Doctor Emmett L. Brown (outatime) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-05-31 19:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, emmett "doc" brown, jean luc picard |
Who: Jean-Luc Picard and Doc Brown
When: BACKDATED - Saturday, May 18, 2013
Where: Java Moment
What: Random Meeting
Rating: Probably no more than G
Status: COMPLETE.
Doc quickly ducked into the doors of Potts Tower, shifting the two brown paper bags he held in his arms. This New York City was a lot different than the one he knew from pictures and nightly news reports - it was a heck of a lot cleaner, for one thing. And he was still adjusting to all the new technology. For while he had some experience working with his own world’s future tech, living with it on a daily basis that was the tricky bit, he was finding. It was all of the little things the natives took for granted that kept throwing him off - the swipe cards for tower and room access instead of keys, the omnipresent cell phones, the way everything seemed to be computerized and automatic. Why, he’d even checked himself out at the convenience store! As Doc moved through the lobby, heading for the elevators, the heady aroma of coffee filled the air as he passed the Java Moment and he stopped in his tracks. “Damn,” he muttered to himself, with a flat look as he stared at the cafe. He’d forgotten to get a coffee maker again. Doc paused for a moment mentally debating whether he could manage his two bags of purchases along with a cup of coffee, or if he should go upstairs and drop his things off before coming back down. Expediency won out over practicality, and Doc decided that he’d rather just do everything in one trip. He stepped forward to the cafe, hoping that the wait wouldn’t be too long. Jean-Luc Picard had somehow managed to use the last of his Earl Grey yesterday without having realized it much to his dismay. He supposed it was the fault of having been certain he’d bought another tin the last time he was out, so that he wasn’t worried about using the last of it yesterday, only to find this morning that he hadn’t done so because there was no tin to be found. Fortunately the Java Moment could brew a decent cup and while it might not be quite as quick as a replicator, it was at least as good as one and so he’d made his way down to the Java Moment and was in line for the tea when a man with slightly crazy hair and an armful of bags stepped up behind him. Picard stood in silence for a moment, not certain if he should say something, but after a moment, politeness won out and he turned around: “Would you like a hand with one of those bags while you’re waiting? It looks as if your arms are full.” Upon closer inspection Picard was reasonably certain the man was a newcomer and that he had seen the man posting on the network a few days back. Probably the bags then were things that he was getting ready to take up to his apartment - things he needed to settle in. Jean-Luc smiled and added, “I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard. I believe I saw you on the network a while back - are you new to Potts Tower?” As the bald-headed gentleman ahead turned to greet him, Doc pulled his gaze away from trying to decipher the posted menu (what on earth were all those ‘something-ccino’ drinks, anyway?), and smiled. “Yes, yes, I am. Doctor Emmett L. Brown, at your service.” He moved to put his hand out, but quickly realized it was full of bagged supplies. Setting one of the bags down on a nearby table, he reached out to shake the other man’s hand. Then suddenly the full implication of the introduction hit him and Doc’s eyes widened a little and he blinked. “Captain?” “A pleasure to meet you, Doctor,” Jean-Luc said with a warm smile. He wondered when the man was from - the clothing was most unusual - but there was nothing that could truly give it away. One of the brilliant aspects of this place was that he did get to meet individuals from all over - all times, and even different realities that he might not have otherwise had the opportunity to do. In his career in Starfleet certainly stranger things had happened. “And yes, Captain, although I suppose here in New York City I am without my ship. She is the USS Enterprise, perhaps you’ve heard of her?” Doc paused in thought for a moment, but soon shook his head in the negative. “I’m afraid I haven’t heard of her, although I will readily admit that I’m not familiar with military ships.” But a split second later, his eyes lit up. “Ah, but now I remember - the first space shuttle orbiter that NASA ever built was called the Enterprise. Were you part of the team that designed it - er, her?” “Not exactly,” Jean-Luc shook his head, “although I believe that the Enterprise was given her name as homage. I’m from the future, the twenty-fourth century to be precise. The USS Enterprise is a Sovereign Class Starship of the Federation that has traveled many places throughout the Alpha quadrant.” Picard tilted his head at the other man. The number of people who had recognized him in this world was significant, so he was left with the conclusion that either where Doctor Brown came from the source material of Star Trek did not exist, or the other alternative was that he was prior to the source material of Star Trek’s creation, or perhaps he simply didn’t watch television. It didn’t particularly matter either way to Picard and certainly there were a fair number of individuals he did not know himself - the majority of them seemed to be from media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and while of course some media had been passed down, Picard had hardly partaken of all of it. “Have you been here long?” He asked the other man as the line shifted forward just slightly. “Great Scott, the twenty-fourth century? That’s astounding, I never would have considered going so far...Wait a moment,” Doc said as something finally clicked for him in his memory. “Star Trek?” He frowned as he peered a bit more closely at the man in front of him. He hadn’t watched much Star Trek - he’d been far too busy in the late sixties with his work on the time machine. Things had really started to move forward, and that hadn’t left him with much time for TV viewing. Doc vaguely remembered some nights of exhaustion where he’d caught the end of an episode before falling asleep in the chair, but he didn’t remember this man’s face at all. “You’ll have to forgive me,” he said with a shake of his head, “I was pretty preoccupied in the late sixties so while I believe I saw bits of the show here and there I did not follow it and I’m afraid I don’t recognize you. But perhaps it would help if I explained a bit about myself, too?” Doc smiled, as he continued. “I’ve been here for just a little over a week now, and I’m originally from my world’s 1985. Well, sort of. I actually came here directly from 1885, after having gotten stuck there when my time machine was hit by lightening. It’s a bit of a complicated story...apparently the whole thing was enough to make a trilogy of movies in this world. I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest...” Doc trailed off with a wry twist of his mouth and a slight shrug of his shoulders. He knew that this was something that all the Tesseract refugees had to learn to deal with, but he was still of two minds about it and struggling with it. “Don’t worry about it. My understanding is that I’m from a later version of Star Trek that aired in the late 80s so it's entirely possible it does not yet exist when you are from. It’s an interesting thing being from a ‘story’ that people have watched. I have people come up and sometimes they ask if I am me, and sometimes they ask if I am Sir Patrick Stewart - whom apparently is my counterpart in this reality, the actor who plays me - and thus they sometimes want Shakespeare. Fortunately,” Jean-Luc’s eyes twinkled slightly. “I know a monologue or two.” “You have your very own time machine though? That’s quite fascinating. Every time I have had experiences with time travel it has been due to naturally occurring phenomenon like temporal distortions or energy rifts and the like... Did you build the time machine yourself?” Doc paused for a moment in thought as he considered what Jean-Luc was saying. He hadn’t yet searched out any other information about his counterpart, here in this world, other than to find out his name. At first glance this Christopher Lloyd seemed like a very different person - a life in Hollywood was not one that Doc ever would have imagined for himself. It was odd, having a doppelganger who looked exactly like him and yet was probably not really much like him at all. He wondered if they would ever have cause to meet. “You’ve actually traveled through time by entering a warp in the space time continuum? They really exist?” Doc’s eyebrows traveled up into his forehead as he was almost instantly distracted by this new, fascinating, information. “That’s incredible, how on earth did you survive the process? My time machine was my own invention, which took years for me to make - it never occurred to me to try using naturally occurring phenomenon.” Doc tilted his head with a wry grin. “Not that the late 20th century had the space travel technology to take me anywhere near an existing distortion in the first place, even if one had been identified.” “They do,” Jean-Luc stepped forward as the person in front of him stepped forward. “Other occurrences have been because of an entity known as Q. I suppose the best way to describe him is as an alien trickster of sorts. He delights in creating situations to bewilder, baffle, and test humans, and however narcissistic it may sound it seems particularly delights in doing so to me. When I first arrived I thought that Q was involved as it seemed precisely the sort of thing that he would do, but Q is not nearly so quiet as this and I’ve been here a good many months, so I have mostly come to the conclusion that Q has nothing to do with this anomaly.” The line moved forward again and Jean-Luc realized he was next to order. He turned to look at Doc Brown. “Let me treat you to the drink of your choice and if you’d like I can walk things back to your apartment and I’ll tell you a bit about our previous situations with time travel - to the best of my understanding. I’m afraid Lieutenant Commander La Forge, the Enterprise’s Chief Engineer, might be better suited to explain some of it, but as he is not here I shall have to do. I would be interested in hearing a bit more about your own time machine as well,” Jean-Luc offered Doc a smile and turned to order his own tea before waiting for the other man. Perhaps the best part of this place was that the people who arrived never failed to be potential friends - something that seemed likely to be completely beyond Q’s understanding and yet another strike against the theory of Q being involved in the mysteries of the tesseract. |