TEST DRIVE #1 - Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

You know how you were standing there, back in your home world, just minding your own business?

Time to forget all about that.

Instead of doing whatever the heck you were just doing, you're standing in the middle of this very stylish, sedate barroom. Happily, you're not alone there - in fact you're surrounded by people who seem to be as confused as you are...and some of them look a little, well unusual

Now would be a great time to do....well, something. Ask some questions of the person nearest you, throw a fit, stage a coup....maybe do a little exploring? No matter what you do, you're going to be here for a very long time.

For others might call it the USS Enterprise, but for the foreseeable future, you'll be calling it home.

[OOC: this test drive's open until the next app period.]

Comments

[splendid_roman]

Ian was surprised by that reaction, but perhaps the other man had been living among aliens or something. Maybe there really were little green men on Mars.

"I don't know where here is," he admitted, "except for a spaceship in space in the 24th century." He was going to say they were in the future, but if the man's father had been to the moon he was already from Ian's future. But it was good to know that humans made it to the moon eventually.

"Seeing Earth from orbit must have been an amazing sight."

[never_felt_better]

"Twenty-fourth century?" John repeats, taking a closer look around. That's definitely the future from when John last saw Earth, and for a minute he feels rattlers in his stomach. Maybe the Earth he knew is gone, and everyone's dead, and he'll never find his way back.

He spies an officer in red and black sitting at a table. There's a little starfleet comm link on his breast. "Hot damn," he mutters, blinking hard. "What? No, yeah, it was amazing. Most amazing thing I'd seen until..."

He squints at that officer and starts laughing again, but this time it's low and forced and slightly manic. "Great googly-moogly. How the hell did I get here?"

[splendid_roman]

Ian was slightly worried about the other man, but then he just appeared on a spaceship. Ian had at least had a few minutes to get used to that.

"I wish I knew," he replied. "I don't know how I got here either." Ian was more calm. He'd been in strange places before and something would present itself sooner or later.

[never_felt_better]

Oh, Ian hasn't even scratched the surface of worrying things John does. He only gets worse from here.

"Do you know where we are?" he giggles, with all the weight of somebody who's got a secret. "No, you know what? I can't even say it out loud. One minute I was on Moya, and the next ... boom, hailing frequencies open. Wait a second, the same thing happened to you? You don't know where Earth is?"

[splendid_roman]

Ian thought that perhaps this man was crazy. Or he reacted to the strangeness in an odd way. But it was a very odd way, and Ian gave him an odd look. "I don't know where Earth is from here. I don't really know where he is, except somewhere in space, and space is big."

[never_felt_better]

Nah, not crazy. Southern! Much worse.

"Damn. Back to the drawing board," he mutters. So close, and yet so far. "I'm sorry ... hi, I'm John Crichton."

He holds out his hand for a proper handshake. "This is all a little weird. I've been trying to find a way back to Earth for a while now, and Friend, you're as close as I've gotten."

[splendid_roman]

"Ian Chesterton." He shook John's hand. "I can understand that feeling." He chuckled. "I can't say I've been on Earth for a while either." Not in the present, anyway, but he was starting to think John might believe his story.

[never_felt_better]

"Let me guess: a wormhole scooped you up and spit you out in uncharted space, right in the middle of Star Wars, and a living ship pulled your ass on board with the cast of Gilligan's Island, none of whom know where or what Earth is?" he ventures.

Oh no, wait, that's what happened to him. Still, it's as good a guess as any.

[splendid_roman]

"Not quite," Ian said chuckling. It sounded such an unbelievable story that he ventured to tell his, since John might well just assume he was making up an equally unbelievable story.

"I've been travelling through space and time in a police box."

[never_felt_better]

He lets that sink in a minute before reacting. The corner of his mouth twitches.

"Sure. Not the roomiest ride, but it'll do in a pinch, right?" he says.

John doesn't know what to believe anymore. The crazy thing is he's only just begun to see the wonders of time and space himself.

[splendid_roman]

"It's bigger on the inside." It sounded so crazy that Ian laughed. It probably did make him sound like he was joking, but John hadn't seemed like he'd believed him anyway.

[never_felt_better]

Something about his laugh is comforting, even though the conversation borders on manic, unbelievable hysteria. He chuckles, tilting his head quizzically.

"Now I'm wondering why you were so impressed with me being an astronaut," he says. "Hell, friend, IASA would kill for that ride."

[splendid_roman]

"Police boxes don't have windows," Ian said, still chuckling. Also space wasn't quite the same when you were inside something so safe.

[never_felt_better]

"That would put a damper on the experience," he says dryly. "How do you know where you're flying?"

Because talking out the science and mechanics of a space-traveling phone booth thing is the natural reaction, right?

[splendid_roman]

"You don't really. It doesn't feel any different." Which did make it sound less exciting, now he said it. "It doesn't feel any different on this ship either."

[never_felt_better]

"Huh." It is a pretty smooth ride. If only he could go back in time and tell his 15-year-old self that he'd one day be on the Enterprise. Almost without thinking, he hops a few times to make sure the ground underneath him is solid. Yep. "Well, I'm weirdly relieved I'm not the only guy with a bizarre war story, though I'd rather be back home with a six-pack and a ... oh, man, I wonder if they have chocolate here."

John misses chocolate. Maybe he should be worrying instead of casting about for a replicator, but he hasn't yet been taken hostage, probed, and lied to enough to be as wary of this place as he should be. It's just another weird alien thing, right? A familiar alien thing, but hey, he'll take it over Denteks and Hynerians any day. "How long have you been here, man?"

[splendid_roman]

Ian chuckled. He was amazed John even believed him - it said something about John's story that he did.

"A few hours," he replied. "I think. I didn't ask about the food but the bar has plenty to drink." He'd let John find out about synthehol on his own. "Of course the most important thing on a spaceship is a fully stocked bar." He chuckled again.

[never_felt_better]

John laughs, clapping Ian's shoulder. "My man!"

He likes the way Ian thinks. It's been a long time since John's had a decent beer, too. But if there's one thing that stays the same from planet to planet, it's that everyone has their own brand of knock-you-on-your-ass alcohol.

"This is the real test, right here," he says, finding what he's pretty sure is a replicator. "Not that I don't believe you, but if this thing can make real chocolate I'll know this isn't some Peacekeeper-induced hallucination. You want anything?"

[splendid_roman]

"Bacon and eggs," he said, thinking of the food dispenser on the TARDIS. He supposed he could live with bars that all looked the same but tasted mostly of what you wanted it to, if he had to. Although he'd rather not.

"If they have a bar, I hope that means they also have a kitchen."

[never_felt_better]

Good golly, Miss Molly, do Ian and John have a lot to commiserate over. Although food cubes don't even have the decency to pretend to be something else.

"Even better, if I can remember how this goes. I was probably fourteen the last time I saw one of these," he says, eyeing the buttons surrounding the replicator. Someone is using the unit right next door. Voice-activated. Handy. "Hey, how's it going? Can I get a plate of bacon and eggs, and a chocolate bar? Uh, please?"

The replicator chirps in response, and a female voice confirms their order. Within seconds, both the plate of food and the bar of chocolate appear in the dispenser.

"Houston, we have a chocolate bar!" John cries.

[splendid_roman]

Ian blinked. "That actually looks like bacon and eggs." That was a step above the Doctor's food machine. "Of course there's no guarantee what it tastes like." Bacon and eggs, even bacon and eggs that looked like bacon and eggs, could never taste like they looked.

Mind you, they smelled good.

There was even cutlery, so Ian cut himself off a piece of bacon and tasted it. And then he had to have a piece of egg, just to check. "This tastes like it's just been fried," he said amazed, then went back for more, just in case he was wrong about the first couple of bites.

"How's your chocolate?"