Day 182

[freedom_engineer]

Who: Colin Starfury, Rin Okumura, and anyone else with opinions about meat.
What: Colin wants to make a purchase, but he needs opinions first.
When: Day 182
Where: The Distillery
Format: Action, Prose, Whatever you like
Open: Open
Warnings: Talk of meat, possibly blood and slaughter of animals. Also, Colin again.

Once again, it seems as though Colin is up to something. This morning, after getting breakfast and making a smoothie, Colin doesn't head out for his daily routine like he usually does. Instead, he's going to head for the kitchen and knock on the door frame. Rin's the cook for the place, and if he's going to be bringing in meat, he needs to know what she's going to be comfortable with.

And the fact that he'd prefer to bring in technology to make meat is probably going to ruffle a couple of feathers.

"Rin, you got a moment?" he asks.

Comments

[hellpyre]

"I'm in the pantry!" her voice calls out from that area, the door open and the light inside on, her tail sticking partially out from it. She seems to be doing something in there that's got her preoccupied enough to not really care that it's Colin interrupting her work.

[freedom_engineer]

Colin smiles and heads towards the pantry. Spying her tail is more than enough to let him know that he shouldn't get too much closer, as she's probably handling something near the entrance.

"I've got a whole bushel of shards," he says. "I was considering the needs of the Bastion, and I realized that we're still lacking some basic needs. You mind if I pick your brain on one of them? It concerns food."

[hellpyre]

She is, apparently trying to pull... something out. Trying, because it's stuck, and even her strength isn't getting it out without breaking either the floor or the object.

She huffs and straightens, stretching out her back with her hands on it.

"Yeah, sure, I need a break anyway..."

[freedom_engineer]

"Maybe when we're done, I can see about giving you a hand with that," Colin says, stepping back to give her room.

"Anyway, my thoughts. We're still lacking a reliable source of meat," he explains. "Paar brings in the occasional mammoth, and we've got fish in the river, but those can't fill all our needs. And I'd rather not get into the practice of slaughtering the animals we've got out at the farm since they're in small quantities."

He leans against the wall, and he gestures at her. "Since you do the majority of our cooking... Would you be open to the possibility of synthetic meat?" he asks.

[hellpyre]

"Please... it's stuck on somethin' and I don't wanna break it."

She moves out of the pantry after that, going to hop up on the counter so she can listen to what Colin has to say.

"Synthetic? What, like... processed stuff?"

[freedom_engineer]

"Close, yes," Colin says, nodding. "Synthetic meat is meat that's grown through artificial means, rather than by raising and slaughtering animals. With the process I'm thinking of, we can grow whatever meat we want, right down to the cuts we need."

[hellpyre]

"... what... does it even taste like? Is it normal or is it more like tofu?"

Which is fine, she can deal with either, but the idea does sound... strange. If it's not processed (like so many things were back home) what should she be expecting?

[freedom_engineer]

"It's essentially the same as normally farmed animals," Colin says. "Beef tastes like beef, pork tastes like pork, etetera etcetera. The technology came about through a derivation in medical research and was perfected on colonies with an inability to grow their own food through normal means."

He glances out the window in the direction of the farm, and he cocks a grin. "The other option, of course, is buying a herd of animals to raise and slaughter. We'd need a slaughterhouse and a butcher for that, though."

[hellpyre]

"Oh..."

She frowned, moving a hand over her head. It was all a bit much for her to understand, but...

"I'll take your word for it. I think you've probably got the right idea, if it can be done without spendin' a whole lot."

[freedom_engineer]

"It won't take much," Colin says, gesturing out the window. "I expect it'll probably take 500 shards, at most. It will probably just be an add on to the farm. I'll need to check with a few more people before I get everything set up, I don't want to imbalance the farm."

He looks back to her then, and he smiles. "I figured I'd ask you first, since you're the one who does the cooking. What kind of meats would you like to have again, anyway?"

[hellpyre]

"500? That's not too bad..."

Still several trips to the skyway, but it wasn't like they didn't do that already.

"... I haven't made sukiyaki in forever. I would kill for some good beef."

[freedom_engineer]

"Yeah, that's what I figured," Colin tells her, adding a chuckle to the end. "We've got meat, but we haven't got enough meat OR enough variety. The facility I've got in mind should make both of those a thing of the past."

He smiles then, and glances towards the pantry. Giving it a gesture, he looks back to Rin with a curious expression. "So, what were you trying to dig out of there?" he asks.

[hellpyre]

"Oh, uh. I moved a crate in there about a week ago and I'm tryin' to get it back out so I can refill it from the farm, but I think it got stuck on somethin'," Rin answered, hopping off the counter so she can move back to the pantry.

"I could just yank it outta there but I don't wanna break anythin'."

[freedom_engineer]

"Well, you got it in, so you can definitely get it out," Colin says, sounding all the more amused. "It just might take a little bit."

Colin moves with her to get to the pantry, inspecting the crate that she'd wedged in there. A pantry seems an odd place to keep a crate, to him. But he figures it was probably a time-saving storage space.

[hellpyre]

The pantry really was the only storage place available in the kitchen, aside from the cupboards and the fridge. But Rin brought in pounds upon pounds of produce and supplies from the farm every few days, and it was just easier to haul it in via large containers like that.

Really she would have loved some nice plastic bins, but she had to make due with slatted wooden crates instead.

"I had this at the back earlier, but I shoved it under this shelf. I wonder if it got like... wedged in there or somethin'."

[freedom_engineer]

"It's certainly possible," Colin says, studying the crate with a curious expression. "Try smearing butter on it to lubricate it? I'd offer to get some lubricant from my workshop, but I don't think we want that stuff anywhere near a food container."

He glances around the kitchen with a thoughtful expression, and he settles his gaze on her again. "Why don't we buy some better storage items for you? This place would probably be a lot more usable if we had some modern and postmodern stuff here," he tells her.

[hellpyre]

... yeah, I'd rather not put somethin' like that near food."

You're so lucky Rin doesn't associate lubricant with something dirty, Colin.

"What? You don't gotta do somethin' like that. Shouldn't you be savin' your shards for that... fake meat stuff?"

[freedom_engineer]

Colin just smirks at her first observation and says nothing.

"I go out onto the skyway almost every day," Colin tells her. "I've got enough shards to make several items right now, and I still don't know enough about the monument to trust it to make the really sensitive stuff I want. If I can make things easier for everyone, I'd prefer to do that. What kind of things do you need? Like... really need?"

[hellpyre]

"Well..." Rin muttered, straightening up. "If I was bein' completely honest, the whole kitchen could be redone. It's not that I can't cook in here, but it'd be easier if the whole thing was more modern."

[freedom_engineer]

"See? Now that is something I can help with," Colin tells her, his voice growing excited at the thought of creating things to make everyones' lives easier. "If you tell me where the problems are, and what you want to replace, then I'll see it happen. We can make plenty of stuff at the monument, and I can build plenty of tools in my workshop."

[hellpyre]

Rin still seems a bit dubious about this, but there's a nod.

"Mostly just the stuff I work with the most. Sink, stove, that stuff. The wood oven is fine, actually, I like how it bakes a lot better'n a modern but but everything else acts up more than I'd like to deal with."

[freedom_engineer]

"Plumbing is easy, I can do that with the stuff I have in my workshop," Colin says, nodding. "Any engineer on a spacecraft needs to know plumbing. You don't want to be between star systems when the water dies, and nobody knows how to fix it."

He grins at her, and he scratches his chin. "The rest is pretty doable. I'll see about drawing up some plans, and... showing you what the finished products will look like."

He figures that Rin would probably appreciate NOT having to give input on math, architecture, and anything else that requires too much thinking.

[If anyone else wants him, here he is.]

[freedom_engineer]

Now that he's done with Rin, Colin has ventured out to the farm. He's wandering the grounds, taking basic survey measurements and trying to decide where and how his latest addition to the Bastion will best be placed.

[hellpyre]

Colin would probably appreciate not having Rin completely botch things up.

"Alright. ... I'm trustin' you with this, y'know. I don't let many people mess around with the place I cook, even if I didn't originally own it."

Not that she owns the distillery now or anything, but Mireille has pretty much given her complete control of the kitchen area now. She figures making adjustments that would work better falls in that arrangement.

[freedom_engineer]

"Relax, relax," Colin assures her. "Nothing's being done without your approval. I don't mess with other peoples' work areas without their say-so, just like I don't want anyone messing with mine. You get the final say on anything I plan to do."

Colin smiles at her then, and moves to assist her in trying to pry the crate out from under the shelf. An extra set of hands there WOULD make it easier to relieve some of the pressure wedging the crate down there...