credit any more.

"Against Azula, right? If she's half as crazy as you say she is, I don't think anyone's going to get hurt by you nursing that grudge."

Kaya had been on the ship long enough to know who to trust and trust: optimism shouldn't be confused with being naive. In any case, she knew well enough she wouldn't be changing his mind anytime soon. He had seen too much in his world to trust too many people, and she hoped, being that way, he would still find people willing to help him.

"With Azula, I'll have to see. I'll be keeping an eye on her as well as my friends: one of us doesn't want Azula to even have the remote chance of coming close to kill us. That's what worries me."

"So you're thinking of what, staying in the safety zones? Do you think she's going to be a danger to everyone or just you guys?"

"I figure it might just be us, otherwise thy wouldn't have let her out so quickly. As for staying safe, even if I wanted to take her down, which I don't, the council is watching anyway. They're already under the assumption that we 'good guys' are judging her simply by what she did in her world."

"And, um, apparently judging people by what they did on their worlds is a bad thing? What are we supposed to judge them on, their haircuts?"

"Well, according to the Council, rules established by the charter of the ship states we aren't supposed to judge them by the things they've done on their world but what they do on th ship itself. I don't know about you, but going and attacking the people on the ship first chance out tends to make you the bad guy, doesn't it?"

"I thought that was less judging people and more punishing them. I think we should judge away and yeah, that generally isn't going to get you any favors."

"They sort of come hand in hand though. With Azula, the way I looked at it, they took into account her rights and how feasible it would be to keep her locked up. Personally, I thought she needed that time to think about what she did and THEN transferred her to a better place to rehabilitate her, not just let her go with a chaperon who, I'm sorry, sounds more biased about the situation than most of us do."

"That policewoman chick? She's, well, I was getting some really sketchy vibes off her. I'm pretty sure she's up to no good. And that's not just because she's a police officer."

"Yes, her. As far as I know, she's the one who arranged for Azula to be given chaperoned freedom. I don't know much about her, but...wait, her being a police officer is a bad thing? Did you not trust law enforcers in your world?"

"I caught her skulking around and being all secretive with this weird briefcase earlier. Couldn't figure out what that was all about, but I didn't want to get on the wrong side of Security, you know? Although I guess if she's hiding something, loosing a crazy teenager with superpowers would be a good distraction." He starts chewing on the toy again as the paranoid wheels in his brain start turning. "I mean, before they all disappeared, police officers tended to target kids like me. So I've never liked them."

He doesn't mention that most of the time, he actually had been shoplifting, cutting class or engaging in other illegal activities.

"Really?" That was news to her, and not good news either: what was someone who was supposed to be watching over one of their worst enemies participating in suspicious behavior herself? "I may have to look into this kind of thing myself. If she means to do something that can potentially harm the crew, I want to be sure about it."

She looked confused. "What do you mean, kids like you?"

"Just, whatever you do, don't let it trail back to me. I don't need Security on my ass and that woman legitimately scares me. I get the feeling she could mess my day up if she wanted to." Not that he wouldn't be up to doing some snooping around. He might even enjoy it. "Kids with my skin color. We get a bad rap back on my homeworld, especially since the school I went to was mostly white kids."

Kaya scoffed. "If she's up to no good and she notices me, I think fear of her is the least of your worries. If she's just a police officer though, I'm not too scared."

Not that she liked the idea of someone from security being up to no good, not in the least. She looked at his skin color, clearly baffled. "What difference would that make? Your descended from people closer to the sun, just like me. Why would that be any different from people who got less skin tone?"

"Actually I'm descended from people from L.A., where if you can see the sun through all the smog it might as well be the end-times, but yeah. I mean, I didn't invent racism. It's pretty stupid."

Kaya had no idea what an L.A. was, maybe some kind of tribe or city? And what on earth was smog, unless it was some sort of combination of smoke and fog? How was that possible?

"Racism, like when that horrible woman called me a chu-I mean, Chink," Kaya said, shaking her head. "Its the dumbest concept I ever heard, skin tone being a factor in liking someone. YOu seem like a very nice person with your own likes and dislikes, like anyone else."

"She called you that? Geez, whatever happened to people being creative with their racism?"

Howard actually laughs at her assessment of him as a very nice person. "Yeah, okay, Bubbles. You're not so bad yourself."

Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

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