The Enchanted Forest Of Crash Test Dummies

Posted on Wed Jul 5th, 2023 @ 9:04pm by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra & Lieutenant Mar Megara MD & Lieutenant Dinui Locke (loch) & Innocent Bystander

2,639 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: S0:1: What Is Past, Is Prologue
Location: Clock Maker Sphere, base of the dome
Timeline: Feburary 2390

Fragments of the red foam-like material that had been the floor were scattered all over the forest floor. Some parts were larges, in others drifts of red dust collected in the nooks of tree roots. Here and there the brass wiring of Morningstar technology could be seen wriggling and writhing, trying to reconnect with large sections to no avail.

The copilot of the runabout, Alvin was his name, sat up in the dust and leaf matter that had 'cushioned' their fall. He remembered the ride down the side of the dome, followed by the flight when the tree's collided with the make-shift toboggan. Just from looking around, he couldn't see anyone-

But then he noticed his arm had a new joint, and then the Good Idea Fairy decided that now was the perfect moment to get in touch with his pain receptors. It was a groan of pain, not a scream.

Shadi jumped up and turned her head about like a bird searching for its flock. "Where are we? Everything looks wrong!"

"Snakes alive! Your eye!" Ono gasped in horror and pointed before covering his face.

"Huh?" Shadi ran her clawed hand over her face and let out a yelp as she nicked the eyeball that was dangling down her cheek like a melon on a vine. "Oh, famine! This is really going to hurt..." She gathered up the organ and gently slid it back into its socket with a squishy pop. A train of hissing came out of Shadi's mouth like a steam engine. Swollen as it was, the eyelid couldn't fully enclose her reddened eye. "How is it now?"

Ono suppressed a gag reflex. "Doctor Megara, please assist the Commander if you can!"

"Hey!" Alvin shouted from where he lay cradling his arm.

"Commander Zatra is our only engineer and you are a pilot for an away team that currently has no shuttle," Ono chastised, "so triage rules dictate you wait your turn!"

"Do you see this arm?" Alvin shouted. "It has two elbows! Humans do not have two elbows in one arm!"

Dinui swallowed hard. Seeing folks with injuries was one of the main reasons she avoided Sickbay it bothered her to see others in pain. It wasn't seeing their blood or guts that got to her. It was the look of pain or in some cases sear agony of their injuries that bothered her. Her mother said it was the mothering instinct telling her to help and protect another. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Dinui blinked and pulled her legs under herself and got up. Unsteadily to be sure and carefully made her way over to Alvin, "Ye need t' stay still laddie." She said, she looked over at Ono, "Ye look no better Sir mind ye'r right side." She sat down with less grace than she would have liked, but she managed to not collide with anyone's injuries. She brushed her hair back from her face and hissed out in surprise as a stabbing pain blossomed from the back of her head and spread like a hand to enclose her skull with spikes of pain. That explained her nausea then. A Concussion possibly, she would ask Meg about it after the more serious injuries were dealt with. She swallowed again.

Being a doctor, Meg was well aware of who needed medical attention more urgently, so she ignored Commander Zuir and moved to check the co-pilot's arm- after making sure she had no serious injuries of course. But, being a Klingon, she was definitely okay. "Hold still," she said, readying a hypospray with local anaesthetic. In short order, she had the limb set and retrieved an osteo-regenerator to begin knitting the bone back together. "You hold this," she told him, indicating the regenerator. "Keep it on this spot. Let me know if it beeps three times in rapid succession."

"Okay," Alvin said shakily as the osteo-regenerator went to work. He then looked up suddenly. "Wait if it beeps three times should I take it off or wait for you to come back? Doc? Doc?"

"Keep it there and wait for me to return," she replied. "And hold still!"

That done, Meg turned her tricorder to Locke. "Your eyes look as if they do not want to focus," she commented, studying the reddout. "Slight fracture to the skull. Very mild concussion. Sit still for a bit. There is nothing I can do for the concussion until we get back to the ship, but I can at least repair the fracture."

Dinui nodded, "Do as ye think Meg," she said softly she trusted Meg and her judgment. Dinui sat still to let Meg tend to her head.

In the meantime, Shadi's eye needed tending, and then she would have to check Zuir. She had her work cut out for her.

IB opened his eyes and touched his own face. Still present. His limbs... ached?... and he could feel the material around those manifest bones that currently formed a skeleton he borrowed to appear human-shaped. Discolouration, he noted, yellow and green as chemisty and biology played out within his avatar. Interesting. Accompanied by the secondhand sensation of what these mortal souls called 'pain' and something he had experienced before though this time less soul-encompassing.

Voices from below told him that the rest of the away team was still alive, and on form with their bickering and complaining. IB shifted his legs, shook out his dreadlocks and turned his golden eyes from his immediate surroundings to the sound of others. As his vision cleared and normal service began to internally resume, he saw them. They were below him down on the ground, alive and complaining as usual and he'd come to a sharp arboreal stop in the welcoming embrace of a red-dusted tree.

"Clee'san?" IB called, not seeing her. "Where are you?"

"I am...present."

The voice of Clee'san came from a little further into the forest. Clearly, she had rolled, or bounced, but now the brass sphere of her body was jammed between two tree trunks. The six-hinged legs around the bottom hemisphere of her body wriggled mechanically, trying to gain purchase in thin air. The small hatches around the equator opened, revealing tools of myriad design. But none could reach the tree to cut her way free.

"I require aid," the once proud warrior said.

"I am en route," confirmed IB with merry enthusiasm as he dropped straight downwards from his tree-locked position and hit the ground jogging.

The sounds emanating from that sentient brass sphere were clear and myriad in his mind, an easy point of reference by which to locate Clee'san's position. IB arrived, clear-minded and curious before her and considered options for a moment. "You are stuck," he noted rather obviously, but with a helpfully cheerful tone. "I can help!"

With a studious expression on his face, IB placed both his hands on the left-hand tree trunk and braced himself ready to push. "I will marginally readjust the physical position of this photosynthetic eukaryote," he stated. "Be prepared for a sudden descent!"

"I have fallen from orbit amid scything beams of hardened light. A few meters married with your logorrhea might well be more dangerous," Clee'san said in her deadpan voice.

"Take it from me that ssspace ghosts are harder to kill than that," Shadi said, striding forward with her bulbous eye back in its socket.

But IB swiftly removed one of his hands and stretched that right arm out, palm cupped beneath that spherical brass ghost-container and steeled himself as he reached in both directions at once. It didn't ocurr to him, decision based on prior conversational analysis and subsequent character profiling, to ask either the reptilian or other lifeforms present for help.

"Fear not!" Bystander intoned the carefree surety of old black and white movie heroes. "For I will catch you!" Then he shoved from his left hand, wrapped against the tree and focused visual attention on his right and the trapped hero's fight against gravity.

The tree gave an almighty creak and gave slightly, but it was enough. Clee'san dropped a few inches, enough to offset her centre of gravity and the rest was physics. Alas physics was not on the side of the angels this day, and Clee'san fell from the bows of the tree and sailed far from IB's arms. The impact of the dense metallic drone body sank her a few inches into the dirt of the forest floor, leaving her scuttling legs to wriggle and jerk.

"Mission accomplished mechanism," Clee'san said with no small amount of snark.

IB looked momentarily confused, then steeled his human features and strolled purposefully after the flying warrior. He had the good grace to look a little sheepish (an expression he was rapidly perfecting) and offered up a clear and direct apology for his error of judgement. "My bad," he admitted. "I failed to consider all the possible parameters. Are you able to extricate yourself or... never mind..." Bystander resolved the query on his own, kneeling down on the ground and digging into the earth with his bare hands. "Please avoid motion or you will injure my phalanges."

"Doc the things beeping, it's beeping a lot!" Alvin said as he nodded at the medical device in his hand.

"Keep it in place!" ordered Meg, hurrying over to check the osteo-regenerator. "It is almost out of power. But," she added, consulting her tricorder. "It seems the bone is almost knitted back together. There should be enough power to finish the job."

"Should?" Alvin squeaked.

"Yes, should!" replied Meg impatiently. "I believe it will, but doctors do not deal in absolutes. Now just hold still and do as I say."

"Commander Ono," Clee'san said upon righting herself. "Perhaps now is the time to contact the Traveller and seek assistance?"

Ono frowned at the talking contraption that dared undermine his leadership but could not deny the wisdom in its suggestion.

"Commander Zatra," he said, "confirm communications to the ship are available."

Her brow arched, Shadi tapped her combadge. "Shadi to Traveller. Ressspond."

"Shadi to Trav-Trav-Traveller. Resspond."

The voice that came back out of Shadi's combadge was distorted, sliding up and down the scale of audibility like a chitinous choir of insects. The same sort of feedback that had become ever present in the Clockmaker infected ark ship the crew had first discovered on exiting the galactic barrier.

"Respond....Respond...Responding..."

"Gah!" Shadi gasped in horror, then ripped off her combadge and threw it on the ground. "Ssstarving space ghostsss!"

For his part, Ono wasn't having it. "Oh, for goodness' sake..." It was high time he asserted a proper command element to this mission. "Commander Zuir to the Traveller requesting an immediate emergency beamout for six."

"Request...request...Barnes request...Barnes to Traveller...Barnes, K." Ono's voice came back distorted, warbling. But then the voice stopped warbling, ceased hissing with static. It came from mouth, and lips, and a clutching gasping throat.

It came from behind them.

A figure stood where none had been before. Dressed in a waspish engineering EVA suit, the shielded caged visor darkened to full opacity, it looked like a statue. A statue bearing the nameplate 'Barnes, K' above the Travellers mission crest. With a jerky step, like pulling its feet from sticking mud, the figure pulled its feet free of the loose forest dirt. Where footsteps should have been black crystal-like tar fizzed and bubbled, flattening back out to bracken and bush.

The figure dropped to one knee, gauntleted hands grasping at the neck ring of their suit until the catch gave with a hiss of differing pressures. The helmet popped free, flinging away by the man in the suit to bounce and roll through the dark trees. He was human, young, hair plastered flat to his skull by sweat and fear as he gulped down huge lungfuls of air.

"Oh god..." Barnes muttered, before dry heaving violently. For a man dead two years, consumed by Clockmaker machines that Ark in dark space, his stomach seemed to think throwing up was the best way to approach reality.

"He... appears human," Ono said skeptically. "Someone give me readings."

Meg shook her head and held out her tricorder to him. "There is no way I am getting close enough for that," she said flatly. "If you want readings, you take them."

"With your medical tricorder, Doctor." Ono scoffed at the absurdity of clarifying his orders. "If I want his vitals checked the archaic way, that's what we have Commander Zatra for."

"I'm not going near that ssspace ghost!" Shadi protested.

Ono pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why? Just why? I want one small thing done without it turning into a circus. Can you all do that?"

“You have it turned around,” Meg pointed out. “If we followed your orders in this case, it would likely turn into a circus. I propose nobody goes anywhere near him.”

IB closed the distance to stand a few feet away from this strange footstepped figure and regarded him closely, abstaining from joining the crew's conversation for a moment. He canted his head from side to side, studying for a second or three, then he addressed the 'man' directly. "Barnes, K," IB said brightly, having no idea of the history here, but picking up on the trepidation. "Are you a human or a facsimile?"

Dinui eyed the for lack of better term zombie-like Barnes. Her stomach rolled in sympathetic reaction to Barnes' dry heaving. She didn't think getting closer was a great idea either. "If the interference with our communication is also affecting our scans at a distance..." She paused swallowing as she glanced at Meg then looked at their first officer. "I don't recommend getting closer until we isolate the interference issue." Her voice was pitched softly and she was trying to ignore her rolling stomach.

"I agree," added Meg with an emphatic nod.

"Very well..." Ono took Meg's tricorder out of her hand, saying, "Since you apparently have no use this..." and then threw it at the alleged human male. "Let's try the old-fashioned way."

Meg rolled her eyes on disbelief and crossed her arms. “Now who has made it into a circus?” she muttered.

"It's called being resourceful," Ono corrected with condescending smugness before turning to the silent humananoid thing. "What are you?"

Meg only rolled her eyes, not pointing out that there were plenty of rocks- or at least what looked like rocks- to throw instead.

Dinui blinked at the medical tricorder that their not so illustrious first officer had pitched at the zombie like Barnes. She wrinkled her nose as she tried to get her science tricorder to link up with the medical tricorder. The interference was still an issue, the reading was garbled with text that made no sense to her. "Readin' inclonsusive, too much garbage. Nice throw." Her tone might not be as respectful as it should be but right then she didn't really care.

"Thank you," Ono said with sincere indifference that made it hard to tell how he really felt. "So, we've determined this lifeform is tangible but not much else."

"I know him!" Shadi insisted. "Or at least I knew him. This used to be Ensign Barnesss, one of my techniciansss! And I watched him get devoured by the Clock Makersss like a rutting rockhound on a caldera rat in heat! Don't touch him or the Clock Makersss might eat your leg." She bared her fangs at the impostor. "How does it feel to get shat out by microscopic machine devils? You won't get the rest of me! You won't!"

And then there was a sound-

 

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