On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
two bigger fish
[Title] Biological Necessities
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word count] 688
[Notes/Summary] The rest of Aperture Science always looked down on the Biology Department. Doug Rattmann is reconsidering that now.
They always kind of looked down on the biology department. You know, here’s Computer Science pushing the boundaries of AI, even if said AI does try and kill everyone every time you switch it on, and here’s Particle Physics And Shower Curtains creating a device that punches holes in reality, or will do if it ever gets out of beta, and there’s Bio, doing… stuff with frogs? Rats? Dissecting cows’ hearts? When’s the last time a biologist did anything that wasn’t, ‘Hey guys, we found another type of plant’ anyway?
Doug’s not pretending he didn’t go along with the joke. After all, he pretty much flunked biology due to a combination of bad teaching, frustration at the analog nature of living organisms, and suddenly-much-less-latent schizophrenia, so it’s not like he owes it anything. And seeing as how Aperture Science’s projects tended to oscillate between terrifyingly effective and entirely useless, and the Bio team never got a write-up in the company newsletters about how well they’d done, they probably weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. He heard rumours that they’d tried to get into biomedical research but the National Institute of Health had sent round an audit team and the multiple ethical violations they recorded had got the department shut down and a large proportion of it arrested. On the other hand, multiple ethical violations had never stopped anyone else at Aperture, so perhaps it was just that the higher-ups thought curing cancer or achieving human cloning wasn’t thinking big enough.
This is all history, and if it’s not ancient (Doug stopped counting the days he’s been down here a long time ago) it sure feels it with the groundwater starting to leach into the lower chambers and the dust thick as silk on the desks.
And he’s developed a new appreciation for things like plants. Sunlight. Birds. Analog. (A new appreciation for things like breathing, and heartbeat, and medication, and not riddled with bullets from turret defence designed to target military androids, let’s be honest.)
The Bio team were at the big switch-on like everyone else, and so they breathed in the deadly neurotoxin like everyone else, just probably knew a little bit more of the science behind what happened to them next. Doug’s taken a while to get to their lab, because it takes a while to get anywhere when you have to travel within the walls. Right now, though, She’s running tests at the other end of the facility, so he’s taking the opportunity to forage. Running low on canned food. He needs to strike out for the canteen in B Building, but that’ll take a while.
The lab certainly doesn’t give the impression the team were working on anything much more exciting than plants. There are tanks full of trays of earth and dead seedlings, dried up leaves and spores, microscope slides lined up in boxes. There’s a room of wall-to-wall cages of mice, all of which are dead. It smells about as great as you’d expect and Doug chooses not to carry on that route in case he finds dogs, cats, monkeys, other test subjects, better to go back into the main lab. There’s an industrial-size fridge there. He tries not to think of embryos and hauls it open.
There aren’t embryos. What there mostly is, is fish. Shelves of tuna. Crabs like dinner plates piled on ice. Octopuses with… okay, with nine tentacles. Some of the fish have two heads. Some of them are faintly glowing.
Seeing as his own department’s directly responsible for the death of thousands and his own trapped-in-post-apocalyptic-paranoid-nightmare predicament, maybe he can’t afford to judge another team for focusing on the piscine side of things.
He takes some of the fish with him, cooks them over a wastebin campfire. She always smells the smoke, starts reading the Health and Safety section of the Employee Handbook out to him with sarcastic asides. Cooking and eating something you found in an Aperture Science laboratory is definitely against health and safety protocols, but the food is hot and tastes good and after all, maybe basic biology is the way to go.
[Title] Food Chain
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word count] 394
[Notes/Summary] Gum, Beat and Tab consider their options after finding their hide-out filled with frogs.
“Okay,” Gum said, pacing the Garage. “So talk me through this.”
“The Poison Jam snuck onto our turf,” Beat said.
“They did.”
“They filled our base full of frogs. For some reason.”
“Yeah,” Tab said. “Where they got them is an exercise left for the viewer.”
“Way I see it, that’s a challenge.”
“Agreed,” Gum said. “I mean, it could be some freaky shit that only makes sense to them.”
“Or an homage to a really obscure horror movie,” Tab said. “Like… Frogs!! or something. But sure, we can assume it’s a challenge.”
“So,” Beat said, “I’m new to this whole gang thing, but when someone challenges you, aren’t you supposed to take it up?”
“Hmm, are you?” Gum said. “I mean, what’s the difference between challenge and trap, when all’s said and done?”
“You think they’re smart enough to set a trap?” Tab said.
“No, but if they are, you know it’ll be a Saw trap.”
Tab nodded ruefully.
“Okay, look at it this way,” Beat said. “If we act like the bigger people here, they’ll figure they can just do it again. Maybe it’ll be something else next time. Eels. Toads.”
“Goldfish,” Tab said, nodding. “No, wait, tuna, like those massive ones they sell down at Kogane-cho Market. Those things weigh a ton.”
“Let’s take the fight to them,” Beat said. “We got skates. We got paint. We got sweet tags. I’m pretty sure we’ve got superior agility. And we’ve probably got the power of friendship or something. Whereas they’ve just got… creepy blood pacts with amphibians. Let’s go on the offense with our weapons, you know?”
Gum frowned, then grabbed up a can of paint. “Yeah, okay. Seems legit. I never liked those guys, and it’d be sweet to get to try out some moves in Kogane.”
“Cool,” Beat said. “Tab? You in?”
Tab turned to look at them. “I got it. I bet it’s called They Croak or something. Like, ‘croak’ as in die, and ‘croak’ as in - come on, you know it’s gotta exist.”
“Oh my god,” Gum said, scowling at him. “Have you been thinking that up this entire time?”
“I’m sorry to say, yes. But I’m cool with the offense plan. Maybe we can rifle through their DVD collection when we find their base. No, they’d have a lair, wouldn’t they? I wanna see if I’m right.”
two bigger fish
[Title] Biological Necessities
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word count] 688
[Notes/Summary] The rest of Aperture Science always looked down on the Biology Department. Doug Rattmann is reconsidering that now.
They always kind of looked down on the biology department. You know, here’s Computer Science pushing the boundaries of AI, even if said AI does try and kill everyone every time you switch it on, and here’s Particle Physics And Shower Curtains creating a device that punches holes in reality, or will do if it ever gets out of beta, and there’s Bio, doing… stuff with frogs? Rats? Dissecting cows’ hearts? When’s the last time a biologist did anything that wasn’t, ‘Hey guys, we found another type of plant’ anyway?
Doug’s not pretending he didn’t go along with the joke. After all, he pretty much flunked biology due to a combination of bad teaching, frustration at the analog nature of living organisms, and suddenly-much-less-latent schizophrenia, so it’s not like he owes it anything. And seeing as how Aperture Science’s projects tended to oscillate between terrifyingly effective and entirely useless, and the Bio team never got a write-up in the company newsletters about how well they’d done, they probably weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. He heard rumours that they’d tried to get into biomedical research but the National Institute of Health had sent round an audit team and the multiple ethical violations they recorded had got the department shut down and a large proportion of it arrested. On the other hand, multiple ethical violations had never stopped anyone else at Aperture, so perhaps it was just that the higher-ups thought curing cancer or achieving human cloning wasn’t thinking big enough.
This is all history, and if it’s not ancient (Doug stopped counting the days he’s been down here a long time ago) it sure feels it with the groundwater starting to leach into the lower chambers and the dust thick as silk on the desks.
And he’s developed a new appreciation for things like plants. Sunlight. Birds. Analog. (A new appreciation for things like breathing, and heartbeat, and medication, and not riddled with bullets from turret defence designed to target military androids, let’s be honest.)
The Bio team were at the big switch-on like everyone else, and so they breathed in the deadly neurotoxin like everyone else, just probably knew a little bit more of the science behind what happened to them next. Doug’s taken a while to get to their lab, because it takes a while to get anywhere when you have to travel within the walls. Right now, though, She’s running tests at the other end of the facility, so he’s taking the opportunity to forage. Running low on canned food. He needs to strike out for the canteen in B Building, but that’ll take a while.
The lab certainly doesn’t give the impression the team were working on anything much more exciting than plants. There are tanks full of trays of earth and dead seedlings, dried up leaves and spores, microscope slides lined up in boxes. There’s a room of wall-to-wall cages of mice, all of which are dead. It smells about as great as you’d expect and Doug chooses not to carry on that route in case he finds dogs, cats, monkeys, other test subjects, better to go back into the main lab. There’s an industrial-size fridge there. He tries not to think of embryos and hauls it open.
There aren’t embryos. What there mostly is, is fish. Shelves of tuna. Crabs like dinner plates piled on ice. Octopuses with… okay, with nine tentacles. Some of the fish have two heads. Some of them are faintly glowing.
Seeing as his own department’s directly responsible for the death of thousands and his own trapped-in-post-apocalyptic-paranoid-nightmare predicament, maybe he can’t afford to judge another team for focusing on the piscine side of things.
He takes some of the fish with him, cooks them over a wastebin campfire. She always smells the smoke, starts reading the Health and Safety section of the Employee Handbook out to him with sarcastic asides. Cooking and eating something you found in an Aperture Science laboratory is definitely against health and safety protocols, but the food is hot and tastes good and after all, maybe basic biology is the way to go.
[Title] Food Chain
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word count] 394
[Notes/Summary] Gum, Beat and Tab consider their options after finding their hide-out filled with frogs.
“Okay,” Gum said, pacing the Garage. “So talk me through this.”
“The Poison Jam snuck onto our turf,” Beat said.
“They did.”
“They filled our base full of frogs. For some reason.”
“Yeah,” Tab said. “Where they got them is an exercise left for the viewer.”
“Way I see it, that’s a challenge.”
“Agreed,” Gum said. “I mean, it could be some freaky shit that only makes sense to them.”
“Or an homage to a really obscure horror movie,” Tab said. “Like… Frogs!! or something. But sure, we can assume it’s a challenge.”
“So,” Beat said, “I’m new to this whole gang thing, but when someone challenges you, aren’t you supposed to take it up?”
“Hmm, are you?” Gum said. “I mean, what’s the difference between challenge and trap, when all’s said and done?”
“You think they’re smart enough to set a trap?” Tab said.
“No, but if they are, you know it’ll be a Saw trap.”
Tab nodded ruefully.
“Okay, look at it this way,” Beat said. “If we act like the bigger people here, they’ll figure they can just do it again. Maybe it’ll be something else next time. Eels. Toads.”
“Goldfish,” Tab said, nodding. “No, wait, tuna, like those massive ones they sell down at Kogane-cho Market. Those things weigh a ton.”
“Let’s take the fight to them,” Beat said. “We got skates. We got paint. We got sweet tags. I’m pretty sure we’ve got superior agility. And we’ve probably got the power of friendship or something. Whereas they’ve just got… creepy blood pacts with amphibians. Let’s go on the offense with our weapons, you know?”
Gum frowned, then grabbed up a can of paint. “Yeah, okay. Seems legit. I never liked those guys, and it’d be sweet to get to try out some moves in Kogane.”
“Cool,” Beat said. “Tab? You in?”
Tab turned to look at them. “I got it. I bet it’s called They Croak or something. Like, ‘croak’ as in die, and ‘croak’ as in - come on, you know it’s gotta exist.”
“Oh my god,” Gum said, scowling at him. “Have you been thinking that up this entire time?”
“I’m sorry to say, yes. But I’m cool with the offense plan. Maybe we can rifle through their DVD collection when we find their base. No, they’d have a lair, wouldn’t they? I wanna see if I’m right.”