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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"Oh fuck yeah man! That's one of the best parts about this place. I can keep food in my room for months and it doesn't go bad, I'm over here having pasta primavera for breakfast in bed if I wanna. That was me and uh..." He makes a gesture over his head that kinda indicates hair while he tries to sort through the stew that is his brain for a name. "Science guy, he was doing some experiment and said there were no bacteria so I brought a bunch of food to my room to test it out. And it never went bad."

He's pretty proud of that actually, he helped! "Downside is Sharky can't start up his still he wants to, because nothing'll ferment."

The corner of Pal’s mouth turns up slightly. “There are indeed disadvantages to the lack of bacteria.” With a gesture towards his experiments, he continues. “I suppose you could say that what I’m doing here is expanding upon the previous work of you and your science friend. We know there’s no life in any of the Captain’s universes, aside from what he brings to them. But now I’m quite sure that there’s no death, either. At least not on a cellular level.”

The gears turning in Pratt's brain made of leftover stew are probably actually visible.

"That's why the ghosts are still in the ship huh? They can't... actually die. They're trapped." He considers that for a moment, "That must be why they're so fucking pissed they don't even get like... to die and have this be over with. But if they're not dead, why can't we you know.. bring 'em back?"

And why does everyone keep yelling at him for suggesting necromancy???

Palamedes expression becomes thoughtful, and then his smile slowly grows. “Pratt, you’re brilliant. Emperor almighty, how did I miss that? I’ve been so focused on the affects of molecular stasis on the material body that I hadn’t even considered the soul. And the soul, of course, is what interests the Captain most of all. Talk about missing the forest through the trees!”

Pal is bouncing on the balls of his feet, writing rapidly in his notebook. Even Pratt’s question isn’t enough to deflate him. “Haven’t the slightest idea! I’ve conducted fifteen seances, both on and off the ship, and each one has landed me with the same result. My only theory, based on the experiences of last October, is that the Captain is keeping them trapped somehow. The people whose bodies were possessed suffered in a void of nothingness; I have to assume that’s where the ghosts are imprisoned most of the time.”

"I am?" He sounds suitably shocked about this revelation.

"I'd guess the whole emotion vampire thing that makes this place function needs souls more than bodies. Since that's where the emotions are?" He was in a religious cult and they did not cover souls as a food source so he's a little out of his element here. "I wonder why though, if they're still there... somewhere, why not keep them all and have a zillion more souls to leech off of? They're obviously still capable of emotions, or they were when they were possessing people anyway. So he could magic up some new bodies for them and have eight times the passengers. More is better yeah? Unless it's not emotions at all, and it's something else..."

You’re in luck, Pratt: Palamedes’ post-apocalyptic religious cult did cover souls as a food source!

“The emotions clearly play a part,” says Palamedes, gaze focusing on the middle distance as he thinks through the puzzle. “And those who were drawn into the nothingness last October speak of experiencing existential horror that, presumably, the ghosts live with all the time. The Captain could be feeding on that. Or,” he presses his lips into a thin line, “he could be feeding on the souls themselves. Even one can fuel extraordinary power, and he has hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Maybe once a passenger is no longer giving him what he wants via their emotions, he makes spectres of them, and derives his power from them that way."

"What happens when a soul is used up and nothings left? Especially here where people can't really die? Can their ... souls not die too?" Which even as a non scientific person he realizes would be really really difficult to figure out an experiment to prove one way or the other.

"Why keep us around then if the souls are better? Just variety? I feel like we cause him a bunch of problems and the souls in the Nothing are just... there." He sighs, running his fingers through his hair, "I'm just saying shit I don't know how we'd even find out. I guess I could ask him, but I dunno if he'd tell me. Or tell me the truth."

Pratt is very good at asking questions that Palamedes hasn’t thought of—he does it with no rhyme or reason, but it’s that precise chaos that makes him so useful. Borderline irritating, but useful.

“Damn. It’s possible. Or they may die, but by another definition entirely. It is theoretically possible for the body to remain even as the soul dissolves, and vice versa.” He takes off his glasses and rubs his hand over his face. “What I need is an expert on energy transfer and the soul. I can’t believe I’m about to say that, but I would give my spleen for five minutes with Ianthe Tridentarius.” Returning his glasses to his face, he adds, “An acquaintance of mine. Clever, but not half as brilliant as she thinks. Knowledgeable in this particular area. And, unfortunately, an absolute psychopath.”

Despite his musings, the Princess of Ida is one of the last people Pal wants to see on the Serena Eterna, and it wouldn’t do him good to wish for her even if it was otherwise.

“Unfortunately, I suspect you’re right. I doubt that’s the kind of information the Captain would give up easily.”

Pratt is totally out of his element, he may have been trapped in a religious cult but the 'soul' was more a metaphorical talking point and not a real tangible thing that could be separate from the body - and especially never mentioned as a possible energy source.

"Yeah, I .. can't help you there, unless you need more dead guy blood. But maybe you should start another binder in the library, see if anyone here is randomly a specialist in this. You can't be the only Necromancer even if..." He trails off about to say something like even if you're the one that belongs to Clarke but he doesn't want her to stab him again so he tries to make a save here, "even if Friday and Jenny keep complaining about us trying to do necromancy. Maybe the others are nervous about outting themselves?"

“Starting a new binder isn’t a bad idea,” Palamedes muses. “I can probably even re-create most of what the old one contained before Skulduggery’s fit of pique.” Though he remembers everything that had been recorded inside it, Pal is still irritated with Skulduggery’s unilateral decision to destroy one of the most vital tools of collaboration on the ship. But that isn’t the point any longer. “There are, in fact, a few other necromancers and people with comparable skills. I don’t think any of them are too secretive—wait, what do Friday and Jenny have against necromancy?”

"I don't blame him, if I was boning the Captain.." He breaks off into snickers because he had not even planned that. Heh. Boning. "Anyway, if it was me I'd get rid of the dirt on my boyfriend too. Makes me think there was something in there that could actually hurt him. But I dunno what."

He'd read it, a few times, but only some of it had been fully absorbed.

"I dunno, I went to Friday to see if she'd pull Pickles out of the ship and put him in this cursed horse I had dug up in the island and she wouldn't do it. And told Ava not to meddle with necromancy."

“Pickles was one of the ghosts that went for a walkabout in October, yes?” It’s a grim memory, and not only because of the carnage. Palamedes still wishes he could have done more—both for his friends and for the ghosts. He should have acted more quickly, damn it.

“I’ve had a similar idea. If we could find a way to bring the ghosts back to consciousness without causing the same sort of chaos as last fall, we might be able to find vessels to contain them—even bodies. They could be free.”

He knits his brows together. "...what sort of 'cursed horse'?"

"Yeah, the one that was in Sharky. Fucking asshole." The main reason he wants to yank him out of the ship and into a new body is so that he can punch him in his own face, instead of punching in Sharky's. Poor Sharky didn't deserve to lose all those teeth.

"It's gotta work somehow. Chase did it, and uh that.. kid who did the hangman thing?" He has already totally blanked on Omori's name, and Rich's, but he definitely remembers hangman because he still has it hanging on his wall. "Like how did Chase manage to get back into his actual body? But the rest of them had to possess people? Doesn't make any sense."

He huffs because it's so unfair that of all the people it was that douchenozzle. Though they really almost all were assholes so... But why did they get to come back and not people like Clara or Caitlyn?

"I dug it up on the island with the salamanders, and I'm pretty sure it was haunted. It was like.. this big," He holds his hands apart to indicate a small toy horse, "And it was wooden with some fabric bits."

“I had wondered about that,” Palamedes admits when Pratt references the ghosts who had returned to the land of the living. Had they fought their way back to permanent sentience? Had they found their bodies and re-inhabited them? Had they been chosen somehow, granted some sort of reprieve? “It’s like they were given a stay of execution,” he says, half to himself. “Where I come from, we call ghosts revenants, The word applies tenfold to these individuals. The Returned. Hm.”

“Have you spoken to any of them? I can’t say I’ve had the opportunity.”

"Only Chase. And the kid who did Hangman but he's either avoiding everyone or he's gone back into the ship. I hope they don't perma-die if they come back and die again or something." He runs his fingers through his hair, frowning, "Can't say talking to Chase was real helpful cuz he's a fucking asshole, and definitely knows more than he's saying, but I'm not sure we're to the point where straight up interrogating him would be helpful. Plus he'd probably lie."

"I've never spoken to him, but from what I've gathered, he isn't very pleasant." Pal folds hims arms over his chest and presses his lips into a thin, thoughtful line. "In my first few months here, I tried over and over to reach the revenants. If only we could speak with one whilst on even footing--not to repeat the hostage situation of October, but to have an actual conversation."

"Did you talk to them then? I mean, I guess it's different since they were people then and not ghosts. Pickles said uh... that when he was in the ship he wasn't like...." It's a visible struggle as he tries to remember. His memory is like trying to listen to badly recorded home videos while underwater. "He didn't have any awareness? Or substance. Like he might have been the one changing the sheets or pouring the drinks but he had no idea he was only aware of there being like... a void I think?"

Pratt is where important details go to die.

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[Open] Love, Blood, and Rhetoric

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