As promised I approached the greenhouse area intending to visit Penny, as I said I would at our last meeting.
On arrival I see Seffy perched on top of the chicken coop and a couple strangers in the vicinity. There’s a man next to Penny outside the greenhouse and a woman by chicken coop.
The woman is talking about how roast chicken was appealing. Seffy pointed out that unfortunately despite wanting fried chicken, she’d been told they were more useful as a supply of eggs. I agreed with that after offering greetings to all.
Penny doesn’t make any introductions of the strangers to me,which seemed odd. However listening to their conversation I gathered she was still trying to find out the man’s name and he was being evasive.
I notice someone come up behind me and move towards the greenhouses so they’re not directly behind me. Not taking in their appearance at that point, just they were very large in stature.
Moving on into and through the greenhouse building, I had a look around while listening to the conversation between the first man I’d seen and Penny. By the time I’d emerged at the other end of the building it was revealed he wished to be addressed as “Sharke”.
The unknown woman blurted out a barely understandable sentence before leaving the area hastily. Evidently not comfortable with the growing number of strangers around.
As I emerge from the greenhouse I’m now facing the stranger that had come from behind me, he’d come closer. I could see another reason the woman may have bolted. He.. presumed from stature, was not human. Humanoid in shape but his head was elongated and his skin appeared leathery.
So I ran a scan with my optical implant. Originally intended for detecting dangerous goods in packages, I’d had a few upgrades made to it. The result showed that the outlines of internal organs seemed to be in the right places for a human, so maybe he was once? I’d noticed his pistol with my regular eye already, the scan revealed just some spare ammo in his long jacket and random stuff in his bag.
Out of curiosity I did the same scan on the other guy, Sharke, talking to Penny. That brought some interesting results. I hadn’t noticed his hands weren’t completely flesh, he’d had quite a few augmented upgrades too. He noticed what I did and didn’t seem to comfortable about it, but made no verbal comment. The conversation revealed that both of them were in need of shelter and that Sharke was in need of a medic and a technician for his hands.
I told him we have a bot-shop so fixing his hands wouldn’t be an issue and we had private accommodation in old shipping containers. Penny chimed in with more information on a shelter and medical facilities. At this point the non-human announced that he was a medical doctor. It crossed my mind that may explain is current appearance, an experiment gone wrong perhaps…or right?
Penny took them over to the large building opposite, that she referred to as the “Church”. I’d just thought of it as a hall or barn, since it contained mostly medical and droid repair equipment.
I followed them over at a distance. Sharke made the gentlemanly gesture of indicating I enter ahead of him, but by the time I caught up he’d gone ahead. I slipped in quietly and leaned against the door frame briefly before taking a seat on an old folding chair, since I had not much to contribute to the discussion at the time.
Penny was trying to get the Doctor to fill in some paperwork, which seemed a little ludicrous given the circumstances. But I figured this was Ellie’s domain and being an android it made sense she’d want everything orderly.
Penny then made her departure to go tend to the greenhouse and feed the chickens, I followed her out, leaving the Doctor and Sharke talking I bade them farewell.