[party post] come sail away with me

[varymydays]

You've come through a door, and you are on a boat. Specifically, you're on a cruise ship in the middle of some giant body of water. You've come through the door behind you which is attached to nothing and may now be locked. It's relatively empty as giant as it appears to be. The only other passengers that are here appear to also have come through the door for the most part and it is not nearly enough to fill up this entire cruise ship.

Also, who knows who the hell is driving this thing since all of the employees appear to be either ghosts or holograms...

Is this your first time here or your hundredth time here? Do you want a drink or a dip in the pool? Is it day or night? Do you stumble on your room or some other situation either fun or painful within its many rooms, shops, and facilities? Do you run into someone you know or a complete stranger?

The possibilities are unlimited!

Comments

[directives]

Plenty of people have walked past her, but he's the first person to stop and say anything to her, let alone ask her a question. Her gaze is sharp and piercing when she turns it on him, a woman well accustomed to dealing with forces bigger and badder than her that could squash her like a bug before she had time to blink. And if the Borg can't drive her to waiver, then some archaic ship in the middle of a nameless ocean didn't stand a chance.

"New, among other things. This vessel wouldn't happen to have a name, would it?"

Straight to the point, no time for pleasantries or unimportant questions. Those can come later.

[uncompliant]

Logan can appreciate straight and to the point. He isn't the best at small talk at all, and he has felt a bit cooped up on this ship being here as long as he has. It means he is more tense than he would be if he could go into the woods or get into the wilderness.

"Not so far as I've been able to figure out," he says, and he has made attempts to, but answers aren't easy to find and the ones that can be found can't be trusted. "No name, no destination. Nothin."

It's a ship in the middle of an ocean that no one recognizes, that has never seen land as far as anyone knows.

[directives]

Cooped up is something Kathryn's used to. She's been contained within the walls of her ship for the past three and a half years. What's one box to another? Except this box isn't the one she captains, isn't the one she belongs on. Voyager's her constant, and she's dedicated the rest of her life to ensuring that her crew gets home. She can't exactly do that when she's standing on a different, far more archaic vessel.

"Of course." These things were never so straightforward. Or easy. Difficult is something she's accustomed to, as well. "I have an unusual question, one you might not be able to answer, but I have to ask it all the same. What year is it?"

Late 20th Century, if she had to wager a guess, but she was a quantum cosmologist not a historian.

[uncompliant]

It's all about the lack of control here. Logan would never choose to be on a ship. He likes his feet on the ground, likes the forest nearby, likes wilderness and dirt. A ship in the middle of the nowhere sailing endlessly into nowhere does not give him any sense of control, which is why he hates it.

Logan shakes his head. "Far as I can tell, people end up here from any time at all," he says. "But the ship itself doesn't have a time of its own. No calendars, no map, nothing."

No way to know where they are or why they're here, just this endless sea that has no sense of time.

[directives]

"Well, it looks very... archaic compared to ship designs I'm used to. Both those that float and those that don't. I can tell you that much."

And no proper definition of time means that applying the Temporal Prime Directive is going to be tricky. She could already feel the headache building. Among her least favorite of activities is dealing with matters of time. She hates time travel and all the anomalies associated with it. Understanding the principles of it doesn't mean she enjoys it.

"Let's start with this: My name is Kathryn and it's supposed to be 2374 for me."

[uncompliant]

Logan lifts his eyebrows, and he is wondering what the chances are that he has somehow met someone else from space. Not from space itself, but from a place where ships fly in space and not just on the water. The whole idea of space travel is absolutely unsettling to him. He's not a huge fan of being on the water either. All that metal grafted to his skeleton means he has a tendency to sink.

He straightens where he's standing when she gives the year that it had been for her.

"Logan. It's supposed to be almost four hundred years in your past for me, and this ship looks like the kind I would've seen."

Even if as far as he can tell, there's no set date or time on it.

[directives]

Been there, done that — as far as four hundred years in the past goes. She wound up by accident in the late 20th Century once, an event she didn't take much pride in. Dealing with the Aeon and Starling was a headache she never planned on having, and she loathed the thought of reporting it all to Temporal Investigations once they got back to Earth. That particular debriefing was going to be a veritable nightmare.

"I've seen a ship like this before, but it was behind glass at the Smithsonian on a grade school field trip."

[uncompliant]

"Well, you're from far in the future. Far in my future anyway," he says after a moment. "Who knows when the hell this ship's from or this world's from."

There's enough about it that doesn't make sense. Who is the captain of it? Why is it moving? Where is it going? Does it really never reach land or anywhere near land? Logan really, really misses land, earth, ground, dirt, trees.

[directives]

"I highly doubt this is a 'world' in the truer sense of the word. Likely some sort of pocket dimension that exists on the edge of a bunch of other ones."

She hated temporal physics. Hated it. She understood the basics just fine, but understanding it and liking it were two completely different things. Sometimes, she loathed that she had any sort of grasp of what was going on with whatever temporal shenanigans they happened to be dealing with. This was no exception.

[uncompliant]

Logan shrugs a bit but nods in response. Makes sense when she puts it that way. Well, much as a pocket dimension can ever make sense to him given he isn't really familiar with any of it. He's a mutant and he knows other mutants and their abilities and he's been alive a long time, but... pocket dimensions are out of his league.

"Sounds like you know what you're talking about a whole helluva lot more than I do."

[directives]

"Let's just say I've been around this bend more times than I'd like."

Far more times. At this point, she was going to start unintentionally gathering the credentials to vie for the position of Starfleet's leading expert on not only the Delta Quadrant and the Borg, but time travel as well. This was getting ridiculous.

"Between you and I, it all gives me a headache."

[uncompliant]

Logan smirks lightly, folding his arms across his chest as he shakes his head a bit, scanning the water below them with a light grimace.

"Well, I've only done this once now and I'm feeling a pretty big damn headache coming on myself." Granted, he is not someone who has patience, which is saying something given how long he has been alive. "So the last pocket dimension you experienced, did it have a big cruise ship or something else?"

[directives]

"It was a long road to nowhere and everywhere, all at once."

The last pocket dimension she'd been in was the Q Continuum. It'd been a barren wasteland, originally, and then battlegrounds that resembled the Civil War torn United States in the 1800s for the sake of her human brain's ability to comprehend. That road was likely a way of compensating for her ability to grasp that which was beyond the human norm, but it stuck with her. It did well to emphasize the infinite number of possibilities laid out before the Q.

[uncompliant]

Logan's gaze narrows as he tries to parse what that would even mean, but he is new to the universe jumping thing. He's been through plenty, but the whole this is a pocket between universes thing is-- It's not something that he can wrap his head around, and it doesn't help that it's on a damn ship.

"Sounds like a pain in the ass," he says unhelpfully and bluntly but it's true. It does. Nowhere and everywhere, give him a specific place to set his feet down on any day.

[directives]

"It is, and the beings that travel to and fro along it are right up there in that category with it."

Kathryn honestly couldn't say whether she'd be pissed or pleased to see a Q pop up on the antiquated bridge of this ship. While it would certainly explain a lot about whatever the hell was going on here, she didn't have the patience for a Q's games right now, nor did she wish to subject Logan or any of the other people on this vessel to them.

[uncompliant]

Logan raises an eyebrow at that, and he folds his arms across his chest further, because this is another pocket universe. If there are beings that travel to and fro, there's that chance they could end up here too.

"What sort of beings? I keep expecting a fight here."

Haven't had one yet, but he'll be ready.

[directives]

"Omnipotent ones that possess an unlimited control over space, matter, and time."

They're honestly better of not dealing with them right now, as convincing a Q to right a wrong was like pulling teeth — and she was (likely) the only mortal being in existence who'd managed to convince the Continuum to put a stop to something and revert it back to where it was. It was more trouble than it was worth; trouble they didn't need on top of being inexplicably... here.

Wherever here was.

[uncompliant]

"...they sound like pains in the ass too."

Logan has never been a fan of people who know more than they should know, who know everything and then hold that information over your head. Granted, maybe they were more open about what they knew, but from his experience, people like that tend to hold their knowledge locked up in their fists.

It's annoying.

[directives]

"Oh, they are. Trust me. I've had to deal with the Q more times than I'd like."

She would rather have not dealt with them at all.