(closed) not your regular medical check-up

[graftage]

Who: John Steinbeck & Royce Bracket
Where: a stone's throw away from the Scarback monastery
When: around the beginning of Chapter 5 shenanigans
Summary: A Scarback with plant abilities goes to see the wizard behind the nanomachine curtain to help check them out.
Restrictions/Warnings: Steinbeck and his plant abilities are body horror central, but other than that, nothing else!

[A lab, huh?]

[It seemed like quite the quaint little place. Steinbeck had never seen it this close before - mostly he had passes by it, its form becoming just a regular part of the background. Plus, that perimeter would've kept him out in case he wanted to take a closer look. But now, not only was he face to face with the building, but he had some context for it - a man by the name of Royce Bracket lived here. A strange man. A man who worked with machines.]

[Nanomachines, to be exact.]

[He checks his pockets just to make sure he's brought his grape seeds. Hopefully, things will be alright - he just wants confirmation that his recent upgrades have gone well. He doesn't want them malfunctioning out of the blue. Steinbeck looks for the doorbell, finally just reaching forward to rap on the front door with his knuckles. He hopes the man inside can hear.]

Hey! It's me! Steinbeck. I'm here about the plants.

Comments

[decompiler]

[ It's no Qreshi estate, to be sure. But it is something. Not that Steinbeck gets to enjoy the cushier upper levels, but when he arrives it's to a towering cantilevered structure nestled in the foothills not far from the Scarbacks and their monastery. In the heart of his lab, Royce's focus is pulled from his task by Steinbeck's arrival; in truth, the sensors along the edge of the property had alerted him first, but he takes some amusement in noting through the camera feed that Steinbeck had taken his invitation to knock rather literally. People do tend to do that from time to time. Take him somewhat... literally.

Well, the defenses are already back up in Steinbeck's distant wake and Royce is, if nothing else, a civil sort, but he glances balefully between multiple PDDs and an adjacent pile of notes and the hallway joining room and entrance.

There's a panel with a screen just next to the door. Unbidden, it blips to life for Steinbeck: Royce's voice, is really all, accompanied by a static image of some part of the lab he isn't in. ]

There you are. I see you. Hello, hello... Come on in; it should be open if I'm not mistaken.

[ Manners, of course, manners do dictate—the manners he was raised with, you see—that he pull himself away for the sake of hospitality, but, well, he'd been honest. After all. Steinbeck may have taken precautionary measures himself, but the others? The others who have contacted him in the last little while haven't been so lucky, now, have they?

It's. Frustrating. Seeing a pattern emerge the way it has. Since the dreams. Since the virus. And having next to no idea what to do about it. ]