5th Hat Flip [Voice/Action]

[immamartillo]

[Voice]

[It's early in the morning-after a night of much boredom and little sleep- when Firo opens his journal.]

I've been wonderin': what kinda weapons do people use back where you guys come from? Where I live, people'll fight with anything from fists to tommy guns, but I figure everywhere's gotta have somethin' different.

[Action]

[Later that morning, Firo sets off running for the Battle Dome. He hasn't been too pleased with himself lately: he failed to be effective against the droids that attacked a few weeks ago, and then he couldn't even protect his friend from being mallynapped. Actually, ever since Ennis was kidnapped before his arrival in Luceti he's felt nagging feelings of uselessness. They've only been intensified by recent events.

He has to get stronger. The capos of his Family would be disappointed if they saw him like this. In the back of his mind Firo can practically hear Yaguruma berating him.

He spends most of the day at the Battle Dome, focusing on training until he's ready to drop (though feel free to interrupt him). Maybe trying to go so long without a break isn't a good idea, but that doesn't matter to Firo at this point. When nightfall comes, he wanders outside and slumps by the door, exhausted.

Comments

[immamartillo]

1933, and they're still pretty common. What about you?

[herd_effect]

1952. [He chuckles--well, this is bizarre. It's not often that he encounters someone behind him in time.] How funny. I was ten years old in 1933.

[immamartillo]

Really? That's... kinda weird to think about.

[This guy sounds older- and is older, if Firo bothers to do the math- and yet Firo's technically older...

Luceti is going to break Firo's brain one of these days.]

So what's it like?

[herd_effect]

1952? It's pretty good. There was a World War that ended in 1945 and the United States has troops fighting Communism over in Korea right now, but things are peaceful where I am in Michigan. The economy's recovered since your time, too.

Technologically speaking, we have a lot of great things. Like television, jet planes, and streptomycin--that's an antibiotic that can treat tuberculosis. [And yes, he finds that even cooler than TV and jets. It did save a ton of lives, after all.]

[immamartillo]

Tuberculosis?

[That's the one question Firo chooses to ask over all the others that are flying around his head now. Not for any real intellectual reasons; he just never thought it'd happen, especially when he was watching his mother die from that disease.]

You're kiddin' me.

[herd_effect]

It's true. It started becoming available while I was doing my internship--sometime in the late forties. It's truly changed the world. Hardly any of the sanatoriums are still open, because we can give people a gram a day for about a month and have them completely cured.

[Well, provided they didn't have a resistant strain of TB. But there are a number of different drugs coming out in his time that might help with that. That isoniazid stuff sounds particularly promising.]

[immamartillo]

Completely?

Huh. It almost sounds easy when ya put it like that.

[herd_effect]

Well, there's always the potential for complications. But by and large it is pretty easy. It's amazing what medicine can do.

We have a vaccine against tuberculosis that's gaining acceptance now, too. It's a live virus and doesn't protect against all strains of the bacteria, but it saved a lot of lives in Europe after the war. Maybe someday we'll be able to prevent most people from getting infected in the first place.

[And hmm, he should ask Adele about that. It'd be interesting if the disease was practically eradicated by 2011.]

[immamartillo]

[Some of that stuff he didn't quite get, but he gets the feeling that asking for an explanation would just complicate things. Besides, he's not sure how comfortable he is with this subject.]

Are you some kinda doctor?

[herd_effect]

Mm-hm. I'm a general practitioner. I work over at the village clinic.

[And hmm, he never did introduce himself.] I'm Dr. Everett Willock.

[immamartillo]

I'm Firo Prochainezo. Nice to meet'cha.

General practitioner? That means you do whatever?

[herd_effect]

Basically. I do everything from check-ups to minor surgeries. So if you're never not feeling well, I'm generally a good person to go to.

Nice to meet you, Mr. Prochainezo. Is that an Italian name?

[immamartillo]

Sounds like a tough job, if ya gotta know all that.

[Okay, as nice as this guy seems, Firo gets that question way too often. Have a small helping of friendly sarcasm.]

Figure that out all by yourself?

[herd_effect]

It can be challenging. The hard part here has been getting caught up on the advances in medical science that happened after our times. There's a lot of medicine and equipment from around the 2000s that I hardly knew how to use when I first arrived. Took quite a bit of studying.

[He's not at all put off by the sarcasm, as it was a pretty obvious question.] I'm the twentieth person or so to ask that, aren't I?

[immamartillo]

And all that on top a' gettin' used to this place? I'm not envious of you, I'll say that much.

[He laughs.]

Yeah. 'Least it lets me know who's from Earth and who's from some other world.

[herd_effect]

[He chuckles lightly.] At least I can practice here. I would have been downright bored otherwise.

That's true. Have you met a lot of people from Earth? It seems to me as though there's not all that many.

[immamartillo]

True. It'd be pretty neat if ya could take the stuff you learned here back home.

[He pauses to consider that.]

Just a few, I think. Let's see, there's you, Sally... and a few others.

[herd_effect]

I know. [He thinks about that a lot, really. Of course, most of what he's learned wouldn't be applicable without the technology in place, but there's still things that could carry over. Like CPR. Who knew compressing someone's chest instead of their back was a more effective resuscitation technique?]

Who's Sally?

[immamartillo]

Sally? She's one a' the people here who's from Earth- London, I think. She's a police officer or a detective or somethin' like that.

[That's another weird thing about Luceti- Firo's meeting so many people from his world with legitimate jobs.]

[herd_effect]

[A female police officer. Fancy that.] Do you know what time she's from?

[immamartillo]

No idea, but I'm pretty sure it's way after mine.

[herd_effect]

Probably around 2000, then. Most people from Earth seem to be. I'll have to meet her sometime.

There's no one here that you knew from back home, is there?

[immamartillo]

It's weird to think about a time so far in the future...

[Will his Family still be together? Will he finally have gotten the guts to ask Ennis out? So much can happen in several decades.]

Actually, there is. A kid named Czes; he lived with me back home.

[Czes won't mind Firo giving his real name out... Will he?]

[herd_effect]

[He nods, though Firo can't see it. What weirds him out is the slim chance that he'll live to see that time--he'll be around ninety if he does, and will get to see all that fancy technology develop. And besides that, the fact that the end of his life might overlap with the lives of those modern people--the fact that they might conceivably be able to encounter each other back home, or hear of each other through the media--that's freaky.]

That must be nice. Sometimes I wish my brother or my best friend could be here, provided the Malnosso wouldn't treat them too harshly. I'd love to have the opportunity to show them everything.

[immamartillo]

It is, I just worry about him bein' around those guys, ya know?

[He's pretty sure nothing awful has happened to Czes, but there's always the future]

I'm just not sure if it's worth it.