hellonspectacles: (Lying to me on a molecular level)
Palamedes Sextus ([personal profile] hellonspectacles) wrote in [community profile] come_sailaway2023-02-04 02:59 pm

[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
skaikru: (pic#8798449)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-02-22 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
Clarke takes his gesture as an invitation, and even goes so far as to pull up a rolling doctor stool and sit down at the edge of the counter. Props an elbow on the countertop and stares at the blood samples like they might spoil Palamedes' scientific reveal. But even if they do hold that secret in their little vials, she can't see it. The Ark's medical bay had been maintained as well it could be, but it was still rotting away like the rest of the ship had been. If they'd once had the most advanced machinery known to mankind, at the end it'd all been dismantled and they'd not even had enough painkillers to soothe the passing of the dying.

So, yeah, no. She has no idea what she's actually looking for in these petri dishes. Stares intently for a few seconds, then turns expectantly to look at Pal and wait for him to fill in the gaps.
skaikru: (pic#9056146)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-02-24 03:46 am (UTC)(link)
...huh.

"Well that's..." Good? "...definitely abnormal. But in line with why it's so hard for you to use necromancy on the ship, right? No cell death equals no thanergy equals nosebleeds. Right?"
skaikru: (pic#11920613)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-02-25 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
There's that phenomena where you spend too much time around a person and slowly start to adopt their traits. That's apparent here in the shift of Clarke's vocabulary — revenants, and the amount of times she says fascinating — and the way she drinks coffee like Palamedes drinks tea. One day she may even trade in tight, moisture wicking athletic wear that'd be good in a physical fight for a comfy, oversized sweater because he makes them look good.

But it is not here in the love of a mystery. Pal is enthused over the layers to peel back to find the truth, while Clarke's simply impatient and wants the answers already in order to figure out how to mold them into something useful. So he all out beams, and she just sort of... grimaces.

"It sure is something. I —"

Give her a moment, as some gears turn. Sure there's inconsistencies, but the more she thinks about it the more it becomes a red flag just how little people have gotten sick around here. And that leads her to —

"You're telling me that I shot myself full of antibiotics every day, for two full weeks after getting stabbed, with those ominous looking needles —" A gesture across the infirmary, towards a tray of syringes. "— and probably didn't even need to because sepsis and necrosis might not even be things here?"
skaikru: (pic#8799134)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-02-26 05:25 am (UTC)(link)
To her credit, Clarke only slightly rolls her eyes. They'd been friendly around the time she'd nearly been gutted by Pratt out on the walking deck, and Clarke would argue it was secrecy over stubbornness that kept her from asking for help past urging Jade to cauterize her wound. But they're basically the same thing, and now she knows better.

And hey! At least she doesn't remember the sensation of her spine snapping and paralyzing her from the waist down, because that'd technically happened to an ancient viking! Small mercies.

She thinks for a beat, a mutters aloud: "That grace maybe could extend to things like cancer and Alzheimer's..." Train of thought briefly drifts to Ava Starr, who'd said she was sick and dying in her own world but hasn't seemed to deteriorate on board the ship. Huh.

Then to Pal properly, "That's cool."
skaikru: (pic#11782185)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-03-09 09:42 am (UTC)(link)
Also relatively familiar with Ava's condition, but too lost in thought to draw the lines there immediately. She's too focused on what all of this might mean further down the line. No death translated into no life; cells in stasis might do good for their food never rotting and the normal course of sicknesses obliterated, but would that mean they'd never be able to have children as well? Would the younger population never reach their final growth spurt? If they were immortal, they probably couldn't age no matter how many birthday parties were thrown. And in the event they ever did make it off this hell ship, would those side effects of being yanked through time and space as a snapshot of a soul persist?

Still conversational though, she hears Palamedes trail off at but — and follows up on the sentiment automatically.

"It'd be an attractive perk."

Then a sigh, leaning on the counter and focusing properly on Pal, and asking with the same timber she'd asked about Skulduggery's rib: "Can we do anything with this?" This discovery, this knowledge. Would it help or was it just another edge piece in the puzzle they all currently resided in.
skaikru: (pic#8799063)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-03-15 06:30 am (UTC)(link)
She can sense Palamedes' frustration. Not that it's hard, a big sigh and rubbing at his nose in that way that unseats his glasses for a second is a pretty telltale sign of bother on anyone. But she cares more for his displeasure, and seeks to abate it. Even if only a little.

"...hey." The sort of utterance that lowkey demands look at me. Then a little half smile and a tilt of her head.

"You'll keep working on it, and if there's anything to find there, I'm sure you're going to find it. You're the only one I know who's looking at things none of the rest of us would probably even consider, and you're the only person I'd trust to come up with a way for us to use this in some way that'd actually help."
skaikru: (pic#8799135)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-03-19 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
Don't thank her so expressly, her faith is arguably cheap and — for gods at least — comes with the what can you do for me condition in bold print. The basis of their earlier friendship had essentially been Clarke just asking for his magic, after all. To determine if she'd died, what she lost when she did die, what he could do to make Jenny in her storm form easier to kill, what he'd learned from relics, what ghosts he could summon and truths he could share.

But the times, they sure do change. It's not about her wanting Pal to feel less defeated and keep his nose to the grindstone, it's just wanting him not to feel defeated at all.

He regathers himself slightly, rolls his shoulders, and searches for the silver lining. To which she helpfully contributes: "We have. If we're truly in stasis, that means disease and viruses aren't going to be a common thing. Cancer's basically a nonfactor. We're not aging, even if we count the birthdays we pass. And no one here's ever going to get pregnant."
skaikru: (pic#8799136)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-03-20 03:25 am (UTC)(link)
"You turned twenty one?"

In regards to clean up, most of the time Clarke would be very ready to help; probably not even ask if her assistance was needed or not, just spring in and start stacking petri dishes. But she's enough medical and cross contamination awareness to curb that instinct; doesn't want to disturb Palamedes' samples, even when some of the blood is her own. She just sort of scoots out of the way on the rolling chair she'd commandeered, and watches him tidy samples.

An uncomfortable weight makes itself known in the bottom of her lungs. She'd literally just had a conversation with Max (fleshy, not omnic) about celebrations and —

"...I know you just concluded that there's no such thing as aging here, but it still feels weird not to have celebrated your birthday." You didn't tell me, as a conversational undercurrent.
skaikru: (pic#8799132)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-03-23 08:11 am (UTC)(link)
She will work through whatever slightly uncomfortable feelings are currently manifesting in her chest in regards to not knowing something so simple about him — a birthday in this calendar system of his original. It's just going to take a minute, during which time she sort of peppers in some throw away commentary.

"Well, they've been here longer than us, they're probably used to it."

Then a touch more confidently: "But sure. Let's get something to eat, then let's go get drunk."

One more beat of silence, and right around the time Pal's squared away all his lab supplies and is ready to go, Clarke adds: "My birthday's October 30th, by the way." Because it feels fair that he know, and she's trusting him to understand why it hadn't been brought up at the time. Sequestered in Cabin 105, nursing burn wounds, living in fear of possessed passengers and mourning the loss of friends right before consigning herself to the Halloween party? Yeah, not the headspace in which you want birthday congratulations.
skaikru: (pic#8799236)

[personal profile] skaikru 2023-03-25 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
"Nonsense."

And as he washes his hands, she drifts up at his back and smooths a hand down his spine. Half affectionate, half meticulously noting each notched vertebrae like a remedial course in human anatomy.

"Only one of those birthdays matters, the one that's getting us wasted —" Almost sing-song, a little too much influence from every passenger here who was born in the modern 2000's era. "— tonight. Come on, let's go."