Post by Heron on Aug 6, 2018 3:41:58 GMT
"Okay, so I have my hatchet still. And my pickaxe. Hammer. Even building materials and some tools. It looks like everything I had in my backpack at the time is still here," Jenna mused, digging through the battered olive drab thing to sort through the improbable assortment stuffed inside.
She also had weapons, tranquilized live animals, and several thousand pounds of lumber tucked inside. Some of the local residents had referred to her backpack as a 'bag of holding', but Jenna didn't really know much about the mechanics of how it worked. It just always had. "I think I also have the ingredients for the cure, taming, and tranquilizing tonics, if I can find a proper medical lab somewhere."
Cure? Could this cure from your world help Janni, do you suppose?
"Well, that's what I'm hoping." Jenna smiled sideways at Vanna, so glad to have a voice talking back for once, even if that voice was inside her head. "Although you've been doing an awesome job of keeping her upright. This plague she's got is something ugly, and near as I can tell, it isn't natural. It's as bad as, if not worse than, the engineered super-plague that all but ended my world. I need a lab before I can do any research or experimentation, though, and...well."
The redhead gestured at the expanse of wilderness around them. On the border between forest and foothill, with just the barest hint of flat grassland, there was little sign of the kind of technology Jenna needed for a task of this magnitude.
Problematic, yes. But you're an experienced builder, are you not?
Jenna laughed. "I can't build that! ...again. Although... You and Janni do need some kind of shelter, and so do I, for that matter. You're right, though, I survived back home...my old home, by building what I needed. I can do that again."
Heartened by the Nadur's gentle reminders, Jenna started pulling things out of her pack. Yes, the sum total well exceeded what her backpack ought to have been able to carry and there was yet more within, but that was how things worked where she hailed from. She started with getting a basic workbench together, since she'd need it to work on everything else.
It took all of her available tools to get the workspace built. The workspace itself was necessary to get the timber for the workshop measured and cut, since aside from a working space the workshop also provided a small shed for storage and, in a pinch, somewhere to toss her bedroll.
From there, it was time to scavenge.
Vanna and even Janni, the Firemane still feverish and a little weak today, proved helpful in searching out Teragaian substitutes for the things Jenna had needed back on Apocalypse Earth. The Illogical Field itself was an unlikely ally as well, not so much in that it was trying to be helpful. Jenna was just used to repurposing everything. So the tree the trio found from which hung all manner of weather vanes... Jenna picked a great many of them. One became a grappling hook and the rest became scrap metal for other projects.
A bush they found some distance of wandering away grew a fair quantity of fabric. Eye-searing hot magenta and acid green tartan fabric, but fabric, and Jenna was too used to desperation that she gathered that too. Likewise, a little bit of everything they came across.
When they got back to the workshop, Jenna had the materials to put together an animal shelter tall enough for an Arabian horse, even when the horse's mane was made of fire, and Vanna talked the equine into standing beneath it and resting while Jenna pursued other projects.
Vanna and Janni awoke the next morning to find that Jenna was half-finished building a house. Which would have been impossible if she'd been building a fancy house with amenities, but this was a very basic cabin. It had a shale floor, log walls, cut-out windows. No door. And still no roof, because they'd not found tiles to stack on top.
I see someone was industrious while we slept.
"Helps me keep my mind from spinning off the rails, working." Jenna put the finishing touches on a door that would be useless without hinges and set it aside. "I spent five, six, seven? A lot of years alone. And I wasn't the last human standing, I...don't think, although with the mutagenic nature of the plague I actually might have been, I don't know. Five years I spent holed up in a research facility trying to find ways to turn myself into some kind of expert on how to cure the plague and all I managed to do was watch everyone die, and finally I ran out of supplies. Figured I could fly the shuttle to some other lab and see if anyone else made it. Figured wrong. Crashed the shuttle, and that was pretty spectacular. Turns out I'm a better pilot if you put me in a hot air balloon. But in all the time I was out in the wilderness blazing trails and being some great adventurer...if I wanted to hear a human voice, I had to talk to myself. The survivors in places like Corpse Harbor – and the name of that place should tell you something – were just...grim, warped, silent, haggard scarecrows in gas masks, holding shotguns like they expected me to turn into a mutant zombie and attack them at any moment when they were more than halfway there themselves. Not a single word. I was my only conversation for however long I was out there, and I can't tell you how long that was, not really, just that it was a significant amount of time. I built entire settlements and watched my rescued animals reproduce more than once. It's not a precise measuring stick, but it's a measuring stick, right? ...sorry, I realize I'm babbling, I just..."
It really has been a long time, hasn't it. For you, having someone to talk to.
Jenna chuckled self-consciously. "Yeah, it really has. I, uh, sometimes I wonder how sane I really still am. Then I realize where I ended up and that may not actually matter."
The Illogical Field does have its moments, true. Vanna stood and stretched, loosening her small, deer-shaped body for the day ahead. However, now is the time to stop and eat something. You've worked long enough.
She also had weapons, tranquilized live animals, and several thousand pounds of lumber tucked inside. Some of the local residents had referred to her backpack as a 'bag of holding', but Jenna didn't really know much about the mechanics of how it worked. It just always had. "I think I also have the ingredients for the cure, taming, and tranquilizing tonics, if I can find a proper medical lab somewhere."
Cure? Could this cure from your world help Janni, do you suppose?
"Well, that's what I'm hoping." Jenna smiled sideways at Vanna, so glad to have a voice talking back for once, even if that voice was inside her head. "Although you've been doing an awesome job of keeping her upright. This plague she's got is something ugly, and near as I can tell, it isn't natural. It's as bad as, if not worse than, the engineered super-plague that all but ended my world. I need a lab before I can do any research or experimentation, though, and...well."
The redhead gestured at the expanse of wilderness around them. On the border between forest and foothill, with just the barest hint of flat grassland, there was little sign of the kind of technology Jenna needed for a task of this magnitude.
Problematic, yes. But you're an experienced builder, are you not?
Jenna laughed. "I can't build that! ...again. Although... You and Janni do need some kind of shelter, and so do I, for that matter. You're right, though, I survived back home...my old home, by building what I needed. I can do that again."
Heartened by the Nadur's gentle reminders, Jenna started pulling things out of her pack. Yes, the sum total well exceeded what her backpack ought to have been able to carry and there was yet more within, but that was how things worked where she hailed from. She started with getting a basic workbench together, since she'd need it to work on everything else.
It took all of her available tools to get the workspace built. The workspace itself was necessary to get the timber for the workshop measured and cut, since aside from a working space the workshop also provided a small shed for storage and, in a pinch, somewhere to toss her bedroll.
From there, it was time to scavenge.
Vanna and even Janni, the Firemane still feverish and a little weak today, proved helpful in searching out Teragaian substitutes for the things Jenna had needed back on Apocalypse Earth. The Illogical Field itself was an unlikely ally as well, not so much in that it was trying to be helpful. Jenna was just used to repurposing everything. So the tree the trio found from which hung all manner of weather vanes... Jenna picked a great many of them. One became a grappling hook and the rest became scrap metal for other projects.
A bush they found some distance of wandering away grew a fair quantity of fabric. Eye-searing hot magenta and acid green tartan fabric, but fabric, and Jenna was too used to desperation that she gathered that too. Likewise, a little bit of everything they came across.
When they got back to the workshop, Jenna had the materials to put together an animal shelter tall enough for an Arabian horse, even when the horse's mane was made of fire, and Vanna talked the equine into standing beneath it and resting while Jenna pursued other projects.
Vanna and Janni awoke the next morning to find that Jenna was half-finished building a house. Which would have been impossible if she'd been building a fancy house with amenities, but this was a very basic cabin. It had a shale floor, log walls, cut-out windows. No door. And still no roof, because they'd not found tiles to stack on top.
I see someone was industrious while we slept.
"Helps me keep my mind from spinning off the rails, working." Jenna put the finishing touches on a door that would be useless without hinges and set it aside. "I spent five, six, seven? A lot of years alone. And I wasn't the last human standing, I...don't think, although with the mutagenic nature of the plague I actually might have been, I don't know. Five years I spent holed up in a research facility trying to find ways to turn myself into some kind of expert on how to cure the plague and all I managed to do was watch everyone die, and finally I ran out of supplies. Figured I could fly the shuttle to some other lab and see if anyone else made it. Figured wrong. Crashed the shuttle, and that was pretty spectacular. Turns out I'm a better pilot if you put me in a hot air balloon. But in all the time I was out in the wilderness blazing trails and being some great adventurer...if I wanted to hear a human voice, I had to talk to myself. The survivors in places like Corpse Harbor – and the name of that place should tell you something – were just...grim, warped, silent, haggard scarecrows in gas masks, holding shotguns like they expected me to turn into a mutant zombie and attack them at any moment when they were more than halfway there themselves. Not a single word. I was my only conversation for however long I was out there, and I can't tell you how long that was, not really, just that it was a significant amount of time. I built entire settlements and watched my rescued animals reproduce more than once. It's not a precise measuring stick, but it's a measuring stick, right? ...sorry, I realize I'm babbling, I just..."
It really has been a long time, hasn't it. For you, having someone to talk to.
Jenna chuckled self-consciously. "Yeah, it really has. I, uh, sometimes I wonder how sane I really still am. Then I realize where I ended up and that may not actually matter."
The Illogical Field does have its moments, true. Vanna stood and stretched, loosening her small, deer-shaped body for the day ahead. However, now is the time to stop and eat something. You've worked long enough.
