Public Service - On the Edge, Monday, Period 2

[raspberryturk]

"Yo, class!" Today, Reno was making people meet in the Danger Shop, where the whole class was congregated in the desert, overlooking… well… it was probably meant to be a city. Mostly it just looked like somebody had taken the ruins of one city and then piled them up trying to make another one. "Welcome to Edge, or at least a simulation of Edge, a city that was built by pilin' up the wreckage of Midgar, that mess of ruins to the side, there."

So yeah, there was that.

"Edge is having a shitty decade, since a meteorite almost crushed those ruins at the middle and the life force of the planet ripped apart the rest of the city that was still standing, yo. Loss of life numbered in the millions, easy, and in the wake of it? Edge doesn't have much in the way of arable land, much in the way of water, orphanages, schools, hospitals or clinics, natural resources of any persuasion, unless you count ruins and friggin' sand, reliable defenses against the monsters that roam the ruins and the desert, transportation routes that are accessible to all…"

Reno cleared his throat a little and shrugged.

"Lots of shit. This class, primarily, is gonna be an offshoot of those 'day after doomsday' classes I taught before. Right here? Right here is your actual working model, your example of what it might look like after one kind of cataclysmic event, and what sort of work people need to do in order to pick up the pieces again, yo. Today we're just standing in a sim, looking at an example of the place, but over the course of the semester we're gonna be taking several trips there, contributing in one way or another to Edge's recovery. Public service, yo. And I'll be straight with you, here- it's probably gonna suck. There are still bodies in those ruins that ain't never gonna be recovered. The only proper highway they had was heading back into Midgar, and it got blown up in an attack on Edge a few years ago." By, you know, somebody. Reno wasn't saying who. "It's been over half a decade since Meteor came down, and the ground is only just getting to a point where it'll be able to grow plants in it again. You know. In the few scattered parts of it that ain't sand."

Reno gave a pointed look around. At the huge sprawling desert behind them that didn't seem to have any sort of end in sight.

"Your mission, rookies, is to brainstorm this week, and pick one thing that you as a class are going to provide for Edge by the end of the semester, yo. We'll be putting it to a vote. Then we're gonna spend the rest of the semester getting together what we need for that one thing. If it's something that needs to be built, I already arranged for a plot of land. Anything beyond that, you're gonna have to figure out fundraisers for, where you're gettin' the supplies to do the building, if we're gonna hire people in Edge to do the manual labor with us - they'll be tripping over themselves for a chance to work, even if the job is just temporary, yo."

Reno waved at the class with one hand.

"Any questions about Edge, get 'em off your chests now. That's what I'm here for. Those ruins in the middle there used to be my home. I know plenty about the topic. If you figure you've heard enough, then get to brainstorming, try and figure out what you all wanna do, bring your suggestions to the rest of the class, and then vote."

[OCD is up and this class is open for business!]

Comments

Sign In!

[raspberryturk]

On the Edge.

Re: Sign In!

[notacokeperson.livejournal.com]

Karina Lyle

Re: Sign In!

[beautifulsenshi.livejournal.com]

Minako Aino

Lecture!

[raspberryturk]

Reno's starting you guys off easy this week, giving you the simulated version of what you'll be seeing later. Feel free to react to that and get it out of your systems now.

This is probably not actually going to be a happy picker-upper class, for the most part.

Re: Lecture!

[notacokeperson.livejournal.com]

...

...

... Yeah, so, what little of the lecture Karina heard was entirely on auto-pilot because... well... the view was rather short-circuiting her listen-to-the-teacher skills.

The view had her attention. Entirely. And there weren't really words for the depths of how shaken and horrified this left her.

Re: Lecture!

[dauntless-four.livejournal.com]

Four bit his lower lip as he stared out at the desert. It was like home, only his was more swamp-and-nothing and less desert-and-nothing.

He didn't miss home.

Questions!

[raspberryturk]

If there's anything you need to know about this place before you get started, ask Reno here.

Re: Questions!

[notacokeperson.livejournal.com]

"How does anyone live there?" Karina blurted. "How are they not all dead?"

Karina's brain-to-mouth filter was never the best and, well, even though it was horrifically insensitive to ask... she thought it was a legit question.

Re: Questions!

[raspberryturk]

It seemed legit enough to Reno, at least.

"Right?" He shrugged his shoulders. "It was touch-and-go for a while, yo. Between starvation and radiation poisoning - the radiation ain't gonna be an issue for us where we'll be set up or I wouldn't be teaching this class - and monsters, it's a miracle anybody's still walkin' around down there. But the simple answer is... that's human tenacity. You either keep going, or you roll over and die, and after all the hell they've been through, they ain't about to give up yet. They're fighters. And some of 'em have done some questionable shit in order to survive, but that's what people will stoop to when they're desperate, yo."

No, he wasn't going to sugar-coat this.

"They're not completely without food comin' in, for what it's worth. There's a town a few days out by truck called Kalm. Some of the people there send in supplies when they can, but it's never enough. Rations are tight, and people get left out all the time."

Re: Questions!

[beautifulsenshi.livejournal.com]

Minako looked out at all that sand. "Where do they get water?" she blurted out, before she could think about raising her hand. "Does that need to be shipped in, too, or are there wells or something that aren't all radiation-y?"

Re: Questions!

[raspberryturk]

"Mostly, it's shipped in with the food," Reno replied, hands in his pockets. "Most people have something to try and catch and recycle the rainwater they can, when it actually does rain, yo. But... desert. And the underground water is generally too polluted to drink after decades of being under a city that was toxic in its own right. But some people try their best to clean it, and then take that risk anyway."

Re: Questions!

[not_every_mage]

"What about medical care?" Anders asked. "Are there doctors here, or any kind of healer?"

He hoped someone with some knowledge would have stayed. But he wouldn't be surprised if none had.

Re: Questions!

[raspberryturk]

"There are volunteers with basic first-aid knowledge," Reno noted, "And sometimes people come across a potion that a monster was carryin' around or something, and they stockpile those. But those are a temporary fix, really just good for healing injuries. There's no full-time proper doctor, no."

Or at least none that most of the people around here felt inclined to trust. Most of Midgar's doctors had been employed by ShinRa, after all.

Re: Questions!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Barry took a look around. He'd been working on some disaster relief stuff for Reno back in the warehouse but most of that was still in the prototype stage.

"What's the number one need for the people here?" Barry asked. "Water? Food? Some fucking toilets?"

Re: Questions!

[raspberryturk]

"Water an' food are always gonna be most important," Reno noted, looking thoughtful. "Makin' it accessible to everyone is even more important. After I graduated here, I spent some time growin' easy vegetables in my shithole apartment to just hand out to neighborhood kids. Nobody's takin' the time to feed them. Shelter's easy, we've dragged entire walls from Midgar's ruins. Medical aid's a challenge, and a good doctor is still worth shit without clean water, usually. Keepin' the water clean is hard too, since no, there ain't exactly a wealth of sanitary ways to get rid of waste."

A lot of what people were talking about at this point seemed to boil down to water.

Re: Questions!

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy bit her lip, struggling not to cry. Crying was stupid, it never helped anything ever, it was something infants did because they didn't have a better way of expressing themselves. Her father's voice echoed in her head until she managed to fight it back down.

"Water, food, clothing, and shelter," she said, keeping her voice steady. "Those are the basic needs of people."

She's heard Reno say that shelter was taken care of and the number of dead likely meant that clothing was also available, so that left water and food.

Re: Questions!

[raspberryturk]

"They are," Reno agreed, nodding. "I like that you guys are askin' questions that lead to sorting out which of those hasn't been met, yo."

Re: Questions!

[nolizardhere]

Andros didn't know much about living in a place after it had fallen apart (that would come if they could ever retake KO-35, which he was reasonably sure they had not left in anything close to this state, although who knew what Dark Spectre's forces had done after the evacuation) but he knew a bit about living a place that was in the process of falling apart, so, "I actually have a lot of questions about infrastructure. Can people move around easily within the city? Because if we do something that's supposed to benefit everyone, but only people within a few blocks can access it, then what's the point? And who's in charge? Is there someone people will listen to, or that we need to get approval from or anything?"

And then he went abruptly silent, because while he had more questions, that was more than Andros generally said at one time and now he felt awkward.

Discuss!

[raspberryturk]

Put forth your ideas for a public service project here. Talk to your classmates about what you think would be the best use of your time and effort this semester.

Re: Discuss!

[notacokeperson.livejournal.com]

"I don't have any great ideas about how to go about fixing things in the city," Karina said bluntly. Outside of the city, yeah, she had a few.

"But, for what it's worth, I've got the money to back just about any improvement, so long as I'm not funding it for the next forever."

Re: Discuss!

[beautifulsenshi.livejournal.com]

Minako had her phone out and was tapping away, a frown marring her normally cheerful face.

"Water filtration," she blurted out. "It might be super-expensive to set up, but if we can find the right tech, we could set up centralized wells for people to use. There's already underground water... it just needs cleaning. So, um, solar disinfection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_disinfection) and carbon filters? But it would take a lot of work and the residents would have to keep it going on their own..."

Vote!

[raspberryturk]

It's not so much a ballot box as a ferret-chewed ball cap with some scrap paper and pens beside it, but here's where you write down what you've decided you personally want the class to do, and Reno will tally up your votes and build the rest of his curriculum based around that.

[OOC: Link leads to an actual poll in Reno's journal, please take a moment to have your character put in their vote, and I'll tally the results for next week's class!]

Talk to Reno!

[raspberryturk]

"Oh, yeah, and I'm looking for a TA this semester who feels like they can handle being the liaison between their classmates an' me," Reno added, once the votes were collected. "Experience in that sort of thing is an asset, but it ain't necessary. Come talk to me here if you're interested, yo."

Re: Talk to Reno!

[notacokeperson.livejournal.com]

After stating that she had no real ideas for things in-city, and that she had money to help fund whatever was decided, Karina had stayed mostly out of the discussions, preferring instead to spend her time with her laptop open and looking up a few things that she remembered but wanted to make sure she remembered right before talking to Reno.

Karina was not much of a team player, no.

And she was ambitious as hell.

"Do you have a moment?" she asked, approaching Reno at the end of class. "Or five?"

Possibly more than that. It depended on if he tried to shut her down or not.

OOC!

[raspberryturk]

Ahahahaha class posted WOOO GO ME.