[MINGLE] Just don't touch the puffball

[markwatney]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: 6I Town Hall
WHEN: 7 June, after lunch
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: n/a
NOTES: Please note in your subject line if a top-level is to Mark (or whoever)

---

I have to be honest, as a botanist, there's a lot about this new, expanded world to be excited about. It seems like almost every time I go out to collect samples, I find something I haven't seen before, and nearly every minute I'm not working in the fields or greenhouse, I've been in Ravi's lab doing tests and compiling observations. Some of the specimens are pretty spectacular, but for a lot of them, the things that make them impressive are also things that could be a problem for the average villager.

Which is why I'm here now, in the town hall, lining up a variety of plants on a long table at the front of the room, some dried, some placed carefully under glass, many seeded in whatever I could find to use as a pot: Sauce pans, old boxes, tea cups.

Early this morning, I left a message on the blackboard in the Inn in big chalk letters:

Seminar on new native plants
TODAY - TOWN HALL - AFTER LUNCH
IMPORTANT INFO!!

In the old place, I used to take folks out one at a time and give them a crash course on what was edible and what was poisonous, but that's just not going to cut it now.

As I wait for folks to arrive (As I wait, hoping folks will arrive), I lay out labels in front of each plant listing what I've been calling it, whether it's dangerous, and any known properties. Once I'm done running my mouth, people can come up and get a good look.

Comments

for Mark

[underpinnings]

Plans to leave the village behind had been scrapped, week after week, by impossible occurrences and genuine needs for help. The friendliness of certain creatures spoke to other settlers, either previous or distant; they could be transported miles in a single step at someone's whim; the flora and fauna could attack before they understood it.

Mark clearly means to mitigate the latter, but there isn't only the environment to worry about. He'd seen the messages, however glib, about special diets, vampirism. Considering his own circumstances, it isn't hard to believe in some other stretch of the vast universe, some other disease could transform a person like that.

Some of the threats are going to come through the fountain. One of them could live under his skin, even if he's had months to confirm a grip on his own mind. Looking askance at the fungal pod, even under glass, he approaches Mark after the meeting, in a moment where he's stepped toward the back of the hall. "Mark," he greets, easy but to the point. "There was something I wanted to ask you, if you have some time."

[markwatney]

I know Owen in the way I know most people around here — It's not quite right to call the relationships you have with anyone here casual because there is nothing casual about this situation, but I see the kid a lot, have talked to him in passing, but don't really know him. Truthfully, I don't really have as many friends as I probably should have by this point, but my days are long. Apparently Picard and I are supposed to be the village dads, but I don't know where that came from. I would not trust me with children. Just saying.

Anyway.

"Sure," I reply with a nod Owen's way. "What's up?"

[underpinnings]

Owen doesn't do father figures; what he's after from Mark is the level head that accompanied them on the expedition, the expertise and priorities that put the meeting together today. While some of the information had come from exploration and dumb luck, Mark had taken it further, put it together, decided it should be known.

He's just going to have to trust his judgment, on whether this should also be broadcast. "I have a few concerns, but nothing I'd like a meeting about just yet." He glances to the crowd around the specimens, then to the back door. "Think this lot is responsible enough for us to take a quick walk?"

If someone did stick their head in with the puff pod, at least they had plenty of the cure. To press the point, he admits: "It's about...other biological dangers, that we might need to deal with."

[markwatney]

"One would hope," I reply as I shoot a look back to the group milling around the table. The labels are all in place, and I just gave a whole talk about what to stay away from — If they can't avoid knocking over the glass covering the puff ball and taking a deep breath, it really doesn't bode well for their general ability to survive here at all.

I nod to Owen and step toward the side of the room. "Biological dangers," I echo, thinking of the frog I collected when we'd all gone to find the lichen. I've got no idea if Owen knows about that or not.

[underpinnings]

Leading along the wall, Owen exits through the back and holds the door for Mark to follow, closing them out into the fields. Training says to lead Mark well away as they talk, to deal with an adverse reaction quietly and without witnesses--but he chooses instead to walk to the edge of the summer growth and stand, watching insects hover and early bats swoop down from the darkening sky.

It's a difficult conversation to start, so he leads with the abstract, hands shoved deeply into his pockets. "The people who come here, they make a lot of claims. That they aren't human, that they aren't from earth. Or they're from a time and place on it utterly foreign to their neighbor."

None of which is news: he understands Mark to be one of the longest residents of the village. "Accepting that as true, what screening could or has been done for disease? They told us how to deal with the spores, but do you think they're going to hand us a smallpox or polio vaccine when someone from that era crawls out of the water? Or something for alien viruses, or--"

Owen wrinkles his nose, teeth showing in a grimace. "Mark, there's a girl on the watches saying she has to drink blood to survive."

[markwatney]

Ah, that sort of biological danger. Not an unfounded concern when you hear the stories about where some of the folks here come from.

"Yeah, I saw that," I slowly reply with a tilt of my head. I fully understand where the kid is coming from, and at some point in life I became the guy people bring this kind of stuff to. Not just here, but back home, too.

"Word is she is, or at least believes she is, a vampire," I add with a lift of my eyebrows. "I haven't talked to her. I probably should. Or at least someone should. See what the contagion situation is like. The good news is she seems willing to be transparent."

I pull in a breath and motion Owen's way. "It's cold comfort, I know, but I don't think letting smallpox run rampant is on the agenda of the people in charge, at least not right now. It's like... taking care of your toys. However we're here, they went to a lot of effort to make it happen. But, who you really need to talk to is Ravi. Infectious diseases is one of his specialties. He was working on a cure for a zombie virus back home before he turned up here. Any info I give you is going to be broad strokes unless it's a plant-based contagion."

[underpinnings]

Ravi, from what he's seen, has struck Owen as the sort of rabbity academic who survived too long in a basement lab--talks too much, too fast, without any care if you can follow what he's saying. The sort of person you leave in the basement lab, until that mind that is so good at those very specific things, produces something useful.

Owen himself only maintains the social skills that overlap with survival, but he isn't looking forward to the conversation.

But if he isn't here to be judgmental of the girl, he's not going to waste it on the doctor either. It's Mark's followup that gives him the opening: Owen's gaze flicks up from lowered consideration to Mark's eyes. "What about fungal," he asks, a flip in his stomach as he takes the plunge. "I'm not asking anyone to take a hard stance on the girl--or, if I am, I'm asking you to take it on me, as well. It hasn't become an issue," he hedges, because it hasn't. "But where I'm from, a mutant Cordyceps species killed half the population, and I want to make sure I'm not carrying it."

[markwatney]

"Do you know the growth rate?" I ask, instinctively dropping my gaze and lifting it again, looking for signs of anything unusual on Owen's person and predictably finding none. "Is there any typical dormancy in a human host?"

Cordyceps generally can be quite aggressive, but he'd said mutant, implying the typical assumptions might not apply.

"I tell you what. Go over to the hospital and have some blood drawn. Tell them I said I needed it for lab work. I live just a couple of houses up from here, other side of the road. The dark green house. We can take the sample over to Ravi's lab and I can take a look, make sure you're clear. Alright?"

My inclination is to think the kid's probably fine unless the Cordyceps has an unusually long incubation period, but it's definitely better to be completely sure.

[underpinnings]

Marlene spent enough years focused on a cure that they all knew a bit; lab shifts were a kind of downtime they could offer their agents, when they were spread too thin in a world that didn't give vacation days. He isn't incurious, and he isn't stupid. "Normally it takes weeks, isn't fatal; but the kind we dealt with took hold in a matter of days."

Death took longer, but in months he hasn't so much as suffered a headache, hasn't lost any vision.

He's fine, which isn't the same as safe. "If I thought that was the problem," he says, "I'd probably be at the bottom of the lake. I just need to know, and I need--I need you and Ravi to know, if it's there." Not that Mark seems to need real convincing. "So, thank you, and just let me know what you find."

[markwatney]

"Yeah, of course," I reply, of the need to know. Even if I suspect that whatever tests we're able to run in this place will come back clear, it's still better know for sure. We're just lucky, I guess, that something like a Cordyceps should be easy to spot even with rudimentary equipment we have on hand.

"We'll make it a priority to get it looked at, I promise." Not that Ravi will need much encouragement on that count; he'll probably just be delighted to have something to do.