Day 57: Game Room (Third Shift)
Having already met two new people today, Zack found that his mood was slowly starting to improve, if only out of necessity. While he didn't like dumping his problems on his friends, he was even less willing to do so with a stranger. More than that, Rose had been very personable and he'd felt good about himself for being to help her with a few
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A Game Boy was snatched from the shelf. A cartridge was snapped into place. An ass was parked in an armchair. Eyes glazed over as the comforting sounds of Kirby's Dream Land started up.
You were surprised?
[Free]
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Or was he? Bones wasn't wrong about his recklessness. He hadn't exactly behaved maturely last shift either. If by pursuing this thing with the basement, he was leading his crew to pain and death... Bones might be right. Or he might be right, and this might get them some answers, finally. Or they both might be right. Who the hell knew ( ... )
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His thumb smacked down on the pause button. Ever so subtly (read: not very subtly), Scott peered up over the top of the Game Boy, gaze drifting toward the sound of the voice. However, he didn't see anyone familiar-looking. All he saw was another young man staring at him and giving him the standard "turn down the damn game" look. Nothing unusual there. But no sign of the owner of that signature voice. Huh."Hey, you didn't just hear someone say something about stardates, did you?" Scott asked the random stranger ( ... )
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"What?" Kirk squinted at him, wondering why he was asking. He'd looked younger staring slack-jawed and wrapped up in his game; now Jim reassessed the other man's age to a couple of years older, maybe even the same age as him. His face wasn't familiar, but then, to be fair, Kirk hadn't exactly had time to get acquainted with all four-hundred-plus people serving on the Enterprise.
He'd thought it strange that the only person who'd come here with him were members of the bridge crew. By now, he'd given up on calling for others on the bulletin board. Was it possible that this man came from the twenty-third century?
Or was it... the other thing? "That was me," Kirk answered. Only one way to find out, and ( ... )
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"...No you're not." That was all Scott said to start, blinking slowly.
He supposed the guy had a certain resemblance. And Scott never had been the biggest Trek fan. But he was pretty darn sure he would have heard if someone had been playing a young Kirk in one of the newer Star Trek series. All the geeks and nerds would have flipped their s***. Then again, there were people like Harvey in the Institute - clearly who they said they were, but totally unlike the versions Scott was familiar with. Was this one of those cases? Even if it was, though... How? When?
Finally, Scott's fourth wall filter caught up with him and smacked him across the back of the brain. He tensed suddenly, almost dropping the Game Boy. "UH. I mean! No I'm not!" he tried to cover (lamely). "I-I've heard of the stardate system, but I never really figured it out! Yeah, that's it ( ... )
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Unlike then, he still had the option of getting up and walking away from this conversation. He could pretend he'd never met this person. His life would continue on same as before with... monsters and... gloating voices on the intercom and mind-numbingly repetitive days.
"Okay," Kirk sighed. "I don't know you... but apparently you know me. Or the other me, whatever." Was that it? Was it him this guy was expecting? Finally he'd gotten over being ( ... )
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"Uh, Scott Pilgrim, for one. No special title," he answered, shifting in the chair and leaning on the arm rest a bit more. He would have used the "Mighty Bassist" title, but he had a feeling that he was going to have to start paying royalties to Guybrush and LucasArts if he used that one too many times more. "And yeah, sorry to disappoint, but it's totally another you that I'm thinking of, if you're who you say you are. And now that that's out of the way, I've gotta know: how did you find out about that? Who told you?" Who mercilessly shattered your fourth wall so I didn't have to?
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Totally another you. Did they really look so different? Kirk thought back to the man he'd seen on the night his shadow came to life. The one who wore his uniform like he'd been born into it, who smirked like he knew his smile stopped most humanoids short. Small things, he'd picked out: hazel eyes, slicked back hair, some ten years and ten pounds on him, but his face...
Kirk opened his mouth to ask a question, but Scott beat him to it. Twice. His mouth held, then closed, then opened again to answer: "What?" This conversation, he realized, was going to have a lot of these moments. Kirk shut his eyes for a second, then decided to take it one at a time ( ... )
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And then it hit him.
"...Oh."
They didn't have anything to do with the fourth wall because Kirk's fourth wall was somehow pristine and intact in spite of his knowing about another Kirk. Correction: had been intact. Scott had just put the beginnings of a crack that was sure to send the whole thing crumbling at any moment.
Crapsticks on a crap sandwich.Uuughhh. No sense in delaying the inevitable, Scott thought. Maybe he could at least make the whole thing sound less insane than it was, if offshoot timelines were involved. "Um. Well, the fact that there's more than one offshoot timeline, apparently," he started, sounding as though he were stumbling around on a pile of words and somehow avoiding the wrong ones by just a hair each time. "Like. One where the Captain Kirk people know is a famous TV star who's played by a guy who looks nothing like you ( ... )
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Bill. Oh god. This whole thing was someone's idea of a joke, wasn't it? An elaborate, ridiculous, impossible-to-believe joke. As if it wasn't enough that he was technically a Jim Kirk from some messed up timeline, and somewhere out there in time and space was a Kirk who rose the ranks legitimately to become captain of the Enterprise. As if it wasn't enough that his CMO was apparently haunted by memories of a third Jim, a cruel and ruthless one ( ... )
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"Yeah, he would happen to be," Scott said carefully, eyeing "Kirk" with a wary eye. "How'd you figure?"
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Where else? He had his reasons for concealing this information from his crew, but he couldn't figure out much of a point to pretend otherwise with Scott, assuming the man really did know everything already. "It's the name the nurses call me. I wouldn't have twice about it, except that about-" He paused, quickly doing the math in his head. "-twelve days ago, there was this... mass brainwashing. A bunch of people made to think they were who our dog tags say we are. I was one of them."
He'd hardly spoken of this since then. A health check-up with Bones, a short conversation with Spock, then an entry in his captain's log and Kirk had closed the book on the whole episode. It had been easy to believe he'd mostly forgotten about this nonsense, but talking brought it all back.
"Bill's story was that he was named after the actor, I think. Huge fan. A 'Trekkie', I guess you'd call it. I still remember some of what he remembers." Kirk tapped the side of his head, then ( ... )
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