"Um, first, if I say... Earth, Japan, China, America, Australia, English, French, Italian, the Great Barrier Reef, trash island, global warming, does all that mean anything to you?" Ben nods his head, seems to understand, so she presses on. They come from worlds similar enough that she won't need to give him any background information.
"I was born in Japan. Right near the Southern tip. A place called Kagoshima. There's a bay there, very creatively named Kagoshima Bay. My family owns it, and the cliffs around it, and the ocean for ten miles out until you hit international waters. We have the land rights and the water rights, and a fleet of fishing ships. I grew up there, in a house perched right on the cliff, looking down at that bay from my bedroom window. I could swim before I could run. I've always loved the ocean. It's what feels like home to me."
As she talks, she catches sight of what looks like a little glowing rock. It's a turtle, and incapable of running away, but that doesn't stop Cho from being slow and gentle with it, from feeding it a berry to make it feel a little safer before she has to tuck it away in its own little apartment within the carrier.
"I always wanted to do something within that facet of the corporation. When I was young, and didn't really understand that I wouldn't be allowed to help that way. Even when I got older, and realized that it was probably only going to be fund-raising or awareness work, that was still all right. I was much younger than the rest of my classmates when I first went to a proper school, before that there were tutors. Structured schooling was the first time I learned about a lot of unpleasant things. It's a rough thing to learn, that the ocean you love so much is home to a giant floating hunk of garbage the size of a small city. It made me very sad, for a while, and then I decided that I couldn't really complain about it if I wasn't doing anything to try and change it. So I really focused myself in college. Then I convinced my grandfather to let me take some time before I got married to get a post-graduate degree in New York. I wanted to try and fix the problems, the things that were doing all the damage and causing all the trouble. My family always talked about them as lines on a balance sheet, decreases in profits and increases in expenditures. What it really meant, though, was that things were getting worse, and the bay was dying by tiny degrees. It's more than the money. It has to be, or nothing will ever really get any better. I thought, if I was a doctor, it might be easier to get people to listen to me."
Cho puts another berry in with the turtle, and then picks the carrier up carefully and starts moving again.
no subject
"I was born in Japan. Right near the Southern tip. A place called Kagoshima. There's a bay there, very creatively named Kagoshima Bay. My family owns it, and the cliffs around it, and the ocean for ten miles out until you hit international waters. We have the land rights and the water rights, and a fleet of fishing ships. I grew up there, in a house perched right on the cliff, looking down at that bay from my bedroom window. I could swim before I could run. I've always loved the ocean. It's what feels like home to me."
As she talks, she catches sight of what looks like a little glowing rock. It's a turtle, and incapable of running away, but that doesn't stop Cho from being slow and gentle with it, from feeding it a berry to make it feel a little safer before she has to tuck it away in its own little apartment within the carrier.
"I always wanted to do something within that facet of the corporation. When I was young, and didn't really understand that I wouldn't be allowed to help that way. Even when I got older, and realized that it was probably only going to be fund-raising or awareness work, that was still all right. I was much younger than the rest of my classmates when I first went to a proper school, before that there were tutors. Structured schooling was the first time I learned about a lot of unpleasant things. It's a rough thing to learn, that the ocean you love so much is home to a giant floating hunk of garbage the size of a small city. It made me very sad, for a while, and then I decided that I couldn't really complain about it if I wasn't doing anything to try and change it. So I really focused myself in college. Then I convinced my grandfather to let me take some time before I got married to get a post-graduate degree in New York. I wanted to try and fix the problems, the things that were doing all the damage and causing all the trouble. My family always talked about them as lines on a balance sheet, decreases in profits and increases in expenditures. What it really meant, though, was that things were getting worse, and the bay was dying by tiny degrees. It's more than the money. It has to be, or nothing will ever really get any better. I thought, if I was a doctor, it might be easier to get people to listen to me."
Cho puts another berry in with the turtle, and then picks the carrier up carefully and starts moving again.