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.


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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

[my_guardian_devil]

"Reddington," she says, even before she has him in her sights.

She stares at him with a wrinkle in her brow and her lips parted, quickly working out two conclusions: one, that if he expects her to believe that then he must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel; and two, he looks different than he did a minute ago.

She arches an eyebrow.

"Space? What is this, Red?" she asks, pivoting to face him. "Tell me what's really going on."

[suspense_kills_me]

Liz, as per usual, decided to tend toward, Or not. Red wasn't surprised in the least.

"Space, final frontier all of that."

Then he flagged the bartender of the day over and ordered a second scotch.

"Look out the window, if you don't believe me."

[my_guardian_devil]

"What, the view? Yeah, I've seen it."

Her skepticism isn't going anywhere fast, but the more invested Reddington seems in this story, the more she takes in the things around her. She gathers her skirt in her hands and slowly makes her way toward the bar, glancing at the fixtures and patrons she passes on the way.

She has to do a double-take when she catches a Vulcan out of the corner of her eye.

"Is that ... ?" No, she won't buy in yet. Her focus returns to Red. "We were leaving the King's auction. There's no way I could have ended up here unless I'd been drugged again."

[suspense_kills_me]

"If the word you're looking for is Alien, then yes it is. Though I suppose we would be the aliens to him."

Red nodded a bit. That sealed it. Lizzie was almost from the exact same time as he was.

"No, you haven't been drugged and no hope of becoming so from the scotch, but," he shrugged a bit before handing her the glass.

[my_guardian_devil]

Great. Even in outer space Reddington still manages to be pedantic. She watches him carefully, filing away each micro-expression and every frustrating lack thereof as he hands her the glass of scotch. She takes it, even spends a few seconds looking at it, but she takes a drink without any further remark. Maybe that says something. Maybe it doesn't.

"That's terrible," she says, making a face at the glass. "They call that scotch?"

If there was ever going to be any convincing proof she's not on Earth, that would be it. She sets the glass down on the bar, and takes a breath.

"You're trying to tell me that I somehow ended up on some alien spaceship, with no memories of how I got here, no sense of time passing," she begins, eyes soft and imploring. "And that you just happen to be here, but I haven't been drugged?"

[suspense_kills_me]

"They do. I suppose some knowledge got lost over the centuries."

Namely, how to make good scotch. He supposed there was some perceived benefit for making it this way, but for the life of him Red couldn't find it.

"I'm not trying to do anything, Lizzie. I am telling you you're on a spaceship with no memory of how you got here, and you haven't been drugged."

And he told her, many months ago, that he'd never lie to her. That was a promise he planned on keeping here too.

[my_guardian_devil]

She isn't sure how much stock anyone can really put in Red's promises. There's so much he isn't telling her that even if he isn't lying to her face, she can still estimate dozens of lies of omission. But for some reason, and god help her whatever it is, she wants to believe him.

So she doesn't say 'Bullshit', even though that's the first word on her tongue.

"Then how did you get here?" she asks instead, eyes drifting back over the room. "And when? I was just with you. You couldn't have had time to sample their scotch before I got here."

Assuming the timeline is right and he isn't lying to her, and that all of this — whatever this is — fits into a neat little box.

[suspense_kills_me]

"It's been about a month, and as far as I know," the look in his eyes said that he knew this was going to be one of the strangest things he'd ever told her. That said something since their lives were what they were back home.

"Something that goes by the name of Q decided to bring us all here. He's bored. When he's bored this is what he does."