sixthiterationlogs | mingle | we have bread and fishes and a jug of.... well, herbal tea.

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mingle | we have bread and fishes and a jug of.... well, herbal tea.

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 15th August | Noon
OPEN TO: E V E R Y O N E
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: All sections are completely free for all! You can handwave your character helping out or thread it out, or just jump in to them eating. All characters are ICly invited, as they are every day. In light of the illness plot, feel free to use this post as an excuse for your characters to catch ill or spread the plague around.
STATUS: Open and ongoing!

Rain, hail, shine; blizzard, earthquake or lightning storm, the meals at the Inn have continued. People can, and do, wander in at breakfast and supper - as long as the stores are enough for three meals, anyway - but the main meal remains the one at midday. It's this meal which is the main event that Kate structures her day around, making sure volunteers arrive to help prepare, serve, and then clean; double-checking that there is enough food for all, that stores aren't too low and that fresh greens have been gathered. With the village chickens now producing eggs regularly there's a welcome addition of protein to the foodstuffs, and by now there are a number of experienced cooks in the village. At least, experienced in the ways of cooking communally and with what's on hand.

The main room of the Inn is swept, dusted; cutlery and bowls, plates are laid out on the sideboards in piles to be collected as people need. Everything is as it should be, even if some people - Kate included - are feeling a bit under the weather. But that's to be expected, isn't it? Everyone gets run down, has a day or two of feeling off colour. Certainly, it's nothing to worry about.

So come on in, help at the kitchen or pull up a chair at a table and enjoy some warm food and company while the outside confusion stays firmly outside.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"About double that. Around six," she answers. "Sometimes it feels like I've been here forever and sometimes I feel brand new. That probably doesn't go away, even here. A lot of life is like that."

She is good about trying the food, though. She may as well, since she's here more to eat than stare at it until it goes bad. Besides, then she can compliment him on his cooking.

"I have not felt brand new to anywhere in a long time," Baze says dryly. He's still just idly prodding at his own lunch with a fork, rather than actually eating it, but at least he seems to enjoy the conversation enough that he's not being grumpy at her. "But I have never been much of a traveler. There was too much to do at home."

"I've gotten used to being brand new to places," Beverly admits with a wry smile. "I belong to an organization of explorers, so I guess it's just what I'm used to now." Starfleet is in her blood and will always be a part of who she is. Her 'home' is always where her people are more than an actual place.

"What do you usually do?"

"I made trouble for imperial troops," Baze answers with a smile that doesn't have much humor to it. "They were occupying our city and stripping our mines, so we had to make things hard for them. And I kept my partner alive." Great job he'd done of that, in the end, though.

That sounds a bit like the Bajoran resistance, though Beverly never had much to do with the Bajorans as a whole. Still, she can understand the necessity, even if she doesn't like it.

"There's not much to do with that right now, though if we ever found the Observers and where they're hiding out, it might be. Have you ever thought about doing patrols around the village or maybe around the canyon walls?"

"I have a line of traps in the woods I check every day," Baze answers with a shrug. He'd done some more formal patrolling a few weeks back, but it got very dull very fast, since there was nothing of interest to see. "It is at least part of a patrol. Nothing ever changes, though. I have checked."

"It would be too easy if it did change, wouldn't it?" she teases very gently. Sometimes she thinks a little change might be nice, but given the Observers, she doubts any kind of change would be very good for them. "I guess you could measure the canyon walls, but since they don't usually change much, it would mostly be to make sure that nothing has changed. I guess you could do the same to the other village, just to start with a baseline."

It would probably be just as dull as patrolling, though, but at least it would be something. Though, that does beg the question of what kind of measuring tools they could use for that.

"Counting paces," Baze suggests. "Though I have not tried to climb them and see how tall they are." He shakes his head, and gives his real opinion on the matter. "I do not think this world is a natural one. What we see is created and cultivated, not natural. There is no other way to explain the planet suddenly deciding to change its rotation."

"As far as I've seen climbing isn't the best idea." She remembers seeing someone fall from a tall height on one of the canyon walls, so she isn't about to recommend doing it to anyone else. Then again, she's afraid of heights and wouldn't recommend that anyway.

"I said the same thing not long ago," she admits thoughtfully. "I've never known any planet to be able to do that without intervention. But... I'm not honestly sure we're even on a planet at all."

"It could be a space station," Baze agrees, food forgotten with the chance to share theories with someone who seems to understand how the universe is supposed to work. "Or simply a very large chamber with very powerful holographic projectors."

"It could be," she allows, "although I'm not sure even that could reverse rotation so easily." The holographic projectors part she would buy more easily, given that her current theory is that this is a holodeck simulation. It would be much easier to manage something like this, though even a holodeck will wear out every so often.

"Do you have holographic projectors in your universe?"

"Yes. Though not this powerful," he has to admit. "You can usually tell when it is a projected image. This is as close to perfect as I could imagine." Plus, you can feel it. Star Wars-era holograms aren't solid. So it's only a partially workable theory, as far as Baze is concerned. But, because the good doctor is asking, he has to guess: "You do, as well?"

She pauses, chewing her latest bite thoughtfully as she ponders how much to tell him. Surely it can't hurt that much given he already knows about holoprojectors. She's not an engineer and so she can't tell him how they work, so there's less harm in her talking about them.

"Ours could make it real," she admits, glancing around a little. "It's a drain on resources to keep a program running continuously for an extended time, but it's possible. And you'd never know the difference."

The frightening thing is that this could all be an elaborate trap for the Starfleet officers, even down to the people programmed in, and they would literally never know until the program terminated or started to wear down and degrade. If either of those options ever happened.

It seems awfully elaborate for just two officers, especially when no one is trying to ask them detailed questions about their home or security measures or anything. This one, however, is asking about holoprojectors, looking curious and determined: "What kind of power source would that take? Something we could find and dismantle?"

It might seem elaborate for that, but at this point Beverly wouldn't put it past the Cardassians. Or Q. Anything could happen and they might have other ways of prying their information out than the last time one of these officers was caught.

"We might be able to, if we can find where it's being stored," she admits with a shrug. "The trouble is that you could walk for years and never get anywhere." But if the safety features are off, which she suspects they are at this point, they might have a chance to blow a hole in the holoprojectors. What that might do to the village and the safety of everyone inside... that's the trickier question.

She offers an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid you've gotten a doctor and not an engineer. That isn't exactly my area of expertise." She might be a cyberneticist, but there's a large, gaping distance between engineering and cybernetics.

"And I am a tinkerer, but mostly with weapons," Baze admits. "Give me a blaster or a cannon or maybe a speeder, and I can make it more efficient, but holograph projections aren't something I have toyed with." What use would a priest and then a rebel have for holograms, after all? He shakes his head. "But we two have more knowledge than some people here. And Bodhi, if he can keep his head steady if something happens, he was a cargo pilot."

She smiles sympathetically. If they had Geordi or Data here, they could manage so much more, but then again given the lack of proper technology, she would be more worried about Data having problems or Geordi's implants being affected. "Make that five―" Two Starfleet officers and one Bajoran militia who is second in command at Deep Space Nine. "―although I'm not sure what Nerys knows. I never really asked her what her interests were."

"Who are the others?" Baze asks, sitting back and looking curious. If there are more space-farers here, he probably ought to know who they are, just to know who will understand when he mentions blasters or says he's not from this Earth everyone else seems to know.

"Nerys and Jean-Luc," she answers. "Although I will admit that I happen to know Jean-Luc better than Nerys, but she's been here longer than either one of us." They are both still her friends, for better or worse.

Baze nods. Not names he knows, but he may have seen them. "Maybe I will meet them, too." It'd be nice to have all the spacers together, since they all have at least sort of a shared background, compared to all the people from that Earth place-- and other non-space-faring worlds. "Are you from the same galaxy?" If she knew this Jean-Luc person longer than the other.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

mingle | we have bread and fishes and a jug of.... well, herbal tea.

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