[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

[underpinnings]

The address cuts Owen's eyes to the side, finding the source. That's his father's name, and not one he tended to give out--but he knows it was written in full on the chalkboard, that day, and it likely shows in full on the watches they've been given to communicate with. Still, it's the first thing he addresses, everything else an odd secondary--why the smile, why the thanks--

"Just Owen's fine," he asserts, rolling himself off the wall with both shoulders. With the focus on names, he eventually places the man--one of the sick.

Thanking Owen for making a journey he had little choice in. "It benefits all of us to have supplies on hand," he says. "Nothing to do with thanks, but I suppose you're welcome."

[collaronhisneck]

"Everything to do with thanks. You didn't have to go, and if you did, you didn't have to share what you found. Perhaps you don't feel like you've done something deserving of thanks, but I do." He's still smiling, because he truly does believe that. None of the people selected had to go, as far as he could tell; yes, the people observing them claimed that only that specific group could find a cure, but from what he knows there wasn't a threat of any sort of punishment if one of them didn't go. And apparently it hadn't been an easy journey, either.

"But at least now we know the treatment, and the symptoms. If any more cases appear, we'll be able to do something about them with much more immediacy."

[underpinnings]

"Yeah," he says, dragging out the syllable. Gratitude isn't a thing he's very comfortable with; being singled out, even if he's just one in a list of the people Mulcahy plans to call out, isn't either.

Too close to heroics; nobody's a hero in real life. You're smart or you're dead.

"Mark's done a good job of making sure we keep a store of it, just in case. And we're better off for having people clear out the pods so it doesn't happen again period." Deflecting the praise elsewhere is easier than arguing with it. "Burning it out was even riskier, before we had anything to cure it with."

[collaronhisneck]

There is very much a disparity in thinking here. Mulcahy is realistic in a lot of ways, but deep in his bones he's an optimist; Owen maybe isn't a complete pessimist, but he's certainly a doubter and someone who plans for the worst. The priest isn't entirely sure why Owen is having such a hard time accepting gratitude, but he's seen enough in his time with the 4077 to know that sometimes people are just like that, not to mention during the Depression it was a much more common way of thinking. Most of the time, though, he has trouble understanding why; but at least he knows when not to continue pushing. He's said his piece, given his thanks, and since Owen is obviously trying to steer the topic away from it, he follows suit.

"Yes, Dr. Watney is a very brilliant man. We're lucky to have him here to be in charge of our fields and food - it would be much worse for all of us without him." It feels almost sacrilegious to say that it's "good" for any person to be stuck in this place with no way out, but it's also true: without Mark, their little settlement would have had many more problems, especially during the events that affected their crops. "Risky, but necessary, I feel. We know what it looks like to avoid it in the wild, now, but the patches that crept into the village were much harder to stay away from. I admit I feel safer knowing they've been burned away."

[underpinnings]

"We're luckier that he seems interested in teaching," Owen replies, nodding toward the meeting at-large. What a person knows is only as valuable as the ability to preserve it, or pass it along. People don't last, and knowledge dies a slow death across generations. "Any group is only as strong as its next set of leaders."

He'd seen that firsthand; he'd done the work to erode infrastructure around them, pushing birds from nests and watching them fall more than they flew. Where the village is concerned, he's keeping his damn hands clean of it.

"I keep an eye out, now that we have a cure." Now that it isn't certain death, if he comes across it at the wrong angle. "Once we know the conditions it grows in--well, it's probably like dealing with mold. It'll come back, but we can predict it better."

[collaronhisneck]

Mulcahy nods at Owen's statement. "Yes, we're also very lucky he seems to understand that as well. Knowledge that dies without being passed along does no one any good - the more people who know a thing, the better. And hopefully if anything new comes along, we'll be able to learn about it in time to prevent any further misadventures."

Because it's certainly too much to hope that they've found everything new this place has to throw at them. Whatever's going on in the "outside world" now, there's things no one has ever seen and very little exploration so far. There are undoubtedly more surprises around the corner.

"Given they look like some sort of fungus, I'd say it's likely the same conditions as mushrooms or lichen - lots of damp weather and rich soil. I may not be correct in that assumption, but it's at least something to keep an eye out for."

[underpinnings]

"Let's hope for a dry summer, then." Which likely as not dooms them to a rainy season, but Owen is more practiced than superstitious. It was hard to begin or maintain relation to some higher power, in his circumstances. He had asked the clanging creaking silence of his father's ship for aid so many times; he had watched nature reclaim her world more than man or god could rise over it.

The drying plant life is spitting seeds across the plains, and that speaks to a system that gets rain, soon. "You'll leave that to the rest of us, I hope." Owen flicks his gaze down the stature of the man.

Not useless; not dismissed. He won't pretend not to care, even if he doesn't want thanks. Nature or something with a soul, Owen decided before he got here: people deserve to live, and the weaker deserve preservation. He doesn't want to be thanked for such a basic thought.