Practical Crisis Problem Solving - Danger Shop, Tuesday, Period 3 (11am-12pm)

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

Oh look. They were back in the holographic version of the park. There was no real reason for it today, other than the Doctor liking the park quite a lot.

"Hello! Sky's blue again this week." The Doctor had his arms spread out like he wanted a hug, but for now he resisted the urge to actually impose a hug on anybody. "No Atraxi threatening to roast us like a Sunday dinner from their ships above. In fact," he noted, glancing around rather suspiciously of their surroundings, "everything seems perfectly normal. Except it's not. That's what 'seems' means as opposed to 'is' and usually, even if you don't always notice it, there's something going on right under your noses.


Oh, by the way, this class on Flexibility and Adaptability, but now it's not, which I suppose requires you to be both flexible and adapt to the sudden news, so it both is and isn't. There you are, Flexibility and Adaptability. Surprise! Where was I?" The Doctor looked at Toothless for the answer, which he retrieved himself before the dragon had a chance to say anything or set anything on fire. "Right under your noses! But sometimes you get a feeling. A little feeling, nothing you can put your finger on, nothing you can explain or see or hear. The feeling is that something's isn't right. Intuition, you call it. A sixth sense. It could be a low-level psychic ability, but more often than not, it's your sensory organs working too fast for the main processing part of the brain to keep up.

Sometimes it turns out to be paranoia and everything's fine and you're imagining it. But sometimes you clue in that something is amiss. And," the Doctor said with a little smile that often meant the recipients were about to find themselves in trouble, "something is amiss. I regret to inform you that about one third of the class has been replaced by parasitic organisms that hiss a noxious green gas that will disintegrate - we're doing a lot of disintegrating, aren't we? I'll change that next week - will disintegrate your entire body, melting you away into a pile of ash. You don't know who. There are no visible or psychic signs that they're anything other than who they say they are. You have nothing to go on except intuition. If you catch them out, they'll have no option but to remove you from the equation through disintegration. Two options now." The Doctor cast a few suspicious glances their way to add to the mood. "You can talk to me about what you would do if there was an invasion of the body snatchers with bad breath, or - and this could be fun - you can talk to as many of your classmates as you'd like and try to work out whether or not they've had their body repossessed. It's like being possessed, only you're not there and there's a metaphor about not paying your loans in there somewhere. Not the best day for me mentally. Headache. Pretend the metaphor worked out." He seemed disappointed that it hadn't.

Comments

Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

Aliens are hiding amongst you and will kill you if they find out that you've found out who they are. What do you do when you can't trust even your closest friends? (Psychically everyone will still read as normal)

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[abitlegless.livejournal.com]

"Wait, so they won't kill us if we don't find out who they are?" Hiccup asked, craning his neck to try and watch everyone at once. "Seems like the thing to do would be to make sure we don't find aything strange. We don't notice them, they don't disintegrate us, and everyone's happy. Except, yeah, hang on." He looked at the Doctor, head tipped slightly to the side. "What happened to the people the aliens are pretending to be?"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"I can't answer that. If you don't have all of the information, then you can't logic your way out. You only know what you know and have to make assumptions based on your gut feeling. Isn't it frustrating?" he smiled.

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[abitlegless.livejournal.com]

Hiccup grinned ruefully back at him. "Frustrating? Oh yeah, just a little bit. Surprising? Not so much." He turned to study his classmates, then glanced at Toothless. "I'd start with asking them how they felt about the weather today after the week of completely terrible storms we've been having. If they miss the fact that there hasn't been any terrible storms, it's probably a dead giveaway something's not right. And I'd ask Toothless if anyone seemed weird." Toothless flicked his ears forward in obvious agreement with the last bit.

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[wrongkindofsith]

"Well, clearly we need some way of finding out who's a parasite without getting killed in the process." Cara refrained from offering her agiels to help with that, since he'd probably start going on about how it would be "wrong" or something.

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"Clearly," the Doctor replied. "Care to elaborate?"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[wrongkindofsith]

Cara thought back to some of the questions the Doctor had expected her to ask last week. "Do they act any differently to normal?"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

The Doctor looked around at the class. "Define normal."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[onlykindofdead.livejournal.com]

"So, what are the aliens going to do if we don't find out who they are?" Madison asked.

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"I know as much as you do," the Doctor said. "You only have the information I've told you."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[onlykindofdead.livejournal.com]

"Well, I guess the most important thing would be to try to figure out if they are friend or foe," Madison said.

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

"What if you continue to trust your friends and family despite not knowing if they're infected or not?" Rosalind asked. "What are the consequences of that?"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"Who knows?" The Doctor wasn't being very helpful today. "Everything could be fine. But then everyone could eventually be replaced. Hard to tell with the information given."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[theotherpeter.livejournal.com]

Peter realized that this was the second week in a row they were dealing with shapeshifters. He was really starting to distrust the idea of shapeshifters.

This would serve him well in about 13 years or so.

"If we only have gut instincts to tell us the difference between people and faux-people, we're doomed. Your only real chance is to coax them into revealing themselves without getting disintegrated. If you treat everyone as a potential threat, you're also removing any potential allies from the equation, possibly even making them enemies as well."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"You also run the risk of trusting the wrong people and having a mole amongst your allies."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[theotherpeter.livejournal.com]

"Isn't it better to trust the wrong people than to hurt an innocent?" Peter said. "Just in general, really."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[daventryprince.livejournal.com]

Alexander had grown up in a situation where Just Doing Things was a Very Bad Idea. This, of course, did not mean that he didn't do them anyway, and so he was feeling himself very clever in approaching the Doctor to discuss with him his plans, while fully intending to still go about and check his classmates for potential bug infestations all the same.

After all, if he wanted to prevent both the Doctor or the insect whatevers from killing him, that second part would have to be done with flawlessly smooth. So, if neither noticed, he would have ultimately succeeded.

"One thing that comes to mind," Alexander offered. "The possibility of finding something that can be done to kill the insect-like creatures that would still be harmless to our more human-like...and reptilian,"--a respectful nod toward Toothless--"friends. I believe that is where I might start. Or, again, like last time, perhaps discovering a useful insect lure, but that runs the risk of them realizing that you know. Something equally noxious to kill them before they have the chance to realize we've discovered their weaknesses is optimal."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"Always with the killing," the Doctor tsked. "You don't have to obliterate someone simply because they might be trying to do the same thing to you. Though the insect lure, if you could get it to work with a species that is completely foreign to this planet, is an interesting approach. Without the killing. Why don't you try incorporating it into a plan that doesn't involve mass murder?"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[daventryprince.livejournal.com]

Alexander frowned at that response, more than a little disturbed at the rebuke making him out to seem like some tyrant just because he wanted to save his skin. So he mulled over it for a good moment, muttering something like, "Well, it isn't as thought I could turn them all into cats..."

He sighed, then, and spoke in a much more distinct tone, "Because there's a good chance that they'll realize they're being lured and then kill us all. And what do we do once we've lured them? Give them a nice smart wrap on the antennea? I suppose maybe if you managed to find a way to neutralize their poison..."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[living_endless]

"I think I'm with Hiccup," Didi contributed, flashing a brief smile in the viking's direction. "If they aren't going to hurt us, the important thing isn't figuring out who they are -- it's getting them to lead us to wherever they put the people they're pretending to be."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"That's assuming they put them anywhere," the Doctor replied, expression darkening. "They do have the means of disintegrating full human bodies."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[living_endless]

"We don't know whether they are or aren't," Didi answered. "Feels like we really don't have a lot to go on."

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[abetterthief.livejournal.com]

Parker considered. "Do the aliens have any tells?"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[worsethanaunts.livejournal.com]

"No visible or psychic signs that they're anything other than who they say they are," the Doctor repeated. "That would make it far too easy!"

Re: Work Out Your Plan With The Doctor

[abetterthief.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, so you say." Parker wasn't ready to drop this train of inquiry. "But do they always react perfectly human? They're not all phobic of horses or clowns or something?" Of course if being scared of horses meant you were an alien, Parker needed to talk to someone because then she had got gypped the cool disinigrating powers.