004 || Voice

[chlorophylliac]

[Ivy's voice is calm but there's an edge of steel underneath; she's not quite in full-on supervillain mode but she sounds....vindicated.]

Were we supposed to learn something from that little expedition, I wonder? The Admiral doesn't seem the type to let his crew off for shore leave but I think he'd easily run to an educational field trip or two.

Truth be told, I've dreamt of that city many times. A city, a world, a culture that felt it had surpassed nature. A population sitting at the top of the tree, believing that it's too far away to concern them when they let their toxic filth wither the roots below. Letting their vanity and self-indulgence distract them from their imminent extinction. There was nothing left for them. The air was toxic, the seas were poison. They were generations beyond the point that the Earth could possibly have healed itself and they were still pouring salt into the wounds.

What we've just seen is the future I fight against. The plutocrats and polluters I've killed were the men building bridges to that world. They were the ones leaving a poisoned world to their descendants, abandoning them to die young so that they could die rich. They made decisions in offices and boardrooms that would kill more than I would ever contemplate.

But of course, I'm the monster. The eco-terrorist. The bad guy. And I embrace it.

[A brief pause.]

Anyone who remembers calling me Pamela Isley, I suggest you let that memory go.

[Private to Erik]

I haven't heard from you since this was over. [How are you doing bro.]

Comments

[private]

[can_has_vodka]

Ms. Ivy, may I get your professional opinion on something related?

[private]

[chlorophylliac]

[....hrm.]

You can ask. Arkady, isn't it?

[private]

[can_has_vodka]

Yes, that's me! Hello. We should have talked before but I didn't want to waste your time with something small.

How would you restore an ecosystem? Assume that it is no longer overpopulated. I'm...doing shop talk, I suppose.

[private]

[chlorophylliac]

I assume you don't mean me personally. Describe the circumstances.

[private]

[can_has_vodka]

Well, I guess that depends on if you'd consider hiring out!

It's a large island that suffered an earthquake with severe subsidence a few years ago. The sea level rose twenty feet and swamped much of the low lying areas. We have it in our power to reverse the subsidence--I think--but we need to desalinate the soil and help plants and animals get a foothold again.

[private/written]

[chlorophylliac]

I doubt the terms of my imprisonment include work placements. If it was me, I would use hybrid mangrove trees adapted to the purpose and climate (I presume from your accent that we're discussing an area a few degrees north of their usual habitat). They draw salt from the water and secrete it from glands onto their leaves which are subsequently dropped from the tree and can be, for lack of a better word, harvested.

Nevertheless, you would need to use a combination of leaching with desalinated water, which would itself demand a system of drainage and a means of returning salinated water to the ocean, and appropriate planting with species that can bear high salinity and would maintain the integrity of the land. There are various ryes and grasses which have high salt tolerance, as do elm trees. Willows and reeds function as natural desalinators and survive well in wet land. If you need the land to be productive, there are various crop species that would survive in those conditions, albeit at less than ideal levels of production.

If your ultimate goal was reclaiming the land entirely, you would have to be prepared to introduce new species as the environment grew less hostile to them, though the transition would take years if not decades in its entirety.

Animals generally populate any area they can reach which is catering to their needs and will leave or die out when it isn't. If you want to help them find a foothold then I recommend focusing on insects at the offset. You'll need them for pollination and they'll attract their predators.

[Note: Ivy is a world-class expert on ecology and botany. I am an arts graduate and understood about 5% of the stuff I Googled. Please adjust your expectations accordingly. :C ]

[with_discipline]

There was a decidedly...theatrical element to that world.

[chlorophylliac]

As you might expect from a world fighting desperately to ignore its own inevitable destruction. Is that at all relevant?

[with_discipline]

It was somewhat unrealistic.

[chlorophylliac]

[T'Pol you're talking to a half-plant woman who fights a vigilante playboy billionaire and you're levelling an accusation of unrealistic-ness at....anything :c]

Real enough for its inhabitants. Even a culture in the grip of its most extravagant death throes must have had a history. Unless you're suggesting that the Admiral actually creates the ports we visit himself.

[with_discipline]

[SHE DEMANDS LOGIC EVERYWHERE. :C]

It's a possibility I have considered. The history of that society was, in many ways, too outrageous. There are medical practices designed to save limbs, while they thought only to amputate and replace. I would be interested, scientifically, in studying how they became that culture. [Because she doesn't really buy it as natural or human.]

[chlorophylliac]

You say 'there are medical practices' as if every society in every possible world develops uniformly to a certain point and then diverts from it. A little reductive, don't you think?

[peektuttut]

You're missing the middle ground again.

[chlorophylliac]

You're naively considering this a matter of politics; if it ever was, it ceased to be a long time ago. This is war. There is no middle ground.

[peektuttut]

War is politics. It's you killing to save plants, or them killing plants to line their pockets, according to you, but either way someone's being hurt. Wars have high casualty counts, Ivy. I don't think either side wants that.

[chlorophylliac]

Don't presume to know what I want.

Had you listened to a word I said, you might have noticed me mentioning that there are future generations of humans that will need to exist as part of a functioning, productive biosphere in order to survive. I don't want to annihilate the human race, Drake. If it makes you squeamish to imagine someone protecting plants for their own sake, consider me a steward of the Earth that humans will still have to inhabit in hundreds of years' time. I accept as inevitable that I am that as well.

The difference between me and 'them' is that I acknowledge what little humanity I have. They seem ever more desperate to ignore their own.

[peektuttut]

It's kind of ironic that you'd lecture me for not listening, when you don't do much listening yourself, don't you think? When have I ever been squeamish about protecting anything? [Captain Boomerang not withstanding. :c]

[Private]

[wecanavenge]

[So badly, ladybro. :c]

I'd prefer to watch others breakdown. [He's been quietly having a small breakdown of his own.]

[Private]

[chlorophylliac]

It seems you wouldn't have far to look. Most of the ship seems to be transparently 'just fine'.

It wasn't the work that bothered you. [More a statement than a question.]

[Private]

[wecanavenge]

No. [Well a little, but not as much as it probably should.] More the indiscriminate way we went about it. [And the wifey and baby, but. :c]

[technophilic]

You kill to prevent the death of the Earth, but only the rich and powerful?

[chlorophylliac]

No.

[technophilic]

Then I misunderstand your assertion. What exactly is it that you do?

[chlorophylliac]

You understand my assertion perfectly. You simply underestimate the breadth of its scope.

I fight to restore the life on Earth that its dominant species is so eager to violate and destroy. And I'll do whatever it takes.

[technophilic]

Why not simply destroy them all?