ten_fwd | Ten Forward: OTA

Current Location: Deck Ten, Forward: Lounge

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Ten Forward: OTA

The Nietzscheans are gone, all of them. No Tyr, no Telemachus, no Gaheris.

Dylan's not sure what to think of that, and he hasn't been since it happened. It's complicated, in the way so many things are complicated. Now there's only Trance and Harper left. Trance and Harper out of what had once been almost his whole crew.

Some days, he misses them more than others. But he misses that world, the world Tyr and Telemachus were from, right alongside the world Gaheris had destroyed.

Because Gaheris is on his mind, Dylan's left his quarters and spent some time with one of the replicators, going through its commands until he managed to make it produce a Go board and pieces. He's set the board up on one of the tables in Ten Forward, near the windows, with the stones in a container set to one side.

He's created the board, but he's not actually playing yet. He has one of the black stones held between his fingers, and he's turning it over and over. It's a way he has of helping him think.

Soon enough, he'll set it on the board. Perhaps.

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Ever since she saw the window here, Annie's been drawn to the strange stars. She's looked at star maps, a little, although first she had to teach herself how to read them. But they are so little, so nothing like the constellations back home, she doesn't know what to think of them. She's just drawn to them, like she was the night sky in District Four, gazing up past where was allowed to look at Jupiter's four (visible) moons.

So when the small woman walks over to near where Dylan is seated, she's not really paying attention to him at all. At least, no more than she normally pays attention to her surroundings when she can. Today's a good day, so there's some awareness of her surroundings. Enough that she double-takes when she realises that on the three tiers are little black and white pieces.

Annie stops, turning a little to look closer.

"Is that three dimensional Go?" she asks, clearly startled. Then her hands gesture at her sides, the movement brief and embarrassed. "Oh, um, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

Edited 2015-04-18 11:19 (UTC)

Carolyn had just spent a fun couple of hours being tested and vaccinated and examined. There was a reason the saying a doctor makes the worst patient was around, and Carolyn was one of them. She'd thought she was healthy enough, but apparently according to the medical staff on the ship, she was but she'd still needed vaccinations with that hypospray. She hadn't exactly been a stellar patient and had very loudly complained the entire time.

And even though it was over, she was still complaining under her breath as she made her way back to the place she'd first arrived in - Ten Forward she was sure it was called. She was tired and irritable and all she wanted to was to be sent home so she could crawl into her bed and just forget all about this crazy she'd found herself in.

Since that wasn't about to happen, she just wanted to second best thing - a cup of coffee. Which she was currently arguing with the replicator about. Worst name for the machine but she still just wanted a cup of coffee. Frustrated that she wasn't able to get what she wanted, she spun around and spotted a man sitting off by himself, staring at some kind of game board.

"Excuse me! Hi? Do you think you can help me with this thing?"

One day, then another, then another. At least she has stopped counting the days since Katniss vanished. She still keeps to Fatima's advice, sleeping holding the jacket and the book, trying to think about Katniss being happy and safe somewhere.

But this was the first place she and Katniss ever had been safe. She tried not to think too much about happy, about how Katniss had treated Fatima, how Katniss almost never spent time in their room...

Yet the room still seemed too large. Too empty. Without her.

Without her.

So she was wandering the halls, more than ever, wearing the too large hunting jacket that had been their fathers, then her sister's, hugging the book her sister had brought with them, filled with their father's notes and... more... she recognized Katniss' handwriting, under the lovely pictures of herbs and roots and flowers.

These were what she clung to as she walked into the lounge. Looking around, she spotted the man sitting on his own and hesitated, then she walked over. Maybe...they could be alone together. She was tired of being alone, alone.

Kaylin's permission post/trigger warning

She was still learning the replicators. She was still... learning a lot of things. But the first thing she learned, and learned well? Food. Here. Food. Lots of food, and they didn't care that her pay wasn't worth ****. She came in, ordered food, they gave her food.

The alcohol didn't have a kick in the slightest, but complaining was the right of someone who was doing something useful and ***** it all, at the moment she wasn't. She was trying not to be a hypocrite. She was.

She missed being busy. Missed being able to help people. Missed going to the foundling hall and helping Marin with the kits, and visiting the pridela, and seeing Ybelline, and spending time with Tara, and yes, she even missed Evanton. She did NOT miss Margot.

But more than almost anything else, she missed work. Missed being a Hawk. Even with Marcus waking her from too little sleep too early in the morning. Or afternoon. Oh ****s sometimes evenings if the day before had been particularly hard.

But the balance was... food. There was food here. Readily available. And if she couldn't work, she was going to do her best to eat herself sick between workouts.

She ordered herself a tray piled high with food, as many interesting looking things as she could think of, then looked for a table. Of course it was crowded. Of course.

His was the only table she saw with an open seat. She strode over, careful not to let the one pitiful glass of water amid all the beautiful plates of food tip.

"Mind if I sit here?" she asked, judging there to be just enough room on the table for both the board where it was and her tray close to the empty chair.

The translucent familiar on her shoulder was studying him with dark opal eyes.

He'd started a game, against himself, and he'd done it almost idly. Is it instinct, is it habit, is it just being so lost in thoughts of so many Go games past? Dylan's not sure. But the stones go to the board, alternating black and white, though idly enough that he catches himself playing a futile ladder before he breaks it, forcing himself into a different direction.

Though playing himself has never been as compelling or engaging as playing an opponent, particularly a skilled one, it has its uses.

He's focused on the game, but he is aware of his surroundings, aware of movement near him, and aware of the young woman who passes him.

He doesn't look at her, though, until she speaks.

"It is," he says, setting a piece down on the board before he looks up at her with bright blue eyes.

"You don't have to apologize. Join me, if you want. Do you play?"

Dylan's been waiting to hear that voice since he got here. Missing that voice. Wishing for that voice.

Andromeda.

He notices the voice just before she speaks to him, and for a moment, he doesn't think about how strange it would be for Andromeda to address him like she didn't know him, or for her to struggle to interact with another computer, or any other logical objection. His heart soars at the voice, because he misses her, and he drops the piece he's holding onto the table.

"Andromeda?"

He's shoved back the chair before he's even realized he's standing, and he still hasn't processed the words, because he's caught on the voice, the voice that had been at his side for nearly five years before he found himself here.

It only first strikes him that something is wrong when he sees that she's not wearing any of the variants on High Guard uniform Rommie favors. But it's her, it has to be.

Except that she's shown no sign of recognizing him, even as he's started walking towards her, and that makes Dylan falter, suddenly wary.

Alec has traveled around enough to have seen know that the multiverse enjoyed creating visual doubles of people. Hell, he had his own face doubles (much to his annoyance at times). Still he does get surprised on occasion. Mostly when he sees a face he hasn't seen in a long while.

So, when he walks past Dylan's table he gives a visible start. It's been a very long time since he's seen that particular face. He starts to say a name but then stops himself. It's obvious, now that he looks at Dylan, it's not the man he thought.

"Uuuh." Carolyn stared at the man, a little wary. Wow, he sure did look way to hopeful that maybe that was her name. She might have felt bad about bursting his bubble but she'd really just been through entirely too much in the last day or so.

She'd gone from working for her father at the SGC and dealing with all the insane stuff the Ori were tossing at them, to being stuck on some starship about two hundred years in the future. PLUS she wasn't able to make the dumb machine just give her a cup of coffee. Not a good day to be confusing her with anyone.

"Whoa! You stay right there," she instructed, pointing at where he was. "I don't know who this Andromeda is, but I'm not her. I'm really not." She drops her hand, quickly shoving it into the pocket of her lab coat. "I'm Carolyn. Doctor Carolyn Lam."

She smiles at him, quickly and shyly, her hands twisting slightly before she forces them into her skirt pockets to stop that.

"All right," Annie says, quietly. To the apologizing, not the offer, which makes her both tempted and hesitant in equal parts. It's a struggle that writes itself clearly across her face.

"I, um. I only know the flat version. Or, really, the flat version of my world, which seems to be a little bit different from the flat version they have in this place? But been teachin' myself 3D chess, so I know a little of adjusting to the multiple boards, and...things."

She misses playing against other people, though. If she couldn't spar with anything else except for Finnick, she'd always still had the games she could play with the other victors.

"So, uh. That okay?"

"Wow. You look like someone killed your puppy." Tom sipped the cup of coffee he had grabbed from the replicator (thankfully it didn't have Neelix's gourmet touch). "Trust me, if it's one thing I know, it's life. And usually, when you feel like the universe just shat you out, it's not as bad as you think. Unless you end up in jail. Then it probably is." Tom helped himself to the seat opposite Dylan and held out his hand.

"Tom Paris. What is this anyway?" Go, in any form, was a little advanced for Tom's juvenile sense of humor and hobbies. The man is smart enough to understand advanced warp theory and pilot a 700,000 metric ton starship.....and yet he can't understand go and logic games. Go figure.

Ezri slid something that looked neon green and smelled alcoholic in front of Dylan. "You look like you could use this more than me. Actually, I ordered it by mistake." The counselor looked at the board. It looked like 3-D chess, but the board wasn't right. Go? Dax drew on her pasts hosts memories, and wondered if she could play, despite never having played before in her (current) life.

"Need a partner? Or are you just setting up the board for fun and plan to look longingly at it? I'm excellent at moping if you need some tips."

Trance looked over, seeing Dylan staring at the Go board he had painstakingly replicated. Part of her, the part that was still young and purple and had a tail, wanted to go over, randomly place a piece and scamper off. But that wouldn't help Dylan. He was lonely and hurt, and probably missed the three Nietzscheans more than he realized he would. More than he's even conscious off.

Instead, she sat down opposite him. "Why do you always prefer the white stones?" Except when he was playing against himself, he seemed to relegate himself to the lighter side of the Go board.

John did wonder what had replaced chess as the looking thoughtfully at pieces board game. He pauses and watches Dylan from a distance, wondering if the guy is going to make a move but he looks pretty occupied. The downturn on the man's mouth suggests that whatever he's thinking, it isn't a happy thought, so John figures he could do with a distraction. He comes and flings himself down into the seat opposite Dylan and picks up a white piece.

"How does this game work exactly?" he asks as he turns the piece over.

The cybernetic being that had let the world believe she was Rebecca Siddons sits at a corner table, scanning the room for the 427th time. It takes Her little time, even with the limited and feeble sensory input that this body provides. Taken from Her pod, seized from Her universe at Her moment of triumph, She now found Herself with no ship to command, no task to accomplish which could at all be worthy of Her intellect. This imprisonment is intolerable.

She notices the board that the human next to Her is setting up. It would not be so grand a task as She would want to crush this insect in a foolish game. But it is better than counting the bartender's hairstrands again.

"Is that Go?"

"Yeah," he said, softly, and trying not to let the disappointment show too much in his voice or his face.

She really does look like Andromeda. Look like her, and sound like her. Right down to the way she sounds when she orders him to stay where he is. He'd wonder if, maybe, Rommie had been reprogrammed, made to forget him, somehow, except ... though he was sure it was the same face, it was, maybe, a little older, a little more rounded out, and Rommie's an android. Their appearances don't change with time the way that humans' do.

"I'm sorry," he says. "She's a friend. A very good friend." He mostly manages to keep too much wistfulness out of his voice. Mostly, but not entirely.

He's stopped, exactly where he is, and though he's much taller than her (she's even Rommie's height), he's doing his best to appear not like a threat. For a man built like Dylan is, with his height and bulk and carriage and a weapon at his belt, that's not easy.

"I'm Dylan. Captain Dylan Hunt."

It's true that it's not considered to be particularly good form to interript someone while they play Go, but Dylan is a starship captain who used to play on his ship, and had played on many other ships before that, even at the Academy, where he'd first picked up the game, because it was considered good training for young officer cadets. He's used to interruptions. He's also used to playing with Nietzscheans: Gaheris had made an art out of cheating, and that included distractions.

A new game for a new player is in order, though, and Dylan begins to clear the boards.

"I'm not from this world, either, so maybe our rules started out the same."

Or different, but he says it with a smile for the young woman. She seems nervous and, he supposes, perhaps has reason to be: he's a big, strong man, and she's a small woman, though she's not precisely delicate. But he's as welcoming as he can he as he holds out a hand to the spare seat.

"I'm happy to teach you."

The girl who approached him was young, very young, and she was clutching hard to a book and wearing a jacket that clearly belonged to somebody else. Dylan never had any children of his own, a fact that hurts, somewhere deeper inside than he wants to give it credit for, but he'd always been fond of children. Fond of them, and good with them.

In some ways, captaining a ship and caring for, raising, a child were similar.

So when the girl walked over, her stance and her gaze sad and lonely, he smiled up at her.

"Would you care to join me? Have a game, or perhaps something to drink?"

He'd sit and have a cup of tea with her to keep her company as readily as he'd teach her the Go of his world.

She hesitated and shrugged finally. "I... don't know how to play," she whispered, her voice horse, either from disuse or from screaming. It was hard to tell which, though there were those that would know. Those who had been with her during the first of the nightmares.

The offer of the drink she was able to ignore, though some part of her knew that if he had offered her food, she would have taken it. Just because she grew up expecting food to be hard to get, so much so that even when it was available freely here... if she trusted that there was no cost, and even of there was, the cost mattered little now... old instincts don't die so easily. Katniss worked too hard to keep them all fed to ignore the efforts.

Katniss...

A shuddering sob tore through her.

Katniss was gone.

"Yeah I figured that," Carolyn replied, still eyeing him warily. Okay, so maybe she felt a little bad for him because this Andromeda seemed to be a little more than a friend to him. He just seemed too disappointed for her to just be a friend and well, she got that it couldn't exactly be easy seeing someone who kinda looked like her - she didn't get that she looked exactly like her. That would have freaked her out and made her think of Replicators - not the kind that were here on the ship, but the not good kind from back home.

She sighed, rocking back on her heels as she continued to watch him. He was tall, way taller than she was... Like maybe by seven or eight inches. He was built, looked healthy enough. He even looked like he actually felt bad about confusing her with his friend. Maybe she should try toning back on the attitude with him.

"I'm sorry, it's been a bizarre couple of days... Uh, what exactly are you Captain of?"

Being lonely had become the way of Dylan's life long before he came here, before Tyr and the Rhades had come here, let alone disappeared. He'd been lonely since Hephaistos, since he'd lost his fiancée and his best friend and everyone he'd ever known.

Some days, it was easier than others. Today was one of those when it wasn't.

Trance, though, was someone familiar. Someone something like from home.

He picked up a white stone, turning it over in his fingers, with only part of his mind on the game.

"Because black moves first," he said as he placed it.

"Because you want to watch what your opponent does? What choices he makes? Or is it something else? Especially considering you would always play with Gaheris." There, she said his name. What she didn't say was that he had been her first choice. A mistake, but still. She had chosen him first.

"Gaheris had a certain kind of determination, so he would go first. But you watch, and wait. You're more careful."

She smiles, again, just as quickly and shyly as before, and she nods. "I'd, uh. I'd like that."

Something new. Something to challenge her brain. And she can always leave if it's too much, or if he starts getting aggressive, or patronizing. Or something.

She walks over and sits down, movements still a little skittish. She doesn't pull the chair in much, either: she'd rather lean forward than be trapped.

"Gaheris was a hell of a Go player, but he sometimes made tactical mistakes. Playing black suited his style."

Aggressive. Determined, yes, like Trance said. It made for an interesting combination in Go, and balanced well as a team of First Officer and Captain. Or so he'd thought, for those three years they'd worked together.

It sounded, when he'd said it, like Dylan was talking about their Go playing, though he could just as easily have been talking about broader life choices.

He'll never think that Gaheris made anything but a serious error when he turned on the Commonwealth.

"And playing white allows me to observe my opponent and him to think he has the advantage."

"Gaheris might not see them that way -- as tactical mistakes.

Actually Trance could say that for certain. She saw firsthand how Gaheris' Commonwealth played out, ending in the destruction of Xinti and Trance's second shot with Dylan.

"He simply did not believe in compromise. Nietzscheans wanted to win at all costs." Which was exactly why she had thought he was the one. Determined.

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Ten Forward: OTA

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