Bullshit. He wants to say. All of that is bullshit. He refrains, leaning against a wall instead, observing Lo, taking in how tired she looks, how unhinged. This incident has shook everyone to their core, that much is obvious. Not that it surprises Julien, death isn’t exactly the easiest to process, specially not when guilt lurks in the corners.
“Hmm….” It seemed that this was an official statement. Julien hadn’t come to Lo with the intention for an interview, he didn’t need statements from the crew….Yet. He had planned to give them some time to process what had happened but if Lo was ready to talk, he wasn’t going to stop her. “Well, doctor Liang, it seems to me that the safest strategy…” He makes air quotes. “Should’ve been discussed prior to this incident, don’t you think? I’m aware that the situation we are in isn’t common but we do have precedent of another crew exploring a planet, some safety measures should’ve been learned from that mission” He looks down at his tablet, taking a couple of notes, nothing too relevant. “What is your comment on that? Cause to me, someone who doesn’t know much about space missions, it seems that the crew is not in the same page regarding security.”
Lo has to resist rolling her eyes, instead steeling herself and clenching her jaw. She keeps her tone even, unfazed, and nods. “I am, of course, referring to the safest strategy in response to what happened. Safety measures were already in place prior to the incident, with protocol based — as you say — on the precedent set by INFERNO IX.” Lo lets her shoulders relax, trying to figure out her exit strategy, trying to mask her discomfort with speaking to Julien. She did not want to compromise the mission in any way, say something that would end up fucking them, but she wasn’t trained in this — hence her strange, robotic stance toward discussion with Julien. She was always fearful something might be used against her. Despite that, she is able, with great effort, to relax her voice.
“Unique circumstances require unique considerations, for which INFERNO IX can offer no blueprint. That’s my comment. As someone who does know a lot about space missions.” Lo pauses momentarily, casts her eyes downward, then back up. “You can try asking me later, but I won’t tell you anything different. That’s all you’re getting from me.”
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.
“Finally. Thank you,” Nil sighed. He was beginning to think he was the only one with some common sense on inter-species communication until Lo spoke up. Someone on his side. He made a mental note of that for later.
“We can always go back to grab them if need be. They weren’t too far away, and with the state of decomposition of that monkey by the lake, they should be there for a while.” Nil dried his hands and leaned against the sink. “Though, really, if we do go back out there, I think we should make a case for no super soldiers accompanying us.”
“The soldiers are disruptive,” she agreed. “I don’t want to put individuals into quarantine because of excessive contamination, and these geniuses will no doubt get themselves -- or others -- in big trouble.” They were able to send the people in question to decontamination this time, but the official procedure -- if they had continued exposure -- would require something more involved. Lo wanted to avoid that at all costs.
“The goal of this mission is to assess, to gather information, to identify and catalogue life forms. And we can’t do that if they go around killing everything.” Lo walked closer to Nil, toward the sinks, then run her hands under the scalding water.
“I swear, one of them lifts a gun to maim or kill another living creature and I’m advocating they stay back on all research excursions. Period. Let them shoot holes in the ship and see how Captain Davies takes to that.”
He looks down at his tablet with a frown. He is supposed to write a report on things, document every moment spent on the ship, write a pretty story for the world to hear. It’s meant to be hopeful, heroic, is meant to be a wonderful story about hot wonderful people worked very hard to give the people on Earth their new home. It’s supposed to have a happy ending. A dead body is not a happy ending. It doesn’t fit in the narrative that Julien knows the politicians want, it doesn’t fit in the little basket with a bow that they want.
Did they had to get someone killed this early in the mission? It’s a cruel thing to think, he knows as much but he still thinks it, still feels the annoyance of it all. How do you document a dead in a story about hope and the start of new possibilities? Specially if what caused that dead is part of the planet that is supposed the best gift humanity has ever gotten?
“Hmm?” He looks up when he hears a voice, the frown in his face remaining there. Lo is the one talking to him and while he notes the concern in her voice, from the looks of it, he is the one that should be worried about her. “I’m fine.” He means it. Dead wasn’t exactly uncommon around him, people on Earth died all the time, usually at the consequences of their own actions and this didn’t seem that different and it wasn’t as if he was close to the one that had gotten themselves killed. “You….Don’t seem to be holding up that great. No offence.”
“I’m fine,” Lo echoes. It’s all she knows how to do. Plunge forward. There also remains the small fact that Lo is aware Julien is writing, documenting, recording. She knows how this will look. She knows how her panic might appear -- and she knows his loyalties likely don’t lie with them as individuals, but with the audience he serves. And if she feeds into the drama, she’ll be giving him a story. The wrong kind of story.
“From a personal and professional standpoint. Scientists are working in tandem with Captain Davies and the soldiers in order to determine the safest strategy.” She is speaking in her official report voice, the understanding being that she won’t be revealing anything further in terms of the confidential information currently being weighed by her, Scott, and Captain Davies. Lo has a general distrust toward media, and Julien is allied with the feds, which makes her bristle.
he shuffles a deck between his fingers as he lays in bed. jesus christ, this mission was a shit show. he feels totally unqualified to say anything at this point. doesn’t want to underminie the scientists but should they get the fuck out of here? clearly it’s too dangerous to live her. or at least, not without a fucking army to wipe out these disgusting creatures. but he knows some of these people will argue against that, too. mckinley doesn’t even know what to think at this point. doesn’t want to get too involved in something he knows nothing about.
he hears lo muttering, and looks down from his top bunk. she’s not there, but when he pulls himself up, she’s there, looking like total shit. but they all do. “someone’s dead.” he shrugs, frowning. “someone’s dead and we’re all stuck on this ship knowing we all could have done better. and i know this isn’t going to be the last terrible choice we make, but i just pray we don’t land another death.” he wasn’t fully a man of god, but in times like these, god seemed like the only thing to make sense.
“we all need to be in quarantine,” lo thinks aloud, the position she has been advocating since it escaped. “but at this point, this is quarantine. everything is contaminated. this whole place is fucked.” she wipes a hand across her face again, as if trying to smear it all away, but the anger keeps coming.
“i can’t believe they shot at it,” lo goes on. “what a welcome fucking introduction -- no wonder it attacked. we could’ve captured it. that’s the priority, isn’t it? study life. preserve life. bring back specimens. we need to know all we can, and we don’t get that from shooting at things.” she doesn’t care that she’s rambling, she doesn’t care that these are thoughts she has communicated already, she doesn’t care about stirring things up at this point. they need to make a decision, and she knows what side she is on. the side of science.
“soldiers are a liability at this point. they killed a creature, they pissed off another. blue’s death is on the hands of that other one -- bailey. soldier bailey.”
when: the morning after the incident / blue’s death
where: sleeping quarters
status: open
Though she sits on her bed, Lo has not actually been able to sleep since it happened. She is running on fumes. The creature is still loose, but they have more information. It seems impervious to most things: It caught fire, but was not killed. It spat out bullets. Tranquilizers had no effect. It grows rapidly. She is borderline talking to herself, just low murmurs, when she notices someone come in. “We’ve got one soldier in medical who looks like she stayed too long on the grill,” Lo grumbles, and then her tone drops lower, “and a casualty.” She repeats this in disbelief. She repeats this to process it.
She runs a hand roughly across her face, letting herself hide behind it a moment. The stress of space is sinking in. Someone has died because of her decision — her research. It was her order. Incubate the specimen. Her heart feels like it has stalled in her chest. She’s trying to be better about breathing, but it’s hard, and so she stops to take a few deep ones. In and out. In and out. Then she turns to the person beside her. “How are you holding up?”
When: 4 hours after the crew returned to the inferno
Where: The Mess Hall
Open Starter
Ryker had woken up from his cryosleep late, there had to have been a bug in the system or something. Otherwise, he would have woken up with the rest of them. But no, here he was, catching up on the expedition and the attack. He was frustrated that his pod had malfunctioned and caused him to miss out on so much. He knows there’s not much he could have done, but he can’t shake the idea that he should have been on the expedition team.
“I should have been with the rest of the crew.” He sits in the mess hall, tray in front of him, but he isn’t hungry. When the words come out of his mouth, he’s mostly talking to himself, forgetting that he’s thinking allowed. “I’m trained in combat, I could have helped! I should have been there.”
His exclamation is soft, as he realizes that people can indeed hear him. He doesn’t want to startle anyone.
Lo had moved on from coffee to actual food, though she could barely swallow it down. She kept thinking of the samples they had lost, of the organisms in the water, of the samples going through the machinery back in the lab. She had half a mind to camp there, waiting for the chem results to come back. Instead, she was still in the mess hall, trying to will herself to eat something, when Ryker spoke. She hadn’t even noticed him come in -- the world was tuned out.
“If it isn’t Sleeping Beauty,” Lo announced, dropping her fork with a clang. “Sorry. Insensitive?”
Combat. Yeah, they had a little too much of that. What they needed were more individuals with scientific concerns -- and an intern with steadier footing. “It was a clusterfuck. Ended up with three people who needed decontamination. We’ll see how the tests come back.”
☓
location: bathing quarters, immediately after the research expedition
status: OPEN
Renzo furiously scrubbed his hands beneath the running water. While his skin never made any actual contact with the dead body, nor the eggs that sprouted from its decapitated head, he couldn’t get the sensation of what they felt like out of his head. It was a nervous habit, if anything.
“This isn’t the way that we need to be researching this area!” He muttered to himself, mostly, but at the presence of someone else joining him in the small quarters, his voice became louder. “If anyone had bothered to listen to me, we wouldn’t have an alien carcass on board with us. Killing an innocent creature isn’t okay!”
Lo had already clawed herself halfway out of the suit. It sloped off her shoulders, bottom half still clinging. She hadn’t seen the vertebrate yet, but she was secretly excited by the opportunity to take a closer look. It wasn’t ideal that they hadn’t found the creature dead, instead had actually made it so, but it still presented a valuable research opportunity. She paused.
“I agree,” Lo said. “Both counts.” She pulled on a loosed strand of hair, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. She needed to get herself cleaned. Even with the protective suit, her medical training was kicking in. “Meanwhile, we didn’t even collect any of the aquatic organisms.” Just dead things.
When: One hour after the crew returned to the Inferno
Where: The Mess Hall
Open Starter
Twinges of disappointment had tugged at the edges of her mind all day. A few of them had to stay back with the ship, it would have been irresponsible to have done otherwise, and she was aware that she didn’t bring much to the table for an exploratory mission unless some gear was broken along the way. However while she was aware of that fact, she couldn’t help the feelings of discontent that crept in when she watched the majority of the crew take off in the shuttle to go exploring the world they had all traveled so far to see.
As soon as the crew came back curiosity began to gnaw at her. Despite knowing the captain was going to hold a debriefing that evening, Mila decided to plant herself in the mess hall, sipping a cup of coffee as she waited for someone to meander in. She didn’t have to wait long.
“So,” she started, not seeing any point in exchanging pleasantries when they walked into the kitchen area, “What was it like down there?”
Lo had returned to the Inferno cold and wet, sweat sliding down her spine. Moisture gathered in all the wrong places. While they were on gaia.01278 she could focus on other things — Nova, for one, tripping into an alien corpse. Back on the ship, she let herself release a string of curse words as she thought back to what they had seen in the water. Aquatic. Craniate. No limbs. No gills. No tell-tale features of chordates. Phosphorescent. Her biggest regret was that she hadn’t grabbed a sample or gone toward the forest, where Khan and others had run into actual vertebrates. And then killed one.
Now, Lo had her skinsuit pulled inelegantly off and slapped into a slick pile. It came off with great effort, the mesh coming away from her skin with an audible slurp of releasing suction. Lo had stripped to the flesh, then pulled on whatever was closest to her. A grey sweatsuit. That was what she wore when she arrived at the mess hall. Noticing what Mila was nursing, Lo fixed herself a warm cup of coffee. No sugar.
“It was,” Lo stopped, considering her words, “fucking metal.”
She felt as if everything was sticking to her; every bit of dust that hung in the air, the tiny droplets they all exhaled into it. Lo curled her bare toes and took a healthy swallow.
“At least we know something about the organisms on this planet. Even if one did pickpocket Khan.”
001. ╱ CHILDHOOD: Lo likes to get to the meat of it quickly. Tumors on her spine. Cancer. Very sad. Bald head, rigid muscles, spine crooked and terrible. She learned the medical processes through them being enacted on her. Lo could spell spinal cord glioblastoma far before most kids could spell alphabet. Her eyes became trained to assess medical imaging. The story they told was grim. Cancer woven between the spinal tissues. Impossible to remove without eviscerating her spinal cord. Then a man in wire-rimmed glasses chewing on his lip and telling her, in syrupy tones, that she was lucky. A miracle. When Lo was only ten, she became one of few children selected to receive experimental bionic transplants (ranging from spinal cords to eyes to femur bones), donated by an anonymous corporation. They disassembled her and put her back together, this time cancer-free.
002. ╱ EDUCATION: Before she knew of careers beyond the ones seen on television and in books – binaries like cop, criminal or sick person, doctor – Lo wanted to be a physician. She studied Biology, which she thought would be a precursor to medicine. Lo’s reputation was that of a party-girl, in a relatively tame sense – the type to crack bad, raunchy jokes, the type to drink a little too much and get people to play absurd games, the type to giggle all night long. For her Masters, Lo wrote her thesis on plant microbial fuel cells. The work went on to be published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, and this esteem earned her a spot at a coveted Bioengineering Doctorate Program. Lo’s life became primarily dedicated to work. She racked up multiple PhDs in biosystems engineering and archaeology, specializing in fuel and feed sources, bioarchaeology, and xenoarchaeology. Lo was working as an Imaging Researcher and doing contract work at an IOT start-up when she was contacted by The Company. That was where she met her husband.
003. ╱ RELATIONSHIPS: All was well for a while after they were married. A few months of bliss. [ C L A S S I F I E D ] Then Lo began an affair with another member of The Company (quite an incestuous organization). They had plans to stay together, but the individual was then selected for the INFERNO IX mission. [ C L A S S I F I E D ]
004. ╱ THE COMPANY: Lo had been with the company for a few years when the INFERNO IX exploration took place. About to turn forty, Lo figured it would be the only shot she got – and she wasn’t selected. Despair only tightened its grip on her. While Lo obviously had hoped she would be selected for INFERNO X, she never truly believed she would be viable – until her ex-husband personally recommended her for the opportunity. She still wonders why he did it. If he thought it would be beneficial for him if she were transported far away, to a different planet. If it was a peace offering. If he simply knew, in a detached way, that she was perfect for the position. Either way, she is thankful. Either way, she doesn’t forgive him.
005. ╱ BRIEF: Lo owes a lot to science. Her life, for one. Her presence on INFERNO X. Lo’s cultivated exterior belies little of what is going on beneath. She believes in maintaining a positive disposition in order to keep things afloat. She believes that a bad joke diffuses a room like nothing else. She believes in keeping busy, moving, and entertained. There is something of her mother in her – the bit of Amina that wants to instigate drinking games, wants to make everyone play along, challenges herself to crack a smile on even the most reluctant of faces. Many have suffered through Lo’s games of Pen-in-Cup or Who Am I? or Never Have I Ever. She has an attitude that allows her to get away with it (well, mostly). People can tell Lo doesn’t take herself very seriously. From the pot-shots at herself to the “I CAN’T KEEP CALM I’M AN ENGINEER” t-shirt, Lo herself is fair game. The one thing she values, above all, is her work. She views herself as a vessel for research, and as an agent for science, more than she does an individual. There are dual sides of her. One is Lo: fun-loving, self-deprecating, buoyant. The other is science itself, and it is black-and-white in its unflinching assessments. That side is more important. That side is what brought her here.
STATISTICS ╱ TRAITS
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