Camp Sunrise: The Bitter Pill
Posted on 17 Mar 2023 @ 7:21pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Olivia Winetrout
Edited on on 25 Apr 2024 @ 3:58pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, Camp Sunrise
Timeline: MD08 Morning on the island (following Camp Sunrise: The Winetrout Clinic)
1715 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure
Eventually, Olivia had emerged from her redoubt behind the door and Ibis cleared the breakfast plates sticking them end up in the sand until she could wash them. She called to Ikemba to come, and he was generally agreeable about going foraging or hauling water together. It was no different today. He didn’t say much, but he always seemed wide eyed and interested, especially in the daily outing.
They set out on Creek Road and Olivia said nothing for a while. When they came to the spot where Ibis had dropped the buckets, there was one mostly still full and the other on its side, the soaked ground around it. Olivia rolled her eyes and collected the spilled pail as if Ibis were incompetent for having dropped it. Ibis said nothing, in spite of it being due to Olivia screaming back at camp and her running to see what was the matter. She just took the hit right in the esteem. It was clear to her that Olivia just wanted to feel bigger than she was, and being better than Wallace and Ibis at something, anything, even at carrying a bucket, allowed her to feel that sense of competence.
Pondering the effect, Ibis beat the path ahead with the stick. She hummed but didn’t sing. Olivia either hated her singing or just loved telling her that she hated her singing. The Korinn had the only real music, even their language itself was music, Olivia had explained repeatedly, and Ibis’ federation pop tunes were just stupid and shallow and tasteless. Korinn were cultured.
Finally as they walked along Ibis spoke with as much brightness and humility as possible, “You know Olivia, I think you’re right.”
Olivia seemed knocked off her guard by that. “Uh, yeah?”
“About planning ahead. For the worst. It’s really wise.”
“Yeah.” Olivia said dumbly, trying to catch on to what it was she had said that Ibis thought was wise.
“I know there’s a lot to remember about being careful as a human. We’re more fragile than the Korinn. So it’s good that you’re establishing some friendships with them. Because if something ever does happen to myself or to Wallace, you and Ikemba may need to rely on them for help. I’m glad you’re making friends. Tell me who you met up with at the Pool’s edge yesterday.”
Her ego flattered, Olivia agreeably began to trill their names in Korinn, and then launched into Korinn clicking and squealing to tell about what they shared. Ibis did her best to follow along with the story of the Irix youth and how enamored they were with Olivia, how they’d given her a Korinn name, literally Silver Dart— which Ibis best understood as probably translating to Minnow— and what games that they had invented that they could play together on the shore. Ibis started to feel relief that Olivia could trust her and actually wanted to tell her so much, so occasionally asked a question in Korinn herself. Her pronunciations were poor, but she knew Olivia could take pride in being better at that too.
She watched Olivia practically skipping along, her mood much improved now as she got to share about her friends and her games in her favorite language and Ibis felt like Laura would be proud that her baby girl was growing up. The pang hit Ibis as it often did, and she imagined, given the choice, that she would have rather died in Laura’s stead so Olivia would have the mother she needed. Ibis felt like a very poor substitute.
Distracted as she was in her own thoughts and trying to track Olivia’s chatter in Korinn, before Ibis knew it they were at the creek and Olivia dipped the bucket in and stood again, balancing it on her head with one hand while taking the bush beating rod from Ibis with the other and leading Ikemba back down the path, talking to him in a mix of Standard and Korinn and telling him what Ibis took to be a Korinn nursery rhyme.
Ibis was left crouching at the water’s edge by herself and looked at her own reflection for the second time that day. She unpinned the crafted commbadge brooch, and tied her shirt over the shoulder instead. For a while she just contemplated the lopsided chevron shape with the little four pointed star she’d etched on the tin case. It was a poor imitation, but when she had first made it for herself with the lab’s laser cutter and secreted it away with her it had felt like an act of defiance. She was still Starfleet, with all of the pride and principles that honor entailed. No condition of slavery could steal that from her. At least, that’s how she felt the first year or so.
After watching Rachel die giving birth to Ikemba, she had been in the process lab, handling another kind of death— a failed project and a lost hope. Built to accommodate processes that were easier to achieve in open air, it was an above-water lab and to the Korinn working in it, it was the equivalent to a human scuba diving to do science. It made their work easier when she was there to operate with them. The lab was crusty and all of the beams and things rusted out. But above water, they could operate equipment, maintain chemistry processes, and use types of power generation that were not as accessible to them under water. Ibis helped to process the chemicals they took to the underwater mines to dissolve the rock from the Kelbonite. The Kelbonite being the resource the Pyrryx wanted so badly that they would force the Irix to spoil the entire planet for it. By quietly rallying her Irix co-workers, she spent several months’ effort trying to at least create a recovery process for the hazardous materials she was creating, so that they could be reused and not keep bleeding into the environment.
But all her best efforts completely and utterly backfired. Her processes when applied slowed down production and the Pyrryx governing from the volcano killed a Z’ala for the slow down, so the Z’ala killed a dozen Irix to make the point stick and severely punished the Irix slaves for using the new methods. As far as Ibis understood via rumors, the Pyrryx never communicated verbally, only through violence, until they made themselves understood. The Korinn went back to destroying the ocean the way they knew best, and even the originally agreeable enslaved Irix technicians who had helped her with developing the recovery process no longer spoke with her in any personable capacity when they worked in the lab. Several had lost loved ones in retribution for the attempt and she was the sorry sack of air to blame.
One of her unique test materials had been a polymer encased isotope that, when mildly charged, would draw the mining dissolution chemicals to it. Then they could be put back through a siphon and the chemicals recovered. The encased isotope could be reused over and over for the collection process, and although deadly in its own right, it could be kept safely inside of a siphon cage to filter the water. After her process was taken out of play, she was left with her test cages of toxic isotope. With no one interested in trying more recovery processes, she decided to break the isotopes down as safely as possible, back to an inert state, and have the remaining material destroyed.
But she kept one small capsule of it, cased in the thin resin coating. She remembered staring at it after all her work to try to save the Korinn’s ocean was for naught. A fresh wave of illness had just led to the cremation and burial of the charred remains of two more Sunrisers that same week, Wallace was being avoidant with her though she couldn’t understand why, and she was having vivid nightmares about Rachel’s death and crippling regret about giving everyone what amounted to false hope. In that moment, she believed that the Camp was better off without her, Wallace was better off without her, and all of Korix was better off without her. Holding the capsule to the light, she just remembered thinking it was so simple. All I have to do is just bite through this resin, and it can all be over with already.
At the creekside, Ibis flipped the crafted commbadge over and popped the back off. Inside was the same resin capsule. In five years she’d never actually taken it, though she’d worn it constantly on her person, the bitter pill obscured by this symbol of hope. For a moment she considered tossing it into the stream, both the pill and the brooch, but… she didn’t want to poison the water. That concern made her smirk, considering how many poisons she was helping to manufacture all of the damn time.
She knew that every time she had thought about taking the pill, if she resisted long enough the worst of the feelings would pass. It became a dark comfort to have it. She’d already decided that there was only one circumstance in which she would, however. And that was if she was truly and utterly left alone. That she couldn’t bear.
Besides, with her luck, the morning she bit into it would be the same hour help finally showed up. Like some Greek tragedy.
She shut the poison isotope back into the brooch, snapping the backing together to make the seal, and pinned it back over her heart. In the distance she could still hear Olivia squeaking and trilling and clicking out Korinn to Ikemba. It was a language that could really carry for a distance, and the outspoken, free-spirited Olivia rarely whispered anything. For a moment, Ibis remembered being that young and that self-assured.
“Fana, help me,” Ibis begged with a sharp exhale, calling on her mother’s patron goddess.
Standing, shakily, Ibis righted herself and then took her longest strides to catch up to the kids.
