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

[asklepian]

But it's so tasty. Sad face.

The computer beeps in a...rather confused manner actually, which mirrors the look of bafflement on Julian's face, because tyrannosaurus? Like the dinosaur? That had been extinct for thousands of years?

The computer's voice is inflectionless, but female: "Unknown specifications. Please restate your request."

Julian shakes his head slightly. "That may be one we have to ask the engineers for." If they could do that...

[masenko]

"Oh," he said, puzzled. "I guess it's not popular anymore... megafauna meat is expensive to buy, but it's not so bad to hunt yourself."

He doesn't add "if you have ki control," because anyone can learn that, right?

[asklepian]

"Tyrannosaurus has been extinct for over 65 million years." He sounds...kind of weak when he says it. "That will be...something of an entirely different conversation."

Also, you...apparently hunt them. Not that he's judging (despite the fact that humans have largely stopped utilizing animal sources for food, it's unnecessary with the replicators) but that's insane. You're like five.

"Probably the closest analogue from Earth would be alligator." He thinks. What do you even compare tyrannosaurus to?

[masenko]

"Extinct?" he repeats. Now he's confused, too. "I've really only heard of alien races going extinct... I wonder who killed all the dinosaurs you're thinking of?"

Natural extinction? What's that?

"I've seen alligators in my books... My dad says they taste really good, but he says that about practically everything."

[asklepian]

"A meteor," Julian says, which...is something of a flat explanation. "And the subsequent global climate change induced by the debris in the atmosphere, that made food sources scarce both for herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs."

That would be natural extinction. Of course, that's all rather theoretical since modern humans came well after dinosaurs and all known information is pieced together from the fossil record.

"I wouldn't know, I've never had it personally."

[masenko]

"Really?" He grinned. "If I was you, and I had one of these, I'd try everything I could think of!"

[asklepian]

"I don't eat meat at all, generally speaking--I'm a vegetarian," Julian explains. Replicators might neatly avoid the ethical and environmental problems of harvesting animals for food, but there are health benefits to keep in mind.

That said, he has eaten meat before, mostly in survival situations, because at that point there's no being picky.