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

[unfavorableinstigation]

"Could almost call that a matter of balance," Nita remarked. Or taking one to know one, she thought but didn't say.

"... That's to pour on them, not ingest, right? Because when you say alcohol..."

She was pretty sure that wasn't what he meant, but the resulting mental image was quite something.

"Though, how do you mean perpetual source of nitric acid?"

[10billionpercent]

"Being required to hear about his girlfriend for hours on end is not as fun as it sounds." Senku said wryly. "However, the big oaf, dimwitted he may be, is durable. He has so much endurance, it's like someone's cheating. I have none. So he's suited to manual labour and I am not. There's a balance there, after all, everyone has different strengths."

Senku believed that when people worked together, they were stronger, because everyone had a skill that someone else might not have.

"Yeah, you pour the solution over the statues, it's not the alcohol that's the problem. If you ingest nitric acid, that's a quick way to die. The alcohol...well at 96% proof, our brandy will get you drunk, certainly. It's not particularly good though. Passable."

He was all too happy to keep talking science, all day, every day. "I'm glad you asked. When I began, the nitric acid we were using came from a natural source, it was dripping down from a cave inhabited by bats, made essentially from guano of course, which was good in the small scale, but if you really want to manufacture nitric acid, you need platinum. We happened to acquire a piece of platinum on treasure island, so once we put it under pressure and add ammonia, which is incredibly easy to come by, it oxidizes into nitric oxide. This gets done twice and added to water and you're finished!"

None of that exactly sounded like a quick or easy process, actually, but compared to how long it would take to make a new natural source? Much much easier.

[unfavorableinstigation]

"You don't need to tell me that one twice," Nita agreed.

As for the science, she could follow it; guano, while gross, was a fact of life. And as for platinum...

"Bit of a literal 'treasure island', there. What were you using to add the pressure?"

If they had, say, a vacuum chamber, that was one thing, but if they could forge steel it sounded as if they had something that worked just as well.

[10billionpercent]

"My old man had an annoying sense of humour, but it fits well enough." Senku quipped in return, he didn't really care what the island was called, since no one who lived on it knew it's original name anyway.

"We haven't built it yet. We just got the platinum, so we'll build it when we get the chance. We've got a couple of things going in tandem, what with dealing with the probable adversary on the moon, we also have to get into space. It's going to be a matter of dividing and conquering. I have to decide what resource we're going to chase first. I do think it's the alcohol though, there's no way we can produce that on a large scale, but if we can get yellow dent corn from America, that would change the game."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"... Family hideaway?"

It was the simplest explanation.

"Getting from stone-age tech back to the space age... how long do you have?"

If the villain was hiding out on the moon, it sure sounded like they could afford the wait, but still!

[10billionpercent]

"In a manner of speaking." Senku said, and then made movements to help himself to tea. "I did say it was long, it's also somewhat complicated."

He knew that because once he realized and made the connections, he'd had to explain them.

"To put it succinctly...Byakuya wasn't on the surface of the planet at the time of the attack. Now I'm not clear it actually was an attack, but for purposes of simplification and discounting all of my theories, let's go with that. He was an astronaut, so he was up on the ISS with four others and a space tourist, a pop idol." Senku replied. "It was the week of changeover so they were still up there together, so when humanity was petrified, they returned to Earth, set themselves up on that island and proceeded to repopulate the world, essentially. Probably somewhere in the oral records there's an exact number of descendants between the six, but I can't be sure offhand."

Ruri wasn't exactly around to ask, and it didn't matter in the end.

"However, aside from establish the mythos the villagers all follow in the form of a hundred stories, apparently he spent much of his life trying to gather as much gold and platinum as he could, and upon his death it was encased in concrete in the remains of the Soyuz capsule. I knew where it was because of one of those tales. A few of the tales were clues left behind for me."

He took a sip.

"As for how much time we have? As long as it takes. I'm not afraid of a long-term project."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita had her own tea preferences; fortunately there were good flavors in stock, and someone had cleaned the carafe that morning.

"Hell of a story... how healthy are the villagers, being the descendants of so few people?"

The answer was probably 'not very', but one could never assume.

"Well, as long as you're not in a hurry - we don't exactly know if we have a timeline for being on this train, either, even if time isn't passing at all back home."

[10billionpercent]

"Mmm, I imagine that was quite the problem at the time, but it's been over a hundred generations, I expect natural selection has come into play, and some of the less desirable genes have been bred out over time. It would be fascinating to take some blood and do some genetic studies but I don't have that kind of equipment yet." Senku was giving the question serious thought though, it wasn't the first time.

"Overall, they are pretty healthy. There are people in the village who are in their 50s, even 60s, but I expect the average life expectancy is pretty low all the same. They didn't have much by way of medicine, so things like illness run rampant when they appear. It was lucky that Ruri's pneumonia didn't, actually. On average, in a year, they lose people to exposure and starvation. They were primarily a hunting and gathering tribe. I'd expect too, that probably infant mortality rates and childbirth are just as perilous."

"Some of them are nearsighted, that much I've noticed, but how they differ genetically I'm not in a position to say just yet."

Senku quirked a smile at that. "You don't say. Fascinating data point." It was good to know time wouldn't pass. "All the same, if for some reason I didn't return, I expect my generals will handle it, so I'm not worried."

Fade out as they drink tea?

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita made a private note to check her Manual on that genetic math; one would think they'd become too unhealthy to survive as a whole after all... Lucky for Senku that hadn't been the case, though.

She made a grimace. "Not exactly a pleasant environment for them. Given they had to recreate plumbing as well, I imagine."

It occurred to Nita that, technically speaking, Senku was younger than her. Blame Nautilus. She quickly put that thought aside.

Sure

[10billionpercent]

It was definitely worth a full study, it just wasn't a priority at the moment for anyone, not when survival was still mostly the name of the game.

"No plumbing." Senku said with a bit of a laugh. "Not enough people, not enough infrastructure."

Aaaand wrap.

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita made another face. "Probably smells worse than here, then, and we have bathrooms."

Too many people, not enough infrastructure; it amounted to the same thing...

"Tell me more about how you're crossing the ocean to America, though?"

It made for a better tea conversation, especially since Nita thought she saw some pastries in the fridge and didn't want to be too ill to try them!