come_sailaway | [Open] Love, Blood, and Rhetoric

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[Open] Love, Blood, and Rhetoric

Who: Palamedes Sextus and you!
What: Blood science!!
When: Early February
Where: The infirmary, or anywhere you feel like finding Pal
Warnings: As you might have guessed, there's blood.

[I. He Blinded Me With Science]

For months now, anyone who enters the Serena Eterna infirmary would have noticed the set of test tubes and petri dishes lined up in one corner of the room’s counter, and labeled with a large note:

Property of Palamedes Sextus, Room 105. DO NOT TOUCH. I will know if you do.

The test tubes each contain a sample of blood taken from a ship-board volunteer: young and old, human and non-human, alive and dead. The petri dishes are for his various experiments. Once upon a time, his question had been simple, or so he thought: could you tell if someone had died, either on the ship or before arriving, by studying their blood chemistry? But like so many matters about, things have gotten much more complicated since those early days.

And they are about to get more complicated still.

Pal spends most Saturday afternoons in his makeshift lab, and today is no exception. Back in January, he had started an experiment regarding the rate of cell decay. Everyone knew that the food on the ship didn’t rot. Everyone knew that people who died returned to life—usually. But what happened to the living on a cellular level? And could that affect be manipulated to guarantee resurrection upon death?

Humming tunelessly to himself, Palamedes inspects each sample in the petri dish, visions of cell clusters dancing in his head. Each time, he notes the thanergy and thalergy levels. Each time, he counts the number of living blood cells. He double-checks the numbers, triple-checks them, quadruple-checks them.

There’s no getting around it: after a month, absolutely no cell death has occurred.

Pal takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes a sheen of blood sweat off his forehead.

“Well, fuck me.”

[II. Wildcard!]

Want to hang with Pal, but don’t have a reason to visit him in the infirmary? I welcome your prompts! Pal is often in the library or drinking tea in Sand Dollars, or curled up in a chair in the lounge. Gimme what you got, or hmu on Plurk

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When he spotted movement in the infirmary, he thought it might be Doctor Watson in here. The wound and stitches at the back of his neck are healing up well, but Max is still under strict instructions to make sure to have it checked regularly so he was coming to finally submit himself to another inspection. He's a little surprised to see Palamedes in here instead, but that immediately turns into curiosity over those experiments. He saw the note, obviously, and he didn't touch, but he has looked a couple of times. This is a perfect moment to finally ask about it.

"What are you doing with those?"

“Mr. Maximum!” Palamedes is in fine form, and he offers Max a brilliant smile when the man comes over to investigate. “I’ve been studying the biological and genetic changes, or lack thereof, resulting from our time as passengers on the Serena Eterna. My initial experiments focused on the affects of death and resurrection experienced before or while aboard ship, though I’ve expanded my scope of late, with interesting results.”

Palamedes definitely wants Max to ask him about those results.

"Oh? Cool." He looks closer at the experiments, showing no hint of repulsion at the sight of blood. That is an everyday thing when you live in a house of vampires.

"What did you find out?"

Blood is so commonplace among the necromantic Houses that Palamedes isn’t the least bit surprised by Max’s lack of hesitation. Frankly, it’s squeamish people that he still finds odd.

“In short, that nothing decays. You might have noticed that such is the case with food; if you leave, say, an apple sitting on your bedside table, it will never rot. Much of the ship is impossibly old, too. Far older than it looks. But what I have just now confirmed is that the same applies to living cells, like those in the blood samples. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

"Wow. I knew about the food but, holy shit?" His mind races through several possibilities: immortality, suspended aging, no disease? It's a lot to take in.

"Do you know what that means for us? I mean, we still can get hurt and heal. And my hair has gotten longer. My nails too. So it can't be as simple as what happens with food, right?"

“That is a bit of a puzzle,” Pal admits. It’s always irritating when a perfectly formed theory has such glaring flaws, but that is the nature of science. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “There is clearly some minor amount of cell activity allowed by the Captain’s molecular stasis. Violent trauma, in particular, can still lead to a breakdown in the body’s responses, and eventual death.”

Pal drums his fingers against the counter, his gaze a little distant. “Yes, it may be better to say that cell death and growth is significantly reduced. Our hair grows, we can digest our food, acute trauma can still lead to expected necrosis. But taken on the whole, and averaging out all processes of a living organism…I feel confident in hypothesizing that we are not aging.”

"Maybe it's a little like the way vampires are where I'm from. Because my master can still grow his hair out, too, but he's, you know, immortal." If he thought about it a little harder, Max would realize that comparison hardly works at all, but sadly vampires happen to be his first frame of reference for a lot of things unnatural or supernatural.

"It's weird to think none of us will ever get physically older. I don't know how to feel about that."

“I have to agree,” says Pal. “If I may be blunt, it feels like yet another form of prison. We are trapped on this ship, and trapped in unchanging bodies, whether we like it or not.”

Palamedes may have sought the secrets of immortality once, but it is another matter to have it thrust upon him, and in a manner he had not asked for.

“Your master?” Though Pal has learned bits and pieces about vampires since arriving on the ship, he hadn’t previously heard Max speak of his own experiences with them. The term master is odd enough to catch his attention.

"Yeah..." he agrees somewhat guiltily. For some people, this place is terrible. He gets that. For him, it's the most freedom he's had in years.

"I work for him, and live with him as a butler. It's a little old-fashioned, I know, but like... he's over a thousand years old so everything is old with him."

“Goodness,” says Palamedes, curiosity more than judgement in his voice. “Where I come from, Master designates a level of expertise—Master Scholar, Master Archivist, Master Warden. I’ve never heard it used independently. How did you get into that line of work?”

"Humans do have that kind of terminology too, yeah," Max says with a light shrug. "But vampires have their own society going. They have their own rules and such."

Ah, shit. That question. He never knows how to answer without giving away too much.

"I kind of fell into it on accident."

Up until no, Max has been a fairly open person, so it’s obvious when he suddenly closes him. Palamedes nods and politely shifts the subject slightly. “Quite the accident. Are vampires common where you come from?”

"They are, yeah. I mean, they like to form their own communities often, but they are also known to humans. It's not a secret or anything. And they aren't monsters." Palamedes didn't imply that at all, but Max has become incredibly defensive of the topic since so many people here seem to be primed to draw that conclusion.

It's true, Palamedes hadn't said anything of the kind. His own experience with vampires is limited. There's Natsuno on the one hand, and on the other, vague folktales about people who stay young forever, drink blood, and, for some reason, sparkle.

Mildly, he asks, "Do people usually think that vampires are dangerous?"

"Yes. And, I mean, it's true that vampires can be dangerous, but they aren't mindless killers. That's what bothers me. Like, yeah, they drink blood. But they don't have to kill people or drain all of their blood or anything like that. In fact, they have rules against killing."

"Frankly, it seems like killing would be more trouble than it's worth," Palamedes muses. "Like uprooting a tree instead of picking its fruit. No doubt there will be those who will take advantage, but that can be said for every single one of us."

"Exactly!" Finally, someone gets this. "My master takes about one or two shots worth from me every week. And I'm no worse for it. Of course, he's an Elder and they don't need as much as younger vampires, but still. There are plenty of people willing to donate some blood. People who like doing it. So, I don't see what everyone gets so upset about."

"Some people like that sort of thing even when there aren't any vampires involved," Palamedes says wryly.

Beneath this casual observation, though, Pal is a little bit unsettled--it's one thing to think about vampires drinking blood in the abstract, another to hear Max talk about giving one or two shots a week to his so-called master. The concept reminds him just a little too much of the Eighth House practice of soul siphoning.

But Max's point is a logical one. "Blood is a common tool in necromatic practice as well, though I'd have questions for any necromancer who regularly used a non-adept's blood. For our purposes it would be both less useful and, to be honest, ethically dubious." He flashes an apologetic smile. "Different circumstances, obviously."

"I know." Said so matter-of-factly. For him, it's just life. Sometimes he forgets how unsettling it might seem to others.

"What's the difference? Adept in what?"

"Adept at necromancy," Palamedes explains. "Where I come from, necromancers are genetically distinct, and only those born with necromatic aptitude are able to execute the necessary theorems."

"Oooh, huh. That's interesting. It's kind of like how Mediums are in my world. You have to be born as one. Are there any downsides to it for you?"

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[Open] Love, Blood, and Rhetoric

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