Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Side Sim, Questions in the Arboretum

Posted by Ensign Kaia (Engineering Officer) in Side Sim, Questions in the Arboretum

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Side Sim, Questions in the Arboretum
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snips)

Kaia absently scratched the spot where her arm joined to her prosthetic, trying to explain her thought process in a good way. “Sure, it would be nice to send out biosynthetic and computerized mechanical limbs, but not everyone has those resources. That’s what I’m trying to say. Those components take a lot of resources. Even in the galaxy we are living in, there are people living from paycheck to paycheck. There are people who don’t exist in the post-scarcity mentality that your almighty Federation and Starfleet have created for themselves. I’m looking at those people. I’m looking at the kid that I was. My parent’s scraped and scrounged to send me and my siblings to school. To send me to the Academy,” she glanced away from Faye, focusing on the dirt for a few long moments. “Even as accessible as your idea might be, it wouldn’t have been within our price range. If there’d been something you could find blueprints for and build yourself, easily, out of wood and string and scrap metal…” she gave a little twist and a tug, and pulled off her prosthetic arm. “I might have had two arms growing up. Even if it only has minimal capabilities.”

Kaia, Eng

Faye blinked. She had no idea, did she? Nope. That was okay. But it was strange to find someone who didn’t know. Yes, another shift. “You’re not hearing me,” she said softly. “I’m not suggesting we create kits of fancy limbs. I’m saying we create kits that are exactly what they need to be. But you can fashion incredibly sophisticated prosthetics with less materials if you know what you’re doing. I’m not an expert by any means, but…” She could see it in her mind, how the parts could fit together. Hell, you could cook up the biopolymer in your kitchen if you were creative enough. Faye exhaled a breath, and the images fell away from her mind. “Anyway, there could be options,” she said, even more quietly.

Kaia dropped her arm, letting it roll across the path for a moment before coming to rest. She looked down, feeling awkward as she had clearly misunderstood what Faye was saying.

She was going to leave it, but no, flashes of the people she had known came unbidden. Faye turned to Kaia. “I get it. I know you think I don’t, but I do. Us colony folk make do however we can. On mine, we lived off the land wherever possible. It was a great life, but don’t doubt that the one summer when we had a terrible storm rip through and kill most of our crops and half the buildings in our settlement that we didn’t wish our one small replicator was an industrial one that could whip us up some pre-fab housing. Instead we chose between feeding ourselves and replicating medicines, and prayed to which ever deity you believed or didn’t believe in that no one got so sick we couldn’t treat them.”

She knelt back down in front of Kaia. “I’m not making recommendations based on some sort of some idyllic picture of the galaxy. I’m thinking, if I was one of those kids, like you, that needed a limb what would I want to have? What would my parents desperately want me to have. There’s a way Kaia, we just have to get creative,” she said, a smile slipping on her face.

~Faye Calloway

Kaia flopped forward, putting her head against Faye and shaking slightly. “I’m sorry, Faye,” she muttered. She hugged herself. She had gotten so used to people just assuming every problem could be solved with high-tech gadgets and throwing currency at it, she’d forgotten that there were other people who struggled, not just her and her family. She didn’t know what to say. She pulled away and looked up. “I think I understand what you mean. Growing up, we got only what we made ourselves. I was so focused on making limbs that people could make all on their own, I didn’t consider other options…”

Kaia, Eng.

It was a weird reversal and normally Faye would have pushed away the impulse immediately or it wouldn’t have even surfaced, having been suppressed so deeply over the years. “Hey…” she said, pulling Kaia in to a firm hug. “It’s okay. Not everyone’s brain is working on multiple outcomes of a scenario at any given time. If it doesn’t annoy you soon as much as it does me some days, I promise you it will eventually,” she joked. Pulling back, Faye picked up the limb and gently handed it back to Kaia.

Faye then sat on the mulched pathway and gazed at Kaia, pondering. “The great thing about growing up the way we did, Kaia, is that we’re incredibly resourceful. My colony doesn’t exist anymore but I carry those lessons I learned with me everyday. Some days it meant the difference between living and dying. No joke. But I spent a long time thinking I had to hide my roots because it would destroy my future. And that was wrong. Figuring out how to be proud of where I came from has made my life so much better.” She reached out and pated the prosthetic arm. “Be proud, Kaia. Resilient warriors come in all forms,” she said with a wink.

~Faye Calloway

Kaia accepted the hug with gratitude. She took the prosthetic back and after fiddling with it for a moment, slotted her forearm back into it. She nodded slightly. “Yeah, we’re resilient warriors,” she said with confidence, straightening out slightly. “So, what was it you were saying about kits? I think one of the difficulties with pre-fab stuff is that you have to account for so many different injury levels and size groups. So, what would work for an adult who lost their leg below the knee wouldn’t work for a child who lost their leg above the knee. And children grow, so there would have to be allowances for that. Something that can adjust according to the size of the child, or components that are sturdy, but inexpensive enough that they could be repurposed or replaced every year or two.” She had firmly gotten her brain back into Engineer-mode.

Kaia, Eng.