Kegs in hand, they claimed a rough-hewn table and let the noise wash over them.
Sheba glanced around her, conceding the venue had a charm of its own.
Her eyes flicked from the seashells and old nets decorating the ceiling to the wild art and masks from the residents on the waxed walls.
‘This place is savage,’ Sheba muttered as she sipped on the delicious lemon-flavored light beer in her hand.
Sliding alongside the bench, seated beside her was Dr. Imani Kweku.
The surgical practitioner was tall and composed, her hair bound in a tight crown of twists, dark eyes piercing and alert.
‘It sure is,’ she quipped with a wink. ‘The locals let loose with local entertainment and folk music from a band. Then, if you hang around after midnight, they bring out a feast of spicyTansinian pork roasted over hot coals. You won’t be able to resist it, it’s so freakin’ delicious.’
On the other side of Sheba sat Jasper Rowe. He was a pulmonary systems specialist from New Savartin, thin, lean, and restless, sleeves already rolled, gaze scanning the room with clinical curiosity.
Across from them was Linh, a generalist medic and the Centre’s head.
Next to her was the bearded, red-headed Dr. Brad Piastri, a medical speleologist whose fascination with subterranean biomes bordered on obsession, adjusting his glasses as he took it all in.
Last but not least, Toma Reyes, a trauma surgeon from Old Manila, broad-shouldered and laconic, who anchored the group with his calm presence.
It had been four weeks since Sheba’s dramatic arrival on Tansinia.
After a week of downtime, settling in and recovery, she got into her new rotations and schedules.
She spent most evenings poring over her cases and managing her admin, leaving her exhausted.
Which was why she had begged off any nights out until now.
Still, she was bonding well with her colleagues; by now, she and the team were on a first-name basis, and she found she liked nearly all of them.
As they talked, Sheba’s attention drifted to the crowd.
Tansinians were strikingly diverse.
A majority were descendants of Asians, Australians, and Africans who fled Oceania during the Great Apocalypse.
Intermarrying with the locals, they interwove their bloodlines with the indigenous tribe’s whose DNA still carried echoes of an ancient other world.
The result was a population marked by broad cheekbones, dark, luminous eyes, and physiques shaped by land and labor.
Their physiology was also extraordinary, and their post-surgery healing and wound-regeneration rates were remarkable.
She turned to her team, who seemed lost in an animated discussion about why Tansinia Minor had been baffling the world of medicine in recent months.
‘Tell me again about how certain regions of the planet suddenly accelerated healing without pharmacological intervention?’ Sheba asked.
‘This place has the hallmarks of a unique ecosystem,’ Jasper said, lifting his glass and staring into it as if his answers might surface there.
‘The locals are infamous for how quickly they use botanical treatments to heal without sophisticated drugs and interventions,’ he went on. ‘However, over the last two years, or even longer, we can’t be sure we’ve seen a sudden increase in tissue repair that accelerates to two to four times baseline. Bones knit faster. Lung trauma stabilizes without much help,’ Brad added. ‘Which is why we’ve set aside part of the facility for a research center, collecting data with the permission of the villagers, that continues to astound most of us.’
‘It’s not just an anomaly,’ Imani said. ‘The locals have stories pointing to a sophisticated linkage of healing throughout different environments.’
Linh leaned forward, forearms braced on the table, eyes bright behind her lenses. ‘The eastern cave networks are the key starting point. We’ve tested some of our willing injured patients in our temporary lab out there. We found that in that region, trees will bind more new CO2, oxygen levels are rising, and the humidity never fluctuates. In that environment, the pulmonary workload decreases by 30%, and the body starts repairing way faster than any other physiology off-world.’
Sheba tilted her head and mused. ‘So, it sounds like because the lungs work less, energy gets rerouted from survival to healing quicker.’
‘Correct, and it’s not isolated,’ Toma supplied. ‘The forests are just as compelling. Old-growth moss ecosystems pump beta-pinene and forest ions into the air. Blood pressure drops across the board. Natural killer cells spike. Post-surgical recovery shortens by more than thirty percent.’
