Sime~Gen Roleplaying on IRC: Snake River Dam Scenario
Episode #104: Soul Food (1/14/01)
Plum sits on the bench, staring at the right corner of his cell wall.
Plum has that wall pretty much memorized and has picked out some favorite spots to lose focus on.
Plum's uneaten plate of stewed lentils sits beside him on the bench.
Sayward has been pointed to the detention area of the IDAS. If Nick hadn't told her that the Minister was in jail she might never have found out.
Plum has been losing weight since he was incarcerated and his clothes are starting to hang rather loosely.
Sayward walk down the very short corridor looking into cells as she passes them. She reaches the one at the end of the corridor and sees Minister Plum.
Plum knows that Arat's "examination" was just the beginning. The Simes want to touch him some more. They want to make use of him for their own purposes.
Plum is determined not to allow himself to be their tool, but he is not quite sure how to prevent it.
Plum hears steps in the hallway.
Plum looks up to see what new torment the Demons have in store for him.
Sayward left Reni Enrikes in charge of the work crews as she always does after dark. She would be there herself still but she can't see. Reni is a very good night foreman.
Sayward: Hello, Minister Plum. How are you tonight?
Plum blinks in the dim light.
Sayward can see that he is not eating and not just from the untouched plate of food. The man has become a shadow of his former self.
Plum tries to place the voice.
Plum: Miz... Sayward?
Sayward: Yes Minister, it's Sayward Mullins.
Sayward: I came as soon as I heard you were here.
Plum observed the construction foreman with her work crews; her stentorian tones are quite distinctive.
Plum: Do you bring any word... from New Washington? From the Synod?
Plum thinks Sayward is an unlikely messenger, but then so was Miz Afred.
Sayward: No, I'm afraid I only bring myself.
Plum: Ah. So this is... a condolence call?
Sayward considers that for a bit. Maybe she can help. But she isn't sure how.
Sayward: I came to see what happened to you and to see if there is anything I can do to help.
Sayward: Have you sent word to the Synod?
Plum: Yes.
Plum: ~~depressed~~
Plum: They are arranging to get legal representation for me.
Plum has met with one or two representatives of the Court. His publicly appointed counsel is Sime and therefore suspect, and the Synod's agent, while Gen, appears to lack the credentials to practice law in-Territory.
Plum remembers that Miz Mullins mentioned something about having ties across the border.
Sayward: When Nick told me you had been detained I came as soon as my work would let me.
Plum: Do you know any Gen lawyers who are qualified to practice on this side of the border?
Plum smiles wryly.
Plum: The Synod is not exactly experienced at... uh, negotiating... with Simes.
Sayward: Not off hand. I will ask around though. Nick told me that they are holding you for attempted murder. Is that true?
Plum shrugs.
Plum: That's the charge.
Sayward: Did you really try to murder Mr. Borgmann?
Plum: How can you "murder" someone who is not a person and has no right to exist?
Plum: I tried to purify Mr. Borgmann. He objected.
Plum: The other Simes object also.
Sayward is take aback by this.
Sayward: But I thought Mr. Borgmann was your friend.
Plum smiles sadly at Sayward.
Plum: There speaks the voice of modern pragmatic revisionism.
Plum: No Sime can be a Gen's friend.
Plum: I loved Gideon as a child, it is true.
Sayward: Did he try to attack you?
Sayward could understand self defense.
Plum: Why should he? My soul had already been devoured by some other Sime.
Plum: He just has helped keep me locked up here, while they prepare me to give more donations.
Plum: They won't succeed.
Plum: ~~horror~~
Sayward has dealt with fundamentalist CoP before and now realizes what some of the problem is.
Plum can't be sure he can stop them. They took the first donation while he was sleeping and he didn't even know his soul was gone.
Sayward: Minister, I understand your dismay at having donated without your consent or knowledge but your soul is you. And you are still here.
Plum: Am I?
Sayward: If you weren't would you be talking to me?
Plum looks down at the flesh hanging loosely on his arms where he has lost weight.
Plum: Simes walk and talk, but they are soulless.
Plum: So are the children who change over. They only appear human.
Plum: And what is a Gen whose essence has been removed?
Plum: I don't feel the same way I used to.
Sayward: If that is true then why would you care if they take more selyn from you. If that is true does your soul return every month?
Plum: Both excellent questions.
Plum: Scripture has no answers.
Plum: In fact, it was those very questions that I hoped to investigate on my mission here.
Plum laughs wildly.
Plum: My fact-finding mission is well underway.
Plum: Though not quite the way I had planned it.
Sayward: Minister, if there is no Scripture to cover it, could it be that those who do donate aren't losing their soul at all but something else entirely?
Plum: I don't know.
Plum: The Simes keep insisting the "selyn" grows back.
Plum: I don't know if that is the same as the soul or not.
Plum: But surely sustaining and preserving the life of demons is a sin.
Plum has been pacing the tiny room debating these points endlessly.
Sayward: Selyn to them is like food is to us. It seems odd that God would give us the ability to sustain Simes if he didn't intend for us to do so.
Plum has worn a groove in his mind as well as a track in the flooring.
Sayward: I think that before the channels and the Tecton we had to protect ourselves. But now we can live with our Sime neighbors in peace.
Plum: If God had created Simes, he would have given them the ability to sustain themselves in nature as normal people and animals do.
Plum: Evil scientists and magicians created Simes. They are in no way natural, and lack the holy force that gives us life.
Plum: And until the last few years, they have always Killed to get what they lacked.
Plum: Is channeling our salvation? Or a new tool of deceit?
Sayward thinks hard about what the Minister has said. There is something that she has always believed and Snake's recent revelation has stuck in her mind.
Sayward: Minister, do you have children?
Plum: I did.
Plum feels tears fill his eyes.
Sayward: Minister, I'm sorry! I didn't realize you had lost a child.
Sayward: What happened to your child?
Plum: They died in the epidemic, winter of '27.
Plum: You don't think I would risk myself out here with children depending on me?
Plum thinks he would have a very different life now if his wife and children had lived.
Sayward: No, I wouldn't think that you would.
Plum takes his responsibilities very seriously.
Plum is grateful for Sayward's quiet sympathy.
Plum reminds himself not to wallow in feeling sorry for himself; he can't afford that kind of indulgence.
Sayward: The reason I asked is that apart, men and women can not make children. Each has something the other needs to create life.
Plum: True.
Sayward: God divided the human race into male and female. Could it now be that he has divided us again for a purpose of creating something just as spectacular?
Plum: God didn't do this!
Plum: Scripture tells us Simes are the creation of evil men inspired by Satan.
Sayward: But God has allowed the split to happen. The means he uses are sometime hard for us to understand.
Sayward: The fact that we have what they need to sustain them tell us something.
Plum: God didn't destroy the Ancient world, or blow clouds of poison through the Heavens, or deform the creatures He created.
Plum: He gave the Ancients free will and that is what they chose to accomplish.
Sayward: That is true.
Plum: We have the opportunity to make a different choice. To return to the purity of His original creation.
Plum: That purity does not include mutants.
Sayward: But he makes the cold beautiful in the form of snow. Even though that snow can kill you if you aren't careful. The same with water. Water can both give life and take it.
Plum gazes at Sayward sadly.
Plum: That is the error of the uninitiated.
Plum: Simes are not evil because they Kill.
Plum: God created Death from the beginning. We all die. How can that be evil?
Sayward: We are standing at a crossroads in human history. Do we keep fighting each other until the human race is no more, or do we join together as one race and live on into a grand future?
Plum: What grand future is this?
Sayward: That is the wonder of it, it has yet to be imagined.
Plum: Simes are evil because they deviate from Divine perfection.
Plum: And any grand future in which humanity attains perfection cannot have mutants in it.
Sayward: Minister, the very fact that we produce the selyn Simes need says that there is a balance there. Simes need us. And it scares them silly that they do.
Sayward: How would you feel if someone had the power of life and death over you?
Plum: Yes, they should be afraid that nature will not sustain their unnatural existence.
Plum smiles wryly at Sayward.
Plum: And someone does.
Sayward: Minister can a cat have puppies?
Plum: A rhetorical question?
Plum learned these tricks in the seminary.
Sayward: No. Can a cat have puppies?
Plum: For the sake of harmony, I will answer. No, not to my knowledge.
Sayward: Well not to mine either. [Sayward smiles warmly] But nearly one third of all children born to Gens become Sime. And Nick tells me that nearly one third of all children born to Simes become Gen. If a cat can't have puppies then a human can't produce anything that is not human. The Scriptures do tell us the all life produces after its own kind.
Plum: Except when tinkered with by ancient and unholy science.
Plum: The Ancients thought they could improve on the original creation.
Plum: They could place puppies in the womb of a cat.
Plum: Make horses with skin that glowed in the dark.
Plum: They tried to breed men who would be immortal, breaking the injunction given in the Garden of Eden.
Plum: And Simes were the result.
Sayward: And if Simes were the result so are Gens.
Smitty: Apples and oranges, from the same tree. It seems a fruitless brawl, says me.
Smitty is sitting on the ceiling of Plum's cell.
Plum: What do you mean?
Smitty runs a zigzagging path down the wall, zeroing in on Plum's lentils.
Plum notices an odd buzz from above, but there are often strange and unpleasant noises in prison.
Sayward: If we can give birth to Simes we must carry the gene.
Smitty is a large cockroach.
Plum: Yes, we are all contaminated. But with proper reverence and care, we can purify our race.
Plum: And return to our former glory.
Plum notices a very large cockroach crawling down the walls of the cell. Vermin!
Sayward: But what if that isn't the lesson that God wants us to learn? What if he allowed the split to teach the Gens compassion and the Simes trust?
Plum stares at Sayward as if she were nuts.
Plum: Then he would have told us so in His Holy Book.
Sayward: "Give compassion unto him that needs". That is Scripture.
Smitty: He wastes away, while I grow fat. If I read his book, would I be flat?
Smitty runs across the pages of an open bible and into the bowl of lentils.
Smitty finds it an interesting question, but he doesn't remain on the open face of the book for long enough to find out.
Plum sees the cockroach dive into the bowl of cold and disgusting prison food. He wasn't hungry anyway.
Sayward is unaware of Smitty as the cell is dimly lit.
Smitty reappears doing the backstroke in the lentils.
Plum: The kindest thing a human being can do for a Sime is to put him out of his misery.
Smitty: And so it's said for my kind too; But I'll take life and health, thank you.
Plum wonders if the cell is infested with mutant cockroaches.
Sayward: Yes I agree. And giving that Sime selyn does end the misery for a month.
Smitty spouts broth and tilts end-up, sinking from sight.
Plum shakes his head, distracted. For a moment he imagined he heard the cockroach singing.
Plum: But does not correct his integral deviation.
Sayward: No, but it is odd that their deviation is a perfect match for ours. If we sustain one another we could have peace.
Plum: And what does it do to the Gen?
Plum: A pure Gen has no deviation.
Plum: Though donating may corrupt us.
Plum: How did you feel, the first time you did it? Any different?
Sayward: No. I didn't think anything had happened. I felt nothing.
Plum shakes his head.
Plum: I didn't even know one of them had been at me, until the others said so.
Plum: But I feel different now.
Sayward: In what way, Minister?
Plum remembers the laterals hot on his arms; the slime oozing through the pores in his skin, contaminating his whole body.
Plum: I feel confused. They tell me about things that have happened that I don't remember.
Plum: I'm not sure if they are trying to convince me I am crazy, or if being around them is eroding my sanity.
Plum thinks that singing cockroaches are another good example of Sime-caused brain-rot.
Plum knows that all Simes go berserk each month, and that Gens who get to close to them can catch it.
Sayward: Minister, you are not insane. But your heart is struggling to a conclusion your mind does not want to accept.
Plum: I will go insane if I remain here. I pray that I may see our own side of the border again before I die.
Sayward has often seen pious persons become distressed in this way when presented with facts that do not fit their preconceived notions.
Plum is not sure if the contamination can be reversed. If not, he would be better off dead, just like Gideon.
Smitty: What drama! What pathos! I like this man. Why, I must travel to his land.
Smitty is lounging on Plum's shoulder, munching a lentil.
Sayward: They will not kill you Minister. Their law would require that anyone who did kill you be executed by refusing them selyn until they died.
Plum is tickled by an antenna brushing his chin.
Smitty: Just think what spiritual woes are played out in his inner throes. And I shall witness every cry, and every wail and every sigh.
Plum notices the cockroach and swipes him off his shoulder.
Plum: Faugh!!!
Sayward: Minister?
Smitty: Most rude, my pet. I'll train you yet.
Smitty picks himself up off the floor.
Plum: This place is full of vermin!
Plum thinks that the Simes are not the only creatures here that could use some purification.
Sayward: Have they not been in to clean the cell?
Smitty: Not full, my friend, but only Smitty. Soul mates we are, you and me - alone in this purgatory.
Plum: It's clean enough, for a pen.
Smitty: No devout here to sing your hymns, nor roaches to scurry to my whims.
Plum: Miz Sayward, would you bring a message to my congregation in Salmonton?
Sayward: Minister... I will ask if I would be allowed to clean it then. Yes Minister I would carry a message for you.
Smitty surreptitiously climbs into Plum's sadly stained pants leg.
Smitty: And you for me. What symmetry!
Plum: Tell them I am still alive, but in dire straits.
Plum: Ask them to do whatever they can to get me released.
Sayward: I will deliver your message, Minister. I will also bring you some of Grandma Mullins Stew. And a change of clothes. Until I can get yours washed.
Smitty: What a squalid palace I see. To rule in hell is my destiny. Are these my tiny subjects then? Nits and lice are my loyal men.
Plum smiles at Sayward. She is a sinner, but a kind woman for all that.
Plum: Thank you. Your assistance is appreciated.
Plum's errant thoughts fix on the memory of a beautifully wrapped package with a bar of scented soap in it. And the distressed face of a channel in a golden cloak.
Plum wonders if he should have thanked the demon, also.
Sayward: It is Scripture. And my Grandma would skin me alive if I didn't help a man of the cloth.
Go on to Episode #105: The Cultivation of Duty
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