2022-05-17: Tempura Bubbles 'Over' Galileo
- Log: Tempura Bubbles 'Over' Galileo
- Cast: Dr. Spartura, Ruri Hoshino
- Where: Lotus Block 7 Consumer Industry Park (Side 6)
- Date: 2022-05-17
- Summary: Ruri confronts Dr. Dorothy -- last name Spartura, not that she knows that part -- over her part in a terrorist attack. Dorothy convinces her she's not a bad guy, though, and even gives her a logic puzzle to think about.
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
WELCOME
TO LOTUS BLOCK 7 CONSUMER INDUSTRY PARK
OUTLET MALL - WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!
We got CHIP READERS, we got MUSIC PLAYERS
We got NORMAL SUITS - Adult AND Child's size!
We got HOUSEWARES! Check our Overstock Bin for WILD SUPPLIES, and be sure to throw a rock at Slappy Sam - we're in the upward tilt. Can you prove yourself a NEW TYPE OF PITCHER?
And we're the only outlet sale point for Salamanga Surgical Supplies: 3S is the leading supplier of custom surgical and medical supplies, with our vacuum-proof Sanitation Guarantee. Every 3S supply item is rad-sterilized BEFORE *AND* AFTER its sealing in a standard polymer wrapper. Home health needs are assisted courteously, and be sure to check out the outpatient surgical clinic on the second floor for caring and patient-centered assistance with minor and moderate major needs. (Cash only; flex-spend receipts available. Discount for payment in full!)
And once you've gotten all that done come down to the
!! OPEN AIR FOOD COURT !!
The Open Air Food Court features a McDowells' outlet, a milk shake emporium, and an Ultra Tempura place. Ultra Tempura's concept is simple: You pick out of a line of several dozen items, and it's tempura fried while-u-wait!
Ultra Tempura has a line.
There's an ash blonde hairstyle in that line.
This woman - who must have an alias but is clearly Dr. Dorothy Spartura - is on her phone.
... She's playing that damn spacenoid match-3 game.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Ruri ran diagnostics on Ryoko's Aestivalis, just as Uribatake asked. There was nothing wrong with the machine, but --
The messages which its communications captured --
It was a lucky thing the Nadesico had clear enough signals to scan the battlefield when all was said and done, because it gave Omoikane a picture of Paul's prosthetics -- which he's been able to cross-reference with the cold trail left by Doctor Dorothy's old clinic address in order to find a new location. All the way out in Side 6...
It took a few days before the Nadesico ran its next errand into space, rather than across Earth -- Ruri's not brave enough to ask them to divert course just for her. (Neither does she, in fact, immediately tell anyone what she suspects.) But once they're out here, she asks if they can stop at Side 6, however briefly.
"I have a doctor's appointment," Ruri explains, very serious.
And so, accompanied by the greatest super-accountant of all time, MR. PROSPECTOR, the young Ruri Hoshino ventures cautiously into Lotus Block 7's Consumer Industry Park Outlet Mall. In her Nergal uniform, she sticks out terribly, amidst the typical patrons.
Ruri wrinkles her nose. "It's crowded," she notes, with distaste.
"You're sure it was here..?" Mr. Prospector asks, adjusting his glasses as he directs his foxish gaze about the complex. He's in his usual vest -- standard accountant issue.
"I'm sure," Ruri insists, as they venture deeper inside. She looks over the food court, only to see --
"Mr. Prospector, I'm going to get something to eat," Ruri says, out of nowhere. "I'll just be a little while."
"I'll come with you," he offers, mindful of her anxiety over the crowds.
"I'll be fine. You gave me a card, after all." Ruri says, stoic as ever.
"Er, well..."
But before he can lecture Ruri on budgeting and spending money on the correct things, Ruri's already hurried off to the line. And -- cut into the line, because she was never coming here for food, anyway. Instead, she steps up to the woman on her phone, and clears her throat.
"Doctor Dorothy?" Ruri asks, tone mild. "Can I talk to you?"
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
Someone pushes and shoves ahead. "Hey!" says a local man, but he seems to relax when he sees 'young child' approaching 'older woman', putting 2 and 2 together to get a bad result. He also has to step forwards. His destiny awaits (it is Tempura).
Dr. Spartura takes a moment to pause her round of Dozoo Degwa. Then she turns her head, blinking several times. She is wearing glasses now but they're not too ridiculous: cats-eye, white frames. "Hey!" she says, brightening up. "Well, this is sure a surprise, isn't it?"
Her voice quiets down a little. "What's up, miclone?" she asks, her tone fond, even as she indicates the assorted menu ahead: "If you're hungry, get the four piece. You come out ahead if you aren't getting just vegetable, AND you get a drink bulb." The price math checks out, although the fiscally optimal option is the 8-pack.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
There is an obvious conclusion to be drawn here. Maybe it's not even entirely wrong! After all, Dorothy greets Ruri entirely warmly.
Ruri -- isn't cold, anyway, even if she's kind of hard to read. She does seem curious, though. "Okay," she agrees, and resolves to get just that when they go up to the counter. But first--!!
"I shouldn't ask here," Ruri says, looking back over the line. "There are a lot of people." Really, the questions she has are ABSOLUTELY something she should have peeople around to ask, but -- Ruri is very much twelve years old, and doesn't really think about consequences in that way.
(These ones don't have anything to do with ship operation, after all.)
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
"I see," Dr. Spartura says. She sounds...
Happy? Is she just on drugs? (Can't be ruled out.)
Stepping forwards, she says, "Well, pick out your food and we'll take a walk while they're frying it. They've got outlets all through Side 6 if you ever want to watch; it's not too unusual, as tempura goes. -- Yeah, can I get the eight, please? I'd like... two zucchini, two pairs of sweet potato slice, two shrimp, aaaand you know what, make it three shrimp and a carrot. Yeah, oolong tea to drink. No rice."
Dr. Spartura steps out of the line of fire and glances around for a moment, but beyond that she seems content to wait for Ruri; and if Ruri should join her before long, she strolls along side, hands in her pockets.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"The four piece, please," Ruri requests, of the vendor, placidly. It's -- not impossible she's on drugs...?
(She isn't. She got this flat affect the old-fashioned way.)
Ruri hurries off to go join Dorothy; she has very short legs, you understand, so she has to speed up a bit to catch up. But she does! And off they stroll. Once they're a little ways away from the food court -- though the eagle-eyed viewer might note that there's an accountant coincidentally browsing nearby, it's a mall, there's no rule against that -- Ruri speaks up, with that same stoicism.
"Doctor Dorothy... were you the one who tried to pick up Paul when the Emotional Front attacked Balic?" Ruri says, straight-out, though she's at least speaking quietly. "I heard your voice in the communications log, when I was running diagnostics on Ms. Subaru's Aestivalis afterwards. But... I wanted to ask you, first. Weren't you the one who fixed him..?"
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
There's a cluck of the tongue. "Oh, gosh," Dr. Spartura says, with a half-sigh. "Guess you cracked that one fast, huh? I appreciate you telling me how come." She reaches down to - if not dodged - pat Ruri once on the head.
HEAD PATS OF EVIL?
"I did," she says, "and I can tell it was pretty unfortunate how it all went down. You guys take him alive?"
"Even if he's a failure," Dr. Spartura says, looking up at the space colony's 'sky', "I hope you won't treat him too badly."
"Of course, I understand he's probably been transferred to somewhere else by now. I doubt OAC was going to be thrilled about him," Dr. Spartura continues, bubbling back towards good cheer. "Still!"
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Ruri's head ducks, but -- because this is a HEAD PAT OF EVIL -- Dr. Spartura just about manages to triumph. (Also, because they're just walking, and Ruri doesn't have a convenient excuse around leaving the meeting.) She looks uncomfortable with the physical contact, but not in any severe manner which would suggest she's allergic to evil head pats.
She just doesn't like being touched. That's probably fine. (It's super not fine, for several child psychology reasons Dr. Spartura might well know.)
"We did," she confirms, and still isn't running away. "And that's right. Nergal doesn't have jurisdiction, since we're not really part of the Federation." They're corporate partners, or something like that. Sometimes they work very closely, but...
Well, Omoikane remembers breaking through the Big Barrier. That's probably fine. (It's super not fine, for several AI psychology reasons Ruri definitely knows.)
She asks, just as mild: "Were you working with him to attack those people?" Stoicism is at least good at not being judgemental. At least not when it's more curious than condemning.
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
She does, unfortunately; and some vestige of her feels a pang of sympathy. But it's not a very large part of Dr. Dorothy Spartura, who joined the Earth Attack Corps for a reason even worse than many others.
"Well, if you can pass it on," she says, "he ought to have free access to hydration beverages. If they have medical ones, that's ideal, but just sports drinks are fine. Water, too. It won't kill him to go without but he'll get cramps and he's the kind of guy who won't say boo, huh?"
Dr. Spartura is at least somewhat right here. Paul, after an initial cursing and wailing, has given nothing except his name, ID number and former Titans rank, and necessary minimum statements such as 'the toilet is broken.'
Then there's another question.
"Hmmm," Dr. Spartura says. "That's a complicated question. Are you asking me as a lawyer, a military oficer, or a seeker after knowledge?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"I will," Ruri says, and she's far too young to lie about things like this. She'll file an official report with the OAC about it as soon as she gets back!
She'll get back, right? Right.
Ruri blinks those too-gold eyes, looking up at Dorothy. "I'm not a lawyer," she says, "and I'm not part of the military, either. I just want to know if you're our enemy. You don't sound like a bad person when you talk about taking care of Paul, but those people were attacking a water processing plant for foolish reasons... but you're the sort of person who likes to be kind of suspicious, aren't you?"
From the mouths of babes! Or maybe it has to do with how Dorothy acts during parties.
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
Dr. Spartura raises her hands and folds them behind her head. There's a faint whirring noise from the prosthetic as she runs the first-level subsidiary nodes down and massages her own scalp. "That's kind of you," she says. "I don't think of myself as a bad person... I don't think anyone does. Hell, you heard of Gihren Zabi, right? He compared himself to this medieval king, Hitler, something like that."
"Guy was a butcher, but I mean," Dorothy says, "he didn't mean it in the sense of 'I'm going to lose and get shot up in a cinema,' you know?"
"I do like to play with the knowledge, though," she continues. "It's kind of a compensation. It's hard for me to be all high minded and caring when I'm in this field... I don't really have anyone else working on the topic, and to be honest, I imagine if I did, they'd just steal my credit."
Dr. Spartura chuckles, in a vaguely raspy way. "But -- I helped Paul to realize his dream. What his dream was, that's not my business, you know? I had to learn to do that. I had to learn not to judge *what* the dream is, because the dream isn't the point."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Ruri, for all her technical knowledge, isn't a historian. She'll look up King Hitler later. Omoikane will be very concerned.
Her head tilts, as she listens to Dorothy's explanation. "That sounds like something the Explaining Lady would say," Ruri reflects, when the doctor shares how difficult it is care about people in the caring profession.
(No wonder Ruri likes Dorothy so much. She looks up to Inez more than anyone else on the Nadesico, really.)
She doesn't judge what people's dreams are... "So, that's why you came to get him," Ruri says, filling in the gaps. "You were supporting him... and I don't think you wanted him to get hurt, either." It's a logical deduction, she thinks, from the way Dorothy healed his injuries in the first place, and she made those comments on his health just now.
It is, of course, very kind.
"The point is... that they know what they want to do, isn't it?" Ruri goes on, and it's a confirmation of a conversation they've already had. She said she hasn't figured it out, yet -- she'd tell her when she did.
"But when you say 'this field' -- what field is that, Dr. Dorothy?" Ruri asks, still with that probing curiosity. "You've mentioned being a surgeon, and Paul had comprehensive prosthetics, but both of those things are areas with a lot of people working on them."
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
"Ahh, you're being so sweet!" Dr. Spartura says, almost laughing. It's an almost, which prevents a proper cackle from ringing outwards or better or for worse (probably the better, right now). "It's true, and I'm glad you're able to look so -- perceptively."
How else do you look?
"But... hm... how can I explain this easily."
A few more steps in silence.
"So you mentioned surgery," she says, "and prosthetics development, and those are both true. But that's because that's how you make your instruments here, in the field I'm working in. You know about Galileo, right? The early scientist. Back in the day, optical instruments were brand new. You couldn't just place an order, much less link in to the observatory they have on every colony."
"Galileo had to make his own telescopes," Dr. Spartura says.
She tilts her head a little, turning her head to look down at Ruri. Not with condescension, but the simple biomechanics of the moment. She is pausing on purpose; there is probably an air here that she is expecting something to happen as a result of this, but she is being *maddeningly vague about it*.
On the other hand, the tempura is being fried. :9
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Dorothy is using prosthetics and surgery... to make her instruments. Ruri frowns, slightly, as she tries to work through the logical deductions she's being led to through the path of Galileo. "I know about him," she confirms, first.
She doesn't, entirely, remember Galileo in silhouette, teaching her about the scientific method.
But her bones know.
"He made his Galilean telescope because there was nothing else which could see the sky," she thinks, out loud, a little. "It was profitable, as well. But he was struggling against entrenched geocentricism, and it ultimately led to him being judged for heresy. So I guess you could call it a failure of humanity," Ruri says, lightly, "since he was just telling them the truth, after all."
Ruri, of course, is something of a scientist herself, so no wonder she'd be sympathetic to the early injuries of science.
"Applying something like that to the human body... I suppose that would mean you're searching for something no one else can see. The human soul, maybe." Ruri pauses, for a moment, thinks of one particular cyborg's anger. She pales -- which is difficult to tell, with skin as faint as hers, but in any case the little shake of her head is easier to catch. "If you were looking for something like that, your preoccupation with people's choices would make sense, too. I guess the question would be something like Theseus's ship -- how much of a person can you replace before they become someone else?"
Ruri pauses, and puffs out a sigh, looking up to Dorothy. "... but maybe I'm wrong," she adds, a breath later. "I'm not a doctor, so I really don't think about things like this."
<Pose Tracker> Dr. Spartura has posed.
"Yes," Dr. Spartura says. "Yes, that's right."
She leans a little...
Ruri speaks... thinks aloud... There is perhaps a sense of growing tension, excitement -- but it wavers a little, towards the end.
Dr. Spartura exhales. It isn't disappointment, exactly. There is certainly no whiff of anger. But perhaps a hope was let down, on some level. Her hands slide into her pockets. "I'd say you're about sixty percent of the way there," she says.
There's a few moments yet of silence.
Looking up at the center of the colonial sky, Dr. Spartura says, "I think that people's dreams are beautiful things."
https://www.youtube.com//watch?v=csgtV0Cs4ao
"When people chase their dreams - they put their all into it. Every single gram of effort and energy inside of their body is at the service of that dream. And when those dreams are at their most passionate, their most intense, you can see just how far people will go. Oh, no dream is invalid," Dr. Spartura says, drawing her hands out of her pockets, "but it's those bright-burning, intense ones... the ones that scream and cry and shine the hardest... Those!"
"And when they get FRUSTRATED," she says. "It's so tragic. Because that intensity just burns there, or I guess, pressurizes might be a better way to put it. So what I try to do, when I can, is help people bring their dreams to life."
"Looks like the order's up," Dr. Spartura concludes. She smiles, though the burned side of her face does make it a little bit more like a grin.
"Tell you what," she continues, reaching into her lab coat pocket. She brings out a little paper card and holds it out. The card has a tastefully-offset email address - alphanumeric strings pointing at a shady but not-federal-law-defying remailer service.
"If you have questions, drop me a line. This is plain text only, mind you - I have to keep my eyes peeled in this crazy world - but I'll answer, one way or another. You'll know it when I do."
"I really want to know about your thoughts."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Sixty percent..? That's strange, Ruri reflects. It must reflect on Dorothy's own intellect.
Ruri tilts her head, as she listens to Dorothy's passion, couples it with her anticipation. Something about it feels a little... "You're a very complicated person, aren't you, Doctor Dorothy?" Ruri asks, direct.
It reminds her of being asked what kind of world she wanted to make.
"But I guess you really aren't a bad person, even if you're this passionate... if you're motivated by something like that. So I won't tell them who you are," Ruri decides, making a very grown-up moral judgement, because it takes experience and wisdom to know when to trust someone like this. (Really! It really does!)
She takes the card, though -- it's easy for someone like Ruri to commit to to memory, if Dorothy would rather take the card back afterwards, but otherwise she'll tuck it into her pocket.
"I'll try to figure it out," she says, and she's far too young to lie about things like this, too. "I don't really care about getting credit for anything, but I think it must be lonely to be the only one working on a problem." Ruri is a good girl, who cares about the people around her. She just -- looks like she isn't affected.
Ruri turns to go and pick up the tempura, only to turn on a heel and nod to Dorothy, one hand clasped at her chest. "Thank you for the recommendation," she remembers to say, just in time.
Then she hurries off to get her tempura.
... for some reason, Mr. Prospector isn't that surprised when Ruri says she's ready to go home afterwards.