reverielogs | Tide don't know where the river flows

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Tide don't know where the river flows

» WHO? Mike and You
» WHEN? Shortly after the sickness plot
» WHERE? Around the station
» WHAT? Mike is not!dead of mystery plague and even got some new duds.
» WARNINGS?None at this time.

Mike thought he was going to die. Then he got so bad, he wished he had. But for all his tempting of Fate, he remained. Enduring, until he found himself waking and thinking that actually, he didn't really feel all that terrible.

That, in and of itself, would have been reason enough to celebrate: the simple joy of being able to cross his own suite without feeling like his knees might be swept from under him, to finally shower the stink of sweat and sick off, to see the dark, spidering veins giving up his body....

And then he found it. Pressed. Folded. As if he himself had put it there. As if it had been waiting for him.

When his hands shook now, it wasn't from illness.

Deck 4:

Plague aside, Mike took care of himself on station. Both as professional habit and personal pride - clean jumpsuit, shaved face, neat hair, his magboots as shiny as he could make them. But somehow he managed to even outdo himself as he stepped from cabin #001 that day. He stands taller in his navy uniform. Stronger for the blue and white silhouette, despite the jagged, black tendrils still snaking from under his collar.

He stands in the doorway - the frame all but engulfed by his shoulders - and smiles at a passerby. He ducks his head, in greeting, as his wrist flicks and the ballcap in his hand snaps open.

Joining them in the flow of foot-traffic, he begins to settle it on his head.

USS Nathan James, it reads. The Spear of the Navy.

"Morning."

It doesn't seem to matter that it actually isn't.

Mess Hall:

He takes the hat off when he eats, but it stays nearby. On the table by his right hand, where he can easily reach it. And see it.

Stare at it, his chest filling with both pride and grief.

And his face too, as the expression he looks up with is clear.

"Help yourself," he gestures with his cutlery to the open seat across from him.

Command Area:

Despite feeling better, he still tires more quickly than he would have liked. Before giving into it and returning to the walls of his cabin, he finds his way to the Bridge. Out of all the places on the station, this was the one he liked the most.

Found the most comfort in.

Understood.

He stands behind the command chair and stares silently at the displays. When footsteps announce someone joining him, he glances back, then nods his head at the large screen.

"Too bad it's not a window, huh?"

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[A voice, feminine and clearly electronic, responds to his musing.]

A window could prove a structural weakness, particularly in such a crucial area of the station.

[The answer, while practical, likely isn’t the sympathetic response he was hoping for. Arid’s faceplate turns to regard the monitors for herself.] If you are seeking a clear view of the surrounding space and planet below, there is an observatory on Deck One.

[Ah. One of those types - the no-fun literal brigade. He exhales through his nose heavily, but politely lets it go.

Technically, the lady bot wasn't wrong.]

Yeah, I know. I just like this room better.

[ Bodhi stops, try in hand - trying to read the inscription on the hat. as the invitation is offered, he nods with a slight smile and puts his tray down opposite Mike. wearing his own gray Imperial flightsuit from over the white standard station one today, his entire arm is covered - only a small portion of copper peeks out from under the cuff.

he nods at the hat. ]

From home?

[Returning his knife and fork to the lump on his tray - it still didn't look like much, the food, but the taste really had improved (or all his tastebuds had finally died off) - Mike smiles as he cuts and spears himself a bite.]

Kind of gives itself away, doesn't it?

It does. [ the uniform is different than that of most of the officers of the Empire - Mike himself is nothing like that, but there's still the nagging of his conditioning as a (former) Imperial that has Bodhi almost offering a salute.

Instead, he dips a piece of something resembling bread into his soup. ]

Nathan James. That's your ship, I take it?

It is. [His smile grows at one corner of his mouth and he moves hand to turn the cap around for Bodhi to see.] Though I know that means different things to people here.

[And indeed, the ship on the hat looks different than any Bodhi would probably know.]

She actually sails on water. No flying through space.

[ from the look on his face, Bodhi is one of those people who it means something different to, being of the "flying through space" variety of people. he stares at the ship for a long moment. ]

Huh. I've never been on that kind of ship before. Hell, I've seen oceans from a distance, but ... never been to one. [ he'd learned to swim in this station's pool, and all. ]

Space travel isn't always this exciting. [ ... ] Not that we're actually travelling anywhere, at the moment.

[Mike snorts lowly.]

I'd certainly hope so, otherwise how would you ever get anything done?

[ that gets a small smile from Bodhi, and a shake of his head. ]

Yes, it'd be pretty hard to fly a ship when you're mysteriously ill or under a week's sleep deprivation. The later would get you killed almost instantly.

Same on the James.

[Mike brightens, gesturing with one hand as he smiles.]

Common ground. What's a few hundred - or thousand - years between us?

Frank received a uniform of his own, though thank god, not his own military uniform. That he would've spaced on sight. o, this is much more familiar. It's a Reverie Terminal jumpsuit, like any of the newly arrived appears in, but instead of a faded blue it's a soft black and appears tailored to his exact measurements. More disturbing is the name over his breast, embroidered just like Mike's and it reads his own name: Castiglione. Well, his new name. The one people here know him by, a strange hybridization of the two.

He nods at the offer and sits almost gingerly across from the other man, a serious expression on his face. It's been a while since he's spoken with Mike, he has to admit he looks annoyingly at home in those fatigues. "Lookin' good, sailor." Out of habit, he sits a little straighter, but he refuses to salute. Those days are over for him, even if Mike technically outranks him.

Mike doesn't salute either - both because he's picked up on how carefully Frank distances himself from such protocol, and because his hat was off - but he offers a respectable nod.

"Blue brings out my eyes."

He says just mildly enough to make it hard to know if he actually takes the fashion of it seriously.

The small, twitched curve of his mouth gives it away though.

It earns him a soft smile, glad he'd had the impulse to sit down with the other man suddenly. There are so few things here that are positive anymore, it's a good reminder that not everything is garbage all the time.

"If you wanna get back in regs, I could clean you up," he offers in the nature of gentle ribbing, thinking Mike's haircuts should match his new duds.

"Hey now," his head comes up sharply, but there's still humor in his eyes. "What's left of my hair is perfectly regulation."

He always makes the bald joke first. Everyone else has to get their own.

Frank snorts and ducks his head. There hasn't been enough in the way of laughter on this station since they all got here. He's been trying to lighten things up as best he can, but it's difficult when nothing matches up. When every time they make a forward stride it's matched by backward progress. "Open offer," he reiterates, making sure Mike knows it isn't really about the haircut. He knows he hasn't checked in with the other man in a while and he blames himself for being so distant.

Mike twirls his fork between his fingers, expression all dry.

"I'll keep that in mind."

There's a beat while he spears at his food, then his lifts his chin at Frank.

"How've you been? You get sick too?"

Frank nods, looking away for a moment before he's addressed again.

"Uh. Yeah, but not as bad as some people. I spent most of the time taking care of my-" He was going to say friends, but is Matt his friend? So he ends up awkwardly revising to just: "Karen." Then grimaces because wow, that came out weirder than usual, even for him.

"Do, uh. Do you feel better?"

One of Mike's eyebrows twitches, but he decides to let it lie for now.

"Huh. Well, I'm glad it wasn't too bad for you." Unconsciously, he rolls one shoulder, rubbing his collar against his neck where the black veins still linger, a gruesome sharpness visible beneath this skin. "Nothing like a brush with death to make you feel alive."

"Yeah, well, I hate to say it but I'm used to this place fucking with us. It's kinda business as usual after a while, isn't it?" He offers a slim smile at the commentary. He perfected the art of almost dying tbh. "At least it's familiar."

Mike makes a bark of a sound, a rough low noise caught somewhere between a snort and a laugh.

"Every time I thought we'd hit 'okay' crap hit the fan again. This though--" His gaze flashes to the side and then roll slightly toward the ceiling in all encompassing look at this shit gesture. "This is a whole other level."

All he can really do is nod at that, biting his lip against an equally rough sound.

"You can say that shit again."

He bobs his head, wry camaraderie. Then he takes a pronounced breath and gestures at Frank with his spoon.

"All the more reason to enjoy what we can while we can." The spoon points down toward his bowl of oatmeal mush. "Is it just me or does this actually taste normal today? If I didn't know better I'd say there were actual oats in it."

"Now you're freaking me out." With his cheer, he means. Frank looks over the food when Mike indicates it, realizing it does actually look better. "I guess those kids are finally getting somewhere with those food machines. That almost looks appetizing." Enough so that he's thinking about getting a portion of it himself.

Mike's mouth twitches, another breath rolling in the back of his throat.

"Don't worry, I'm sure we'll be back to running for our lives soon enough."

He scoops into his oatmeal and lifts the spoon toward his mouth.

"So get it while it lasts."

So, that was a taste of what this station could offer, huh? Jim has to admit that it wasn't all that fun. That was it was actually pretty freaking terrifying to watch his body slowly break down in front of him. That he could lose limbs and just watch in horrified awe as they rolled around his room.

Thankfully, whatever had caused it had seemed to right itself and now the only remnants of that ordeal were some black lines that crawled up from wrist to elbow. Even his fingers were back to normal.

"Too bad we can't do more than just stare at this point," Jim returned, stepping into the command area and taking a breath. Like Mike, he was most at ease here as well. It wasn't the Enterprise but it was something and he felt like being here was the hub of the action.

Mike spots a bit of that familiar black, peeking out on Kirk's skin, with a quick glance and unconsciously he tips his own head away from the similar wounds on his neck.

Twins.

He says nothing about it though, just shrugs his broad shoulders mildly.

"For now. We're in the hanger. Hopefully it's only a matter of time."

"Guess that's better than no access at all," Jim muses, crossing his arms over his chest and walking the perimeter of the room. "Bet this place worked pretty well went it was alive and not a hunk of junk in some unknown part of the galaxy."

That still twigged Jim out a bit, that they were just hanging there, unprotected. It was an invitation for unsavory types to find them and shoot them out of orbit.

"Most space stations don't just get built for no reason," he wonders aloud, "so I still wonder what the reason for this one was. My guess is something to do with the planet but that's apparently a dead zone too."

"Unless this scenic corner of bumfuck nowhere was chosen because it's dead." Mike looks over at Kirk, his arms folding easily over his chest - a tree trunk of flesh and bone behind the Captain's chair. "If they guessed whatever they were experimenting on could go even a fraction as bad as it did, you'd hope they pick somewhere far away from everyone and everything else."

"True."

Jim has to give him that one. And if that's what's happened, he has to give credit to the crew of the station as well for not senselessly endangering other people just because they wanted the station built in a convenient part of space.

He shudders though, a full body thing that makes him grimace. "I hate the thought of experiments. I'm not denying that that's a possibility, not after all that sick shit that just happened but I better not be here to be a lab rat."

He was too pretty for that. But then again, he'd already died so looks really didn't matter, did they? "You hear any reports of what they found down on the planet?"

"The team posted about it on the network," Mike replies, almost idly, distracted by what else Kirk said. "The possibility of experiments? I take it you didn't see the video where they did that."

"Still kinda new here," Jim explains with a shrug of his shoulder. "I haven't gotten completely up to date."

But, he's frowning. He's frowning that it's happened already.

"What video? What experiments?"

Rather than replying with words, Mike unfolds his arms and steps away from the command chair. Down in the deck, he taps one of the consoles, moving through the folders until he finds The Video.

With another tap of his finger, he starts it playing.

A woman orders one crew member to contact mission command. She then informs mission command that they are about to begin test zero-zero-five and to stand by. The crew clearly knows the protocol for running this test; various crew members call out their tasks, from slowing the rings to a stop (after which gravity ceases on the command desk and presumably everywhere on the station) to initiating drive.

There is a tense moment. A crew member keeps calling percentages: “Drive at five percent. Drive at ten percent.”

Eventually: “Drive steady at 60 percent. Steady -”

Several consoles beep. “Drive failed.”

The woman contacts mission command again: “Be advised. Test zero-zero-five failed after a climb to 60%.”

As it finishes, he looks back at Kirk, arms folding again.

"They were testing something here, experimenting with whatever this 'drive' was. And something clearly went sideways leaving the station broken and empty until we were brought here."

"Well, that's comforting," Jim says, sighing. He crosses his arms, letting his mind spin with possibilities on the drive. A station wasn't typically something that moved so he doesn't think they could be talking about a hyper drive but a 'drive' implies movement so.

He scowls and shakes his head. "For a second, I thought you were going to show me human experiments. Glad they didn't go that far, at least."

"We don't know what it's supposed to do, so technically, it still could be," Mike points out mildly. "And given what happened to them..."

He trails off, shrugging his broad shoulders.

"Cheery, huh?"

"Place just gets better and better," Jim says, sighing. He rubs a hand over his face and shakes his head. "Given what happened to them, yeah -- "

He cuts off and frowns, thumb worrying along his lower lip. "So, this whole thing could be an experiment? An extraordinarily well organized thing that's meant to test and torture."

It was cruelly elegant, if so.

"This is why I stick to ships. Stationary things like this are bad news."

"Gotta say," Mike sighs, staring the screen with eyes that weren't really watching the people move to and fro in their clipped limbo. "Of all the things to survive the test of time, I was kind of hoping these particular parts of human nature didn't. Whether it's cruelty or just spectacular incompetence---"

He breaks off, tone making his opinion clear.

He'd just hoped for better. That they might have learned, eventually.

"If it helps, this isn't only a human nature thing," Jim says with a sigh. He scratches at his cheek, frowning at the state of everything. He was stuck on a station with no way back, possibly dead or still dying, and whoever had brought him here had been a little messed up.

"People are like this everywhere in the galaxy," he shares with a rueful frown. "Not everyone, of course, but enough. Power corrupts and all that philosophy shit. Spock would be better at doling out advice in a situation like this."

"Didn't say I was surprised," Mike points out, glancing back over at Kirk. "Just disappointed."

He says in the tone perfected by fathers everywhere.

"Yeah. Hey, maybe that's what the people here before us were trying to change," Jim said, tone sarcastic. "They were trying to make the world a better place and had to fuck it all up before that happened."

Doubtful but Jim really hates that he can't figure this place out. He's usually better at parsing out puzzles and solving them. This station is just a question mark of massive proportions and it bugs Jim so much.

"I hate how confused this place makes me."

Edited 2018-09-12 15:37 (UTC)

"Megalomania," Mike mutters dryly. "That's something else that could stay in the past."

He exhales a long breath, eyes sweeping over the viewscreen, the blinking consoles again.

"At least you've got a basis to work off. We hadn't even made it to Mars yet where I'm from."

"Mars isn't all that impressive," Jim says, wrinkling his nose. "Lots of dust, no aliens. It's once you get past the Milky Way that you find the good stuff."

The Federation hadn't even bothered with those planets save for resources. Once hyperspace had been accessible, that's when they'd been able to find other life, both plant and animal, and they'd been able to expand their outreach.

"This is actually the quietest part of space I've been in in awhile."

Mike says nothing, letting Kirk go on without comment. He only tips his head, slanting the man a look that - when Kirk pauses and looks back - says clearly, "Thanks for proving the point."

A beat after that he offers a mildly amused, "I'll have to take your word for it."

Edited (better icon) 2018-09-18 11:46 (UTC)

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Tide don't know where the river flows

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