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"Later" isn't a date. But you know where to find me.
If "later" is unclear to you, then you don't live in the moment enough.
[This is a lie.]
But yeah, okay. Later.
I'm good to go. Shoot.
This was rough to see in the moment and it's just gonna get rougher in hindsight.
Kind of open-ended: I just wanted to hear the insights. As it applies to there and just in general with food security.
I'll tell you what I told him:
Asking for volunteers doesn't work. Some people will sign up to be helpful, but they're not necessarily the right people for the job, and the wardens were giving off pretty mixed signals at the time –– desperate for help, but also insisting they were fine without it. Most people in less important jobs will just look at that and decide it doesn't apply to them, so now we've got barely dozen people or something trying to cover three meals a day, seven days a week, plus snacks, for a hundred or so people. They're going to burn out, and I don't care if Archer's willing to pick up all the slack personally, because that's not a real back-up plan. Harry leaving left the infirmary in the hands of a bunch of people with patchwork training. If I'd arrived with only Tiffany and Bodhi, I would have been dead within the hour. Even if I trusted he knows what he's doing, you can't hinge our fucking access to food on one guy.
There's also the supply itself. Not wanting to "settle" for just sandwiches, all the cookies and all that –– that's a waste. People don't need that much food every day to get by, and they definitely don't need fancy. Reserving supplies is more important. Archer insisted food supply isn't an issue, but Arthur says otherwise, and... [a pause] well, they always say that. They don't want to cause a panic, so they ask for help while pretending they don't actually need it.
He also suggested we all individually stock up. Most people here probably have never starved in their lives, so they could stand to stock up, but it's still trite bullshit to spout. Inmates don't have kitchen access, and they can only wait for a port and hope a warden will help out to keep them stocked. You can't blow off my concerns, do nothing to make food more accessible, and then expect me to trust you have things under control, either.
[A deep breath; she can feel herself getting worked up again.]
I don't mean to rant, but that whole thing really pissed me off.
Quentin mentioned private stock to Arthur and me both, and I'm still chewing on that. It's something I want to be on people about going forward - I have a couple things I want to run by kitchen staff, but this isn't exactly my wheelhouse. I've provided for myself, but that's not going to translate to a tiny space and a lot of people.
Just in general, things like this, are there pitfalls you see a lot? Stuff that looks good on paper but falls apart in practice. Ways the normal setup here would make things worse in an emergency, anything.
I get it, because it's not really my wheelhouse either. I spend more time gaming the system back home than contributing to it, I can admit that, but I'm used to living with the consequences of people above me fucking it up, too.
The biggest pitfall to me is an attitude problem. People just aren't used to living in a way where food is a daily concern, so they don't plan for the long term, or they dismiss planning as pointless because they hope the Admiral would only take it away temporarily. Over and over the thing I hear "wow, Tess, your world sucks" and some unspoken pity about it, like it'd never happen for them, or they made it past 2013 without it happening so it's impossible. They think they're special, so they're not thinking about if we crash, or lose engine power or something, and then we're floating in space without help.
And when a small number of people control the bulk of the food, and they're not even receptive to talking about how it's handled, they're probably going to lose their shit in an emergency. Wardens and inmates with better connections are going to get fed, and unpaired inmates are going to get overlooked quick. People who have no concept of food security are going to be baking cookies in the middle of a crisis because they'll think "this will be over in a week" or "having this would make me feel better." No! Even if it was only a week, watch how quick people riot when they haven't been fed for a couple days, or they're seeing other people get fed more than them. It gets ugly.
[Said with a careful, deliberate optimism.]
The place definitely doesn't help with the head games. People'd be wrong for looking down their noses at preparedness, but I can't say I'd be shocked if the Admiral pulled something like that intentionally. I think I've heard about the ship being attacked before, what might be actual slip-ups -- whatever that thing was where inmates were wardens and vice versa, that wasn't a planned thing. There should be at least enough implication of danger to sell some people, and once you sell a handful I think it's easy to snowball.
How limited the setup is does make me nervous. No convincing the Admiral to open that up, but I think hitting kitchen heads all at once ought to yield...something. Set up stockpiling, plan crisis-rations. Force them to keep each other accountable when there isn't someone hovering about it.
How'd they handle protein? Were there still farms, plant substitutes-?
He really doesn't want to talk to anyone. He wants to crawl into bed with a bottle of liquor and close his eyes for a week. He didn't die, but he only barely managed to escape death - he'd seen those spikes, and he knows he wouldn't have lived long if he hadn't escaped just then.
He hates himself. He doesn't think on this too often, but right now he hates who he is. He'd told Jake he'd be doing dumb shit, and what did he end up doing?
Fuck. The problem had been that Tess wasn't there to remind him what he was there for. With her away on that ranch, not even knowing who she was, it had been so easy to just get pulled into all the chaos. But she is here now. And he's got his responsibility towards her, even if he's tempted to leave custodial to Leia for a few days.
He sends Tess a message, the morning after they've left: Don't feel too good. You okay?
Now she’d rather dare to want more.
The plan was to sleep in for once, but she wakes up when the communicator notification goes off. She frowns at the message and props herself up on an elbow to type back:
I’m okay. Sit tight, I’ll swing by with coffee.
Something must have happened.
Just wanted to make sure he didn't leave you behind. It's fine.
He wants to be taken care of. He wants a cool hand on his back telling him poor Arthur. Life hasn't been kind, has it?
Even the desire makes him recoil from himself. He can't have her looking at him when he feels like this.
Can’t say you feel bad and then say it’s fine, big guy, it doesn’t work like that.
He’s self depreciating sometimes, but it must be big if he was willing to open with it, so she’s up and out of bed, pulling on clothes. (And god, isn’t it nice to not have to lace herself into a corset.)
He looks at the message, then groans and just puts the communicator down. Word or no, she's going to show up anyway. He drags himself out of bed to unlock the door, and then falls back, eyes closed, resting until she knocks.
“You didn’t spend the whole week drinking without me, did you?” she says, veering cheery.
She crosses the tiny room and sets the coffee on his table, and then she frowns when she sees just how rough he looks up close.
“Jesus, Arthur.”
Well, he did drink a lot without her - but that's not the cause of his state. He's pushed himself up to lean against the wall, but even the low lighting doesn't hide the black eye, the bruises on his face, the split lip, the wounds on his knuckles. There's no prizes for guessing what he looks like underneath his clothing.
"I'm not winnin' any beauty contests right now," he says, his voice hoarse.
“Not today, no,” she agrees. “Anything broken?”
He's clearly been in a fight, but some of those scrapes look like damage from rough-hewn stone, or something else coarse enough to rip open skin. It's clean enough; he took care of that.
"Don't think so. Everything hurts pretty much the same."
He's talking even slower than he usually does, and his eyes drop to the way she's holding on to his hand. He doesn't feel like he's worth much, and her touch stands out to him.
"I'll go grab a kit and patch you up, but tell me what happened first."
Unspoken but heating up under the surface: who's now on my shit list?
He grunts and pulls his hand away, crossing his arms over his equally-bruised chest.
"If I wanted to talk about it, I wouldn't have told you to stay home."
"Well, I'm here now anyway," she tells him, like it doesn't sting to be shut out. "Did you make it hard for the bastard, at least?"
He clenches his teeth and lifts his sore hands to his face, to rub them over his eyes and through his beard. It hurts, but it also gives him some distraction.
"Wish I coulda said I did. They took me and tied me up, so I didn't do much fightin'."
The anger she feels at the idea of him just getting wrecked without being able to defend himself is very casual, very calm. She plans, swiftly and quietly, that she'll do something about it later.
"What are you planning on doing about them?"
"What the hell can I do about it?"
There's a dark rumble in his voice - anger, that he doesn't want to show her. Not her. Maybe he should pick a fight with Jake. He'd let him wallop him.
"They were overboarded, just like you. Didn't know who I was. Just that I had those stupid damn powers, and the metal to go with 'em."
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