Day 44: Women's Showers (2nd Shift)

[hajike_tobiume]

The sting of the water on Momo's wounds reminded her exactly where each and every burn was. Between that and the clear plastic wrapping the nurse placed around the long cut up her arm to her shoulder, she decided as little time in the actual spray would be wise. Sitting on a stool out of the direct stream, she went about scrubbing the grit and

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[ninelivesonce]

Most people were really short next to Taura; the woman unlacing her enviably unfrizzy hair from some sort of complex arrangement fell squarely into Taura's estimation of average height. What was more noticeable was that she was limping. The last person who'd said he could stay upright on his own and shrugged off assistance had collapsed with gaping wounds shortly thereafter, which made Taura a little twitchy about taking this woman's statement at face value. Even if she hadn't been talking to Taura when she'd said it.

It was daytime, and neither of the last two night's events were being treated as normal by the more seasoned ranks of the population, so maybe it would be fine. And a fall on slippery tiles would hurt, but it wasn't anything like a stab wound to the shoulder.

"Uh, I've heard her voice before -- not sure when, but she's done the announcements. Before the whole I.R.I.S. thing started." I think that's the first time I've heard her introduce herself." Had Lydia been mentioned on the bulletin? She'd seen some names mentioned that she'd never heard firsthand, but Lydia hadn't been one of them. "I haven't been here very long; did you just arrive?" She'd been here less than a week -- she didn't believe in wasting time but there was no way that made her an old hand, or a fountain of knowledge. "She's always like that -- less cheery, and more like a normal medic."

She tipped her head back and let the water cascade over her face for a minute. Then she shook the water out of her eyes, looking more awake than she had before. "Oh. I'm Taura."

[mugenreppa]

"Hnnnn?" Well, there was no other way of saying it- Mele shook her head as she said, "I haven't been...paying attention." It had only occurred to her just now that tracking the movements of the voices on the intercom might be a good idea. "I've been here maybe...three days? Four?" Counting her conversations with Soma, that was three, and then the trip to town, and then the day she'd missed that belonged to last night with the weirdo screams, assumedly.

Combing her hair out with her fingers, she said flippantly, "I'm Mele. Nice to meet you~"

The gashes on her legs stung a little more than expected, but it was only water, and the injuries were mostly healed, anyway. Even so, Mele was careful to keep balanced on her feet, since falling would be utterly embarrassing.

"Meet anyone interesting lately?" Engaging in small talk-silence made her edgy and uncomfortable now, though she couldn't say why.

[ninelivesonce]

Small talk was more difficult than small arms fire. Taura liked getting to know new people; she just...wasn't very good at it.

"Yeah, me too. Fourth day here, I mean. And I've met a bunch of nice people -- everyone here except the staff have been friendly." She mentally dodged running the roll call of names; at least one was dead, and several had vanished. "Lots of folks from old Earth, and a bunch -- a bunch I don't know where they hail from; we were too busy running for real introductions." She grinned -- the zombie attack hadn't been fun, but as they'd all come out of it unscathed, the memory took on the real-sun-drenched cast of a successful mission; it'd burn you if you had to go back and spend all day in it, but the reflected light was warm.

"How about you? Where do you call home?"

[mugenreppa]

Mele laughed at the comment about the staff, resting her hand gently on the tile as a precaution against losing her balance. "They're saccharine, really, but they don't even bother to learn our real names."

Her hands returned to her hair. "My home is..." Mele tilted her head. She'd never thought about it, and she had the jaded view of someone who lives somewhere without really seeing it. "Normal? Something like that town, I guess, but livelier." Although with the zombie attack there, maybe it was about the same. When she mounted an attack, at least she'd done it in the day and she'd had no means of converting the entire city to some kind of ruins like that.... But, details.

"You said 'old' Earth?" Mele asked, peering up at Taura through the hair that had flopped into her face. "Is there a new one?"

[ninelivesonce]

"Not a New Earth," Taura replied, her low voice drum-beating the capital letters just hard enough to make her meaning clear. "Lots of New Londons and there's Nuovo Brazil, but no-one's tried to claim themselves to be New Earth. I meant that I've met a bunch of people from before we -- humanity -- started having other options."

"Some time around when this whole place is supposed to be. Projectile guns and ground cars and primitive medicine." The low-tech look, including the wounds they'd left on Mele's legs, had to be part of the deception. Even if that technology was more of the "magic" she'd seen last night rather than anything she could recognize, whoever was in charge had more resources than they'd shown. Just like letting them overhear the "confusion" on the radio -- all of it was calculated to be disarming. But the evidence was there if you looked, and remembered -- in everything from repaired building damage to Taura's own new body. "Did you know women used to die in childbirth? Frequently enough that they weren't allowed to do whole classes of jobs?"

All of the history books Taura had read had been military history; what she knew of primitive medicine was summed up in casualty charts and tactical advice, and the incidental facts that, when you went back far enough, all the authors were men, as well as their intended audience. "No female soldiers, tacticians, pilots, nothing."

Gender had been no line-item detail in Taura's creation; half of her creche mates had been female, the other half male. The only difference that had mattered was that the females had outlived the males by a few percentage points; and she had outlived the rest of the females by a handful more.

Okay, that she'd lived long enough to have a life and that Miles would have had a very different reaction, down in that horrid basement. But she wouldn't have known that, then. What did Captain Thorne call him -- so hopelessly monosexual? She snorted, a little, imagining his expression. And Bel's. The real Bel, not yesterday's impostor.

[mugenreppa]

"Yep," Mele replied to the death in childbirth question. Women also died when they were slain by a stronger fighter or when armies and bandits raided villages for their own pleasure. Mele had seen that kind of thing only once.

As for women soldiers, Mele shrugged. She didn't have too many feelings about that; too busy swallowing a bae killing people. She probably didn't deserve to say anything on that front, being who she was.

"About ten years ago, I was revived in a more futuristic time than I remember. Where you come from sounds like that-it's the future to me, probably." Mele pulled her hair around over her shoulder. "Sounds fun. Is everything 'new' there?" she asked, carelessly clueless rather than sarcastic.

[ninelivesonce]

Taura was still stuck on hunting for ways that yesterday's visitor had differed from the Bel Thorne she knew -- ways other than believing the Institute's pack of lies about Taura. Its mannerisms matched; that carelessly aggressive posture when Bel meant the dressing-down it was giving, the faint hint of quasi-maternal worry. All of it had been carefully coached; she hadn't seen a single slip. That had been what had convinced her it was an impostor; the real Bel would have found a way to signal her, to get a message through, even if it was just no, it's impossible. It would still have given her hope, since Bel might give up on impossibilities, but Miles didn't.

"New? I don't think so. Everything gets old -- jumpship Necklin rods aren't any different from," she glanced around, hunting for a reference point they were guaranteed to have in common, "floor tiles, when it comes down to it. But you said you were cryo-frozen? For a long time?" I guess you could do that with cryogenics -- take a one-way trip to the future just to play tourist. Not just to wait until you'd hit a medical facility capable of fixing whatever you'd done to yourself. It seemed like a lot of faith to have in the future, though Mele hadn't said she hadn't been injured. Just that she'd been successfully revived at the end of it.

"What was it like, seeing the future?"