Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

After the 'bitching about Stacy' session finally reached a head, Sakura and Howard decided to actually do something about all the questions they had about their spacefaring fleshy home. Granted, they couldn't really find anything out about the Ohm on their own, and the Daligig were Right Out, so that left exploring the ship itself.

Time for them to find out what it is that they're putting in their bodies.

They drew on a few people they trust, or at least have figured out well enough to not distrust (more than they usually do), and now they're gathered at the mess hall at some awkward hour when no one is there to eat. They've brought Kanoe Zouichi (specialties: stuff going boom and wrangling Howard into being cooperative) and Ian Chesterton (specialties: hot cocoa, also science). And Ian's brought Barbara Wright (specialties: ??? and pissing Howard off).

Howard's tucking away at a tray of slop, figuring that if they're going to find anything that puts them off eating food forever, he might as well enjoy sweet, delicious ignorance now.

Comments

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I'm betting money right now that it's something that's going to give us nightmares forever," Howard says, setting his fork down next to his tray (which he's polished clean, naturally). "I mean, the Reavers were getting fed clones, right? We're probably eating vats of cell cultures or something."

[encourage]

"They were being fed clones, sure." Sakura looked over at Howard, frowning. "What makes even less sense is they didn't bother trying to acclimitize them to the slop. Why the exception? No, I don't want to know. I don't want to know how resource intensive it is to make as many clones as they needed to be kept fed. Or whose clones those were."

Sakura shivered, staring at Howard's slop like it was some vast abyss of terrible possibilities.

Then she shrugged. "We've already got nightmares. What's a few more on top of the rest?"

[zouichi]

"It makes sense if they were a contingency plan. Keep feeding them humanoid prey, and their instincts will be that much sharper when they need to be loosed on a population." Zouichi had fully embraced cynical pessimism. Maybe they were eating the ship! Or clones of themselves! Or babies! Or clone babies!

He had most of his weapons with him, including some new little toys he'd picked up after the battle with SHODAN. When in doubt, come well armed, right?

[first_in_time]

When Barbara entered, she sighed quietly to herself with relief that it wasn't going to be just her, Howard and Ian. She was sure that Howard was a nice enough young man - especially after Ian spoke so highly of him - but they clashed a little before. Now, however, might be a good time to patch things up. And she was interested in finding out more about Stacey, herself.

"What's that about clones?" Barbara asked as she approached.

[splendid_roman]

Ian shook his head. "You don't want to know," he told Barbara, shifting over a little so there was space for her to sit next to him. "But what's disgusting in one culture is a delicacy in another," he said to the group.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"It's not like Stacy puts a ton of emphasis on resources. I mean, bath houses? A theme park? She must have a water tank the size of Wisconsin somewhere in here." And that makes Howard nervous too, because for all he knows Stacy is just stupid.

Oh, Zouichi and his haterade. Howard can't help but agree. He goes on to explain to Barbara, "Stacy keeps a bunch of 'weapons' around the ship for a rainy day, and more often than not they try to kill us like that SHODAN thing. She had a bunch of cannibal axe-crazies around for a while that she was feeding clone bodies to."

He shrugs. "But hey, who knows? Maybe it's all vegetable paste. That's why we're bringing Ian along, to use his science fu."

[encourage]

Sakura looked to Ian, nodding her head politely. "Whatever we do find out, one way or another, this is the culture we currently live in. It's not like we can shift over to some other food staple for our collective diets. The ship can't support our population, small as it is, doing things in the usual fashion."

She smiled at Barbara, really not wanting to explain past what Howard had already said on the Reavers. "They were flushed out an airlock by the Captain not long after being discovered."

[zouichi]

Yeah, that was letting everyone down easy. 'The ship was storing cannibal space zombies to kill us with later! Oh, but we shoved them all out an airlock, so it's cool'.

Although the news had been satisfying. Zouichi only wished he'd been able to press the button.

He crossed his arms where he stood, glancing over at Sakura. "But can't we? We don't have a lot of people growing food, but we could make more frequent stops. Or use magic. And you can't tell me no one in the multiverse has invented a food replicator or easily storable, compact rations. If we could get a concerted effort together, I'm sure we could at least lower our dependence on the ship a little. I don't really like the idea of sailing around and depending on the continued function of a demonstrably defective AI."

The haterade was delicious and everyone should try some.

[first_in_time]

"Yes," she said to Howard, "I'm slowly learning that Stacey isn't the comfort, or safe house I originally thought she might be." A quick glance at Sakura and Barbara saw the smile. It was comforting, and she smiled back.

Zouichi was somewhat intimidating standing over them with this arms crossed. "Has anyone proposed the idea to...the council or to Stacey or GLaDOS?" In all honesty, Barbara still wasn't certain who to go to for what. It was on her list of things to find out.

[splendid_roman]

Ian supposed there was something on the TARDIS. But given the problem the Doctors had had with it, it probably wasn't to be trusted. Or a good idea to bring up with people he didn't know if the Doctor trusted with the information.

"There's no guarantee that everywhere we stopped would be friendly," he pointed out. "We could go a long time just eating this food anyway. And I'm not sure I like the idea of magically created food. You can't create something from nothing." Even if magic was real it was against the laws of physics.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard can't help but giving a kind of rude snort when Barbara suggests asking the Council. "Stacy's a liar who tortures people for shits and giggles, and the Council's a bunch of liars who couldn't find their own asses without an instruction manual. We're better off organizing on our own."

He raises an eyebrow at Zouichi. "That's easy for you to say because you don't eat. My take is that unless we figure out that the food's full of, I don't know, brainwashing nanotech or poison, we use it while it's here and use our crop resources to build up a nest egg in case we ever have to leave. Store now, eat later. Ant and the grasshopper and all that."

Of course the hoarder would say that.

"And Teach, I'm not sure I like the idea of people being picky about whether their food comes from magic or not."

[encourage]

"Either way," Sakura said, looking at everyone gathered here, "Having more than one means of accessing food supplies is wise. Getting the ship to stop more often would be beneficial from that standpoint, if the Captain has the power."

If being the key word in that sentence.

"I don't like the dependency any more than you do," she added, looking at Zouichi. "But I don't believe in blowing up bridges until it leaves us at more of a tactical advantage than the other guys."

[zouichi]

"Who said anything about blowing up bridges?" asked Zouichi. "The goals of becoming less dependent on the ship, storing extra food, and continuing to eat the slop aren't mutually exclusive. The more options we have, the better chance we have if one of them breaks down. And that is a tactical advantage."

Sometimes he wondered if the translators on Stacy were working quite right.

[first_in_time]

"I have to say that I agree with multiple sources of food, even if it is by magic or pills or blocks of nutrients. If Stacey is as unfair and harsh as Howard explained, what's stopping her from cutting off the food supply? Or has she tried that before?" Barbara added tentatively.

Being so new, she still offered lots of things which had already happened or were useless thanks to some past event.

[splendid_roman]

"It's not picky, just impossible." Ian still hadn't got used to the idea of magic being real. "But I agree that it would be a good idea to have more than once source of food. But maybe someone should just talk to the Captain about that."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"She is," he says with a nod to Barbara. "She totally is. The tape of her publicly torturing some chick is still in the library if you're into snuff films."

Nothing to put the fear of Mom into you like a record of public torture. He doesn't comment on the crossed wires with Sakura and Zouichi. He gets the gist.

"Nothing's impossible here. Don't you know that?" And Howard makes another little snorting, snickering sound at the mention of the Captain.

[encourage]

She frowned at Zouichi, about to make comment on what hadn't been communicating well when the comment on Howard's part redirected her attention. "She lived." Part of that is what made it worse.

If it fit right in with the uplifting statement of nothing's impossibility. "There's no such thing as something Stacy can't find out, though if we're going to take time to delight in being paranoid, I'm going to go find out if Kang has any juice left at the Drunken Dragon. I'd rather have something tasty with my paranoia, thank you. Makes it all go down smooth."

She looked up from the table, eyeing the room as a whole.

"It was through the Mess Hall that they reached SHODAN, wasn't it?"

[zouichi]

Zouichi didn't really care if his paranoia went down smooth or not; he was here to go exploring and chew bubble gum, and he was all out of gum. Or juice. He'd ruined the reference.

[first_in_time]

"No, thank you." Barbara was glad that she wasn't the only one Howard snorted at and talked down to. She still wasn't used to the idea of a teenager being so...forceful and angry.

"You should have learnt a long time ago that there's no such thing as impossible," she told Ian with a light smile. After everything they'd been through, it was slightly surprising that he still insisted that everything followed his science and that was the end of it.

Though Zouichi's way of thinking was being labeled paranoia, Barbara thought that it was, in a sense, practical thinking should the very worst happen. But she kept quiet for the moment.

[splendid_roman]

Ian frowned at Howard for mentioning the tape, but Barbara was quite capable of not watching it on her own.

Given the general atmosphere that had gathered over the group, Ian tried to wrench it back to the topic of food. "I could tell you the chemical composition of this," he said, nodding in the direction of the stuff Howard had been eating. "But that's not that helpful in the long run."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Didn't think so," he says to Barbara, with just a trace of empathy in his voice. Not too much or people will start to think he's friendly! "I didn't watch it either."

He shrugs at Sakura. "I was busy running around like a chicken with its head cut off during that mess. If so, they cleaned this place up good."

He pushes his tray towards Ian. "It's different for everyone, based on your needs. Like we get paste, and Zouichi here gets half a glass of water, and my cat gets something that smells like spam. And Sampire gets blood. Whose blood, we got no idea." Howard shakes his head and walks his fork across the table like a little person distractedly. "The question isn't really what it is, it's where she's getting all the material for it."

[encourage]

"What's the theory some Earth scientist had? Matter is neither created nor destroyed?" She didn't mention how her mind went to their waste products, but... "The ship operates on some version of finite resources. Everything we've encountered hasn't indicated otherwise. Something controls it, something regulates it, and some portion of it gets turned into the appropriate nutrients to sustain all of us, no matter our particular needs."

She stood up, stepping back over the bench and starting to pace.

"Where is she getting the materials, and what regulates that supply? Before even worrying if it stops -- can we see about making sure it doesn't?"

She paused, looking at the gathered group, then over to Zouichi in particular. "This ship is enormous. We have access to very little of it, for no good reason aside from protocols left in place from the Warden or the Daligig that put her in place. Stacy can get us in to the things we should know more about to survive, thrive, and then do whatever it is we need to do for this whole damn prophetic war in the first place."

The anger that was rising didn't entirely fit the cause, and it wasn't entirely caused by anything directly involved in this situation. Sakura went back to pacing, unable to hold still right then.

[zouichi]

Zouichi didn't really feel anger at the moment, just cynicism. He wasn't personally invested in the war -- in fact, after meeting the Daligig, he'd concluded it was likely that they were simply fighting for what was currently the lesser of two evils. One was bent on destroying worlds. The other they knew little about, save that they were willing to maim or murder their allies if they didn't toe the line. Besides, who was to say the Daligig hadn't started this face-off?

And of course the ship had been an enemy since day one.

But he was growing a little impatient. "So let's find out what this source is. That is why we're here, isn't it?" Unless they'd invited him here to exchange complaints, of course, and he had plenty of those waiting in the wings.

[first_in_time]

Silently, Barbara watched Sakura pace. She couldn't really understand why she was becoming so angry.

"Where would we start?" she asked Zouichi eventually. "And how? Do we need to pull things a part or break into some place?" They might need equipment if that were the case.

[splendid_roman]

"With some equipment," Ian pointed out to Howard, but that didn't stop him from scooping out some of the paste with his finger and sniffing it.

"You're right." He smiled at Sakura. "Although it's energy that can't be created or destroyed. But perhaps the food is some output from Stacy. We drink milk from cows, perhaps this is Stacy's equivalent.