fh_trips | Kellerman's Resort, Tuesday Morning and Afternoon, October 13th

Entry tags:

fall break 2009: kellerman's

Kellerman's Resort, Tuesday Morning and Afternoon, October 13th

The weather at Kellerman's continued to be favourable, as the autumn sun shone down on the fields and streams of the area. The staff of the resort were busy but happy to help, bustling through the corridors and courtyard.

The boards outside were advertising a white water rafting trip today, for anyone willing to go out and risk the rapids; for the less adventurous, a trip to see the Cascade Falls might just do the trick.

[[ Cottage and Room List | Rooms | Activities Barn | Indoor Activities | Outdoor Activities | White Water Rafting | Cascade Falls | OOC | OCD up! ]]

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"No memory loss, no muscle tremors or fine control difficulties." She nodded. "I'm good. But while we don't have extensive data yet, symptoms onset is sudden."

"No possibility of a risk assessment yet?"

Ender lapsed into this frame of terminology with ease, even if it made him watch Triela with more care.

"No. The first time it happened no one was anticipating it. We don't have any ideas what sort of neuro-chemical markers there might be in advance of permanent damage."

Ender nodded. "And it's only occurred once so far," he surmised, carefully keeping his eyes on Triela to see if he was wrong, "So there's no definite data of any kind. You might be the next test case."

"Probably will be," she agreed. "Angelica is the only girl brought in before me. And while there are plenty of things we don't know, we're pretty sure that exposure time is a big factor."

"How far is Angelica into the degeneration process?" Ender asked, his mind racing on the topic.

"Years. It's slow and ugly. She can't be put on active duty, but they can't stop regular doses of Conditioning drugs." That would only make things worse.

"How much work are they making out of finding out what went wrong?" he asked, delicately.

"Some." Not enough. Jean was still the senior handler, and he still thought it was easier to recruit a replacement than figure out how to solve the problems with the drugs.

"There is some value to retaining experience, after all."

"More than some," Ender said, a little empathy seeping into his voice. "I imagine they'd lose a lot of valuable skills in you if you start to deteriorate."

"They would," she agreed. "But Conditioning can provide a lot of those without the need for extensive training. They'd still lose something, but... that's the price of using cyborgs." Triela sounded remarkably clinical about the whole situation.

But then she always did, a fact which Ender ascribed to the medication she took, not the elements her body was made up of. "And it's that easy to get new candidates?" he asked, softening his voice just the slightest touch.

"Of course," Triela shot Ender a look suggesting that the question was silly. "Do you have any idea how many children are wards of the state? Enough that at least one or two a year need radical medical procedures to survive."

"Of course," Ender said, glancing at the growth along the path. "Very magnanimous of the government, too."

"In some ways it is," Triela pointed out. "It's not like I would have survived without... this," she waved at herself.

"It isn't," he said, simply. "It's kind to help you survive. But it's not charitable in the slightest."

Triela snorted in amusement. "True. Though..." she shrugged. "They could have picked some other girl to save. Hilshire picked me because..." she shrugged again. She wasn't entirely sure why he'd picked her.

"They could have," Ender agreed. "I'm not disputing that there is some compassion in it - in their choices, if nothing else." He considered Triela again, pigtails and all. "But their intent remains the same, in the end."

"Yeah. If it were altruism we wouldn't all be highly trained killers."

Triela fell into silence for a moment.

"Does it matter?" she asked eventually.

The corner of his mouth tugged up.

He thought of Valentine.

"Yes," he said, after an equal silence. "Even in a world where nobody controls their own life. Maybe moreso, because of it."

"Why?" She sounded more curious than she might have intended. Not quite as detached as she usually sounded.

He took a breath of air, registering that curiosity in the back of his mind. "I guess it matters because that's the core of who we are," he said, finally. "Although that in itself is a vague specification. But if someone else is shaping us, making us into something, whether we're saved or left to die from it..."

He pursed his lips. "Then why they're doing it defines whether it's right or wrong, a good choice or a bad, a crime or a charity. And that in turn defines us, and what choices we make."

He shook his head to get things into place. "I don't think I'm being completely clear," he admitted, "Rescuing your life was a good act. Shaping it into their own tool for the sake of death, leaving you to your own devices and replacing you when you start to rust..."

"Is just life," Triela finished for him. Even if that probably wasn't what he had been planning to say. "People use each other. That's how humanity works."

"Which is exactly what makes the why so important," he said, quietly.

Valentine, again. He'd been mulling on that statement for quite some time now.

"I..." Triela trailed off. She didn't get it. But she wasn't sure she could. Ender was so... general. It was hard to figure out where he was coming from or why he thought what he did.

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