What have we here? (OTA)

[capt_j_t_kirk]

Kirk was very relieved to be back to himself. And glad that Scotty was too. He knew he was never going to hear the end of it from McCoy, and Spock, though he had ordered that the tale not get back to the Enterprise. They each had their own very subtle and completely deniable ways of letting him know that they remembered. He smiled even as he sighed

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[dominie]

When Kirk made it to Ops, there was a little man primly situated at one of the consoles. Primly situated meaning that he was scooted up into the chair so his feet could rest bare with a remote between his toes, pressing buttons with his feet for some important thing or another while his arms were restricted around him with a length of straight-jacket.

He looked up abruptly as someone he wasn't expecting entered, blue eyes wide and mid-squirm. Then those eyes shifted suspiciously.

"Sir, I'll respectfully ask you to consider that this situation isn't what it looks like. Or it is, if you think it's multi-tasking," he announced in a rolling accent, and then squirmed some more. Apparently his hat had become dislodged off his curly mop of hair in all his wriggles and squiggles, and was resting upside down in the floor beside his chair.

[capt_j_t_kirk]

Kirk paused for a moment. He had a brief flashback of being held captive by a madman on Elba II, but forced himself not to jump to any conclusions.

"It looks as though you are pushing buttons with your toes as you are trying to escape a strait jacket."

[dominie]

"Oh come now! I'm not trying to escape it at all. I am escaping it. Two entirely different things, trying and doing. One means you've roundly set your mind to it, and the other suggests an attempt that can possibly fail."

He jammed his hand out the front of the front of the canvas like an alien parasite erupting from the part between the fabric, and he wiggled his fingers at Kirk. "There's a place in one of the consoles for the key. It wouldn't allow me to change my mind, damned curiosity of mine."

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"Why...are you in the strait jacket in the first place?"

Kirk looked around at the consoles and found one without a key in it.

He stood, undecided, weighing the remark about not being allowed to change his mind.

[dominie]

"To get out of it!" he said, though the words might have been lost in a swaddle of clothes and buckles. He'd gotten it over his head in the short time that Kirk was overlooking the consoles. "Consider it practice. For some reason, my enemies think that tieing me up in the background while they blather on about their plans is an extremely constructive tactic."

He tossed the strait jacket off over the console when he was done, grasping the remote from between his feet and offering Kirk an oafishly delighted grin. "There's a couple of others, by the way. Places for keys. I'll have to presume you're some sort of leader."

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"It's funny how often they do that, feel the need to explain themselves," Kirk was thinking of Garth again as he said it.

"I'll have to presume I am too, since my starship and crew don't seem to be anywhere around." Kirk looked peeved.

"James T. Kirk, at your service." Peeved but polite.

[dominie]

"Really, explaining yourself is just a waste of time anyway, and for a whole universe full of the stuff I constantly find myself a might short on it..." He swiveled in the chair, snagged his hat, and planted it on his head.

"I'm the Doctor. And the lady of the station and myself find ourselves without the planets we are in charge of, yet we've been given the run of the place. Illusory run, anyway. In the end, the computer seems to still make emergency decisions."

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"Ah, a 'Doctor'," Kirk nodded, as one familiar with the term in this particular sense,

"Are there any more of you here?"

Even as he asked, he couldn't keep himself from craning a bit, to see what systems the station had been having him run.

[dominie]

"I am. And there's a younger version of myself here. The prim one, a might bit more uptight but a more amicable nature toward strangers. He also had hair that actually did as he wanted it to. Very novel." He scratched at his curly disobedient mane, hopping up from his chair to pad barefoot over to where Kirk was.

"Still thinking about it, are you?"

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"Mmmm," Kirk admitted, a thoughtful frown on his face.

"An illusion of control...perhaps a test?" Like the simulations at the academy.

[dominie]

"I was wondering about that myself. I believe what did me in is if I didn't, I wouldn't know what came after if I did. I had a pretty good idea what would happen if I didn't. Nothing. Curiosity can be a wretched thing," so wretched that he emphasized it with an especially long trill of the "r".

He put his hands behind his back, rocking back on his heels. "The Enterprise, was it? That was your ship?"

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"I can be dangerous, but it drives learning. Yes, she is my ship, and is on a voyage of discovery...of satisfying curiosity."

And that decided him, he slid the thin crystal key into the slot.

[dominie]

"Operations position filled," the computer announced, the console lighting up.

"Congratulations. That's what comes after it. And then the next thing." He made a little "round in the air" motion with his finger.

"You remember that illness that spread through the station a bit back? The one that was inflicted by my poor hapless companion. Not that she could help it being infected. The girl is wrought with guilt over it. But I honestly think if the medical crew wasn't what it was, and if we hadn't been here, the station would have only known to keep everyone aboard and burn out the virus. I think it needed a crew, and it has a way of acquiring one. I would ask it directly but it seems to be more interested in dodging my questions than answering them properly."

Said the pot distastefully of the kettle.

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"I remember that illness, vividly, well, at least up until I reached unconsciousness." Blessed unconsciousness.

"Keep everyone aboard? There are ways to get off? Who has access to them?" Kirk asked the question of both the computer and the Doctor.

[dominie]

"The Docking Bay is fully equipped with personal transport vessels with various allotments of distance based on situational demands."

"I've taken it to mean that they want more than one person to travel together if parting from the station. Otherwise the computer commandeers your vessel and returns you to safety." He leaned his back against the console, actually drumming his toes against the floor.

[capt_j_t_kirk]

"Is there any other reason that people are turned around--except perhaps quarantine? Does station AI decide whether the trip meets its standards of importance? Are any places outside the station forbidden?"