ten_fwd | The Boy and His Dog

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The Boy and His Dog

It is the end of the school year for Andrew. The bus does not take him all the way home. He still has to walk a good distance. He can smell the fresh grass and in the distance he sees a few of his Aunt and Uncle's horses. They seem to be having a grand time.

Andrew is not. The last day of school is always hard on him. The others kids had been way too excited for him to reasonably deal with. It was draining to feel their excitement. How could they possibly be that energized?

It didn't matter. He had his report card. He had a few things his teachers had reminded him to get so they wouldn't be left at the school over the summer. Eventually he makes his way up to the house. He takes a deep breath then laughs as a very familiar face greets him.

"Bernie!" The large German Shepard nearly knocks him down. He can feel how thrilled and pleased Bernie is that he is home. Andrew is pleased because the familiar emotions that Bernie has almost all of the time are comforting.

"Come on boy. Let's go inside." Andrew follows the big dog as he sops to drop his book bag off at the kitchen table. Then Andrew checks to make sure he has his emergency inhaler on him.

"Okay. Wanna go play boy," Andrew asks the dog who barks excitedly and races out the back door. Andrew grabs a tennis ball to go play with his dog. Once they are out in the yard behind the farm house Andrew pulls his arm back and throws the ball. Then in an instant the tennis ball bounces off someone's drink. Andrew is suddenly mortified. He hadn't meant to do that!

He isn't even sure where he is suddenly. But Bernie is after that tennis ball. Ducking around legs and grabbing it in his mouth right away.

"I..." Andrew just blinks like a tiny little owlet. "I'm sorry?"

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With the seemingly neverending stream of newly-abducted people appearing in Ten Forward, as well as the fascinating variety of drinks and food available from other worlds, Philip has been spending much of his spare time -- when he's not in the holodeck -- in the bar.

His jaw drops when a tennis ball goes bouncing off his glass, spilling some sort of syntheholic whiskey into the bowl of soup he's eating. He glances around in confusion, his eyes finally landing on the boy standing there. And there's... a dog. Ah. That explains it.

Andrew just looks a little more distressed. The adult hasn't even said anything. He is not where he should be.

What is going on? He starts to try and say something but the words just catch in his throat. This is very uncomfortable for him. He makes a small noise and shuffles to try and get Bernie who is now calmly chewing on that tennis ball.

"Sorry." He said it again. He isn't sure why.

"Sheesh," Philip sighs. He frowns down at his ruined lunch for a moment. Ah, well. He can replicate some more.

More interesting, at the moment, is this kid and his dog. He looks back up with curiosity on his face. "You've just arrived, I take it? I have not yet seen anyone bring a pet along."

"Bernie isn't just a pet," Andrew defends. He bristles just a bit at the idea of his best friend being no more than a side kick. Bernie is very important to him.

"I guess. I was just in the back part of the yard. I was going to play with Bernie."

"Not just a pet? Interesting." His lunch is a lost cause, so Philip gets up from his seat to crouch in front of Bernie. "I have not seen this sort of dog before. What is its breed?"

And there he goes on a tangent instead of, you know, explaining what's going on to the poor displaced kid. Priorities.

"No.He's my best friend." Which might sound strange but it's true given how hard it is for Andrew to make friends.

"He's a German Shepard." He is a little puzzled as German Shepherds are fairly well known. He guesses maybe it's because they tend to be seen as a larger breed. Not everywhere would have a dog like Bernie no matter how awesome Bernie is.

"How intriguing." Philip grinned. Without even asking whether it would be a good idea, he reaches out to pet Bernie behind the ears.

Bernie doesn't bite people. Instead he stills himself silently sniffing at Phillip. Andrew smiles a little to him,self at the steady reaction from his dog.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's always interesting to encounter something with which I was unfamiliar prior. Wouldn't you agree?" Philip's just lucky it's a dog and not a scorpion or something. Common sense is not something with which he is well acquainted.

"Not always. This place is new and I'm certainly not happy to be here," the young boy says very firmly. He is nine going on forty the way he sounds. But it is obvious he isn't happy. His posture is very stiff.

"Where am I?"

Alas. Some people are just not as interested in learning, and that's weird, but Philip has learned to accept it.

He turns his gaze from the dog to the boy. "This is a spaceship called the U.S.S. Enterprise, presently located in interstellar space. The current year is 2366."

Some people might accuse Philip of lying. Some people might scoff at what was just said.

Andrew just looks queasy. "You're not lying," he says as serious as he had been before.

He squirms slightly. "Do.... Do you happen to know why we're here? It was 2014 for me."

"An entity called Q has gathered us here for his own entertainment. From what I have gathered, there seems to be some sort of history between this Q and the captain of the Enterprise." Philip smiles knowingly. "All of this may well be the result of a grudge that none of us were initially party to."

"He must have a weird sense of humor," Andrew grumbles. He doesn't care for pranks. He is a little too serious for that. Still somehow Philip's attitude was a bit of a calming factor for Andrew.

That or he was swinging back to the fact they're on a real space ship. "So this is really a space trip? Not just a really fancy looking restaurant?"

"That's right. See for yourself." He finally stops patting Bernie and gets to his feet. He gestures to the windows lined up along one wall.

"You said you were from the year 2014? How curious. Though we have been abducted from many different places and points in time, there is a statistical cluster around the early twenty-first century. There must be some reason for that..."

Bernie had been thrilled to have some new person paying attention to him. He does, however, follow after Andrew as the boy goes to check out the windows.

The windows are placed a little high for someone of his height. Still he pushes up on his feet and is able to nearly press his nose against the window.

"Wow!" The fact he can see this is real is seriously neat. He stumbles a bit then blinks over at Philip.

"Maybe... Um. Maybe it has to do with how a multiverse might work?"

Philip returns his plate and cup to the bar before following after Andrew. He raises an eyebrow at that observation. He hadn't been expecting to hear something like that from someone so young. Honestly, he wouldn't have expected it from most of the adults around here.

"Unfortunately, I can only make inferences from the information available." He doesn't like that. He doesn't like not having all the information available at his fingertips immediately. Still, he'll have to think about this a little more; maybe he can piece something together. "What do you know about this subject?"

"Just a little bit. I read a lot because I get sick easy so..." Andrew shrugs slightly. He looks like he's puzzling over his thoughts.

"I just figure.... Well. There's the universe or if you prefer, reality, you come from. I figure that it has it's own kind of neighborhood. Because that would explain how we have humans all over this place who are from what I see as the future. Then others who.... are from a time close to mine. Maybe our realities have a similar zip code or something. A way that explains what they have in common."

A grin spread across Philip's face as he listened to that suggestion. "What a compelling suggestion. You may just be some sort of genius."

Andrew just blushes a bit. If it weren't for Bernie butting Andrew's hand lightly the poor kid would have gotten really flustered.

"I just read a lot. But you did say there were lots of people from a similar time period.... The evidence of some kind of.... common factor is there." After another moment's thought he just blinks.

"Of course that might only explain how this.... Q picked us out."

"It may. Q himself says that he is capable of doing 'anything', but that's hardly an objective assessment." Philip taps a finger to his lips, staring out the window in thought. "If his abilities are limited to 'neighboring' universes, and if the flow of time is different from universe to universe-- ah, no, that wouldn't work. Haruto Sohma is proof against that." By the end of that sentence he's just muttering to himself without really thinking about whether Andrew is even still listening.

"It could be Q can time travel too," Andrew feels the need to point out.

"We don't know what limits him. We just know he can do lots of stuff, just not the specifics of what that stuff isbesides bringing us here."

"That's true enough. The lack of information available to us outweighs that which we know by orders of magnitude." He sighs, but he's not too frustrated at the moment. The boy's suggestion has given him much to think about.

Speaking of whom... "You've told me your friend's name," Philip says, gesturing down at Bernie, "but not yours. Introductions are important, given that we may be seeing each other quite often as long as we are here."

"I wonder if they'll tell us anything." Because like anyone would tell a nine year old all the things. That just doesn't happen.

"I'm Andrew. Andrew McKee." He hates nick names. Drew sounds silly and he doesn't much like Andy either because of a movie about toys.

"And I'm Philip." A 'nice to meet you' would only slow the conversation down, so he replies, "The crew of this ship has been forthcoming with information, if there is anything in particular you are interested in."

It is implied which is fine for him. "Well... I'm not sure what I'm interested in. I'm pretty sure if Bernie or I need to eat soon I can ask about that. Bernie needs dog food so I'd hope they could do something for him. I'm not too picky, usually."

He could care less as long as he can eat it easily.

"You're in luck. You've appeared in a restaurant." Philip gestured to the bar. "Currency is not a problem in this time period. All you need do is ask, if you're hungry."

"No currency then?" That is a little weird to him. "I wonder why. I guess their culture is very different. I mean it is a few hundred years in the future."

"The Earth of this time period is a post-scarcity world. It's incredible!"

"Seriously?" Andrew gapes slightly. That means there are so many things that are different from his time period.

"That's really cool." It makes Andrew happy because that means his father would be out of a job here. Somehow that is just really nice to the part of him that resents his father still.

"Indeed. And it's given me much to think about when researching economics. Throughout human history a number of economic systems have developed, but none managed to solve the basic problem of there not being enough resources to go around. Somehow, within the past three hundred years, this was overcome. Perhaps the replicator technology was in part responsible..."

Sorry, Andrew. Here Philip goes on a wild tangent.

"Hey Philip? What's a replicator?" Obviously the best way to get answers is to ask questions. Andrew has plenty but he can only ask one at a time right now as that is all he can really handle.

His eyes light up at that question. "It's an ingenious piece of technology native to this time period. Through some process of matter dematerialization and rematerialization, it's able to produce objects seemingly out of nowhere!"

Henry watched the boy and his dog like he watched everyone else in Ten Forward. Stared for a while, making notes and not really introducing himself. But then he saw the tennis ball roll towards him and he smiled, moving to pick it up.

By this point, he'd seen that the dog was friendly and wasn't scared as he came to reclaim what was his. Holding it out to the dog, Henry nodded at Andrew.

"Nice dog. What's his name?"

(ooc: hope that's okay, i can change it if you don't like it)

"Bernie."

He blinks a little at the slightly older boy. Henry has plenty of height on them both. Andrew is a bit scrawny from having not as good health as he should. It's the asthma coupled with a poor immune system but hopefully the boy will grow out of that.

"He likes playing with people."

"Reminds me of Pongo." Henry smiled and stroked the dog, not at all scared or trying to scare in return.

"I'm Henry. Do you live here or did you just appear? I just appeared not very long ago."

He's not usually this talkative but there was something about the presence of a dog that soothed him.

"Um. Yes," he says with a quick nod.

"I don't know how I got here," he admits. He really doesn't like that fact. He wants to know how he got here and why he is here.

"Do you know what's going on?"

"I don't know how I got here either. I don't think anyone really knows much. Guess we just have to wait and see what happens next."

As much as Henry hates just letting the adults handle it, there's not much he can do right now. "What's your name?"

"Andrew," the boy offers.

"I guess since we don't know what's going on we're gonna have to wait for the adults to actually tell us." He considers this very carefully. "Henry. Can we.... Can we trust them?"

Andrew has been hurt by adults before. He doesn't want to get hurt again.

Henry thought about the other boy's question for a moment. He had a point.

"I don't know. But if we stick together, we can help each other, right? There don't seem to be many kids." If they stuck together, then they'd have each other and perhaps not even need the adults.

Personally, Andrew wants to trust the grownups. They aren't bad people but his own history makes it hard to just put blind faith in grownups. They have a habit of leaving him.

"We'd have Bernie to protect us," Andrew adds. His dog is good at that. "And... And we should make sure any other kids are okay. Just in case."

"That's a great idea." Bernie looked like he'd be great at protection and Andrew's idea wasn't bad either. "Form a group of kids and no one will harm us."

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The Boy and His Dog

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