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Interplanetary Travel 101: This Is Not Kansas

Nov 21, 2008 00:41

She checked the seals on her Hazmat suit a few more times and then made sure the hoses were working properly, which they were. Lam was fairly confident the suit was sound -- she did this every time -- and stepped up to the shimmering ripple of the gate, her hands full of equipment to deal with just about anything save major surgery. SG-12 was still ( Read more... )

dr. daniel jackson, debut, dr. carolyn lam, trance gemini, harry sullivan, cameron mitchell

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purplensparkly November 21 2008, 18:28:50 UTC

Trance was carrying Rommie's head home. She wasn't entirely sure what else to do with it, so she had it in the crook of her arm. It was completely dead and she wasn't sure how she was going to reactivate her or even if she wanted to. After all, it wasn't much of a life if you were just a head.

But when she turned the corner and saw that face, the same face as the head she had in her hand, she shrieked again, jumping back.

One might almost say she was getting to be human, shouting like that so much.

savedthatjaffa November 21 2008, 19:13:11 UTC

Lam frowned.

And then stared, blinking at her own head.

"...what the hell?" Okay. It wasn't every day some purple woman (purple?) shrieked at you. For that matter, it wasn't every day a purple woman had her hands full of your head. Lam took a step back and put a hand to her head. Still there.

"This might sound weird," she said carefully, "but...why do you have my head?" Technically speaking, it wasn't her head, but a copy of her head, which wasn't necessarily her head at all. Lam folded her arms and tried to wipe the shocked expression off her face.

purplensparkly November 22 2008, 04:19:04 UTC

"Rommie? Rommie, no, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't be here. You're supposed to be back on the Andromeda with...well, with yourselves and Dylan and Harper and Beka and Tyr. And me. I was supposed to fix things. I was supposed to make them right."

Trance was wondering why her other self hadn't fixed things. Why things seemed worse than she'd warned herself about.

"At least tell me you know how you got here. If it's a tesseract, we can probably find a way to get you back. Even if it doesn't quite work that way here." Trance would make it work if that's what it took to get Rommie back where she was supposed to be.

savedthatjaffa November 22 2008, 04:29:55 UTC

"I'm not who you think I am," Lam said, frowning a little deeper. "I'm not Rommie. I'm Doctor Carolyn Lam." Sorry. "And you still have a head that looks exactly like mine. I have to admit, that's pretty creepy." 'Pretty creepy' was the understatement of the decade. Maybe of the last, oh, six billion years.

purplensparkly November 24 2008, 05:50:34 UTC

"Are you...well, of course you're human. Everything is human once it gets here. And it doesn't look like yours, it looks like Rommie's. There's a difference." Half hopefully, half fearfully, Trance lifted the head so the woman could see the wiring underneath the neck.

"I don't suppose yours ever did that?"

savedthatjaffa November 24 2008, 16:11:36 UTC

"No, I'm afraid it never did," she looked a trifle startled and her hand went to her neck reflexively. "I'm...firmly attached."

Very firmly.

Very humanly.

She wanted to say it didn't look like much of a difference, but she didn't.

purplensparkly November 26 2008, 21:21:08 UTC

Trance sighed softly. "Of course. You're like Daniel, then. Someone who looks like someone from my past. Only he never looked like one of my friends." Someone she'd known since joining the crew of the Andromeda and someone she'd known about since long before that.

She ducked her head and smiled a little. "I'm sorry. The island does that sometimes. It's just never really done it to me."

savedthatjaffa November 28 2008, 15:49:16 UTC

"Oh."

Weird.

"So, if your friend does show up, she'll be a machine?" With my face? Her face. My face. So confusing.

purplensparkly November 28 2008, 20:34:24 UTC

Trance shook her head. "Nope. That's not the way it works here. People are human, no matter what they were before. Sometimes they're a little different like me and Garak or have a little different physiology, like the Doctor and his two hearts, but we're all essentially human."

Which was weird, to say the least.

savedthatjaffa November 30 2008, 04:55:31 UTC

Lam's brows arched and she studied the purple woman for a long while. Alien skins holding a human body together? Interesting. And two hearts? Her lips thinned as she absorbed the information.

"Well," she said after a long moment. "This is, apparently, a place of surprises, then. I'm sure that had to be a shock."

purplensparkly December 1 2008, 00:15:34 UTC

"Not...well...funny thing is it wasn't." Softly, Trance added, "Until today." Until today when her entire world turned on its head and she didn't know up from down. "I thought I was here for a reason. To learn. That's why I joined the medical staff. But now I'm not so sure anymore."

She looked at Rommie's head. She wasn't sure at all.

She held out the hand not holding the head. "I'm Trance, by the way. Trance Gemini."

savedthatjaffa December 1 2008, 21:43:18 UTC

"maybe the reason you think you might have been here for isn't quite the right reason? I mean...the hell if I know why I'm here. I'm just..." she spread her hands and then shook Trance's after a moment, "...just a doctor. In any case, it's both weird and nice to meet you, Trance."

And your friend's head, she added silently. It still creeped her out.

purplensparkly December 2 2008, 00:07:58 UTC

"I stepped through a portal in time and space. I switched places with myself and wound up here. I thought I was sending myself back to learn. To figure things out." But now...now Trance didn't know what was going on. Was it possible that she was just stuck here like everyone else? If that was true, where would she go when she left the island?

savedthatjaffa December 2 2008, 16:40:49 UTC

Well that made as much sense as anything she'd ever heard on the base. Lam crossed her arms and puzzled it over for awhile, her eyes fixed on Trance's face thoughtfully.

"Maybe you are learning," she offered. "It might not be what you think it's supposed to be, but maybe it's essential anyway. Maybe it's a first step and when you leave here, you go to the next step until you get to where you need to be."

purplensparkly December 4 2008, 23:31:18 UTC

Trance shook her head. "They were all supposed to be there. Rommie, Dylan, Harper, Beka, everyone. Her being here, or her head, at least, means that something goes wrong." Horribly, horribly wrong and she didn't know why. Was it even her that she meets or is she a loose end? A paradox for the paradox machine and one that was now defunct.

"I wanted to make things right. So that evil doesn't take over."

savedthatjaffa December 5 2008, 02:09:53 UTC

"Maybe it doesn't, maybe what you think went wrong, no matter if you do have Rommie's head, really didn't? Or it went wrong as is in the process of being fixed. The head could be from sort of alternate future or from something else entirely. I hear that this place doesn't make things clear or easy at all and it messes with your head. maybe that's what it's doing. Throwing you off balance, making you question things just so it disrupts your life here."

Lam shrugged.

"I'm a medical doctor, I don't know anything about physics or time travel or," she gestured, "robotics. But I do know that just because something is really screwed up doesn't mean that everything you are or everything that's supposed to be can't come out okay at the end of it all."

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