PERSISTENCE OF VISION (0.1)
New
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The sunlight dappled along the narrow dirt path which did not exist. The leaves which cast their comforting shade didn't exist, either. Nor did the smell of earthy landscape, the warm heat of the horse. The soft blowing of his nose wasn't here, either. And yet, all of it surrounded Phoebe Janeway as she sat astride the horse and tried to think of how to possibly respond to her sister's letter.
Phoebe and Katheryn Janeway had always had a complex relationship. Two minds, two personalities, sharing a single body had long since been accepted into the vast plurality of the Federation's many thoughtforms, alongside autism and similar unique perspectives. It wasn't even the most unusual thoughtform that a human could take.
No, the issue was Katheryn. Her life was so...
Alive.
So connected with the world around her. And that world was not the world of the past - the lost days of Earth's simpler times. Yes, times where I'd have been sent to an asylum, a remarkably bitter whisper came from the back of her mind. Phoebe pursed her lips and repressed the thought. The last thing she needed was yet a third sister to split her time with. So, Katheryn's job and her duties took up much of the time, leaving Phoebe with scant moments to herself, to be herself, to live her life. She couldn't begrudge her sister. But...she could rue the world that she was forced into. And...now?
Now, her sister wrote to her to tell her she had begun a relationship with another woman.
And this, I have to admit you...I haven't even admitted it to her yet, but if I can't tell my sister this, who can I tell? Katheryn had written. I think this is the most I've ever loved anyone before. Every date, every time we have a moment together, even practicing flying on a shuttle in the holodeck, it's all so remarkable. The very idea of admitting this to her is almost terrifying - what if she...well, sees me as just someone to spend time with? But, if that was how she felt, then...she left on Voyager with me, oh I am being absurd, aren't I?
Phoebe shook her head and sighed. She drew back on the reigns, slowing her horse, who flicked his ear casually.
"Sister dearest, you are an absurd creature," Phoebe said, tasting the words on the air. She could have simulated an entire town of people to be with - she could have even had some of the Voyager's crew come within the holodeck as well - though, Katheryn did prefer her privacy, even when she wasn't fronting. She could have. But she preferred this strange dream of England. A place that had the greenery, the warmth of spring, the hedges and the distant shapes of homes both grand and humble, all of them without people. It left her free to speak her mind. And her horse was such a very good listener.
She rode past a gnarled old oak and a spreading field of flowers. Her smile grew more warm. "Your love for this Amelia - this pilot, I must say - is so evident I can hear it even in your awful handwriting. By the way, I must hasten to remind you that proper penmanship should be a skill that a ship's captain practices - you can't always be letting these strange compu-"
Phoebe Janeway hesitated.
Not because she didn't know what to say.
She knew what to say, oh no.
No.
No.
It was because she heard...
She swore she had heard a splash.
Had the computer added a spring nearby?
The idea flicked across her mind and she could see herself sitting in the grass, rumpling and staining her dress - not very ladylike, no, but there might be a small rock to set a writing desk on. She had packed one in her saddlebags. She could sit down and pen the writing out in a spring. The smile flitted across her face, growing more and more firm as she turned her horse's head with a gentle tug of the reigns. She was sitting sidesaddle, and had to move gently to not send herself spilling off - but soon, she had entered into a thick copse of trees and could hear the sound of a babbling brook, a soft splashing noise. There was a waterfall too? She had not programmed this into the holodeck...but...
Oh my sister, Phoebe thought, delighted. She slid off the horse, her shoes crinkling some grass, then stepped around several of the trees, and stood completely still, shocked to her core.
There was someone in her holodeck.
The figure standing in the water could have been called a goddess - if one was willing to deliver her a supreme insult. Aphrodite would have been plain next to her - Helen would have been left by the wayside as her suitors flocked to this woman instead. She was tall and and powerful in her build, with broad shoulders and hair so golden that when it caught the hair, it was as if she was already halo'd by some infatuated painter. Her hair was allowed to grow long and wild, spilling along her shoulders, dusting right above her peach-taut buttocks, which glistened with the moisture she had been splashing in. Her back was to Phoebe, and so, she was entirely unaware as she stood in the water, kneeling down and splashing some into her face with a happy sigh.
Phoebe stood very. Very. Very still. Her mouth opened slowly, then closed. Then opened again.
The woman tensed.
She spun around, revealing that her beauty from the front was just as impossibly striking. She was remarkably well endowed, her pale pink nipples beading with water, glittering in the sun. The moisture she had splashed across her body left her even more fantastically beautiful, but it was her eyes that struck Phoebe.
They were blue.
And they were as cold and imperious as the sky. She looked at Phoebe, her lips pursed into a frown. Her eyes flicked up and down Phoebe's body, taking her in every detail, and then...she dismissed her. She looked aside as if she wasn't even there. Phoebe had never felt quite so stricken. She stumbled against her horse, clutching at the saddle, as she swooned, just by that glance. "W...Who...who are you?" she stammered, her eyes widening.
The woman turned back to her. She frowned, then said.
"Who are you?" she asked, then shook her head. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
Her voice was as cold as her eyes. She had a husky tone which drew Phoebe like a loadstone, she-
The holodeck hissed, then fuzzed out. The woman was gone.
She was a hologram.
Oh.
Phoebe felt so utterly ashamed that she fled. Fled back into the recesses of Katheryn's mind - and so, Katheryn blinked, finding herself standing in an empty holodeck, dressed in her sister's clothing. She frowned, then fished her combadge out of her pocket. "Report," she said, firmly.
"Sorry, Captain, I know, uh, your sister was using holodeck two, but...we had a bit of a bug."
Captain Janeway entered into the medbay, pursing her lips as she did so. "Report."
"It's nothing, Captain-"
"Ensign Munroe, as well as several other members of tactical were engaging in a simulated exercise with the direct approval of Lt. Adora," Tuvok said. "I myself assisted with the programming and management of their scenario."
"And the holodeck malfunctioned?" Janeway asked, sighing quietly. That did explain why her sister had been booted so quickly. "What were you working on?"
"Just a Borg sim," Ensign Munroe said.
"A Borg sim?" Janeway asked, her eyebrows shooting straight up.
Tuvok nodded. "Considering the fact that our ship is only a few weeks, months at the most, away from entering territory directly influenced by the Collective, I and Lt. Adora judged it prudent to begin anti-borg training for our security officers. This was a simple boaring procedure - using newly updated holographic routines based on our Doctor."
"Ah! Well! So glad to make our favorite toy more deadly," the Doctor said, turning away and folding his dermal regenerator shut. "Ensign Munroe has been saved from the perils of a sharp piece of rapidly flying metal."
"...sharp metal?" Janeway asked.
Ensign Munroe grinned, sheepishly. "We were backed into a corner, so, I experimented with some kinetic weaponry. Makeshift, of course."
"I see," Janeway said.
"The simulations do show that it was pretty effective!" Ensign Munroe added.
Janeway's lips thinned and the ensign went quiet, while she turned to Tuvok. "Do you know what caused the...bug...in the holodeck?"
"It is unclear," he said. "But we have begun to investigate." He paused. "I would like to apologize to your sister for interrupting her passtime."
"She understands," Janeway said, though she knew for a fact that Tuvok's emotions on the issue were...likely roiling. Shame, fury at being a failure, resounding, rebounding annoyance that no human would ever feel given this situation. But he kept it cool. Controlled. Locked in. There was a curious flicker of deja vu. She ignored it. "Keep me appraised."
"Yes, Captain," Tuvok said.
Janeway, with a padd in one hand, and a coffee in the other, nodded. She sipped, then skimmed down the report as she and Kim walked together down the corridor away from the bridge. "And...another Kazon sept," she said, her eyebrows shooting them.
Harry chuckled. "Their state department contacted us, not the other way around."
"And?" she asked.
"They asked us to give a wide berth, they have a client species called the Bothans," Harry said. "The news reports seem...fine." He shrugged.
"Oh?" Janeway asked, sipping from her coffee again.
"Standard economic traffic, enough Bothans on their feed and a lot of inter-planetary complaining - the kind of thing that reads to the xenoanthropoligsts as an imperfect but generally functional society."
"None of our buisness, then?" Janeway said.
"That's my estimation, Captain, but...it is up to you!" Harry said, chuckling.
Janeway grinned, then put her coffee cup against his chest - it was empty. "Recycle this, Mr. Kim, and tell Mr. Paris to keep us on a nice, wide berth around this sept."
"Aye, Captain!" Harry said, then started to walk down the corridor, chucking the coffee cup from palm to palm. Janeway nodded to herself, then opened the door to her room. She closed the door, then hesitated. She saw that Amelia was sprawled in her bed, snoring softly, a book in one hand - it looked like a pulp from the 1960s. Ah, no, not just any pulp.
She was reading Stranger in a Strange Land.
Janeway smiled, slightly, but before she went to her bedroom, she walked to the writing desk. There was no note from Phoebe...of course, she had been kicked from the holodeck by that bug. Janeway sat down, closing her eyes. First, she became Katheryn. It was less dramatic than becoming Phoebe - she simply let the captaincy slide off her shoulders. She let herself relax. Then...she tried to make herself welcoming to her sister. IT was harder when she wasn't in a holodeck, or in the right clothes...but she felt she-
Phoebe blinked open her eyes. She was in Katheryn's cold, spartan corridors. The vastness of space hung out the window. It was as terrifying as ever. But Phoebe knew why her sister had opened the door - and she knew why she was here.
She expects a letter.
Phoebe took out a piece of paper and the small inkwell that Katheryn kept for just such circumstances. She dipped her quill in it...and hesitated.
Beautiful. Blond. Blue eyed. Cold.
She had just been a hologram.
...right?
Right.
Oh but to tell her I had met a fascinating hologram? She'd think me the silliest girl in the whole world, Phoebe thought, closing her eyes. She rubbed her brow. She heard a soft shifting noise and a snoring groan from her sister's lover and repressed a smile at the sound. She felt the glowing love from Katheryn, radiating into her mind.
She couldn't...keep her long.
Oh Lord, what to write?
---
MOMENTUM: 0
THREAT: 6
TRAITS: None
[ ] Write the honest, bald faced truth. She may need to know about the "bug."
[ ] Write to tell her how she should embrace loving Amelia and also, ask her if you can visit the holodeck again. If she was just a hologram, you could surely get the computer to bring her back. You know. To talk...to her. Right?
[ ] Write in
Yo, dragon, I hear you cry: Why is there so much threat? well, we're FULLY into 2nd edition rules now BABY! Each session begins with 2 threat per PC! I've decided the main characters are Phoebe, Janeway, and then one more - maybe Kes, maybe someone else, we'll FIND OUT!
Phoebe and Katheryn Janeway had always had a complex relationship. Two minds, two personalities, sharing a single body had long since been accepted into the vast plurality of the Federation's many thoughtforms, alongside autism and similar unique perspectives. It wasn't even the most unusual thoughtform that a human could take.
No, the issue was Katheryn. Her life was so...
Alive.
So connected with the world around her. And that world was not the world of the past - the lost days of Earth's simpler times. Yes, times where I'd have been sent to an asylum, a remarkably bitter whisper came from the back of her mind. Phoebe pursed her lips and repressed the thought. The last thing she needed was yet a third sister to split her time with. So, Katheryn's job and her duties took up much of the time, leaving Phoebe with scant moments to herself, to be herself, to live her life. She couldn't begrudge her sister. But...she could rue the world that she was forced into. And...now?
Now, her sister wrote to her to tell her she had begun a relationship with another woman.
And this, I have to admit you...I haven't even admitted it to her yet, but if I can't tell my sister this, who can I tell? Katheryn had written. I think this is the most I've ever loved anyone before. Every date, every time we have a moment together, even practicing flying on a shuttle in the holodeck, it's all so remarkable. The very idea of admitting this to her is almost terrifying - what if she...well, sees me as just someone to spend time with? But, if that was how she felt, then...she left on Voyager with me, oh I am being absurd, aren't I?
Phoebe shook her head and sighed. She drew back on the reigns, slowing her horse, who flicked his ear casually.
"Sister dearest, you are an absurd creature," Phoebe said, tasting the words on the air. She could have simulated an entire town of people to be with - she could have even had some of the Voyager's crew come within the holodeck as well - though, Katheryn did prefer her privacy, even when she wasn't fronting. She could have. But she preferred this strange dream of England. A place that had the greenery, the warmth of spring, the hedges and the distant shapes of homes both grand and humble, all of them without people. It left her free to speak her mind. And her horse was such a very good listener.
She rode past a gnarled old oak and a spreading field of flowers. Her smile grew more warm. "Your love for this Amelia - this pilot, I must say - is so evident I can hear it even in your awful handwriting. By the way, I must hasten to remind you that proper penmanship should be a skill that a ship's captain practices - you can't always be letting these strange compu-"
Phoebe Janeway hesitated.
Not because she didn't know what to say.
She knew what to say, oh no.
No.
No.
It was because she heard...
She swore she had heard a splash.
Had the computer added a spring nearby?
The idea flicked across her mind and she could see herself sitting in the grass, rumpling and staining her dress - not very ladylike, no, but there might be a small rock to set a writing desk on. She had packed one in her saddlebags. She could sit down and pen the writing out in a spring. The smile flitted across her face, growing more and more firm as she turned her horse's head with a gentle tug of the reigns. She was sitting sidesaddle, and had to move gently to not send herself spilling off - but soon, she had entered into a thick copse of trees and could hear the sound of a babbling brook, a soft splashing noise. There was a waterfall too? She had not programmed this into the holodeck...but...
Oh my sister, Phoebe thought, delighted. She slid off the horse, her shoes crinkling some grass, then stepped around several of the trees, and stood completely still, shocked to her core.
There was someone in her holodeck.
The figure standing in the water could have been called a goddess - if one was willing to deliver her a supreme insult. Aphrodite would have been plain next to her - Helen would have been left by the wayside as her suitors flocked to this woman instead. She was tall and and powerful in her build, with broad shoulders and hair so golden that when it caught the hair, it was as if she was already halo'd by some infatuated painter. Her hair was allowed to grow long and wild, spilling along her shoulders, dusting right above her peach-taut buttocks, which glistened with the moisture she had been splashing in. Her back was to Phoebe, and so, she was entirely unaware as she stood in the water, kneeling down and splashing some into her face with a happy sigh.
Phoebe stood very. Very. Very still. Her mouth opened slowly, then closed. Then opened again.
The woman tensed.
She spun around, revealing that her beauty from the front was just as impossibly striking. She was remarkably well endowed, her pale pink nipples beading with water, glittering in the sun. The moisture she had splashed across her body left her even more fantastically beautiful, but it was her eyes that struck Phoebe.
They were blue.
And they were as cold and imperious as the sky. She looked at Phoebe, her lips pursed into a frown. Her eyes flicked up and down Phoebe's body, taking her in every detail, and then...she dismissed her. She looked aside as if she wasn't even there. Phoebe had never felt quite so stricken. She stumbled against her horse, clutching at the saddle, as she swooned, just by that glance. "W...Who...who are you?" she stammered, her eyes widening.
The woman turned back to her. She frowned, then said.
"Who are you?" she asked, then shook her head. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
Her voice was as cold as her eyes. She had a husky tone which drew Phoebe like a loadstone, she-
The holodeck hissed, then fuzzed out. The woman was gone.
She was a hologram.
Oh.
Phoebe felt so utterly ashamed that she fled. Fled back into the recesses of Katheryn's mind - and so, Katheryn blinked, finding herself standing in an empty holodeck, dressed in her sister's clothing. She frowned, then fished her combadge out of her pocket. "Report," she said, firmly.
"Sorry, Captain, I know, uh, your sister was using holodeck two, but...we had a bit of a bug."
***
"Ah, well, if it was a training exercise, I suppose that makes it all better," the Doctor said, his voice prim as he used a dermal regenerator to slowly seal up the huge gash that had nearly cut deep into Alexander Munroe's femoral artery. The brown haired security officer grinned sheepishly, while Tuvok looked on, expressionless.
Captain Janeway entered into the medbay, pursing her lips as she did so. "Report."
"It's nothing, Captain-"
"Ensign Munroe, as well as several other members of tactical were engaging in a simulated exercise with the direct approval of Lt. Adora," Tuvok said. "I myself assisted with the programming and management of their scenario."
"And the holodeck malfunctioned?" Janeway asked, sighing quietly. That did explain why her sister had been booted so quickly. "What were you working on?"
"Just a Borg sim," Ensign Munroe said.
"A Borg sim?" Janeway asked, her eyebrows shooting straight up.
Tuvok nodded. "Considering the fact that our ship is only a few weeks, months at the most, away from entering territory directly influenced by the Collective, I and Lt. Adora judged it prudent to begin anti-borg training for our security officers. This was a simple boaring procedure - using newly updated holographic routines based on our Doctor."
"Ah! Well! So glad to make our favorite toy more deadly," the Doctor said, turning away and folding his dermal regenerator shut. "Ensign Munroe has been saved from the perils of a sharp piece of rapidly flying metal."
"...sharp metal?" Janeway asked.
Ensign Munroe grinned, sheepishly. "We were backed into a corner, so, I experimented with some kinetic weaponry. Makeshift, of course."
"I see," Janeway said.
"The simulations do show that it was pretty effective!" Ensign Munroe added.
Janeway's lips thinned and the ensign went quiet, while she turned to Tuvok. "Do you know what caused the...bug...in the holodeck?"
"It is unclear," he said. "But we have begun to investigate." He paused. "I would like to apologize to your sister for interrupting her passtime."
"She understands," Janeway said, though she knew for a fact that Tuvok's emotions on the issue were...likely roiling. Shame, fury at being a failure, resounding, rebounding annoyance that no human would ever feel given this situation. But he kept it cool. Controlled. Locked in. There was a curious flicker of deja vu. She ignored it. "Keep me appraised."
"Yes, Captain," Tuvok said.
***
"And that's the basic rundown of our current supply situation," Harry Kim said. "The feedstocks have been refilled, but we want to keep an eye out for an asteroid with the following exotics - if we see any neutron stars in the way, they tend to release the tellerian and trixite ores that we're low on when their original forms went supernova, so, we're likely to find trace elements in asteroids in other nearby solar systems."
Janeway, with a padd in one hand, and a coffee in the other, nodded. She sipped, then skimmed down the report as she and Kim walked together down the corridor away from the bridge. "And...another Kazon sept," she said, her eyebrows shooting them.
Harry chuckled. "Their state department contacted us, not the other way around."
"And?" she asked.
"They asked us to give a wide berth, they have a client species called the Bothans," Harry said. "The news reports seem...fine." He shrugged.
"Oh?" Janeway asked, sipping from her coffee again.
"Standard economic traffic, enough Bothans on their feed and a lot of inter-planetary complaining - the kind of thing that reads to the xenoanthropoligsts as an imperfect but generally functional society."
"None of our buisness, then?" Janeway said.
"That's my estimation, Captain, but...it is up to you!" Harry said, chuckling.
Janeway grinned, then put her coffee cup against his chest - it was empty. "Recycle this, Mr. Kim, and tell Mr. Paris to keep us on a nice, wide berth around this sept."
"Aye, Captain!" Harry said, then started to walk down the corridor, chucking the coffee cup from palm to palm. Janeway nodded to herself, then opened the door to her room. She closed the door, then hesitated. She saw that Amelia was sprawled in her bed, snoring softly, a book in one hand - it looked like a pulp from the 1960s. Ah, no, not just any pulp.
She was reading Stranger in a Strange Land.
Janeway smiled, slightly, but before she went to her bedroom, she walked to the writing desk. There was no note from Phoebe...of course, she had been kicked from the holodeck by that bug. Janeway sat down, closing her eyes. First, she became Katheryn. It was less dramatic than becoming Phoebe - she simply let the captaincy slide off her shoulders. She let herself relax. Then...she tried to make herself welcoming to her sister. IT was harder when she wasn't in a holodeck, or in the right clothes...but she felt she-
Phoebe blinked open her eyes. She was in Katheryn's cold, spartan corridors. The vastness of space hung out the window. It was as terrifying as ever. But Phoebe knew why her sister had opened the door - and she knew why she was here.
She expects a letter.
Phoebe took out a piece of paper and the small inkwell that Katheryn kept for just such circumstances. She dipped her quill in it...and hesitated.
Beautiful. Blond. Blue eyed. Cold.
She had just been a hologram.
...right?
Right.
Oh but to tell her I had met a fascinating hologram? She'd think me the silliest girl in the whole world, Phoebe thought, closing her eyes. She rubbed her brow. She heard a soft shifting noise and a snoring groan from her sister's lover and repressed a smile at the sound. She felt the glowing love from Katheryn, radiating into her mind.
She couldn't...keep her long.
Oh Lord, what to write?
---
MOMENTUM: 0
THREAT: 6
TRAITS: None
[ ] Write the honest, bald faced truth. She may need to know about the "bug."
[ ] Write to tell her how she should embrace loving Amelia and also, ask her if you can visit the holodeck again. If she was just a hologram, you could surely get the computer to bring her back. You know. To talk...to her. Right?
[ ] Write in
Yo, dragon, I hear you cry: Why is there so much threat? well, we're FULLY into 2nd edition rules now BABY! Each session begins with 2 threat per PC! I've decided the main characters are Phoebe, Janeway, and then one more - maybe Kes, maybe someone else, we'll FIND OUT!