Sofflox is a beautiful, but oddly deadly - to non-natives anyhow, havenworld. Before, people had to wear full livesuits to leave the protected areas due to the spores of that world. Thanks to a couple of scientists born on that world, and human researchers, they come up with a special, clear, full-face mask that filters out all of the harmful stuff, so a person CAN visit without the full suit. It's still a little annoying, but at least a little more comfortable.
@internutter/challenge-03872-j220-looks-so-harmless -- Anon Guest
The fluff from Sofflox's Spore Season is relatively harmless. Provided, of course, that the individual in the middle of it doesn't have fluid of any kind on their personal surfaces. In lay terms, you're fine as long as you don't sweat, sneeze, or spit. Crying is also right out.
The hydrophillic fluff of Sofflox's floating spores could attach itself to any significant amount of fluid and then swell right up as it absorbed. On something like sweaty Human skin, it quickly becomes a crusty coating that can cause its victim to pass out from heat exhaustion. Assuming the Human in question hadn't already choked on the swollen spores that had invaded their moist airways.
Atmospheric filter feeding is a very popular evolutionary tactic on Sofflox.
Science and Medicine have been working together to prevent tourists from dying of entitlement and misadventure. No matter how simple the explanation, no matter how complicated the safeguards, there's an average of one per tourist shuttle who will try their utmost to get outside without safety gear "like everyone else".
Even though the natives of Sofflox are very different to the average Human, the Humans who do this willfully mistake them for other Humans and then insist on their rights.
Most of them live to survive their stupidity, owing to the best efforts of the ERT's.
So far, the best thing they can offer the tourists is the face-helm. An almost retro-aesthetic bubble that allows Humans to walk about unassisted. "Like everyone else".
Natives in the high-traffic tourist zones wear domed headgear for everyone's protection[1]. Astonishingly, the Humans practicing willful ignorance don't notice that the native's helms are open to the spore-filled atmosphere. Well. Most of them don't.
The other hyper-effective method of preventing entitlement-related misadventures is what they're calling the Tourists Educational Gauntlet. Fun little activities by the window where visitors can catch a single spore and then introduce it to a glass of water, watching how much it swells. There's also an informative scale that weighs how much a passerby's water-weight might be.
Most of them draw the obvious conclusion and willingly don the safety gear.
But there's always a few who choose ignorance, choose misadventure, and choose a stint in remedial education and therapy to find out exactly what's wrong with their brains.
Science and Medicine alike are still trying to figure it out.
[1] Especially from attempted lawsuits.
[Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash]
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