Shades of Grey in the Looking-Glass

Posted on Thu Sep 1st, 2011 @ 7:03pm by Lieutenant Commander Aral Aix & Captain Nathan Cowell MD

Mission: Tomorrow's Arizona
Location: Commodore's Ready Room, Bridge, USS Arizona
Timeline: Following 'Following a White Rabbit'

Aral Aix, having taken his leave of the unusually affectionate Chief Medical Officer, departed the all together too sane environment of sickbay in search of insanity, for insanity had somehow become the norm aboard the Arizona since she encountered the giant floating space doughnut that catapulted them all into this dystopian future timeline. The prospect of exploration the entity had afforded them was incomprehensibly vast. That was the good news. The prospect of a slow and painful death by any of a thousand means was equally pressing. That was the bad news.

The Chief Science Officer alighted the turbolift and found himself on the Bridge. En route he had received word from Engineering that the transponder was now fitted and fully functioning. He thought to inform the Commodore in person. Finding the bridge under the watchful custody of Lieutenants Idrani and Lischka and the ever dynamic Colonel nowhere in sight, Aix pressed the door chime of the Commodore's Ready Room. If Aix was in search of insanity the Commodore was its epicentre, the madness that flowed over the Arizona in this time line seemed to eddy and swirl around the ancient man and Aral knew, perhaps only subconsciously, that the Commodore could see the start of a path through the chaos they had found themselves wading through.

"If you're selling something, fuck off!" the Commodore bellowed from behind the door, the ire in his voice palpable.

"Just this beautiful morning Commodore!" Aral announced with optimistic gusto as he entered the Ready Room. As far as the Chief Science Officer was aware the trappings of capitalism had died out centuries before any of his births.

"See, you're trying to sell me something I don't want... worse than a damn encyclopedia salesman..." Nathan grumbled as he watched the undaunted science officer walk into his office. He almost... heavy emphasis on almost... regretted not having that drone around to dissuade visitors. It was, however, better that the drones were no longer aboard his ship. The tension aboard was almost too thick to move through at times.

"So what do you want, oh bringer of cheer no one asked for?" Nathan inquired sarcastically of his Second Officer.

"Your transponder has been installed at great cost to my own health," Aral replied as he made his way further into the room.

"Good," Nathan said briskly, "And since you're here with that damn smile on your face, you're less than dead... so I can't say I feel overly sorry for your cheerful ass..."

"How else would you have me behave on this side of the looking glass, sir?" Aral replied, his newly regenerated right hand resting on one of the chairs in front of the old man's desk.

"A little less like Alice," Nathan said, "That damnable girl should have died five times over by the time that book was half through. I'm sure it cuts down on chapters but its a damn sight more believable than that crap that was actually in that novel..."

The old man motioned for the Trill to take a seat, more out of annoyance for having someone attempting to tower over him in his own office than a desire to actually have the man stick around. It did, however, afford him on thing he hadn't had in a while... someone to vent at.

"So what do you think of this whole situation, Aral?" the Commodore asked.

Aral grinned. "Well you seem to think I'm the Cheshire Ca..." However before Aral could continue his literary exegesis, and ask the Commodore what the difference between a raven and a writing desk was, he was interrupted.

"The whole thing is fucked up, that's what it is!" the Commodore said suddenly, "I don't know why the hell that damn Guardian dumped us here... It's like the thing has some sadistic need to drop us in the middle of some hell just to get off! This is just like those damn morons back in the Second World War... always deploying us to those shit hole towns just to see if those damn krauts would come for us. I feel like we're being used as bait, and we didn't get told what the big fish out there is that we're supposed to be intended for. It's damn aggravating! And then, to top it all off, I have to find out that she somehow finds her way into the Borg Collective! I mean shit... did our selves in this fucked up future's past come on some kind of hard times that gave the Borg the change to take some of our crew? And lord knows how many of them they managed to take... I'd have to strangle myself in this timeline if she was the only one... And there's the other bit that bothers me... I've been in paradoxical situations a time or two before, and I could always tell they were wrong... nothing about this timeline feels wrong to me! Do you know how damn frustrating it is to get that feeling like even though you don't belong somewhere it still feels like you're not out of place?"

The old man rose and walked over to one of several slotted windows that lined the wall of his Ready Room, "I don't like this shit, son, and I think that's what bothers me the most... there's not a damn thing I can do about it but see it through to whatever twisted damn end the Guardian has in store for us..."

Aral did not like the Commodore, he was neither endearing nor charming; he was not a man crew members could like easily, if at all. However the old bastard was the type of man that could be trusted. He always seemed to have a plan and even when held hostage by fate or dominant female aliens, the Commodore was the man with the plan, the leader who would get everyone home. As Aral heard the Commodore rant he gripped the back of the chair tightly, not so much for support but comfort, as the safety net Aral had imagined for himself - and the Arizona - was pulled away. The trill knew that men lied, he himself was a skilled and practiced liar, however the Commodore's words had a ring of truth about them and the seriousness of their plight somehow prevented Aral from retreating into denial.

"And so we make a pact with the devil." He gestured around the Ready Room, the LCARS consoles bore small green and metallic traces of Borg technology. "And throw a mad hatter's tea party. But what next, steal tarts from the Borg Queen?" The trill's panic seemed to subside and rational thoughts began percolating through his head. "Could the reason that you do not feel the distortions in space-time be because this timeline is not actually incorrect?"

Nathan glared at the Trill, "That's exactly what I'm saying... There are real and true events being played out... but the issue here is, did we cause them, are we even a part of them, did we even matter when it came right down to it. Until we hunt down clues to this timeline's past, we'll be as clued in as mushrooms..."

Aral shrugged. "It's not that we don't understand time, it's that we can't understand it. Between infinite universes and infinite possibilities this is entirely our universe and entirely not. Just because it isn't a paradox or anomaly, doesn't mean it's fated to happen to us." He paused. "Except it is, but it might not be us." Realizing that his explanation was succeeding in only in raising the Commodore's blood pressure Aral decided to stop speaking until something intelligent entered his mind. A few seconds later he said one word. "Earth."

"Yes, that's where I've been thinking we need to go. If there are answers to be found, that would be the place to start looking. Hell... I might find my future self sitting on my porch... wouldn't that be something..." Nathan said with a momentary look of calm on his face.

"Yes, that would be quite something." Aral was not optimistic about the old man's chances in this timeline. He had already noticed that the scientific drone bore a striking resemblance to SCPO Neral, thankfully no one aside from him had taken such an acute interest in the drone. "I once read insanity is the only sane response to an insane world." He paused, but found himself unable to complete his own line of thought.

"Son... let me tell you a little something about insanity..." the Commodore said, coming to sit back down in his chair, "It's nothing but perspective. To you, the world might seem perfectly ordered and everything in the place it ought to be. On the flip side, I might think the whole world's gone ape shit crazy and nothing is right in the world. Which one of us is right?"

"Whichever one of us shouts the loudest?" Aix did not appreciate the lesson in philosophy, nor was he - as a man of science - willing to concede the absence of an objective reality in some form.

"Nope..." Nathan said with a chuckle, "We're both wrong. There is no sanity, no insanity... just degrees of coherence..."

Had the Commodore ever read the Vulcan Literary Review or Trill Journal of Literature he might have found himself less certain on that point. However Aral was willing to accept it for the purposes of the conversation. He paused for a moment, "While we're still on the theme of sanity, are we actually about to lead the Borg to Earth?" He paused, "Who's to say they haven't already beaten us there?"

"The Borg are the least of my concerns right now, honestly. Besides, even if they've been to Earth, I can't really see them having held on to it. Earth is out in the open, these critters are in hiding... that tells me something about them right off the bat. This place isn't about the black and white like it used to be in our time. There's so much grey here it's depressing..." the old man grumbled.