trade my soul for a wish | Glowfic Constellation

kaolinandbone

"A hundred extra years is hardly insignificant. If I wasn't a vampire, I would probably be dead by now."

She shrugs.

"Life goes on, and we've just got to do the best we can with it."

from_scratch

"Very philosophical. You want a look at Oceania from the air?"

kaolinandbone

"I doubt it would be particularly illuminating. I have other duties to attend to, and while it would probably be enjoyable, I'm not certain it's worth risking another spotting merely for fun's sake. Thank you for the offer, in any case."

from_scratch

"No, I mean, I recorded it on flyover."

kaolinandbone

"... You have screens that display images. Of course you also have methods of recording images. Please forgive me for forgetting that photography exists."

from_scratch

Cam smiles good-naturedly and pulls his computer out of his pocket and shows her Oceania.

kaolinandbone

Isabella examines it.

"As you said, it hasn't got anything like the shape of your world, unlike everywhere else in my world. Would you mind bringing up the mirrored map of your world again?"

from_scratch

Here that is again.

kaolinandbone

Isabella looks from one to the other.

"... You know, this would probably be a lot more enlightening if I were a geologist. One thing that does leap out at me is that there are no additions - there's no extra landmass from your own world, only additional ocean. Perhaps there was some sort of natural disaster in my world that sank most of - China, you said?"

from_scratch

"Maybe, but if the sea level rose or fell much in general you'd expect the coastlines to be different."

kaolinandbone

"True. Perhaps it's that the land sank, rather than the sea rising?"

from_scratch

"The sea would still have to fill in the area, and it's a fair amount of area. If they didn't sink very far it might look the same without taking up too much ocean... I'm not immediately sure how to do the math on the hypothetical but maybe I can dig up some sort of geology simulation."

kaolinandbone

"Computers actually being useful again, hmm?"

She smiles.

"So, I've been thinking while you were away. Would you be willing to generate some vaccines for me?"

from_scratch

"How are you planning on distributing 'em?"

kaolinandbone

"I have an airship yard in Mark that I can sell my stake in to raise operating capital for a clinic. If we charge a nominal fee for vaccinations, then the entire venture should only produce money, given that we have absolutely no manufacturing costs and vaccine is not excessively difficult to transport. If we can then produce a working manufacturing process, we might even win the Imperial prize for Medicine this year... Or, at least, whichever trustworthy person we select as the 'inventor.'"

from_scratch

"Okay. I like this plan. However, I don't know if I can guarantee that the infectious diseases here are exactly like the ones I know how to vaccinate for. I can in general produce dead viruses and bacteria and so on based on local strains, but immunology is a little more complicated than that. When you say it's not difficult to transport are you including that it has to be in sterile containers and many kinds need to be kept cold?"

kaolinandbone

"Ice-carts and ice-cellars exist, which should allow for adequate refrigeration over short distances. Long-distance transportation is more of an issue, but Grand Victoria is not a large country, and by the time we wish to expand beyond its borders we will have many more resources with which to do so. Furthermore, given that our plan is not 'become fabulously wealthy' but 'vaccinate people', we can always let our patents lapse and allow others to continue developing the vaccine. Once again, subject to a manufacturing method that is not 'wish for it from thin air.'"

She tilts her head.

"Now, what exactly do you mean by a 'sterile container'? Containers don't usually breed in this universe."

from_scratch

"I mean it has to be really, really, really clean. You don't want to inject somebody with dead polio and find that accompanying it is live tetanus or botulism or something. I can make things that start that clean, but they need to be handled appropriately on their way to point B."

kaolinandbone

"If you have safety guidelines to follow, they can be made known to the staff. Is there any way that containers could be made sterile without involving your personal handling?"

from_scratch

"Yeah, you can do it if you get them hot enough. Boiling does the trick."

kaolinandbone

"That seems simple enough to not be an enormously significant issue, then, so long as all staff are properly instructed."

from_scratch

"Yeah. And you never, ever use a needle more than once, stuff like that, I'll write up instructions I guess."

kaolinandbone

"People might start to notice if we're conjuring many hundreds of injection needles from nowhere... They can't be made sterile effectively, you say?"

from_scratch

"The needles? It's not just sterility, it's tiny abrasions in the metal. Also, people have different blood types, even if everything in the needle was boiled to death you might have problems with antigens or something, that I'm not actually sure of because needle scarcity's not a problem I ever expected to encounter."

kaolinandbone