Day 49: Late Afternoon - T & M Electronics

[hes_deadjim]

The rain was really picking up by the time McCoy left the bar. A roll of thunder rumbled through the air. He paused under the awning, squinting up at the dark sky. He hadn't seen a storm like this in years. Not since Earth. It was looking to outdo any storm he'd ever seen too. Was it safe to even drive through this weather? If he was worried about

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[hes_deadjim]

McCoy turned at the voice. He recognized the man sure enough. Male human, sturdy build like the captain, brown hair. It was the patient from a few nights ago. He suppressed a disapproving frown. The very one who thought it was a good idea to not only use an old leather jacket as a compress, but to go applying belt tourniquets at the drop of a hat.

He didn't know where he'd learned his first aid, but it felt more like he was trying to practice something more like frontier field medicine than anything actually safe or sanctioned. Vodka, makeshift tourneys? What was next, amputations and leeches? Bloodletting?

McCoy had managed to stop the patient in time, and that's what mattered. The young woman hadn't risked severe damage to the leg, and the man had been perfectly willing to help all the same. He'd managed to keep a cool head despite all the blood, which wasn't something you saw a lot of from civilians. He really couldn't be too hard on him.

Maybe it was best to start simple before he could go judging him like that. He held out his hand.

"Doctor McCoy," he replied. "How's your friend doing?"

[theroadsofar]

He took it, shaking it. Guy had a pretty good grip; not the kind that was trying too hard to compensate for something, but something solid.

Although why did he keep getting the weird, niggling feeling that he'd heard that name before?

Try as he might, he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Dean," he said. After the talk with Sam about the possibility of them both having been here longer than a week, his usual alias wasn't gonna work. Not if he could get wiped again and needed to track what he'd been up to. For all he knew, next time he wasn't gonna pick the exact same alias again. "She'll pull through. You did good back there."

Hey, so what if he'd been shoved aside like he might puke at the sight of a little blood? Dean had to give credit where credit was due. The guy knew what he was doing and it wasn't worth getting into a pissing contest over. They kinda had bigger problems on their plate. Dean looked around the electronics store and...man, this was pretty ghetto and old school, 'cause he was pretty sure those were VCRs back there on the shelves. Dean tapped his soaked shoe again against the door frame and moved deeper inside the store, half to keep an eye out on the employees - even if he wasn't gonna jack anything, it was just auto-pilot - half to get a better look around.

"Hey, this's gonna sound weird, but we ever met before?" Dean glanced over his shoulder at McCoy. Man, it was kinda funky. There was something about the guy.

[hes_deadjim]

He had a confident enough handshake. Dean's hands were rough, calloused.

"That's good to hear. Just make sure she doesn't over-exert that leg in the mean time. It'll need time to heal," McCoy said. Although with the way Dean and his friend had been ready to handle that wound last night, McCoy suspected that they'd consider just 'walking it off' a valid treatment.

With the accelerated healing he'd seen on Jim, it might not even be too much of a concern. He hadn't had a chance to check back up on the woman, but it could have healed just as neatly as the captain's. Accelerated, near inhuman healing or not, that wasn't an excuse to throw caution to the winds just because you thought you could. That leg would still need a chance to recover.

McCoy looked at him curiously when he went on. He didn't recognize Dean, not outside of that encounter that night and certainly not from the Enterprise or any of the planets they'd stopped at.

"I don't think so. Do I remind you of someone?"

[theroadsofar]

Dean peered at McCoy. "I thought you did." If they had run into each other before, McCoy wasn't exactly pitching in with his two cents.

Either he really was new or he'd been wiped too. Man, and Dean'd been thinking it was gonna be tricky before today. This was the kind of BS that made it hard to roll out of bed sometimes, when it looked like everything was stacked against you no matter how hard you butted your head against the wall. It wasn't just running into another person he wasn't entirely sure if he'd met or not. More like everything just piling up, not knowing how much time left there was, and not being able to gank all the evil crap that was roaming around the halls at night. Dean ran a hand through his hair, the rain spiking it into wet clumps, and then dropped it.

Pretending to look around, he didn't have to fake the surprise, "Man, this place looks like an antique shop or something," Dean gestured at a big tube TV. "Haven't seen stuff like this since I was a kid." He wasn't sure yet on McCoy; for all he knew they could have past history together and yet it'd be intros all over again 'cause of how this place worked.

But if there was anything Dean learned on the job, it was that talking about the seemingly random stuff like crap electronics that helped to get real familiar with someone. It also had the bonus of being less shady than running up to someone and grilling them with Twenty Questions until they went "uncle".

[hes_deadjim]

Maybe it was someone back home, wherever (or when) Dean came from exactly. Unless he had someone running around that looked like him, maybe a scruffier version of him, just like Jim's scruffier version of Spock.

The doctor moved further inside as Dean motioned to the large screen. The back was bulky, looked like you could strain several somethings trying to lift it. And what had they called those things higher up? MP4 players? MP2 players? Whatever the exact name, they were all obsolete by the twenty-third century. You saw these in photos, memory tapes, the odd eccentric's collection and exhibits.

Still, they could still be useful. He hadn't had a chance to mention it yet, but maybe Spock could do something with the thing's innards. If not here, then the ones back at the facility. McCoy wasn't much of a mechanic or engineer, so jury-rigging up some sort of communication device from anything in here would take nothing short of a miracle from his end.

The doctor leaned forward to inspect what looked like it very well could be an actual casette player.

"I'll say. Looks more like a museum," he said, bemused.

[theroadsofar]

Dean almost grinned at that. No kidding. Hell, if he was Joe Normal, he'd probably have forgotten how to work a VCR by now, but messing around with security cameras and dropping by Bobby's meant you got the refresher course on old school stuff every now and then.

"Hey, casette players are awesome," Dean reached out to pick it up. Wouldn't be the first time he worked with weird crap and he'd already had experience jury rigging a casette player into an EMF reader. At least that was covered if he could find a way down here to make a supply run. "Had one of these babies back home: thing was still working."

Dean was about to say more when someone suddenly let out a blood-curdling yell right in the middle of the store. He tensed up and while he didn't whip around, he swiveled, an unconscious part of him expecting something monster or another to come bearing down on 'em. He eyed the dude who'd shrieked like a little bitch, then carefully checked out the rest of the store. After staring, the guy behind the counter was turning back to business and that was a dead ringer right there that it wasn't anything but a patient wigging out. He'd take that over a poltergeist dicking around with people.

[hes_deadjim]

That wasn't exactly the word McCoy would have used. 'Useful', maybe, if Spock got his hands on it. That was if he could do anything with it. Other than that, antiquated, obsolete, and about as a clunky looking as an old freighter. If he remembered correctly, these things required you to carry a tape all over the place. If you wanted other musicians, you had to bring along even more tapes. It was a wonder people back then had room for anything else if they were bogged down as it was. Data storage had come a long way in his time.

McCoy found himself appreciating modern technology just a little bit more just now.

"I always thought these things broke at the drop of a hat," he replied. "What do they operate on, batteries?" That was the right term, wasn't it?

They didn't use power cells commonly in the past. That was if he remembered his history correctly. He never thought he'd ever be in a position where he needed to know that particular detail, and yet, here he was, right there. Ancient medicine had had more of an impact, when dialysis and amputations and phlebotomy were accepted practices. He tended to go by his history from the progression of medicine and medical practice.

If those old diagrams in the exhibits were to be believed, the power required to operate one of these things took up over half the player's space and would only yield about five minutes of time on powering up a PADD. In Spock's words, completely inefficient-

Someone shrieked suddenly, almost as if he'd just gotten stabbed. McCoy jumped, just as Dean tensed up like a man always ready for a fight. What he saw wasn't someone being attacked, but just a male patient with a woman, looking like he'd just been on the verge of a panic attack.

"What in blazes..?"