due South snippet: "Life"

[luzula]

Title: Life
Fandom: due South
Characters: Fraser, Thatcher, and an OC
Rating: G
Prompt: require
Length: 300 words
Summary: Xenobiologist!Fraser.
Notes: This is backstory for the SF AU I am psyching myself up to write. Er, I hope the technobabble is at least vaguely convincing.

"And I expect the analysis of those samples will be done by tomorrow?" Professor Thatcher said.

"Are you a slave or a Ph. D. student?" Chen muttered in Mandarin from the other lab desk. Thatcher frowned suspiciously at him.

Fraser glanced at Chen quellingly. "I...yes, of course, Professor."

Thatcher swept out in her white lab coat. Fraser looked at the screen of the molecular imager, with its complicated tangle of e-RNA and pseudo-proteins. "E" for Europa, of course, on whose surface they were, in a hermetically sealed station shielded from the cold and the radiation of the Jupiter system. Sometimes he wondered why he'd left the open vistas of his home planet for this, when only sterilized probes could enter Europa's sea with its alien life.

"She isn't a bad advisor," he told Chen in Mandarin. "No, really, she's brilliant. And she requires brilliance from me. I'm not sure I can deliver, but why else am I here, if not to try?"

"Brilliant, huh," Chen said with a knowing smile. Fraser blushed.

Well, he was used to exacting teachers, at any rate. He was glad his grandparents had insisted he learn both standard Mandarin and English, though he spoke both with an accent, his native language being the Chinese-English-Inuktitut creole spoken on Pigivuq. But his grandparents were terraformers, oriented towards practical applications of the life sciences, such as developing new strains of Salix tolerant of high CO2. Professor Thatcher's work was pure xenobiology, the study of alien life for its own sake. It was what he'd wanted, too, and it's what he was getting.

"Right," he said, taking a deep breath.

"Guess it'll be a late night," Chen said.

"Yes. I'd better get on with it," Fraser said, sliding into his chair and adjusting the focus on the molecular imager.

Comments

[akamine_chan]

Love it, Luz. Can't wait to read more, and it's been a while since anything due South-ish has moved me.

You mentioning Europa reminded me of the movie The Europa Report. Did you see it?

[luzula]

Oh, thank you! That means a lot to me. ♥ It'll be a long-term project, though, probably Big Bang-sized.

And no, I haven't even heard of that movie. *looks it up* Oh hey, that looks promising. Did you like it?

[akamine_chan]

I really did like the movie. It was well done, realistic, and believable, with strong female characters and real science. \o/

[luzula]

Yay! Sounds like something I'll enjoy.

[ride_4ever]

*flailing with love for this*

I am very particular about SF...I want believable worldbuilding and I want engaging characters...and since coming into fandom I want SF that is dS. What you've got here looks like my definition of perfect like a perfect thing.

[luzula]

Cool, thank you! Yeah, this is something where I want to pay attention to the worldbuilding. I mean, sometimes you just want to write some fun spaceship action, but this is not that story.

[seascribble]

Oh boy, I'm glad you're writing more of this, I love it. :D

[luzula]

Thanks! And I wrote some on the main story yesterday. \o/

[andeincascade]

Definitely want to see more of this, Luz. I'm fascinated to learn more of this world.

[luzula]

Thanks! I got started on the main story yesterday. : )

[scribe]

Wooo, yay worldbuilding! So excited for this.

[luzula]

Thanks! : )

[exbex]

This is the best kind of tease.

[luzula]

Oh, good! It'll take a while to write the main story, though. : )

[sproid]

OOOH! This is brilliant! I love this idea, and how you've set it up. I'm really intrigued by Fraser and Thatcher in this, especially their altered backstories, which I'd love to hear more about. I'm curious to see more of them in this universe!

And the technobabble was understandable to someone with A-Level biology, if that helps :D

[luzula]

Yay, thanks! Thatcher won't actually be in the main story, though, at least I don't think so--this is just backstory from when Fraser gets his Ph D, and then the main story will be about other things. But there will be lots of xenobiology in it. : )

[sproid]

I will equally as happily read about other things with lots of xenobiology, too! I took a class on astrobiology in my second year, which was really interesting. The combination of xenobiology and due South should be great :D

[luzula]

Oh really? I think you maybe just recommended yourself as beta. : ) If you want to, of course.

[sproid]

I would be very happy to! Although before you decide that you want me as beta, I should point out that the course was astrobiology for physicists, so focused more on the 'astro' than the 'biology'. So, we looked at the history of life on Earth, and then at the conditions on extrasolar planets, and didn't do a whole lot of actual biology. (Although I did write an essay on how eukaryotes may have developed, that was kinda cool.) But I'm certainly willing to give it a shot!

[luzula]

That sounds perfect, actually! : ) It'll probably take me some time to get this fic written (wow, so busy) but I'll send it to you when I have something worth looking at.

[hazelwho]

This is SO FREAKING COOL!! *heart eyes* I really hope you do end up writing it. *cough* big bang starts soon *cough*

[luzula]

Yay, thanks! Yeah, I was planning to do this for my Big Bang. Or try, anyway.