Heckno12@Tortoise By the way, a question completely unrelated to anything 
What is the I.S.A. position on weed on ship?
What is the I.S.A. position on weed on ship?
Raylah
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Currently super swamped by work and having cold on the top of it, so posts will be delayed
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Cake didn’t respond right away and Elm noticed that the star on her tablet turned grey and minimized into a corner. She figured that the A.I. is busy elsewhere, probably assisting the crew with the ongoing mission, and since Elm’s request was hardly a priority, she just left a message in the system. Elm also sent a note to her two assistants about what happened and why the greenhouse is on lockdown. Greenhouse 7 was sealed shut and locked with her personal code, no one else should be able to access it until the matter with the murderous plant is resolved. She did this just in case her assistants wanted to play heroes. Nothing against being initiative, but the ship is going to an unexplored part of the galaxy, it is probably going to be hard to find replacement postgrad botany students there.
Originally she wanted to go straight into the lab and start working on the chemical to pacify Escallonia - even without the samples, she could prepare a general carrier substance and be ready to add specific substances later. But she realized she should probably go change as her uniform was torn in shreds, giving her rather ‘interesting’ appearance. She used a piece of cloth to wrap the wounds on her wrists and headed to her quarters.
As soon as she left the part of the ship where various laboratories were located, she noticed crewmembers running around, escorting several confused-looking people from the hangar towards the medical bay. Elm realized that these must be the hostages from the pirate ship and was pleased that no one seemed to be seriously hurt.
“That was a fast mission,” she mumbled as she got out of the way of a soldier carrying a young boy in his arms. She shook her head. “These pirates stop at nothing.” Selling a child to a slave market, what kind of a creature does that?
Even though Elm wanted to go right back to work, healing the injuries had taken a toll on her body and she felt exhausted. So she turned the UV lights on instead and took a long, refreshing nap.
When the Prize reached Deep Solar 3, Elm was just finishing checking the lab supplies one more time. Since they had an unexpected chance to resupply before finally going through the wormhole, she thought it would be wise to take a moment to go over it again, even though they have just recently started the mission. She added one or two items to the ship’s ‘shoplist’, absentmindedly scratching her wrist. The wound didn’t heal as fast as she had expected and it started to itch. Still, it wasn’t that serious to bother the medical crew with it.
Elm decided it would be better to distract herself and go check out the starbase. Heading through the airlock, she had met many crewmembers going the same direction, talking about visiting a bar or going shopping. Only part of the engineering crew remained on the ship to oversee the repairs the Prize had sustained while fighting the pirate vessel.
The base was quite busy, one could see many different species and hear lots of different languages. Elm headed to a wing where lots of small shops were located, selling everything imaginable - weird-looking food, electronic parts and techno-gadgets Elm wouldn’t understand in a million years, fancy clothes in all shapes and sizes and many other things. Nibbling on a piece of fried Tiger Tomatillo, a spicy descendant of an old terran tomato, she stopped at a shop selling various seeds and quietly browsed through the goods, lost in her thoughts.
Originally she wanted to go straight into the lab and start working on the chemical to pacify Escallonia - even without the samples, she could prepare a general carrier substance and be ready to add specific substances later. But she realized she should probably go change as her uniform was torn in shreds, giving her rather ‘interesting’ appearance. She used a piece of cloth to wrap the wounds on her wrists and headed to her quarters.
As soon as she left the part of the ship where various laboratories were located, she noticed crewmembers running around, escorting several confused-looking people from the hangar towards the medical bay. Elm realized that these must be the hostages from the pirate ship and was pleased that no one seemed to be seriously hurt.
“That was a fast mission,” she mumbled as she got out of the way of a soldier carrying a young boy in his arms. She shook her head. “These pirates stop at nothing.” Selling a child to a slave market, what kind of a creature does that?
Even though Elm wanted to go right back to work, healing the injuries had taken a toll on her body and she felt exhausted. So she turned the UV lights on instead and took a long, refreshing nap.
-----
When the Prize reached Deep Solar 3, Elm was just finishing checking the lab supplies one more time. Since they had an unexpected chance to resupply before finally going through the wormhole, she thought it would be wise to take a moment to go over it again, even though they have just recently started the mission. She added one or two items to the ship’s ‘shoplist’, absentmindedly scratching her wrist. The wound didn’t heal as fast as she had expected and it started to itch. Still, it wasn’t that serious to bother the medical crew with it.
Elm decided it would be better to distract herself and go check out the starbase. Heading through the airlock, she had met many crewmembers going the same direction, talking about visiting a bar or going shopping. Only part of the engineering crew remained on the ship to oversee the repairs the Prize had sustained while fighting the pirate vessel.
The base was quite busy, one could see many different species and hear lots of different languages. Elm headed to a wing where lots of small shops were located, selling everything imaginable - weird-looking food, electronic parts and techno-gadgets Elm wouldn’t understand in a million years, fancy clothes in all shapes and sizes and many other things. Nibbling on a piece of fried Tiger Tomatillo, a spicy descendant of an old terran tomato, she stopped at a shop selling various seeds and quietly browsed through the goods, lost in her thoughts.
Every crew of every ship in every show: "We will do whatever it takes to bring our fallen heroes back home to be buried there."
I.S.S. Prize crew: "Let's plant a grenade in this dead guy and drown our enemies in blood and intestines!"
I.S.S. Prize crew: "Let's plant a grenade in this dead guy and drown our enemies in blood and intestines!"
Poor Cake is going to be busy on all fronts. @datadogie Feel free to postpone solving the greenhouse crisis until the mission is over if you want to.
Elm leaned against the door to greenhouse 7 (after carefully checking that they are shut and locked) and closed her eyes, attempting to gather her thoughts and plan what to do next. She needed to update the greenhouse manifest with the new information about the murdering plant and add some extra warnings to the system. She had to check whatever wounds the creepers left on her skin. And most importantly, she needed to figure out a plan to get things in the greenhouse 7 in order, preferably without anyone getting hurt or eaten.
Simplest things first, she looked down on her wrist. Her bark-like skin was thicker than normal human skin and normally protected her from all scratches, bruises and lighter flesh wounds, but Escallonia’s sprouts were apparently designed to latch themselves onto trees and pierce through bark to get access to the sap. By ripping them off Elm had freed herself, but also tore the top layer of her skin off, revealing the soft tissue under it. Drops of viscous brown liquid formed at the edges of the injury, some dropping to the floor with a loud splatting noise. Elm stared at it for a few seconds, fascinated. It had been ages since she had seen her own blood. Her legs were in much better shape, as they were partially protected by the uniform which was now torn in several places.
She considered options for restoring order in the greenhouse. The simplest, but the most brutal one, was running the cleanup protocol designed to safely destroy everything inside and was supposed to be used when there was a danger that could spread to the entire ship. Elm had only seen one situation when this protocol was used in her lab at university, when one of the plant samples brought from a newly discovered planet started releasing highly toxic spores that quickly started to spread through the ventilation system. This situation was certainly not that dangerous and Elm wasn’t going to destroy everything in the greenhouse 7 just to get rid of one slightly aggressive plant.
If she had a sample she could create some chemical agent targeted specifically at Escallonia’s DNA. Ideally something that wouldn’t kill it, just put it to sleep or at least render it immobile for a period of time necessary to move it into ‘solitary’ - one of the isolated boxes located at the side of the greenhouse. Even though the plant tried to kill Elm, she didn’t hold a grudge against it, knowing it only followed its natural instincts. But the problem still remained - how to obtain the sample?
She nearly jumped up when her tablet suddenly started talking, roughly interrupting her thoughts. Several things ran through her mind, the first one was that she is either hallucinating from a shock she suffered, or that the plant had released some poison into her body and now she is starting to feel the effects. Fortunately she quickly realized that she wasn’t going crazy and it was just the ship’s AI talking to her.
Elm found it rather interesting for a computer of this importance to be allowed to have such ‘quirky’ personality but if the captain was OK with it, it wasn’t her place to criticize. “Thank you for your concern Cake. You know that I am always up for some adventures,” she joked, "but I am afraid that my presence on the mission would be more of a liability than an asset. And as for the medical staff, no need to bother them, my wounds should heal on their own. If they don’t, I will stop by when doctor Daniels returns.” Elm glanced at her wrist. The thick blood had already sealed the deepest part of the wound and would eventually grow into a new layer of skin if there is no infection or other complications.
“But,” Elm looked blue star twinkling on her tablet, which seemed closest to talking to Cake’s face, “there is something you could do for me. Would it be possible to reprogram one or more of the pollination drones to collect a sample of one of the plants? A part of the stem ideally, and two or three leaves for testing the agent distribution. Make sure the drones are careful though, I am not sure whether the plant reacts to heat signatures or just vibrations from nearby movement.”
@datadogie
Simplest things first, she looked down on her wrist. Her bark-like skin was thicker than normal human skin and normally protected her from all scratches, bruises and lighter flesh wounds, but Escallonia’s sprouts were apparently designed to latch themselves onto trees and pierce through bark to get access to the sap. By ripping them off Elm had freed herself, but also tore the top layer of her skin off, revealing the soft tissue under it. Drops of viscous brown liquid formed at the edges of the injury, some dropping to the floor with a loud splatting noise. Elm stared at it for a few seconds, fascinated. It had been ages since she had seen her own blood. Her legs were in much better shape, as they were partially protected by the uniform which was now torn in several places.
She considered options for restoring order in the greenhouse. The simplest, but the most brutal one, was running the cleanup protocol designed to safely destroy everything inside and was supposed to be used when there was a danger that could spread to the entire ship. Elm had only seen one situation when this protocol was used in her lab at university, when one of the plant samples brought from a newly discovered planet started releasing highly toxic spores that quickly started to spread through the ventilation system. This situation was certainly not that dangerous and Elm wasn’t going to destroy everything in the greenhouse 7 just to get rid of one slightly aggressive plant.
If she had a sample she could create some chemical agent targeted specifically at Escallonia’s DNA. Ideally something that wouldn’t kill it, just put it to sleep or at least render it immobile for a period of time necessary to move it into ‘solitary’ - one of the isolated boxes located at the side of the greenhouse. Even though the plant tried to kill Elm, she didn’t hold a grudge against it, knowing it only followed its natural instincts. But the problem still remained - how to obtain the sample?
She nearly jumped up when her tablet suddenly started talking, roughly interrupting her thoughts. Several things ran through her mind, the first one was that she is either hallucinating from a shock she suffered, or that the plant had released some poison into her body and now she is starting to feel the effects. Fortunately she quickly realized that she wasn’t going crazy and it was just the ship’s AI talking to her.
Elm found it rather interesting for a computer of this importance to be allowed to have such ‘quirky’ personality but if the captain was OK with it, it wasn’t her place to criticize. “Thank you for your concern Cake. You know that I am always up for some adventures,” she joked, "but I am afraid that my presence on the mission would be more of a liability than an asset. And as for the medical staff, no need to bother them, my wounds should heal on their own. If they don’t, I will stop by when doctor Daniels returns.” Elm glanced at her wrist. The thick blood had already sealed the deepest part of the wound and would eventually grow into a new layer of skin if there is no infection or other complications.
“But,” Elm looked blue star twinkling on her tablet, which seemed closest to talking to Cake’s face, “there is something you could do for me. Would it be possible to reprogram one or more of the pollination drones to collect a sample of one of the plants? A part of the stem ideally, and two or three leaves for testing the agent distribution. Make sure the drones are careful though, I am not sure whether the plant reacts to heat signatures or just vibrations from nearby movement.”
@datadogie
@MST3K 4ever I am not sure but wasnt Moray the passenger transport and not the big pirate ship?
Well she does eat other plants, I think she would mostly be overprotective of trees, or at least chopping them down without really good reasons. Other plants would probably be to her like animals are to us just like Jeyma said - if you really need part of them for something, go ahead and use them.
<Snipped quote by Starlance>
I mean, I'm sure Elm does too.
Well, you never know what is hiding in one of those greenhouses. I can totally imagine her being the secret weed dealer for the entire ship
<Snipped quote by Raylah>
But maybe the pirates have like, um... a botanical garden? A pirate one?
Okay yeah, maybe Elm isn't super relevant to this one.
Well if you find something interesting, bring it back to the ship, I will plant it somewhere
Elm stretched her body on the bed, enjoying the warm light coming from the light emitters on the ceiling. While the lights were carefully calibrated to mimic the light conditions on her home planet Vathul, still lying under a strip lighting was hardly the same as basking in the afternoon sun, smelling the grass and having wind play with the leaves on her head. But you can’t have everything, especially here in the cold darkness of space.
She closed her eyes for a few more moments, carefully thinking about what she had planned for today. The Prize was finally supposed to pass through the wormhole to the unexplored part of the galaxy, but until they come across a planet with a stable atmosphere and existing flora, that was of little consequence to Elm. Her plan for the day was pretty much the same as the previous days since she joined the crew of the Prize - trying to put the botany lab and the associated greenhouses into some order, with a few breaks for stopping in the mess hall to get some sustenance and hopefully meet other members of the crew. Her kind was an extremely rare sight in the ISA space as they preferred to be left alone on Vathul, and a lot of people were intimidated by her tree-like appearance. Elm had already gotten used to people staring at her from her time on the Mars university and it didn’t bother her at all.
The botany lab was another matter entirely. The previous leading botanist, an elderly human doctor Rybanski, was no doubt a brilliant and accomplished scientist, but he had absolutely no system in his work. His notes were one big chaos, the projects weren’t categorized or often even labeled, and the greenhouses apparently went on completely unattended, some turning into jungles. Elm didn’t even have time yet to visit each of them - checking the last one, according to the incomplete notes filled with various tropical specimens, was on today’s to-do list.
Finally she got up, dressing in a version of the ship’s science crew uniform, tailored specifically for the Lavathulin body constitution. She clipped off a few tiny sprouts that appeared on her body overnight. While for most of her kind it was common to leave the shoots unattended at least until leaves have started to appear on them, Elm found it inconvenient and also unappealing. Especially after seeing how much care do human females take of their bodies, carefully removing all hair, she thought it would be appropriate to do the same.
She stopped over at the mess hall to get a quick breakfast and while munching on her favorite broccoli, she used her tablet to check new messages. Apparently the ship wasn’t going through the wormhole today, due to assisting with some pirate problem. On one hand she was glad that she had more time to get the lab in order, but on the other hand she was worried about the crewmembers getting hurt in action or hostages being killed by the pirates. Since there was nothing she could possibly do to help, she tried to stop thinking about it and got to work.
Her assistants, two postgraduate students were busy tidying and categorizing greenhouse 2 - the arctic and subarctic flora samples so she went to greenhouse 7 on her own. The air was hot and the humidity was over 90%. The conditions were maintained automatically by the ship’s computer based on the given parameters, ensuring that the plants will not die even when unattended for longer periods of time. While Elm enjoyed humid environments, the temperature here was a bit too high for her. But the plants in greenhouse 7 apparently thrived, turning the room into a tropical jungle. The sounds of insects and birds were replaced by quiet whirring - tiny drones were flying around, taking care of pollination, which allowed the plants to reproduce and take over the greenhouse.
Elm walked around, making notes into her tablet. She recognized most plants and checked them in the incomplete greenhouse manifest. Some more delicate species sadly didn’t survive in the new competitive environment. A beautiful purple blossom caught her eye. It was hanging from a liana wrapped around a tree branch. Elm had never seen that kind before and came closer to observe it more carefully. She noticed that the plant was rather extensive, its creepers sprawling around, climbing nearby trees and bushes. There was no label anywhere and none of the images in the manifest resembled the plant. There was one name without an image - Escallonia villanosa, with a vague description that could possibly match the plant - ‘climber with beautiful blossoms’. Other than that, the note only contained a couple of big red exclamation marks. Elm stood under the plant, trying to find some more information about Escallonia anywhere in the ship logs or scientific literature available in the archives, but apparently it was some new species that doctor Rybanski discovered, named and didn’t report anywhere.
She used her tablet to clip a few images, taking notes about the structure of the blossom and unique leaf texture. Fully emerged in her work, she didn’t really pay much attention to her surroundings. When she stepped back to make a picture from a greater distance, she tripped over something and fell down. As soon as her body hit the ground, she could feel light tickling, as something crawled around her legs and arms. The long creepers were moving towards her, trying to wrap around her body. Elm froze, trying to figure out what to do. If the plant was carnivorous, it was most likely very hungry after such a long time. The fact that Elm’s body wasn’t really made of flesh didn’t seem to bother it. Maybe it was just a parasitic organism used to latch itself onto other plant life and feed off them? There were many known cases of such plants. The best method to fight the parasites was usually simply manually removing them from the host, but some cases required more complicated approaches like creating chemical or biological agents to fight the parasite on the cellular level.
Elm snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that her racial tendency to overthink things is going to cost her her life. She needed to act now and think later. Jumping up, she tore the creepers from around her legs and wrists, shouting out in pain as they took part of her bark with them, leaving long but fortunately shallow wounds behind. She had to crouch to avoid low-hanging branches as she sprinted out of the greenhouse, quickly shutting the door behind her. While catching her breath, the normally calm Elm cursed doctor Rybanski, deciding to be much more careful from now on.
And as for greenhouse 7, one of her assistants will surely be glad to take care of sorting things out in there.
She closed her eyes for a few more moments, carefully thinking about what she had planned for today. The Prize was finally supposed to pass through the wormhole to the unexplored part of the galaxy, but until they come across a planet with a stable atmosphere and existing flora, that was of little consequence to Elm. Her plan for the day was pretty much the same as the previous days since she joined the crew of the Prize - trying to put the botany lab and the associated greenhouses into some order, with a few breaks for stopping in the mess hall to get some sustenance and hopefully meet other members of the crew. Her kind was an extremely rare sight in the ISA space as they preferred to be left alone on Vathul, and a lot of people were intimidated by her tree-like appearance. Elm had already gotten used to people staring at her from her time on the Mars university and it didn’t bother her at all.
The botany lab was another matter entirely. The previous leading botanist, an elderly human doctor Rybanski, was no doubt a brilliant and accomplished scientist, but he had absolutely no system in his work. His notes were one big chaos, the projects weren’t categorized or often even labeled, and the greenhouses apparently went on completely unattended, some turning into jungles. Elm didn’t even have time yet to visit each of them - checking the last one, according to the incomplete notes filled with various tropical specimens, was on today’s to-do list.
Finally she got up, dressing in a version of the ship’s science crew uniform, tailored specifically for the Lavathulin body constitution. She clipped off a few tiny sprouts that appeared on her body overnight. While for most of her kind it was common to leave the shoots unattended at least until leaves have started to appear on them, Elm found it inconvenient and also unappealing. Especially after seeing how much care do human females take of their bodies, carefully removing all hair, she thought it would be appropriate to do the same.
She stopped over at the mess hall to get a quick breakfast and while munching on her favorite broccoli, she used her tablet to check new messages. Apparently the ship wasn’t going through the wormhole today, due to assisting with some pirate problem. On one hand she was glad that she had more time to get the lab in order, but on the other hand she was worried about the crewmembers getting hurt in action or hostages being killed by the pirates. Since there was nothing she could possibly do to help, she tried to stop thinking about it and got to work.
Her assistants, two postgraduate students were busy tidying and categorizing greenhouse 2 - the arctic and subarctic flora samples so she went to greenhouse 7 on her own. The air was hot and the humidity was over 90%. The conditions were maintained automatically by the ship’s computer based on the given parameters, ensuring that the plants will not die even when unattended for longer periods of time. While Elm enjoyed humid environments, the temperature here was a bit too high for her. But the plants in greenhouse 7 apparently thrived, turning the room into a tropical jungle. The sounds of insects and birds were replaced by quiet whirring - tiny drones were flying around, taking care of pollination, which allowed the plants to reproduce and take over the greenhouse.
Elm walked around, making notes into her tablet. She recognized most plants and checked them in the incomplete greenhouse manifest. Some more delicate species sadly didn’t survive in the new competitive environment. A beautiful purple blossom caught her eye. It was hanging from a liana wrapped around a tree branch. Elm had never seen that kind before and came closer to observe it more carefully. She noticed that the plant was rather extensive, its creepers sprawling around, climbing nearby trees and bushes. There was no label anywhere and none of the images in the manifest resembled the plant. There was one name without an image - Escallonia villanosa, with a vague description that could possibly match the plant - ‘climber with beautiful blossoms’. Other than that, the note only contained a couple of big red exclamation marks. Elm stood under the plant, trying to find some more information about Escallonia anywhere in the ship logs or scientific literature available in the archives, but apparently it was some new species that doctor Rybanski discovered, named and didn’t report anywhere.
She used her tablet to clip a few images, taking notes about the structure of the blossom and unique leaf texture. Fully emerged in her work, she didn’t really pay much attention to her surroundings. When she stepped back to make a picture from a greater distance, she tripped over something and fell down. As soon as her body hit the ground, she could feel light tickling, as something crawled around her legs and arms. The long creepers were moving towards her, trying to wrap around her body. Elm froze, trying to figure out what to do. If the plant was carnivorous, it was most likely very hungry after such a long time. The fact that Elm’s body wasn’t really made of flesh didn’t seem to bother it. Maybe it was just a parasitic organism used to latch itself onto other plant life and feed off them? There were many known cases of such plants. The best method to fight the parasites was usually simply manually removing them from the host, but some cases required more complicated approaches like creating chemical or biological agents to fight the parasite on the cellular level.
Elm snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that her racial tendency to overthink things is going to cost her her life. She needed to act now and think later. Jumping up, she tore the creepers from around her legs and wrists, shouting out in pain as they took part of her bark with them, leaving long but fortunately shallow wounds behind. She had to crouch to avoid low-hanging branches as she sprinted out of the greenhouse, quickly shutting the door behind her. While catching her breath, the normally calm Elm cursed doctor Rybanski, deciding to be much more careful from now on.
And as for greenhouse 7, one of her assistants will surely be glad to take care of sorting things out in there.
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