Event: Healing Waters

[voidtreckermods]

"Good morning passengers, it is day twenty three of the month of Grasshopper. All passengers of the Voidtrecker Express require rest. Next stop Jema’grethy Island. All passengers prepare to disembark."

It is a very strange morning message that rings through the train on the morning of day twenty three but as the passengers of the Voidtrecker Express wake their screens glow with the colour of the void and a holographic screen pops up for them to read.

World #2554098133741: A world once inhabited by an ancient civilisation and now preserved as a historical site, nature reserve and well-being retreat. It is famous for its relaxing hot springs, calming atmosphere and beautiful beaches.

It is a popular void-traveller destination, particularly among void missionaries as a place to rest and recuperate after difficult missions.

The Voidtrecker Express will spend three days here, arriving today and leaving on day twenty six of the month of Grasshopper. The dressing carriage is open for your convenience.

It is time for a holiday it seems!

Preparation

For those who go to explore the dressing carriage they will find a variety of beachwear and wetsuits. One cupboard has a pile of tents and groundsheets in all four team colours.

One cabinet is exclusively filled with beach towels, in a kaleidoscope of colours, designs and patterns. Another is filled with different shapes and sizes of plain towel dressing gowns. There is even a cabinet with buckets, spades and small rock-pooling nets.

It seems they are in for quite an adventure.

Arrival

"Shortly arriving on World #2554098133741. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

The train lurches and rattles as it leaves the void they will get a glimpse of silver-purple sky and a beautiful ocean below.

However some passengers might be a little more than distracted, one staring at that table for a second too long, another seeming lost in thought for a couple of seconds, a longer than normal pause in a sentence. They see a vision, a glimpse of a life that is not their own. Not all at once, but here and there as the train descends to the island.

But then it is gone and things are back to normal. Just in time, as they come to land.

Jema’grethy Island

The train has landed on a grassy ridge, overlooking a beautiful beach of white sand and the ocean beyond. It is warm, but not too hot, a cool ocean breeze cutting through the heat making it pleasant. Behind them is a grassy plain, changing to forest in the distance. There is the sound of birdsong in the purple sky. To the west the land is more craggy, the silhouette of a fortress in the distance. In a word, it is idylic. A sense of peace permeates the island.

A little more worrying is the volcano-like structure in the north. But even a quick glance will show it is not a typical volcano. There is no smoke and the liquid slowly running down it in rivulets is pink and blue.

Exploring the passengers will find beautiful beaches, ragged cliffs to walk and caves to explore. Where it is more craggy the beaches are made of pebbles- perfect for rock pooling.

The place has no people, but it is clearly maintained. The eastern beaches have racks of shallow boats, both canoes and one- or two-person sailing dinghies. There is also a small building in which scuba gear is stored, along with several waterproofed manuals and instructional literature.

Ruins of ancient houses are scattered across the island, but the main settlement is built into a rocky section in the north-west that has been secured with ropes and stairways cut into the cliffs, perfect for scrambles and hikes.

There are no living quarters, but there are sheltered sections with basic toilet facilities marked as camping grounds in five different sections of the island - by the hot springs, within the ruined fortress, beside the harbour, on the eastern beaches, and on the northern face of the mountain.

Hot Springs

To the west are the hot springs. They have both outdoor and indoor areas; the indoor areas being wooden loghouse saunas, changing rooms and storage sheds, whilst the outdoor areas are a tiered series of pools spilling down the side of the mountain and shaded by brightly flowering trees. The waters are hot, mineral-rich and soothing.

Perfect for overly stressed, world weary Void heroes...

(OOC: More setting information is here, please feel free to go wild with the setting and have a fun and relaxing time. You can use this post as a catch all for your holiday or make your own posts on middleofsomewhere. More information about how the memory event is structured is here!)

Comments

[deage]

"It's too bad we don't have the tools to do a compositional analysis. It could be something useful." Or not. Who knows.

"...What's your name, by the way." Haibara wants to know the name of the guy who would both go this far for mineral identification, and had the level of knowledge about it that he did.

[10billionpercent]

"Yeah, if you really want to branch out into chemistry, you need glass and the short period of time here is going to make getting some impossible." He sighed, that was too bad, he had a nice set up in the village, he missed it. "It's a vexing limitation, but being annoyed about it is a waste of time."

Senku tilted his head slightly. "It's Senku. Ishigami Senku, but my last name's not that important." He said, mildly dismissively.

Then there was a pause, right, conversation. "Yours?"

[deage]

"There's apparently a lab on board the train, but I haven't been able to get into it yet." Does she sound miffed about that? Maybe a little. "You'd think the medical carriage would at least have some basic equipment for mixing drugs, but it's woefully unequipped for any real chemical work."

....Right. "Haibara Ai."

[10billionpercent]

"Really?" That was valuable information, and so was the information about the medical carriage.

He snorted, slight derision at that. "What do they have in this medical carriage then? Drugs are a fairly big part of medicine, and as long as you know the chemical composition you can make anything with enough time and resources."

He hummed at the name. "Oh, the child that woman wanted to protect. Got it." He summarised the connection as he saw it.

[deage]

Ugh, of course everybody had heard Ran's plea over the terminals. Well, there wasn't anything that could be done about that.

"It has an operating room, two examination rooms, and four recovery rooms. It's stocked with some basic medications, but not nearly enough kinds, and has basic equipment for diagnosis and surgery, but not much else."

Does Haibara spend way too much time there? Absolutely. And yet it hasn't made any new equipment for her, rude.

[10billionpercent]

He'd heard. He was the guy who was thinking of arming small children with a crossbow as a back up. It was only logical.

"Basic medications...paracetemol? Acetylsalicylic acid? Sulfonamide?" Senku asked, looking like he was thinking that over. "Dimenhydrinate, maybe?"

When he was lost in a stream of consciousness kind of thinking, he tended to stick to the scientific terms, although he could explain if needed, but he wouldn't assume it was. Ai knew what he was doing, maybe she could keep up with him, and what a novelty that was.

"Some of that equipment might be a luxury, but not having medications is a suicide mission, even on a train that presently defies the laws of physics. You said a surgery theatre, so some kind of anesthetic? Benzodiazepines or barbituates maybe?"

[deage]

"Not even that much," Haibara replies with a derisive sound of voice. "Paracetamol, yes. Loratadine as well, and epinephrine autoinjectors." Pain relief, antihistamines, and adrenaline for severe allergic reactions. Hardly the largest variety of medications. Honestly Haibara had more in her own drug kit.

"The surgery area has a pretty good variety of anesthetics though. Lidocaine for regional anesthesia, desflurane as an inhalational general anesthetic, and barbiturates, yes, for intravenous."

[10billionpercent]

"Nothing remotely useful if anyone gets sick? You're kidding right? What kind of a drug kit is that?" He sounded incredulous, what was it about medicine that people didn't understand? Not so much Ai, obviously, but whoever orchestrated their kidnapping.

"At the very least the surgical theatre sounds fairly well provided for because a surgery without anesthetic isn't a pleasant experience for either the surgeon or the patient." He sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

"Ah, we're not here nearly long enough for me to create sulfonamide." It took him six months before with nothing, they had a handful of days.

[deage]

Haibara's silent for a moment, mulling over something in her head. At the very least, Senku seemed like an ally - not in science (though also in that) but in concern for the medical side of things, now that she had brought it to his attention.

"I have some antibiotics already. About 30 pills, enough for several incidents as long as they're rationed well." She didn't have to make it from scratch though - it was part of the drug kit that came with her from home.

[10billionpercent]

"That...depends." Senku said, doing the calculations in his mind. "If you get by with an incident, catch it early and it's not particularly brutal, you could maybe make do with a three day course of antibiotics, but it really depends on the bacteria involved. It's good that you have it, but it's not going to be enough especially if something is so contagious it spreads throughout the train."

He didn't like that idea at all. The idea of a pathogen gaining ground in an enclosed space worried him.

"In fact we'd be helpless to an infection just because of the close quarters." He murmured that more for his own benefit.

"Sounds woefully inadequate, and maybe I should be looking at the flora here."

[deage]

She had more been worried about infections coming from cuts or wounds, given the way the last mission went, rather than infectious disease. Still, that was a valid concern as well.

She gave it a little thought. "You could probably buy more medication from the train shop. In fact, the medical car might be set up with that in mind." Still, buying specific items would mean they'd arrive only when the train stopped at a station, so every two weeks. And the indiscernible way you got the 'points' needed to buy things.... they'd need to organize in some way in order to keep it stocked properly.

"If we organized and several people pitched in, we could cover some more basics that way. Looking into producing our own could help offset the cost of that, if we find some effective means of doing so. And plants can be grown in the greenhouse car, they would be easy to keep up with."

[10billionpercent]

Since Senku missed the last mission by virtue of not being there, he had no way to know what she was thinking, but that was always a concern as well, keeping injuries clean and free of bacteria, but antibiotics would help with that too.

"I don't have a problem donating my points to that, but I don't really have any so it doesn't seem particularly sustainable." Senku frowned.

"Plants would be doable, many of them have properties used in the application of medicine but that would still be subject to the limitations. The reason people developed medications were because the plants alone weren't effective. We need actual chemistry, and specifically, a source of sulfuric acid. It's used in so many compounds, it would be nearly impossible without it."

[deage]

"Even if we don't have many points now, it's something to keep in mind for the future. Or we could talk other passengers into using theirs. It is for a good cause, and some people enjoy the feeling of being charitable."

She pauses as she considers. "It's more realistic than finding an effective source of sulfuric acid. Although, alternatively, we could use points on getting some of it. I'm not sure how feasible sulfuric acid production would be on board the train, we'd almost need a dedicated car for it." She could do it, though. With the equipment.

[10billionpercent]

"They don't have to be charitable exactly, I'm happy to offer a trade with anything they can possibly want that is within my power to make." Senku said, gesturing out of habit. He was more than happy to bribe people when it was suitable for him.

"Sulfuric acid production would be insanely dangerous, and this lab I doubt, has a full fume hood anyway. The gas alone...the small space...there's no way this isn't going to kill us. The plants are a fine enough plan for now, if we can find good ones. I'll be sure to look around here anyway for anything I can find in the flora. Anything will be a help at this point when you're starting from zero."