ten_fwd_ooc | TEST DRIVE #2 - The Holodeck/Ten Forward

Where were you a minute ago? Well, you aren't there anymore. Instead, you're standing in a very large, dark room lined with yellow. There are doors at either end of it.

Here's where things get a little choose your own adventure-y. You could:

1: Approach a console filled with buttons, located a few feet away. Press one, and it'll let you out of the room. Travel down a long hallway and you'll be in Ten Forward, the Enterprises' entertainment lounge. Have a drink, mingle and try to figure out why you're here.

OR

2: Maybe you just muttered some vague request under your breath. Maybe you wished aloud you were somewhere else. Or for help? If you did, might be in a fire station. Muttered something about killing whoever dumped you here? Surprise - you're in a slasher movie!

Though they're confusing, these visions feel about as real as they can be. And guess what - other people can experience those fantasies with you, as if they too were really there. How ever will you escape? Or do you want to?

[OOC: Welcome to the Holodeck! If you choose this option, whatever your character chooses to say out loud will cause a virtual reality program to load and play. While your character feels as if what they're experiencing and seeing is quite real, they're purely living through the latest and best in what he Enterprise has to offer in entertainment. Make sure to detail what your character's fantasy is, so that those threading with them will know how to react.

Open til next month's test drive!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Near stars, far stars...I wish I could see the bigger picture from here," Billy admits, giving it one more glance before turning his gaze toward the bar again. "For now I'm having a more interesting time meeting the people here. Life across the universe---I never thought I'd see this."

It's a massive inconvenience, definitely worrisome, but the opportunity this little trip affords still has its appeal. There's a smile in his eyes.

That's the kind of smile The Doctor has proudly coaxed out of dozens of people. This one isn't his in the earning. But he's done it. Lived for it. The sight of the awe and wonder of the grandiose cosmos spread out like a blanket at the feet of someone for the first time.

He takes a risk. A leap. Pleased, a little assumptive, but congenially curious."You've never been in space before now?"

"No, but I've wanted to be since I was a child," Billy says, casting another fond glance at the window. Maybe those stars are just stars...but if this ship moves again, they'll eventually see something amazing, he hopes.

He looks up at his mysterious conversation partner again and laughs, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. "You could say that first contact didn't go well for my planet...but I didn't stop hoping that there was more good to see than bad. I still hope I'm right."

"Well, first meetings aren't always great, right?" Ten smiled, as thought this could be obvious. First meetings with aliens could go as disastrous as first meetings with anyone else of any same race. While the second could cause more problems than the first, it was still the same kind of concept. Problem. Situation. Idea. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes you had to hit the third or fourth. The twentieth. A thousand years.

"But the hope lives on." Ten might be beaming. He loved that about humans. Even while talking about it not working out, the boy smiles and he dreamed of more still hiding in the twinkling stars, looking shy and embarrassed for the admission of it. "So, how'd you come around to this? No, let me guess. Is it a round trip? Some kind of first out the gate tour?"

"Right. Given the diversity you'd expect with all the combinations that create life, it's statistically improbable that all encounters would be similar." Because that totally makes sense, right? He's justified it enough for himself, and that's what counts.

Billy exhales slightly, then glances up, as if their captor might be around. "I wish those were the circumstances---but almost everyone not in uniform was pulled here from a different point in time and space. The crew's still working on the why and how."

The Doctor's eyebrows pushed upward, head canting to one side. "Pulled through time? What? All of them?"

It's almost as easy as that, too. He can pick them out. It's why the room felt wrong. Why nothing was matching correctly. It's not everyone in the room, but it's a large percentage of the room. Ripped from other times, and deposited in this Fixed Point. This still-standing ship. Displaced. Disjointed.

"I think so," is Billy's answer. He gazes around at the room, idly counting off the people he's met. "I've met two who work for the same organization that owns this ship, but they came from a hundred years in the past. Almost everyone else has never heard of Starfleet or space exploration like this. And we have a few planets represented"

He works on recalling all he's learned about the newcomers. "The funnier thing is that even for those of us from Earth, our planets' histories seem to be inconsistent."

"Different timelines? Different universe?" He asks it with all the seriousness the question deserves.

"What kinds of discrepancies are showing up between the histories and worlds?"

"The main one is that first contact appears to have happened at different points. It could be that previous instances were covered up, but we all remember different dates: the 1990s, the 1940s, earlier than that in a case or two. That, and superheroes---they exist on different worlds, but we haven't heard of the sets from others' Earths."

Billy folds his hands behind his back, frowning. Nothing that too severely affected the course of the planet, it seemed, but it was still worrisome.

Parallels, mirrors, alternates. The skin of the universes, and not just time, being ripped apart by an unknown being for an unknown purpose. But whom had gone to great lengths, and great troubles, to amass these disparate people. Aliens had been coming to the Earth he knew for far longer than most humans had ever been aware of it.

"Has anyone started cataloging all these differences?" Started comparing what the similarities might be.

"I'd ask Philip and Shotaro. They're a pair of detectives from Japan, and they have a real talent for absorbing information like that," Billy recommends, idly gesturing in the direction he last saw Shotaro's hat.

"I'm trying to help as well, but I think I've been slightly distracted by the new tech and new people," he admits with some shame, idly kicking a foot.

TEST DRIVE #2 - The Holodeck/Ten Forward

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