Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "My head's cold. I ate my hat."

colonelgibson (colonelgibson) wrote in thefield,
@ 2009-05-15 12:32:00

Entry tags:

aaron, alex, arlo, bazzer, group, kenneth, rowan, ryan, sophie, thorne, z - 1st tribe - day 20

Time to move out-open to everyone leaving on the 20th
Who: Kenneth and anyone/everyone leaving on the 20th
When: Mid morning
Where: Heading east
What: Taking a break

There was no way to keep up the grueling pace all day, at least not for most. Kenneth made sure to call plenty of halts, at least as many as he possibly could, but they still weren't making the speed they'd need to get to the safe camp. Fortunately, he'd sort of planned on that, his worst case scenario. If they didn't make it, he'd circle the carts, build a fire and people would just have to stay awake. The Laughers were smart, he hoped if he took down enough of them, they'd just back off. Did Laughers have a concept for unacceptable losses?

Kenneth didn't know, but he did know that would burn through his ammunition, something he'd already decided was worth it to protect those coming with him. He looked around and squinted up at the sun. Sacrificing a blanket, he tore strips of it with his knife then handed them to the closest person. "Soak these with some water and get people to put them on the back of their necks and heads. It might help."

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 05:20 pm UTC (link)

Alex was in great shape, but that was from running, not from heavy labor. "True," he nodded, horses. "Now I'm thinking Star Trek. 'Space the final frontier...their mission, to seek our new life and new civilization. To boldly go where no man has gone before!' We definitely qualify for that," he intoned the words to Star Trek: The Next Generation a la Patrick Stewart. He'd grown up on it as a kid.

Taking Aaron's hand he shook it briefly, "Alex Callahan. Well, Father Alex as you've heard," he disliked introducing himself with his title. It seemed pretentious and like he was using it demand respect. He felt it should be earned, "Boston, Massachusetts. Nothing wrong with being Anglican that becoming Catholic won't fix," he joked. Alex was a firm believer in a personal relationship with God and if being Anglican or Jewish or whatever worked for a person, then that was what was important.

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 05:26 pm UTC (link)

Aaron laughed. "I've heard that before, I think, but my grandmother would roll over in her grave." He gave Alex's hand a good shake. They'd left in such a hurry this morning and people were tagging in and out pulling the carts that he hadn't had a chance to really meet many people as of yet. Alex seemed alright. Aaron could appreciate a priest with a sense of humor. "So how long have you been here?" he queried. A few people had been here well over a week. Some more than two. That didn't bode well, as far as Aaron was concerned.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 05:32 pm UTC (link)

"A week and a bit," he wasn't the oldest here by far, either physically or in length of time in general, but it still seemed like forever. "Long enough to hold two masses," he paused to reflect on those short services and amended his statement, "Well, two mostly non-denominational and rather short services with a Catholic bent to them. At least missionaries have a bible," he didn't have even that much. All he had was in his mind and unlike Bazzer, he wasn't capable of spitting out facts and quotes at a moments notice. While he certainly had passages, psalms and verses memorized it was far from the entire bible and its writings. He didn't even have his breviary. If he at least had that he'd be in better shape. Or paper to begin a new one. "What do you do in Toronto and the Yukon then?"

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 06:01 pm UTC (link)

He didn't remember saying that he was from Toronto specifically but he supposed someone else must have mentioned it. "Ah, I'm a student at U of T, sort of." He made a generalized gesture. "Doing doctoral research in the Yukon, not too far from Whitehorse. Sort of between there and Carmacks Native Reserve. Carmacks shut me down the night before I showed up here." He shook his head gravely. "I bet you know one's even looking for me." He heaved a sigh. "All the people I work with know how much I fought for that base camp." Not for the first time he supposed that they'd all think he'd walked off into the bush or something. That made him wonder if maybe he'd have done it if the news hadn't exhausted him so thoroughly.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 07:23 pm UTC (link)

For all Alex knew on this topic, he could have been speaking Swahili. He had no idea what Carmacks was exactly, though context helped a lot and while he knew where the Yukon was in general, he had no idea where Whitehorse was in that area. It was a large area. With a snort Alex realized, other than knowing that Canada was to the north of him, and where Toronto and Montreal were, he really had no clue about Canadian geography. It wasn't really a focus of American schools. They spent a lot of time on England and Europe though. "What were you studying?" he asked, curiously. Alex was always interested in these things.

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 07:28 pm UTC (link)

"Environmental sciences, mostly. Climate change, all of that." He'd learned already that the glazed looks were fast to form when he got too much more indepth than that. "I was hoping to really make some breakthroughs this year that was going to drastically change logging laws in Canada." He shook his head. "Not to mention demonstrate the rate that we were altering the growth and life cycles of trees." He gave the priest a sympathetic smile. "my own priest back home was one of my family's close friends. He was an amatuer marine environmentalist. He was used to me babbling about this stuff. Sorry about that, Alex." Thinking about Father Drayden gave him a sharp pang of homesickness. It had been a couple of days now. Even if his coworkers weren't missing him, his family was.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 07:36 pm UTC (link)

"No, no, it's alright. I studied philosophy as an undergrad and minored in Latin, then continued Latin in seminary and theology. Always liked science, but hated the math that went with it," especially in high school physics, "but there were some good times with frog dissection. And throwing the frog bits," that had gotten him in trouble, but it had been worth it. Making the girls scream had been great. "I probably have the same look that you get when I start discussing Ordo Templi Orientis and Catholic gnosticism, mysticism and the occult," that had been his thesis topic. Even in seminary it had been considered a little strange.

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 07:42 pm UTC (link)

Aaron chuckled. "My high school girlfriend was a drama student. We performed some scenes from Hamlet with our embalmed pig fetuses." He gave the priest a decidedly guilty shrug that wasn't the least bit repentant. "How could we not?" Ordo Templi Orientis? Yup, the more spiritual aspects we lost on him. "I was always completely lost once we got beyond the ten commandments," he confided. "I figured that was all I needed to know. Some rules to live by, and science could take it from there." Most clergymen he'd come in contact with since then tended to agree with him, though he'd encountered a few who didn't feel that way at all.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 07:52 pm UTC (link)

"Nowhere does it say that science and religion have to be mutually exclusive," Alex pointed out, "Take virgin birth. It's not probable or common, but it is certainly possible, even without medical help. I heard of a case once of a girl who became pregnant though she claimed she was a virgin. Turned out, she was. She and her boyfriend had been experimenting with hand jobs, some of his fluid landed on her leg and well, humanity is a very determined species," many priests would get red and blush and Alex absolutely did when faced with his own urges and in front of women, but he could discuss things from a detached point of view just fine. "While the church does not condone sex before marriage which is another discussion all together, that is proof of virgin birth without science. I should think that God definitely had a hand in making that girl pregnant without intercourse."

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 07:57 pm UTC (link)

He may not have been the most devout person on the face of the planet, nor the most observent. Still, hearing the words hand jobs come out of the mouth of a catholic priest gave him the nearly uncontrolable urge to flop over and die in a fit of giggles. Sure, giggling wasn't really like him and it was probably just because of the awful shock of being in this place. His face went even more red than the sun had made it and he had to jerkily nod. "I could see how it could be seen that way. God's hands or not, I'd still be plenty pissed off if my daughter was out giving hand jobs to people she couldn't even fess up to later." Lord, how it was hard to get all of those words out without busting a gut.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 08:05 pm UTC (link)

If he hadn't been here now in this situation, Alex would definitely have found a better way to phrase things, but he was here and it was now and Aaron was not someone he thought would get offended. The laughter he was not at all upset about. "Well, yes. Of course. And I have no doubt her family was," he shrugged, "In my parish, teen girls get pregnant fairly regularly and then married quickly after that. We try to teach them about the importance of self respect and relationships, but well, teenagers. And we cannot discuss safe sex or condoms or anything useful. We were all teenagers at one point, but I think adults just try to deny it. Denial: not just a river in Egypt," it was one of the places Alex didn't agree with the official church policy. While he would be the first to stand for abstinence, it was not a realistic expectation given modern American society. He certainly hadn't listened as a teenager, he was just lucky enough not to get a girl pregnant.

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 08:11 pm UTC (link)

"Ah, well, what I missed in church I made up for in health class." He chuckled as he twisted the scrap of cloth between his fingers. Aaron had always been the monogamous type. He'd been lucky, too, in high school to meet a girl who was just as in to him as he was in to her. A slow smile spread over his features as he thought about Deb. Who knew where in the world she was now but when he was sixteen? Hoo-boy. No amount of porn, peer pressure or locker room chater could have turned his head. Plus, she'd been something of a hippy chick and had been open to experimentation with the local science nerd. Those had been good years. They'd been doubly safe the whole way though, and in five years of dating they hadn't had a single scare.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 08:15 pm UTC (link)

"Doesn't much matter now," he pointed out, laying partially in the shade. He was a priest, Kenneth was probably too old for children, Rowan was already pregnant and it seemed like quite a few of the guys were gay. That did not make for a good selection of people to renew humanity from. And he had no intention of breaking his vows, alien planet or not. "Though I do worry for Rowan and her baby. What it will face."

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 08:19 pm UTC (link)

Aaron heaved a sigh. "I think you'll find that she'll be fine with the baby. What I worry about are the kids who are born here. No medical aid while their mom's are pregnant. No pre or post natal vitamins. No pediatric care, no vaccines. We might be ok without vaccines for a another generation but after that it would be open season." He turned his gaze out to the waving grass once more. "Until then I guess it's just abstinence and the best care we can manage, right?" He didn't exactly feel wounded with the threat of abstinence over his head. Sure, he and Janine hadn't been a terribly serious item but he still couldn't imagine himself finding someone new to bunk down with tomorrow just because she wasn't around.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 08:26 pm UTC (link)

"That's what I mean," Alex nodded, "Vaccines and such. Science again, but very useful. Antibiotics mostly. Especially for cuts and things. Or worse," he really didn't want to think about worse. While he could 'make' holy water, he had no oil for anointing during the sacrament of the sick and technically he could not simply 'make' more with prayer. He would have to muddle through...if he could find some sort of oil. "And education. Think about this - Bazzer there is a librarian, you're an environmental scientist, I'm a theologian, Kenneth has some sort of higher degree I think, Rowan does as well, think how much information we have here now...and how much we are going to lose because we cannot preserve it. And how much we have already lost simply because we don't have someone with that knowledge here."

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 08:33 pm UTC (link)

Aaron shrugged and gave the doctor an incredulous look. "Well paper's not hard. Neither is ink." He grinned as he didn't see his meaning dawning too quickly. "Parchment is made from animal skins, which we have." There was no missing the aroma that followed Bazzer and his cart. "But even if we didn't want to put all of the work in to cute parchment, there's always the papyrus notion. All we need to make that is some kind of reed plant that remains fiberous when it rots." He demonstrated laying out the reeds in a grid. "Lay it all out on a rock, lay another rock down on top and leave it for a bit. Sure, it's not the easiest thing to write on but it beats chiseling into tablets." He chuckled. "It was actually a pretty environmentally sound form of making paper. Beat the heck out of chewing up trees. And then the Chinese were making lamp black ink since, well, a thousand years before Christ. That's just charcoal and wine, or even water in some cases." It was amazing, the things you picked up when you were learning the sciences.

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fatheralex
2009-05-18 08:49 pm UTC (link)

Huh. Well, that was new. "And this is why I'm a priest and not a scientist," he replied easily. "Parchment I knew about, papyrus I did not. Nor ink, though we don't have any wine," at least not yet. He'd love some for mass. It was hard to have a proper mass without communion. And if there was wine, there would be oil hopefully and he would feel better. "I'm learning though. Never let it be said I'm too old. Getting reasonably adept at dressing and butchering the meat they hunt," even if he couldn't bring himself to kill an animal.

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wanderingaaron
2009-05-18 08:58 pm UTC (link)

Aaron had been a hunter since he was fairly small. He could probably fire the colonel's rifle with fairly good accuracy even if it did pack more punch than he was used to. He was also a decent archer and he'd noticed that the loudmouth (it was hard to miss it) Arlo had a homemade bow slung over his shoulder as he walked. Maybe some time he could have a look at it and figure out how to make his own. Truth was, though, it had been five years since he'd hunted anything. He'd been far too busy to take those trips with his dad and even the old man went away less often now that Tim's Huntington's disease had advanced too far for him to be able to go as well. "Maybe when we settle at this new place we'll figure out a way to make some sheets of papyrus and then we'll get those passages that you remember all written down." Aaron hated to admit they might be there long enough for their knowledge to be passed down to a following generation, but Alex was right about one thing. The knowledge that they collectively possessed was far too precious to be lost and forgotten. He'd find a way to safe guard it somehow.

A whistle down the line drew his attention. It sounded like the train was gathering together to march on a ways. They had barely broken the trees, after all. There was a while to walk yet, as he understood it.

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