#>personnel log { musings }

[exastrisnonnocere]

WHAT IS YOUR CURSE?

The Shadow

Something walks behind you, nipping at your heels. You know the shape it takes, though you cannot see it. You think you know. Its edges look like yours, but clean and concise, close-cut lines articulated into iridescent air. Turn around and catch it-- and it slides away. Your shadow shines and you are blinded. You half-hear it whispering words that stick to your skin like mist and evaporate under your gaze, but they shake you. Even their echoes are true. It knows you. It wears your skin. It is more you than you are. Are you the chaser? Are you the shadow? Which, really, were you rather be? Walk backwards if you must. You must keep looking back.

Stolen from: @ensnchekov Tagging: @onlybonesleft, @whydotheykeeptakingmine, @nursc & you also yes you there with the face

[unitlead]

tags.

[unitleada]

tag dump. I took this too srsly I know. leave me to my brainrot.

[subliminalbointext]

Classified Information: The Prophet

The following documents were retrieved from the Carpenter State Digital Library Initiative Private Server. Access to this server is limited to authorized faculty and administration only. Access of this server by non-authorized personnel will be punished by penalty of law.

From the Audio Logs of Ada George

Adjunct Lecturer of Anthropology, Carpenter State University

Retrieved from Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia

Transcribed by Bailey C. DuBois for the Carpenter State Digital Library Initiative 01/07/2020

Our plane landed in Siberia two days ago and though I hoped to spend my time in the city prepping our strategy, I’ve spent more of it acclimating my body to the time change. The team was ready to move out this morning, but I talked them into an extra day in the city. The truth is I haven’t been this nervous about a research project since my dissertation. The months I spent lobbying the anthropology department to back me…I can’t go back to Romero empty handed.

I’ll admit I have my doubts about what’s going on at the impact site. It’s not completely uncommon for communication to break down between universities and their researchers abroad, especially when their funding is so tenuous. I know I’m taking my career into my own hands chasing rumors like this, but it’s the only chance I have at tenure. How many researchers get an opportunity to study a culture that has completely materialized overnight? Fuck, those rumors better be true.

Oh hell, what am I even saying? Take a deep breath and edit this part out, Ada.

Accompanying me is my research assistant, Debbie Hightower, and cameraman Joey May. Debbie is one of our brightest rising stars in the department, focusing on forensic anthropology. She jumped at the opportunity for some hands-on experience and I believe she’ll be a great asset in my studies. Joey is a film studies major whose interest is more in shooting the Russian landscape, but he’s already shot a couple of projects as a freelance cameraman for the department and he’s one of the best around.

Our goal is to move to the impact site first thing tomorrow morning. I’m optimistic that all of the jitters will have worked themselves out by then.

From the Carpenter Foghorn Vol. 33, Issue 9

Archived by Damon R. Vasquez 09/21/2018

Bizarre Rumors Surround Disappearance of Tunguska Research Team

By David S. Stone

Despite an organized effort from Carpenter State administration, details continue to surface from CSU’s ill-fated study of a Siberian impact crater. The research team, which consisted of ten geology fellows led by Dr. Nick Barone, ceased communications with the university in late June after days of erratic messages from Dr. Barone. Officials from the Department of Earth Sciences have declined to share details of Barone’s final messages, though anonymous sources familiar with the communications allege that the messages contained “cult-like rhetoric” and “apocalyptic musings.” Though the university officially maintains that no communication has been made with the team since June, the Foghorn has been notified of the existence of a recent video from Dr. Barone that our source describes as a manifesto.

“Barone speaks for the team when he lays out a vision of the end of days,” they state. “The video is lewd, but shockingly cogent. On the other hand, it’s so-off base from the soil samples they were sent to collect, I can’t imagine what they’ve discovered in that forest.”

When asked to elaborate on the word “lewd,” the source added, “No comment.”

From the Audio Logs of Ada George, Cont.

Day 1

This morning was my first in Siberia where I didn’t wake up feeling like I’d been hit by a train. I celebrated this intercontinental victory by treating myself to breakfast at the coffee shop across from our hotel. The barista shared with me a few stories of Dr. Barone, who seems to be something of a local boogeyman. To her knowledge, he runs a commune near the impact crater where they worship the meteorite. She described them as “real earthly, nudist types.” Though the commune was humorous for a while, it grew creepy as members of the commune, calling themselves acolytes, returned to the city to evangelize. Those who followed the acolytes back to the impact site have never returned.

After breakfast we boarded a small bus and began the long trek into the wild. By noon we were nearing the impact site, but our driver, weary of the rumors surrounding the commune, wouldn’t take us into Dr. Barone’s makeshift village.

As we continue on foot, my mind is racing with probabilities. People don’t just transform from men who stare at rocks into cult leaders overnight. Whatever has afflicted Dr. Barone, it seems to be a possible case of mass psychosis like the dancing plague of 14th century Europe.

Day 2

I was nervous to see how my colleagues would react to their first contact with fellow researchers in over a year, especially dropping in unannounced. There’s a definite wariness among the research team, but they have accepted us on the basis of scholarly respect, I suppose a kind of probational research offer. It didn’t come without conditions. 

I have not yet been granted access to Dr. Barone. He lives atop a high ridge overlooking the impact crater in his own makeshift hut, the largest in the village. All the reports of the commune being nudists are true—walking into the village I was greeted by a number of smiling faces and exposed genitalia. The men and women are equal in their nudity here. Untrimmed and natural as Dr. Barone commands it.

The ten researchers from the original crew are all accounted for: Tony Lewis, Steve Barowski, Abigal Fine, Holly Fine, Tommy Tucker, Andrew Holmes, Jasmine Parks, Ava Katzenberg, Dominic Polanski, and Justin Sinclair. Among the original ten researchers are twelve more acolytes recruited from the city. There appears to be a clear structure of power between the original ten and the new acolytes. They remain silent in the company of myself and my team.

The Carpenter Sate ten made it clear to us that Barone will not accept a meeting on camera, and there will be no meetings whatsoever until we’ve accepted his terms. They are as follows: We must abide by the dress codes of the colony, we must be willing to listen to Dr. Barone’s testimony, and finally we must submit to worship at the center of the impact crater.

I am prepared to meet all of these conditions, but Debbie and Joey are hesitant, especially in regards to the first one. This may hurt our ability to connect with the commune, but I’m optimistic that in the next few days I can convince my team to agree to their conditions.

Day 3

Still no sign of Barone. Tony has emerged as the doctor’s mouthpiece while the Fine sisters have the most access to him. He often requests their company in his bedchambers which they eagerly agree to.

Tony has granted us permission to observe their daily rituals but, outside of voice recordings, requested that we refrain from filming. There was a testy exchange between Tony and Joey, who felt that his presence in the commune without his camera was irrelevant. I don’t disagree with Joey, but we’re treading on thin ice as it is.

While Joey tests the patience of the men in the commune, Debbie is building relationships with the women. She’s gathered some fascinating information about the local economy. We’ve learned that the trips into town that I heard about in the city are monthly, and are as much about subsistence as they are growing the commune. Only the women travel, and it is the only time they are allowed to be clothed. They take with them small shards of meteorite that they offer to people along with their testimonies. They return with food, supplies, and new recruits. It’s never a lot, but it’s enough to supplement what they can’t get from the natural resources in the forest.

Day 4

There was an altercation last night as Tony and Dominic stormed into our tent and dragged Joey out into the night. I chased after the pair, but Andrew was on me before I could step through the tent’s flap, assuring me that Joey would be taken care of. I could hear Debbie scream from another tent outside.

I felt powerless as Andrew held me down, his limp penis pressing inadvertently against the crotch of my sweatpants. Trying to diffuse the situation, I asked Andrew where they had taken Joey. He told me that they were taking him to the crater.

His grip eased and he slid away from me, apologizing for the force. I sensed a gentleness in Andrew that didn’t seem to exist in Tony and Dominic.

A few hours later, Dominic returned to the tent to smash Joey’s camera.

From the Carpenter Foghorn Vol. 32, Issue 8

Archived by Gabrielle T. Peerman 04/02/2018

Frustrations Mounting in Siberia Among Research Team

By Sherry P. Morris

What began as a two month grant, has extended into April and bloated well over budget. Carpenter State officials have grown impatient with Dr. Barone’s study of the meteorite impact crater in Siberia and issued ultimatums to his team: return home, or be forced to.

When asked for comment, Dr. Barone replied via Skype, “They just don’t understand what we’ve seen here. There’s so much more to study than we could have imagined.”

One Carpenter State Official rebutted, “The grant’s conditions are clear. If Dr. Barone wishes to spend more time with his meteorite, he can do it on his with his own time and money. But for now he’s wasting our resources on what has become a personal obsession.”

“I just need more time,” Dr. Barone said.

From the Audio Logs of Ada George, Cont.

Day 5 

They’ve done something to Joey. In the morning I found him in the center of the village, naked and joining in their daily worship around the communal fire pit. I tried to pull him aside, but his vacant expression told me everything I needed to know. He was under an order of silence, like the other recent converts.

Debbie, too, appears to have had a change of heart over the course of the night. I found her barefoot in the communal garden, tending to a crop of tomatoes. Her body was exposed, breasts bare in the cold morning air. She smiled and spoke to me, which was enough confirmation that they hadn’t done to her what they did to Joey. Not yet.

Debbie lodged with Jasmine and the Fine sisters last night. She and Jasmine shared a dorm building as freshman at CSU and she took that as an opportunity to learn more about the commune’s culture. When I asked Debbie what had changed her mind about the dress code, she shrugged and referenced the rules of cultural relativism. “We’ll never get anywhere unless we meet them at their cultural standards.”

My conversation with Debbie was a welcome rebound from last night’s stressors. I know that I haven’t handled this project as well as I could have. But Debbie has reminded me of the discipline, and I’m confident that tomorrow morning I’ll awake in the correct headspace to do some real research.

Everything will be better tomorrow.

Day 12

H-hello?

I can’t believe this thing is still working. Christ. I…I don’t know where to begin.

I can only estimate the day. It’s been so long since I last recorded anything, but I’ll try my best to fill in the gaps.

On the morning of day…it must have been day six? On that morning I awoke to find Debbie and Joey standing silent, like statues in my tent. They were naked, their bodies glistening as if covered in a thin coat of glaze. I called out to them but they didn’t speak.

And that’s when I saw him: Dr. Barone standing at the entrance of my tent.

I startled upward, and he ordered them to move. Like Tony and Dominic the night before, they were on me in a flash. They tore away at my pajamas, Debbie pulling my sweatpants down my legs and Joey ripping open by shirt to expose my naked breasts. They were silent as they worked, emotionless tools for Barone to wield.

When I was fully nude, Barone crouched over me and clenched his hand around my neck.

He said, “You will bear witness.”

I was thrown out of the tent onto the hard dirt outside. As I stumbled to my feet, I realized that every member of the commune had gathered outside. They began encircling me. Herding me, until I was pushed to the edge of the fire pit in the center of the village. I hadn’t realized how deep the pit was. It’s a hole at least ten feet down. They closed in on me, chanting now, words I couldn’t understand.

Suddenly he crowd parted like the red sea as Barone emerged stalking slowly, whispering in the same foreign language. He thrust his hand forward, pushing me into the muddy pit below.

I’ve been here ever since, toiling in this exposed prison. Each morning the commune surrounds me in worship. I haven’t seen Dr. Barone since that evening, but I’ve been assured that I will in time. Today Tony offered me my recorder. Barone wants me to document this. When they worship, they worship in that language that I can’t understand. I’ll try to get an audio sample next time.

I know Barone is waiting for something. Waiting for me to break like my colleagues. I won’t give him that satisfaction.

Day 15

This morning Debbie greeted me at the top of the pit with a smile. It’s the first I’ve heard her speak English since our talk in the garden. She told me that I’m ready for the next step, and that if I accept it, I can be freed from my prison.

She bent down at the edge of the pit and extended her hand down to me. In her palm was a small flake of meteorite. Like a shard of glass, but jet black. The shard is both cool and hot to the touch, a sensation I can’t quite comprehend or describe. Balling my fist around it, I swear I could hear voices whispering that odd language.

Debbie’s visit left me feeling optimistic for the first time in days. She is so much more rational than the woman I’ve seen contorting her naked body above me during worship. I know that my friends and colleagues are still with me, and I believe I will get out of this unscathed.

Day 16

I recognize now that this was never a fire pit, but more like a jail where they punish nonbelievers. Since my imprisonment I’ve watched their service every day with disdain as they dance and whoop and holler around me. But this morning, something was different. With the meteorite buzzing in my hand, reacting to the sounds of their odd tongue. I felt…fuck. I feel so aroused.

I want to join them. I want to be free in the wind like Debbie. Help. Somebody please, fucking help me before I lose my goddamn mind.

From the Carpenter Foghorn Vol. 32, Issue 1

Archived by Gabrielle T. Peerman 01/30/2018

Carpenter State Research Team Sets Course for Siberia

By Sherry P. Morris

If you’ve taken a class in the College of Earth Sciences, you likely recognize Dr. Nick Barone, Carpenter State’s celebrated professor of geology. With his jet black hair and thick, horn-rimmed glasses, he looks more like a young George Lucas directing the first Star Wars than a professor leading a team of geologists to study meteorites. Dr. Barone has always been popular among students thanks to his passion for the subject and his storytelling style of teaching. It is no coincidence that Nick, likely the most charismatic face in Earth Sciences on the northwest coast, has made his share of appearances on National Geographic documentaries.

This weekend, Dr. Barone will set off for Siberia where he and his team will research soil deposits around the impact crater in Krasnoyarsk Krai. “This has really been a passion project of mine for some time.” Dr. Barone says. “When I first heard news of the impact, I knew that it was an opportunity I may never get again. How often do you hear of a repeat impact?”

Dr. Barone refers, of course, to the Tunguska event—a massive explosion near the Tunguska River in Siberia in 1908 that leveled hundreds of square miles of forest. Though a meteor has never been proven to be the source of the explosion, it has long been maintained as the most plausible explanation.

One year ago, a confirmed meteorite crashed in that same region, leaving less significant damage, but a golden opportunity for Dr. Barone and his team.

“It may be the most significant research ever conducted by the College of Earth and Sciences,” Dr. Barone beams.

The following is an excerpt from the audio logs of Ada George, Adjunct Lecturer of Anthropology, with the additional voice of Dr. Nicholas Barone, Professor of Geology, Carpenter State University. Speakers are notated appropriately.

Transcribed by Bailey C. DuBois for the Carpenter State Digital Library Initiative 01/07/2020 

Day 21

DR. BARONE: The world is a body, would you agree?

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. BARONE: Humans are an abscess about to burst, would you agree?

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. BARONE: These are the final days, would you agree?

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. BARONE: This is the voice of Dr. Nicholas Barone. I have allowed my subject the resources she needs to communicate my testimony as all other attempts to reach my former colleagues has failed, likely the result of meddling from the Carpenter State administration. The voice you hear on this recording with me is your colleague, Ada George, who today traveled to the center of the crater, and was reawakened. She will not be returning to her position, would you agree?

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. BARONE: Ada has undergone the same physical and spiritual conversion that the rest of my people have. That I myself did. We are enlightened to the truth of the world. I came here to study minerals in a meteorite blast site, but what I found was the gift of sight. The world must know what has happened here, would you agree?

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. BARONE: My intention was no to hold any of your colleagues hostage, rather, to send a message that cannot be ignored. I have had a thousand visions of the world’s end, and there is only one solution: a return to our primal state of being. It is the only way to survive the coming calamity. Ada bears witness to this vision, and she can testify to it.

GEORGE: I have looked into the soul of the crater and seen the end. I accept my fate as the earth’s protector. I must return to the primal ways as my prophet envisions.

DR. BARONE: This is the only way, would you agree?

GEORGE: Yes, my prophet.

[sangfear]

Here’s an informal little post about stuff that’s useful to know about Marlo or their canon milieu that I didn’t wanna bother formalizing on the carrd.

Marlo is not Captain, not technically. Although Cuttlefish promoted them and gave them the hat and all, Callie later overrode that decision. They’re still sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong in Alterna and decoding the logs. But this point is flexible, so if Neo 3s want to run into them, interact with their replacement (Rome, my Agent 4), or just have them be Captain anyway, that’s all fine.

Otherwise their time’s spent at their teaching job (8th and 9th grade humanities) in a run-down little Splatsville district or back at Shellendorf Institute in Greater Inkopolis.

They also work for Cuttlegear’s Agency, which’s similar in function but distinct from the New Squidbeak Splatoon; it’s a government intelligence agency. Their job is counterintelligence and, as with their archivist job, they were hired not through legitimate credentials but their specialized knowledge and connections. Not many people know about this job, especially not the other agents.

In that vein, Marlo prides themself on knowing as much about Octarians as they can. Which can include personnel files, projects and experiments, and the like, if you would be comfortable with or interested in Marlo having some background knowledge on your muse.

When it comes to duplicates, Marlo will be inherently hostile. They’re enormously defensive of their title—or what remains of it—and won’t hesitate to unload derision and skepticism on yours. I have an Agent None verse (or other ocs, lol) if that isn’t your cup of tea.

Apart from the fact that Octavio never brainwashed his military, Marlo’s canon differs significantly in the fact that they sided with Commander Tartar. Eight still lived, but, you know, not because they wanted them to; and they still got Sanitized.

Marlo’s from the bayous of North America as their Southern accent betrays and came to Inkopolis in pursuit of their brother, Adonis. They’re also partially Octoling, though they don’t know that.

You cannot misgender them. Don’t call them ‘enby’ but anything else flies.

[zassiie]

tags.

[gl0rious-purpose]

Exciting and Fast Things (Loki x TVA!Reader)

Summary: Life at the TVA was boring. Of course, Loki had to be the one to spice up life there, specifically yours.

Word Count: 3214 Words

Author's Note: There is implied sexual content and light swearing, but there's not really a lot of details.

The TVA. The infamous Time Variance Authority. It was the only thing you had known since you were born. Or at least you were taught that. A man by the name of Mobius M. Mobius, who was obsessed with jet skis, had raised you as his daughter. He was kind, gentle, and very much dad material. You never really went to school, the knowledge just magically showed up as you got older. While you got older, your dad had discovered a variant. The variant had been killing minute men all across the timeline, causing a huge disruption in workflow.

The disruption mostly affected you. You worked as a file keeper and you had to constantly keep updating files as the minute men and women were killed and new ones were trained and brought in, minds clearly wiped. Well, in a sense. As far as you know, you were the only one who had been their your whole life, besides Mobius and Ravonna. 

While you were working one day, an alarm started going off. It was on that didn't go off as often, but it piqued your interest. The light would flash whatever color an identified variant radiated. This one radiated green. Those who radiated green tended to be perfectionists, analytical, conceptual, cool, calm, inventive and logical. They could even be mischievous. The green ones were always rare, or at least that's what you thought. You've never met one. Well, that was until Mobius had identified the variant killing all personnel. 

It was a Loki variant. Out of curiosity, you looked up the Loki variants on your computer. Most of the variants you saw were apparently "pruned." The one they had identified apparently was unlisted because you couldn't find on that was female, but seeing that all of them were fluid with sex and gender, you thought they had just shifted to a different form. As you scrolled through the files, one caught your eye. Loki Laufeyson, Timeline: 2012. You pulled the file up and scanned it. 2012? There's no way they're here now. As you read further, you found the status area. In bright red lettering read 'In Process Of Capture.' 

Your thin brows furrowed lightly before returning back to their relaxed position. We capture them? You inquired mentally, not wanting a response. You shook it all off before closing down all the files and clearing the history. That was the number one rule when it came to computers in the TVA. You log in, get the information you require, and then you would clear out without a trace. You truly hated it, but it wasn't your place to complain about an extremely reasonable rule. Closing the area completely and locking it, you stared into the now dark area. I wonder if I'll ever meet on of these green Loki variants. You mused mentally, sighing as your keys bounced against your thigh as you made your way to your shared apartment with Mobius.

  Several Months Later...

Months had passed since the Loki variant was identified. You've never seen your dad more excited than that moment. Well, besides when he met you and he got new jet ski magazines. You only got them because they made him happy, but you were more into motorcycles. Running the risk of getting thrown off an open bike at high speed just appealed to you. Maybe you liked the idea of it. Or maybe it was the thrill. One of these days, you were determined to ride one at least. 

Today, however, was not one of those days.

A week ago, the minute personnel was able to capture the 2012 Loki variant. While The Avengers going back in time to break the timeline was fate, Loki escaping with the tesseract was not. You stood by the docking bay, waiting eagerly to see the green variant. Your dad had been so excited about this, he wanted you to be there. He wanted you to see that all the hard work paid off. Of course, you had to stay in a corner, far out of harm's way. As the portal open up, the minute personnel pushed the variant through. Your breathing faltered as you took him in. He was menacing, but in a good way. He was extremely tall. If he were to stand by you, he would've loomed over you like a giant. The idea made you shiver, not with anxiety, but with.. anticipation. You wanted that to happen. 

A loud clink caused you to focus back in on what was happening. The personnel was unlocking his chains, leaving his mouth guard for last. As they dropped the chains, they looked at the guard before deciding to leave it on until they got to booking. You stared intensely at the variant. The almost viridian green suit flattered his form quite well. Instinctively, your mouth turned up into a smirk at his appearance, eyes flickering to the sudden movement. Mobius had walked up to the variant, clearly pleased with himself.

"Loki Laufeyson. Glad you could be here." Mobius spoke courtly to him, which caused the man in front of him to roll his eyes. If you didn't know Mobius, you would've thought he would've pruned him right there and then at the action. But that's the thing – you did know him. Mobius would rather work along side this variant and understand him better in person than removing him from the timeline completely. Mobius gave a smile and stepped aside to let the guards through. They walked swiftly, afraid that Loki might try something while not locked up. You staring must've been felt because suddenly his eyes flickered over to your location. If you weren't mistaken, you could've swore you saw a hint of mischief glimmering in his eyes. Once he was out of sight, you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. Oh my god...You couldn't help, but mentally swooned over the variant. You had to manually take care of your breathing as you tried to compose yourself as Mobius came over, huge smile plastered on his face.

"Wasn't that awesome?!" Mobius spoke in a breathy voice, overwhelmed by the encounter. You shot him a small grin, happy that he finally got what he wanted. He pulled you into a huge, bear hug, rocking you back and forth. Mobius pulled away, pressed a kiss to your forehead. He shot you a toothy grin before glancing at one of his own personnel. They gave him some type of gesture, you believe it was to indicate that the variant was ready to be interviewed and he nodded before looking back at you.

"Well, I better go over the variant's history. I'll send my findings up to be filed in a bit." You barely nodded at him before you saw him basically run out of there to get to the interview room. Back against the wall, you stood there for a couple minutes. You would've spoken to Mobius instead of giving simple gestures, but it felt like Loki had stolen your voice. Clearing your throat, you pushed yourself off of the wall and walked out of the docking bay to the files room.

As you got settled in and started to dive into your work, your mind kept wandering to the variant. He was just so hypnotizing and he had you spellbound. Without moving your head, your eyes glanced up at the personnel walking by as you remember somewhere in the file that said his mother – well, adopted mother – had taught him magic. Had he casted an incantation on you? You pondered on this for a while before rolling your eyes.

"We all know magic is incapable of use here." You muttered, internally scolding yourself at the thought. You reached over to grab a file you had to digitize and placed it in the scanner. As you watched the devices bar of light through the closed lid, you realized that you weren't going to get a moment without thinking about the variant. You groaned, sitting back in your chair as you waited for the scanning to finish. You thought this was going to be a long day like the rest. However, it was starting to change. A long day? This was going to be a long week.

  Every work day went the same way, but it appeared Mobius was spending more and more time with the Loki variant. Please let Mobius get his work done with Loki. You internally pleaded this for several mornings as you watched him rush from the apartment to meet up with the God. You placed your hands on the counter as your hung your head, mentally exhausted from thinking about Loki. Maybe you should talk to him? You suggested to yourself as you took in a deep breath, looking up. As you looked up, a magazine caught your eyes. You slid your body over the counter as you reached for it, smiling at the motorcycle on the front. 

"Great," you started, slightly sarcastically. "An excuse not to have to file dad's notes yet. Score!" You celebrated a little before grabbing your things and walking down to files. You were going to file those note whether you liked it or not, you were just going to make it the first thing you did. Walking out, you locked the door, juggling the items you had in your hands. As you swung your bag over your shoulder in the hall, magazine in hand, you heard minute personnel talking behind you, boots rapidly hitting the ground loudly. 

"Did you hear? Mobius is actually trusting the Loki variant to roam the place." The first one spoke, clearly astonished. The other one scoffed behind you.

"I think he's definitely gonna help." The second one's snide remark made you pick up the pace a bit, eager to get away from the negativity.

"Yeah, help himself." The first guard replied in a snarky manner before they both let out demeaning giggles rang out, nauseating you. You swallowed the feeling as you picked up the pace and made it to files. Looking up at the clock on the wall, you saw you were extremely early. Maybe I can get more work done. You mused to yourself as you got the area unlocked and ready for business. Dropping into your chair, you turned on the computer and logged in. As it logged in and took you to the homescreen, you zoned out. Was Mobius really letting Loki walk around freely? You pondered on what the hunters had said, jumping at a file being dropping on the counter. You looked at the guard, who in turn looked at you apologetically, muttering a 'sorry' before scurrying off to their post. You shook your head as you grabbed the file and placed it on the scanner. By the way it was going, you could already tell it was gonna be a long work day.

As hours passed, by the fourth hour of work, you had already gotten all your work done. Even though time moves differently here, it could at least speed the fuck up. You thought, grumpily. Normally at this time, you would have more files coming. You had gotten a notification that no more files were going to come until tomorrow due to printing error. As you sat there, wondering what to do, you remembered your motorcycle magazine. Grabbing it gleefully, you eagerly started to flip through the magazine. As you read each page, you basically checked out if the world around you. In fact, you were so engrossed with the magazine, you barely noticed that Loki had walked up to the counter in front of your desk. He leaned over the desk, examining you, waiting for you to notice his presence. His eyes raked over your body, enticed with what he was seeing. You were the most ravishing person he had ever had the pleasure of laying his eyes on. Gods, the things he would do to you if he had permission. He leaned further, not realizing you hadn't seen him. After a couple minutes, he decided to clear his throat to catch your attention. The sound startled you as you quickly closed the magazine and threw it under files, looking at the person briefly. As you adjusted yourself, you did a double-take of the person leaning comfortably across from you. You gulped, hoping your sudden nervousness wasn't apparent. He gave you a smile as he caught your eyes, easing the tensions, but causing your stomach to twist into knots. A sailor's knot to be specific, and it was quite uncomfortable. You turned your body more towards him, not realizing it allowed him to take you in fully. His blue eyes flickered down before they rose slowly back to yours.

"Hello, Loki Laufeyson." You spoke slowly, hoping your voice was as steady as you tried to make it. He hummed in response, scanning your chest for a name tag. 

"Hello..." His voice trailed off, realizing he couldn't find your name anywhere.

"..None of your business." You finished his sentence, wanting to mess with him before you actually let him know your name. You couldn't imagine how wide his eyes would be when he learned who your dad was. You watched him suck in his cheeks, trying to figure out how to respond. His eyes closed as he head leaned back fully, allowed your eyes to slowly trail from the underside of his jaw to the bottom of his throat. It was the strangest thing, but you thought it was attractive seeing him like that.  I'd like to see that more often. You chewed on your lip as some questionable thoughts came to mind. His head fell back down, face covered with determination. 

"Excuse my manners. You know my name, but I don't know yours. What is your name? A woman as ravishing as you must have a lovely name.." Loki's voice seemed to grow deeper as the sentence trailed off, flicking his out against his bottom lip as looking you up and down again, hoping you noticed. Without warning, your cheeks grew a little hot. Your eyes flickered down as you tried to make your cheeks go back to their normal hue, mentally scolding yourself. Loki smirked mischievously at your reaction. He watched your head turn back to him, ready to respond.

"It's Y/N. Y/N Mobius." You paused as you watched the gears turn in his head before his mouth formed an 'o' shape. Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. That was definitely not the reaction you were expecting, let alone the one you wanted.

"He talked about you. I didn't connect the dots that you were his daughter until now." Loki shrugged nonchalantly, giving you a warm, cunning smile. All you did was nod in response. Now that these foolish semantics were done, you decide to find out why he was really here.

"Anyway, why are you here?" You inquired, reaching over to clear the computer before logging off. You won't remember to do so after this conversation. You glanced over at him as he quickly put his words together.

"Well, Y/N, I came to see the prettiest person at the TVA." He stated his true intentions, watching your face intently for a reaction. As he watched you stare blankly at him, he realized you might've been oblivious to his flirting attempts. This is going to be harder than I thought. He grumbled internally, throwing a mischievous smile on.

"That would be you, darling." The nickname rolled off of Loki's silver tongue, making your stomach twist tighter. Ignoring the internal war, you have a quick smile before going back to just staring at him. Your unimpressed look threw Loki off completely. He breathed in deeply, realizing he'd have to change the subject to keep this interaction going. He needed this to work.

"Um, anyway... What were you reading? You know, before I distracted you." He wiggled his eyebrows at you, watching your eyes flicker to the finish pile of files. Sighing, you dug out the magazine and tossed onto the counter besides Loki's arms. He eyes the magazine, taking in every detail.

"It's a motorcycle magazine." You explained blatantly, knowing he knew what it was. He hummed in response before chuckling. 

"Your dad likes jet skis and you like motorcycles. Huh." He pondered for a second before continuing. "How interesting." One of his brows raised as he looked up at you, intrigued.

"What can I say? We both are drawn to exciting and fast things. It's our passion." You explained, hoping Loki was going somewhere with this conversation. If he wasn't, you were very much prepared to go home and sleep. He looked down as he licked his lips, eyes peering back up at you through his brows.

"You know, I'm very exciting." Loki stopped his sentence, hoping he had captured your attention. Your attentive eyes stared back at him, head tilting slightly to the right. Make this good, Laufeyson...You internally urged him, eyes squinting slightly.

"And I can go as fast as you like." His eyes flickered to your lips before moving back up, sending you a quick wink as he laughed darkly. You laughed nervously, biting your lip as you brought your hand up to the computer, turning it off. Well, if he's interested. Loki watched you push yourself away from the computer desk, eyes dropping down to your thighs. As much as he tried to stop himself and half some self control, he stared at them, sizing you up a bit. He nodded as his eyes trailed back up your body again, this time he did it seductively, causing your breath to hitch in your throat. You walked over to him slowly, hands slowly sliding up his body before settling on his chest, palm towards him. Loki watched you, eager for your next moves. You moved your right hand to grab his tie, gently tugging him towards you. Leaning your mouth up against the corner of his, the corners of your lips turning up teasingly, eyes fluttering closed.

"If you're so confident about that, let's find out." You whispered to him seductively, reaching out and biting his bottom lip. Loki growled at you, roughly grabbing your hips as he hungrily pressed his lips to yours, his tongue making it's way quickly into your own. You moaned as he continued to battle your own tongue, wrapping your arms around his neck. His tongue grazed against the inside of your mouth, exploring every inch. Suddenly remembering you were out in the open, kissing a variant, you pulled away for air. As you briskly locked everything up, leaving the magazine on the counter, you grabbed Loki's wrist and dragged him back to the shared apartment. You looked behind, winking at him before he hurried to walk beside you, slipping an arm around your waist. The slyness? The mischief? The analytical skills? Loki was without a doubt a green variant, and you were sure his personal skills were going to keep proving that.

You weren't entirely sure of what was going to happen tonight, but you were very eager to let it happen. You just hoped Mobius was so busy talking shop with Ravonna that he wouldn't be coming home.

You can also read this fic here <3

[the-goddamn-queen]

Camping, but make it sexy.

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: SMUT, dirty talk, semi-public, just really the filthiest thing I’ve ever written

Word Count: 1721

A/N: For @sherrybaby14‘s Fall Into You Challenge! My prompt was camping trip.

It was mostly your fault, honestly. The minute you’d made sure everyone was situated after the final battle, you’d practically dragged Bucky into your bedroom with no intention of letting him go until you were well and truly done with him.

You spent five years without him, what were you supposed to do?

The tables had turned rather quickly on you, though, and five days later you found yourself still naked and in bed having only managed to slip out for a couple baths that Bucky insisted on taking with you.

Turns out he missed you too.

Your relief finally comes in the form of F.R.I.D.A.Y. announcing that “Mr. Stark has organized a camping trip that is required for all Avengers personnel.”

Bucky groans into your hair and wraps his arms around you tighter. “Fuck that.” His metal hand starts gliding down your stomach. “We’re not going anywhere.” He finally reaches his destination and you gasp, grasping futilely at his wrist.

“Buck, please, I don’t want to get in trouble.”

He yanks his hand away and flips you, so you’re pinned underneath him by your wrists and hips. “The only trouble you’ll get into is if you try and leave this bed,” he groans into your ear. You whine and buck instinctively. Sure, you were tired, but fuck if that man didn’t do things to you.

 You practically throw yourself out of the van the moment Steve shifts into park. Closing your eyes, you reach your hands out to touch every bit of air you can. Fresh air. Finally.

Bucky seems to take your outstretched arms as an invitation and wraps his own around your middle, hauling you into the air and making you squeal.

“Bucky!” you gasp as he sets you to your feet again. “Get off of me and help me pitch our tent.”

“But, baby, I already pitched a tent.” Your eyes widen a bit at what he’s insinuating, and you smack his arm, wincing when you realize it’s the metal one.

“Watch your mouth. There are children here.”

He smirks and twists an arm around your waist again. “I can think of way better things to do with my mouth.”

You snake away from his arm and snatch up the bag for your tent. “I’m gonna find us a spot,” you say sticking your tongue out, “join me when you’re less of a perv.”

“C’mon, doll!” he calls after you, “don’t tease me with that tongue!”

 It’s dark by the time everyone gets their tents settled. The Starks holed themselves up pretty quickly for the sake of Morgan’s bedtime (despite her very weak protest that she was not, in fact, tired). Everyone else dragged up whatever they could find to sit around the fire; logs, blankets, bucket chairs. Bucky had claimed the bench of a picnic table for the two of you. He’d seemingly calmed down from when you’d first arrived.

You’re snuggled up into his side with his arm wrapped securely around your waist listening to him and Sam bicker over who pulled the cooler rescue op while Nat and Wanda giggle over a shared thermos of something you know Natasha made too strong. You barely notice Bucky’s hand move until its almost enveloped your breast. You try to play it off, laughing at Sam’s jab and slowly reaching to remove Bucky’s hand. Just before you reach it, he swipes his thumb down the center, and you have to bite back a gasp when he grazes your nipple. You hope it’s dark enough that no one can see.

Bucky smirks down at you as pull at his wrist to no avail. He just holds you a little tighter and starts making tight circles with his thumb. You bite your lip to hold back the whine that’s bubbling up in your throat. You’re grateful that the conversation’s drifted, and no one seems to be paying attention to you anymore.

Without letting go of you, Bucky reaches behind him to grab a blanket off the table and drape it around your shoulders. You notice it just barely covers where he’s holding you, just like the one on your legs barely covers your lap…

Oh, shit.

He’s faster than you, locking your thigh to his before you can move them from where they’re folded underneath you. You turn your face to bury it in his shoulder, knowing damn well you won’t be able to hold much back if he decides to touch you there. You feel him smirk against the side of your head. He won, and you both know it.

“Sleepyhead over here and I are gonna call it a night,” Bucky announces to the rest of group. You breathe a sigh of relief that he’s accepted your surrender and manage your own quick goodnight as he drags you away from the fire.

 When you return to your tent, you half expect Bucky to throw you down on the air mattress. Instead, he calmly ducks in after you and settles himself among the blankets, leaving you to crouch awkwardly with your hands on the hem of your shirt.

“You comin’ to bed, sweetheart?”

“Uh, yeah,” you say still thumbing the fabric, “we’re not gonna…”

Bucky smirks. The asshole is toying with you. “Not gonna what, sweetheart?” The bastard knows exactly what he’s doing. Getting you all hot and bothered as revenge for dragging him away from your bedroom.

You shake your head. “Never mind,” you manage with a small smile. You can at least pretend he didn’t win your frustration.

You crawl into the makeshift bed and curl into him, his warm, strong body a balm against the slight October chill. A sigh escapes you as one of his hands finds its way under the edge of your shirt to pull you closer. You revel in the skin to skin contact and let it start to lull you under.

Sleep starts to take you, so you barely register Bucky’s fingers skimming the edge of your pants. You’re drifting off as he just begins to slide his hand into the waistband. You think you’re dreaming when he cups the space between your thighs.

You’re eyes snap open and you gasp as he runs his middle finger along your center and presses it firmly against your clit.

“Bucky,” you breathe into his ear.

“Shhh,” he begins rubbing tight circles, “quiet, sweetheart. There’s children here, remember?”

You groan and bury your face in his shoulder, trying to drown out the noises you can’t stop. “Bucky, please, I’m so close. Make me cum.”

He chuckles lowly and slows his fingers. You whine and buck towards his hand. “Now, why should I do that, darlin’?” He moves his finger down, barely pressing it inside you. “Teasing me all day, pushing me away.” He sinks in another centimeter, toying with you. “I think you should convince me.”

You’re desperate now, trying to push yourself down on his finger, but he won’t let you. “Anything, Bucky, please, I’m sorry, I need you, I need–” You’re babbling now. Breathless whispers in his ear. God, if he would just go a little deeper–

He pulls his finger away from you suddenly and shoves it into your mouth. You whimper but close your lips around it, anyway, sucking it down gratefully. “Too much noise, baby,” he muses, “I think there’s better things to do with that mouth of yours.”

You hum in agreement, moving less than gracefully on the unstable air mattress to straddle him, pulling desperately at his pants to pull his cock out. Rock hard and leaking. You hadn’t touched him all day, and it shows.

Bucky lounges back with his arms behind his head, taking in the glazed look in your eyes. You glance up thinking he looks a little too please with the state he’s put you in. You decide not to waste any time.

You sink your head down as far as you can, pressing your tongue up against him and sucking. Hard.

His hands fly immediately to your hair gripping hard as he grounds out a ‘fuck, baby.’ You smile inwardly. Two can play at this game.

You set a fast pace, setting your hands on his thighs for leverage. Truly and completely sucking his soul out through his dick.

He loses himself for a moment letting his hips thrust up into your mouth once, twice, before yanking you off of him and hauling you up to suck the taste of himself off your tongue. “Good girl, baby, good girl,” he mumbles into your mouth as he rolls you over. “Let me give you what you want, sweetheart, remind me.”

He narrowly avoids shredding your pants as he yanks them off you. You do the same for your shirt before tugging at his wanting to feel his skin against yours. “I want you, Bucky, I need you,” you’re babbling again, “I need your cock. I need to come all over you.”

He presses up against, his lips finding yours again, and grasps your thighs to wrap around his hips. “What else, darlin’, one more thing, I need to hear you say it.”

“I love you, Bucky.”

It’s finally enough. He plunges into you, clasping his hand over your mouth to muffle your scream. You claw at his back looking for leverage to thrust back, but all you can do is lay back and take it.

He fucking surrounds you. His whole hulking frame absolutely drowning you as he pounds his hips against yours. It’s so much. It’s almost too much, and you find yourself screaming against his hand again as your pussy clamps down around him over and over again.

“That’s it, honey, that’s what you need, huh?” You nod as best you can, but he doesn’t let up. “Do it again, baby, I need to feel you do it again.” He moves his hand from your mouth, and you moan. “God, I wish I could listen to you but you gotta stay quiet. Bite me,” he orders. And you do. He moves that hand down to where you’re joined and rubs hard, unforgiving circles on your nub.

You squeal into his shoulder and hold him tighter.

“Cum.”

You do. Hard and shaking against him until he stills, filling you gently compared to how he fucked you.

“I love you too.”

[exastrisnonnocere]

Character Info Sheet

NAME: Silas Lane Garcia Alderin

NAME MEANING: Silas meaning 'of the forest' from the Latin Silvanus and he is named after his paternal grandfather. Lane is masculinized from his mother's name Elena (specifically her nickname Lanie), which is the Spanish variation of the name Helen, meaning 'bright, shining light'. Silas's surname is officially Alderin, with his mother's first surname Garcia (of Garcia Villegas or Garcia-Villegas from the traditional dos apellidos convention) listed as a sort of second middle name, since Elena had elected to take her husband's name at the time of their marriage. Garcia is a Spanish surname meaning 'bear', while Alderin is a spelling variation of Aldrin, either from the Old English meaning 'old and wise ruler' or the Old Norse Áleifr meaning 'noble leader'. (OOC: surname was definitely chosen because Buzz Aldrin but also more because mun is a Lily Aldrin from HIMYM stan no regrets)

ALIAS/ES: Nicknamed Si (pronounced like sigh), also called Miguel by his grandfather after he developed dementia and often mistook Silas for his father, Michael.

ETHNICITY: Mexican (Mother's side) & British/Italian (Father's side)

ONE (1) PICTURE YOU LIKE BEST OF YOUR CHARACTER:

THREE HCS YOU'VE NEVER TOLD ANYONE: ( I've been writing this man since 2012, I'm pretty sure I've told everything to one person or another at some point, so we'll go with some HCs I haven't posted on this blog yet. )

Silas is allergic to copper (and incidentally the blood and various other bodily fluids of Vulcans; he learned this the hard way with his Vulcan Academy boyfriend because I thought it was funny af and for literally no other reason)

He really, *really* enjoys getting flowers. Like, a lot. Give this lorge grown ass man flowers and watch him smile and blush.

Silas is not especially a fan of labels in regards to sexuality. Silas has almost exclusively dated men for almost twenty years, but he has also had many emotional relationships with women during that time. If pressed, he would say that he is primarily physically attracted to men and primarily emotionally attracted to women, though both attractions develop with either one, eventually. His relationships with men tend to be intensely passionate, but emotionally shallow or needlessly complicated, while his relationships with women are often deeply established before any kind of desire rears its head. Because of this, the women he falls in love with are usually already well-established as friends, and he declines to pursue any romantic involvement for the sake of the existing relationship.

THREE THINGS YOUR CHARACTER LIKES DOING IN THEIR FREE TIME:

Reading. This boy is always reading like five books at a time. He is partial to poetry and fiction, but he's also all up in the niche scientific and anthropological research spaces.

Cooking. He likes food. Real food. Replicators suck. The end.

Dancing/Singing. He sings while he's cooking. He dances in the shower. Music lives in his body at all times, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

EIGHT PEOPLE YOUR CHARACTER LIKES/LOVES: (PSA: multiship so each one exists in its own little verse unless there's an arranged poly situation going on; also, if you are not on this list don't worry, he likes almost everyone! I just picked the 8 who are closest to him currently and/or have been close to him for years; if we haven't interacted much or haven't discussed their relationship OOC then I don't like to make assumptions about it overall.)

Ten of Eleven aka Madeline - his baby girl, pride and joy, and the true love of his life, his adopted daughter.

Jin Kim - Long time OTP played off-site, biochemist with a crappy disposition but great legs.

Leonard McCoy (@onlybonesleft ) - Sometimes platonic soulmate, sometimes not platonic at all, but inevitably cut from the same cloth. Both men are too used to caring for others and not enough for themselves, so they pester each other into self-care submission and their relationship keeps me up at night because reasons.

Christine Chapel (@nursc ) - The bright spot in a shitty day but also 100% reliable when you need help on the floor. She knows her shit, she gets things done, she's the one he calls when he needs a hand. He hopes she knows she can count on him for the same. His work wife, his non-work wife, his gossip girl, his bestie. Can't live without her, doesn't want to.

Sergio Alderin - His middle brother, closest in age and the one he still sometimes talks to. Schoolteacher. Married to his childhood BFF.

Simon Castelo - His childhood BFF and brother-in-law, keeps him up to date with goings on in his brothers' lives more often than the brothers themselves, given their rocky relationships.

Michael (Mikey) Alderin Jr. - Youngest brother, wanderlust type with little guidance and direction in his life. Suffered in foster care and blames Silas for not being there to protect him.

James T. Kirk (@traiilblazer ) - On-again, off-again lovers, played off-site.

TWO THINGS YOUR CHARACTER REGRETS:

Losing his brothers. While they are all three alive and well, the relationship between them is strained. Silas leaving foster care and his subsequent failure to obtain custody of his younger brothers at the time of their parents' deaths is something he wishes had gone differently. He thinks he gave up too easily, that he should have tried harder. He also carries guilt because, deep down, his failure at the time had been a relief. Relief from the burden of trying to figure out how to provide for and raise his siblings when he, himself, was only 17.

Getting married. Not so much the relationships themselves, but the almost knee-jerk urge to put untested romances under the stress of a long-term, official commitment. Military marriages tho, amirite?

TWO PHOBIAS YOUR CHARACTER HAS:

Autophobia, also called monophobia, isolophobia, or eremophobia, is the specific phobia or a morbid fear or dread of oneself or of being alone, isolated, abandoned, and ignored. For Silas, this manifests as a fear of ending up alone or almost an expectation of abandonment. This is, incidentally, contrary to how he has operated throughout his life in the past, where he is and always has been fiercely independent out of necessity and often chooses not to rely on others for help or support. He often pursues relationships with individuals who need him in some way, rather than pursuing mutuality and emotional intimacy which would require him to be vulnerable, thereby ensuring that he both has intrinsic value to the other person and that if/when the relationship ends, he is not utterly destroyed by it. He believes that love exists, but he does not believe it exists for him or that he is deserving of it.

Trypanophobia is the extreme fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles. This seems like an inconvenient fear for a doctor to have, however it only manifests when he himself is facing an injection or medical procedure, himself. The fear, at this point in his life, is fairly minor and easily overcome, however it was, at one point, severe and debilitating to his ability to work. Early in his career, Silas and a few others on his away team encountered a Borg vessel and were partially assimilated during that encounter. After being recovered, the various nanite appendages were surgically removed, but the initial trauma of being injected and losing identity and autonomy was heavily damaging to his mental state for some time after the event.

TAGGED BY STOLEN FROM: @ensnchekov TAGGING: @onlybonesleft & anyone else (if u want u don't have to)

[cabalrive]

Varosh’ati’ruon: Backstory

The halls of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera were brightly lit, the harsh white lights embedded in the walls gleaming off the polished black floors. Varosh’ati’roun, otherwise known as Shatir, walked at a brisk pace, jackbooted feet moving lightly across the deck as he left the hanger bay where his shuttle was docked. His brilliant white uniform jacket was a stark contrast to his blue skin and mildly tousled black hair, which was only mostly contained by his black cap. He had plenty of time. In fact, he’d likely be waiting around for a while when he arrived but much safer to be early. Reflecting on this, he almost barreled into the figure stepping out from an adjoining hallway.

“Excuse me,” Shatir said, barely glancing back.

“One might consider that gross insubordination, Lieutenant” intoned a voice behind him. Shatir stopped dead in his tracks and whipped around.

“Taeg’edor’enokai?” Shatir exclaimed, staring at the black-clad individual. “What are you doing here?” Taeg’edor’enokai, usually going by Gedore, smiled. He wore the uniform of the Imperial Special Forces, his plaque declaring him a Captain.

“Is it so astounding to run into another Chiss here, of all places?”

“It is good to see you. Are you available later?” inquired Shatir “I’m afraid I have a meeting to get to at the moment.”

“Do you really? What a coincidence. So do I.”

“He wants to see both of us?”

“Apparently.”

“I don’t think there have been more than two of us together at any given time since we got off the ship from Csilla…” Shatir wondered aloud. Gedore broke in, speaking quietly in Cheunh.

“Maybe it’s time for us to overthrow our false leaders and once more rejoin our illustrious Ascendency.” Shatir glared at Gedore and replied in the same language. 

“That’s hardly a joking matter. If it were anyone but me you would be reported and executed.”

“Luckily I am quite certain that it is, in point of fact, you to whom I made this particularly egregious jest.”

“Perhaps I won’t turn you in. This time.” Shatir shot back.

“My thanks” replied Gedore in Basic, briefly bowing his head to his oldest friend.

They strode off together, an imposing duo in the lightly trafficked corridors. The few personnel they did encounter quickly stood aside to let them pass, poorly hiding their efforts to stare at the two Chiss officers. Most had only ever seen the one, from a distance at that. Now there were three of them on one ship.

Six Chiss had arrived from Csilla as part of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s program to study the suitability of incorporating the Chiss in other branches of the Imperial Military. Each recruit had gone into different departments. Shatir was placed in Naval Intelligence, Gedore the Special Forces and the others in the Army, Department of Military Research, Imperial Intelligence, and ISB. The position in the Navy proper was, of course, already filled. They were fully immersed in Imperial culture, each working their way through the Academy, rarely seeing one another. They all suspected they were deliberately kept apart, but logically could not see fault in such a course of action. To both be summoned by the Grand Admiral was hitherto unheard of.

They arrived at the entrance to the Grand Admiral’s command suite. Shatir nodded and Gedore punched the call controls. A moment later the door slid silently open and they stepped through. Both had been independently summoned before and knew what to expect. The arrangements of sculptures and artwork, both real and holographic, claimed much of the space in the office. At the moment though the Grand Admiral was studying a datapad. Shatir and Gedore stood stiffly at attention, saying nothing.

“At ease, gentlemen.” Thrawn said, putting down the datapad and fixing his gaze upon them. “Congratulations on your promotion, Taeg’edor’enokai. Your commanding officer speaks highly of your skills.”

“Thank you, sir.” replied Gedore.

“And you, Varosh’ati’roun. It has been some time since you were last aboard. Your mission was a success?”

“Yes, sir. I have successfully traced the targets.”

“Excellent. Then you have your next destination.” Shatir and Gedore exchanged the briefest of glances. Thrawn continued. “Lieutenant Shatir has been tracing several Rebel sympathizers. The hope is to insinuate him into their company, and then, once contact with the Rebellion has been established, he will become a double-agent.

Your role in this, Gedore, is extraction. In the event that Shatir secures a valuable asset, or is captured, you will retrieve him. You may assemble a team if you so choose. I need not remind either of you that the level of duplicity required for such an assignment is extreme and I trust you will use the full breadth of your abilities to maintain cover. Gedore, until such time as your services are required you will be assigned as Special Forces Liaison to the Chimaera.

Shatir, you may brief him further with any information you believe to be relevant, and proceed with your preparations. Dismissed.” Shatir and Gedore saluted, turned smartly on their heels and left the Grand Admiral to his studies.

They did not speak again until they had reached an open conference room. Shatir shut the door, engaged his personal comm jammer and pulled up his files on the holo-display.

“Rebel activity on Kashyyyk is quite common,” began Shatir, gesturing to a log of decrypted comms records, “a predictable side effect of the Empire favouring the Wookies as slave labour. Therefore it is a good starting point to find a sympathetic group. There is a slave auction in three days, and based on the communications I intercepted and data from the garrison, there is likely to be a rescue attempt. I hope to assist with that attempt and go with the group to a Rebel base. After that I’ll be on my own.”

Gedore nodded, scanning the text.

“Do you require assistance on Kashyyyk?” he inquired.

“Perhaps you could run interference on the local stormtrooper garrison? I would prefer to reduce Imperial casualties without arousing suspicion.”

“Of course”

“That’s about it. I have the advantage that most people have never encountered a Chiss before. We are one of the only races in the Galaxy who are more known to the Empire than anyone else, but even then it’s mostly restricted to the Navy and the Intelligence branches.”

“You can always say you’re a Pantoran with an eye condition.” joked Gedore, smiling slightly at the old adage.

“Indeed.” Shatir replied, distracted. “I suppose I must leave immediately. At maximum speed it will take at least two days to get to Kashyyyk from here. I need to assemble my kit.”

“I will fly you there. It will be easier to distract the garrison from local orbit rather than blasting orders across the galaxy from a not particularly inconspicuous Star Destroyer. If Rebel activity is so common I should be able to send them off on a raid with relatively little information. Of course, my holo transmitter will be malfunctioning and audio only. Does Captain Kovars sound like a convincing pseudonym to you?”

“As good as any. Increased Imperial activity should mask my activities nicely.” mused Shatir, rolling the plan over in his mind. “I’m sure the garrison will be thrilled to have a mystery officer hijacking their operations.”

“What can I say, Special Forces are special.” Gedore smirked. “No authorization required.”

A few hours later they were aboard a requisitioned Lambda class T-4a shuttle, discussing the upcoming mission, stories from the academy, any missions they could share without breaching security clearances and their lives in general. Both enjoyed the chance to talk as friends rather than as professionals. While there was now mutual respect between many Imperials and their Chiss colleagues, friendship was a difficult thing to come by. The Chiss officers had the advantage of full exposure to Imperial and human culture, but there was no reciprocation whatsoever. The Grand Admiral didn’t count, of course. Both Human and Chiss alike held him in awe, and his rank held him above all

The two day hyperspace flight went by in a flash, the two comrades finding themselves saying farewell once more. Shatir had changed out of his uniform into civilian clothing appropriate to the weather. He rolled his sleeves up in anticipation of the muggy jungle climate, and shrugged on a vest over the shoulder-holsters for his vibroknives.

“I have two gifts for you, before you leave. The first I had originally planned to leave on the Chimaera for you, but events have made this much more convenient.” Gedore pulled a chrono out of his pocket and presented it to Shatir.

“My thanks, Gedore. Had I but known I would be seeing you…” he trailed off, inspecting the chrono.

“Never mind that. It has one excellent feature, besides being waterproof up to 100m,” he reached over and grasped a tiny tab, pulling out a length of carbon nanofiber wire. “May your enemies never see you coming.”

“Charming, and incredibly useful. I thank you.” Shatir said, inclining his head graciously, and proceeding to fasten the chrono to his wrist.

“Anything for my oldest, most duplicitous friend,” grinned Gedore, slapping his shoulder. “The second gift, I fear you will enjoy less.” he said, grabbing Shatir’s forearm and stabbing an injector into his flesh. Gedore pushed the button with his thumb to activate it. Shatir hissed at the unexpected pain and looked quizzically at his friend, red eyes flashing. 

“This implant has two uses,” explained Gedore. “First off, it carries your Imperial credentials. It is undetectable until activated. In the event you need to prove you are, in fact, a commissioned Imperial operative, tap your arm near the implant twice. It will read on most ident-chip scanners. You can deactivate it again the same way. The second use is as an SOS tracking chip. It will piggyback an SOS on any local Imperial channels directly to the Chimaera, and to me. To call for aid, break the shielding capsule by pressing down on it. It takes a bit of force as it is designed not to break under normal combat conditions. If you are successful you should feel it burn slightly as it draws power from your body’s natural electrical currents. Then you just have to wait for the cavalry to arrive.”

“Unless, of course, I am not near any Imperial outposts.” commented Shatir drily, massaging his arm.

“That is true, but the options for undetectable beacons are rather limited, I’m afraid.” Gedore said cheerfully. “Now away with you. I must return to orbit and practice my lounging skills so I fit in with you Navy types once I return to the Chimaera.”

“Could be worse, could be assigned to the ISB,” smirked Shatir, and, with a small Chiss salute, departed.

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Episode 1.21: The Return of the Archons

AKA: In Star Trek, Neural Network Trains You 

Our episode begins with two men running frantically down a deserted, old-fashioned-looking street. The men look a bit old-fashioned themselves, wearing tall boots, waistcoats and tricorne hats, but when one of them trips and falls we see that the other one, stopping to help him up, is Sulu. In and of itself I wouldn’t find this terribly surprising since I just assume 19th-century themed LARPing is the kind of thing Sulu does on his days off, but they both look pretty freaked, so there’s probably something else going on here.

“O’Neil, we’ve got to keep going,” Sulu says, but O’Neil’s feeling a bit less plucky about the situation. “It’s no use, they’re everywhere!” he bemoans as the two of them back up against what appears to be a store window, albeit one completely empty of any merchandise. The desperate urgency of this statement is somewhat undercut by the fact that the camera then shows us all of one person, an anonymous figure wearing a brown hooded robe and carrying a big metal rod, pursuing them down the otherwise empty street. I say ‘pursuing’ but really, it’s more of a mosey than anything.

“Captain gave us an order! We’ve got to find some clue!” Sulu admonishes O’Neil, but O’Neil only reiterates that “It’s no use!” Then he points out another hooded figure approaching from a different direction. Oh, there’s two of them? Oh, well, I stand corrected. You’re definitely screwed.

[ID: An empty street with a large, old stone building at one end, in front of which a single figure in a brown hooded robe is standing.]

ahhhhh the endless hordes ohhhh nooooo

While Sulu and O’Neil are standing around waiting patiently to be cornered by the slowly advancing figures, Sulu kills some time by calling the ship to get them beamed up. Specifically, he calls the bridge, gets Kirk, and tells Kirk they need to be beamed up so that Kirk can then call the transporter room and tell them that the landing party needs to be beamed up, because just calling the transporter room directly might actually have gotten them out of there in time. Naturally, as soon as the situation calls for them to stay where they are so they can get beamed out, O’Neil immediately changes his mind and decides that actually he’d quite like to run away. Sulu yells after him desperately, but it’s no use; O’Neil has scarpered, leaving Sulu to face the approaching figure alone. The very slowly approaching figure.

Despite Sulu’s heroic last stand (heavier on the ‘stand’ than the ‘heroic,’ it must be said), one of the hooded figures manages to reach him, threateningly raising the big length of metal pipe they’re carrying to...gently tap him on the shoulder with it. Evidently this has more serious effects than Sulu being declared It now, because there’s an ominous sound effect and Sulu goes rigid for a moment. Then his expression turns into a blank, empty grin just as he finally gets beamed up.

Upon arrival, our still-grinning navigator staggers somewhat drunkenly on the transporter pad as Kirk hurries in, wanting to know what’s going on, and where’s O’Neil? Yeah, Mr. Transporter Man, where is O’Neil? This need for people to remain perfectly still for the transporter to lock on to them has rather suddenly come out of nowhere, considering a few episodes ago they were able to pluck a man flying a jet fighter out of the sky with no trouble. O’Neil might have run off pretty quick but I rather doubt he was traveling faster than an F-104. Damn thing must be on the fritz again.

Neither Sulu nor the transporter operator answer Kirk’s questions. Sulu just looks at him dreamily and says, “What? Who?” I don’t know what the transporter operator’s excuse is. Then Sulu looks a little more focused (it’s a very low bar) and says, “You’re not of the Body.”

At this point Kirk quite sensibly decides to ctrl-alt-del this entire conversation and just calls for McCoy to get down here pronto. Meanwhile, Sulu has rounded on a nearby blueshirt who’s just hanging out in the transporter room for some unknown reason, and starts yelling, “You, you did it! They knew we were Archons. These are the clothes they wear, not these!” (So, are you saying those clothes were...anarchonistic?) Then he throws his tricorne at the blueshirt and starts taking off his coat for good measure, because taking off his clothes is just how Sulu reacts to being under alien influences. This time he doesn’t get quite as far as in The Naked Time, though, getting distracted partway through by some thought that makes him look up to the ceiling and start grinning again while saying, “Landru...Landru...”

Kirk manages to get Sulu to sit down on the transporter pad and attempts to pry some kind of useful information out of him, but all he gets is some rambling about how “They’re wonderful, the sweetest people in the universe...” and “It’s paradise, my friend.”

McCoy gets there in the middle of this and reacts about how you’d expect.

[ID: McCoy raising an eyebrow and glancing to the side in bewilderment while saying “da fuck.”]

“Sulu, where’s O’Neil?” Kirk asks once again.

“Paradise...” Sulu says happily.

We never get to find out what McCoy considers to be the appropriate medical response to this situation, because at that point the scene cuts to the titles. Afterward we get a captain’s log to shed a very small amount of light on the situation:

“While orbiting planet Beta 3 trying to find some trace of the starship Archon that disappeared here a hundred years ago, a search party consisting of two Enterprise officers were sent to the planet below. Mr. Sulu has returned, but in a highly agitated mental state. His condition requires I beam down with an additional search detail.”

I don’t know if I would call that agitated, per se. It’s sort of the opposite of agitated, really. But never mind that, let’s talk about the fact that the Enterprise has been sent to investigate the whereabouts of a ship that vanished a century ago. At that point we’re well past there being any chance of actually helping any survivors and into ‘historical mystery’ territory. Sure, it’d be good to find out what happened, but was there really not anything of higher priority for the Enterprise, of all ships, to be doing? This is like telling an active Navy cruiser to stop everything and go look for the USS Cyclops. (Look it up.)

Well, Archon or no Archon, there’s clearly something weird going on here and whatever it is ate our best navigator’s brain, so there’s only one thing to do: send even more critical personnel down right into the middle of it to check it out. So Kirk, Spock, McCoy and three other dudes we don’t know beam down all dolled up in what could be called period dress as long as you don’t ask too many questions about exactly what period it is. Special shout-out to Spock, who’s chosen to hide his ears in the most conspicuous manner possible:

[ID: A landing party of six men assembled in two rows on an old-fashioned city street. In the front stand McCoy, wearing a a gray suit with a black bolo tie and carrying a medical case; Kirk, wearing a dark blue coat over suit pants, a patterned gray waistcoat, and a black bolo tie; and Spock, wearing a black knee-length cloak with a square hood over gray suit pants and dress shoes. In the back row are three more crewmembers wearing similar clothing.]

SPOCK SMOCK SPOCK SMOCK SPOCK SMOCK

Incidentally, if any of these streets and buildings look familiar, it’s because the exterior of the town was filmed at RKO 40 Acres, the same multi-purpose backlot that provided the set for Miri, which you may recall also served as the town of Mayberry in The Andy Griffith Show. It kinda makes me wonder if the Andy Griffith crew ever got annoyed at the Star Trek crew for trashing their town multiple times.

As the party gets their bearings, a man holding one hand to his chest wanders past, apparently too busy staring dreamily into the distance to take any notice of the new arrivals. Spock and Kirk take immediate notice of how much this resembles the state Sulu was in. “If everyone on this planet is like him...” Kirk muses, but doesn’t bother giving us the end to that sentence. Probably it wasn’t supposed to be “...then where can I get some?” but that’s the first thing to come to mind.

They head off down the street, and soon encounter another local wearing the same vacant expression, and also a bowler hat. This one actually stops and addresses them, though, saying, “Joy to you, friends,” with the hand-on-chest gesture the first guy was doing. Well, when in Rome, etc, so Kirk also puts his hand on his chest and replies, “Joy to you,” while behind him Spock chimes in with a distinctly half-hearted attempt at the same gesture.

The local continues, “You be strangers. Come for the festival, are ya?” For some reason the actor here has chosen to go with the most goofily over-enunciated accent he could possibly manage. It sticks out like a sore thumb because no one else in the town sounds remotely like that; they tend to sound a bit spacey, but nothing more than that. Indeed, I’m quite sure that no real existing human being has ever naturally sounded like this dude. But hey, I guess that’s one way to make your five minutes of screen time memorable.

Kirk’s happy to go with this conveniently offered explanation for their presence. Sure! Festival! Definitely! That is definitely why we are here, absolutely.

The guy then asks if they have a place to “sleep it off” yet. When Kirk shakes his head, the guy suggests they go find the house of someone called Reger. “He’s got rooms...but you’ll have to hurry. It’s almost the Red Hour.” Oh, that sounds...fun.

Sure enough there’s a clock on the nearby building reading about two minutes to six, which is barely enough time to put directions to Reger’s house into Wayz, let alone to get there. Unfortunately the party is still trapped in the iron grip of small talk with a dude who clearly sees no reason whatsoever to draw any association between “you’ll have to hurry” and “now it’s time to stop casually chatting.” But that’s small towns for you. I have occasionally come pretty close to having to gnaw my own arm off to escape conversations at the library check-out desk, and were meteors to start falling outside I would not expect the lady scanning my books to speed up one little bit.

At that moment, a couple of women come drifting serenely down the sidewalk nearby, giving Bowler Hat the chance to rope even more people into the conversation. “Tula, these folks come for the festival,” he says to one of them. “Your daddy can put them up, can’t he?” Tula, who looks slightly less spacey than Bowler Hat (a low bar) asks if the party is from the valley. One of the three as-yet-anonymous crewmembers, eager to make a contribution, chimes in that they’ve just arrived. Sure is convenient that everyone around here only asks leading questions.

Tula says sure, her dad would be happy to put them up. But it’s too late: just as she says this, the clock begins tolling six. The effect on the town is immediate. Tula, Bowler Hat, and everyone else in sight break into a frenzy, screaming, throwing hats and gloves, hitting each other, breaking things, and generally rampaging like an Instant Angry Mob, Just Add Water. The stunned landing party run for cover while people go wild all around them. Unfortunately one of them does get beaned by a remarkably soft bit of debris in the process.

[ID: A gif showing the landing party, led by Kirk, running through a street while various debris gets thrown around. One piece hits one of the crewmen in the head, causing him to throw his hands up, but not stop running.]

They find a nearby building to run into, quickly close the door, and only then turn around to see three very confused older men standing there staring at them. Kirk apologizes for bursting in on them, explaining that they weren’t prepared for “this kind of a welcome.” One of the men asks if they’re strangers and Kirk says yes, they came from the valley and they’re here for the festival. This answer doesn’t seem to satisfy the men as well as it did Bowler Hat, though, because the speaker asks, “How come you here?” Before Kirk can try to answer this, one of the crewmembers (the same one who spoke before, of course; what, you think they could afford to have all three of them talk? Talking’s expensive!) asks if the guy is Reger. The guy says yes, and then confirms that Tula is his daughter. “Well you better do something!” the ‘shirt yells. “She’s outside!”

Reger, however, doesn’t look at all taken aback by this news, just sad. “I know,” he says. “It’s Festival. It’s the will of Landru.”

At that point, one of Reger’s companions interrupts, pointing out that these new strangers are “young men, not old enough to be excused.” Oh, that’s okay, we’ve got McCoy here, he can write everyone a quick doctor’s note. Reger points out that they’re visitors, but the other man isn’t about to be content with that. “Well, have they no lawgivers in the valley?” he demands. “Why be they not at the festival?”

Rather than attempt to navigate the weird backroads of this conversation any further, Kirk aims to distract by telling Reger that they heard he might have some rooms for them. Reger looks relieved at this. “You see, Hacom?” he tells the complaining man. “They’ve merely come looking for a place to rest afterwards.” Hacom is still not appeased: “The Red Hour has already struck!”

The third man steps in then and tries to help soothe Hacom, telling him that “the valley has different ways.” But Hacom’s got a good head of outrage built up by now and he’s not about to concede it for anyone. “Do you say that Landru is not everywhere?!” he demands, with much the same kind of self-righteous huffiness of a man bitching out a Starbucks barista for wishing him happy holidays instead of merry Christmas.

“No, of course not,” the third man says, still gamely trying to defuse things. “It’s simply that they have different ways.”

“They’ve come looking for shelter,” Reger says, with what he clearly hopes is a sense of finality. “Can I turn them away?”

He turns and makes as if to lead the landing party up the nearby stairs, but the concerned ‘shirt stops him and asks again about Tula. “She is in Festival, as you should be!” Hacom snaps. As Reger finally manages to get the landing party upstairs Hacom turns to the remaining man and says that “the Lawgivers should know.” He is distinctly not amused when the other man tries to point out that surely the Lawgivers already know since they’re infallible, which Hacom takes as mockery toward the Lawgivers. “The strangers are not of the Body!” he yells as he stalks outside in a huff. “You will see!”

Upstairs, Reger has taken the party to a room with several beds, where he putters around opening the windows (revealing that somehow, full dark has fallen in the five minutes or so that they’ve been inside) and saying that the group can come back there after Festival, when they’ll be in need of rest. Kirk tells him they have no intention of attending Festival. This leaves Reger stunned and confused, but not nearly as stunned and confused as he is a moment later when Kirk says that he’d like to know more about the Festival, and about this ‘Landru’ person. At that, Reger freaks out, slamming the window closed again and spluttering incoherently before finally managing to say “Well...you’re strange.” Then he tries to ask, “Are you...are you...” but can’t quite make it. Undaunted by this, Kirk asks about Landru once again, causing Reger to freak out even more.

Outside, meanwhile, it’s still total chaos. Things are on fire, people are screaming, the works. Special shout-out to the guy who just straight-up throws himself through an entire window.

[ID: A gif showing a man running past a glass window with a chair right before another man runs up and jumps through the window, shattering the glass.]

And now, the weather.  

By the time we cut back to the landing party, some time seems to have passed, as Reger is absent and Kirk is busy brooding at the window. Having evidently seen enough, he turns back to the group and says, “My guess is we have until morning. Let’s put the time to good use.” He tells McCoy to take some readings to see if there’s anything in the air that might account for all this and Lindstrom—the ‘shirt who was concerned about Tula—to “correlate everything that you’ve seen with any other sociological parallels, if any.” Oh man, Lindstrom got the hard homework. Kirk then turns to Spock and says, “You and I have some serious thinking to do. When we leave here tomorrow, I want to have a plan of action.”

Apparently all that thinking really takes it out of you, because the next thing we see is the gas lamp by the door having burned out, while in the interim almost everyone has passed out on some piece of furniture or another. Kirk remains somewhat awake, leaning half-asleep against the post of the bunk bed with a blanket wrapped around him, while Spock is laying flat on his back on a top bunk with his hands on his chest and his eyes wide open like Dracula. I don’t know he’s awake or if that’s just how Spock sleeps. Could go either way.

Kirk meanders sleepily over to the window and looks out. The rioting is still going strong, even though the sun has risen and the town clock is reading a few minutes to six. As the clock strikes six a moment later, the people below all suddenly freeze where they are. Then they all begin to calmly meander off in different directions, the rioting over just as abruptly as it began.

Kirk goes to wake up/get the attention of Spock, then rouses Lindstrom and then McCoy, who’s fallen asleep in some kind of chair-bed thing. The silence is suddenly broken by the sound of a woman crying loudly downstairs, which accelerates the waking-up process considerably. Everyone hastens downstairs to see Reger holding Tula, who’s sobbing hysterically, while Reger’s friend from last night hovers awkwardly patting her on the shoulder and such. McCoy gently pulls Tula away into another room, and when Reger tries to follow Kirk stops him, saying, “He’ll give her a shot, it’ll calm her down. Trust us.” Yeah, Reger! Trust the total strangers to medicate your daughter! What could go wrong?

Lindstrom breaks in angrily, demanding to know what kind of father Reger is that he didn’t even attempt to rescue Tula last night. Reger helplessly says that it was Landru’s will. Lindstrom, I know you’re righteously angry right now, but there’s a thing called “making half an effort to blend in with the locals so they don’t cut your head off.” Here, let Kirk show you how it’s done.

[ID: Kirk standing slightly behind Reger, a concerned looking middle-aged white man with brown hair in a dark gray suit, and another, older white man with gray hair and a similar suit. Kirk is saying, “What about Landru? Who is he?”]

oh for fuck’s sake

“So it’s true then,” Reger’s friend says. “You didn’t attend the festival last night?” No, Kirk says. “Then you’re not of the Body,” Reger muses. “You couldn’t be...”

The two of them hurry off in consternation, and the rest of the party follows, into the side room where McCoy and Spock have taken Tula. Speaking of Tula, she’s now thoroughly passed out. Evidently McCoy wasn’t kidding around with that shot.

“Are you...are you Archons?” Reger asks Kirk.

“What if we are?” Kirk replies, smoothly sidestepping out of that minefield of a question.

“It was said more would follow,” Reger says uncertainly. “If you are indeed--”

“We must hide them, quickly,” his friend interrupts. “The Lawgivers--” Kirk tries to assure him that they can take care of themselves, but assured he is not. “Landru will know,” he says. “He will come.”

Turns out that wasn’t hyperbole, because all of about two seconds later, a couple of the same brown-hooded figures that were harassing Sulu and O’Neil come bursting into the room, metal rods at the ready.

[ID: The landing party along with Reger and his friend all assembled in an old-fashioned sitting room and looking towards the doors, which are flanked by two men wearing brown hooded robes and carrying tall metal rods.]

NOBODY EXPECTS THE LAWGIVER INQUISITION

Accompanying them is Hacom, the damn narc, who smugly proclaims that Reger’s friend has been mocking the Lawgivers, and also those punks over there didn’t attend Festival like good citizens. “Tamar. Stand Clear,” one of the Lawgivers intones at Reger’s friend, in a robotic and slightly reverb-y voice. Both Reger and Tamar look stricken, but after a moment Tamar slowly says, “I hear and obey the voice of Landru,” and steps out in front of Reger. The Lawgiver raises their Rod of Lordly Might and the end of it fizzles and pops like a handful of cheap sparklers, which is probably exactly what it was. Tamar collapses on the spot, dead.

As Reger and Kirk grab Tamar and gently lower him to the ground, the Lawgiver speaks again. “You. Attacked. The Body. You Have Heard The Word. And Disobeyed. You Will Be Exterminated Absorbed.”

“What do you mean, absorbed?” Kirk asks. I’m going to give you a tip for free here: if someone tells you “you will be absorbed” that is not the time to stand around asking questions. Get out of there and you can figure out the details later, cause one thing you can be sure of is that there is no scenario where that could possibly end up being a good thing.

Hacom immediately crows that this is proof the strangers are “not of the Body” but the Lawgivers don’t seem to pay him any attention. “You Will Be Absorbed,” Kirk is told. “The Good Is All. Landru Is Gentle. You Will Come.”

After the break, Kirk, still looking unimpressed by all this, tells the Lawgivers, “We’re not going anywhere.”

“It Is The Law,” the Lawgiver tells him. “You Must Come.”

“I said we’re not going anywhere,” Kirk repeats calmly, while Reger clings onto his arm with a look of absolute terror.

But instead of resorting to force, the Lawgivers turn to face each other and just stand there for a moment. “Evidently they’re not prepared to deal with outright disobedience,” Spock notes curiously. “How did you know?” Kirk replies that everything they’ve seen so far indicates that the people in this place have a compulsive stimulus of some kind towards actions beyond their control, so he banked on the Lawgivers not being able to deal with people who couldn’t just be ordered around. Absolutely nobody feels inclined to take advantage of this brief respite by, say, climbing out the convenient nearby window or anything.

Eventually the Lawgivers turn back to the party. “It Is Clear That You Simply Did Not Understand,” the speaking one says. “I Will Rephrase. You Are Ordered To Accompany Us To The Absorption Chambers.”

“Why did you kill that man?” Kirk demands.

“Out Of Order,” the Lawgiver says. “You Will Obey. It Is The Word Of Landru.”

“You tell Landru,” Kirk says, “that we’ll come in our own time and we’ll speak to him.” Then he grabs the Lawgiver’s staff and hands it to Spock, who starts poking around with it.

“You Cannot,” the Lawgiver says. “It Is Landru.”

At this point Hacom evidently loses his nerve and rushes out of the room, whimpering, “Landru!” Meanwhile, Spock observes that the Lawgiver’s staff is just an empty tube without any kind of mechanism inside it.

The Lawgivers have to stop and buffer once again, only this time they’re making a strange noise. “They’re communing,” Reger says. “We have time, come with me.” He can take them to a place where they’ll be safe, he says, but they have to hurry before Landru comes.

So he leads them outside, where he starts walking casually down the street, smiling and nodding and doing the ‘peace’ gesture at people as they pass. Kirk puts rather less effort into being surreptitious and keeps loudly talking to Spock while they make their way across town, asking him what he makes of all this weirdness. Unsurprisingly, Spock finds it all “totally illogical.” Yesterday, for no apparent reason, the entire town broke out into total havoc. “Yet today, now--” “--Now, they’re back to normal,” Kirk finishes. I mean, if you want to call that normal. Arguably the way they’re acting now is less normal than the rioting and screaming.

As they walk, Bowler Hat Man approaches them with a cheerful “Morning, friends.” Reger greets him back casually, but Lindstrom recognizes him and rushes up to Reger, saying, “Your daughter—that’s the man!” The man who...well, we didn’t see what happened, exactly, but we did see Bilar grab Tula while the whole town was breaking out in a wild frenzy, and the next time we saw Tula she was sobbing frantically, so...draw your own conclusions.

But Reger seems neither surprised nor upset by the accusation. “No, it wasn’t Bilar, it was Landru,” he says impatiently, before telling them all they need to hurry. Which is easier said than done—moseying and hurrying at the same time is a difficult proposition.

Despite their best efforts, the group hasn’t gotten much farther before Reger stops and says, “It’s too late—look!” For a moment it doesn’t look as if anything much has happened, but then the party realizes that everyone on the street has stopped dead in their tracks. It’s Landru, Reger says—he’s summoning the Body. Or, as Spock helpfully chimes in, “Telepathy, Captain.”

A moment later, the townspeople all start reaching down and picking up bits of the debris that’s littering the area. Specifically, the bits that are rather heavy and blunt, like bricks and bits of masonry and big sticks. Oh dear. “Phasers on stun,” Kirk says. Yeah, no kidding.

Abandoning the pretense of normality, Reger leads the group off at a jog down the street as the dead-eyed townspeople advance on them. It’s admittedly a bit creepy. There might not have been enough extras to sell the idea of an entire town in full riot, but there are enough to make a decent-sized mob. It’s just a shame they advance so very slowly. And that, when the party turns into an alley and sees more people coming up it from the other end, they just kind of stop and hang out there for a moment to let themselves get cornered, even though the rest of the mob isn’t nearly close enough behind them that they couldn’t just turn around and keep going in another direction.

[ID: The landing party and Reger huddled in a group at the mouth of an alley while a mob slowly approaches from several yards away.]

had a D&D game once that ended up remarkably like this

Kirk says he doesn’t want to hurt them, and tells Reger to warn them back, but Reger says “They’re in the Body, it’s Landru!” In other words, they’re possessed, and not about to listen to Reger or anyone. So the group has to fire on the townspeople approaching up the alleyway. Evidently Landru’s powers over people don’t extend to making them phaser-proof, because everyone hit by the beams drops where they stand, only for them to be immediately replaced by more townspeople in their wake. The whole ‘unstoppable zombie horde’ vibe is, again, unfortunately a bit diminished by a sheer lack of numbers—given the population of this town as we’ve seen it so far, and how slowly they move, the party could probably just easily stand there and keep firing until the whole town is unconscious. It’d probably take about five minutes, tops.

Also, one of the supposedly stunned townspeople rather noticeably catches himself on the way down.

[ID: A gif showing several townspeople at the end of an alley, all holding aloft various sticks and bits of debris, as a stun beam hits them, causing them to fall to the ground. A man in front catches himself with one hand and lowers himself the rest of the way.]

Despite my tactical advice, the crew decides to make a run for it down the alley after clearing away some of the mob, but as they’re on the move McCoy stops suddenly and kneels by one of the fallen men. It’s O’Neil. Evidently running didn’t turn out any better for him than standing still did for Sulu. Kirk tells Reger that this is one of their men, but Reger says that he isn’t, not anymore. “He’s one of them!” he cries. “Landru will find us through him! Leave him there, he’s our enemy, he’s been absorbed!”

Yeah, three guesses as to whether Kirk is about to leave one of his crewmembers laying unconscious and brainwashed in the path of a relentless mob, and the first two don’t count. One of the ‘shirts does point out, though, that now that they’ve found O’Neil they could go ahead and beam the heck outta this whole mess. Kirk says no, because they still haven’t found their answers about what happened to the Archons. I mean, sure, but...is that really more of a priority right now than escaping the mob that’s out for your blood, and getting to a safe space where you could regroup, tend to your unconscious party member, and question Reger without having to worry about some hooded jerks with big sticks bursting in on you at any time?  Apparently it is, because a couple of people haul O’Neil off the ground and they all hurry off.

Exactly where Reger’s hiding place is we don’t get to find out, but evidently they get there alright, because the next thing we see is him pushing open a heavy stone door that leads into a distinctly dungeon-ish looking room. Everyone hurries inside, and Reger pushes aside an old bedframe to get to an alcove where someone’s left a big plastic square wrapped in heavy cloth. At least, it looks like a big plastic square, but Kirk identifies it as a lighting panel and it does, indeed, light up. “Amazing in this culture,” Spock comments. Yeah, it is a bit anachronistic next to the brazier over there.

Reger hangs it up on the wall to illuminate the room and says that it “comes from a time before Landru.” Asked just how long ago that was, he says that no one knows for sure, but some say it was as long as six thousand years ago. Six thousand years and it still works? Man, and I thought the Centennial Light was impressive.

Kirk has the two still-nameless ‘shirts go stand guard at the door while he and Spock muse over how weird it is that the lighting panel clearly came from a much more technologically advanced culture than the one currently occupying the place. Meanwhile, McCoy has had O’Neil brought over to what remains of the bed and is busy examining him. He gives Kirk an ‘in a minute’ gesture, so Kirk goes back to pacing and speculating, wondering if the Lawgiver’s rods might be some kind of antennae or broadcasting devices for transmitting the power of Landru in all its sparkly glory. Meanwhile, Spock is looking at his tricorder, which is apparently picking up “strong power generations...near here, but radiating in all directions.”

McCoy interjects to say that O’Neil will be coming around soon. “He must not!” Reger protests frantically. “He’s been absorbed!” This is followed by a dramatic chord and Kirk turning to Reger and going “Absorbed??” as if Reger didn’t already say the exact same thing twice back in the alley. I suppose he was a bit distracted at the time, but still.

“The Body absorbs its enemies,” Reger explains. “It only kills when it has to. When the first Archons came they were free, out of control, opposing the will of Landru. Many were killed, many more were absorbed. When he regains consciousness, Landru will find us through him. And if the others come--”

What others? Kirk asks. Reger explains that he means other people like him, who oppose Landru. They’re organized in threes—Reger was part of a cell consisting of him, Tamar, and one other person whom he doesn’t actually know, because Tamar was his contact. Evidently they’re doing the standard Resistance thing of limiting what individual members know in case they get captured, which is even more important when your adversary can control minds.

McCoy interrupts to say yeah that’s all great, but he needs a decision here, because O’Neil is coming out of it. Reger protests once again that O’Neil can’t be allowed to wake up, and Kirk mulls it over for a moment before telling McCoy, “Give him a shot. Keep him asleep.” Man, McCoy’s handing out sleepy shots left and right this episode. He must have a stash hidden in that waistcoat somewhere.

While McCoy does that, Kirk draws Reger over to a nearby table and says that he wants some answers. For one thing, if Landru’s so powerful, how is there a resistance movement at all?  Reger doesn’t know how it happened, only that some people have escaped “the directives.” “It was that way when the first Archons came,” he adds.

Reger’s obviously not entirely clear on what was up with the Archons, understandably given that it was a hundred years ago and detailed history is probably hard to keep track of around here if you’re not part of the hivemind, but he says that “Landru pulled them down from the skies” and that they invaded the Body but at least in part resisted Landru’s will. Kirk gets interested in that first bit, interpreting it as Landru bringing down a starship. Spock confirms that the power readings he’s getting are over nine thousand powerful enough to destroy a starship. Kirk sure doesn’t like the sound of that, so he calls up the Enterprise to check up on how un-destroyed it is. The answer’s not real great: Scotty picks up and reports that the ship is under attack by “heat beams of some kind coming up from the planet’s surface.”

The shields are holding so far, but keeping them up is taking all of the ship’s power, so much so that if they can’t even move without being burned up. Oh, and the orbit is failing, because of course it is, you can’t keep an orbit going round here for anything. Although presumably they are still in an orbit right now, which begs the question of where these heat beams are coming from that they can stay locked onto the ship no matter which side of the planet it’s facing. I guess Landru really is everywhere. Anyway, if they can’t shake the heat beams long enough to use the engines, Scotty reports grimly, they’ve only got about twelve hours left before the orbit decays and they hit the atmosphere. Cool. Were you gonna like, call up and let the landing party know about this at some point, or…?

Kirk basically tells him to hang in there, since there’s not exactly much more that they can do, while the landing party works on taking out those heat beams at the source. Scotty starts to talk about how he tried the emergency bypass circuits, but they weren’t effective—they never are, I don’t know why he even bothers—but then he starts breaking up. Spock reports that he’s picking up some very strong sensor beams—something’s probing them, and it’s too strong for him to block it.

Just then, there’s a strange whirring noise, preceding the arrival of a holographic image (or, possibly, ghost) appearing against the wall. Specifically, it’s an image of a dude wearing a purple and pink-cape-toga-thing and looking incredibly smug for someone with no apparent arms.

[ID: A semi-transparent image being projected onto a stone wall, which shows a middle-aged white man with thick light brown hair, wearing a long purple robe over a black high-necked shirt, with a shiny pinkish-orange cape on top.]

“I am Landru,” the image announces.

Spock is unimpressed. “Projection, captain,” he announces. “Unreal.”

“But beautiful, Mr. Spock, with no apparatus at this end,” Kirk muses. I dunno, man, the pink cape thing is certainly a bold choice but I think ‘beautiful’ is a bit of a stretch.

“You have come as destroyers,” the projection of Landru continues, heedless of the commentary from the audience. “You bring an infection.” Kirk insists that Landru release the Enterprise, but Landru carries blithely on. “You have come to a world without hate, without fear, without conflict. No war, no disease, no crime. None of the ancient evils. Landru seeks tranquility. Peace for all. The universal good.” Yeah, it looked real peaceful and conflict-free last night.

Kirk tries to tell Landru that they mean no harm, and that theirs “is a mission of peace and goodwill.” (That’s why we brought phasers!) Landru just keeps talking about good transcending evil, etc, etc, until Spock points out that “He doesn’t hear you, Captain.” Honestly not sure if he means that Landru literally has no way to hear them or if he can hear them but just keeps right on monologuing anyway cause, y’know, we’ve all met That Dude.

“Maybe he’ll hear this!” Lindstrom says, charging forward with his phaser out. Oh yeah, great job there Lindy, let’s SHOOT the HOLOGRAM. Kirk tells Lindstrom to cut that shit out so he can get back to talking to Landru which, admittedly, is really doing just about as much good as shooting the wall would.

“You will be absorbed,” Landru says. “Your individuality will merge into the unity of good, and in your submergence into the common being of the Body, you will find contentment and fulfillment. You will experience...the absolute good.” See, I told you it wouldn’t mean anything good.

At this point, a high-pitched whirring noise that’s been steadily but mostly unnoticeably rising through the background music suddenly peaks, causing everyone to start clutching at their heads in pain. The two ‘shirts guarding the door are the first to drop to their knees, with the rest of the party succumbing quickly afterward.

What follows is a wonderful opportunity to observe several different styles of Slowly Passing Out. Nimoy looks like he’s going to go one way but then changes his mind and falls backward onto the table instead until he’s laying on his back looking up. Christopher Held (Lindstrom) takes the bold move of just falling straight to the ground in a dead drop, while Kelley, no fool he, is back there doing a complex maneuver involving hanging onto the bedpost to slow his own descent. Shatner, of course, goes for the most extra route possible, pitching forward onto the table while clutching his head and then slowly falling down into the chair. I give full marks to everyone except Harry Townes (Reger) who was already sitting down and didn’t have very far to go in the first place.

[ID: A gif showing Kirk, Lindstrom, Spock, McCoy, and Reger clutching their heads and slowly collapsing on and around a nearby table.]

After the break, Kirk gives a captain’s log, which is quite impressive considering he’s currently unconscious.

“The Enterprise, still under attack by some sort of heat rays from the surface of Beta 3, is now being commanded by engineering officer Scott. The shore party has been taken by the creature called Landru.”

We briefly see the Enterprise in orbit around the planet (heat rays not pictured), before cutting to the landing party, now relocated to an even more dungeon-like room than the one they were in before. Kirk wakes up, staggers out of the alcove he was laying in, and goes to investigate the other end of the room, where Lindstrom and one of the unnamed ‘shirts are passed out in another alcove. Some further investigation reveals that Kirk is no longer carrying either phaser or communicator, and that the only apparent exit to the place is less of a door and more just a giant slab of stone in a doorway, which Kirk predictably has absolutely no luck moving. Eventually he gives up and goes back to wake up Spock, Lindstrom, and the other ‘shirt, who he addresses as Leslie.

We’ve seen Leslie quite a few times already—actor Eddie Paskey was a recurring extra who frequently filled the role of oddjob Enterprise crewmembers whenever one was needed. Like in the case of Kyle and the other TOS background regulars, it’s difficult to tell how many of Paskey’s appearances should actually be taken to be the same person, since not only does he go through a couple different names before ‘Leslie’ finally gets used, but for all of his characters to be Leslie would require him to go through jobs at a rate unlikely even for Enterprise crewmembers. Still, he gets referred to as Leslie more often than he gets called anything else, so he’s probably Leslie at least most of the time.

Spock, noticing that they’re a couple of heads short all of a sudden, asks where McCoy is. Kirk tells him he doesn’t know, since McCoy was gone before Kirk even woke up, along with O’Neil and “the other guard.” Oh yeah, “the other guard.” Great job remembering your crew’s names there, captain. Actually, said guard is probably named Galloway or possibly Galoway, yet another one of those amorphous extras; Galloway, however, is pretty consistently a security officer (aside from a brief stint as transporter operator) and while he won’t be referred to by name until his next appearance, he’s not called any other names until then, so in this case it’s fairly reasonable to assume that all or least most appearances of actor David L. Ross can be taken to be the same character. Not that it makes any real difference, since he has no personality whatsoever.

Anyway, Spock thinks McCoy and Galloway must have been here but were removed at some point. Kirk wonders where “here” is. “Evidently a maximum security establishment,” Spock replies. That may or may not have been sarcasm. Honestly it’s hard to tell with Spock sometimes.

Kirk also informs Spock that “all our phasers are gone, I checked” even though we’ve been watching him this whole time and he definitely didn’t check anyone but himself, but never mind that. Lindstrom and Leslie finally make it up, looking rather the worse for wear, with Lindstrom mentioning having a killer headache (Leslie probably has one too, but we’d have to pay him more if he said anything). Spock says that this is because they were all subjected to a hypersonic attack, which probably would have killed them had it been any stronger. Instead it just knocked them out, and possibly gave them tinnitus.

Enough about sound waves, Kirk wants to focus on coming up with a way out of this dungeon. He hopefully mentions the way the Lawgivers seemed unable to react to anything unexpected, but Spock shoots that one down, saying they shouldn’t count on it happening again because “in a society as well-organized as this one appears to be, I cannot conceive of such an oversight going uncorrected.” That said, he still finds that behavior to be very interesting, because the way the Lawgivers reacted was a lot like the way a computer would react to being given insufficient or contradictory data. He doesn’t think this means the Lawgivers themselves are computers—but it’s definitely an interesting data point.

At that moment, the door opens and a Lawgiver escorts McCoy and Galloway inside. Kirk rushes over to them, only to see McCoy smile blandly at him and say, “Hello, friend. We were told to wait here.” Oh dear.

Now real concerned, Kirk starts to say “Doc--” but McCoy just turns to him and says, “Can I help you, friend?”

“Don’t you know me?” Kirk asks desperately.

“We all know one another through Landru,” McCoy replies.

Just like Sulu, Spock observes grimly. But Kirk’s having a hard time holding onto his objectivity. It’s one thing to hear Reger talk about Landru doing this to people, even to see it happen to members of his own crew—but this is McCoy. His friend. Kirk grabs him by the shoulders and yells at him to remember—but McCoy just looks confused and asks if Kirk is from “away” because he speaks very strangely. Then even that brief moment of emotion fades away and he returns to smiling. “Ask Landru,” he says. “He remembers. He knows, and he watches.”

Kirk eventually has to give up and leave McCoy sitting in the alcove with the guard. He turns to Spock, but before they can even begin to confer on this problem, the door opens again to admit a couple of Lawgivers. One of them points their rod threateningly at Kirk and orders him to come with them. Kirk tries his previous trick of just refusing, but as Spock predicted, that bug has evidently been patched, because this time the Lawgiver calmly replies, “Then You Will Die.”

It seems there’s not much choice but for Kirk to get going, so with one final order for Spock to see if he can do anything about McCoy’s whole situation, he follows the Lawgiver out the door. Spock watches him go before turning to McCoy and asking what’s going to happen to Kirk. “He goes to joy, peace and tranquility,” McCoy says happily. “He goes to meet Landru. Happiness is to all of us blessed by Landru.” Spock gives this statement the side-eye it deserves.

We then see Kirk in another room, standing up against a wall with some heavy-duty wrist restraints in place.

[ID: Kirk standing up against a wall, being restrained by two large bars holding his wrists in place, while two Lawgivers stand in front of him, pointing their rods at him.]

This is only happiness to a very specific subset of people.

But before Kirk can meet his grim fate, the Lawgivers are interrupted by someone else coming in. This is not another Lawgiver, however, but a bald man in bright orange robes, who speaks—well, I can’t exactly say he speaks normally because no one around here does, but he at least doesn’t sound like he’s speaking through a knock-off toy Darth Vader helmet. “I am Marplon,” he tells the Lawgivers. “It is your hour. Happy communing.”

“With Thanks. Hap-py Comm-uning,” one Lawgiver replies, and they both head off to take a smoke break or whatever the Lawgiver equivalent is. Marplon steps into the nearby control booth and flicks some switches, causing the booth to slowly rotate around to face Kirk (presumably with the aid of an extra and a pulley somewhere behind the camera) while a dramatic sting plays.

Meanwhile, back in the dungeon, Spock is poking around at McCoy. Evidently someone leaning over you and almost poking you in the eye as they put their hands all over your face isn’t considered bothersome behavior under the directives of Landru, since McCoy seems perfectly fine with it and just sits there calmly while Spock does whatever it is he’s doing. Eventually, Spock grimly pulls his hands away and says, “Impossible. He’s under extremely powerful control.”

You kind of have to wonder what Spock saw in there. The nature of Landru’s control is a bit vague on the details—do members of the Body possess any degree of personality and individuality, smothered though it may be under a stupor of happy-happy-peace-and-tranquility thoughts? Or are they all being outright puppeteered by Landru? They at least seem to have enough personality to have names, and the fact that they stop and have discussions with each other seems to indicate that they aren’t a total hivemind—Tula has to be informed out loud by Bilar that the landing party are strangers in town, rather than her just knowing it automatically as soon as he knew it. But McCoy doesn’t show any sign of retaining any amount of McCoy-ness after he gets taken. He doesn’t remember Kirk and Spock at all, he doesn’t use any of his usual mannerisms, he doesn’t—as we’ll see in a bit—respond to perceived threats the way McCoy usually does, and in general he doesn’t act like McCoy-but-unnaturally-happy-and-calm so much as he acts like a completely different person. So when Spock says he’s under “powerful control” it’s hard to say whether he means that he saw McCoy being forced to feel peaceful and loyal to Landru, or if he saw McCoy in there, somewhere, possibly even aware, but no longer able to control his own actions. Either way, it’s a pretty damn creepy thought.

Unsatisfied with Spock’s analysis, Lindstrom asks if they’re, what, just going to stand around here and do nothing? Spock replies that there’s not a lot they can do, unless Lindstrom has any bright ideas about how to get through a solid stone door. Lindstrom clearly does not, because instead he just splutters about how “This is simply ridiculous, a bunch of stone age characters running around in robes--!” as if he’s got half a mind to just march out there and tell everyone to stop all this nonsense and behave, at which point presumably the Lawgivers will drop their rods and shuffle away in embarrassment. I can only conclude that Mr. Lindstrom has not been serving aboard the Enterprise very long, otherwise he would know that this is hardly any more ridiculous than the usual kind of thing they get up to. You notice Leslie over there isn’t saying anything. Leslie’s seen some shit.

Spock coolly points out that these “stone age characters” are in command of some powers that the Enterprise crew have so far been helpless to understand or resist. “Not simple. Not ridiculous,” he says. “Very, very dangerous.”

On the one hand, this could easily just be your standard sarcastic Spock response of the sort commonly seen whenever someone decides to start running their mouth off in his vicinity, but you have to wonder if he’s not also feeling particularly ticked off at Lindstrom scorning this whole situation, considering that Spock just got done with a close examination of exactly how powerful a grip Landru currently has on the mind of one of Spock’s two close friends. And his other close friend has just been taken off to have the same thing done to him, with Spock powerless to stop it. I mean, let’s put that in non-science fiction terms: imagine you woke up to find you’d been taken captive, and some of the people you were with, including a friend of yours, aren’t there. And then your captors show up and throw them back in your cell, and when you examine your friend you realize that, while you have no idea what happened to him while he was gone, he came back so badly concussed he doesn’t know who you are or where he is, and can’t even answer a simple question. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Your other friend has just been dragged off for the same treatment, and there was nothing you could do about that, either. And as you stand there, desperately wracking your brain for any way out of this, trying not to think about the state your other friend will be in when he comes back, this punk starts whining about how ridiculous the situation is, as if he’s more upset about being bested by what he views as an inferior opponent than by the damage those opponents have already caused, and the very real threat those of you remaining are still facing. Granted, I don’t think that’s what Lindstrom actually meant; he was probably just expressing understandable if poorly-worded frustration at being helpless to do anything in a situation where it feels like you really should be able to do something. But it’s not real surprising that Spock would feel rather cheesed at him about it. Y’know, if Vulcans felt cheesed, which of course they don’t.

At that point, the door opens and two more Lawgivers come in. One of them points their rod at Spock and orders him to come with them. Spock more or less shrugs and follows them out the door, leaving Lindstrom and Leslie alone to ruminate about how screwed they are.

The Lawgivers take Spock to the brainwashing room, where Marplon is releasing Kirk from the restraints. Kirk walks over to Spock with a vacant smile and tells him, “Joy to you, friend. Peace and contentment will fill you. You will know the peace of Landru.” Spock doesn’t say anything, but his expression indicates that he’s gearing up to end somebody over this.

[ID: Spock, being escorted by two Lawmakers, watching as Kirk tells him, “You will know the peace of Landru.” Spock has a particularly murderous expression on his face.]

Spock is gonna KILL GOD.

After the break, things look grim, with Spock—looking highly unimpressed--restrained against the wall while Marplon makes the lights flash and the Lawgivers point their rods at Spock for good measure. But when the Lawgivers have left, Marplon looks up and says, “Have no fear, friend. The effect is harmless.” He introduces himself and explains that he was unfortunately too late to save McCoy and the other guard, so watch out for them. But, as it turns out, he wasn’t too late to save Kirk, who was just faking for the Lawgivers.

Marplon goes on to explain that he is actually the third man in Reger’s triad (wow, small world), and that they’ve been “awaiting your return.” Spock tells him that they are not the Archons, although, really, who or what exactly these people think the Archons are is still pretty hazy. And indeed, Marplon himself doesn’t seem real fussed about the distinction, saying that, “Whatever you may call yourselves, you are in fulfillment of prophecy. We ask your help.” The poor guy is practically trembling with a mixture of enthusiasm and desperation.

Spock asks where Reger is and Marplon says that he’ll join them, adding that Reger is immune to absorption. Exactly why this should be is never explained, and neither is the question of what exactly happened to Reger after the group got captured. One would assume that being in the presence of said group would rather give the game away, but maybe Marplon was able to cover for him somehow.

But never mind Reger—what Spock really wants to know more about is Landru. But upon being asked about him, Marplon gets even more panicky and says they can’t discuss that just now because Landru will hear. Although if Landru could hear them in here, they’d already be screwed, given everything Marplon has just admitted out-loud. My best guess would be that Landru isn’t quite as omniscient as all that and the resistance members are just (understandably) a bit paranoid and superstitious, although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that, true to form for vengeful deity-types, saying Landru’s name attracts his attention.

Marplon hands Spock a couple of the confiscated phasers, which Spock stows away just before the Lawgivers come back in. Marplon just has time to warn Spock to behave just as he saw Kirk doing before slipping back into his own charade to tell the Lawgivers that “It is done!” Spock obligingly spouts the standard peace and contentment and so on, although I can’t say he puts a great deal of effort into it. The Lawgivers seem to be satisfied, though, because they take him back to the cell without fuss.

Back in the cell, Spock meets up with Kirk. They exchange a bit of “peace and tranquility” talk very loudly to satisfy McCoy and the other guard, before Kirk drops it and mutters, “Are you alright?” “Quite alright,” Spock replies. “But be careful of Dr. McCoy.” Indeed, as soon as he says this, McCoy rises up in the background ominously.

[ID: A gif of Kirk, Spock and Lindstrom standing in a half-circle near an archway. Spock says, “Be careful of Doctor McCoy.” As Kirk replies, “I understand,” McCoy stands up in the background.]

“I FUCKIN HEARD THAT”

Kirk tries to question Spock, who says he has a theory about Landru, but he’s cautious about sharing it with McCoy hovering in the background glaring at them like that. “You speak in strange whispers,” McCoy says as they turn to look at him. “This is not the way of Landru.”

Of everyone we’ve seen being or pretending to be Landru-possessed in the episode so far, the acting choices have mostly fallen on a spectrum ranging from Takei’s “incredibly high” to Nimoy’s “barely even bothering.” (Shatner falls somewhere in the middle, around “comfortably buzzed.”) Kelley, on the other hand, opted for a direction I can only describe as “intensely Southern passive-aggressiveness.” Perhaps it’s the increased Georgia drawl, but Possessed!McCoy feels eerily familiar, like someone I’ve definitely encountered at the Dollar General before. It’s the exact kind of sinister watchfulness not quite masked by a cheerful, friendly exterior that you would expect to find in that lady at church who would never say the world ‘hell’ but gets a little too excited during the bits of sermon about damnation and is currently engaged in complex political machinations to backstab Becky from next door because she lets her kids play too loudly and sold more brownies at the last bake sale (or just in the average head of a homeowner’s association.) I half expect him to start handing out Chick Tracts at any moment.

Before that can happen, Kirk is able to pacify him with more peace and tranquility, then dramatically claps his hands on Spock and Lindstrom’s shoulders and declares “MY FRIENDS” as he ushers them away to a slightly more private corner of the cell. There Spock is able to go into his theory, such as it is. “This is a soulless society, Captain,” he explains, and given that Vulcans have quantified the existence of the soul he probably knows what he’s talking about. “It has no spirit, no spark. All is indeed peace and tranquility—the peace of the factory, the tranquility of the machine. All parts working in unison.”

“And when something unexplained happens...their routine is disrupted?” Kirk muses. Spock agrees, and says that someone must be giving the orders—but who? Landru, presumably, but Spock says there is no Landru...not in the human sense.

“You’re thinking the same thing I am, Mr. Spock,” Kirk says. “The plug must be pulled.” But if Spock is thinking that, it’s not without some reservations. Because, you know, that whole prime directive thing. They’re really not supposed to go around deposing/assassinating political leaders, even really obnoxious ones. But, Kirk says, after all about two seconds of reflection, that directive is meant for living, growing cultures, which this one ain’t. This would be a fascinating ethical point if it wasn’t so obviously a quick justification to let them get on with saving the day without all that pesky worldbuilding getting in the way.

Conveniently, before Spock can say anything in response to this, the door opens again, but this time instead of more Lawgivers it’s Marplon and Reger. McCoy immediately stands up and says, “JOY TO YOU FRIENDS!” like that guy at Wal-Mart that you were really hoping to avoid having a conversation with but you didn’t sneak out of the cereal aisle quickly enough and now he’s seen you. Marplon and Reger keep up the smiling act until they make it over to the Non-Brainwashed Club at the back of the room. Marplon’s brought them their communicators, which is helpful, but Kirk has something more in mind. What they really need, he tells them, is more information about Landru. Marplon and Reger shake their heads frantically, mumbling about “the prophecy” but Kirk isn’t interested in prophecies. “If you want to be liberated from Landru,” he tells the two men, “we’ll need your help.”

It seems he said that just a bit too loudly, though, because McCoy springs up from his seat, points dramatically, and yells, “You’re not of the Body!” Kirk tries to calm him down, but McCoy isn’t having any more peace and tranquility. He screams for the Lawgivers before rushing Kirk and trying to throttle him, screaming “TRAITORS! TRAITORS!” all the while. (See what I meant about him not responding to threats normally? McCoy wouldn’t bother to try to strangle someone if he could whack ‘em with a hypospray instead.)

The other guard joins in, taking a swing at Kirk, but Spock intercepts and tosses him to the floor. He’s a lot less helpful with McCoy, mostly just kind of standing there watching as McCoy manages to back Kirk up against a wall, still screaming. “Doc, I don’t wanna hurt you,” Kirk begs, but of course, this does nothing. In the end, Kirk has to punch McCoy and then put him in a chokehold until he drops. Kirk slowly lowers him to the floor, sadly muttering, “Aw, doc...”

Just then there’s a noise of someone approaching, and Kirk and Spock quickly duck into cover in the corners. A pair of Lawgivers enter and walk right past them, demonstrating why it’s not a super great idea to dress your law enforcement in big peripheral-vision-obscuring hoods, not to mention why most jail cells aren’t designed to have lots of great hiding spots. The Lawgivers promptly get ambushed; Kirk deploys the good old fashioned Neck Chop, while Spock, surprisingly, forgoes the usual nerve pinch in favor of just straight up decking the guy. One suspects Spock is feeling a bit crabby at the moment.

[ID: Kirk and Spock fighting Lawmakers between two arches in their dungeon cell. Kirk is standing over an unconscious Lawmaker, who is laying next to an unconscious McCoy, while Spock is leaning back to punch the Lawmaker he is squaring off against.]

DIRECT ACTION

With phase one of the classic “mug the guards and steal their uniforms” maneuver successfully completed, Kirk moves right on to phase two, stripping the robe off one of the fallen Lawgivers and putting it on over his waistcoat. While he’s doing that, he asks Marplon and Reger where Landru is. The two of them stutter fearfully a bit, but Marplon manages to explain that they never see Landru, only hear him, in a place called the Hall of Audiences--conveniently located in this very building! “You’re gonna take us there,” Kirk says, leaving the poor bastards looking like they’re about to cry. When one of them makes a noise Kirk grabs them by the shoulders and yells at them to snap out of it and start acting like men. The empathy on display here is staggering.

Spock, meanwhile, has gotten in touch with the Enterprise and asks them for a status report. Scotty’s apparently been trying to get in contact with them for quite a while now, not that he has anything particularly new to tell them: their orbit is still decaying, the heat beams are still locked onto the ship, and they’ve now got about six hours left. “You’ve got to cut them off or we’ll cook, one way or another,” he says grimly.

Kirk tells him once again to stand by and then asks after Sulu. “He’s peaceful enough, but he worries me,” Scotty replies. Kirk orders him to put a guard on Sulu, which stuns Scotty, but Kirk doesn’t offer any useful information about the situation. All he says is, “Watch him. That’s an order,” and then he hangs up.

Kirk then turns back to Marplon and Reger and says, for the umpteenth time this episode, asks them to tell him about Landru. Which at this point is starting to sound like a repeating dialogue option.

[ID: 1. A shot of Kirk with a video game-style dialogue selection in the bottom left corner, with the option ‘Ask about Landru’ highlighted and the options ‘Ask about Archons’ ‘Ask about Lawgivers’ and ‘Remain Silent’ listed below it. 2. The same shot of Kirk, now saying, “About Landru.”]

“Well...there was war...convulsions...the world was destroying itself,” Reger says. “Landru was our leader. He saw the truth. He changed the world. He took us back, back to a simpler time. A time of peace and tranquility.” Oh fuck, he was one of those dudes. Of course he was. “Everything will be alright if we go back to the old ways, when things were good and simple and peaceful because everyone was busy dying of polio.”

Asked what happened to Landru, Marplon says that he’s still alive. “He is here now. He sees, he hears.” Then he begins to break down, crying, “We have destroyed ourselves! Please, no more.”

“You said you wanted freedom,” Kirk tells him sternly. “It’s time you learned that freedom is never a gift. It has to be earned.”

Yes, yes, very pithy, but I can’t really say I’m here for listening to Kirk tell people who have lived their whole lives under a horrifying totalitarian regime that they need to Man Up. I mean, regular human totalitarian regimes fuck people up enough, let alone one where everyone is literally being mind-controlled. Can you imagine what life is like for these guys? We know that Landru will try to kill anyone that can’t be controlled, so for Marplon and Reger to still be alive means pretending, every day that they were free of Landru’s control—which, depending on whether they somehow broke free or were born immune, could be their entire lives—pretending to be controlled, pretending to be just as happy and tranquil as everyone else, never able to let slip the slightest trace of fear or anger or grief at everything you saw happening around you, lest any of the constantly watching eyes all around you catch on and you either get executed by the Lawmakers or, if you’re not so lucky, slaughtered by the angry mob that just detected a traitor, traitor in its midst. And they were still trying to resist, still working against Landru despite him being, near as they could tell, all but omnipotent. And Kirk’s gonna stand here and lecture them about courage? Sure, they’re afraid—who could blame them? Sometimes people are afraid. Sometimes people need help.

And, well, Kirk’s not helping. Oh, in a broad sense, sure, he’ll save the day and defeat the bad guy for them (spoilers). But as far as Marplon and Reger specifically are concerned, Kirk has really not bothered to help them. He hasn’t made even a pretense of answering any of their questions. He hasn’t explained anything about who the Enterprise crew are, why they’re there, what their theories are about Landru or what they’re planning to do to defeat him. He hasn’t reassured them or made any effort to quell their fears, even though from the perspective of Reger at least, the landing party arriving has directly led to a lot of those fears coming true—since they got here, they’ve drawn suspicion to him that led to his friend being killed and him being pursued and captured, probably to be executed if Marplon hadn’t happened to be around. Kirk hasn’t shown hardly any sympathy for their situation, not directly—oh, he’s muttered to Spock about what a shitshow this whole society is, but he’s not once given Marplon and Reger themselves so much as a “wow, that sucks.” Mostly his interactions with them have ranged from “a bit condescending” to “barely even trying to pretend to be patient.”

And I know I’ve just spent the last two paragraphs ranting at Kirk, but Kirk isn’t really the focus of the problem here. This kind of writing doesn’t feel right for him. Does Kirk sometimes dismiss smaller, individual problems because he’s more focused on the bigger picture? Does he sometimes push people around him a little harder than they can handle because he’s busy pushing himself too hard at the same time? Sure. Those are understandable, human character flaws that are natural extensions of the character strengths that make him a good captain in the first place. But the attitude of this whole episode feels like it has very little to do with Kirk as a character, flawed or otherwise, and much more to do with an obnoxious combination of the lofty moralizing that Star Trek sometimes dips into mixed with an especially 60s-flavored American outlook on Freedom, subsection: The Costs Of. Yeah, we know all about fighting for freedom! We know all about what it costs! We’re the big strong heroes who are gonna save you from Nazis and Communism cause someone’s gotta do it and that someone is us! TROOPS!

As for the lofty moralizing, well, the behavior of our protagonists in this episode feels rather like the other end of the Metron problem in Arena. Our heroes sweep into a Less Advanced society, decide they’re gonna fix everything for them, and proceed to do so without putting much effort into actually including the members of that society in their plans. Heck, how much time have Kirk and Spock spent in this episode chatting about the flaws and foibles of this culture right in front of Reger, Tamar and Marplon, because it’s not like they’re gonna understand us anyway, right? Of course, I’m not saying that they’re acting as bad as the Metrons—they still haven’t been that obnoxious. And of course there are extenuating circumstances; Kirk’s got crewmen down here and a ship up there in immediate danger, he’s short on time and him being frustrated with not getting the help he wants out of the locals is understandable enough. I mean, at the end of the day, whatever they do to Landru is unlikely to be worse for this culture than having the Enterprise crash into it, which is what will happen if they don’t do anything. But again, the writing of the whole thing doesn’t make it feel like our protagonists are actually being driven by desperation, danger and their own flaws; it feels like an attitude that exists on the same kind of spectrum as we saw with the Metrons: there are cultures that do things Right and cultures that do things Wrong. Some of them are more Right than humans so we should aspire to be like them someday, and some of them are more Wrong so we should help get them on the right track. The extraordinary speed with which Kirk brushes aside the question of whether they’re breaking the Prime Directive speaks to the fact that the episode isn’t interested in exploring that question in the first place. It just wants to get on with dropping cool one-liners and defeating the villain.

Kirk says they’re going to find Landru now, but Reger finally reaches his breaking point and starts yelling that he was wrong, he’ll submit to Landru, and tries to run screaming for the Lawgivers. He doesn’t get very far before Spock nerve-pinches him, while Kirk sternly says, “It’s too late for that.” Hmm, I wonder if this could possibly have been averted at all if we’d done anything to help calm him down instead of telling him to tough it out like a real man? Nah, I’m sure it was unavoidable. Kirk then turns to Marplon and says it’s up to him now to take them to Landru. Marplon looks like he’s regretting every single one of his life choices.

But evidently either persuasion or intimidation was effective, because the next thing we see is Marplon leading Kirk and Spock, both now all robed up, down a very orange corridor. He stops at the door at one end of the hall and tells them that this is the Hall of Audiences (fastpass available). Kirk, naturally, tells him to open it. “But this is Landru!” Marplon pleads. Unimpressed, Kirk tells him to get on with it and open the thing already because seriously, there’s only like ten minutes of episode left, we don’t have time for this.

So Marplon performs the Sacred Gesture of Door-Opening, which is to say he folds his fingers and bows, and the door opens. Kirk and Spock hustle in behind him and immediately discard their entire disguises, which may not have been the best idea, practically speaking, but it’s understandable enough; the Hall of Audiences doesn’t look real well-ventilated.

On a side-note, Kirk was definitely not wearing his coat when he put the robe on, but evidently it respawned in his inventory at some point because he is wearing it when he takes the robe off again.

[ID: A comparison between two images. On the left, Kirk putting a Lawgiver’s robe on over his shirt and waistcoat. On the right, Kirk dropping his robe to the floor in the Hall of Audiences, showing his coat on over his shirt and waistcoat.]

One small problem: the room is completely empty, with no sign of any Landrus anywhere. Kirk starts yelling for him, saying that they are the Archons (sure, why not) and they’ve come to have a chat. A moment later, Landru’s projection appears against the back wall. I’m not sure if they intended for his shirt to blend in with the wall so well that it looks like his head is floating, but that’s what they achieved.

[ID: Another projection of Landru, this one a headshot in which the color of his shirt matches the wall behind him so well it’s barely visible.]

a true figurehead

For a moment everyone just stands around staring at Landru, although Marplon is multitasking and also having a massive panic attack. Then Landru finally speaks up. “Despite my efforts to save you, you have invaded the Body, and are causing great harm,” he says. Kirk says they have no intention of causing harm, but Landru keeps right on going. “Obliteration is necessary,” he says. “The infection is strong. For the good of the Body...you must die. It is...a great sorrow.” Oh, well, if you feel bad about it, that’s okay then. Carry on.

Kirk says they don’t intend to die, either, but as you might have worked out by now, Landru’s not listening. “All who saw you, all who know of your presence here, must be excised,” he says. “The memory of the Body will be cleansed.”

Before Kirk can keep this one-sided conversation going any longer, Spock tells him it’s useless—this is only a projection. “Yes, Mr. Spock,” Kirk muses. “Let’s have a look at the projector.”

The two of them take their phasers out and shoot the wall Landru’s projecting onto, blasting a big hole in the masonry. For once, shooting the hologram actually turns out to be useful, as it reveals the real Landru: a giant computer. Kirk and Spock exchange some pretty smug looks. “Of course. It had to be,” Kirk says. For, as Spock points out, this whole society has all along been run to a computer’s concept of perfection—peace, harmony, all parts working in perfect unison, and absolutely no soul.

“I am Landru,” the computer trills at them. “You have intruded.”

“Pull out its plug, Mr. Spock,” Kirk says, soaring clear over not only any ethical dilemmas here but also over the question of whether “pull out its plug” is even a metaphor that would make sense in the 23rd century. But when they raise their phasers again, there’s a flash of light, and not like the kind there’s supposed to be when you fire a phaser. “Your devices have been neutralized,” the computer informs them. “So it shall be with you. I am Landru.”

Kirk, barely missing a beat over the devastating failure of his cool one-liner, says, “Landru died over six thousand years ago.” The computer insists that it is Landru. “All that he was, I am. His experience, his knowledge.”

“But not his wisdom,” Kirk says. “He may have programmed you, but he could not have given you a soul. You are a machine.”

Landru 2.0 says that this is irrelevant, they will be obliterated, and that the good of the Body is the prime directive. Okay, first of all, that’s copyright infringement. Second of all—what, exactly, is the good? The computer stutters over this, repeating, “I am Landru,” before finally managing to spit out, “The good...is the harmonious continuation...of the Body. The good is peace, tranquility. The good of the Body is the directive.”

“Then I put it to you that you have disobeyed the prime directive,” Kirk says. “You are harmful to the Body.”

“The Body is! It exists. It is healthy.”

“The Body is dying. YOU are destroying it.”

“Do you ask a question?!” Oh, bad move, that’s a sure sign you’re losing the argument. Kirk, sensing weakness, takes a moment to get into a proper computer-dissing stance before asking his next question: “What have you done to do justice to the full potential of every individual in the Body?”

[ID: A gif of Kirk standing in front of a large hole in the stone wall before him, one leg propped up on the bottom of said hole. When Landru 2.0 asks, “Do you ask a question?” Kirk puts one hand on his leg and the other on his hip, and pauses deliberately for a moment before responding.]

Landru 2.0 doesn’t know what to do with that, so Kirk just continues anyway. “Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity! Without creativity, there is no life. The Body dies. The fault...is YOURS.”

Spock chimes in at this point to ask, “Are you aiding the Body or are you destroying it?” Landru 2.0 says it’s not programmed to answer that question. At that point a couple of Lawmakers come running in, but they’re not looking nearly so intimidating anymore, yelling, “Landru, guide us!” in a panic. Kirk turns toward them and pulls out his phaser (presumably out of force of habit, since it doesn’t work anymore) but Spock says they needn’t bother anyway—the Lawmakers have no guidance, probably for the first time ever in their lives, and thus are not much of a threat at the moment. Also, they don’t even have their giant sticks, so what are they gonna do? Headbutt the intruders to death? So Kirk dismissed them and turns back to Landru 2.0, ordering it to answer the question.

“Peace, order, and tranquility are maintained,” Landru 2.0 says, having had a bit of time of think about it. “The Body lives, but I reserve creativity to me.”

“Then the Body dies,” Spock says. “Creativity is necessary for the health of the Body.”

“That...is...impossible!” Landru 2.0 cries desperately.

Marplon, who’s been standing in the back looking real worldview-shattered this whole time, finally speaks up to ask if this is truly Landru, like someone who just met their favorite celebrity and got real let down. “What’s left of him,” Spock says. “After he built and programmed this machine six thousand years ago.”

“You must create the good,” Kirk tells Landru 2.0. “That is the will of Landru, nothing else.”

“But there is evil!”

“Then the evil must be destroyed. That is the prime directive, and YOU are the evil!”

“I think! I live!”

“You are the evil! The evil must be destroyed! Fulfill the prime directive!”

At this point Landru 2.0 starts smoking, as computers are well-known to do when they think too hard. Kirk keeps yelling at it to “Fulfill the prime directive!” and Landru 2.0 eventually just starts yelling, “Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me!” until it explodes in a giant shower of sparks.

[ID: A gif showing Landru 2.0, a large boxy computer sitting behind a hole in a stone wall, sparking wildly and catching fire. The gif cuts briefly to Kirk watching, before cutting back to show Landru 2.0 smoking as the sparks die slowly.]

Yeah IT’s probably not gonna be able to help with that one.

Kirk and Spock step inside to take a look at the remains (probably not a good idea, the air quality in there cannot be good). Evidently satisfied that Landru 2.0 is well and truly busted, Kirk turns to Marplon and says, “Well, you’re on your own now. I hope you’re up to it. You can get rid of those robes, and if I were you I’d start looking for a new job.” Gee, thanks.

He then calls the Enterprise to see how they’re doing. Scotty reports that the heat rays are gone, and Sulu’s all back to normal. To demonstrate this, Sulu shrugs at the camera so exaggeratedly I half expected a laugh track to follow it, before clapping the current helmsman on the shoulder and hustling him out of his chair so Sulu can get back to work. SERIOUSLY? I’m well used to Trek blowing off the effects of things that really ought to be pretty traumatic, but even for TOS this is pretty extreme. I mean, even putting aside the whole matter of recovering so quickly and easily from incredibly powerful mind control stripping away your entire sense of self in subjugation to a mindless collective, how did he get up there so quickly? The Enterprise is a big ship! You can only get from Sickbay to the bridge so fast! Landru’s been out of commission for what, two minutes? Five minutes, generously? Hell, he didn’t even get to take the rest of his shift off? Man, they really keep your nose to the grindstone on this ship.

Kirk, evidently more satisfied with this than I am, tells Scotty to stand by to beam them up, then hangs up and says, “Let’s go see how the others are doing. Marplon can finish up here.” We don’t get to find out how the others are doing, or indeed what the heck “finish up” is supposed to mean in this context, because the scene cuts immediately back to the bridge sometime later, where Kirk is giving a captain’s log.

“The Enterprise is preparing to leave Beta 3 in starsystem C-111. Sociologist Lindstrom is remaining behind with a party of experts who will help restore the planet’s culture to a human form.”

“Marvelous,” Spock comments as Kirk finishes. “The late Landru—a marvelous feat of engineering. A computer capable of directing the lives of millions of human beings.” Pretty impressive indeed—heck, just building a computer that’s still running after six thousand years is quite incredible. Would have been nice to study it. Pity someone blew it up.

Kirk’s not feeling real sentimental about it, though. It was still only a machine, he says. “The original Landru programmed it with all his knowledge, but he couldn’t give it his wisdom, his compassion, his understanding...his soul, Mr. Spock.”

Yes, yes, so you’ve said a bazillion times already, although it’s quite a large assumption given they have no idea what the original Landru was actually like. I mean, we do know this was a guy whose response to a world in crisis was to take everybody back to “a simpler time” aka the imaginary dreamland of bitter conservatives everywhere, and that he was so convinced his method of running that society was the only correct answer that he built a computer to go on micro-managing that society in his name forever. Not to mention, y’know, the mind-controlling powers that he apparently built into it. It’s entirely possible that Landru 2.0 was not an error of programming but in fact was running exactly as intended.

“Predictably metaphysical,” Spock says, apparently forgetting that he made the exact some observation himself earlier. “I prefer the concrete, the graspable, the provable.”

“You would make a splendid computer, Mr. Spock,” Kirk says fondly. Spock, of course, looks immensely pleased and replies, “That is very kind of you, captain.”

Before these two dorks can get any further with their sweet-talk, Lindstrom calls up to say good-bye. Asked how it’s going down there, he says, “Couldn’t be better, captain. Already this morning, we’ve had half a dozen domestic quarrels and two genuine knock-down drag-outs. It may not be paradise, but it’s certainly human.” Huh. I guess that’s better than laying in the fetal position crying, which is what I would be doing in that situation. Still, good to see that this society is acting properly human now. This...non-human society.

Kirk wishes him good luck and leaves him to it. As they prepare to head out, Spock muses about, ““How often mankind has wished for a world as peaceful and secure as the one Landru provided.” “Yes, and we never got it,” Kirk says. “Just lucky, I guess.” Yes, yes, no such thing as a utopia, and all that. Personally I just fantasize about a world where I earn a living wage, but I suppose that would make for a rather more boring episode.

They exchange wry looks, and the episode ends. There’s no sign or word of any of the crewmembers who got Landru’d throughout this scene, so who knows how they’re dealing with all this. I’m assuming McCoy is off somewhere getting super drunk right about now.

The Return of the Archons is an episode that always feels to me as if someone started writing it with no idea of where it was going and just made it up as they went along, but without the bit where you go back at the end and edit everything to match. There are a lot of things that either seem odd in the context of what we learn later, or just get brought up and then never explained. The biggest offender is the Festival, which dominates the first act of the episode so much you figure it has to be important, but then it just gets dropped with no answer as to what purpose it serves, how often it happens, why older people are exempt, etc. (The James Blish novelization takes a crack at it by having Lindstrom postulate that having everyone wildly run amok for one night a year was a form of population control. Which...seems suspect to me, but hey, he tried.) But there are plenty of other questions as well, like, where’s the ‘valley’ that everyone talks about, and who, if anyone, lives there? Why are some people immune to being Landru’d? Why is there a whole special chamber that our heroes get dragged off to one by one to get absorbed, when the Lawmakers are capable of doing it just by tapping people with their rods? Why is Hacom so grumpy and un-tranquil despite apparently being a member of the Body, none of the rest of whom show that amount of individualism? Considering Landru 2.0’s range apparently extends far enough for Sulu to still be controlled while up in orbit, why didn’t it ever try to use Sulu against the Enterprise? Why does Sulu, even after being absorbed, yell at that guy in the transporter room about having the wrong clothes? How do the Lawgivers do that robo-voice thing? I’m used to having to fill in some gaps on my own to make TOS episodes make total sense, but even for TOS this one has an abnormal amount of unanswered questions, which makes it difficult for me to take it seriously as a story, even aside from my problems with the whole “FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM LIKE REAL MEN” thing. On the plus side: waistcoats!

Landru’s circuit-popping demise has brought our Bluescreen Monologues tally up by one. No crew deaths this time, everyone escaped the clutches of Landru more or less intact. Next time we’ll be seeing the origins of a particularly iconic foe in Space Seed.

[svtegg]

manager jeon (나의 아저씨 au)

a au heavily based on/inspired by the my ajusshi drama. its my absolute favorite drama and i really recomend it! anyway,,, its been a while since ive written anything so im a little rusty,,,please be kind heheh. let me know if you would like me to continue this heheh

2,1k words (warning: includes spoilers, and bad writing)

spoiler warning for the drama My Ajusshi/ 나의 아저씨! this fic is literally based on the plot of that drama and the characters are very (almost too much) inspired by lee jian and park donghoon

jeon wonwoo lived a completely ordinary life, worked an ordinary job at an ordinary company, did ordinary things and lived in an ordinary apartment. he should be happy. he had a wife, a son and a job that played well. he lived close to his family and he still hung out with his childhood friends every sunday to play soccer.

but jeon wonwoo felt like he was slowly dying. in his ordinary life, everything was out of the ordinary. nothing seemed right anymore, and he couldn’t figure out what was the cause. maybe he was just starting to get old.

a choir of “good morning mr. jeon!” erupted from the small office section he managed, the workers there already settling into their desk chairs and logging into their cubicle computers. he greeted the workroom, just like ordinary and made his way into the open section of 4 desks across the hallway from the rest of the workers. “did you see the game yesterday, seungkwan? your team lost again.” soonyoung, one of his three assistant managers teased. his managing team consisted of himself, the manager and head of his section of the company, his second in command, kim mingyu, and his two assistants boo seungkwan and kwon soonyoung. together the four of them formed the managing team of the 3rd security inspection section.

wonwoo hung his heavy winter coat over the back of his chair and placed his briefcase on his desk. “well your team haven’t even won a game yet this season so if i where you, i wouldn’t bite over more than i could chew, you punk.” seungkwan fired back at his college. this was another ordinary day, seungkwan and soonyoung bickering and teasing each other as usual, and jihoon already nose deep in a project only five minutes into the workday. wonwoo sighed as he pulled himself up to his desk, the plastic wheels on his chair squeaking against the newly washed floors. “manager jeon, you have a phone call! i’ll transfer it!” the office assistant yelled from across the hall, wonwoo looked up at the woman and gave her a curt nod to let her know he heard her.

“yes?” wonwoo mumbled into the phone. “i have the applications for the temporary position ready, manager. just come down to logistics and pick one out and i’ll send out the emails.” the personnel manager cheerily spoke into the other end of the line. “i’ll be right down.”

the elevator dinged obnoxiously, rousing wonwoo from his thoughtless daydream. the doors slid apart and forced the male to come face to face with his boss. the younger man staring back at him from outside the confines of the elevator met his eyes, and wonwoo stared back blankly. the older men surrounding the boss, the other directors of the company gave wonwoo some dissatisfied looks as he slipped past them. “director.” he mumbled, bowing his head at his younger colleague and former classmate. the flock of older men dressed in suits filed into the waiting elevator, the small talk picking up as wonwoo moved further away from them. “the ceo may be younger than mr. jeon but he should still bow to his boss, where are his manners?”. the ceo’s personal assistant and director of wonwoo’s department hissed, his spiteful voice carrying through the tile hallway. wonwoo sighed as he heard the elevator door close.

“here’s the resumes, manager.” the loud personnel manager said, the small boardroom making the mans voice seem even louder than it was over the phone. “I personally like this one, very good credentials.” he commented, pointing to the resume with the girl who looked the most traditionally pretty. she had a good education, and relevant work experience for the position. wonwoo scanned the four other papers presented in front of him. ‘y/n y/l/n.’ he read, the picture to accompany the resume a grainy and slightly dark photo of a younger, tired looking girl. ‘hobby: running. special talent: running.’ his eyes scanned the rest of the paper. “this one.” wonwoo stated lowly, letting his hand rest on the edge of the paper, his pointer finger right under the word running. he met eyes with the man across the table, his eyes wide with surprise. “what? why her? she didn’t even finish high school!” the older man erupts, his eyes darting quickly between the paper and jeon wonwoo, his boss.

wonwoo calmly retracted his hand, digging his hands into the pockets of his dark blue suit pants as he straightened out his back and looked at the confused male in front of him. “here,” wonwoo gestured, quickly turning the paper and sliding it over the table for the elder man to see what had caught his eyes. “hobby: running.” he continued, his voice still low and calm as he returned the hand he had used to push the paper across the wooden surface to his pocket. “it’s different.” he chuckled. wonwoo slowly turned around to leave the small glass surrounded room, his shoes dragging a little against the carpeted floor. “she doesn’t even have an education! hey!” the older man yelled after him as he opened the door and began walking back to his section. “hey!”. wonwoo just kept walking, his hands still buried in his pockets. “well just remember you chose her! don’t come to me complaining when she’s fired after two weeks!” the personnel manager shouted after wonwoo, holding up the resume and shaking it slightly in frustration. the hall echoed the slow steps of the man, his back disappearing into the sliding doors of the elevator that would take him back up to the 17th floor where he worked.

“the new temp is kinda weird.” seungkwan commented, his eyes fixed on the newly hired worker across the hall from the section of desks he sat at. mingyu looked up from a folder of blueprints, while soonyoung snorted in response, his eyes barely peeking above the edge of his huge computerscreen. the girl worked quietly as the men looked her over. she was wearing a sweater probably two sizes too big and skinny jeans paired with a pair of dirty and worn chucks that where probably white at some point but now resembled a light shade of dusty gray. “she gives me sort of a mysterious vibe.” mingyu mused, the folder on his desk pressing down a few buttons on his keyboard which then prompted a few dissatisfied sounds to erupt from the laptop. “I heard younghee say that she saw her on the underground the day after she started, like 3 weeks ago. she didn’t even say hello or anything, and she wasn’t dressed for the weather either.” soonyoung whispered at his coworkers, seungkwan gasping a little as he too recalled the floor secretary’s story. “quit staring. get back to work, you’re not getting paid to act like creeps.” wonwoo’s heavy steps roused the three men out of their trance. the manager flopped down onto his office chair, his desk ajar from the group of three in front of him having been littered with documents and papers from various companies. there was a neatly placed stack of mail on the side of his desk, and as the man noticed this he glanced over at the worker who put them there.

y/n y/l/n. the worker he had hired almost a month ago. she didn’t do a lot around the office. well, she did what she was supposed to, but wonwoo had never spoken to her or seen her outside the workplace. the younger girl looked frail and tiny but she had a though and cold aura to her, almost as if she weren’t as young as she looked, like she knew all the secrets in the world. she had busied herself with watering the plants around the office, and wonwoo let himself observe the girl for a moment before he sat down at the desk he sat at every day. y/n sorted and printed receipts from various purchases made by the company and the workers, sorted and delivered mail to the rest of the officeworkers’ desks as well as printing and filing important documents in the huge cabinets by the inspectors office. she was unsually quiet, never speaking to anyone unless needed. wonwoo turned on his computer, opening the e-mail application on his desktop before taking a quick glance back at the girl. she sat, glue stick in hand as she quickly pasted the various receipts onto a piece of paper.

hours passed and the day seemed to go on as usual, the phone ringing every once in a while and e-mails slowly disappearing from the unread basket as the man typed out reply after reply. by lunchtime wonwoo and his team of assistants where reviewing an application for a security inspection to rebuild a larger building in handong when the department secretary, min younghee, called for him. “manager jeon! there’s a package delivery coming up to your desk in a minute!” she yelled out from across the room, the phone tucked in between her chin and her shoulder. wonwoo reacted quickly, moving over from the huddle of men surrounded around the application and blueprints for the building in discussion. he could hear the elevator ding over the monotone whitenoise filling the office. a deliveryman, one of those express deliverymen who drive around on motorcycles and take scandalously much in payment, walked into the open office space with a motorcycle helmet on his head. “jeon wonwoo?” he called out, secretary younghee jumped to her feet and pointed the man towards her manager.

jeon wonwoo was stood by his desk, a little confused tweak of his eyebrows flashing over his tired face before he quickly signed the paper the stranger asked him to and took the big brown envelope that was handed to him. and just like that the helmet clad man was gone again and wonwoo was stood with a blank expression and a heavy brown paper envelope in his hand with his name scribbled into the edge with black marker. it wasn’t unusual to get deliveries, he noted, but no return address and no e-mail or phone calls from any of his business partners that they had sent him anything. which wonwoo noted as a little strange. despite this he sat down at his desk. his desk had always been stood slightly away from soonyoung, mingyu and seungkwan’s to keep himself out of their constant bickering but also to get some space to do manager things such as writing out hours and payments for his staff. the rest of the office could barley see his desk so he didn’t bother to double check if anyone where watching him as he slowly peeled the sticky flap of the envelope back and pulled out the content.

he jumped slightly in his chair, his eyebrows almost disappearing into his hairline before he looked up to see if anyone had noticed his unusual reaction to the mail he had received. in his hand laid a stack of fresh 50,000 won notes, and a small piece of a yellow post it that read “make sure you get it done. thanks”. he took another unsure glance up before trying to discreetly put the envelope into one of his desk drawers. as the drawer quietly slammed closed, he let out a relieved sigh. he would report the money to the inspector after hours, or maybe tomorrow. and maybe, just maybe he would check how much had been sent in that envelope. just because that’s vital information of course. the man, still tense from the shock and still feeling the rush of the unexpected bribery money, straightened his back and looked over to the men still huddled together a couple meters in front of his desk. they seemed to still be completely oblivious. good. wonwoo turned to assess the rest of the office when his eyes met a unfamiliar pair staring back at him. the only desk that had direct view to his was the temp desk. the temp he had hired was staring right into his eyes, her face expressionless and cold. he couldn’t seem to look away from her intense stare either. it felt like a lifetime had passed when wonwoo clared his throat and looked over at his computer awkwardly. he could still feel y/n’s stare on him as he pointlessly scrolled through all his read e-mails. he would report the money tomorrow. first he had to figure out why someone would try to frame him for bribery. he was an honest man, so honest in fact that he would report this. but tomorrow. or maybe in two days.

[winterdeepelegy]

RP Log: Trials and Revelations - Part 2

Frost continued on with his explanation, "In our ongoing idleness, he sought to use my Brothers and Sisters to further his own experiments, in the development of a more powerful living weapon, and to do so, this meant their lives would be sacrificed, their bodies repurposed, or at least parts of them which were to be combined with others.  This also included drastic physical mutations inflicted upon them by chemical means.  If any of us were ever 'beasts', it was solely due to this.  If any of us have been 'abused', it was due such a drastic level of suffering being inflicted upon them, with or without anyone else's consent.  One of my Sisters returned to us missing most of her skin... this was months ago, now, and she is still in recovery." He took a breath and added, "We are opposed to Theius' experiments for these reasons.  You want to see us as beasts?  It was solely because a Pureblood intended for us to be seen that way.  I will also add that there are Purebloods among us now, too, as mentioned in my recent letter.  Are they any less for what they've received from Pyr Sylvanius?"

“You realize then if we approve of pyr Sylvanius’ request, you will likely go back to being idle and obsolete”, he said merely playing devil’s advocate at this point, and really pissing Lillium off below her hard shell. The door opened again to have another militia official step inside. Moka could pick up the weight and clatter of the highly complex, decorated armor. Each footfall fell heel first, then slowly rolled. Clack, thump. Clack, thump.

Ember jumped in her chair, the sound standing out for the weight of it. Where people came in fancy shoes for the most part, they made a distinct rubber sound. This...was not that. She didn't just twist in her chair; she turned her legs to the side, in the direction Glace had sat, thankfully, so she didn't bang knees with anybody.

Moka would be passed by a giant of an individual that rivaled Terra in size. The mountain of armor and twisting designs signified the presence of a tribune. With a guiding cane, that likely doubled as a gun if the military was to be known, the man stopped in the isle and rested both hands on this black, glossy stick. He spoke, loud and low, “Your honor.”  The voice was Lysander, the size was wrong, the weight was impossible for a man. He had no signal of any subject. “My apologies for this tardiness.” The helm adjusted its angle to stare a hole through the back of Frost’s head. “I was met with a highly inconvenient set of circumstances.”

Frost's jaw tightened.  Behind the shades, he was probably BlueScreened.  Son of a bitch…

So much for uncoiled muscles. Everything about her went high tension from the tip of her ears to the end of her tail, which fluffed and went perfectly still. Her eyes tracked the figure intently, torn between so many feelings she wasn't sure WHAT to do with herself...from the impulse to run all the way to attack for the...wrongness. Her hand moved slightly across her lap...but there wasn't anything to reach -for-, leaving her fingers flexing in blank, empty air.

At length, 178 slowly turned his head to regard the armored figure for a moment before turning his eyes back to the council.  It afforded him a moment long enough to regain his ability to breathe, "Lord Theius.  How very good of you to join us."  Flat tone, no more or less emotion than he's displayed thus far.  This whole thing boded ill... he wondered how long the council knew, and how much they'd been paid.

When the man approached, the stark difference in his own height set him well above Frost and Lillium, but perhaps it was the helmet. His shoulders were so broad, and he stepped so carefully it was as if he was walking along each support beam through the floor. “No thanks to a set of Imperial Shadows who saw fit to crash my ship ride home”, he immediately accused, bringing the entire council to a bit of a stand still. “E-excuse me?” One of the men stammered. “We are most thrilled to see you return well, but the media must be notified of your return. What do you mean you were attacked by Shadows?” Theius lifted his head and spoke calmly, “Perhaps it is something we can discuss before you transfer my hard work back into obsoletion.”

174 dropped her jaw. Shit. Her eyes went to Glace - remember what he had told her, everything he had mentioned. And then to Mother. She had to do something...step in, remind them of a hearing? She was on the edge of her chair again, wondering wildly if she could reach Frost in time if she had to, if an attempt to restrain him was going to be made...if the accusations were going to get worse. The why's and how's seemed kinda paltry by comparison... ...not to mention she needed to let someone else know too. And why was he alone?

“Certainly”, Lysander began, “Such discussions can be completed here given you have a witness to the attack present right now. Let the media suspect whomever it wants. This discussion may prove or disprove the viability of this transfer.” The center judge, still a bit shocked, gestured a hand to the helmed man. “Lord Theius, I mean no disrespect, but given the accusations and your disappearance, and the convenience of your arrival, I am going to ask you to remove your helm in the presence of my court. Then we can continue.” The giant didn’t hesitate. He set the cane against a nearby desk so he could reach up and draw his helmet off his head. The visage was definitely, without  doubt, Theius. He looked up at the council, two blue eyes, a central third eye glossy and bright, and the only thing showing was a bit of scruff on his jaw and an ashy tone to his skin. With his identity revealed, the elder judge nodded his head with some disbelief. “Let the court continue the hearing.”

Witnesses were different than evidence, he mused in silence.  All the while, he felt Sheol grinning at the back of his mind, taunting 'You really should have gone to Azys Lla first... but we can work with this if we must... it will be messy.' Frost barely inclined his head to the council to continue.  He had no reason to think they were done questioning him just from what they had written on the docket.

Theius spoke to explain himself, “Before the crash occurred, I was happened upon by a group of rogue shadows who knew full well the transportation ship was Imperial owned. The group was large, but I likely can pick them out in a line up if given the chance. They are the reason for my absence, but my health is restored, and I request that this transfer be canceled and the power of the courts be moved to smoking out the treasonous Shadows that made the attempt on my life, and killed innocent medical personnel. ‘ “Lord Theius, can you testify if any of the subjects under pyr Sylvanius’ guide interfered with this incident, were present, or had any hand resulting in the absence that could keep you from this hearing today?”

Frost's eyes closed behind his shades and remained that way, waiting…

Scooted to the end of her chair, right foot forward, looking ready to move at a seconds notice...and she was.

Theius looked towards Frost to study him fully, and maybe let time drag on just a bit more so the burrs pulled at his flesh as seconds crawled by. He would turn back and answer, “None, your honor. I believe pyr Sylvanius is taking advantage of a convenience made by the traitors. I stand before you now to request that the transfer be canceled. Units still listed under my name are to be left to finish their advancement.” “A number of accusations have been made against your methods saying you inflict harm, or torture, on your subjects. How do you reply?” “I have worked under pyr Sylvanius for the duration of my career before I was promoted. I assure you the methods I use are all detailed in my reports as evidence, and are available at Solus for review. All of which are designed under pyr Sylvanius’ design, and each subject is provided ample support during and after surgeries. If there is any suffering to be had, it is the removal of my subjects from this support before they are completed.’

Under the back of his shirt was a frozen line running the entire length of his spine where his own sweat had turned to ice.  Frost remained still and visibly calm, but inside, he was screaming and confused, and Sheol was having a laugh riot over it all.  There was nothing he could do to silence the beast. His eyes opened, but narrowed.  "And Mother can also furnish copies of duplicate reports if the court would like to compare the ones in the Solus files."  He hated putting the woman on the spot, but if anything could disprove Theius' argument, it would be testing the freshness of the ink it was written with.  "Frumentarium, as well, maintains records of -all- experiments conducted."

He lifted his head a few degrees to peer directly up at Theius-bot over the top edge of his shades, "That is still correct isn't it, my Lord?"

“Correct. If it will please the court, I have a request of my own”, Theius answered then nodding to the central judge. “As a show of my advancements and proof that the subjects are to be used well under my directive, and not left idle, and given a chance at life, I would like to request a transfer from pyr Sylvanius to my own team, to which the courts, Frumentarium and Academy can observe.” Lillium was ready to burst, her eyes so icy cold and stone hard with rage. If he took her Frost, there would be hells to raise. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do in her position either. “That is an extensive audience. We will grant your request for a temporary transfer. Shall you negotiate a subject exchange with the Optio here, or do you have a specific unit in mind?” “I do, your honor.”

Frost smirked, the first visible sign of emotion since he was called forward.  Another inward 'son of a bitch...'

“I specialize in taking the forgotten subjects of the Colossii and repurposing them with viable bodies. I have the perfect refurbishment idea in mind, and I request that unit 76 be transferred to Solus.” “I object”, Lillium nearly interrupted him. “76 is not fit for transfer.” “Precisely why she would benefit from an improvement.”Ember jerked so hard in her chair that it actually dislodged back from under her, skittering backwards after almost falling over. She didn't look at Frost - she knew his reaction would be along the same as her own, if not a bit more contained...or even more outward. She was staring at Lillium. She couldn't...she -wouldn't- let that happen, would she? The Elezen uttered the first sound of protest - the start of a growl - but caught himself. "With respect to the courts, 76 is delicate.  The procedures inflicted upon the others by Theius were of an extreme, stressful, and incredibly painful nature.  She would not survive the process." “Methods that are reserved for units within the second and third tiers. Unit 76 is a tier one, the most basic. She will get a long awaited upgrade to classify her before undergoing any additional advancement. Basic units are easily upgraded to accessory units with the injection of a sterile, benign hive of nanobots. Once her resilience is proven to the courts, I can also show that my support systems are appropriate.” “Your support systems are sedatives and painkillers”, Lillium argued coldly. “As are the protocols within any medical facility, Optio.”"At least he admitted to his brutality, finally. I would," raised a hand to interject over the debating around him, "ask for the council to review the results of the experiments conducted on my Brothers and Sisters up to this point, including the visible images of mutations and deformities sustained as a result before making such a decision.  An upgrade of this nature could just as easily be conducted by Pyr Sylvanius in more comfortable and familiar surroundings." “The point of this transfer isn’t to show the methods of the past”, Theius argued gently. “Allow me to work on 76, and I will transfer three of my works back to Pyr Sylvanius for her to observe and test for herself the new nature of her familiar units with my handiwork. Let the appropriate personnel follow the works.” Lillium was furious, but she could reclaim three right there, in a way she didn’t prefer. She still didn’t approve. “76 is not fit for transfer”, she remained firm."We have no guarantee that your present methods are any better than your past ones," he grumbled, yet still kept his tone in check.  Lillium gave him a card to play and he was determined to play it to the fullest extent, and for as long as possible.  "I would request to have proof of the current methods before anyone else is subject to it." “Given I have just walked myself to this hearing, I will transfer the appropriate documentation once I can get proper transfer back to Solus, under military guard”, Theius demanded. “Granted. Deliver the necessary documentation and we will gather again to discuss a temporary transfer of multiple units for experimental purposes. Pyr Sylvanius, unfortunately, I must deny your request for transfer of the whole sect. However, if the tribune is unable to prove his methods, then we will reconsider.” Lillium shut her eyes so the fire didn’t shoot out of them. She bowed her head and growled, “Of course, your honor.” "Wait!" She was the rest of the way up before she even realized it. Though amongst all the larger Garleans, she still very much looked like a bright pink midget. She hesitated, then set her face. "Uh..I'd like to..propose something.", with a complete lack of social etiquette for such a thing. Hands down at her sides, she spoke anyway. "Brother Frost and Mother weren't lying...76 is...special. She's capable but she's...", she bit her lips. They didn't care about that. "...I'd request to go with her. She knows me. If she's calmer, feels safer, the results should be...more accurate right?", her ears pinned themselves back. "Sister!"  he barked.  Not only had she spoken out of turn, but she outright -volunteered- to go.  Right when they had this under control for the moment… “Optio, keep your units in order”, the judge called out gesturing to have Moka sit back down. “Request denied,  unit 174. Sit.” Theius practically purred his response, “Now, now, let’s not keep these men and women silenced. 174, Ember, is showing a love for her companion subject. It will prove all the more how well my methods are, especially if one of the optio’s own is willing to jump so willingly to observe.” “Present the documents, Lord Theius, and we will consider the double transfer with the verbal consent of unit 174 to accompany unit 76 for this. Unit 174 is to report to Pyr Sylvanius and the courts frequently throughout the process if approved.” She didn't dare look at Frost - it didn't matter if she had the mask for a shield or not. She kept herself standing, even though her knees did give a little jolt to bent when she was told to sit. When Theius spoke in favor, she felt an odd rush that echoed in her ears, as if she were suddenly under water...relief or...something else? Maybe both. At least this way...she could be with 76. And report to Mother...that was good. It had to be good. Frost's eyes flicked up at Theius again with his mocking tone.  He knew he didn't see any of them as people, and the snideness was evidence of that.  He took a slow breath and exhaled it, steeling his calm once more and looking back to the council.  He wasn't sure if they were about to adjourn, or if there was more.Lillium requested a final time before the gavel fell, “I would like a word with my unit before this transaction is completed. Surely the tribune will require time to get his things in order, and I can properly counsel my subject.” “Granted”, the elder nodded. “You both have your orders. This meeting will recess until further notice. Dismissed.” He picked up the gavel and gave a single hammer down to end the meeting. "Thank you, Your Honors."  With the council departing, he snapped a sharp salute and waited until they were out of the room to let his shoulders sag. He looked to Lillium with concern. Lillium, sorely battered by all this, kept her firm glare forward at that damned chair where that damned man called the order of this court. Her jade eyes slid to the man who arrived, one she surely wished would drop dead right there. Theius would be soon joined by the few militia and a lone medicus that arrived earlier. “ The media will be thrilled to hear of your survival story”, she said half spitting. “I owe it to my technological advancements”, he said proudly. ”I knew you may bring a few of your own with you, so I made sure to silence myself before my arrival. No need to cause more of a commotion than it did.” "Hmph... how thoughtful,” Frost drawled.So that was why.... Her ears went back even further. Still right where she was, waiting. Even if she saw a bright side to it, she was still fairly certain she was in a deep amount of trouble. Frost shook his head and stepped off to Lillium's side, "We can depart when you're ready, Mother."  He wanted very much to not stay any longer than they already had because he wasn't sure which orifice was going to let go first once they were 'safe'. Theius waved them off  and Lillium sought to collect both Frost and Ember before anything could intercept them. “Let’s go, you two”, she ordered. “We are leaving.” “I look forward to the next hearing, Sylvanius”, he spoke out lifting a hand up to tap a small device on his breastplate. The setting in that stopped the hammer that dampened his subject signal, allowing it to pour over the court in an echoing frequency that was unlike any of the three tiers. It rang low, but powerful as a tier 3 would be, but with the implication that it was beyond that. Other units hearing this frequency, even for the first time, would be instantly alerted to an excessively powerful being nearby. Even the MT code warning signal just barely equaled the feeling this signal carried. The Miqo’te waited until Mother was close before she started to turn...but when the code unleashed she froze. Pinned back ears couldn't save her now as goosebumps went up and down the length of her arms. She whipped around, unwilling to leave her back to someone - something - like that, fists not brandished, but fingers curled as if she still wore the metal fitted over claws over each digit. Glued focus on Father, slow breath through parted lips. Frost scowled and stepped up behind Embersong and dropped both hands onto her shoulders.  He'd steer her toward the door if he had to, he didn't care if he had his back turned to Theius since he'd had his backside to him most of the time he was present.  And as far as he was concerned, it was the only side the old man was entitled to see.  "Come along, Sister. The sooner we put some space between ourselves and this place the better." “Move on, 174. I’m sure I will see each other soon enough”, Theius answered her hesitance back. He waved his hand, and the signal seemed to shift in a frequency that subjugated those who could hear it with the pressure it exerted. Even if Moka wanted to engage, the feeling she would get would be that of a challenge she could not win. Her programming would tell her to back down immediately. She flared her nose, pressing her lips together so hard that they blanched completely white beneath the lipstick. No teeth...don't... Frost's guidance helped; turning her away and directing her towards the door, feeling her feet shuffle but thankfully not tangle up in one another. "...Right. Right.", she wasn't even sure to what she was answering anymore. Frost followed wherever Lillium led them, whether it was to somewhere providing accommodations, or to a waiting transport.  He almost hoped for the former... just in case. Lillium would lead them back to the transport ship that would swiftly lead them back to the castrum. She was bothered. Highly bothered, by so many things. So many questions she didn’t want answers for. “Get in the ship. We will talk on the way home.” She furiously slammed the lift gate button to lower it down on the transport ship. Ember felt...better-ish, at least, for being further away and outside. Less closed I'm trapped and stifled. The anger pouring off of Lilium in practically tangible waves however was hard to miss. As soon as the lift was down, she started up the ramp..then paused. "Mother...I...", she wasn't sure what to say, the rest of anything and everything else wedging like a hard lump in her throat. He boarded the ship and immediately sank into a seat with all the bonelessness of a bag of popotos.  He patted for one pocket with a visibly shaking hand, but failed to find what he sought.  With alarm, he started patting and searching for other pockets until he had the one thing he wanted, a single, tightly wrapped, fragrant cigar.  This, he pinched between his teeth and resumed searching for something to light it with and grumbled when he found nothing.  Instead, he simply gnawed pointlessly at it and slouched forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at his shaking hands.  All the frozen sweat under his hair and clothes liquefied at once, leaving the Survivalist to look like he'd just walked through a downpour in his dress uniform. Lillium manned the ship to get them home, but she was sorely defeated by all this. Everything just seemed to shatter and fall around her. She didn’t know what to say to Ember, still debating it as they flew into the air. How could she prove Theius was a monster when she had her own jumping to offer themselves up? She cursed 271. Cursed him silently every minute of the flight for whatever he had done to 174. 174 sat quietly before the ship took off, fingers nimbly fitting the belt in to place. All her of her nervous habits took a back seat to just staring down at her hands without really seeing them, thoughts all turned inwards and ears down low...how she was going to tell some. What else this would mean. How angry Mother and Frost had been. The scolding of the court...they had turned over everything and now 76 would be with her… "This... this isn't a defeat," he muttered hoarsely, "Not entirely.  No matter how it looks, we still have a fighting chance..." He had to believe that, no matter if anyone else did or not.  He knew there was a finite possibility that Theius could have survived when all the searching turned up with no remains, but just looking at the old man now, he was more monster than Pureblood, himself.  More machine than Spoken. The documents would reveal the conflict in Theius' words, they had to, Lillium's and Frumentarium's documentation, against his which were undoubtedly doctored.  He absolutely loathed the possibility of 76 falling into his hands, but he knew why.  The old man knew how well-loved she was by all of them and that seeing her harmed would destroy them.  He knew Frost was part of the team of Shadows who crashed the airship, and this was his revenge. "I failed... forgive me, Mother.  But I daresay this has now given us more of a fighting chance than we had before. " “I don’t like how he is setting this up. I don’t like that he is alive at all. I don’t even believe that was him. How the hell did he return a fulm taller? He had both of his eyes. He knew you were there and he lied to the court. Why would he risk perjury if only to blackmail you later!?”" Because he's a Pureblood and he's banking on that granting more credibility than a savage with no rank or clout whatsoever... typical.  He probably lied because he knows of other ways to drag out his revenge rather than let the courts call for an immediate execution."  Fingers curled and uncurled, fidgeting and wanting something to stave off the trembling. "His signal was screaming, like none I'd ever heard from another subject.  Close to an MT code warning, but not an MT code.  He's a threat... but assassination won't cut it. He needs to be exposed." Lillium frowned a bit. “I heard it, too” , she said in a defeated hush. “I’m not sure what this means. I felt as though just hearing that tone, there was no point resisting.” "Even trying to fight him there would have made our case worse.  If you heard it, then everyone else must have too, surely they would have made note of it."  He scowled, taking the cigar into hand and staring down at it since chewing on it wasn't helping to settle him any.  "271 will try to go back to him as soon as he finds out, which also means he'll know I was responsible for what happened.  I'm expecting a fight." “No one else but us heard it”, she concluded quietly. Frost slowly turned his eyes toward Lillium. Ember pinned her ears back. She heard that, much as she didnt want to. Now her hands turned towards each other, fingers intertwining. Instead she asked. "How do you know, Mother...?" "When were you augmented, Mother?" he asked plainly. “When Terra became a tier 3”, she said without hesitance in her answer. "Ah, so that's what he meant."  Frost nodded, but got up from his seat to try and find something he could use as a light.  Finally, amidst utility cabinets, he found a small butain torch.  The aroma of creamy spices soon softly flavored the cabin air.  He took several long draws from the cigar, practically inhaling half of it straight away. “He said he told you, but you didn’t understand at the time. I didn’t want to press the issue with this, but I am technically 296b. It was necessary when they were giving L... Terra his second surgery. I trusted no one else with his life, so I became his Other.” "I didn't, because he made it sounds like more of a romance thing - soulmates and all that - rather than an actual -Other- Other.  Like for those of us who have Others, they're no longer living beings who are bound to us but fragments of history, or a scrap of memory."  He sagged back in his seat until his head touched the head  rest.  "He's lucky.  Mine's an arsehole." Ember opened her mouth...then stopped. She thought it sounded...well it didnt matter. She lapsed back to quiet. But rather than swell in darker thoughts, she opened her ears back up to fully listening to the two of them. “It is, and it isn’t. Before we joined the Empire, and even now, we are husband and wife. I couldn’t risk him failing his upgrade when he was the first executioner made. I had no idea what to expect, but I couldn’t lose him. The only Other that could understand him as well as could be was me, so I volunteered. The resonance of Host and Other is a type of bond. The more I see 168 speak to himself, the more I’m inclined to believe him the longer I’m bonded to Terra.” "There's no reason to disbelieve it... I've spoken to his Other, Raiden.  Mine is aware... and has been trying to get me to secure a better bond with it," which almost had a note of dread the way he described it.  "When can you fix that loose wire, by the way?" “If your Other is reaching out to you, reach back, Frost”, she said resigning to the idea. “As you are now, you will not lose yourself, or the Other in your core. You need to find ways to resonate with one another, and you will then be able to be more powerful. Obviously, the Empire frowns highly on this explanation of ideas, so keep this between us three. When we get back to the castrum, I can see about your wire.” His brow furrowed as he stumped out the end bit of the cigar in an ice-filled palm.  He didn't fully trust his Other or its desires to commit on that level, even though he agreed to accept it.  A trip to Azys Lla would soon be in order, once his core housing was fully repaired.

[heartslogos]

the unclassified texts of the inquisition’s elite [24]

(605): Dude, A DAMN CHEESEBURGER HIT ME IN THE FACE!!! WTF was i suppoused to do!?.

/

(+44): just drove past - why are you walking towards the shop in your pyjamas?

(1+44): Can't talk, on a quest for bacon.

“Let me see if I’m understanding this clearly,” Leliana taps her finger on her desk looking between the two agents standing in front of her, “Sera and Maxwell were in pursuit of our target and were stopped by?”

Cooper shrugs a shoulder, “A cheeseburger.”

“And where did this cheeseburger come from?”

Cooper and Tailor glance at each other before Tailor answers, “Well. Our target threw a bunch of things out their car window and one of those things was a take out bag.”

“From a burger place?”

“Yup.”

“And the burger hit Maxwell in the face causing him to lose control of his motorcycle and in the process run off the side of a cliff - thankfully not too far and with little injury - and lose track of our suspect?”

“That sums it up quite succinctly, ma’am.”

Leliana sighs, “Did we lose our leads?”

“I think our cover is effectively blown on this case. Infiltration will be difficult and time consuming,” Cooper says. “It’s probably best if we do this the old fashioned way.”

“The old fashioned way?” Tailor asks, turning to Cooper.

“Get Mahanon on it,” Leliana says, “He’ll track them down and get everything we need within the week. Cooper, how did you find out about this again?”

“It was in the chat log, ma’am,” Cooper says. “Maxwell and Sera were also arguing about it very, very loudly. Sera is upset that Maxwell threw her off of the motorcycle.”

“Good call, it might have saved her from serious injury. All she has is road rash and some bruises,” Tailor says. “Meanwhile Maxwell’s got fractured ribs, a concussion, loose teeth, and a lump on his ankle the size of a Qunari fist.”

“Yikes.”

“Well said,” Leliana muses, sighing. “Alright. So what else do I need to know about our current operations in Ferelden aside from us losing one of our best leads, Sera and Maxwell being down, and the knowledge that Maxwell Trevelyan makes good judgement calls regarding the safety of others under pressure?”

“We’ve got plates,” Cooper says, “Trevelyan reports them back very clearly. We also have make and model of the car, as well as the brand names for some of the things that were thrown out of the vehicle. We were able to obtain a few receipts after sweeping the area. It’ll take some time to check if they’re receipts from the van or not, but it can be done.”

“Good,” Leliana says. “Anything else after that?”

“Kaaras Adaar and Edric Cadaash have safely reached our foreword base at the Approach,” Tailor says, “Progress is going along well. We may need to reassign some of our agents southwards to assist with information gathering. It looks like there’s a lot of networks operating at once, interfering with Cadaash’s set up as well as Adaar’s attempts at research.”

“Tap Harding and have her redistribute our personnel,” Leliana says, “If we need to I’ll request joint operations with the Commander and commission a few of his people to assist on our less difficult tasks. If anything I’m sure he’ll let us borrow the Chargers. Dismissed.”

-

“I haven’t heard from her since,” Cullen says, taking his phone back from Josephine. “She hasn’t texted or answered the phone. No one else has heard from her either. I asked Blackwall and Bull. I asked Rylen and Harding, I even asked Varric.”

“Have you asked Leliana? She knows where everyone is.”

“She’s my next stop after you, I was hoping you had any idea of where Cassandra is. I’m concerned.”

“I don’t know why you would be, she’s Cassandra Pentaghast,” Josephine says, “Though the words seem a touch unexpected and unusual from her. If she’s on a quest for bacon she’s going to get it and she’s going to be fine.”

“But why wouldn’t she just drive there? And wouldn’t she be back by now?” Cullen says, “What if she’s been abducted? Yes, Josephine. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it’s a possibility. A slim possibility, but a possibility. I think we need to look for her.”

“I think you need to finish your cup of tea and get back to work,” Josephine says. “You’re just stressed because of all the budget approvals you have to sign off on. The ones you’ve been procrastinating for the past two weeks and are due in two days.”

“Why do I have to do this?” Cullen says, “I’m the Commander of the army, not the treasurer or finance officer of it.”

“You do it because I say so and you’ve got a head for math and finance,” Josephine replies. “Just like if you ever told me to drop to the ground and roll underneath the nearest piece of furniture I’d trust your judgement call and do it.”

“I don’t quite follow how one relates to the other. You aren’t worried about Cassandra?”

“Not really, Cullen. She’s Cassandra. Sometimes I don’t even think old age will get her. Death somehow seems like an option she chose not to elect. Don’t ask me how or why I came to that absurd, but somehow very plausible, conclusion. I just did.”

Cullen shakes his head, running a hand through his hair.

“I’m going to go ask Leliana for help.”

“You can do that but she’ll just say the same things I just did. Maybe in a more mocking and judgmental manner,” Josephine says. “I meant it about your budget though. It’s due in two days and I’m not giving you an extension no matter how much I like you.”

Cullen’s mouth quirks up, “You like me?”

Josephine rolls her eyes, standing up with him and walking him to her door, “Cullen. You are a good colleague, a valuable asset, and a treasured friend. Yes. I do like you. I especially like you when you do as you’re told and get your work submitted on time. Go have Leliana talk you down about Cassandra and go back to your desk and get it done. I’ll check in on you with tea and lunch in three hours.���

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.74

“Now Darkness Falls”

A/N: Takes place during episode 10, "Despite Yourself." I apologize to those of you who have not seen the entire show but are reading this. (There’s 2-4 of you out there, I know.) This may feel like having the rug pulled out from under you. Those of you who have watched the show may also feel the same about certain details. All I can say is, I don't take the trust you've placed in me by reading this far lightly, and while we are absolutely nearing the end, the story is far from over. The things you seek, they shall be found.

The last scene in this chapter was one that was written months—months!—ago that I was desperately trying to reach before the show did the reveal. If you had told me it would take this long to get here... I still wouldn't change a word. It turns out, all these words are important.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 73 - Where Once Was Light 75 - The Truth Must Out >>

They had suffered minor structural damage but Discovery was intact, all decks and departments reporting. Lorca rose from the captain's chair and approached the flickering display of the viewscreen. The stars beyond were beautiful specks of light floating in a sea of black tinged with clouds of blue and purple interstellar gases. Between Discovery and the distant stars lay a field of ship debris.

"Mr. Saru?" demanded Lorca. "What am I looking at?"

Saru shook his head, not understanding. "I, uh, I'm not quite sure. I'm unable to confirm our position using standard procedures. Sensors are going haywire!"

"Where is our starbase?" mused Lorca.

"Not where it should be," managed Saru.

The ship debris around them was Klingon, but the hull densities were wrong. Saru reported the navigational array was malfunctioning. They appeared to be at their intended coordinates based on stellar cartography, but nothing else was where it should have been. The spore drive was offline because its navigator was presently laying on the floor of the engineering bay, unresponsive.

A Vulcan cruiser appeared on their sensors. Rather than answer their hails, it fired on them, raising even more questions. As the Vulcans came about for a second strafing run, Discovery prepared to fire in response, but another volley of fire smashed against the Vulcan's hull from the side. It was another ship, the Cooper, and another mystery: the Cooper was supposed to be undergoing a refit after sustaining crippling damage in a battle three days earlier.

The voice on the other end of the communication channel was unfamiliar. "Spooked by rebels, Discovery? You're losing your edge. Don't worry, we'll take care of them. Cooper out."

"Vulcan rebels?" asked Burnham, verbalizing the question on the minds of the bridge crew. "Firing on Starfleet?"

"I may have something," said Saru at last. "The quantum signature of the Cooper, as well as that of the Vulcan cruiser, are inconsistent with ours."

"That's not possible," said Burnham. "All matter native to our universe resonates with the same quantum signature, nothing can change it."

"That's true," said Lorca. "Unless..." He paced towards the viewscreen, turning to address the whole of the bridge. "...This is not our universe."

"That is not possible," said Burnham again, but her protest fell far short the second time around.

He brought Saru and Burnham into his ready room and presented them with the original finished map and the proposition of a parallel universe. Burnham quickly realized the significance and summarized the mycelial network as it truly was: "A vast system underpinning all quantum realities."

"But the exact coordinates of some of the more esoteric destinations eluded us," said Lorca. "Apparently the hundred and thirty-three jumps we made filled in the gaps."

"An extraordinarily fortunate coincidence," said Saru, in a way that suggested he had a glimmer of something beyond coincidence.

"I'd say unfortunate, wouldn't you, number one?" asked Lorca sharply.

Burnham immediately realized they were not going to be able to deliver the cloak-breaking algorithm Starfleet was waiting for.

"That's why we have to make it back," said Lorca. "Otherwise the war's as good as lost."

"Well, Stamets, brought us here accidentally, so we should examine the spore drive's navigational logs more closely—"

"I just pushed Stamets too hard, the number of jumps scrambled his ability to hold the coordinates for Starbase 46 in his head," explained Lorca. "Now what we need to do is understand where we are and how to survive, and then we'll find a way home." He looked at Burnham and Saru, a silent plea in his eyes. "Recalibrate the sensors and you start looking at the records, see if there's something we can learn."

"Yes, captain," said Burnham.

Saru and Burnham hastened to carry out his orders and Lorca checked the Lab 26 security feed. Empty, but the computer said Mischkelovitz was in there. She had probably startled at the jump gone awry and hidden herself in the wall. "Lorca to Mischkelovitz." There was no answer. He looked at the communications display. The channel was open. "You there?"

"Yes," came the tentative answer.

Lorca's tone was grave but calm and patient. "Mischka, we have a problem."

"That jump wasn't right," she said.

"No, it was not. The coordinates of that universe we were going to use as proof? Somehow they overwrote the default coordinates."

He heard the faintest whimper. "Then..."

"Either I did something wrong when I encrypted it, or..." A pause, then a dramatic and portentous inhalation. "Whatever you did to get those coordinates so quickly."

She gasped and covered her mouth. One tiny slip-up with the computer and it was entirely possible she had done just that. She could certainly believe it. If anyone found out how she had gotten those coordinates...

Lorca suspected there were tears on her face. In the same even, reassuring tone he had been employing since this call began, he said, "Don't worry. I overwrote the coordinate system with the original settings. No one will ever find out it was you. I'll take the blame before I let that happen."

"Thank you, captain," she said in a tiny, delicate voice. Lorca smiled faintly at the empty air.

"We'll get through this, Mischka. Don't you worry. One step at a time."

He closed the channel and glanced at the bowl of fortune cookies, pulling one out. You are careful and systematic in your business arrangements. Whether or not it was a proper fortune was up for debate, but there was no doubting the fact it was true. He looked out the ready room window at the stars. Cornwell and Terral were a universe away and he still had the view.

They found a data core in the debris field surrounded by the bodies of Klingons, Vulcans, and Andorians. All three species had apparently been together on the Klingons' destroyed ship. The reason soon became clear. In this universe, there was no Starfleet. There was no United Federation of Planets. The whole of the known galaxy was controlled by a single entity, and there were only two key forces at play within it: humans, and everyone else.

It was called the Terran Empire. There were a thousand worlds and species subjugated under its rule. It was the antithesis of the Federation in every way. Xenophobic, warlike, oppressive. An entire galactic culture based on the unconditional hatred and rejection of anything non-human. At its center ruled a nameless, faceless emperor with an unparalleled reputation for savagery. Against this fascist, monopolistic threat, a handful of alien races fought in a feeble but enduring rebellion.

The data core contained a vast quantity of stolen caches of information on the Terrans: their weapons, their power, their personnel. Personnel that had the same names and faces as people aboard Discover. It proved conclusively they were in an alternate version of their universe—one where they could literally meet an alternate version of themselves. It was like gazing through a dark mirror.

As Lorca listened to this summation, he marveled at how foreign it felt. "No way we're asking these neighbors for a cup of sugar," he quipped.

Then the Cooper returned from its hunt and hailed them again, sending the bridge into a small frenzy as they tried to figure out exactly how to respond. "What intel do we have!" Lorca demanded. They had only just begun to brush the surface of the data in that core.

Saru hastily provided a key point of information: "The rebel logs show their ships being attacked by a vessel with a warp signature matching our Discovery, but a quantum signature matching this universe. That signature seems to have vanished at the same coordinates where we popped in. It is possible we switched places with their Discovery."

"I'm gonna run with Mr. Saru's theory and hope that we don't run into ourselves and blow our cover," announced Lorca. Burnham quickly modified their ship's signature with the deflector to match the signature of the Discovery that was supposed to be in this region of space.

This took precious time. The Cooper began to get impatient. "They're saying if we don't respond that we should prepare to be fired on," reported Bryce at the comms.

"Open a channel, audio only," said Lorca.

"Belay that," said Burnham. "I'm sorry, but you can't take it, sir. I'm examining the crew manifest of mirror Discovery, you're not its captain."

"Who is?" asked Lorca.

Burnham put the image up on the main viewscreen. It was Sylvia Tilly. Not as they knew her, with the frizzy red hair and the quick smile. Clad in golden armor and with straight, blonde hair. Her image stared across the bridge with a ferocious intensity.

"Uh, that's me," said Tilly helpfully. "That's me!" And yet, in almost every way that counted, it clearly was not.

"That's absurd," said Lorca, summing up this turn of events perfectly. "Cadet, looks like you're taking this." He spun the captain's chair towards Tilly.

"Uh, wh... uh, wh-what—what do I say?" stammered Tilly as she sat down, immediately panicking.

There was no way Tilly was doing this without help. Lorca fixed his full attention on her with an intensity that drew her attention to him in kind. Despite his annoyance at this turn of events, he was calm and firm as he instructed her on what to do. "You just get rid of them as fast as possible and you talk as little as possible."

Tilly looked up at him from the chair fearfully. "That—that might be a little hard. Have you noticed that I talk a lot?"

"Defy your every instinct," said Lorca.

They opened the channel.

For a moment, Tilly just looked around the bridge. Then: "Hello, this is Captain Tilly. What the heck—h-hell? Hold your horses!" She looked at Lorca apologetically.

"Why the delay in responding, Discovery?" asked the Cooper.

"I was..." Tilly kept her eyes focused on Lorca. He tried signaling her, mouthing at her. "...Indisposed."

Everything that was coming out of her mouth was wrong. Lorca marveled at it as much as he scowled.

"Any reason you're still hanging around?" asked the Cooper.

"We're experiencing mechanical issues," managed Tilly. Lorca nodded at her in encouragement.

"Need a hand? We're not far."

Lorca signaled her as clearly as he could without making a sound: No! But Tilly was flustered and did not answer quickly enough to stave off the Cooper's next question:

"And why are you not on screen!?"

"M-Mechanical issues?" she asked, and looked pleadingly at Lorca. "Here's my chief engineer."

Burnham rushed over and touched Lorca's back. "I don't know who you are over here just yet," she warned, "so conceal your voice just in case."

It was hard to be too angry at Tilly for failing to come across as a captain because Lorca made a lousy engineer. "How you doing, captain?" Lorca asked, finding himself mimicking a Scottish accent. "Everything's squared away here. We've got, uh, wee bit of trouble with our visual emitters and the starboard nacelle, but a bit of tweaking, we'll be good to go, all right?"

Despite the fact this was the worst engineering jargon possible since the beginning of time, the captain of the Cooper apparently knew as much about engineering as Lorca did. It worked.

"Happy hunting. Long live the Empire!"

Lorca mouthed at Tilly: Long live!

"Long live the Empire!" blurted Tilly. Lorca reached over and closed the comm via the armrest console.

"Good," he said simply, forgiving even, though that had been almost entirely awful. It took Tilly a moment, but she got out of his chair. Lorca addressed the bridge. "Next time, we might not get away with audio only. If we want to live to get back home, we have to make it so we look and act like we belong here. Mr. Saru, while we get up to speed with this universe, see to it that this ship, its crew, it's captain"—he looked at Tilly—"are prepared."

"Yes, sir," said Saru.

Lorca looked at Tilly and only Tilly. "I mean fully prepared."

Tilly still looked startled as a deer in the headlights, but now that they all knew what they were walking into, next time would go better. It had to. This was not the sort of universe that would easily forgive mistakes.

Burnham was assigned the task of unraveling everyone's mirror identities from the files in the data core. It was not necessary for her to brief every member of the crew directly, but some figures were of key note in this universe and merited personal attention. She found herself standing in the hallway before the assembled personnel of Lab 26: O'Malley, Mischkelovitz, Groves, Larsson, and Allan. "Colonel O'Malley. You are an interrogator in the service of the Emperor," she announced, transferring the details of O'Malley's mirror identity to his padd.

"Whizz-bang," said O'Malley, annoyed as he skimmed the top of the file. He doubted "interrogator" entailed the same methodology he applied in their universe. One thing was for certain: his mirror counterpart had just as many freckles. The other O'Malley looked grim and intimidating in his black uniform in the file photo. As much as O'Malley knew it was his own face, he had real trouble recognizing it.

Burnham turned to go. "What about us?" asked Groves.

"I'm only delivering priority one identity information," said Burnham. This was the designation they had given to "people they might encounter who held substantial Terran rank or played a significant role in Terran government."

"Really?" said Groves. The word could have been pejorative, but coming from Groves, it sounded more mildly bored than anything else. "After all those games of chess we played, this is the thanks I get?"

That gave Burnham pause. "You're Rove," she realized.

"In the flesh," said Groves. "Which is why I find it hard to believe that I'm not a priority one person." O'Malley rolled his eyes at that, but since everyone was facing Burnham, she was the only one who saw it.

Burnham glanced at the padd in her hand. "Lieutenant Larsson, you were aboard the Buran when it was destroyed in this universe."

Larsson barely reacted. "Ah," he said, as if this were no particular surprise. "We must not have met the lului, so I never wrote my book. Then I would have been on the Buran." It was strange to think that this held true in their universe as well: if they had not met the lului, he would have died on the Buran there, too.

Burnham wondered what "the lului" were, but she had enough mysteries on her plate for the moment. "Unfortunately, I was unable to—"

Groves pointed to himself, then Mischkelovitz. "John Francis Narvic, Emellia Petrellovitz." He spelled the surnames for her.

Burnham checked again. She found them both in the same file. "John Narvic died in 2238 at a research colony in the Mizar sector called 'Qorya.'" She mispronounced it, as people did when seeing the word for the first time.

"Damn," said Groves. "Really? Afterlife fist bump?" He offered a fist to Larsson. Larsson only glowered at him. They were roommates, not friends.

Burnham turned to Mischkelovitz and addressed her with an entirely more measured approach. "Doctor, you were... senior science officer aboard the Buran."

Mischkelovitz blinked. "I was... I was a bridge officer? On the Buran? With Captain Lorca? I was the captain's science officer? I was..." She suddenly looked so happy. "I was a bridge officer! And then, did I die?" Her voice was a happy exclamation. Even the prospect of her own demise seemed unable to diminish her glee at this information.

Burnham glanced down and discovered a small surprise. "No, you are currently in prison for treason."

"I'm Gabriel's senior science officer! Me!" She looked at Groves and O'Malley for affirmation. Groves shrugged, not caring because he was dead, but O'Malley managed a weak smile of dubious support.

"I'm... glad for you," said Burnham stoically, because she did not know what you were supposed to say when someone reacted to this sort of information with the level of unrestrained joy Mischkelovitz was displaying. Burnham looked at Allan. "Do you also have another name?"

"Me?" said Allan, surprised. "No. Just 'John Langley Allan.' Same as it's ever been."

"I was unable to find any record of you or your parents. It's possible you were never born."

"Oh, well that's comforting," said Allan. "A whole universe of evil and I'm the only one not in it."

Burnham tilted her head, trying to determine if that was sarcasm. "Major?"

"I'm too good for this universe. Literally too good for it!" He grinned at Mischkelovitz and she pressed her hands together and smiled back coyly, fighting the urge to laugh.

Burnham sighed. At least two people could find positives in this abysmal situation. "The rest of you will need to lay low to avoid causing suspicion." She turned to leave again.

"Wait!" said Mischkelovitz. "What about Mischka?"

O'Malley reacted to this request with alarm. Groves seemed piqued. "Milosz Mieszała," Groves supplied.

"I'm not sure," O'Malley began to say, but Burnham had already located the record without even needing to ask Groves how Milosz's name was spelled.

"He also died in 2238."

Mischkelovitz was immediately grief-stricken. She turned and pressed her face against O'Malley's shoulder and he put an arm around her in sympathy, but truthfully he was relieved. As tragic as that information was, it was better than having Mischkelovitz attempting to chase down Milosz's living ghost somewhere in this universe.

"What the hell happened in 2238?" wondered Groves aloud.

"I don't have any information about that," lied Burnham. The answer was plainly written on the padd in her hand. In 2238, at the age of fifteen, Emellia Petrellovitz had killed eighteen people, ten of them children. Listed among the dead were John Francis Narvic and Mischkelovitz's former husband in the other universe, Milosz Mieszała.

Lorca stood in his ready room doing his own delve into the core data. The bridge now belonged to "Captain Killy" as far as he was concerned (what a nickname that was; Tilly's mirror counterpart had really gone out of her way to earn it), but it suited him fine, because he liked the quiet dimness of his ready room.

As soon as Burnham appeared, Lorca began to pepper her with questions. "Are we civilians? Do we get uniforms? What?"

The answer was not pleasant. Neither he nor Burnham were presently part of the Terran command ecosystem. Burnham was presumed dead and Lorca was wanted for her murder.

Lorca swallowed. "Well, what happened?"

"It appears that you and I both enjoyed immense prestige here. I was the captain of the Shenzhou. And you had the Buran here, too, sir."

Lorca asked the question because it had to be asked, but his reluctance was clear. "And, my crew—they alive?"

"No," said Burnham. "You attempted a coup against the emperor. I was sent to stop you. In the process, my shuttle was destroyed by one of your followers and I was killed. And the emperor laid waste to your ship in retaliation. It's believed you escaped."

Lorca shook his head. That was not right, not at all. "Well, there's me hoping I'd find a better version of myself over here," he said, and smiled in thanks at Burnham. Then he turned to the window. "Look out there. Come on." He jerked his head for her to join him at the window and she obliged. Their reflections stood side by side against the backdrop of stars. "Amazing, isn’t it? Different universe, but somehow the same people had a way to find each other." He looked away from the stars a moment, smiled at her. "The strongest argument I've ever seen for the existence of destiny."

"I'm not sure if I believe in destiny," said Burnham.

"Well, is that so?" asked Lorca. "Sitting in that cell all alone, facing a life sentence of solitude, future full of misery... A little part of you had to know that wasn't the end of your story. You were destined for something more."

"Destiny didn't get me out of prison, captain," she countered, and for a moment he felt every bit of that cold, Vulcan upbringing. Then her voice broke into something warmer. "You did that."

"Well. Let's agree to disagree. For now." He looked at Burnham, her eyes fixed on the stars. "Maybe it's not a bad thing that you and I are ghosts. I found something curious in the data here. A potential way home. I didn't know how to exploit it till right now, but I think you might end up saving us all."

According to rebel files, theirs was not the first ship from their universe to end up here. The USS Defiant, a Constitution-class, had slipped into this universe as well. The difference was, it had not done so with a spore drive. That meant there was another way to traverse between the worlds.

As they reviewed the data and formulated a plan, Lorca handed Burnham a cookie. "You have a reputation for being straightforward and honest," it read.

He also took one for himself. "Your principles mean more to you than any money or success." He snorted in laughter.

"Is that funny?" asked Burnham, who tended to miss jokes because of her childhood on Vulcan.

"The last person who got this fortune hated it," Lorca recalled. "But I like it just fine." He smiled and tucked it into his pocket.

Ultimately, their plan was elegantly simple. Posing as their Terran counterparts, Burnham—whose body had never been found—would bring in the Empire's most wanted fugitive, Gabriel Lorca, and gain access to the Shenzhou. From there, they would download every bit of data available on the Defiant, and finally return to Discovery and figure out how to apply this information towards their situation. A simple mission, in and out. Tyler would pose as Burnham's personal guard for an added level of backup security.

"Let's get us home," Lorca said.

First, though, they were all going to need a very good night's sleep.

The message came through brig chess and it was two words: "NEED SPORES." Tilly looked at it and frowned and bit her lip.

She should have been reviewing her own personnel file, or better yet, sleeping, but the vicious achievements of her mirror counterpart, "Captain Killy," scared her and she was too jumpy to sleep. Instead, she was in the engineering bay, trying to pinpoint the source of the aberration that had dropped them into another universe. Other people were hard at work on the problem, too, and likely the answer was simply what everyone suspected—the enduring toll jumping had taken on Stamets—but Tilly had been the one actively at the controls. She kept going over everything in her head. Where had they gone wrong? Could she have done something to prevent this? How were they going to get home?

There was no way she would solve these questions tonight, but working on a technical problem was a comfort to the engineering portion of her brain.

The two-word message concerned her. It was possible this entire thing had not been Stamets fault at all. Possibly it was hers because she had been supplying Mischkelovitz with spores.

Well, she decided. No time like the present to practice being captain. She headed towards the lab.

"Oh my god," said O'Malley when he saw her. She looked the very image of her mirror counterpart. Gold armor over a black uniform, long blonde hair flowing straight down to her shoulders instead of the familiar mess of red frizz. He was in a Terran uniform, too, but his had black armor instead of gold, so was much less showy, and his hair had not changed.

O'Malley's response threw Tilly, but she quickly recovered. "Is that how you address your captain!"

O'Malley stared at her, blinking in disbelief.

Tilly shrunk apologetically. "Sorry," she said. "Practicing being the scary version of me!" She threw her hands up in a display of helplessness.

"No, that was... good," said O'Malley. "You just look so..."

The expression on O'Malley's face did not seem very appreciative of the new look. Tilly self-consciously pulled at her straightened hair. "You don't like it?"

"I realize it's bad form to tell a woman she doesn't look good, but..." He frowned. He was clearly thinking it.

"Really? It's not sexy?" O'Malley's eyebrows shot up. Realizing how that sounded, Tilly immediately blurted, "Not that I meant—I mean—"

"Me neither!" exclaimed O'Malley. "Not that you're not—" They were both getting entirely flustered. "I'm much too old for you! And married!"

Tilly held up her hands again, this time pointing upward and spinning her index fingers in a request to pause the conversation. "Let's rewind and start over!"

O'Malley squinted at her because he did not believe in do-overs. "I just meant, I think you look perfectly fine as yourself, and this is..." He waved his hand at her look. "A lot."

"I don't want you to think I'm sexy," said Tilly, embarrassed. "You're very nice, colonel, but..." She shook her head. That thought had never entered her head until now and it held no appeal.

O'Malley turned his gaze to the ceiling and sighed, partly because no one liked being rejected no matter how many times it happened or how right the rejection was, and partly because Tilly was rather young and probably lacked some awareness as to what qualities she had to offer in this regard. "The sexiest thing a person can be is themselves," he declared. "And everyone's most attractive feature is their mind. Now let's call this topic closed forever."

"Forever," agreed Tilly.

Inside, Mischkelovitz was also surprised by Tilly's new appearance, but made no attempt to comment on it. Her own Terran uniform (they all had them in case of some sort of unfortunate Terran incursion) lay draped halfway across a table on the far side of the room, essentially abandoned.

"Where are the spores?" was Mischkelovitz's greeting. She had not really warmed up to Tilly despite the regular spore deliveries.

"I need you to tell me what you're doing with them," said Tilly.

Mischkelovitz shook her head forcefully enough it seemed to make her dizzy and bumped into her worktable. "I can't!"

Tilly took a breath and focused herself. "I've been bringing you spores for weeks now, and that last jump we ended up in parallel universe. How do I know that wasn't because of the spores I gave you?"

Mischkelovitz recalled what Lorca had said. You had to find the truth in what you were saying. The truth was, Mischkelovitz knew how they had gotten here, but that was a secret. It was also true she knew her work with the spores was entirely not the cause of it. Not everything you could do with spores involved traveling places. "I promise you," said Mischkelovitz, "it wasn't that. I need spores, though, I really do. Please." Her eyes began to water.

Tilly hated to see anyone cry. She knew too well what it felt like. "Why is it so important? Why can't you tell anyone?"

"Because," trembled Mischkelovitz, "it's Mischka's secret!" Her breathing became erratic.

"You mean... Lieutenant Mischkelovitz? Your..." Thankfully, Mischkelovitz nodded, erasing the need for Tilly to probe for further confirmation. "But he didn't work with spores. I've read every single thing I could find about his research, and he never..." Milosz had not worked with spores or mushrooms, he had no interest in biology, and would have found Stamets' physics-as-biology assertions impossibly simpleminded and pedestrian, but he had worked with things that could possibly interact with spores that had the properties belonging to Prototaxites stellaviatori.

Tilly spoke aloud what she thought Mischkelovitz was doing. The way Mischkelovitz's eyes went wide was answer enough. "But that could totally have affected the jump!" exclaimed Tilly.

"No!" insisted Mischkelovitz. "It couldn't, because look!" She ran to the nearest wall and began pulling open the panels. Every element of the walls was a panel, and behind every panel were transparent conduits. A thin line of blue dust lay in the bottom of the conduits, but they were otherwise empty. "It was like this before the jump!"

"Then you already..." Tilly's eyes widened. "Did it work?"

"Yes!"

"Really?"

"Yes!"

Tilly accepted that, if Mischkelovitz was telling her the truth, there really was no way Mischkelovitz's work had interfered with the spore jump. At least that meant Tilly's conscience was now a little clearer. Her secret spore deliveries had not been the cause of this mess. Which did not absolve her of any responsibility from being the one at the drive's controls.

"So will you get me more spores?"

Tilly's brow knit as she frowned in thought. "Okay," she decided. "But I can't do it right now. The lab is under a lot of scrutiny because of what happened."

"So what? Aren't you the captain now?" asked Mischkelovitz. Tilly stared. Surely Mischkelovitz did not think this play-acting was indicative of any actual change in rank. "I'm a bridge officer, you know. On the Buran. Maybe I should just go and—"

"No!" Tilly said quickly. "I promise I'll bring more spores soon. Just hang tight until I do. Promise me you won't try to get any yourself."

As displeased as Mischkelovitz was to have to wait, she agreed. "But listen to me, you can't tell anyone what I’m working on, understand? Not a single person. If word gets back to anyone..."

"I understand," said Tilly, even though she did not. Science was better when people were working together in her opinion, not territorially hiding their work.

It struck Tilly as she was standing in the access chamber, preparing to open the outer door. They might never get out of this strange universe. Exactly who was Mischkelovitz worried word would get back to?

As Lorca entered his quarters, his mind was already pouring a drink.

"Gabriel."

He almost jumped out of his boots in surprise. Lalana was sitting in the middle of the room waiting for him. He hastily shut the door before anyone saw her, never mind that the hallway outside was empty. "Lalana, what... How?"

She tilted her head and spun her hands. "How do I usually get into your room?"

In the past, he knew the answer to that question had been Einar Larsson, but that could not be the answer now. Larsson did not have full security clearance aboard Discovery and the door to Lorca's quarters, like the door to his study, had been set to unlock only for him.

"Did you forget?" she asked. "You gave me your room codes many years ago. 'Fate has shown you what you were not to see.'"

That was indeed the code. It had been transferred along with every other personal setting on file from the Buran. It was also the code to his personal study. There was a more pressing concern. "Did anyone see you?"

"Of course not. I was very careful. Einar hid me in the halls." There was Larsson's participation, right on cue. Lorca was beginning to realize the two of them were thick as thieves.

He shook his head faintly in amazement. "All right, well, you're welcome to stay the night, but I'm dog-tired." He moved towards the bed, unfastening his collar and pulling open the front of his uniform jacket with a groan of exhaustion.

"Now that we are in this universe, do you still need the phaser under your pillow?"

"I'll put it somewhere else," he agreed.

He was agreeing to a request she had not made. "Oh, no, I do not mind it, I simply wondered if being here was comfort enough so as to render the phaser unnecessary."

Lalana seemed to have missed the memo on what "here" was like. "Why the hell would being here..." He rubbed his eyes. He was tired and not entirely sure how to phrase it.

"Because of San Francisco."

Lorca did not follow. He sighed, shook his head, and went for the whiskey. "I'm not in the mood for any riddles tonight," he warned her, pouring a glass. "Maybe you should go."

"In San Francisco, you kept reaching under your pillow and waking up when you could not find the thing that was missing. If I had known a phaser was the thing you were reaching for, I would have brought you one. As it was, I did not know how to help you and I find myself in that position again."

Lorca moved towards the window and stared out at the stars. "It's great that you want to help, but we've already got a plan to get us out of this universe, so unless you're hiding a clone of Stamets..." He turned from the window, smiling at her in jest.

Lalana did not click her tongue. She tilted her head. "I think you have heard the opposite of my meaning."

"Oh?" he prompted, sipping his drink and turning away from the window to listen.

"I am not interested in helping the crew get home, I am interested in helping you with your plan. You have one, do you not?"

She had proven herself an excellent sounding board on several occasions, so he explained the plan to gain access to the Shenzhou and steal intel on the Defiant.

She stopped him. "This is very interesting, but you cannot expect me to believe you came back here for the purposes of leaving again? Is it that you need to pick something up?"

For a moment, he was again confused, but then there was a glimmer in the back of his mind. He felt a sudden rush of something approaching panic. The surge of adrenaline kicked him wide awake. "What the hell are you talking about," he said flatly.

"The particles here, they match you in resonance. So we are in your home now, are we not?"

"This is..." He shook his head as if clearing it. This was not happening. "I'm from Earth, Lalana. You know that."

"Yes, but not the Earth my Gabriel was from. There must be an Earth here as well, then."

"Your..." She knew. She knew. How could she possibly know? She couldn't. "What are you saying?"

"What part of what I have said is confusing?"

He was still desperately trying to stick to the script. "All of it! Lalana, we're in a different universe, not the one we're from."

"My eyes see more than you will ever know. As I have said repeatedly to humans, and yet still you seem to have trouble understanding. Gabriel, I knew you weren't Hayliel the moment I saw you, because you are a different color."

Lorca sat down heavily on the bed and considered grabbing the phaser under his pillow. Not yet. Not until he understood what was going on. He downed the remaining whiskey in his glass and tried to return to the lie one more time. "You're confused, that's all. That jump must have messed up your eyes. Let's get Mischka to take a look."

"I even tested you, do you recall? I asked you what the last message Hayliel sent me was about, and you could not tell me, because you did not send it."

He dimly remembered that. "But..."

"Then there was the time you said we were not animals, when I brought you the octopus. My Hayliel understood very well that we are."

That incident he recalled vividly because a whole, live octopus from the San Francisco Bay was not an easy thing to forget.

Lalana continued, "When I was helping Dr. Li with her investigation, she shared with me the notes of the medical doctor who served with her uncle. He examined the body of a member of the Suliban Cabal. We have similar eyes, did you know? The Suliban were genetically enhanced with lului eyes because lului eyes can see particle resonances in waves outside of light."

Something clicked in his mind. He put the glass down on the bed next to him. "The halo of stars."

Her hands spun twice in approval. "Yes, I believe that is another aberrant resonance. But yours it not a halo. It is... darker somehow. That is why I call you the space between the stars. And now, we are in a world where everything is the space between the stars. So, this must be the world you are from. It matches you."

His heartbeat was pounding in his ears. "This entire time, you knew..." He could not finish the sentence and say what she knew because admitting it even after exposure still went against his every instinct.

"Of course. That is why I have been helping you." She had helped him, repeatedly. She had given him details and insights above and beyond, which had never made much sense at the time except she seemed to enjoy talking and telling him things. "Why do you think I told you my story?"

Lorca stared. He had thought she was just trying to comfort the person she knew as her Gabriel by retelling their story. Something to get him through the tragedy of losing a ship. Not as an instruction manual, but that was how he had used it, and apparently exactly as she intended.

It struck him, the truth. "You told me the story so I'd keep you around." Lorca pulled at his mouth with his hand. It was impossibly crazy to think this whole time she had been on his side and known exactly who he was. He felt himself shake faintly at the magnitude of it.

"But of course. I was surprised how readily you believed me. My Hayliel understood, as you have failed to, that I am constantly repurposing truths, yet you 'take me at face value' even though you cannot read my face. Perhaps you thought there were no liars like you in my universe. But mostly, Gabriel, I told it to you because you are always so afraid. It is written on you as clearly as words are in a book. It is etched into you. My Hayliel had fears, but they did not govern him the way they govern you. He found the way to escape them."

"I'm not afraid," Lorca said with a sneer, because in this universe, that was not something you admitted.

Her head tilted. "Aren't you? Aren't you terrified right now? And are you not running away?"

He stood firm—figuratively, because he was still sitting on the bed and was not sure his legs would hold if he did get up. "I'm not afraid of anything. And I don't run."

"You are not a very good liar."

That statement hung in the air long enough for Lorca's face to cloud with anger.

Lalana's head straightened. "It is as it is. You do not need to admit anything. I am here to admit things to you, Gabriel. You are not him, but you are. You are funny and clever and you come up with the most amazing plans. You inspire people, to your own ends, but you inspire them all the same, and make them better. You take command of the world around you and shape it to your will, just as he did. I appreciate how you have attempted to become Hayliel. It is like you ate him, which is a very lului thing to do. You did not let his death go to waste."

To call that sentiment alien was an understatement.

She took a step towards him. "Mostly, you are the only thing I have left of him. I would do anything to keep you safe and make you happy."

Lorca's face darkened at her approach. He had read the lului reports. He knew the damage she could do on a cellular level. He knew it firsthand, though damaging was not the way she had used that skill during the single night they had spent together. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I have been your ally all this time in my world, but now that we are in yours, I wish to know. How may I help? What is your plan?" She stepped towards him again.

Given the words she used to describe it, she must have realized what he had done to the Buran captained by her Lorca. He reached for the phaser then. Stretched back and grabbed it from its hiding place under his pillow quick as he could and pointed it right at her. "Stay back. I see exactly what you're doing. You're trying to trick me, get me to let my guard down so you can avenge your precious 'Hayliel.' Well, I'm not falling for it." His finger tightened on the trigger.

"Oh, Gabriel. Killing you will not bring him back. You are the closest thing to him I have. I would not sacrifice that for anything. That is why I have been helping you. Because I still love your face, and I will always love your face. But I do not know this world or how to help you here. So tell me. What do we do next?"

He lowered the phaser and took a deep breath. He understood what she meant entirely because he knew it was true. When you had lost the person you loved most in the universe, it meant everything to be able to see their face again, even as another person. He knew it because he had lived it himself. He stared at her, looking forlorn. "I can't."

"Yes, you can. I know you can tell me because Hayliel could do anything he set his mind to, and you are him from another universe. Let me help you, Gabriel, the way I helped him." She took the last step towards him and placed her tail upon his hand in comfort and pressed her chest against his knee in companionship. "I have kept your secret. You can trust me."

So he told her.

Part 75

[traveladict]

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