[Video]

[timesbureaucrat]

[Narvin is suspicious and paranoid and generally thinks that people are out to get him even under the best of circumstances. So hearing from the news report that the person who set off the skeleton spawner is possibly an import--someone he knows--is stoking the paranoia, and building fears that the native population might turn ugly against them all.]

How lovely learning that one of us may be responsible for attempting to slaughter everyone. I'm sure that endears us to the natives.

[Narvin leans forward, steeples his fingers.]

Of course, a psychic scan could quickly clear all this up. Targeted for only relevant information, of course. If you're innocent, you'd have nothing to worry about.

Comments

[Private]

[most_feared]

Do you honestly think that we're not worrying about the same thing?

But we got enough labels on us. And we're not going to authorize Wynter to do it either. [Unless it's a very extreme emergency.] If you want to help, tell us more about the spawners.

But you really, really gotta let us handle this.

[Private]

[timesbureaucrat]

[He takes a deep breath in...exhales... He knows Kay is right. Narvin has no jurisdiction here. He isn't security here. And he knows how irate he would be if someone unauthorized were pushing into his jurisdiction.

Kay is being more patient with him than Narvin would be under such circumstances.]

Right.


Right.


It's...difficult. I'm not used to being a civilian. I feel so...useless.

Helpless.

[Private]

[most_feared]

Well, you got five hundred other ways you can help and I don't see you doing a damn one of them.

[Kay may be patient, but he's also painfully blunt.]

The townspeople here aren't incapable, but they're stuck here with no help from their outside world. We're their outside world. As far as I know, they don't have a spawner that can produce some of their basic medications. It's winter now, so food's gonna be harder to come by unless it can be gathered from other areas. They can't work outside this cultivation area but they can take it from the wild. What about a better method of cultivating indoors while the climate is cold that won't strain the power resources?

You say your people have the intelligence to do all that but the only thing you can think of doing is picking apart people's heads.

[Private]

[timesbureaucrat]

My training was temporal mechanics and programming, I've never done...agriculture. There were other specialists for that.

But, I suppose I can give it a try.

[Which will first require a lot of basic research on How Things Grow. Because Narvin's usual knowledge of and interaction with food was that you push a button on a food machine and a food tablet comes out. Sometimes, on special occasions, platters of fancier food might be set up, but he never gave a thought to where it came from or how.]

[Private]

[most_feared]

There's always somethin'. [He's not going to bind Narvin to any role except helpful civilian. He just wants him to realize that he can do other things to give the imports better standing.]