Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:51:42 GMT In: alt.startrek.creative From: "Jay P Hailey" Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey@hotmail.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs Codes: None Part: 31/339(?) Rating:[PG] Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Star Trek. I claim Original Characters and Situations for me. Webpage HTTP://jayphailey.8m.com Rishan Pleasure Base #5 by Jay P. Hailey And Dennnis Washburn (Stardate 45378) It was stardate 99507.34 and that meant it was summer on the Planet Benson. I was out in the garden fighting with a piece of landscaping. Landscaping was not something that a ninety-five year old man needed to be doing, but I was tired of waiting for the contractors to bring power shovels out to do it. I was grunting and straining with a large piece of rock. The anti-grav took away the weight, but not the inertia. I didn't have the thing quite dug out enough, but I was hoping that the rock could push through the dirt if I gave it enough momentum. It took a long time to get moving, and that gave me time to push a lot. A shadow fell across me, and I stopped pushing and looked up. It was Katherine, my older daughter. This was all the excuse I needed to stop working. I stepped away from the boulder and climbed out of the pit I had dug next to it. I looked at Katherine, and a weird sort of happiness bubbled up inside me. I was very proud of my oldest. She was slimmer than her mother and shorter. I saw her pale blue eyes and fine straight blonde hair. She was an adult now nearing her late thirties, I guessed. She was more fiery than her mother, too. Energy was her middle name. I found myself grinning, and took her hand. We had adopted a more formal set of greetings and language when she entered Starfleet Academy, way back when I was still on active duty. Then I noticed a fourth golden pip on her shoulder. Katherine had made captain. "Well, Captain." I said. "I came home to tell you." She said. She was solemn. Was she feeling the weight of her first command? I remembered the feeling. It had been forty six years since I had walked on board the USS Harrier, and I could still remember how nervous I had been. It had been forty years since I had commanded the Harrier through that long desperate quest home. We weren't in great shape when we got home, but we did make it. There was something about that mission that was still bothering me after four decades. I couldn't put my finger on it. I knew by now that I probably never would. Once again, I put the nagging feeling out of my mind and concentrated on the present. As I got older, it was getting harder to do that, too. "Mph." I said "They give you a ship, yet?" "Yes, The Renegade." I racked my brains, but five years of desk duty, followed by fifteen years of retirement had taken their toll. "Which one is that?" "Nothing special, just a Nova class cruiser." She tried to sound casual, but I could almost see the stats and records flowing past her mind's eye. "Don't knock it. The Novas are workhorses. They assign them everywhere." I reassured her, but Katherine didn't need more shop talk. besides, I felt dizzy and thirsty. My body was telling me to go sit down in the nice, cool house, put my feet up, and wrap my hands around a cool lemonade. My body had grown more demanding and loud as I had grown older. I didn't see any point in arguing with it. My house was a bigger two story rambling affair, with all the signs of old people who had lived there forever. It had been twenty years. We went into the kitchen and grabbed some cool lemonade out of the replicator. It was a luxury I had refused to do without, although my true love felt that the artificial nature of the device was distasteful. We went into the living room and I slowly lowered myself into my chair. I saw the concern in Katherine's eyes, and it irritated me. I wasn't crippled, dammit, I was just old. My joints resented sharp movements, and so it was more comfortable to move deliberately and with calculation. "Have you talked to your mother, yet?" I asked, with a grouchy tone in my voice. "She wasn't here, when I arrived, so I went looking for you." Then I remembered. Someone had come up with a new revelation in microbiology, or genetics or organic chemistry or something. Sandra had put on her shining armor and had gone flying off on her steed to make sure the young squirt had crossed his T's and dotted his I's. They were holding the conference at the University of Benson. Sandra was a published and retired professor with no tenure to sweat, so she routinely invaded the place and set them all on their ears. Many of the hidebound academics and stuffed shirts hated her. That's part of why she loved to go. Sandra was relentless in her insistence that the truth be the final arbiter of such matters. I grinned and counted my lucky stars. Who knew who I would be without her? "How about your sister?" I asked. I knew where Barbara was, roughly. She was on Earth, destroying the status quo with a relish to equal her mother's. Barbara was a performance artist, attempting to express her thoughts and emotions directly to other beings, by making music, or telling stories, or painting pictures in front of them. There was no audience at a performance of Barbara's, there were only hapless participants. I had been drug into a couple of these events, and Barbara hated it. My career had been composed mostly of nodding as though I had understood what was going on and then acting as though it were all under control until I figured out what was what. Barbara said I ruined the groove on her performances. The truth is, my reactions to weirdness was practiced enough so that the other participants thought I had an idea and sort of gravitated to me. Instead I bought the highly prized bootleg holodeck recordings of her performances and watched from a comfortable distance. Barbara would probably say something like the distance between the art and the participant was too great and that's what her troupe was all about. "I missed her in Los Angeles." Katherine said "The whole performance moved to Mount Fuji and I couldn't wait." "Better luck next time." I said. Rats, the recording would be incomplete. We chatted a little more. Thirty years separated our careers in Starfleet, so there weren't to many common acquaintances for us to talk about. "How's Admiral Spaat?" I asked. Katherine thought about it. "I haven't seen him in four years. Last I heard he was still commanding Starbase 1245." Spaat had been Katherine's first Captain. He was far too Vulcan to ever let our acquaintance color his reaction to Katherine, but I noticed that he had pushed her rather hard. This gave her the record she needed to make the fast track to Captain. Spaat had been her mentor. Never let a word of favoritism pass your lips, he made her earn it. "Oh. Did you see Boothby while you were on Earth?" "Yes. He is still puttering in the flower beds and growling at the cadets. He did remember me, though. Gave me a flower and made me promise not to tell anyone." Boothby was the El-Aurian gardener. For seventy years or more he had been watching the cadets at Starfleet Academy come and go, grouching at us and dropping just the right words when we needed to hear them. Suddenly I was on the floor. It was cold and I hurt. "Katherine?" I called. It came out a whisper. She was right beside me, calling into her comm-badge. "Medical Emergency! Medical Emergency, Reserve Center Please respond!" "Starfleet Reserve Center, Benson, Please state the nature of the Medical Emergency." "Man down, unknown cause..." She was telling them the basics, and stopped making sense. I drifted away... I was still cold and hurt, but for some reason I was happy. I looked up and I was in Sandra's lap. That's why I was happy. What could be wrong there? "Hey..." I said "Be quiet, They'll be here in a minute." She stroked the side of my head. I could almost relax, except I knew that there was something desperately wrong with me. "Who? Who's here?" I managed She just said "Ssshhh..." and kept hold of me. I always knew that she would. A moment of clarity swept over me, and I knew that the end was near. "Listen." I said I tried hard and put a little steel in my voice. "You have to know. I love you. Remember that." "I love you, too." She said. I could see that she understood what I meant. I saw pain in her eyes. I hated that. I would have given anything to take her pain away, except that I didn't have anything more to give. My head throbbed brokenly. I tried to say more, but my words, and then my body failed. I floated serenely in nothingness for a few moments and then I saw a bright light. It enveloped me... -*- I looked around, shocked. The after life looked just like the bridge of my first starship the USS Harrier. The nagging feeling I had carried around for more that forty years came back to me with a vengeance. The Harrier had been cruising through space more than a thousand light years from the Federation. We had been losing crewmen to an unknown long range transporter, and we had never resolved the problem. Somehow I had gone on with my life for another forty years, never clearly remembering this. There were all my old friends from the Harrier, and they looked just like I remembered them from that time. It was hard to tell with Li'ira, the Green Orions don't age externally the same way as humans do. There was Harksain Varupuchu I hadn't seen him look so fleshy in years. If they looked just like the good old days on the Harrier, so did I. I had regained a lot of weight and my hands weren't nearly as spindly as I was used to. "What, what.." I managed. A flash and scream interrupted my thoughts I turned to see Flagg rolling across the deck. "NOOOoooo!" he screamed. I hadn't seen Flagg since the end of the Harrier's voyage. I hadn't even thought that the nutcase was still alive. I was having one hell of a hallucination. "I don't believe it! This is some sort of Obsidian Order trick!" Flagg rolled to his feet and crouched with a snarl. I saw Stephanie Anderson pull a phaser out from under her tactical station and check the setting. Flagg noticed this , but focused on me. "Hailey! You must be joking. I know he's dead! I killed him myself. I'll show you." My new body was some what faster than I was used to, but I was never a match for Flagg. Fortunately, I could scuttle away from him long enough for Stephanie to stun him. My brains started to turn over at this point. "I'm back on the Harrier!" I said, with awe. "Are you all right, Captain?" Li'ira said to me. I looked at her, swaying slightly. Anything I said at this point could alter the future, but I was sort of stuck. "Some sort of time warp?" I wondered. A face appeared on the screen. He looked bright, chipper and slightly familiar. "And did you enjoy your experience, Captain Hailey of the Harrier?" He asked in a perky salesman's voice. "My what?" I was confused... "Your virtual lifetime! We offer the finest in detail and virtual experience. We pride ourselves in the fidelity of our creations." Katherine, Barbara, Sandra, my whole life? NO! "Ah, err..." I said. "Thank you for waiting. Our systems have cycled again and it's time for our next group of customers to enjoy their virtual lives." The perky man on the screen said. With a flash Varupuchu, Spaat, Stephanie and Li'ira disappeared. "I'm Chief Sub-Altern Lieutenant Carubo. Call if you have any questions, and thank you for choosing Rishan Pleasure Base Number Five for your virtual experiences." --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.588 / Virus Database: 372 - Release Date: 2/13/2004 -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ ASCL is a stories-only list, no discussion. Comments and feedback should be directed to alt.startrek .creative or directly to the author. Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCL/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: ASCL-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From ???@??? Fri Feb 27 20:30:39 2004 X-Persona: Status: U Return-Path: Received: from n28.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.84]) by robin (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1aWTgJ2zS3NZFjX0 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:27:53 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1977044-13237-1077931673-stephenbratliffasc=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yah