ten_fwd | Deepest Africa (locked to Kate Barlow)

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Deepest Africa (locked to Kate Barlow)

Sam took a long time setting this one up. The details had to be right. The ship has records of Africa, of course, but those are, in general, from a time long after Sam's own.

The 'camp' is just at the border between jungle and wetlands. The ground is treacherous here. Much further towards the trees, and it'd take a machete to get very far. Mosquitoes abound, the heat is downright oppressive, and if one wanders too far off of the trail, partly just composed of mud layers on top of tree roots, they might get a close up of a crocodile or three, floating in the water amidst the fallen trees to escape the heat of midday.

Sam seems quite comfortable, stretched out on a fallen log, hat tipped down to shade 'his' eyes while he waits for company.

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Kate's a patient lady, so she don't mind it too much when Sam takes his time getting the hol-o-deck up and ready for their adventure. It ain't like she's going anywhere.

It gives her some time to prepare, which just makes this feel all the more like an honest-to-goodness trip across seas. She wishes she had her old books handy, but she knows this ship has all kinds of information and records, if she can work out how to get to them. It takes a day or two—and her roommate surviving a few thrown boots and yelled words—but she gets the computer to show her what she needs, and in a few weeks she feels properly prepared.

When she meets Sam, she's dressed up like Sir H. M. Stanley, with a ladies suit of tropical tweed and knee-high boots more suited to climbing around than her usual fare. Her belt's different, too; she still has her six and her Bowie, but it's meant to carry a machete once she's inside the holodeck.

The only things that haven't changed are her hat, set atop primly braided hair, and her smile once she spies him.

"Ho there! Hope I'm not too late."

Sam is /finally/ in 'his' real clothes, which is to say a mix of proper buckskins and rough-weave cotton, plus the beaverskin hat. It certainly doesn't look like a proper British anything, outside of the hat, but it definitely makes him look a lot more frontier, along with being well suited for a lot of travel and wear.

"You look great. As for late? I suspect Africa'll be plenty patient, and I figure you're worth any waitin' on."

Kate laughs sweetly.

"I wanted t'be sure I gave Africa a run for her money. Gracious, this is excitin'!"

Once she catches up to him, she takes her time looking around the program. She's got no real experience with Africa to compare it to, but it certainly looks marvelous.

"Thank you for doin' this, Sugar. It's been a long-time dream of mine."

Sam kicks up to 'his' feet, then tightrope walks down the slippery log, hopping down onto the marshy ground.

"Not a problem. Africa is probably my fourth or fifth favorite place on Earth. Especially out here. Watch for the hippos, though. The crocs, they'll mostly leave you be when it's like this, unless you fall in. Hippos, though, they're just mean."

She casts him a sly look.

"One of these days we're gonna have a sit-down and you're gonna tell me 'bout all the places you've been."

And then, more than likely, she'll find a way of convincing him to take her there, too.

"All right. Can y'still get hurt in a room like this?"

"Not seriously. Bumps and bruises. I had Gaila show me how to turn the safety protocols off so it's more challenging, but I got 'em turned back on for this. As for the places I've been, safe to say, most of the world, one time or another. I'd love to show you all of it."

"Safety protocols."

She's just testing the phrase out on her tongue. What an odd concept. Then again, she's in a small room on a spaceship and she's got mosquitoes buzzing around her head and heat sinking into her bones, so she figures that's not the strangest thing to come out of all this. One of these days she's gonna figure out how this contraption works herself.

"All right, I'll be sure t'give the hippos a wide berth. You go ahead an' lead the way."

Probably best that way, given if she saw a hippo she might go ambling towards it to have a better look. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that.

"You're so young t'have traveled so much! Lookin' at you I'm beginnin' to feel like I've wasted time, and I've been to the end of the universe and back."

Sam leads the way like 'he' was born to it, skimming across the marshy ground, and laying down a safe path of footprints, amidst a lot of walking across networks of tree roots and along slippery fallen logs to avoid some of the softer ground.

"Would you believe it if I told you I was older than I look?"

And Kate, though small and slim and pretty enough to give the first impression she might be delicate, has no trouble keeping up. Matter of fact, she dogs his steps so closely one might think she's trying to get him to up the ante.

Not that she would ever, of course.

Ahem.

"Sugar, by now I'd believe you if y'told me you was the Prince of Persia."

Not exactly true, but they've traded their fair share of interesting enough stories that looks aren't gonna make her stumble now.

"Trust me, I ain't Prince of nowhere. But I'm a ways past my teens, too." Which gets into long stories.

Then it gets into conflicting motives. Sam is supposed to be guide here, so laying down the safest path in a treaturous place full of crocs, hippos, mosquitoes, and plenty of environmental danger is important.
On the other hand, Sam has also just been challenged. And Sam is /not good/ at turning down interesting challenges.

"One second."

If Kate has run into some of the borderline superhumans about the ship, like Steve Rogers, Khan, etc., the feat might have more context - Sam goes scrambling up a tree, free-climbing with fingertips and toe-holds, no caution, and high speed. There's a bit of simian-ish acrobatics in the branches to get where 'he's' going, but Sam is back with a bunch of bananas in hand, tossing one Kate's way before resuming guide duties.

"Looked like a good bunch. Watch out for the banana spiders."

She narrows her eyes.

"How much is 'a ways'?"

She's not a fool, Miss Kate Barlow. Before she turned outlaw she was a schoolteacher, after all. She's good at reading folk, and though she could have once been seen as the trusting sort, a life on the run has sharpened her paranoia just enough that she's always got an eye out for what somebody might be hiding.

And Sam? There's secrets there, all right. She reckons he'll tell her in time, if she don't figure them out first.

As he scampers off up a tree, all Kate does is pull to a stop and keep a bead on him, a little wonder in her eyes at first. That quickly fades into half-amused blandness. She sets her hands on her hips and waits for him akimbo, doing all but tap her toe. Catching the banana easily, she lets off a small cackling laugh.

"Of course."

Shaking her head, she resumes following him, breaking the skin on the banana as she does.

"Don't make me sharp a pheasant, or whatever passes for 'em in these parts."

"I suppose it ain't quite as weird as some of what's back on the ship and all. So... somewhere in the eight or nine decades since I was technically a teenager." Sam replies, expression casual enough about it, as 'he' eats his own banana from the bunch.

"Part of how I've been so many places."

She stops.

The math ain't hard to figure, it's just that she'd imagine something like that would come up in conversation a lot sooner. She blinks at him, her banana all but forgotten.

"Are you tryin' to tell me you're over one hundred years old?"

There's a bit of that scolding schoolmarm in her tone, though it's mostly tinged with awe.

"Yep. Back home, we ain't s'posed to say anything about it, in case someone else found the Fountain. Lots of people shouldn't have forever. So we kept movin'."

"The Fountain?"

Her brow smooths as she realizes what he means, like shaking wrinkles from a sheet.

"The fountain of youth?"

"That's the one."

Were he any other man, the clipped, cavalier way he answers would garner her ire. He answers like they're talking about the weather or picking out a good skin from the market, not immortality. So Kate fixes him with narrowed eyes and an arched eyebrow, wondering if he plans on volunteering anything else or if he's being coy on purpose.

"Really?"

How's a lady supposed to react to that kind of shock?

"How would you like me to prove it? But, really. Not that we were ever s'posed to talk about it, lest anyone actually find it. But I've done more'n a normal share of livin' and traveling."

She lets off a startled laugh.

"Prove it? Sugar, you jus' told me you was one hundred years old and that the Fountain of Youth exists in your world."

She finally starts moving again, taking a couple quick strides to catch up with him.

"All as if you was placin' an order with a general store. Y'have met me before, haven't you? Do I really hafta ask what it was like?"

Finding it, where it was, what it looked like, how it tasted — hell, it don't matter. He's just gotta give her more than that!

"Existed. It's gone. And before that, I wasn't exactly a regular visitor. My Dad found it by accident. Took my mother back there. She didn't know she was pregnant with me when they were drinkin', bathin', all of that. So, I got a bit more of a direct hit of it than Dad, I suppose."

If he's looking at her, he'll see her face fall.

"Oh."

She don't know why she's so disappointed, it ain't as if it's a sure thing his world is the same as hers; however, knowing it's out there, someplace to discover, someday...

Well, that's all gone now.

She gives herself a mental shake.

"So you never got a chance t'go there yourself? What 'bout your parents? Without the Fountain, are they still — with us?"

Sam sees the expression fall, and... pauses. Sam knows that expression all too well, for very different reasons.

Yes, it's gone. It's all gone. Thanks to greed, and railroads, and science. Time marches on and all that.

"I missed my chance by about two years. We went back when it was a matter of life and death... which is how I know for sure it's gone. My Dad is still around, startin' to show his age a bit... or some age. After, way he figures it, three-hundred years, he's lookin' about like a guy in his late forties, fifties maybe. My mom died not long after I was born."

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Deepest Africa (locked to Kate Barlow)

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ooc: I apologize for my slowness, RL has been kicking me pretty hard lately. >_<

Re: ooc: I apologize for my slowness, RL has been kicking me pretty hard lately. >_<

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