Play date: October 21, 2016
In-game date: March 27, EY219
Location: Osan military base, on the moon orbiting Daebak, the system of Aiscapo
Previous events: The navy of Aiscapo is on their side
With the meeting over and the navy convinced that the D'vor are a real danger Azar and Volkova head back to the ship. Jillian decides to go through any resources that the navy has about Juche so that they have as much information as possible about what they may face there. Volkova picks up Malcolm and the two take advantage of the military's gym -- it's much better equipped than the corner of the Hummingbird that they usually use!
Bishop tries to meet with Rear Admiral Choi on his own but she's not in her office and her staff can't or won't give him any information about when she'll be back. He and Whang take the short maglev train ride over to the civilian Osan Station to replace his clothing that Malcolm destroyed in his fit of pique. He and Whang go on a shopping spree -- he may not have much in the way of money but he's amazing at bargaining and he manages to get two nice white suits and an equally nice necklace for Whang. Bishop gets his usual great deals by making sure that he buys from female clerks who are susceptible to his charm. Whang doesn't mind his behaviour -- she knows it's for a good deal, nothing more. Right?
While Bishop is flirting and buying, Jillian's got her nose buried in books. She ignores the boring stuff, like axial tilt and orbit length (29 degrees and 450 days, respectively), and focuses on what might be most useful in the current situation. She gleans the following information:
The planet itself is a mess, literally and figuratively. It's full of volcanic activity and though the atmosphere is breathable it's sulphurous and those who spend time on the surface come to have a distinctive scent. Oddly, surface-dwellers insist it's the offworlders who smell funny. The only real city on the planet is Ungjin, population 30,000.
Originally meant to be a major source of metals for the system, mining has proven to be problematic due to the same activity that brings metal-rich but liquid hot magma to the surface. There are some more stable areas but once digging commences there's a tendency for magma to burst through the walls and for earthquakes to collapse tunnels.
All of the hardships have given rise to a culture that values proud self-reliance and the idea that Juche itself has been ignored by the rest of the system, especially by its rich sister planet Daebak. A hard planet leads to hard leaders, and the latest is Rhee Ha-Neul, whose cult of personality has raised him from the status of glorified union boss that leaders on the planet usually enjoy to an almost deific character in the eyes of his followers. His sway over the military is unknown but officially assumed to be moderate. Ji-Hun Cho, the official governor of the planet, is a figurehead at best.
The military here is effectively independent of the rest of the system's navy. Its primary task is to deal with the pirates of the outer system, who prey on ships travelling from the Busan jump gate that lies between Juche and the outer system. The size of the navy is impressive; it's roughly on par with the rest of the system's.
Orbiting the planet are two space stations (Sabi and Hwando) that are entirely military and strictly off-limits to anyone else.
Juche's two moonlets, Jageun and Keun, offer the best opportunity to investigate the military.
Jageun, the smaller of the two, has the official port for anyone visiting Juche. It's small, run-down, and not where the action really is. The Steel Hummingbird has visited the moonlet before, stealing a cache of weapons off the ship The People's Freedom before blowing up the ship.
Keun, the somewhat larger moonlet, has the Songun military base that's the main military presence for Juche. It has 8,000 crew and is led by Admiral Wu Jo. The Lieutenant General that Noah Lawrence was sending a letter to is based here: her name is Min-Suh Hwang.
Keun has another base, generally called Songun2, which officially doesn't exist but is the interface between Juche and the rest of the system. It's right next to the military base of Songun but is civilian and shady, likely with lots of organized crime influence. Jillian works out that there's no way that Juche can support itself with its scant natural resources (outside of mining and hot liquid death); it looks like it does a lot of underground trading with basically anyone who can pay for the metal it brings up. By keeping this under the table Juche manages to keep up its pretence of being independent while not starving. Jillian can tell that this is the best way into the guarded kingdom, along with the letter for Lieutenant General Min-Suh Hwang.
The Aiscapo navy has surprisingly little information about the Songun military base.
Juche and the rest of the system have meetings, officially to coordinate activities. In reality not much goes on, though the meetings still take place. Juche always sends representatives to Osun base, refusing to ever have meetings on its own territory. The next visit will be in eight days, on April 4th. This would be a great time to check out if the representatives have been converted by the D'vor.
After all of her research Jillian's got a pounding headache and a desire to charge the military for their services. Sure, the Hummingbird's got a pile of cash, but that's not going to last forever and there's no need for the military to know that. Saving the system doesn't have to be altruistic, right? There's no reason they can't stop the D'vor invasion and make a profit.
By the time a bleary-eyed Jillian gets back to the ship Bishop and Whang have returned from their shopping trip and and are proudly wearing their new suit and necklace, respectively. Jillian want Bishop to come along with her and help with the negotiation for their services. He's got a new suit and so isn't terribly interested in grubbing for money but agrees to help out. They manage to find Rear Admiral Choi in her office and have a long discussion. Jillian's got paperwork and Bishop's got charm, even though it pains him to use it on someone so wrinkly. Choi's perfectly willing to pay them, so it ends up being mostly about the amount. Choi is a pretty good negotiator and her wrinkles deflect much of Bishop's ability to wheel and deal but in the end everyone's reasonably happy with the amount agreed upon.
With another eight days until the delegation from Juche shows up there's enough time to scan the rest of the crew on Osan station and then spend some time on R&R down on Daebak. After a bit of research they decide to spend the time at the Hanwha Resort, just across the lake from Wonju. Bishop, Volkova, and Whang spend every mealtime doing their Dreamy thing.
March 29, EY219
Jillian's been doing her best to keep away from Sheema, but at this point there's really nothing to do if you're not a Dreamer and eventually her luck runs out. Sheema catches her and unable to come up with yet another lame excuse she's physically dragged into her quarters by her neglected girlfriend. And so they have The Talk [transcript below the main summary].
March 30, EY219
After scanning umpteen thousand crew everyone's surprised when Bishop and his Dreaming aides find no one with The Song in them. Not a one. It feels suspicious but there it is; to the best of their knowledge not a single member of the 12,000 crew is converted. Seems like it's a good time to head off and relax somewhere with a proper sky, especially now that the palpable tension between Jillian and Sheema is gone, replaced by a nauseating lovesickness.
March 31, EY219
Malcolm calls Xao's family's residence to tell/warn them that the Steel Hummingbird's crew is on its way down to Daebak's surface. Private ships aren't allowed to fly down, so they have to take a shuttle from the moon to the surface.
Landing at the Wonju spaceport in the wee hours of the morning, they're met by the crew of the Resplendent Dragon. After greetings they take a bus to the port and then a water taxi across Andong Lake to the resort. Watching the lights of the cluster's capital grow smaller behind them, Xao can't help but comment to Malcolm that Jillian and Sheema seem to be getting along much better than they used to, which seems to make him happy.
March 31-April 3, EY219
The resort came recommended for a reason and the time they spend there is lovely. Although it's autumn there are many heated outdoor pools and sun rooms. Malcolm spends some time in bed with Olivia and some time in bed with other guests and staff of the resort. One night, soaking in a hot tub under the stars, Jillian probes Xao one more time about Sabine and whether they can really trust her or not. He goes into more detail than he has before about her: her sister, Ester Weiß (the shuttle pilot for the Eggen Observatory) vouches for her, and although she has had some issues with money (Jillian gets enough clues to make her think gambling) that led her to rub shoulders with organized crime Xao's extremely good at reading people and can tell that she's reliable. If only her dog were smaller. Jillian ends the night convinced that Sabine's not a Black Rose plant or ready to sell them out whenever the opportunity shows itself.
Xao also complains a bit about the ships that his family has that are available for him. The Dragon has been extensively modified over the past year to be combat-ready but still nimble and his parents' ships don't compare. None of them match the Dragon's flying abilities and of course having a cannon that's the equivalent of what Olivia's used to isn't going to happen. Perhaps the military has something suitable, but he doubts it. The repairs on the Dragon should be done in a week and a half, so there's no sense in getting anything other than a loaner while here. Jillian seethes inside as she listens to him talk his rich boy talk.
If they're going to properly enjoy themselves Jillian decides that they should have a large dinner party. Both ships will be there, of course, and Jillian decides to invite both Inspectors Wen and How, if they're in the system. She leaves a message for them and belatedly picks up messages for her ship. There's one from Hyun Jung Gang, the academic liaison at the Bureau of Xenobiology, dated January of last year, saying that she'd love to see them again the next time they're in the system. Well, the lateness of the response can be blamed on the peripatetic nature of the Steel Hummingbird, right? Jillian contacts Gang and tells her about the dinner, inviting her to bring her husband. Helga Lang, the researcher who managed to escape on the Hummingbird from Labrys City, is also invited. Jillian wonders what she's been doing with that sample of black ooze that she smuggled off Kali.
Malcolm hires a room at The Unctuous Tortoise, pretty much the most exclusive restaurant in Wonju. He has to drop a lot of money on it to get a private room for twenty people, but money is something he's got a lot of. He specifies that it's to be a room that doesn't have any artwork by Alexei Rusanov.
The dinner has fifteen people in the end: Azar, Bishop, Jillian, Malcolm, Sheema, Volkova, and Whang from the Steel Hummingbird. Olivia, Neet, Sabine, and Xao from the Resplendent Dragon (Olivia decides not to bring her boyfriend from Osan station). Hyun Jung Gang and her husband, who despite all of her fawning and laudatory claims, is a silent and boring person. Helga Lang. The fifteenth person is someone that Volkova picked up in the gym at the resort. He's younger and taller than her and is also an engineer. His name is Jan and he's originally from Walküren.
Some of dinner is business but much is fun. Volkova's end of the table is the "mostly fun" side of things. Malcolm and Olivia, and Bishop and Whang, canoodle but their efforts are put to shame by Jillian and Sheema's constant touching, giggling, and nuzzling.
On the business end Jillian talks to Helga Lang about what she's been doing with the black slime. Helga's been keeping it very small after encountering larger amounts back in Labrys City. The small amounts don't seem to affect one's mind and it's vulnerable to acid and fire, but physical damage doesn't do much. She hasn't been investigating it as much as she'd like, as she's been keeping it a secret from her co-workers and BoX itself. The stuff is acellular as far as she can tell and eats food, in the sense of dead organic matter. It's generally bad at eating living things, even just cells on a petri dish -- though it will happily eat the agar! Splitting it up into smaller pieces just makes for more, smaller instances of the stuff. It's made of strange molecules and she can't figure out how it works.
By the end of the dinner everyone's pretty tipsy. There is a bit of a plan for the next couple of days:
Bishop will go to the Bureau of Xenobiology lab to take a look at the black slime there.
A trip to the xenotechnology museum at Aiscapo University to look at the collections. No one here knows anyone in the xenotech side of the department, so maybe Seo will have to come in. Bishop contacts Chig using The Egg and the Iof will fly her in if Bishop says so. Seo used to work there and ideally can get them behind the scenes.
And so a happy, drunken group spills out of the restaurant and heads to their respective beds.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 24)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 1 (running total: 4)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 13)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 6)
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Jillian and Sheema's talk
Sheema takes Jillian's arm and says "We need to talk. Now."
Jillian has been actively avoiding talking with Sheema ever since the night they captured Julia and interrogated the Song. That was the night when Xao made his passing remark about Jillian being hypocritical for not letting him kill Julia, considering she'd killed someone who'd stolen from her. Jillian has been kind of hoping that Sheema only half-heard Xao and that eventually she'd forget about it and it would blow over, but that's looking increasingly unlikely. So, with a heavy heart, she says "Yeah, okay. Let's go to my quarters."
They head to Jillian's quarters, the captain feeling Sheema's eyes burning into her back. Once there, Jillian locks the door and takes out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
Sheema looks at the glasses and raises her hand to wave it off, but then shrugs and takes it. She only takes a sip. Just enough to be polite. Then she plonks the glass down on the table and says "We need to talk. You've been avoiding me for a while. I know you have plots to take down the D'vor going on, but we haven't talked since the other side of the galaxy."
"Things have been busy," Jillian says weakly, and takes a drink. "Sorry I've been ... distant."
"There's busy and there's avoiding," Sheema points out. "Was it that important to talk all night with... with... everyone? All the time?"
Jillian can tell that Sheema isn't just upset, she's trying to hold back tears.
"Shit," Jillian says. She reaches across the table and squeezes Sheema's hand. "I've been horrible to you. You ditched everything, flew off with me on what very well could be a suicide mission -- I shouldn't have been avoiding you. It wasn't fair. I am so sorry."
"Why have you been avoiding me? Talking to aliens, headaches, getting drunk... what's so wrong that you can't talk to me anymore? What's changed?"
Jillian hunches her shoulders guiltily. She can tell that Sheema wants to talk about something in particular, not just Jillian's avoidance, and she can't tell exactly what, but Jillian is terribly afraid that it's about what Xao said. "Nothing's changed. It's just that I never really was the person you thought I was. I wanted to be. I wanted it so badly. And when you turned up that day in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth, I was so happy to see you, it made me think I could be that person for you, at least. But," she shakes her head, takes a drink. "It was already too late thirteen years ago."
"What do you mean it was too late back then? I've seen the way you do things now. You thought it was all cool to hang around with killers, I know that, and I know that you've changed. You've seen people die now. Seeing those consequences changes anyone. Trust me, I know. Why do you say you're the same as back then?" Sheema looks at her drink, but leaves it on the table, though her eyes don't raise to meet Jillian's.
Jillian fiddles with her glass, but doesn't take another drink. Not yet. "Consequences, yeah. There are things that once you've done, they change you. And they can't ever be undone." Finally she gets her courage up enough to look Sheema straight in the eyes -- fearing, as she does, that it might be the last time she ever gets to. "I never really told you why I ran away."
Sheema silently waits for Jillian to continue.
"I killed somebody, Sheema." Feeling a little dizzy from adrenaline, Jillian takes a drink and waits a moment to see Sheema's reaction.
Sheema's voice is a whisper. "Who?"
"His name was Brutus Montoya. He was a drug dealer, he was dealing on our turf without cutting us in." Jillian catches herself. "Our. Well. I mean the Black Rose. My father told me to take care of it. It was six months, maybe, since I'd gotten the tattoo. I wanted to impress him. My father, I mean. I guess it might have been enough to scare the guy, but this was the first time my father had asked me to take care of something, like I was an adult, not some pampered kid. I was seventeen. I was already married to Rashid, and I was coming to realize how dark and wild he was. I needed to show them all that I was a serious player. So I arranged a hit."
Jillian pauses for a moment, thinking of the yellowed scrap of newsprint at the bottom of her lockbox. She doesn't go to get it, though.
"He was scum. A junkie and a drug dealer, too dumb to even understand you don't mess with the Black Rose. He had hurt people. He would have hurt more people. But he was a person. He had a wife, a daughter. People who cried at his funeral.
"It was wrong to have him killed. Terribly, unforgivably wrong. And the whole empire of the Black Rose was built on acts like that. It was what you'd been trying to tell me all along, but by the time I understood, it was too late. There was already blood on my hands." Jillian stands up, taking her glass with her. She can't look at Sheema. She goes over to the wall, leans her head against it. She doesn't even want a drink; she feels sick.
"I think I remember him," Sheema says. "I was trying to keep track of all the bad stuff that the Black Rose did, or that I thought they did. There was a scrapbook that I was putting together. When it was full I was going to show it to you and you'd see what they were really like and you'd run away with me." She smiles wanly. "I was such a kid back then. 'Look at my scrapbook of evil and be convinced!' There's nothing like actually experiencing doing evil yourself, is there?" She finally looks up at Jillian. "But that's changed, Nikoo, hasn't it? You left all that behind you and started up a new life here. Art school, captain of a ship... you've done a lot to wash that blood off of your hands. Right?"
Sheema's staring into Jillian's eyes with a frighteningly intense look. It wasn't a rhetorical question.
Jillian stays where she is, leaning into the wall. "I've been avoiding you because I've been afraid you would ask me about what Xao said at the hospital."
"I was wondering if you were going to bring that up, see if I did hear it or not. Xao wasn't talking about Brutus, was he? He wouldn't bring something like that up from that long ago. Nikoo... who was Xao talking about? What did you do?"
"It's sort of a long story. I mean ... " Jillian hesitates. "I guess in the end it's a very short story. But there was a complicated lead-in. Back a year or two ago, before things got so crazy with the D'vor, Malcolm and I arranged for some upgrades to the Hummingbird. It turned out that the contractor was a fly-by-night con man. When we showed up to collect our ship, no work had been done and the contractor had fled with the money. We were pretty upset, obviously. We tried to find the guy. We connected with another crew that had been similarly ripped off. We hired a private detective. Eventually we got a name for the guy -- Flint Cardesco. It turned out that Malcolm's family had had a run-in with him many years previously, and he'd ripped them off really badly. The Devereaux nearly lost the business over it. So you can imagine, Malcolm was really seeing red over it.
"We didn't have any luck tracking him down, though. He was in the wind. He used a series of false names, anyway -- Flint Cardesco probably wasn't even his real name, it's just the one we knew him by.
"Finally, quite a while later, we ran into him totally by coincidence in iLanga, at uBunto's orbital station.
"We knew he had to be up to something. We tried to warn the station commander, but he didn't seem interested -- actually we found out later that he was making some dirty deals of his own with Cardesco.
"Volkova and Olivia managed to steal some papers from Cardesco's ship, and when we looked through them it became clear that he was working for the Black Rose.
"We hadn't even decided what to do about it yet when we ran into Flint and his bodyguard in a station hallway. Malcolm was in the group, and things escalated very fast. There was shooting. Next thing I knew, Flint and his two people were prisoners in the Hummingbird. They'd been hurt, but not lethally.
"We separated Flint from the others, and we figured we needed to question him. We were very worried about what it meant that he was working for the Black Rose. At that point, I knew that they were in the cluster but I had no idea how widespread their influence was. We needed honest answers from him, and he was a career liar. So ... I decided to play the card that I had. I went into that room with my tattoo showing, and I let him think that I was some serious Black Rose bad-ass that he'd crossed. I found out what he was up to, and who he reported to."
Jillian pauses in her story and takes a drink. "In the end," she admits afer a moment, "he wasn't very important. He was just an errand-boy, sent off to the most remote corner of the cluster to see if the local station commander was amenable to a Black Rose presence. If it had been more important they would've sent one of their own people.
"So, once we'd found out what he could tell us, we had to decide what to do with him.
"He was too dangerous to set free -- if he reported back to the Black Rose about what had happened, we were going to be in deep shit. And keeping him as a prisoner indefinitely just wasn't practical."
Jillian pauses, takes a long drink. "So I murdered him," she says finally, in a flat tone.
Her glass is empty. She goes to the desk, where the whiskey bottle is sitting, and refills her glass with a shaking hand.
"You killed him? Just like that?" Sheema's voice is curiously even, caught between a whisper and wanting to shout. Sheís shocked by what Jillian just said -- even though Sheemaís been fearing something like this ever since she overheard Xaoís barbed remark, itís quite another thing to hear her loverís own confession that she killed a man in cold blood.
Trying to make sense of it all, Sheema looks over at Jillian. She notes Jillianís trembling hand, her haunted gaze that refuses to meet Sheemaís. Seeing all this, and knowing Jillian as she does, Sheema realizes that Jillian is not at peace with what sheís done. In fact she seems to be horrified by it. And that gives Sheema some hope that Jillian is still a good person at heart, still a person that Sheema can love.
And yet. She killed a man.
Sheema takes a deep breath, and when Jillian turns toward the sound she sees Sheema staring at her with a fearsome intensity.
"At least you did this," Sheema says. "You. Made yourself feel it. Didn't make Volkova do it." Sheema forces herself to sound colder than she feels. She needs to push Jillian and get everything out in the open, for once. "Are there any others I should know about?"
Sheema's tone momentarily startles Jillian -- she didn't know that Sheema, normally so gentle, could talk like that. And yet Jillian's faced down far, far worse and can feel that Sheema's heart is not really behind it. She realizes that the coldness is Sheema's attempt to sound intimidating, and it doesn't reflect Sheema's true feelings towards her.
After processing for a moment, Jillian finds it almost cute, and she warms to Sheema that much more.
Jillian decides that now that she's told Sheema about Brutus Montoya and Flint Cardesco, the worst is over and it would be best to come clean completely about her history of violence. "Not like that," Jillian says. "Not like shooting a man who's tied to a chair. But there have been other times ... when I needed to protect somebody. Back in the Navy, for instance, I once poisoned my commanding officer when he was ordering me to plot a course lethally close to Loge." She sips her drink, her hand a little steadier now. It's sort of a relief to have Flint Cardesco out in the open, finally. "He didn't die, but he could have -- I wasn't that sure of the dose. But I'm pretty sure I saved everybody on the ship by doing it." She looks back at Sheema. "It's not how you would have done it."
Sheema dips her head slightly, acknowledging the point. "No, I would never kill anyone. You know that. Seriously though, you poisoned your officer? That must get you kicked out the spacelock or something. Guess you didn't get caught.
"So you've been avoiding me all this time because of what Xao said in the hospital. You must have known I heard it. Why didn't you bring it up right away? Is this more running away? Do I have to keep chasing you? Forever? Am I going to find Nikoo or Jillian at the end of it, assuming you ever stop running? And which one is you? Which is the killer? Both? Neither?"
"I was running away," Jillian confesses. "I'd been running for thirteen years, it's a hard habit to break. But I'm not running anymore, Sheema. It's exhausting, and lonely. I want to fix the mistake I made fourteen years ago when I chose the Black Rose over you. I want to be the better person that you thought I could be."
"Do you think that's possible? I mean, what if you come across a situation like that again? Your crew doesn't seem to be able -- or willing -- to stop you. You know that it was wrong, I get that, and you think you had your back up against the wall. I get that too. But I can't love a murderer. And, and, if that's what you are, if I always have to worry about that side of you whenever things get *inconvenient*, I can't be with you."
Sheema gets up from the table and steps over to Jillian in the cramped room. She takes Jillian's hands in hers -- Jillian's already finished her next drink and just a single drop falls onto the floor -- and pushes up against Jillian. It's not sexual, it's an attempt to get close to Jillian and find out who Jillian, or Nikoo, really is.
"Sheema, I can't promise I'll never kill anybody else," Jillian says, her voice catching. She wants Sheema to stay with her, more than she's ever wanted anything else, but she knows that the relationship is doomed if it's based on unrealistic promises. And although Jillian is filled with permanent, post-traumatic horror about the choice she made to have Brutus murdered, and about the fact that she was a person who was able to murder Flint in cold blood without hesitation, she doesn't regret poisoning her Captain that one time, or shooting Emily's brother (except for the fact that in that case she was acting on bad information), or killing Kel Varnson and company, or killing guards in the former Box station where Tigd and Seo were being held prisoner. Sometimes violence really is the best solution, and she has to make Sheema understand that. She turns her face fully toward Sheema to fix her with a one-eyed stare, which she knows adds gravitas to her words. "We have to live in a dangerous universe. Right now, we're about to fly into a military base where the personnel are probably all possessed by a mind-altering sentient Song that wants to kill all humans. It's not realistic to try to solve these problems through the legal system, the way you want to bring Rashid to justice."
"I... I... guess so," Sheema concedes. "The world isn't what we want it to be, trust me I know that. But promise me that you'll let me try to talk you out of it if something like that happens again."
"I promise." Since Sheema crossed the small room to press against her, Jillian has been standing rigid, barely restraining herself from either recoiling from Sheema's closeness or giving in to it completely. Now she gives in to the latter impulse, snaking her arms around Sheema's body and pulling her into a tight hug. "And can you promise me that when it comes up, you won't hate me if the reality of the situation is that violence is our only option?"
"I don't think I can ever hate you" Sheema says, her face pressed into Jillian's shoulder. "But if you do something like that again and there is another way, I *will* leave you." She raises her head up and looks into Jillian's eyes, then raises up on tiptoes and gives her a quick kiss on the lips. "Understood?"
"Yes," Jillian says. "I understand. And that's part of why I love you so much." She lifts a hand to Sheema's hair, brushes a stray strand gently away from her forehead. "From now on, I will be the person you told me I could be." And then she leans in for a longer kiss, trembling with emotion. Her good eye is blurred with tears before she closes it.
[Alice: Over ... and out?]
[Torsten: Fade to makeup sex, I think, which we're not going to roleplay]
[Alice: If this were a Joss Whedon show, I'd give Sheema a max of 24 hours to live at this point.]
Afterwards, lying in bed together, Sheema says "You know, I think that Xao was feeling guilty about what he said in the hospital. While he was on the ship he kept saying things that made you seem like a good person. Subtly, but I noticed it."