Dr. Helen Magnus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sixthiterationlogs2017-02-07 09:41 pm
notsocommon) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-02-07 09:41 pm
003 ∞ whilst this planet has gone cycling
WHO: Helen Magnus
WHERE: hospital, schoolhouse, outside the butchers, Inn
WHEN: 7 February - 14 February
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: TBD
STATUS: Open
i. fixed law of gravity
Thanks to the work done by Rory, the hospital was something approaching hospitable. There were beds inside it, yes, but Helen wasn't certain that the narrow sickbays could really be considered proper beds or not. It was more of a triage station, really, or a field hospital to her modern standards and she was reminded yet again of all the medicine she'd practiced during the two great wars; there was little that rattled the nerves quite as much as hearing and feeling the vibrations of shells and mortar just outside one's door while trying to heal the sick and make them comfortable.
Helen could do without ever seeing another war.
Still, it was the nature of human beings to fight and while there hadn't been many quarrels here in this place, Helen wasn't naive enough to believe that it would always be so calm or that their threats would always come in easy to handle packages. The injuries this month were proof enough of that. No one had been hurt terribly as of yet but she was certain it was not far off, considering the lightning only increased in frequency as days passed.
Currently, she was in the midst of cataloging her meager supplies with which to treat burns. There were bandages, there were poultices and her very precious store of penicillin. She had five syringes, prepared if she should have to use them, and there was no reason to believe she'd ever get more. Their captors had been gracious enough to give her the medicine once. She wouldn't be the one to waste it.
She was ripping linens at the moment in order to make more bandages and hoped that she'd never have occasion to use quite as many as she'd made.
ii. so simple a beginning
After putting in a long day of scouring the woods for more herbs and dodging lightning where she could, Helen found herself in the Inn for a cup of her preciously-hoarded coffee and a bite to eat. She'd been grateful that there was food already cooked when she'd arrived at the kitchens and made a note to bring more berries and herbs to replenish Kate's stores from time to time. It was what she could do to help, after all, and while she could cook she was also content to eat the cooking of others.
She had a bowl of stew balanced on one knee and a mug of coffee in the other as she sat by the fire, lost in reflection and memory. There had been disappearances of late, a rash of them, and she wondered what that meant. Their captors never seemed to announce why they did things and she supposed it was futile to assume they'd start doing it now. Once she'd finished eating, she pulled out her notes from Annie and Finnick's findings, trying to make sense of the new information they'd discovered.
She wound up moving from the chair to the floor and when that didn't give her enough room, she decided to take the lot of her work over to the schoolhouse in order to avail herself of the slates inside there. She took care not to erase anything already on the chalkboards, not wanting to ruin someone else's work, but took up a piece of it herself and started trying to make sense of the muddled equations and endless lines of text.
"It doesn't bloody make sense she exclaimed in frustration, banging a closed fist in an uncharacteristic fit of pique. Even her own mind had been tested by this and if she couldn't figure it out, what hope did she have of ever finding a way back home? How could she provide insight and understanding to the people here if she couldn't make heads of tails with what she'd been presented? She sank down at one of the desks, sitting hard enough to send it flying a few inches.
"Damn."
iii. endless forms most beautiful
Having given up on the mystery of the pods for the time being, Helen decided to make herself useful and was tending a hot fire and a veritable cauldron of soap. The butcher's was the only place where she had the equipment to render fat properly and while it was smelly, disgusting work, the end result was quite nice. It reminded her of being a girl, making soaps and things by hand and once she had the soda ash added to the fat, she could start the process of turning the lot of it into soap.
This batch was going to be scented with lemon, one of the precious essential oils she'd been gifted, and it lent the air a fresh, clean scent. It was something neutral, something that simply smelled of clean and she hoped that the others in the village would agree with that assessment. If not, they were free to make their own soap, she supposed, though she was the only one who seemed to make any in any real quantity.
The next batch was blood orange and the final, at the end of the day, ended up scented with lavender. Once she'd poured it into the crude molds she'd crafted of wood she covered it with towels to let it cure. Later, after it'd set up, she'd slice it into thick bars but for now it would simply have to set. There were more than a few lye burns on her hands once she'd finished for the evening and she wondered if the powers that be would gift her a set of proper gloves. They would have more than one use. Of that, she was absolutely certain.
WHERE: hospital, schoolhouse, outside the butchers, Inn
WHEN: 7 February - 14 February
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: TBD
STATUS: Open
i. fixed law of gravity
Thanks to the work done by Rory, the hospital was something approaching hospitable. There were beds inside it, yes, but Helen wasn't certain that the narrow sickbays could really be considered proper beds or not. It was more of a triage station, really, or a field hospital to her modern standards and she was reminded yet again of all the medicine she'd practiced during the two great wars; there was little that rattled the nerves quite as much as hearing and feeling the vibrations of shells and mortar just outside one's door while trying to heal the sick and make them comfortable.
Helen could do without ever seeing another war.
Still, it was the nature of human beings to fight and while there hadn't been many quarrels here in this place, Helen wasn't naive enough to believe that it would always be so calm or that their threats would always come in easy to handle packages. The injuries this month were proof enough of that. No one had been hurt terribly as of yet but she was certain it was not far off, considering the lightning only increased in frequency as days passed.
Currently, she was in the midst of cataloging her meager supplies with which to treat burns. There were bandages, there were poultices and her very precious store of penicillin. She had five syringes, prepared if she should have to use them, and there was no reason to believe she'd ever get more. Their captors had been gracious enough to give her the medicine once. She wouldn't be the one to waste it.
She was ripping linens at the moment in order to make more bandages and hoped that she'd never have occasion to use quite as many as she'd made.
ii. so simple a beginning
After putting in a long day of scouring the woods for more herbs and dodging lightning where she could, Helen found herself in the Inn for a cup of her preciously-hoarded coffee and a bite to eat. She'd been grateful that there was food already cooked when she'd arrived at the kitchens and made a note to bring more berries and herbs to replenish Kate's stores from time to time. It was what she could do to help, after all, and while she could cook she was also content to eat the cooking of others.
She had a bowl of stew balanced on one knee and a mug of coffee in the other as she sat by the fire, lost in reflection and memory. There had been disappearances of late, a rash of them, and she wondered what that meant. Their captors never seemed to announce why they did things and she supposed it was futile to assume they'd start doing it now. Once she'd finished eating, she pulled out her notes from Annie and Finnick's findings, trying to make sense of the new information they'd discovered.
She wound up moving from the chair to the floor and when that didn't give her enough room, she decided to take the lot of her work over to the schoolhouse in order to avail herself of the slates inside there. She took care not to erase anything already on the chalkboards, not wanting to ruin someone else's work, but took up a piece of it herself and started trying to make sense of the muddled equations and endless lines of text.
"It doesn't bloody make sense she exclaimed in frustration, banging a closed fist in an uncharacteristic fit of pique. Even her own mind had been tested by this and if she couldn't figure it out, what hope did she have of ever finding a way back home? How could she provide insight and understanding to the people here if she couldn't make heads of tails with what she'd been presented? She sank down at one of the desks, sitting hard enough to send it flying a few inches.
"Damn."
iii. endless forms most beautiful
Having given up on the mystery of the pods for the time being, Helen decided to make herself useful and was tending a hot fire and a veritable cauldron of soap. The butcher's was the only place where she had the equipment to render fat properly and while it was smelly, disgusting work, the end result was quite nice. It reminded her of being a girl, making soaps and things by hand and once she had the soda ash added to the fat, she could start the process of turning the lot of it into soap.
This batch was going to be scented with lemon, one of the precious essential oils she'd been gifted, and it lent the air a fresh, clean scent. It was something neutral, something that simply smelled of clean and she hoped that the others in the village would agree with that assessment. If not, they were free to make their own soap, she supposed, though she was the only one who seemed to make any in any real quantity.
The next batch was blood orange and the final, at the end of the day, ended up scented with lavender. Once she'd poured it into the crude molds she'd crafted of wood she covered it with towels to let it cure. Later, after it'd set up, she'd slice it into thick bars but for now it would simply have to set. There were more than a few lye burns on her hands once she'd finished for the evening and she wondered if the powers that be would gift her a set of proper gloves. They would have more than one use. Of that, she was absolutely certain.
Re: i
"I may regret saying this later but you act an awful lot like Nikola. An awful lot."
no subject
"Here," he says, gesturing with a hand. "Hand me another pile while you tell me how smart I am, like him."
no subject
"Oh, you're brilliant. And you tend to change the subject just as rapidly as he ever did."
no subject
Glancing over his shoulder as he begins to start tearing bandages, he feels like it's time for him to fess up. "I was only partially through my world-changing discovery, after all."
no subject
Or was, but Helen didn't feel the need to discuss Carentan or Ravi's fate therein. He'd had a happy life there, albeit too brief.
"They tend to be brilliant."
no subject
Zombies isn't exactly something that comes up so readily, after all, not in his experience.
no subject
"Not, of course, to minimize what you're going to tell me. I'm just assuring you that I won't think you're mad. I always dare to believe in the unbelievable."
no subject
Honestly, he'd been ready to buy himself a fencing outfit to wear at all times back home after the scare with the zombie rat, thank god that biting doesn't seem to transmit the virus.
no subject
"It doesn't shock me. If anything, I just want to know more about them and how you were involved. I'm curious to a fault."
no subject
"Where I come from, Seattle is on the precipice of falling to the walking dead," he says, "and I'm the one working on the cure. Unfortunately, that does mean that two of my best friends are without it, at the moment."
no subject
Helen tapped her lips a bit, thinking. "Share with me everything you know about the affliction and maybe I can help you brainstorm. I've got two centuries of knowledge tucked away in this brain. Surely there's something in there of use, yes?"
no subject
"Honestly, what I really need are the two main components. Max Rager," he lists on one finger, "a supercharged energy drink, and tainted utopium, a new designer drug. When ingested together, the subject becomes..." He makes a face, best mimicking zombies as he can. "The main cause of transformation, as far as I've seen, has been scratches."
no subject
"If only we had those materials and access to my laboratory back home. We could really make a go of it."
no subject
"All I can hope is that somehow, the clocks are stopped at home," he says, with a serious look on his face.
no subject
"I don't want the burden of worrying about that on top of everything else."
no subject
No one has anything on them that can be tracked and they have no way of knowing where and when they are. "So that's my life, really, back home. Fighting the good fight, battling zombies while living and working with them, wondering if my ex-girlfriend is going to be seduced by an ex-zombie."
no subject
It was said more than a bit flippant because, at this point, Helen had to be. It was either laugh or cry and Helen chose to laugh.
no subject
no subject
She laughed a bit. "Nikola's problem is that he wants to feel important and allows that to drive him to things that aren't...exactly the best course of action."
no subject
no subject
"There's the Curies, as well, and Einstein was a dear friend of mine. Did you know he loved to watch football matches? Didn't know a damned thing that was going on, mind, but he loved the excitement of it."
no subject
"That whole thing and all, but still," he maligns.
no subject
no subject
"Though, are we even in a country? I'd say it looks like the US, but only because it has that air of despondent giving up to it," Ravi notes.
no subject
She hadn't seen anything confirming it one way or the other and had simply been operating under the assumption it was North America.
(no subject)