This is an AU fic. Set while there's still wildlife in seas and birds are kind of okay, so probably a few decades before 2077. Judy is a marine biologist/BD recorder with strong views on ecology, trying to preserve as much knowledge as she can, even if in digital form. V... you'll see.
The saVage
It was going to be a routine trip to one of the islands in the Pacific Ocean, getting some material for BD scrolls. By routine, I mean desperately fighting against time, because acidity in the oceans began rising to levels that were actually incredibly hazardous to any lifeforms inhabiting them. And if there was nothing alive in the water, that meant nothing to study... Unless we're talking whoring out to Biotechnica to try and find ways to grow stuff from preserved seeds and archived DNA material, possibly so some asshole could have a nice, quaint aquarium in his CEO office.
The thought made me sick. I was still suffering from a bit of a heartbreak, my latest flame got doused by reality pretty quickly, and seeing Maiko pick her corpo career over our relationship. Yeah, okay, I threw a jealous fit or two, but as it turned out, she really was banging her assistant, so it wasn't completely unfounded.
In that respect, the trip was what I really, really needed emotionally, and I was glad when the opportunity came along. Many academics preferred to stay in and just research stuff, dismissing the tales of adventure and exploration as some ancient practices from centuries past. Bunch of self-important pricks. There was so much work to be done! So perhaps it was partly me getting over a break-up, and partly hooray for science.
As I was saying, the goal was to explore islands or any remote places really, if they were easily accessible, just to record... the wilderness. Islands were good targets for that. I still had hopes about some efforts to keep the oceans alive... but the pragmatic part of me was already considering a career change. Moving into education or BD editing. After all, it would need a lot of commentary to be educational. Properly educational.
Besides, different BDs would be necessary for different levels of education... cute and awe-inspiring for elementary school, cool and intriguing for later ages, and finally detailed and to the point, for higher education. Someone with an idea of what they were doing would have a much better chance at actually making them marketable to educational institutions.
But that was before our ship was attacked, so I had to rethink my plans on the double. A bunch of nerds with some token security thanks to Biotechnica's mercy in return for the copyrights for the BDs... Of course we didn't stand a chance against modern pirates. Gunshots and grenades were pretty good motivators for me to delta the fuck out of there.
The raid happened at night and I stopped feeling groggy really quickly as the world around me shook violently, not in a good way, for sure. There was chaos all over, people screaming, pirates screaming even louder. I had no idea what to do, trying to fight whatever was going on seemed futile. I just grabbed the emergency pack that was stowed in each cabin... and ran.
I got to the mess hall, only to almost trip over the bodies of Tom and Roxanne, our anthropologist and flora experts respectively. My habit of midnight snacking not rearing its ugly head that night probably saved my life... But my dinner came up instead and I had to stop to puke in the corner of the room. My vision turned even more blurry because of feeling sick and crying at the same time, but my instincts kept guiding me away from the ship.
The others... I was too afraid to call out and ask. Yes, I was a fucking coward, but at least I made it out to tell the story. Besides, even an octopus knows when to behave like a rock formation, or use active camouflage to avoid danger. And I was going to slink my way out of that inferno without death stopping me.
There was smoke, fire, the pirates must have gotten the tech they wanted and decided to scuttle everything else to make any recovery missions difficult... After all, the black-box would stop at the end of the bottom of the sea, and the pirates could be miles and miles away, making them less likely to be found. I still managed to get to the deck (somehow, I really, really don't remember how) and activated one of the emergency float drones.
There was so much metal and sharp plastic of all sorts already floating in the oceans that regular inflatable boats were hardly ever reliable, and a new solution had to be implemented – a light alloy raft that kept floating and had well protected ballast tanks underneath it to make sure that it supported the human weight. It even had a retractable solar panel with some emergency electronics that could be used in case of an emergency like this.
Bit of an old-school solution, but at least it worked. I watched the ship slowly get devoured by the water, floating away into... some direction. I exhaled. I made it out, thank fuck. At that moment, the engine, perhaps the boiler room, well, something an engineer should have concerned themselves with, decided to explode. At that moment I had no idea what happened, I just knew that I got pushed off my raft, maybe with the raft. Everything went dark and that was the last I ever saw of RV Endurance.
I woke up coughing. Part of it was saltwater, part of it was sand. I was either on the bottom of the ocean, dying, or I was... was I on the shore? I rolled to my stomach and kept coughing up whatever refuse found its way into my system, I think I found a bubble gum wrapper in there, too. It was a damn miracle that I didn't choke.
The question was... where the fuck was I? I could feel sun burning my skin, I was thirsty (for sweet water, please... ), hungry too. Worst part was, I didn't seem to have a connection to the net. No terminals in sight either. Just the sea, sand, and lots of palm trees. I sat up and looked around, hissing in pain. I felt a burn, as the slight acidity of water didn't do wonders for my skin. There were no ships on the horizon, no rigs, not a single sign of human activity. Except for the plastic soup on the surface of water.
If luck had been on my side, I would have wandered around the island long enough before stumbling into a tourist resort... But those usually had some form of net coverage, so that option was kind of out of the question. I had a rough idea where we were in the Pacific, as rough as one could get from waking up somewhere... after some time spent drifting in an unknown direction away from the Endurance.
In layman's terms, I was fucked. But I wouldn't put that in the abstract, if any of you were considering a career in the academia. Unless it's studies on the practical aspects of human sexuality. Or linguistics. Damn, those guys got away with a lot.
It took me some effort to get into the shade. That was a bit of relief from the sun, at least. Now that the glare was gone and I could see a bit more clearly, a certain shape caught my attention. No fuckin' way... It was my emergency go-bag! I crawled towards it from the shade and cradled it to my chest as if it were my only salvation. It squelched, which told me enough. It must have been perforated, at least enough for it to be filled with water. I hoped some of the contents remained inside.
I moved back to the shade. There was water, thankfully. I downed it, using some of it to clear my throat from the remnants of the sand, and the rest to quench my thirst. I've never been that thirsty in my entire life. Most of the food in plastic tubs was gone, or there were salted remains of it on the inside of the fabric. But there were some cans. It could have been the foulest kibble, but I ate it without thinking and it was only then that I started thinking a bit more clearly. I ate a lot. Probably should have thought about it earlier, but hungry castaways were never known to be great at planning.
I had to see what else was left in the bag. A knife with a handy magnesium fire starter rod attached to the it with a bit of cord, through a small hole on the handle. Always useful. A few feet of paracord. A box of a water purification agent. Some basic first aid stuff... Hand warmers, and a well compressed sleeping bag in a reinforced box. This was some Stone Age shit. I wrinkled my nose back then, but I didn't know just how lucky I was to have these things.
The electronics were fried. Whatever damaged the bag either must have caused them to activate in adverse conditions... or the acidity got to them. That pack must have been on the ship for a few years and didn't account for the changes in the sea. Besides, those packs were designed for having net coverage, using the damn electronics, and calling in help to be rescued within a day or two, at most.
I had to start thinking about survival. I looked at the empty cans and the bottle. I'd wash them out and use them for weather collection. There would be morning dew, rainfall, and there was sand and ground to perform some basic water purification, minimizing the risk of dysentery making me die in agony.
Food would be a lot trickier. But with a knife, I could at least make myself a makeshift spear and some other tools. Maybe try to fish... But that would be like being a librarian and setting everything on fire at your work place. I wished Roxie was here with me, there would be less risk of me poisoning myself accidentally.
I vaguely remembered a course I've taken before the first expedition. It seemed like such a stupid thing to have to sit through. Being a castaway? In a world where medicine and technology could do pretty much anything? My arrogance was quietly giggling in an air-conditioned apartment somewhere in the civilized part of the world, while I was trying to find a spot where I could create a form of shelter.
I spent the first night on the ground, and regretted it a lot. I switched to a hammock made from the sleeping bag and some paracord for the following night, because of a lot of bug bites and back pain. I even managed to make a fire on my third day, after finally finding some wood that burned for longer than a few moments.
My ideas for water collection worked well enough, and after a few days of observing the local wildlife, I even managed to find bugs that I knew could be edible. I mean if it could go on a pizza, it was good enough for a marshmallow, right? For the record, they weren't great marshmallows, but they helped me be less hungry, and that was definitely a positive development.
Routine was what I needed, and I settled into it. Things were looking up, or so it seemed. Maybe it was just the start of it all and a bit of beginner's luck. I tried to avoid scorpions, spiders, and the big, fuck-off coconut crabs. They were fascinating, but creepy if they got too close.
I manged to find a flat-ish stone and nicked some eggs from local birds to fry them on that stone around noon. There weren't many mammals on the island, apart from some rodents, but birds and insects were numerous. I guessed that also meant no big predators, either.
Sometimes I'd watch whales and dolphins in the sea and envy them their ability to traverse water that way. I really wished I had my diving equipment with me. Exploring the local waters would have been such a treat...
Once I established a routine, I became increasingly braver in my explorations of the island. I kept to the shade, walked along the coast, and left myself arrow signs made from shells, so I knew where I came from and where I was going, in case I got lost. Sometimes, I just took walks to distract myself from being hungry. At other times, I'd hoped I'd find some useful piece of salvage washed up on the beach, miraculously working... anything to get me out of that place.
It was so quiet there. So natural. It made me feel almost uneasy about being so far from advertisements, messages, phone calls, meetings... everything that was my daily life. I was so lost in thought that I almost didn't notice another person crouching at the shore.
Their skin bronzed from the sun in a much nicer way than mine, for sure. Then again, I was still healing up a few acid burns from floating in water for goodness knew how long. I froze at first, but then called out, "Hello?!" And that was stupid of me. Well, in a way.
The person, a woman, turned around and rushed towards me, snarling and ready to leap at me. I had my makeshift spear with me and my knife strapped to my trousers... I guess I looked armed enough to look threatening. She pounced on me within a matter of moments and held up... a balled fist above my head. She had some sort of a... dagger? Made from flint and wood, tied to her wrist. Must have been a cross between a tool and a weapon, to get rid of vines or stab fish or something, at first it looked as if it grew from her flesh like some freak combat implant, but that was just my associations bleeding through.
Her eyes were blue, with tints of green to them... pretty, like the sea, if you fished out all the plastic crap. Her hair was a bit of a mess at first sight, but I noticed it was just braided and had some sand and foliage in it, giving it a kind of a dreadlocked look. She looked at me for a moment, blinking. My absolutely terrified expression must have made her feel a bit less murderous. She leaned in to sniff my hair. It was still green and pink, would be for a few more weeks, sure, I must have looked odd to her. She tilted her head to the side and moved off of me, placing her hands on her hips as she sat on her ankles.
It was then that I realized that she was wearing some sort of a waist wrap, a loincloth... something, a tattered mini-skirt, just one that wouldn't hinder movement. And that was all. Not that I was really complaining, that woman was fit. And perky, too, so... It just really wasn't a good moment to admit that having that savage on top just moments before of me was kind of hot.
"Uhh..." I made a sound and she tilted her head to the side again. I could see her ears perk up, as if she were an animal. After a moment she repeated the sound. There was a harsh, husky tone to it. I gathered she didn't really speak much. If at all.
I raised my hand in a gesture of peace and greeting, "Hello..." I said and swallowed hard, "I... I'm really sorry I startled you."
She licked her lips, frowning, then took a breath and repeated my, "Uhh..." to me again. The way she looked at the ground with effort made me wonder whether she wanted to speak but couldn't... or could, but didn't want to. She looked at my makeshift spear that I managed to drop a few feet away, then back at me. Then she unceremoniously picked it up and weighed it in her hand. With a flip of her wrist, she moved from a holding position to a throwing stance, then looked at it critically. My spear felt really judged.
I sat up and sighed, "Hey, so... do you speak, or do you just make sounds?" I decided to ask, but the moment I tried to take the spear from her, she focused on something behind me and I could feel one of her hands press on my leg, as if to try to make me remain still. A moment later her 'arm-dagger' thrust forward into the air behind me and moments later she was wrestling with what looked likeas a snake. A very bright and quick one, probably extremely dangerous, too. She grabbed it and wrapped it around the dagger, effectively carving the beast in two. She had the reflexes that would make corpo assassins jealous. Seemed inhuman. But she very much was. And she had just saved my life.
Her wild, focused eyes scanned the area, looking for more danger. Eventually, she exhaled and nodded, "Okay," she said casually, then handed me my spear and began to move up. She walked back to the shore, then looked over her shoulder at me with a clear expectation of me following her... Whatever you say, topless, snake-killing lady. And then it hit me.
"Okay?" I blinked a few times, "So you speak?" I demanded. I said it loud enough to startle a few birds chilling in the nearby branches. Some of the ones floating on water, too.
The woman looked the dead snake, then at me, shrugging, "Okay now," she confirmed and poked the dead reptile on the sand as if to confirm. Then she wrinkled her nose and shook her head. She probably noticed the way I was staring at that snake... maybe a bit too hungrily.
She beckoned me to come with her and I followed, too curious for my own good. This was surreal, but she seemed to know what she was doing, so I made my way to the shore with her. It turned out that she had a few traps set up in the shallows, for crabs and such. Some even caught small fish. If she was used to it... and there seemed to be quite a few fish there, despite trash, then whatever acid or poison content there was in the fish... she must have built an immunity to it.
Then again, I fried bird eggs on a hot stone and I was okay, so maybe she wasn't that crazy. And she looked good, no doubt about that. She dove to retrieve her catches and emerged, smiling at me with pride. Droplets of water were running down her bronzed skin, her eyes were sparkling with joy, she was panting from keeping her breath underwater, so her breasts and abs were moving, glistening in the sun... and I was staring, like I really shouldn't have.
"Nice catch," I said, probably blushing as I looked up into her eyes. I wasn't sure what was worse. Her being barely dressed or that beautiful gaze. I just looked away completely.
"Food," she said and started moving again, deeper into the forest.
"Wait! No!" I realized that my stuff was still back at my little camp.
She looked over her shoulder, mildly confused and annoyed.
"No food?" she wondered. It was my turn to beckon her.
"Yes food. I just... I'm not going into that forest. I have my stuff... back... at a different spot? My things? Home?" I tried.
Hearing the last word, she pointed into the forest and nodded. I shook my head and took her free, unarmed hand. Kind of a big step there, but I was kind of out of options, "Come on. I'll show you."
My new friend spent a few good minutes exploring my setup: she sniffed around my hammock, frowned at my campfire in confusion. On the plus side, she smiled and nodded at my little dew-gathering operation. Finally, some fucking approval for my survival skills.
She looked around, as if waiting for me to do something, "Things?" she finally asked and gestured around.
"Uh... yeah? What about them?"
"No home. Home there," she pointed in to the forest again, then made a beckoning gesture with her head. For a moment I wondered whether it was a U-Haul joke. We held hands, after all. I briefly considered my options. I could stay here, be hungry, get burned or have a scorpion bite me or whatever... or I could go with her, obviously better suited to surviving on the island, and see what she had to offer. She didn't look like a netrunner to me, but maybe she at least had some form of a better shelter... Besides, she was human, she spoke some English, and she seemed friendly enough. What could go wrong?