[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)

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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

[digging]

"Where's my booze? All I got was shampoo and paper— Which, let's be clear, I am very grateful for," Karen says, adding the last bit both toward the ceiling and into her wrist device before she looks back to Kira.

"I guess that's true. I didn't really think about it that much until..." She makes a vague motion Kira's way and then drops her hand. "For a long time, I was focused just on getting out." But if she's not really her, if she was grown in a lab for some asshole's entertainment, what's the point?

"We should make something with those magic peaches," she adds, preferring to pull the conversation back to the safer realm of questionable inebriation.

[3ofswords]

"Or we can find whatever does the opposite of these," he says, brushing a finger across the notes on the memory-boosting flowers, "and really forget our troubles for awhile."

He's--mostly joking. The last thing the village, or maybe just Mark needs, is for him to forget what he's doing here. Obviously if he wanted to start over, or start someone over, he'd go snort the puff pod and let them send a fresh Kira through the fountain.

Looking down at his own watch, he wonders if that's another reason not to talk about it. In the canyon, the ways they were observed didn't have physical apparence: would the Observers replace them, if they stopped being--whatever the Observers need them to be? Non compliant versus nonreactive? Not ready to test it, he lifts his own watch and sets a mild gaze out on the crowd: "Personally, I'd like some shampoo samples to pass out to those who haven't heard of it yet."