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

[dreams_dont_die]

Those are not good words.

He's had enough of far from your time for a lifetime. For the whole 343 years of his lifetime, including the ones he didn't notice passing him by.

"Far from my time," he says, echoing Peter's words.

Yeah. Far from his time is about right. Far, far further than the 303 years he'd thought were more than far enough.

"You could say that," he says, dropping his hand to shove the lance back into its holster. "Like about 3000 years."

[spideys]

That makes Peter sit up, jolted as though he'd just been electrocuted.

And any other thought is mostly cleared out by the sheer consideration of distance in time between him and Captain Hunt.

C r a z y.

"What? You - you serious?"

[dreams_dont_die]

"I've learned just how serious temporal displacement is."

A long eighteen months ago.

"So yeah. I'm serious. Before I found myself here it was Commonwealth Year 10088. Which in Earth time is ..." He hesitates, making a mental calculation, because for a man from Tarn-Vedra, Earth reckoning was never his first way of dating. "5168."

He shakes his head.

"And you'd never have heard of my homeworld."

[spideys]

"That's insane," is the first thing that comes out of Peter's mouth before he can stop it.

Because - what the hell.

Talk about science-fiction come to life; Peter can't even imagine what life would be like 3,156 years later, but he imagines sticking around Dylan will enlighten him to some degree.

"Wow, that - that makes me feel like I'm living in the stone-age or something. All our tech must be really primitive.

"A-a lot could change in 3,000 plus years."

To put it lightly.

[dreams_dont_die]

He's used to hearing people say that he -- or his story -- is insane, but this isn't his particular story that's in question. It's him being here, in this place. It's this place, these people. And this dwarfs even 303 years spent trapped on the edge of a black hole.

"A lot can change in just a few moments," he says, his tone verging on bitterness, because that 303 years seemed to pass in just that, moments, and those moments stole his life and everything he'd known. Civilization fell in those moments, chaos took over, his homeworld and all its culture and history vanished.

And that was in just a couple of those hundreds of years.

He shakes his head.

"I gotta say, I'm not even sure what your world would be like. My Earth history isn't that great." Earth, of course, has a connection to all humans, as their original home, but Dylan's always felt a greater affinity for his own home and the Commonwealth it stood for.

[spideys]

"Earth history."

Peter shakes his head, disbelieving, and still in awe. The fact that there's an 'Earth history', something that isn't specified into 'US history' or 'Chinese history' ... well, that's something. Because that means his planet as a whole has to have had some distance in time before every country could be lumped into one singular noun: 'Earth'.

"Man, you're not kidding about that."

He's not even sure what 'that' really implies. The year 5168? The fact that a lot can change in 3,000 years plus? Or that it could change in even a few moments?

"Well, my world's - it's somethin'."

[dreams_dont_die]

"Earth history," Dylan confirms. "Earth joined the Commonwealth and its people spread out across the Known Worlds. Including my ancestors."

It's a good thing Peter doesn't know what Dylan does know about the history of Earth in times more recent to Dylan's understanding. About humanity spreading out from its homeworld and leaving it an ancestral homeworld with little significance to many of its descendants, Dylan included. About the enslavement by the Drago-Kazov after the Fall, and the Magog attacks, and the poverty and hopelessness that gave Harper his lousy immune system and his hatred of Nietszscheans.

About the revolution Harper helped start and Dylan couldn't finish.

"Yeah," he agrees, his voice quiet and, for a moment, his eyes suddenly distant as his thoughts go thousands of years and millions of light-years away. To Tarn-Vedra, the one, unaccountable loss when he'd woken. "So was mine."

His world, and the Vedrans, and the line they should have been able to help hold in the face of the war that destroyed civilization. But they were gone. The slipstream route vanished, and with it, the symbol of all Dylan once knew and loved. Would the world he'd founds after Hephaistos be any easier to handle knowing his home were there, somewhere?

Maybe not. But its loss still aches as deep as any other. If even Harper can love the hellhole that Earth is in his time, then a son of Tarn-Vedra can mourn its loss even more keenly.

[spideys]

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that home-worlds are a bit of a touchy subject for the captain.

Peter glances at him for a moment, then runs a hand through his mess of brown hair, stalling for something to say. Something comforting, maybe; or something to give him an idea of whether or not it's cool to keep talking about home-worlds without it becoming awkward or uncomfortable.

"Well, I guess it's kinda cool knowing that people managed to advance space travel to the point of inhabiting what sounds like a lot of new planets."

[dreams_dont_die]

"They had a little help." From the Perseids, their sponsors into the Commonwealth and, ultimately, from the Vedrans, the first race to discover Slipstream, the first to travel faster than light and the conquerors, then founders, of the Commonwealth.

"But by my time, humans have spread out across three galaxies, to hundreds of thousands of worlds." Including the tiny minority population in their quarter of Vishna-Tarn that had been Dylan's people growing up.

"I'm not even sure when my ancestors left Earth, but it was a long time ago."

[spideys]

With a few millenia between them, it suddenly becomes apparent that, for people to continue to exist, to continue to thrive in different types of planetary weather, vegetation, and simply getting along with other species, the human race would have to adapt; they couldn't remain exactly as they are in the year 2012.

Peter can't help but look at Dylan again, this time with a slightly different perspective.

"Hey, uh - about the human species. It's - it's not possible for us to remain exactly the same, having the same kind of genetic make-up, when there are so many different types of uh - new environments to adapt to. You must be a totally different type of human than I am, huh?

"Aliens and humans ... they must have -" He shrugs, intentionally choosing not to finish the sentence because talking about intercrossing species, his species, is kind of a weird topic to get into.

[dreams_dont_die]

Dylan's eyebrows raise.

"Yeah. The aliens and humans, that ... maybe not quite so much. I mean, it happens." Of course it does.

"But humans have had to adapt to different environments. Mostly through genetic engineering. Most of the human race has been enhanced in one way or another, even if it's just their immune systems. But there are a lot of planets out there that aren't much like Earth. There are subgroups of altered humans who can breathe underwater or can survive the environments on volcanic worlds. There's even a whole subspecies genetically engineered and bred to be perfect."

For a given value of perfection, of course. For all they like to go on about physical perfection, he personally thinks a lot of Nietzscheans have a hell of a long way to go before they're actually perfect. But since imperfection is part of being human, he's okay with that.

He shrugs.

"And there are people who have the muscle mass to survive on worlds with gravity much higher than Earth's. And that would be me."

[spideys]

"Wow."

Huh. Yeah, Peter figured as much but it's weird to actually hear that it exists. That human beings adapting to environments - those with the ability to breathe underwater, or withstand severe temperatures feels like science-fiction, but his own story isn't so far off the mark. After all, he is the first human being to survive a radioactive spider-bite and still be just him, not a Lizard, not an actual spider, but just Peter Parker ... with advanced strength, agility, and healing. (Among other things.)

"And is that a natural part of you? Or was that sort of ... engineered into you?"

[dreams_dont_die]

"Into my ancestors."

To someone from Peter's time period, when Earth hadn't started colonizing the rest of its system, let alone met the Perseids and joined the Commonwealth, this must be a surprise.

The difference in perspective shows the gap of thousands of years; to Peter's viewpoint, this is something he has to ask if it's happened, but to Dylan's, it's such a part of who he is, and of humanity itself, that it's strange to think of a humanity that doesn't have that history.

"Humans had to be genetically engineered when we first started to live on heavy gravity worlds. My mother's family came from one, before she left to become a pilot. I inherited the enhanced genes."

[spideys]

Peter nods.

"Yeah, yeah that makes sense."

He sits back, brows furrowed in concentration, arms crossed. Digesting this new bit of information. Fascinated, and yet ... well, no, simply fascinated.

"That's crazy, man. I mean - it's really cool, but ... this sort of genetic advancement is still in its really early stages back where I'm from."

[dreams_dont_die]

"Like you said. Humanity went out to new planets, and not all of them were hospitable. Besides, we, uh, had a little help with some of the technology."

A lot of humanity's greatest scientific advancements -- even through into more recent times, like Harper's crazy time-traveling teleport -- came about as a result of a combination of Perseid technology and human ingenuity. Just like Harper said.

"In your time, yeah, it still was in its early stages. In my world, too."

He shrugs.

"It's just a part of what humanity is. Something like 90 percent of humans have been genetically enhanced in one way or another."

[spideys]

"We're uh - pretty persistent to keep living, that's another thing," Peter says, shrugging.

There's a trace of wry amusement in there, like maybe people aren't so different from rats or cockroaches or any other species ever, just trying to get by on whatever planet they're on because the alternative is so scary.

"Not all that easy to wipe us out."