Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Cleaving things in twain, I like the sound of that, cool," Noah decided.

BUTCHERY IS NICE. ALL THAT RED SHINING MEAT, WET AND SOFT AND FINE, AND THE GRATE AND SNAP AND CRUNCH WHEN WE BITE BONE. BITE AND DON'T LET GO.

Noah flinched, his smile fading, and ducked his head to focus on his cleaning tasks. "Lazarus, that was creepy," he muttered.

The factoid Jack offered restored some of his good humor. "Laterally or vertically?" he asked with interest. "Or are you talking pressure? That's interesting. Were you in biology or medical sciences? Or was that just something you learned sometime?"

Noah listened with interest. There were terms he didn't know in the explanation, but he could look them up later. He'd heard somebody talking about a library. He couldn't wait to have some time to check that out, because holy crap, what kind of books would be in the library of a secret superhero organization? Just the thought was exciting. He nodded to the last part of the statement. "Yeah, I didn't really think it would be laterally, I've broken my arm twice just falling off things," he replied, and carefully transferred a hazcat back into its cage, locking the latches down before moving to the next one.

NO MORE BREAKING YOURSELF. I WON'T HAVE THAT.

"Um. Okay. Anyway, I guess it makes sense that those kind of experiments would be run, I bet that's useful in forensic investigation too," Noah mused. "Like, for degree and type of injuries." He moved on to the next cage, methodically repeating the cleaning routine. Jack got a slightly concerned glance for the tone of voice in which he said morals, but Noah didn't comment on that. "Bio-engineering? Like, genetically engineered vegetables, that kind of stuff, or do I have totally wrong impressions here?"

"What kind of game?" Noah asked interestedly. "Team sports? I did soccer for a while but I never got good enough at it to really be worth much on a team. I had other projects that I could use the time for, anyway."

"That's fascinating," he said animatedly. "I read that the genetic code that differentiates humans from other forms of life is a very small percentage, and that some areas of DNA are essentially interchangeable between different types of animals, like, they can be swapped out and still be functional. Is that correct?"

At the question, though, he wilted a little and ducked his head, scrubbing determinedly at the tank. "I, uh, I was planning on studying to go into agricultural engineering. But I haven't had any college courses. I did graduate high school with honors," he added, but it was clear that he was embarrassed about his lack of achievement or knowledge in comparison to Jack's expertise.

"Awesome! You must've been pretty great," Noah said. Not only was Jack clearly a very smart guy, he must be very good at basketball if he'd gone to college on a sports scholarship. Pretty amazing that he'd had the time to pursue both scholarly and athletic excellence.

"Are most people here older than me?" he asked, a little hesitantly. "The guy who recruited me didn't say anything about my age, so I assumed that this was normal." He wiped the cage down and ushered the feline thing that lived in it back inside before snapping the latches down and securing it back into place.

There were only a few cages left, and he got to work on the next one as Jack gave him a brief, simple summary of what he'd asked about. "That's fascinating," he mused. "I wonder if the ability to perceive the supernatural is genetic, or if it's some other factor. I'm the only one in my family who ever saw any of the things."

He perked up when Jack asked about agricultural engineering, the faint sneer in the other man's voice flying right over his head. "I wanted to study hybridization and its relation to sustainability for both crops and livestock," he answered. "Both naturally diverse and artificially introduced strains tend to be hardier and longer-lived, and I wanted to look more closely into how the strengths and weaknesses appear. Getting a more reliable metric on production numbers and the chances of failure in any given crop or stock would be useful in practical terms as well as adding to the general knowledge base for biologists of all types. I mean, I know that's a pretty broad and generic statement," he added shyly, "but I figured I could narrow the field down more as I learned more."

Most of us die within a few years -- he couldn't be hearing that right, but Noah found himself weirdly reluctant to ask for clarification. He moved on to the next subject instead. He could ask later. Or find it in the library. Or something. "I never met anyone else who could see them," he told Jack. "Offline, anyway. Which board was yours? I kind of lurked a few, but I couldn't really tell which ones were crackpots and which ones were actually seeing things." He gingerly ushered a creature with multiple eyes and a beakish jaw back into its tank.

"Maybe the power will be back up soon," he suggested hopefully. "Has anyone thought about solar, do you know? Since it seems to be tropical here and there's so much sun, maybe some solar panels could provide a secondary source of power."

He frowned, taking the question seriously. "Tobacco's pretty hardy and easy to cultivate, but it takes a while to grow," he answered. "A week really isn't enough time to get a good crop of anything started. Um. There's very few crops that'll give you a really rapid return on your investment, unless there's techniques I don't know about here that could accelerate germination and growth. But that might have its own issues. Have weather patterns here changed? Or was there some other reason that cultivation wasn't possible?" he asked curiously.

"I saw some links to that one, but I never checked it out," Noah admitted. "I lurked more than I posted anywhere anyway so even if I had you probably wouldn't have pinged me." He moved on to the last cage in his row, ushering what looked like an adorable little unicorn out of its tank and into the holding cage, resisting the urge to pet it and coo over it, because that would give the complete wrong impression.

"They've got to be getting equipment and supplies from somewhere," he said as he worked on clearing the tank out. "I mean, there aren't really any farms or fabrication plants here, but there's a lot of stuff that can't possibly be made or grown here, so it has to be being brought in from somewhere. If the outage is a lasting thing and alternative energy sources have to be found, I bet that equipment can be gotten."

"We'd need seeds, space to cultivate the crop, and we'd need to build the necessary equipment for drying the tobacco after it was ready to harvest. Um. It'd depend on how readily available commercial tobacco was available by harvest time. If it becomes easier to buy from outside sources, then we'd have done a lot of work for little return," he mused.

Noah wilted a little at the tone in which Jack said lurker. "I didn't really think I had anything productive to add to the discussions," he mumbled. He was saved from further excuses by the shift in subjects, and he perked up again as he listened to Jack listing off the potential obstacles. "Does Fear create mutations in plants or something? Are there any crops or plantings being grown on the island already, or is there any data available? That'd be something to research, um, right, do you want to take getting seeds or checking for existing data to build on for the project?" Obviously this was going to be a joint venture, after all.

He finished wiping down the tank he was working on and put the wriggly, sparkly little unicorn back inside with a quick, surreptitious pat to its back before he closed the cage again. "There! That's that row done. Not too bad," he said cheerfully.