Flirting With The Deep End

Andy and I came up with this one and I had fun doing it. Thanks, Andy!

En route to Highgate
04 Jun 2521
Corridors of the Summer's Gift

Joshua had no plans to go insane. Or, at least, not any more than he already was. Which explained why he was standing in front of Rina's door before he had even started prepping breakfast. If he wanted her help, he needed to catch her before she got settled into her repairs and general ship duties. He knocked on her door in a firm, but not overly loud staccato designed to get her attention without potentially disturbing anyone else.

***

"Shtoh za chiert?" Someone's knuckles on my door jerked me awake and pulled the curse from me unbidden. What the hell--? I slapped the door comms live from my console and modulated my response. "Yeah?"

***

"Hi there, sweetcakes." As he said it, he couldn't help chuckling. As she was waking up was about the only time he could get away with calling her that. And with a door separating the two of them. And with her unarmed.

Before she could get too riled up, he let his voice grow more serious. "It's Joshua. I was hoping to get your help before you got started this morning.”

***

The sobriquet was unlike him and it swept the last of the cobwebs from my head. Something's up. Paranoia had me kicking the covers free and I opened the door before he finished speaking and pulled him inside. I checked the corridor—Clear—and shut it before anyone else happened along.

Too late, I realized my mistake. There was no hiding my quarters from him now. Since the night on the hull I had expanded the timeline, drawing it on the wall opposite my bunk. At this point, it spanned nearly three years and I'd added a rough sketch of the Verse with our travels plotted in. Duct tape labeled salient points on the map and arrows connected them to events on the timeline. Sheets of paper were taped to the wall at the margins, containing notes I couldn't spare room for on the schematic. It spanned the entire length of wall from locker to door. Everything was drawn in grease pencil and everything was written in Russian. I'd hoped to find a pattern, a clue, something that would make sense of what had happened to Mike. Something that could suggest a way to save him.

God only knew what Joshua would make of it.

Never mind. He’s seen it. Damage done. I checked my watch: 0516. Not too early, but definitely earlier than the rest of the crew. I planted my back against my door and crossed my arms, clad in nothing but my skivvies.

"What do you need?"

***

"Well..." Joshua started to talk and then fell silent as he observed the wall covered in what seemed to be some sort of massive timeline. Rina was hyper focused even at her worst, but this was something else altogether. He could only make out some of what she had written in Russian. What he could make out all seemed to deal with Mike Carter, a story of events that happened before he arrived, to a man he had never met.

It made sense when he took a minute to think about it. Of course, she would be spending her free time obsessing over the information she had. And the information she didn't have, for that matter. Would she have done something like this for him? A pang of jealousy shot up from his stomach to his chest, but he pushed it back down.

"Well..," he paused again and gathered his thoughts."I was hoping to catch you before you got started. I need someone to keep me from going off the deep end.”

***

I didn't miss his glance at the wall and his statement acquired multiple meanings I really hadn't the time or the patience to sift through. So I simply addressed the most obvious one.

"Sure. Literally or metaphorically?"

***

"Both, perhaps?" He wasn't quite sure how to answer her, so he settled for getting to the point. "I want to start delving into my chip, but I don't want to start it without someone watching over me to make sure I stay me.”

***

Literally, then.

"Okay. Have a seat. I'll get dressed."

That was the work of a minute. I stepped into my boots, pulled up the coveralls they stood in, and zipped up.

"Do you want me standing by with a sedative patch? Or should I just kosh you?" I paused at my locker, its door open and my hand on my gun. Did I want to put myself in the position of shooting him? As he'd said—repeatedly—there's no coming back from killing.

***

His eye moved to her hand on her gun. An instinctive reflex for her, he was sure, but it did always make him a little nervous. "Let's keep it simple. Sedative patch if possible. I'd rather not be feeling the results for days afterwards. Getting hit by you is like slamming into the hatch door headfirst." He pulled the chip out of his shirt pocket and held it up in front of her face. "I've got the chip with me. Pick a place that would work best for you. I can always move later, assuming that you've not knocked me out at that point.”

He motioned her towards her door as he stepped out, anxious to leave the confined space. Joshua knew she didn't mean it to be that way, but the timeline made her room feel oppressive, a greasepencil reminder of the ever-present past, hanging over Rina like the Sword of Damocles. To Rina, a ghost of things missed and overlooked, a finger of blame. To Joshua, a reminder of the man, almost a mythical figure that held what Joshua loved just out of his reach. Next time he would look for her in the engine room, routine or no.

***

I stepped back, lest I accidentally inhale the chip and closed my locker door. Damn. He's keyed up.

"Okay. Simple works. You choose the venue. I'll get the patch. I know where Arden keeps them."

I doubted sympathy or coddling was what he wanted. What he wanted was backup, someone he could trust to keep it together. That piece of work on my wall might make him think twice about coming to me but there was nothing he or I could do about it now. He'd come to me first, walked in and asked, and there was no undoing it now. I kept it nice and businesslike and opened my door.

"After you."

***

"Let's do this in one of the empty cargo containers. Open space and less likely to freak out our passengers. Meet you there?" He turned off in that direction without giving Rina a chance to reply. It was only when he got there and started to sit down on the floor that he had absolutely no idea how he was planning to actually read the chip.

***

I watched him take off with some snap in his step and eyed the line of his back. Nervous. Needing answers. Refusing to back down. Memory nagged and I realized he'd neglected to bring anything to read the chip on. I pulled my databook from my desk drawer and shut my door. I turned off my watch before its alarm could start beeping and detoured into the engine room to start up the day cycle and get that daily diagnostic running. Immediate duties taken care of, I hit the med bay on the way down . Arden kept the patches in one of the crash carts, I knew, and it wasn't long before I had several in my pocket. The lowerdecks were dim, despite the power-up for the day, and I called out when I came off the stairs.

"Joshua. You there?"

***

"I'm an idiot, but I'm here." His eyes had adapted to the dim light already and as he turned his head, he could see her heading his way. "You didn't happen to think about a datapad or something, did you? I thought about breaking open the chip and letting all the little data bits spill on the floor where I could sort them, but that would make such a mess." He was rambling again. Kiera had been right when she said he talked too much. Especially when he was nervous.

***

Definitely nervous.

I took in the rambling speech, the little movements he made with his hands, his shoulders, heard it in his tone. I pulled my databook from my pocket and the half dozen patches I'd filched from med bay and spread them both on the deck.

"Before we start, I need to ask you something."

***

Uh-oh. "Sure, go ahead. I've got nothing to hide." He found himself sliding the data chip back and forth between his fingers and he forced himself to set it on the floor between him and Rina. "Except of course, for my monstrous past as a Blue Sun operative. But you already know that.”

***

Here we go.

"I saw you looking at my wall back there. I know how it looks, so I'm just going to ask: Do you trust me?"

***

"Of course I do. If I was worried, I would've said something to you." He took her hand into his and rubbed it reassuringly. "I will always love you, no matter how we stand. And that means I trust you about the things that matter." Love was a complicated beast, for sure, but at its core, it was about trusting someone other than yourself. And he loved Rina.

***

Relief made me giddy, gratitude made me want to weep, and love held me together.

"Spasiba," I said and took his face in both my hands, leaned forward and kissed him long and deep. I knew the risks inherent in reading that chip and so did he. But he trusted me. He was ready to take that chance and now, so was I.

***

Joshua found himself leaning deep into the kiss, feeling the energy from it shoot down his spine, enjoying the pleasure of the sweet taste of her lips. Enjoying it too much, in fact. The logical portion of his brain did its best to reign in the emotional portion. With no small amount of his struggle, he broke free from the kiss and sat back. A couple of deep breaths later, he managed to wrangle his thoughts back to the chip sitting in front of him.

"I don't have a plan, really. I'm going to start reading the chip, and if I start to act like someone that's not Joshua, patch me." He reached for the datapad resting near Rina's leg as he confirmed, "Make sense?”

***

"Perfect sense."

I didn't hold him when he broke free. I wasn't looking to coerce him into anything. I’d only wanted to communicate how much his trust meant to me. I rose and locked the container door, then took the panel off the controls and rigged an override on it. If I was too slow with that patch, or Joshua managed somehow to stay awake in spite of it, he wasn't leaving the container. Neither could anyone else get in. Any casualties would be restricted to just him and me. I kept my body between Joshua and what I was doing, knowing he could pick up the trick if he could observe it, and when everything was a secure as I could make it, I returned and knelt in front of him. I took up a patch and held it ready.

"Go," I said.

***

Joshua picked up the chip and plugged into the datapad without saying a word. It made a quiet whirring noise and then a louder chunk, chunk, chunk noise before a file came up on the screen. And what was in the file was gibberish.

Looking closer, he could make out an occasional word, but occasional was perhaps being generous. He scrolled through 4 pages, and then 10, and then sped up skimming through 20 pages at a time. He couldn't see anything that looked coherent. Thousands of pages of information and all of them were all a waste of time. He held the datapad up with one hand and reared back to throw it across the cargo container.

***

"Stoi!" I rose to my feet in a flash and grabbed his wrist before he could throw it. I pulled my datapad gently from his hand and looked him in the eye. I wasn't sure what had set him off but I didn't think he'd left me. Not yet. "Joshua, stop. I only have the one. Please don't break it."

***

As she looked him in the eye, he grew calm for a bit. "I'm still me." Despite the anger rumbling inside of him, he didn't want to be on the wrong end of a tranq patch. "And I'm sorry, you're right, I don't want to break your stuff. Now, if you'll excuse me." He calmly stood himself up, walked quietly away from Rina to the other side of the cargo container.

“Da Shiong La Se La Chwohn Tian!”

“C’est vraiment des conneries!”

“Ebn el Metanaka!”

“Me cago en la leche!”

He cursed a blue streak in every language he knew how, except Russian, feeling oddly embarrassed cursing in a language that Rina knew. After about the twelfth or thirteenth language, he could feel the anger slowly draining, like a particularly nasty boil. Once he could feel the calm overtaking him again, he walked back over to Rina and sat back down. "Sorry.”

***

I secured the databook and gave him his head. While he turned the air blue I leant against the container wall and skimmed the contents of the chip.

Hmm... Encrypted, obviously. But why are some words coming through? I slid down the wall to sit and started going over the material again, trying to suss out the code. It was slow going since my attention was divided between what I had in my lap and Joshua striding back in forth in front of me, and the occasional swear would strike my ear as intriguing. How many languages does he actually know? I made a mental note of some of the more interesting ones to ask about later, and turned back to the chip.

Joshua swore, I scanned, and time passed. I looked up when he settled on the deck beside me, a little sweaty from working off his steam but calmer than when he’d started.

"Sorry," he said.

"Ni za shto," I said, shrugging off his tirade. "After everything that's happened to you in the past year, you were overdue."

***

"Still, not really an excuse. Do you mind?" Joshua reached his hand out for the datapad. "I promise I won't throw it. Or even set it down too hard. I just want to look at it again."

***

"I don't recognize the encryption.” I handed it over and leaned in to look at the screen. “Do you?"

***

He shook his head. "It's not encrypted, Rina. We decrypted this on Colchester. If it was encrypted, I wouldn't be so pissed." He stared at the datapad again and shook his head in disgust. "It's not encrypted. It's been corrupted.”

He skimmed through a few pages just to feel like he was doing something. Then he saw it, a substantial fragment of a sentence sitting in the midst of the nonsense: ...sympathetic neurological distress. Subject may need to be removed to…

"Do you see that?" he asked quietly. "Or am I just completely delusional?”

***

“How did it get corrupted?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. The last thing he needs from you is criticism, even if only implied. “I mean, was it corrupted after Colchester or before?”

He didn’t answer, being busy with scanning the chip and I saw him stiffen about two pages further in. I looked where he pointed and read the words and for a second couldn’t comprehend what my eyes saw.

Sympathetic neurological distress.

My ears caught up with the rest of me and I realized Joshua was waiting for an answer to his question.

“No, you’re not. I see it,” I said. “I just don’t know what the hell it means. Does ‘sympathetic’ in this case mean suffering empathetically? If so, that would mean that there was more than one person involved and you … picked up on it. Right? No, don’t answer that.” I leaned closer, my side pressing into his as I tried for a better viewing angle. The databook wasn’t very big, about the size of a large paperback and the screen a touch smaller to allow for the frame. “Is there any more to this?”

***

He handed the databook over to her so she could look closer. "Not on this page. In fact, not any other pages I looked on. But there are tens of thousands of pages, it looks like. Maybe even a hundred thousand." Would his report have had that many pages? No, not likely, he concluded. All the nonsense must be what had been binary data, now just an incomprehensible mess of corrupted machine language. But there was one fragment, there might be more, he thought. Suddenly the long four week trip to Highgate didn't seem like nearly enough time at all to Joshua.

***

Tens of thousands of pages. Maybe even a hundred thousand.

I tried not to think how many years of his life that it translated into, how many experiments, how many violations it represented.

Dear God in Heaven...

My gorge rose, bitter and stinging. I swallowed it back and scrambled up to pace the container lest he see my expression. Joshua didn't need my horror or my pity. He needed me strong, collected and above all, thinking, not emoting. He was distressed enough without having to fend off my distress too. Or hold my hand while I cried for him. I took a deep cleansing breath and resumed my seat beside him.

"Why didn't you turn, for want of a better word, when you looked at it this time? One glance was all it took on Colchester. There were images, then, too. I wasn't able to see everything but I did see that much. And now they're gone. Why is it different now?"

***

Joshua thought about it for a minute. It was a good question. And then, staring at the garbled letters, Joshua realized he was staring the probable answer right in the face. "Maybe whatever caused it got corrupted too. Maybe some of this gobbledy-gook mess is the remains of whatever program caused me to flashback to a previous memory. Certainly not much left of previous memory now.”

***

"As a working hypothesis, it's as good as any I can come up with," I said, meaning it. "I hope that means you won't need a wingman standing by to tranq you while you read it."

I'd almost said 'riding shotgun' but decided that perhaps the gun metaphor wouldn't be something he'd appreciate. I gathered the patches off the deck and put them in my pocket, then debated what to do next. Curiosity warred with discretion, worry with confidence.

Joshua's a grown man who knows what he wants. Why don't you just ask him?

"Do you want me to stay while you look this over? Or do you want me to go?" I kept my voice as neutral as I could but only Joshua could judge how successful I'd been.

***

"Can I borrow your datapad for a while?" he asked apologetically. "And by a while, I mean 4 weeks. This is going to take me a metric ton of time to go through. You're welcome to stay if you want, but I don't think I'm going to need to be slapped with a patch. Or even just plain slapped." He wasn't sure what he was going to do if he found any information. Of course, if everything he found was as bizarre and confusing as the one piece he had found, he'd be lost anyway.

***

"Sure," I said, putting my databook firmly in his hands and wrapping his fingers around it. His flesh felt cold and I gave his hand a squeeze. "Just give it back when you're done. As for staying, I'll stay or go as you need me."

That was some mighty fine 'being strong' you did there, woman. Pass the buck why don't you?

***

"Stay for a while, then. I could use the company. And you could probably use some time away from the time line." Joshua looked at her and smiled softly to let her know that he was only concerned for her. "Maybe we should go to the lounge. A little more comfy than a cold, empty container." He rose gracefully to his feet, and then gave a tug on Rina's hand. "You know it'll be fun staring at a data screen for hours.”

***

I let him pull me up and let the crack about the timeline slide. It didn't matter where the physical timeline was, I'd already memorized every last inch of it. Not that Joshua needed to know that. It would only make him worry. I got the control panel back to rights and opened the container door.

"Go on ahead," I said, nodding toward the stairs. "I'll meet you there."

***

Joshua nodded at her and smiled before heading up the stairs on his way to the lounge. The next 4 weeks were going to be a test of his patience. He could only hope he found something to keep him going every so often. Otherwise, he wasn't sure he could handle the endless frustration of staring at a mess of letters that could've been his answers.

***

Go back to: Timeline Season Four, April 2521 to Dec 2521

Go to Peripatetica - Rina's Journal entry and RP log
Go to Rina's Russian Glossary
Go to Rina's Crew Page
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