trans_9 | Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

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Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

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.

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Zouichi produced a small vial from one of his pockets, collecting some of the dark liquid before putting it away once more. The footing was a little rough, but at least he didn't need to worry about breathing.

"You'd think the food would pick up some of the smell." Hopefully they weren't contaminating the slop by being in here. Although it smelled contaminated enough already.

"No, but we can take it back to the lab and examine it." The way the tunnel sloped made him think that something didn't come up here, it went down. "Perhaps this takes some sort of waste products away. You don't pump anything up a slope." Generally. It certainly wouldn't be productive.

"Unless it's coming down from a higher slope. I mean, this place is the size of a moon. Who knows how far this goes? God, someone needs to install a Glade filter or something in here."

The tunnel walls around them shudder. Howard hesitates. "I'm not the only one who noticed that, right?"

Zouichi took another step forward, testing the footing beyond their current point.

"It'll be fine," he said. It was almost a reflex by now. "I can go first, if you're worried about what's ahead."

Besides, even if the tunnel collapsed on them, they could always cut their way out. Of course, that might leave them in another unknown part of the ship, but sometimes you just had to improvise.

"I'm sure it's normal." Ian might have offered to go first if he had a torch. But there was also no way of knowing how narrow the tunnels were. As the tallest of the three of them, he was probably better off at the back, so he waved Zouichi on to go first and hung back himself.

"If there's more of this stuff on the walls straight ahead of us as the tunnel bends then that tells us that something comes down here, even if it's just the backwash."

At that point, the tunnel behind them begins to contract. It's a slow motion at first, then one that begins to move more quickly up the tunnel to where they are.

"I'm honestly more worried about what's behind us." Howard bolts, although it does occur to him that Ian's probably right - the presence of goo means that something regularly passes through here. Whether that's food, waste, backwash or snot is not really up to him to determine yet.

He goes pretty fast for slipping and sliding down the tunnel, rounding a turn and ending up in a rather large cavern full of pods. Very similar to the pods they came out of, except hanging from the ceiling. And plugged full of tubes, some big and some small, that lead out into other tunnels.

"Um, guys?"

Zouichi turned quiet and businesslike as he shot his grappling needle into the ceiling again, propelling himself upward to examine one of the hanging pods. If he needed both, he could detach the device from his wrist... but hopefully that wouldn't be necessary.

He was just going to assume these pods weren't for safely storing crew members. Time to see what was in them.

Ian looked behind him, although he couldn't see anything. But he was glad he was at the back because no one else was in more danger than he was. He went as quickly as he can, but in the end the best way was to simply just slide. He was already covered in whatever was in the tunnels, so a little more wouldn't hurt.

Once in the cavern he looked around. "Perhaps the food's stored here," he suggested, watching Zouchi examine the pods.

"Not all of it. The size of that thing would feed about..." Howard frames the pod with his hands and squints at it. "Five people for three or four days, depending on how thick the shell is. So if there's twenty of them here, that still doesn't cover a week's worth of food."

Count on Howard to be able to estimate that. "The tubes are going everywhere, too. My guess is it's some sort of separator."

The pod was large and green, with a bumpy, surprisingly dry exterior. Zouichi gauged its size and weight, then considered his options. In the end, he reached behind him, snapping open his collapsible axe.

"Careful, I'm going to try and cut this down." He grabbed onto the pod itself, letting it support his weight as he recalled his grappling device. One clean swing with his newly freed hand, and the pod was severed from the ceiling. He dropped with the pod, down to the floor of the chamber.

The pod lands on the floor with a thump and a crack. The tubes attached to it thwip away. A fissure appears in its side, leaking some type of wet, milky fluid and a smell that would nauseate the steeliest of noses.

Clearly they should poke it. And maybe pinch their noses.

Ian eyes started watering at the smell and he held his nose. However, he still wanted to know what it was. So of course he poked it. "I really hope this isn't part of the food-making process." Something that smelt that bad shouldn't be allowed near food, never mind in it.

"Maybe the tubes were feeding it." Howard pokes at it with his pen. "Maybe they were feeding it like, rotten eggs and cat vomit and old mayonaise and everything else that smells frigging awful."

He pokes it again, a little harder, and the chunk of shell outside the crack widens. Globs of the white smile spill out, along with the head of a large fetal cow. It lolls out of the hole in the pod, dead, the rest of its body still inside the pod. One blank, goopy eyes stares at them. Its tongue hangs out of its mouth.

"Wow. Hamburger."

Ugh; it was utterly foul. ~~And you made him eat that, Howard, how could you~~

Zouichi grimaced. "We going to take this back?" Because it. Was super gross.

Ian looked at the cow's head and then up at the rest of it in the pod. "That's interesting." Also horrible, but once you put aside the smell, it was interesting. "That's probably the source of the smell." Or at least something to do with it.

He'd love to take this home or to the science lab, find out what was going on with it - what killed it, what bits of it might be missing. But several people might complain about the smell and he wasn't sure how he'd get it there. So he said, "Perhaps we'd best leave it here for now. But we might have to move it later. We don't want it getting in the food source."

"We're absolutely going to take it back!" Howard sounds a little incredulous that Ian doesn't want to drag it home. "Once we test this puppy for toxins, I'm making ribs and rennet."

He starts to pull the fetal calf out of the pod, bringing another gush of goo with it. "I've got Saran Wrap in my backpack. We can wrap it up in that and take it to a lab somewhere."

Since the other pods are largely the same size, it's probably safe to assume they hold similar things. They might want to start following the tubes that led from the pod - they go down a series of tunnels, one of which is a metal walkway instead of Stacy's usual flesh. And well-lit, even. If they go in that direction they'll find a lab with big vats of what looks like jello in clear trays, with droppers hovering over them. If they take one of the other tunnels they'll find more pods, including ones that are shaped, oddly-enough, like humans.

"Not in my kitchen," Zouichi said, staring dubiously at the cow. "Feel free to have a barbecue about a city block from the inn, though. And I still have some foam sealant spray, if the saran wrap doesn't work." Of course, that was made for quick-sealing wounds. But this thing sure smelt like it was dying.

He didn't even want to ask, but...

"Guess I'm carrying it back?" The hesitation was rather uncharacteristic of him. It wasn't that he'd have any trouble lifting it, but carrying a fetal cow that smelled like a million dead feet was daunting.

He motioned to the tubes leading out from the pod. "Want to keep going and swing back here later?"

"I think that's a good idea." Carrying a cow around is going to slow them down a bit. And even wrapping it in cling film isn't likely to stop the smell that much.

He went first down the tunnel, following the tubes. Someone must have created this - how else would metal end up being part of Stacy? At least the smell wasn't so bad down here. When he reached the end he leaned over one of the vats to sniff it. Given what happened with the pod he had no intention of tasting it.

"Do you have something in your bag we can put a sample of this in?" he asked Howard.

"I'll carry it if you don't want to. Or drag it. Whatever." Howard's determined to keep that dead cow, guys. So determined. He's a few minutes behind the other two since he stays to saran wrap that sucker up. Don't you dare point out how weird it is to be this fixated on a putrid cow fetus.

The gel in the vats doesn't smell like anything. Howard hands Ian some vials and stoppers from Medical and pokes at the gels with a pen. "This looks like the slop, but clearer. Like this would be a mixing gel or something, I don't know."

There's a console off to the side. It has dust and grime on it, like it hasn't been turned on in a while, but a 'power' light on the side is still blinking. As they investigate, a tentacle emerges from the ceiling, picks up a tray and whisks it back towards the tunnel to the chute.

Zouichi held up a hand. "I'll do it. The pod might break down further if you drag it around anyway."

He'd just have to take a nice, long bath after this. In any case, he moved over to the console to examine it more closely. Well, at least they built it to last?

Ian filled the vials. "I can find out what this is." Well, as long as it consisted of elements he'd come across before. He was less interested in the console, as it came under the realms of things he didn't understand. As he stoppered one of the vials he saw the tentacle out of the corner of his eye.

"This is a factory." He rushed over, but the tentacle and the tray had gone by the time he got there. But he waited, one hand on the tray, in case it came back for another.

Howard nods. "It looks like this is the place where they combine ingredients."

As much as the food is super interesting to him (and he wants to know what's in those droppers), he also wants to know what's at that computer. He walks over to and tries to turn it on. It starts booting up, but at a speed that wouldn't outpace a 1994 Macintosh knockoff. And when it does, it asks for a password and refuses to accept 'guest' and 'password' as answers.

"Man, you've got to be better at computers than I am," he says to Zouichi, wandering back over to Ian and the gel. "I'm betting this is edible. If I try it and die, can you make sure my corpse gets rinsed off before they bury me?"

>AAAAAA
>AAAAAC

Zouichi tried a few more passwords: blank password, 12345, Daligig, etc. Another area in which his partner might have been helpful. He wasn't used to this whole... keyboard interface thing.

"I guess at the very least," he said, frowning, "Maybe we could get Fuyu in here to jack into the machine, see if there's any useful data here. But with our luck, it'll just be a plain old monitoring system. Should we check the other tunnel?"

"I'd rather you didn't try it. What if it's made of dead cow?" This wouldn't be the best place to be ill, a long way from any medical help. "I don't want to carry your dead body out of here," he added, grinning.

But he turned away, so Howard could decide for himself whether he should try it or not. "We've run out of things to try here. Let's see if there's anything more useful down the other tunnel." The tentacle hadn't reappeared either. It was bound to come back just after they leave.

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