Nightshift 49: Staff Recreational/Exercise Area - 2nd Floor

[arc_wrench]

[From here]

Another random, useless room, except this one looked back at him! ...Because of the mirror on the opposite wall. HK felt incredibly stupid for having tensed for just a moment when he saw some meatbags looking at him.

He also tried to cover the fact that he had at all by acting incredibly casual. "Query: Shall we try another room?"

Comments

[dual_worlds]

While this method of transporting was far different from the one used in their own time, it stood to reason that it was probably the same one Landel used to move them back to their rooms once nightshift was over. The only difference was that none of them were ever awake to properly remember it. As for the nature of the technology used to accomplish such a feat, Spock was still uncertain. It didn't feel at all like their atoms were being dematerialized, transmitted, and then reassembled once they reached their destination. Rather, they simply walked from one room, and entered a completely different area as if it were all somehow quite natural.

And yet the disorientation one experienced from it could be enough to unsettle someone who wasn't expecting it. (Himself excluded, of course.)

However it was done, it far exceeded anything 21st-century Earth should have been able to maintain. Marc had told him this was somehow a different version of Earth, however. Was it, perhaps, some sort of alternate reality? But if that was the case, at what point did the initial divergence in history occur? With that possibility in mind, Spock wondered whether that was one of the reasons why their captors refused to let them see any information that would have detailed such information.

"I have always found the standard method of transporting used by Starfleet to be satisfactory," Spock remarked as he moved toward the mirror in order to investigate. "There are, after all, strict safety measures and protocols to protect those who use it." Unfortunately, he didn't know enough about Landel's method to be able to say the same about what he was using to transport them from room to room tonight. Saying so was likely unnecessary, however.

[hes_deadjim]

McCoy drew up to a mirror. The mirror didn't have fingerprints or scratches, looked about as new as the day it'd been installed. His face looked drawn, the slightest bit pale, probably because of being picked up and tossed what felt like clear across the institute and back. It was hard to tell if those were shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep or if that was just lack of light.

There was that odd sensation like he was looking at the wrong reflection, that he wasn't supposed to have brown hair or blue eyes in the first place. The longer he looked at himself, the stronger it got, the growing sense of that what he'd lived with for years wasn't really his at all.

McCoy looked over at Spock, more to have something else to look at. Of course Spock would find nothing wrong with transporters. This was the man who could spout off the probabilities of a being hit by a meteorite while planetside versus dying in a transporter malfunction, and yet it sure seemed like they had a wealth of accidents on the Enterprise when it came to that machine. Scotty was the most brilliant engineer in the fleet, but even he couldn't stop ion storms or control atmospheric conditions on a planet.

Satisfactory? he thought, Spock's the only person I know who'd call the experience 'satisfactory'.

"You would. Tell that to the people who've been turned inside out by that gadget or had their patterns assembled incorrectly or just plain lost to the nether 'cause of a malfunction."

[dual_worlds]

Why McCoy would bother to argue his point when they clearly had other matters to see to was difficult to understand. Certainly, technology had its limits, which was why scientists worked to find safer, more efficient ways to carry out daily tasks. In that sense, transporters were not 100 percent devoid of risk. However, Spock would argue that, when proper precautions were taken, the chances of injury or death were extremely slim.

"When one compares the statistics of transporter accidents and injures to the number of times a transporter is used every standard year, it becomes quite obvious that such incidents are rare," Spock said. It would only be illogical for Starfleet to implement an overtly faulty method for transporting people, cargo, and other valuable resources.

The Vulcan slowly brought his light around the room, taking a careful look at the dated equipment positioned throughout the room. Clearly, this area was not designated for patient use. After all, the daytime staff would likely deem such an environment unfit for the mentally ill.

"This may be a room used by the staff to maintain their physical health," Spock said, changing to a more relevant subject. "Unfortunately, I suspect it will provide even less insight on Landel's true purpose than the medical reference library. Perhaps it would be best to try the door once again."

[hes_deadjim]

He knew the statistical likelihood of transporter accidents as well as Spock did. It didn't comfort him at all, not when you had over four hundred crewmen on-board and and a ship and captain that had a penchant for getting tangled with the bizarre.

He'd say the odds in favor of a mishap were looking pretty good.

"'Extremely rare' and 'Jim' don't always mix," he pointed out. He'd seen his share of transporter psychosis in patients, injuries and deaths. The ones that hadn't resulted in anything life-threatening weren't all that reassuring either. He never thought he'd ever see two Kirks running around in his lifetime, neither of them anymore a real man than the other. He hadn't ever considered the thought of actually visiting another dimension either. Or being pulled here. Spock could claim all the way to end of time that transporters were perfectly safe, but to McCoy, they just represented an infinite set of possibilities for accidents.

"The Enterprise has a way of attracting trouble like bees to honey." McCoy said. He added. "Remind me never to ask you to fill in as a counselor. You couldn't reassure someone if those pointed ears of yours depended on it."

At least he hadn't decided to give him the exact statistics. That had to be Spock's idea of reassurance, which, of course, was grounded in solid fact and logic, and ultimately wasn't too reassuring at all. You only had to be that 'rare occurrence' that one time, and most beings with the capacity for emotion weren't going to be able to take that kind of solace in logic.

The doctor left the mirror wall. There wasn't anything immediately useful here he could see, or nearly as interesting as the medical research library.

[Over to here]