Sime~Gen Roleplaying on IRC: Snake River Dam Scenario
Episode #141: Tentacleless (3/19/01)
Coras is almost ready to believe that things are looking up. Working with out-T Gens is so much less traumatic than in-T Gens. OT's don't know or care how many tentacles he is supposed to have.
Coras has just taken his last donation. He just can't hold another dynopter.
Coras tries not to go to the dispensary as it upsets the renSimes. Usually a channel comes down to the camp to meet him.
Coras waits in the little cubby of a room designated for off loading.
Sylma takes a moment to firm her control before she enters the interment camp's Collectorium: a grandiose name for three little cubbyholes in a makeshift shack.
Coras is feeling useful again even if he is still on channel's transfer. He misses having a Donor.
Sylma has been warned about Coras's infirmity, and doesn't want to show zlinnable surprise and revulsion.
Sylma signals politely before the door to Coras's cubbyhole.
Coras: Come in please.
Sylma enters.
Coras braces for the inevitable reaction to his deformity.
Sylma: Hajene Coras. I've been sent to collect the selyn you've gathered today.
Coras: Yes, of course. May I get you some tea if you have a moment?
Sylma is a Second, and therefore able to keep her reactions to herself. It helps that Dar views scars and other signs of injury as a normal consequence of a martial career.
Sylma: Why, that's very kind of you.
Sylma smiles with genuine ~~cheer ~~
Coras is way out ranked by the other channel but he tries to zlin for sincerity.
Coras pours a small glass of Tecton issue "trin tea" for the other channel and one for himself.
Sylma certainly looks sincerely cheerful, rather than appalled at Coras's infirmity.
Sylma accepts the tea gratefully.
Coras: I'm sorry I didn't catch your name?
Sylma: Sylma ambrov Dar.
Coras suspected as much. After all, how many well muscled channels do you run into in a lifetime?
Sylma takes a sip of the tea.
Coras: Pleased to meet you Hajene.
Coras has had a recent return of his curiosity.
Sylma: How have you found the work here? Any problems with the donors?
Coras: Very few problems, surprisingly. They don't seem to care about my... mishap.
Coras holds up his right arm and turns his palm up to reveal an ugly scar and the fact that his ventral tentacles are gone.
Sylma offers light ~ sympathy ~, but no pity.
Coras bows his head then looks up with a wavering smile.
Coras: Thank you.
Coras: Most Simes either pity me or run.
Sylma: How does that affect your grip? Some of those out-Territory Gens are quite skittish. Can you hold them securely enough?
Coras: It gets a bit tricky with the big ones but I tend to compensate with my fingers.
Coras: If they really have a problem one of the other Thirds will take them.
Coras: I get a lot of the newly Established kids though. It seems that they like to hear about how I lost these. [point to the scar]
Sylma chuckles.
Coras: Kids go figure.
Sylma: Is it a suitably hair-raising story, or do you have to embroider?
Sylma's mouth is quirked upwards in a smile that threatens to become an unprofessional grin.
Coras shudders a bit at the memory. He has watered the actual events down quite a bit for the kids.
Coras: I don't have to embroider.
Sylma's smile disappears at Coras's reaction.
Sylma: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.
Sylma does have a habit of poking her nose into other people's lives.
Sylma: Would it help to talk about it?
Coras: I'm not really upset. I just... it wasn't pleasant. [grimaces at the understatement]
Coras: Sure you want to hear it?
Sylma can zlin that Coras is used to not being able to talk about his trauma, at least with adults.
Sylma thinks that talking about it might help Coras cope with the reaction he gets from the in-Territory citizens.
Coras hasn't told anyone the whole story since they released him from rehab.
Coras fights the urge to zlin Sylma's reaction. She could lie to him without even trying. He is only a Third after all.
Sylma: Dar's specialty is combat -- and all myths to the contrary, our people get maimed and murdered in the course of their duties with some regularity.
Coras: ~~ shock~~
Coras: Really?
Sylma smiles, a bit grimly.
Sylma: People don't spend the kind of money Dar charges for protection, if there's nothing to protect against.
Coras recognizes that smile. He has seen it on his own face too often.
Coras thinks maybe she will understand.
Sylma reaches a handling tentacle across to rest it on the scar where Coras's handling tentacles should have been.
Coras stop himself from drawing his arm away. No one has ever willingly touched that scar.
Coras blinks back tears.
Sylma: This isn't the first such mutilation I've seen. The woman who drilled my brother and me in basic skills when we were children was missing half a dorsal tentacle.
Coras nods and tries to find his voice again.
Coras: I'll tell you.
Sylma's nager shows ~~ quiet sympathy ~~, unmixed with pity.
Sylma settles back to listen attentively.
Coras: It was my first and only out-T assignment. This wasn't a border town, it was a small town that didn't really want us there. You know the drill. This one was made up of gun toting farmers that hated the very sight of any Sime.
Sylma nods.
Sylma: Not like the out-Territory Gens here, where just about everyone is here voluntarily.
Sylma makes an exception for Plum, of course.
Coras: Yeah. We were there for months. We tried to offer the farmers our help with their crop problems, that was what we were there for. But they wouldn't even talk to us.
Coras smiles at a memory.
Coras: The kids would sneak around and watch us over the fence sometimes.
Sylma smiles.
Sylma: I expect most of them were there on a dare, and thought themselves quite courageous?
Coras: There was this one little girl, Maiera, she would ask questions through the fence. They never would come inside though.
Coras: Anyway to make a long story short, she came to us when she went into changeover. Her father tracked her down with the usual mob that comes out to hunt berserkers -- children.
Sylma: I take it he was unalterably opposed to having his daughter live as a Sime, even if she didn't have to kill?
Coras: He wasn't her blood father and didn't care if she lived or died. It was an excuse to attack us.
Coras: They came through our fence like it wasn't even there. Our Controller had insisted that we not put up a sturdier one so it wouldn't appear that we were making an armed camp in their midst.
Sylma winces, imagining such an attack, with no one competent to meet it.
Sylma knows that if there had been a contingent of Dar guards around, a channel civilian like Coras would never have been injured.
Sylma corrects herself: at least, not while the Dar guards were alive, and she'd have heard about this incident if a dozen or so of her fellow Householders had perished.
Coras: The funny thing is that once they were through the fence they were standing in the fields we had planted fields that were yielding nicely while theirs were barren.
Coras: It stopped them in their tracks as they just looked around.
Coras: Kien, our Controller, went out to meet them with me and Maiera in tow.
Coras: He explained that she didn't have to kill and that we would be happy to keep her inside the fence and take care of her.
Sylma can imagine the scene: the Gens with their guns, ready to murder, the crops taunting them with the superiority of in-Territory farming methods, and then three Simes appearing, one of which they considered fair game.
Sylma: And they attacked you, instead?
Coras: They were actually about to leave us alone when Maiera's father decided that he would make an example of his "daughter".
Coras: He shot Kien in the foot. He didn't even raise his gun. Maiera took off running and I tried to catch her. She managed to wedge herself into a corner under the porch.
Sylma winces. Running in panic is the worst thing you can do when facing a lynch mob, particularly if there's no place to run to.
Coras: He caught up to me. I've always been clumsy so when he tried to stab me I tried to take the knife out of his hand. I misjudged. In a way I slashed my own tentacles.
Sylma: No. It takes a lot of skill to take a knife away from an attacker who knows what he's doing, even a Gen.
Sylma: I expect most Simes without specific combat training would have had the same trouble.
Coras: You're the first Sime ever to say so. They all think it was my own fault.
Coras: At least the ones I've told. I might not be able to zlin through a show field but I can see it in their eyes.
Sylma expects Coras hadn't met very many ambrov Dar, then; the members of her House tend to view most Simes and Gens as helpless civilians.
Coras: I don't remember much after that. I woke up in the infirmary with PD and a bandage around my arm.
Sylma: Did the Gens break off their attack, when they saw the injuries?
Sylma assumes so, or Coras wouldn't have survived at all.
Coras: Maiera's father was the only one attacking it seems. The rest were following him. They all just stood there looking at him until he slashed me. Kien told me later that they had stopped him from murdering me.
Coras: I don't remember that part.
Sylma: You were all very fortunate. Quite often, one injury is enough to set a mob off on a rampage. I doubt any of you would have survived that.
Coras: They never put the fence back up.
Sylma: They didn't?
Sylma: Did that mean that they no longer felt it necessary to have you fenced off?
Coras: Seems that farmers love farming more than they hate Simes.
Sylma's lips twitch in amusement.
Coras: They started listening to our Specialists. Last I heard they were all doing well.
Sylma shakes her head.
Coras smiles. The first real smile since the incident.
Coras: I guess it was worth a couple tentacles.
Sylma chuckles.
Coras looks at Sylma and takes a deep breath. Also the first since the incident, well the first truly free one.
Coras: Thank you Hajene.
Sylma: You're very welcome.
Sylma smiles at Coras cheerfully.
Coras: I would like to learn the trick of taking a knife from a Gen without losing what's left of my tentacles. Could you teach me?
Coras: ~~joking~~
Sylma: Well, first you hog-tie the Gen....
Coras throws his head back and laughs!
Sylma is ~~ delighted ~~ at the change in Coras's attitude.
Coras: I had better stop holding you up. [offers Sylma a transfer grip]
Coras extends all his tentacles, unselfconscious for the first time.
Sylma readily entwines six handling tentacles with Coras's, letting the extra ventrals wrap around his scarred arm comfortably, as they would if she were handling a cooperative Gen.
Sylma leans forward so that Coras can make lip contact easily.
Coras makes lip contact and off loads everything in his secondary system.
Coras: [breaks contact and sits back] All done.
Sylma: Yes.
Sylma sheathes her laterals, then takes her time letting the handling tentacles -- and arm -- go.
Coras: Thanks for the perspective Sylma. And thanks for touching me.
Sylma: My pleasure.
Coras grins. He doubts if it was pleasurable but at least he knows Sylma isn't just being polite.
Coras: Aren't you doing my transfer this month?
Sylma: Yes, I believe so.
Coras mentally kicks himself for not making the connection sooner.
Sylma: I expect that's why I was asked to come down here and collect the selyn you've gathered.
Coras: I'm glad. If I have to be stuck on channel's transfers I would rather you than Arat.
Sylma raises an eyebrow.
Coras thinks or Snake, or Jeniard, or Roliver.
Sylma: Really? Controller Arat can be a bit unpleasant at times, but I'm only a Second.
Sylma doesn't want to raise false expectations.
Coras: At least you will touch me. Not just dump the selyn and run. I think that is what I miss most about having a Donor. Someone who has an emotional stake in the transfer.
Coras: I know I'm only a Third but I'm not a renSime. I do know the difference.
Sylma mentally adds a few pointed comments to her discreet report.
Go on to Episode #142: GN1 Controls QN2?
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