sixthiterationlogs | Half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees [OTA]

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Half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees [OTA]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Fields and nearby
WHEN: 23 May, evening
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Poop
STATUS: Open
NOTE: Please don't feel you have to talk to him about plants. I know how boring it can get.

The weather is starting to become a concern.

Now, I really am not a person prone to panic. Things have to be going pretty badly pretty abruptly for me to freak out. But I'm also aware of how nefarious a gradual change can be, and how dangerous to people not paying attention. Personally, I'm not interested in being a lobster in a slow-warming pot.

Then again, maybe I don't have much choice in that.

Point is, it's easier to pay attention to the fact that the sun is taking the opposite path in the sky than that we're getting way too warm too soon for this time of year. (And I could get into why it's implausible that the Earth has actually reversed rotation, including disruptions that would likely end all life, but it's way more boring than it sounds, so I'll just say I'm not buying it.) People are finding ways to cool off, and that's good -- Apart from physical health reasons, we don't get nearly enough opportunities to simply relax and have unfettered fun. The plants we've all been so tending so judiciously, though, don't have the option to take a dip.

The hail was bad enough. The damage was... Well, it wasn't great, obviously, but nothing we couldn't recover from. Assuming, of course, that everything stays relatively predictable. This heat and lack of rain? It isn't predictable.

I've been out in the fields all day today, even longer than normal, taking notes and measurements, doing what I can to ensure the plants are well fed and watered. We really cannot afford to lose a significant part of this harvest, not with the number of people in the village now. It's tedious, back-breaking work, but it has to be done.

And it's honestly probably a testament to how tedious and back-breaking it is that I am tired and distracted enough that I end up covered in shit. Not metaphorical shit; actual shit, courtesy of a poorly-timed misstep while I was shoveling fertilizer. Manure's coated all along the front of my thighs and torso, splashed up to my neck and chin.

"God damn it," I moan, picking myself up with a wince.

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Though Nerys has no idea what is and isn't normal, she's been and lived in enough temperate climates to be able to tell when the turning of a season is too quick, and certainly when planetary rotation is...uh...askew. The latter seems to bear theories like Peggy's holosuite idea out, that they're all in a simulacrum, but at the same time, Nerys would like to believe that she can tell when things are a holo and when they aren't.

Beings can't live by eating holo-plants, for example, and those plants can't grow in construct dirt, so here she is out watering the garden as best as she's able with the grey water they've managed to collect from communal mealtimes. That is, she's watering the garden until there's a holler and an audible splat.

Nerys is pretty sure shit doesn't stink quite as much in a holoprogramme either.

Unfortunately most of her water is already soaking rapidly into the thirsty ground, so she sets down the bucket and jogs over to where Watney has taken a tumble. "Prophets' balls," she says, looking at him and grimacing. "Well, I'd say a bath is a good excuse for a rest break."

"Maybe someone up there is trying to tell me something," I allow as I pick myself up. I take special care, but I see quickly enough that there's little point: I'm covered from ankles to chest.

"On the bright side, I didn't get any in my mouth," I add, still grimacing. Smiling isn't easily done when you're covered in shit, even if you are trying to crack a joke.

"You think you could find me some soap so I can rinse off in the river? I don't think I could manage to not leave a trail of shit inside if I did it myself."

"Mark, if I know the Prophets, wouldn't that be 'full of shit' instead of 'covered in'?" Nerys asks with faux-innocent doe eyes and a deadpan expression--that lasts all of about five seconds before she pats him on the shoulder (in a location that hasn't been splattered). "Just giving you a hard time, but you're right, at least it's only on the outside."

She nods and holds up a finger. "Give me a second, I'll grab you something from inside, and try to find something to use for a towel."

A quick jog to the Inn, and five minutes or so of rummaging, and she's back with a long piece of curtain fabric and some of Magnus' herbal soap. Watney doesn't strike her as particularly fond of scented toiletries, but the smell involved here really needs...a little something.

I huff out a soft laugh as I watch her go, and start the walk toward the river. There's still the runoff barrel that Nerys had set up last year behind the inn, but despite the walk, the river just seems the most expedient and hygienic way to get clean.

Pausing at the crossroads by the inn, I carefully pull off my shirt and examine my hat, which looks like it survived unscathed.

Nerys makes an educated guess as to which way Watney's gone--and the educated guess in this case doesn't really require higher logic, as there's a faint trail of manure, and as the wind changes, there's the scent too.

"Need me to hold that?" she asks, clearing her throat and holding out the soap and ersatz towel from a relatively safe distance. "While you wash, I mean. It looks like it's in decent shape."

"Yeah, thanks," I reply as I hold out the hat with the tips of my fingers. "The towel, too. I think it would defeat the purpose if I touched it now," I add with a soft laugh, although I do gratefully pluck the soap from the pile and start making my way down toward the river.

"You may be surprised to know that in over twenty years of being a botanist, this is the first time I have landed in a pile of shit." Hopefully I can go another 20 without it happening again.

"Good point," Nerys says with a faint sniff of a laugh, and drapes the towel over the arm that's holding Mark's hat. It's warm out, sure, but she's not very sweaty yet, fortunately, her shift in the garden having only started a little while ago. She follows him down towards the water at a relatively discreet distance, then settles on a boulder in the shade.

"First time? Gotta say, that's hard to believe--unless they use other stuff for fertilizer, in your time?" she asks. "I know in parts of Bajor, they use excrement as part of a sustainable waste reclamation project, but it's been treated with something and processed, long before it gets anywhere near the fields." Not that they have anything remotely like that kind of luxury, here, and as long as they only use animal manure, they should be all right.

"My favorite general fertilizer actually comes from worms," I say, and then pause as I wade into the river. I've braced myself for the chill of it, and I frown a little when it turns out to just be cool.

"One sec," I call back as I plunge fully in. A handful of seconds later, I reemerge, and push the wet hair from my eyes with the back of one hand.

"A lot of cattle ranchers compost using worms. It reduces methane and the compost ends up a much higher quality. You can use them to compost anything, but the cattle industry is probably the most widespread usage. There's a whole industry just for processing manure for use as fertilizer, but I don't think it's anything like what you're talking about."

Nerys waits, glad to be sitting by the water what with it being so warm. She doesn't exactly want to get in, it's still too soon after the thaw to be a pleasant temperature yet. "Worms? So they eat the...uh, animal waste, and then...excrete it?"

Yeah, she's kind of being diplomatic about this, for once, but there's only so much talking about shit directly that she thinks is necessary, all things considered.

"I think they do it with gene-tailored bacteria, on Bajor, but obviously that's not how it's always been. Maybe it's based on something like the worms, but I'm not going to lie to you, Watney, I never gave much of a damn about agriculture until I got to this place."

I laugh at that, and shrug as I start soaping up my shirt. Better to wash what I can now, even if I'll probably wash it all again later with the stronger soap.

"That's most people, and let's be honest, in most situations it's never going to be an issue. This isn't exactly a typical scenario we're working with here." I feel like this is an anecdote I trot out again and again, like my human brain just can't quite parse being here unless I compare it to what came before.

"And hey, I'm fine not spending my days talking about worms eating shit, or worms shitting out shit," I say, and pause to huff out another laugh. "But given the circumstances, I'm not sorry I know about it."

"My life's been a whole batch of unusual scenarios," Nerys says with a crooked smile. "You know, eventually you start expecting the unusual as the usual, but there's only so much you can anticipate."

She turns a little, ensuring she's not staring at him or anything that might make him uncomfortable, but not keeping her back to him entirely, so they can keep talking. "And yeah, I'm glad you know about shit-eating worms too, Watney, along with all the other, more pleasant things that are involved. It's good to have a skillset that feeds people. isn't it?"

She imagines it might feel slightly more...fulfilling than what she feels about her own. There's a difference between surviving and thriving.

"If you're trying to spare me my dignity, I don't have much left," I say when I look up and see Nerys has turned away. "Now, if you're sparing yourself looking at me, that I can understand. But nine months at a time stuck on a ship with the same five people kind of inures you to having no privacy. And I promise the undershorts are staying on."

I take a moment to rinse the shirt off again and hold it up. I'll have to wash it again later with the stronger soap, but this will do for now.

"I've been thinking we should start having little seminars for people. Teach them the basics about things like gardening, making fires, first aid. It's just been such a busy season." At this rate, I might not get to it before next winter.

"Just being polite," Nerys replies, turning back slightly but with a certain amount of decorum--it's enough that she can shift again if necessary. "I know some human cultures are...awkward about nudity, and I swear I don't like you that way, Mark." She grins at him and winks very slowly and deliberately.

She stretches out a little more on the rock, now that she doesn't have to keep herself to one particular position, and trails a hand in the water. "That's a good idea. It'd be good to have refreshers even for those of us who know some of this stuff. Maybe held in the evenings, if people aren't too tired?" It'll be cooler, of course, and there'll be less work to do, along with the light staying longer. But at the same time, everyone tends to be exhausted at the end of a day.

Edited (gdi tenses) 2017-06-24 19:56 (UTC)

"Maybe we could do it at dinner. Rather than everyone going home for dinner one night, we could have some volunteers serve the meal for the people who want to come. Or even have a pot luck, let folks bring a bit of something to share. We've already got the chalkboard in the inn, I don't think it would be difficult to set up."

Even now, the village was so small that lacking something as pedestrian as a bulletin board was little deterrent to getting a message spread. Then again, the chalk board was right there; putting a date and time up would be simple enough.

"We used to do sessions like that on the station--over lunch, for the junior officers and staff." It had usually worked pretty well, though eating generally limits people's ability to take notes; note-taking isn't exactly as much of an issue here, really, now that Nerys thinks about it. Most of them have remarkably limited access to writing equipment, though there must surely be a way to make paper from old rags.

"Don't want to make it too intense, though, if people are eating. More like drip-feeding information until it sticks."

"Yeah, and the practical portion would obviously have to wait until everyone was done, but it's a good way to entice people into coming. Not that there's much else happening around here. We could get some people there just wanting entertainment," I say with a laugh.

For the sake of everyone's dignity, I keep my pants on as I scrub them. It's hot enough that it might even be nice to wear them on the way home, and not so far I'd need to worry about a rash.

"It might be worth it to see if the weather breaks first, though. The heat is a real energy killer."

"Hey, sometimes you get the best people from the folks who just show up for entertainment or the hell of it," Nerys says, thinking of her resistance cell. "Sometimes people don't know they have a real knack for something until they try it, and they've never had a reason to do it."

The heat makes her dip her feet back into the water after a few minutes, though not in the direct downstream path of where Mark is washing. She's got a couple of blisters at the moment, and she doesn't want them to get infected. "Have you been anywhere on Earth that had weather like this?" she asks. "Where it can be so cold and so hot within a few months?"

Nerys can pinpoint this kind of climate on Bajor with her eyes closed, but that doesn't do much for understanding what part of Earth this is like. Everyone seems to have a different theory.

I tilt my head, squinting in thought. "Well, technically the desert can go from hot to cold in the space of a day because of the low humidity, but this is something else. Mars was like that, too. But this—" I pause, bar of soap still in hand, and make a vague motion to the scenery around us. "This climate should not be having this kind of weather. I keep freaking people out by saying this, but the only thing that makes sense is a simulation. Unless we really are just on another planet that looks a hell of a lot like the Pacific Northwest."

"This isn't a desert," Nerys agrees with a faintly sardonic smile. She reaches into the water with a cupped hand, smirking faintly and shaking her head. After a moment, she draws the water up and splashes her face a little to clear off some sweat.

"You know, the simulation theory...you're not the first one I've heard that from. I'm not going to pretend it hasn't come to mind for me, either, but I can't fathom the amount of resources it would take to pull off. Or, for that matter, a plausible motive, though we've certainly encountered beings who don't think the way other sentients do."

"Motive's the trickiest part of the equation, and unless somebody very obviously tips their hand, I'm thinking it's probably the least likely to be answered anytime soon." Not that we've got much to go on with any part of the equation in question, but at least the how can have scientific theory applied to it. The why is a lot more tricky.

"You understand planetary physics," I continue with a motion Nerys' way. "For the people who don't, it's easier to buy that the sun started moving the wrong direction in the sky, but you and I and a few others know we wouldn't still be alive if that had actually happened."

"True. And really, the issue with my thinking that I've been well-indoctrinated by a very dedicated security constable, when it comes to problem solving." Odo's skepticism is pretty damn infectious, actually. Since she came to DS9 permanently, trying to think like he does has kept Nerys from putting her foot in her mouth even more frequently than she already does.

Doesn't mean that her instincts sometimes just win out, but here she's had more than enough time to think logically about the situation.

"It's probably all for the best that not everyone understands the stuff here that's scientifically impossible or implausible," she says. "The last thing any of us need is a group panic."

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Half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees [OTA]

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