TEST DRIVE #10 - Cetacean Pool and Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

#1

Option 001. Cetacean Pool/Aquatics Lab: Of all the places in the world, you open your eyes and you find yourself in a medium-sized aquatics laboratory, filled with various living specimens along with various science officers bustling about trying to maintain order. There's much to explore here (and hopefully, in the crew's opinion, not break), but the main attraction is the large pool at the far end of the lab; enormous but tanklike in appearance, it contains several dolphins happily swimming about, seemingly without a care in the world.


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

cries on you

[megabot]

"It's either that or the eight legs, if you want to be choosey." That's a little...weird, actually. Hiro's sure that the other was a bit brighter, a second ago; so what's with the shyness now?

"Well aren't you plain out of luck, then?" His voice is probably a tad too dry- a little overly confident. It's easy to forget sometimes that most people? Most people don't understand his sarcastic mannerisms.

Although- "Yes! Yeah, I'm a new arrival. Nothing to do with your amnesia- which, I mean, sorry for that, totally lame-" Yeah no he doesn't care. "New arrival. Meaning, more than just me? People just, show up here? Out of nowhere?"

dries off tears with tissue

[akito]

"Don't say things like that - you'll jinx it! And then one day I'll wake up with tentacles and won't be able to wear my favourite shirts anymore, and my cat will probably see if I'd make good sushi." Sarcasam is good. Meh Yewll was always full of sass when he basically lived in the medbay. So he can totally work with this. And somehow even the overconfident tone is more attractive than it is offputting.

"Um, yeah - it happens in waves, usually. Around the start of the month? Apparently an all-powerful god-like entity named Q gets bored really easily and likes to drag people in from other dimensions and universes for fun." Akito can only shrug at that because, yeah, it definitely is as weird as it sounds. "Then if that isn't enough for him he'll sometimes do weird stuff to us for entertainment. I can't personally confirm that though since the last time it happened I was in a coma. The ship's logs probably have more data available on it though..."

Speaking of which - "Oh! Ah, this is a space ship. If you didn't have a chance to look out of a window. It's a pretty neat place to be stuck! Um, like, if you ever want anything you can just go to a replicator and it will make it for you. The only thing I know it can't do is replicate something for you that's alive."

Icon keywords tbh

[megabot]

"Pretty sure that's not going to happen." Fred. He reminds him of Fred. His shoulders relax as his lips curve into a knowing smile; eccentrics. Eccentrics are okay, Hiro can handle those.

Except when they're talking about things like that.

"Woah, woah! Okay, time out. Hold." Hiro's hands fly up into a 'T' formation, skeptical from the word go. "I'm gonna start with the spaceship, because that's easiest. Haven't invented those yet. Or replicators."

He makes a soft tsk sound, shoulders raising into a shrug. "And dimensions? Universes? What are we talking here; like, space time continuum or Many World's Interpretation? Hate to break it to you; it sounds cool, but it's pretty much only useful in sci-fi. Copenhagen, you know? Can't have too many dimensions, they'd just keep collapsing again."

HIRO-MUN HAS GONE TO THE WORLD OF DREAMS and will tag more later c:

[akito]

"Spaceships were invented in like the 1960's of course there are spaceships. Not advanced like this one, but it's definitely plausible that in some spot on the time continuum they get to be as cool as this one. And- Copenhagen? I dunno what it's like where you're from, but nobody seems to know what the Copenhagen interpretation actually is as far as I've read. Everyone thinks it's something different and sometimes contradictory to each other and it's just... Weird. Quantum physics, you know? Ah.. I mean, obviously you know. Since you know about this stuff..."

So maybe Akito was pretty bored and also pretty curious about things when he was confined to bed rest. And physics really clicked with him the most - right after biology. With nothing else to do trying to teach himself knowledge he might have lost seemed like the best idea. "And I'm pretty sure it's more like space-time continuum than, um, Many Worlds interpretation? Since there are people here from the same worlds but different times within them. But then there are a lot of people from Earth, but from different versions of it... It's definitely like... Different worlds running parallel to each other. Super similar but not exactly the same? And then this Q guy can just pluck someone out of their strand of the universe and dump them into this one..."

Quantum physics is too weird. He rubs at his temples absently; a habit he's picked up from the chronic headaches he gets since waking. "I only read up on this stuff a couple of weeks ago, so I'm not an expert on it or anything, but obviously it's all at least plausible since we're here. In outer space? On a space ship with all kinds of weird stuff that I'm pretty sure doesn't follow the laws of conservation of mass."

It's frustrating. It's not something he thinks about often - in fact, he often tries not to think about it - but when he does it just feels like he's bashing his head against a brick wall. Akito lets out a frustrated exhalation as he brings his hand back down to stuff in his pocket, though he stiffens as he hears the tell-tale sound of water freezing over.

Oh, crap. Are the tanks temperature sensitive? He has absolutely no idea. And would rather not stick around to see if he gets in trouble for turning a good chunk of the water near the glass into ice. Akito's first instinct is to grab the other boy by his hand, which he does ("Just... Come with me and I'll show you!"), and then tug him out of the labyrinth of marine creatures until they exit into a more relatively-normal hallway.

Akito finds the nearest window and gestures for Hiro to take a look out of it.

"Space ship," he intones. Now much less anxious than he was when dragging them into the great, wonderful world of not-aquarium-ness. "And... Ah, actually before you get full access to the rest of the ship you've got to stop by the sickbay. They scan you for health issues, then will generally give you a hypospray - it's like a needle, but uses vaccines with a small enough molecular weight and size that it can be injected into your blood stream through your clothes via air pressure. It's like a pinch and then you're done! And protected against any strange space diseases that um, aliens... Might have that are transmissible."