futurology | text; un: bortz

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text; un: bortz

[Bortz is not a chatty person. They aren't a particularly social person, and they aren't at all eager to make new "friends". But they'll submit to this sort of socialization with complete strangers to get information they need.]

Do animals have doctors?
If there is anyone in charge of fixing those of us who break then I need to know in advance rather than waiting until they're actually needed.

[There's a pause, and then they continue, almost begrudgingly.]

I also need to know if anything be done for you people if you're damaged.
If it comes up then there won't be time to figure it out in the moment. I won't waste time trying to help if there's no point.

[They don't care. They really don't, these organics mean nothing to them and frankly, expending effort on them when they have such short, limited lifespans to begin with seems pointless. But this is the job they've been given, and they'll do it right. If that means babysitting these fleshy people then so be it.]

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[They nod simply as if to confirm her realization about their name.]

Our doctor examined us.

[They want to be helpful and cooperative in this. She's only trying to assist them, and the more she knows then the beter she'll be able to stand in for Rutile should things go wrong. But at the mention of taking a sample they frown, eyebrows knitting together in a faintly uncertain expression.]

...Will you give the sample back afterwards?

I could, most certainly.

[After she's studied it, anyway... but. They do seem a bit reluctant, and she isn't opposed to offering alternatives.]

If your entire body is made of the same material, though, I might could do rudimentary examinations while said sample were still attached. If you can stay still.

Your... hair, or your fingers, perhaps?

[Hair is difficult to reattach. The strands are just too thin. Rutile could do it, maybe, but hair is often minor enough and lacking in any memories that it's not worth bothering. They probably don't carry any memories within them.

But then, Bortz has a lot of hair. They don't want to bet on it being that inconsequential a loss. Besides, Red Beryl would take issue with them ruining their hair and being unable to fix it.

So they nod again, thoughtful, before shoving up a kimono sleeve to peel off the long glove underneath. The skin revealed appears pale and flawlessly smooth, the nails a black that just faintly glitters as if painted with a fancy polish. But closer examination will reveal that there's no polish -- and in fact, no skin either. Their arm is a consistently rock hard surface all throughout, and close observation will reveal that it's all been coated with a layer of makeup-like powder except for the nails, which were left their natural coloring.

Biting back the lingering reluctance, they offer up the limb wordlessly.]

[Now that... is interesting.

Sieglinde scootches off her cushions, tugging her own soft gloves off the nearby table to pull on before she gently places her fingers beneath their elbow and palm to support the limb while she leans over it. Long and close enough to notice the coating.

Curious, she cocks her head before looking up at their face. More coating?]

What is this, exactly? Can I remove it?

Powder. We look hideous without it.

[Ugh. It isn't that different from how Rutile conducts examinations -- comfortingly similar, even -- but the content of these requests put them mildly on edge given the situation. They can't help but want to preserve their powder as long as possible, at least until a local substitute has been found. But she probably can't do a decent examination with it on.

Their jaw tense slightly, but they nod.]

Only on a small section. I don't have any powder to replace it yet. [A beat, and:] Water will wash it off with enough time or some rubbing.

Edited 2018-01-26 14:07 (UTC)

["Hideous"...

That makes her pause, glancing back down at their hand and the glittering black that seems to be a glimpse of their actual coloring. It looks pretty to her eyes, people always praised the glitter of precious stones...

But her eyes flick down to her feet, bandaged and half-dead. She knows well that the opinions of others meant absolutely nothing when it came to how one viewed one's self. So it isn't her place to argue against that judgement.

Instead, she just smiles reassuringly.]

In that case, shall we add this powder of yours to our list of things to try recreating? I can analyze it's consistency.

[She comes up with a small cotton swab, choosing a place on the inside of Bortz's elbow that is easy to hide with the gloves or the kimono sleeves if they wished, beginning to rub a small portion of the powder off.[

[This small community of gem people and their Sensei has developed some very strange standards of beauty. For a group that doesn't even know what humans are, they sure do judge a fair bit of their appearances by how basically human they look. There are Reasons, but that's all before Bortz's time. As far as they're concerned, this is just how they do things and they have no desire to rebel against the group.

The powder does not come off easily with rubbing alone. It's meant to last without frequent reapplication, after all. Water would make it easier. That small patch does slowly begin to thin with the concentrated attention, though, and a hint of black starts to show through the layer of powder.]

Someone said it sounds like makeup. That women may be able to just purchase it here.

[They need to think beyond just this mission and this world, of course. But they're trying to be helpful.]

[It certainly is a stubborn substance, this powder, but she wants as pure a sample as possible, so she doesn't resort to water, instead continuing to rub with a focused determination, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as she keeps working.]

Well, it seems to serve the same purpose as makeup, in a sense, but... I have never seen a makeup this good at sticking to such a surface, I am not sure you could purchase it.

[The makeup she's familiar with would surely leave residue or ruboff on his clothing, smear where garments were worn...

But she doubles her efforts and keeps it up until there is a small circle of black exposed, after which she encourages him to turn his arm slightly and allow her to rub an equally small spot on the exact opposite side of the one she's already made.]

[They move with the quiet encouragements easily, like they're well-used to being manhandled in this manner. At least this girl doesn't have to wear gloves just to touch them without risking damage to herself. There are strange, subtle benefits to being so soft.]

Rutile makes it from the berries of a flower that blooms in the early fall. The berries are most abundant when it's hot, so the others gather the berries mid to late summer.

[Even once the opposite surface is cleared, it's basically impossible to see straight through it without directly shining a light through the spot or something. They've always been one of the more opaque gems due to their polycrystalline structure. But It's almost transparent, in a way similar to cloudy water. And there's nothing to be seen but that same material all the way through, no bones or veins or muscles or any kind.]

[Berries, hmm... she is definitely going to have to focus on organics, but she is certainly fine with that. Most of her work came from the natural world, from herbs and the ground.]

If you could draw or describe that flower for me, it would be most useful.

[She assumes it is an alien one, if it is from a world populated by gem people, but still, might as well.

Once the two patches are cleared she carefully takes her cotton swab samples and puts them in a small case to store them, planning to examine them later. She wants to make sure there's no interference from the powder when she looks through the microscope, but she can't help but stop a moment to marvel that it seems he is truly sculpted from gem alone, with no skeletal base to speak off. She can vaguely, just vaguely, see the shadow of the movement of her fingers on the other side.

Fascinating.]

Let us get you under a microscope- one moment.

[She says microscope, but... when she pulls away and scoots back to her table, what she pulls out is what looks like a giant crystal ball. Organic, not crystal, though, the lens of a sea serpent's eye.]

[They nod. They are...not an artist. But they can do their best.

When she turns away and comes back with a big orb thing, however, the frown slightly, eyebrows knitting together in consternation.]

What is that?

This? It is the lens I dug out of a sea serpent’s eye in a world called Nalawi.

[While speaking she begins to set up, arranging a sort of cradle for her to set the lens in that allows for a sample (or an arm) to be placed on a plate beneath the lens.

Oh, he is not flesh, she should probably explain-]

Most creatures with eyeballs have a lens within the orb that allows for focusing on objects we see. Considering it’s biological use, it was quite fitting to convert it magically for both scrying and analysis.

[She points helpfully at her eyeball, and considering the size of the lens on her table, at least ten inches wide, the eye it had belonged to just have been huge... wait, did that mean this little girl went digging about in a beast’s eye socket to pull this out?

Yes, yes it did.]

I see.

[They don't really...understand fully the implications of digging around in the body parts of fleshy creatures. Handling others' body parts is pretty standard for them. This sounds perfectly legit.

It probably doesn't help that they don't have the same concept of age either. Gems are born fully formed. For all they know, she's just small because...she's small. They couldn't even begin to guess at how old she is.

Helpfully, they just make en educated guess about what needs to be done here and sets their arm beneath the lens.]

[Not being told that she couldn't go diving for magic components in sea serpent corpses? Not being judged for her age? There might be some benefits to hanging around a walking gem after all.

The guess at least is right, and Sieglinde nods approvingly.]

Let us take a look, shall we? I grew a diamond for a mission last year, but in the end I did not even get to use it... I hope all that research can be put to better use.

[Excited, she carefully adjusts his arm just slightly before tracing a rune she's carved into the side of the lens and leaning in to look at what shows up much like a modern microscope...

And the twinkle in her eyes is undeniable, clutching the side of the lens in surprise at proof that he really was composed of, by all accounts... diamond.]

Look at that latticing... !!

[Under a microscope -- or in this case, a magic sea serpent eyeball thing -- not only is their structure clearly indeed all crystal, but it's not standard diamond Where a traditional jewelry-grade diamond is a monocrystal, all one solid piece, their structure is a mass of tiny crystals making up the whole.

Sieglinde's enthusiasm is...interesting, at least. Hard to say whether it's nice or just strange. Glancing around the room while she makes her observations, Bortz frowns.]

You might not be able to get a sample with any of your tools.

[They're too hard, and without traditional diamond's perfect cleavage and susceptibility to impact.

[Fascinating. It's as if their entire body was a crystalline colony, and she can't help but be excited at the prospect of studying such a thing, how he is able to be sentient, and have life and a personality and-

Her palm slaps into her forehead at the reminder, though, reeling back from the magnified image of his arm structure with a groan.]

Your carbons- !

[They were latticed so tightly together... but. Wait-

She hadn't had the chance to user it on Leramzen, which meant she still had it around here somewhere... Sieglinde goes diving into her things, eventually coming back up with... a rough chunk of artificially grown diamond, that she clasps in both hands, checking it over.]

Is this hard enough...

[It's the separation between the microcrystals that makes them so durable, as it turns out. Where an impact that might shatter Diamond would travel far through their solid mass of crystal, that same impact is stopped short by Bortz's disjointed microcrystals. They can chip, but it takes a hell of a hit to break them, to break through all those tiny individual diamonds.]

It'll require both hardness and intense force or pressure.

[And humans are...so frail. They somehow doubt she has that much strength in her small body. Their current streak of avoiding any kind of damage was decades long -- possibly centuries, they lost count after a while -- and only half of that was due to pure fighting skill.

They eye the rough diamond for a moment, and then their own hand -- hard and tough as the rest of them, but with such thin fingers...]

I can probably do it.

[Well, Bortz is right about that. Sieglinde has very little in the way of power in her body, thin of limb and with little experience in labor... so she puts the hunk of diamond on her desk thoughtfully.]

... Do you feel pain?

[She did want a sample, but... she wasn't so obsessed with her science projects to ignore the question of her patients and their well-being in the process.

Most of the time.]

[This again. The one straightforward person had asked if it hurt to break. They aren't familiar with the concept of pain being used for things outside emotions, but they aren't stupid. Humans expect some negative feeling to being damaged.]

No.

[With that much to ease her apparent worries, they reach over to grab the hunk of diamond and set their off hand against the worktable, spreading their fingers out. They lift the diamond as if to unceremoniously bring it crashing down, but pause before doing so to shoot Sieglinde a thoughtful look.]

Would you be upset if this broke?

[Traditional diamond won't weather a blow as well as they will. It very well may crack or entirely split.]

[No pain receptors... ?

She'll have to address that another time, because if it didn't hurt them... she was completely fine with going ahead, nodding along.]

It is fine. I only made it for a mission.

[If it had to be broken in order to advance something to help a fellow, then so be it- she had no actual use these days for precious stones and the finery befitting the station she'd been raised to believe was her blood right.]

I only need a sample this large.

[She holds up her fingers to show about an inch long, unable to stop herself from leaning forward slightly in interest.]

[Welp. Permission granted. They hold her gaze for a second longer before looking down to their hand and slamming the narrowest end of the diamond hunk against their pinky, taking care to pull the blow just a little so as to not crush it against the desk. They don't want to smash it to straight-up dust..

The sound of the impact is loud and sharply cracking. Neither their hand nor the diamond comes away unscathed.

The hunk of diamond's break is relatively neat. Relatively. Small bits fly and the tip of the chunk where it impacted shatters into a number of pieces, several cracks running through what remains of the whole. It's far from a precise jeweler's cut. But the facets, haphazard as they are, are fairly tidy if one really looks at them, smooth panes where the diamond split most easily.

Bortz's finger does not shatter so clearly. The tiny black bits that scatter from the force of the impact are far more numerous, and the edges of the broken off finger and the hand it was separated from are horribly jagged. They frown at the scattering of shards and the rough edges, already anticipating the painstaking process it will be to piece back together, before glancing to their other hand to make sure the blow hadn't damaged it as well.

Eventually satisfied, they pluck the severed pinky from the mess, whole for the entirely of the last joint and a bit of a mess for most of the next. They shake off the loose pieces and offer it up to Sieglinde.]

Will that work?

[It better. They should have just tried snapping the finger off, really. It might have been neater. They carefully sweep together the mess of small loose shards with the side of their hand, scanning the floor to see if any fell.]

[It's difficult to not flinch upon impact. It's a violent seeming action, the shattering, and despite her experiences since she's joined ALASTAIR and now Hathaway... the fighting in Nalawi, the chimera of Chantes, the ambush in Perdition's Rest... she still couldn't help but be frightened of such things. Of the wounds and the death that came in the wake.

But this... rather than there being no blood, it's the fact that his facial expression remains calm that prevents her from recoiling, from feeling upset at the sight of another's pain, able to watch until the end just curling her fingers tightly in the fabric of her kimono.

Once he offers the finger, though... she can't help but reach for it eagerly, holding it up to the light and admiring the crystal, eyes wide.]

Yes, yes, this will-

[Or, wait, this could be better... she points to the finger somewhat sheepishly.]

Actually... could you break this in half somehow? That way I do not have to call you in every time I'd like to test a compound...

[It looks more like a broken bit of statue when disconnected like that, exposed dark crystal giving way to a stiff, powder-coated digit. Bortz takes it back without awe or question at her request. If that's what she needs, then so be it.

The severed finger is pretty small. It might be hard to get the right leverage. They frown at it for a moment and then place their fingers gingerly at either end. It takes a good amount of careful force and effort, but it eventually snaps with a cracking sound at the joint into two uneven pieces, only a few extra tiny shards falling loose to join their pile.

Damn. Really probably would have been neater. Their frown deepens, but they wordlessly hand the two parts back to her.]

[Carefully, containing her urge to explode into movement and begin examining things immediately, Sieglinde accepts the two pieces, laying them in her lap briefly to pull an incongruous piece of equipment in this lab out, a tablet computer, fingers flying over the screen and tapping until she pulls up a drawing application.

It seems rude to ask them to draw with charcoal on paper after breaking off a finger, so the easily done one-finger-touch application seems the better choice.]

Now, could you draw the flower you mentioned. To the best of your ability is fine, we are not all artists.

[She demonstrates how to work the tablet in case they do not know before she offers it, smiling as if to mirror the depth of that frown.]

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