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 Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 5:02 pm
Nell thumped the desk with her hand... and then dropped her head to the table and thumped the desk her forehead...
"I'm just too damn dumb!" She picked up a peice of paper and flung it *nicely* over to the sugar glider at the other end of the table. "What do you think? I'd say trade me, but I already know the one you're looking at too." Nell dropped her face into her hands and rubbed visciously at her eyes... she was getting tired, and the thought of her cousing upstairs in his bed with his boyfriend standing over him....
"I just can't think Acia. I keep getting pictures of Jen dying, and I see Tawn and Sarabi and Banda, and even Dan though the b*****d won't admit it, all getting sicker and sicker... I can't stand it."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:22 pm
"You're not dumb," Acia assured her with a sigh, dragging over the sheet of paper and smoothing out the wrinkles. The glider girl paced along the margin, eyes scanning the paper for the umpteenth time that evening even as she replied to Nell. "You're just stressed out... You're under a lot of pressure with this. Me too. A lot of lives ride on this..."
The glider paused in step, ears falling back against her head. However, just as quickly she refocused on the task. Better to eye their experiments from the unbiased eye of a scientist, rather than get all emotional knowing how ill her brother and his friends were. Poor Banda... He had been gone for so long, and now this... She shook off the thoughts, peering down at the writing on the paper. "I think we're just thinking too hard. Overlooking something crucial."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:29 pm
"Probably everything crucial..." she let her body slide forward on the seat until her face was planted on the table... "Nmmmmfffph... ummp rrremmpfh." ....
She lifted her head and tried to rid her mind of thoughts of Jen and Dan an the others. "It's gotta be so simple... something here that, like you said, we can't see.... and now listen to me." She laughed. "I'm just repeating what you say." Nell leaned back and stretched her arms and shoulders over her head...
"You want something to drink? I'm thinking about heading down to the kitchen."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:36 pm
"Nah, I'm fine, thanks." Sighing once more, she dropped to sit on the table, frowning down at the stretch of paper. There had to be something... Something easy, something obvious. Muttering under her breath, Acia summoned a gust to send another paper floating across the table to her side, glancing to it instead. It was simply a list of everyone who had, as of yet, been infected, and what symptoms they had shown. Maybe they were thinking too hard. Maybe...the answer was here...
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:46 pm
Nell watched as Acia floated papers across the room... it was prety cool, and Nell lamented for a fraction of a second. Then as she watched the paper go she saw that it was the list... and she shivered slightly...
"It's the tally so far. Most of them are Skull Monkeys of course..." She picked up a pencil, thoughts of going for a drink forgotten, and pulled another peice of paper towards her... it was blank, and if her mind had anything to say, it was going to stay that way.
She found herself doodling pictures of Vayle and Luna and Acia and Dan... "why is it affecting Skull Monkeys? And why isn't Vayle getting sick? And Why is Jen so bad, while Dan stands beside him and is able to pretend that he's not sick at all... but not very well.... and why.... um... oh yeah... Luna... Luna brought the damn thing here. Why is she getting better and no one else is?"
She sighed. "I don't care what you say, I still feel stupid."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:58 pm
"Don't feel stupid. We're just overlooking something..." It had to be simple. They had gone through just about every other possibility. Just relax, clear your mind, and read the paper as if you hadn't before...yes... Normal symptoms. Colds and coughing and bloody noses. Paralysis was a stretch, but Acia could make a case for that too, if needed. Metal bits caught her eye, but then she realized it was Dan, he was Isto's twin, and had probably been that way all his life. Greying hair for Jen and Banda... That seemed odd.
Suddenly straightening up, Acia shifted to her knees, running a hand along the to her monstrous words as she read to keep her train of thought. Deformities in the new babies, physical changes to the older SkullMonkeys as well, and then some SMs who were hardly effected... "What if... what if it's genetic?" She lifted her head, glancing towards Nell. "What if it's genetic and something mild simply triggered it?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:07 pm
"That...." She stopped, obviously lost in thought, "That makes sense..." The way she said it made her seem nervous, as if just admiting that there might be answers down that alley would make the whole situation that much more unsolvable. "It would certainly explain the changes we've been seeing..." She was getting more solid now... "Jen's hair's gone white, and ... and didn't you say something about Banda's hair as well? And Luna has gills, and wanted to know why the Sm's here didn't have strange mutations!" Now she was rolling.
She grappled for loose papers on the table and shot a grin at Acia. "You may be the smartest Sugar glider that I've ever met..."
As she scrabbled around on the table she came across her half blank paper full of doodles and managed to write down two words... 'genetic?'
and 'cause?'
"It's obviously part of Luna... whatever it is..." She looked around for her notes on Luna but didn't see them.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:27 pm
"I'm the smartest sugar glider I've ever met, too." She grinned smugly, climbing to her feet and wiping graphite smudges off her knees and darting across the tabletop to peer down at Nell's paper. "So Luna's what triggered it, if we're right.. She had something that did, anyway. But if it's genetic... We can't exactly cure it, can we? We can just prevent the trigger from spreading."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:37 pm
Nell just stared at her companion... This Velvet was a genius! Of course it was Luna... it had to be. All this started when Luna arrived, and only got worse ever since. And as for it being genetic, that made sense too... but the thing that really got Nell was Acia's suggestion that they didn't need a cure...
"Stalemate..." She grinned down at Acia, and then the puzzle peices started going together. "But... If it is genetic, then it's also communicable... Very very contagious... Which means..." She stopped and rubbed her hands against her eye sockets again in frusteration. "Which means that all of us who have come in contact with it are infected... either the way that Tawn is, or as carriers... which means you and I are both carrying it too, and..." the wheels in Nell's head were working so hard that they were almost audible. "we'll never get a clean genetic slate to pinpoint it... If we could pinpoint it at all that is..."
but then a thought came to her...
"Luna's not getting sicker... in fact she's not only getting better, she's getting better from pnemonia, NOT Smog... So she's got it and somehow her body isn't letting it take her over...."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:43 pm
The Velvet's eyes brightened up, and she nodded furiously, catching Nell's line of thought immediately. "So Luna's clean. We compare her genes to those of the infected SMs, and then...oh...but that would take ages..." Her smile faltered, eyes turning back towards the paper. "We don't have nearly the equipment we would need... But if we can figure out why she was able to overcome it, maybe we can get that same quality to the sick SMs..."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:52 pm
"Oh I don't know!" Nell stood up and began to pace across the smallish room. "She's GOT to have it... she's the only one who could have given it to all of us... and then, oh what was it she told Jen?" She tried to remember and was only getting fragments of conversation... "Something about her sister and her brother? One died young of the Smog, and the other one? ...." Nothing. She couldn't remember...
"So it gets all Skull Monkeys, some more than others, and Luna says the scientists on the Island don't know why... but they obviously haven't left the island for generations..."
"There's got to be something that they all have in common... besides being Skull Monkeys of course... some lesser or more common gene that makes them more susceptible to the disease... who are the most sick right now?"
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