[Day 191 | Open] What's that familiar sizzling sound?

[freedom_engineer]

Who: Colin, anyone who wants breakfast
Open: OPEN
What: One word. BACON
When: Day 191, Morning
Where: The Distillery
Format: Take your pick
Warnings: Who needs a warning when BACON is involved?

Three days ago, Colin introduced his new buildings to the Bastion. This morning, the lab's work had finally come to fruition. Colin brought a slab of skillet-ready bacon to the kitchen, first thing in the morning. The kitchen was freshly upgraded, how fitting it would be to have it broken in with fresh meat?

Rin had been apprehensive at first. Artificial meat couldn't be good, could it? But that apprehension seemed to melt away gradually like so much fat off of sizzling meat as the bacon cooked.

So, when everyone shows up for breakfast, there's a giant serving platter loaded down with bacon to go along with the rest of the breakfast for the day.

Go nuts, everyone.

Comments

[daughterofursa]

Zuko may be accustomed by now to fish being the primary source of meat in her diet, but growing up in the Fire Nation there was a lot more variety. The strong scent of bacon is familiar to her, too, though she may not be thinking of quite the same animal as everyone else.

"...did we get some pig chickens or something?"

She doesn't need the question answered to gravitate towards the platter and... maybe reach for a piece. As long as no one objects.

[freedom_engineer]

"Not quite," Colin says. He's long since finished his meal, and now he's simply relaxing. He's also running various scenarios through his head for the future, but that's hardly something that can be observed.

"We've got a new facility at the farm that should keep us supplied with meat for the foreseeable future," he continues.

[daughterofursa]

"What kind of facility produces bacon without there being any livestock?"

Well, no one's stopping her. She snags a piece and takes a bite. It sure tastes like pig chicken.

[freedom_engineer]

"You sure you want an answer to that?" Colin asks, his tone gentle and dissuading. "I'm more than happy to tell you, but once you learn something, you can't unlearn it. It's nothing bad, but it will be alien to you and probably unsettle you."

[daughterofursa]

"It wouldn't be the first thing around here. I think I can handle it."

[freedom_engineer]

"All right," Colin says, nodding. "The facility uses a derivation of medical technology to grow meat from its base components. It can produce almost any kind of cut of meat, ready to eat, that you can think of."

[daughterofursa]

Not only does this information fail to unsettle her, it... doesn't really seem to make sense, either. Medical technology?

"How do you 'grow' meat?" Isn't that what raising livestock is all about?

[freedom_engineer]

"Where do you think you come from?" Colin asks, off-handed. "What are you made of?"

[daughterofursa]

"What kind of question is that? I had parents, I wasn't grown in some facility." She's also made up of more than just meat.

[freedom_engineer]

"Deeper than that," Colin says. "What is your flesh and bone made of? Carbon. Hydrogen. Base elements. It's the same throughout all creatures. Iron in the blood, calcium in the bone, everything is made up of the same building blocks on a fundamental level."

He grins at the impromptu science lesson. "Once you know how to build from that level... you can build anything," he says.

[daughterofursa]

She continues to give him a flat, mostly uncomprehending look throughout the mini lesson. Up until this talk about 'base elements,' the only element she's known to be part of a person's body is water. She's never thought, or cared, about what makes her up on the physical level.

"It sounds pretty crazy," is her conclusion.

[freedom_engineer]

"Science often does," Colin confirms. "I'm guessing your world hasn't made major scientific advancements, yet."

He smirks. "In my universe, we fly between the stars and have colonized hundreds of worlds," he says, far too innocently. "Growing meat from scratch is simple technology in comparison to that. And yet, if we hadn't traveled between the stars, we never would have discovered how to do it."

He smiles fondly, then. "Most planets in the universe are inhospitable to life. Hard to grow crops, much harder to raise animals," he explains. "Food is one of the first things a colony needs to be able to produce."

[daughterofursa]

Colin has such an impeccable sense of modesty. It's...... admirable. Really.

At least travelling around in space is a much easier concept for her to grasp, even if she doesn't have much interest in that either. "The kind of 'advancements' you're talking about aren't the measure of a people. If you aren't spiritually advanced enough, you'll just misuse them."

...although she has to admit, it's difficult to see how a person could misuse bacon.

[freedom_engineer]

"And?" Colin asks, blinking. "Science isn't prejudiced. It's simply how things work. From the finest saint to the worst tyrant, science plays no favorites. For that matter, one man's proper use of science is another man's heresy."

He pauses, and he smirks. "I'm sure even you must know of mobs hunting down people who do things they don't agree with, tormenting them until they change their ways," he says. "Or killing them when they don't. Barbarism is fairly common when someone doesn't agree with something."

[daughterofursa]

"My father led those kinds of mobs," Zuko states, not knowing why that kind of remark merited a smirk. "And I'm pretty sure fewer people would have died if he hadn't had battleships and airships and bombs."

[freedom_engineer]

"Then you don't give your father enough credit," Colin says, leveling a wicked stare at her. "Bigots and fools don't need technology to be monsters, nor do they need weapons to raise a body count. Science is not, and never will be, evil. How people use it, that is evil, but that evil exists whether or not they can see the universe or if they can't see past a single difference."

[daughterofursa]

Zuko stares levelly back at him for a moment. She knows her father was a horrible person, and he always would have been, with or without armies and war machines at his disposal, with or without his firebending. But having them made him a lot more dangerous. What would her face have looked like if he hadn't been born a firebender? Black eyes heal a lot nicer.

But it's becoming clear enough that this isn't something Colin is going to understand. He's missing the point. She takes a few more pieces of meat and turns to go.

"Thanks for the bacon." It's about the least grateful-sounding thank you ever.

[freedom_engineer]

"Why are you defending him?" Colin asks, ignoring the least grateful sounding thanks ever. He keeps his gaze focused on her, letting his eyes bore into her.

[daughterofursa]

She was trying to walk away from this before her temper got the better of her, but it looks like that isn't going to work out. She whirls back around, furious at the question.

"You think I'm defending him? He was a horrible person, and a terrible father! Of all the people I lost from my world, I'm almost glad he's dead!"

[freedom_engineer]

"So why are you excusing his behavior, blaming his tools for his monstrosities?" he asks. He knows he's provoking her. He knows she's trying to extract herself before she does something she'll regret.

But he's not content to let it go. Technology can't defend itself. Entire cultures have been scrubbed from existence for thoughts along these lines.

[daughterofursa]

Just what is this guy's problem?

"I'm not. That doesn't change the fact that he used them. He almost destroyed our world himself."

[freedom_engineer]

"A single man can destroy a world with a silver tongue and nothing more," Colin says. "Tools do nothing to change that, and thinking otherwise has set back societies and resulted in more deaths than you could imagine. An evil soul can use a tool just as readily as a good soul can. The only difference is what they do with it."

[daughterofursa]

"Just what are you trying to convince me of? I already know what kind of person my father was, and I think I know it better than anyone else. Nothing was going to change that about him."

[freedom_engineer]

"I'm trying to tell you that technology isn't some horrible inspiring force of destruction," he says, his tone measured but still a little cross. "If I'm reading you wrong, then I apologize, but from the sound of things, you think that your father would have been harmless if he hadn't had his weapons."

A slight pause, never taking his eyes off her. "Am I wrong?"

[daughterofursa]

"My father could never be harmless. That's why I had him imprisoned even after the Avatar took his bending away."

She would fold her arms, but she's still holding the bacon she was trying to make off with, which makes it a little awkward.

"I never said technology was a force of destruction, but that's how my nation used it, and the world would have been better off without us having it."