TEST DRIVE #3 - Alien Bazaar/Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

#1

Option 001. Alien planet, marketplace: So you're new to this whole space travel thing. The ship is cool and all, but there are hundreds of alien worlds out there. You want to explore. To see what the universe REALLY looks like.

Well, here's your chance! Your first stop is this lovely indoor marketplace, which looks kind of like a mall. There are stalls one after the other as far as the eye can see, and they sell all kinds of things: food, clothes, trinkets, animals, fabrics, jewelry, perfumes, books, etc etc. Some things look human, easy to recognize; other things look very alien. There are two levels, and constant chatter as people hawk their wares and discuss prices.

Do you want to explore? Poke at the weird shops? Buy a gift for a new friend? Flirt with someone at the food court? Maybe you see a pickpocket, and must run to the aid of the victim. Maybe there's some other villainy afoot. After all, a crowded marketplace is a good place for villains to lurk, causing trouble. Whether you're a hero or just an unassuming traveler, there proves to be some adventure for you on this planet.


2

Option 002. Aboard the Enterprise, Ten Forward: You have no idea what just happened. One minute you were home, and now you're on a spaceship, in the middle of a crowded room. It looks like a bar. There are people eating and drinking, some in uniform, others not. Some are clearly aliens.

You've managed to land in Ten Forward a long bar with barstools and a bartender, tables sprinkled throughout, and the far wall is nothing but windows out to space. It looks like a nice lounge, low conversation making the room hum.

Better ask some questions and find out where you are, or just tap the closest person on the shoulder and try to make friends. The bar is open.

Comments

[asklepian]

Again? Q was really bringing in people from everywhere, it seemed.

"Enterprise, actually, but I wager you weren't expecting to find yourself here." Julian is still wearing his grey-shouldered uniform--he's not quite part of the Enterprise crew and therefore doesn't feel right about wearing the duty uniform. But the trappings are similar enough, the badge and rank pips, and even the teal color of his undershirt is the same shade as the chest of the other science officers in Ten Forward.

"Welcome."

[dreams_dont_die]

"Enterprise?"

He turns to look for the person who'd spoken, and sees a man wearing what is clearly a uniform, but one Dylan has never before seen. Not that he'd expect High Guard uniforms; in fact, most of the encounters they've had with High Guard uniforms have been bad, courtesy of insane AIs or similar.

Why isn't he on his ship anymore?

"I'm Captain Dylan Hunt of the High Guard starship Andromeda Ascendant." He takes a step forward. "Where's my ship?"

[asklepian]

"Lieutenant Julian Bashir, Chief Medical Officer of Deep Space 9." There's an open seat next to him, he offers it to the other man.

"Back where you're from. You were brought here separately. I've been talking to Trance quite often, she is one of your crew, isn't she? We've both been helping Doctor Crusher in sickbay."

[dreams_dont_die]

"Trance?"

Of course, if any member of his crew were going to be around when something like ... whatever that was just happened, it'd be Trance. Trance who, in her newest form, just walked straight through time onto his ship for her own inscrutable reasons, to help steer the world towards the future she wanted.

Actually, this sounds exactly like where you'd find Trance. With strange things happening all around her while she protests her ignorance.

"She's my medic and Environmental Systems Officer."

He turns his head, looking around him with suspicion. This room seems to be something akin, perhaps, to the officer's mess on the Andromeda, with bar and dining facilities and a wall covered in windows that opens up onto space like the observation deck.

"What just happened?"

If anything, it reminds him of when that tesseract machine had been bending time and space in knots around the Andromeda. One moment, walking along a corridor on his way to Command, the next somewhere completely different.

He didn't think there was anything worse than the day of the goddamned cut and paste spaceship, suddenly finding himself ten decks away from where he was supposed to be, but apparently, there is.

[asklepian]

"She's mentioned you." Julian smiles kindly, knowing that this was quite a lot to get used to. Moreso for someone who's been pulled from another reality entirely, at least Julian is used to Starfleet ships.

"There's a being here called Q. He tends to do varied things to test the patience of Starfleet officers, in particular Captain Picard, who's in command of this ship. He's been pulling people from various places and times and bringing them all here, to the Enterprise."

Julian picks up his mug and looks down into it, swirling the cloudy tea around.

"This is the flagship of the Federation fleet--which Trance compared to your Commonwealth. Though the Federation isn't nearly so large as she said the Commonwealth was."

[dreams_dont_die]

Some days, it's hard staying calm like a High Guard captain is supposed to do in the face of adversity.

But he does his best, letting out a long breath as he slips into the seat next to Lieutenant Bashir.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Just because there aren't any other High Guard officers around to show the courtesy due between officers doesn't mean he's forgotten it.

Lieutenant Bashir at least seems amiable enough, and willing to talk openly without playing the sort of games he might expect from Trance if it had been her he'd seen when he'd walked into this place. And, at first, Dylan can follow what he's saying; it's weird, but his whole life's been weird since Hephaistos. He's been back in time, trapped in time, had bits of the past and the future apparently randomly appearing on his spaceship.

A being taking people from different times and places and collecting them aboard a ship is up there is strange as hell, but given the evidence of his eyes, he's going to have to believe it. For now.

Until he has a chance to find Trance and talk to her about it. For whatever answers he might or might not get out of her.

Dylan leans forward, hands clasped and forearms in their High Guard uniform bracers pressed against the table.

"I don't follow, Lieutenant. There's never been anything else like the Commonwealth."

[asklepian]

"In your reality, I assume you'd know best. However, this one is completely different. Perhaps divergent, though I don't know exactly where the split occurred." Julian takes a drink of his tea, turning to entirely face the other man.

His uniform is dark, far more military-looking in Julian's opinion than Starfleet's. Which isn't really saying much. Trance had also mentioned his genetic background, and Julian has to say--he can't see too much difference between the Captain and any other human. It's somewhat heartening, really, though he can't say why.

"The United Federation of Planets was founded in 2161, two hundred and five years ago. Starfleet is its exploratory, defense, and humanitarian force, and we are currently on its flagship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The year is 2366. I'm from 2374, myself--I suppose it doesn't make much sense when phrased like that, but the being responsible often doesn't make much sense."

[dreams_dont_die]

Divergent realities.

This might just win the prize for craziest thing to happen to him since the Eureka Maru pulled him out of the black hole.

Dylan rubs a hand across the back of his head.

"A long time ago. The Commonwealth lasted for five and a half thousand years, and the Vedran Empire thousands of years before that," he says, hating that it's so easy now to talk about the Commonwealth in the past tense when once it had been his world.

But he listens, and when his hand drops back to the table, he intertwines his fingers again, a little tighter than really necessary.

Because he can see what Trance meant if she told Lieutenant Bashir that the Federation sounded like the Commonwealth. Because Bashir, talking about the Enterprise, and Starfleet's mission, sounds like nothing so much as what he used to do aboard the Andromeda Ascendant before the black hole tore his world away from him.

"I don't know how much Trance told you about the Andromeda or the Commonwealth," he says, "but your Starfleet sounds like the High Guard."

And he's here and that's now. Dylan has to fight to keep his expression from showing too much, so he smiles, instead. Because that's so much easier.

[asklepian]

"That would be quite a long time indeed." Julian raises his mug again--it's truly an impressive number, thousands of years of peace, despite the not-so-comforting term of empire that preceded it. But if this High Guard indeed shared the same ideals as Starfleet, he didn't think Captain Hunt would have too much trouble adapting to the routine aboard a Federation ship.

"She didn't tell me too much more than that. I would be interested in learning more, though, if you're amenable to the idea."

Talking to someone from so far in the future, from another united front of various planets--millions, Trance had said, as opposed to the hundred-fifty or so in the Federation, which seemed to stretch farther than humanity could have even guessed so much as two or three centuries ago.

"I would certainly be happy to answer any of your questions that I'm able to."

[dreams_dont_die]

To Dylan, of course, there's no point of comparison, not really. Of course, there were worlds and races outside the Commonwealth, but he'd always been immersed in it, because he was from its heart -- Tarn-Vedra, home of the Vedrans, capital of the Commonwealth, home of the High Guard. Tarn-Vedra, the lost planet that now seems little more than a myth to the people of the Long Night. Tarn-Vedra, where the streets were so steeped in the history of the Commonwealth and its peoples that it was impossible not to love that world for the curious, idealistic young Dylan.

The smile he gives Lieutenant Bashir's raised mug is small, sad at the edges, his grief for the loss of the world he'd known haunting his eyes.

"I'd be happy to tell you more, but it doesn't have a happy ending." Not yet. "The Commonwealth fell. It took two years for a civil war to tear it all apart. That was three hundred years ago. My crew and I are trying to rebuild it. And," he continues, his smile wry, "it's quite a mission. So anything about the Federation that could help would be very valuable."

Because here, in another reality, thousands of years ago, there's something like it, something new in comparison, small in comparison.

Something like what Dylan and the Andromeda are trying to build from the ashes of the Commonwealth.

"My ship and I are the only survivors of the High Guard."

[asklepian]

"Trance did mention the war." Julian's voice turns back on itself, unpleasant memories welling up in his head. He doesn't like war very much.

"There are full Federation histories in Enterprise's data banks. I'm not much of a historian, so I could give a basic rundown--about as much as any child learns on Earth--but all the details are a bit beyond me." He smiles, a bit self-deprecatingly. He simply hasn't committed himself to learning history, aside from one very particular area of interest in the Eugenics Wars and the history of Augments.

"You may even be able to find a history program in the Holodeck, view everything as if you were there."

[dreams_dont_die]

Yeah. The war.

The war he missed because he was trapped in a black hole, and the war he couldn't have changed even if he wasn't. He's almost gotten used to trying to feel in his heart what he knows in his head, that even if he and Andromeda had escaped Hephaistos, they wouldn't have changed things. At best they'd have died heroically at Witchhead or one of the other battles.

Now, they can make a difference. But as an officer of the High Guard, it's a hell of a thing to try to really believe that the best thing he could have done for the Commonwealth was to get stuck in that black hole instead of fighting alongside his friends and comrades to try to save civilization.

"I'd love to hear the basics about how it started. Maybe you could give me the basics. The Commonwealth came out of the Vedran Empire, but there's nothing left of it now, and," he shakes his head with a self-deprecating laugh, "I'm the only one with a chance to restore it, but I am no diplomat."