Montgomery Scott is a miracle worker (warp_speed) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-05-06 12:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, gaila, james kirk, montgomery scott |
"We're all contaminating the timeline."
Who: Kirk, Scotty, Gaila
What: destructive playdates, the Narada sculpture gets disintegrated, and paradox talks & timeline pollution.
When: Yesterday
Where: Mad Monty's
Rating: PGish
Status: Complete
Jim had grabbed his phaser, and a set of clothing that didn't matter. He set out the clothing for his date with Janice later, and then hopped into his Chevy and sped to Scotty's. Bros before hos and all that, it was playdate time! He careened into the garage, took aim at a piece of scrap metal and vaporized it.
He gave Scotty the biggest shit-eating grin you ever did see.
Not too far into the garage! There was stuff everywhere, thanks to the secret project! Not that Scotty noticed or had time to open his mouth and tell Kirk to stop being rambunctious in his engineering domain because it was playdate time! He even went \o/ and held up the plasma cutter and sliced right through a nearby piece of metal tubing that was left over from the build. Shit-eating grin of Scottish proportions? It was being lobbed right back at Kirk, most massively.
"All right, aye, there's scrap in the corner but ye have tae let me vaporize something." He practically tap danced in front of Kirk holding out the plasma cutter like TRADE NAO PLS.
Seriously, these two were the precise two out of the entire crew that should NOT be given any form of weaponry or things that go BOOM, considering Scotty's unnatural love of photon torpedoes and his prime universe counterpart had been quoted as saying, "The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank."
Jim pumped his fist into the air, set the phaser to stun - for safety- then the trade happened, "Okay what can I cut through?"
A plasma torch was the closest thing to a lightsaber.
"There, uhh...wait, look here," Scotty had the phaser in one hand and was pointing out the adjustment settings on one side of the cutter. "Just slide that there and punch that button. Simple as that. I mean, there's really a setting for the aperture but, might as well just wide-beam the bloody thing and start slicing. Is this on stun?"
Scotty started looking around like he lost something. Of course he nodded over toward a big scrap pile like Kirk could have at it.
"Yes, I didn't a premature evaporation when I was handing it over." Jim took the torch and flipped it on. He cackled with glee and attacked the scrap pile like it was a pile of Klingons.
Scotty let out a howl of glee, sighted Porthos and fired. We're sorry, puppy, but you've not only been particalized and bounced around the universe based on a dare due to a heated argument, but now you've been stun phaser gunned.
Porthos yelped and flopped over. His little paws twitched.
This is why Scotty shouldn't have pets.
"Och! Brilliant! I need tae find that cat that's been yeowling about in the middle of the night. I'll teach it a lesson!"
This is why Scotty shouldn't be around animals. Ever.
"Hehehehe...." Jim torched a long piece of tubing, and it fell over with a huge clang.
"It's tae bad this dinnae have a lower setting, because imagine if ye could point it at someone's legs as they were running away, take aim, and fire so they just go flopping over..."
Already, Scotty was looking like he wanted to crack it open. He was looking it over, while simultaneously nudging Porthos with the toe of his boot. He'll make it a uber sandwich and give it some scotch later to make up for it.
"Well I've burnt toast with it? Close enough. Sort of like a flesh wound." Kirk looked around, and then started to weld something. Like art.
"If I can get it to point-five for a setting, would ye let me try it on you?"
"No."
"Well why not? It's not like it'd do more than stun you. All I need is for you tae run away and I'd just shoot you in one leg." Scotty shrugged like it was no big deal. "I'm sure it'd wear aff, sooner rather than later. Speaking of which, how long's the stun last? The doggie is goin' tae wake up, isnae he?"Oh, sure, NOW you wonder how long the stun is and get worried. Pffft. Engineers and tinker junkies.
Porthos' feet were still kickling. Kirk looked up from his junkyard art project, "I'm not sure, depends on the level of stun and the size of the subject. Probably a good 15 minutes?"
"Huh. That seems about right, in me brain at least, for a human size...so I'll give him thirty minutes and then start to worry." He tilted his head and gave the dog one last nudge with his boot. "Either he's having a doggie dream or his neural pathways are havin' a fit."
And off Scotty went, cranking the setting up to vaporize and getting rid of some old parts that were of no use at all, in the corner. "Ha! I need one of these."
"Maybe a little of both." Jim appeared to actually be making something. It vaguely resembled some sort of ship, all lines and angles and jagged tendrils. The Narada was coming back to life, without him really trying.
That being something that Scotty hadn't dreamed about or remembered yet, so when he did look over from getting the phaser opened so he could poke around inside it, he just grinned like it was pretty awesome looking.
"Who knew you had a bright future in modern art sculpture. Certainly not me," was all the Scotsman said, before his attention was focused on the phaser again, with plenty of HMMM's and AH HA's going on.
Jim squinted at his work, "Yeah...It feels familiar." It needed something more, he was certain it had been in a dream but he couldn't remember right now, so he concentrated on welding the mess together.
Gaila, meanwhile, was staying out of their way. It was safer. She descended the stairs to leave them super sammiches, then ran out the door, "I'll get you guys something to drink!"
Scotty waved and thanked her because yay sammiches and drinks! And tinkering! Huzzah for particle weaponry! It was only after she was gone that Scotty belatedly suggested, "Ye might not want tae overdo it, or it's goin' tae look like a big spikey mess. Hard tae make sense of...well, if it's modern, it's not goin' tae make sense anyway, tae be honest."
Scotty was just not into art anyway, because for him, art involved engines and things that went boom, which were the prettiest things in the known universe. Besides green girls from other planets.
"I'm not overdoing it, I'm making it how it's supposed to be," Jim replied. "It's.. a something. It has to be the something. I think its a ship."
"How could that be a ship?" Scotty stopped in the middle of his phaser inspection and took a seriously hard look at it. "In order tae hold up anything with a hull split up like that, it'd have tae be bloody immense."
He was taking into account momentum and force and maneuverability, and just where would the decks be laid out on that thing? Egads.
"Bet it had some interesting shielding," he finally said with a shrug. "If it's really anything resembling a ship."
"It was huge," Jim muttered. He stopped working, and sat back. He scratched at his head, "Powerful. Wiped out dozens of ships." It was becoming clearer now.
Scotty watched and couldn't help - being the hands on and practical sort - but wonder if maybe throwing one's self too much into those dreams was a bad idea, because it might lead to flight's of fancy. This was mainly fueled by the fact that he couldn't recall a thing about a ship like that. Not yet, at least.
"I havenae seen anything like that, but it's possible I simply didnae remember it. Yet. I mean, it'd have tae be huge, depending on what sort of engines it'd have and..." He went off about collectors and particles and shields and structural integrity when moving through space at high warp speeds and it probably sounds like technobabble, so thank gods & goddesses for this summary.
"It was from the future. It was the ship that killed my father." Kirk fired up the torch again, a grim look on his face as he started to tear into it, cutting it, burning it, kicking at the metal.
Well? He was chalking it up to a form of therapy. Every man had to have his moment of revenge to get things out of their system, so Scotty said nothing other than to scrunch up an eye, and let Kirk have at it. He felt a bit like he had on the Enterprise's bridge and was left watching a one-sided fight all over again.
After all, in his big Scottish book of do's and don'ts, one of the biggest dont's was messing with people's families. So there.
Kirk even rage-screamed a little bit, kicking the rubble into another pile and firing the torch up to maximum strength to melt the "narada" into slag!
That's okay. Scotty momentarily winced, outright, and pieced the phaser back together once he got an idea of how it worked and what made it tick. He figured that he could vaporize the slag out of existence. Or maybe just...yeah, he had probably a better idea. Someone else should do the honors.
Once he was done and when Kirk appeared to be approachable, Scotty made his way over, elbowed Kirk in the arm and held the phaser out to him, with a warning. "It's set all the way up. You might as well get the last word in edgewise with what's left of that ship."
Jim's fingers closed around the phaser, then he took aim, "Stand back." Zzzzzaaaap!!
Scotty figured it was really not the time to argue or debate, so he simply did as he was told, hands on his hips, watching with raised eyebrows.
The slag of metal disappeared, leaving only a smoking mark in its place.
"...well that's a spot that's never coming out," Scotty remarked, and then he reached out, and carefully took his plasma cutter back like the playdate was over, and Kirk might hurt himself or others if he kept wagging around tools meant for slicing through...umm...pretty much anything. It was his baby, after all. He didn’t let other people touch it, so Kirk got Special Privileges(tm).
Sad thing was that it may have been somewhat therapeutic, but Scotty was pretty sure it didn't make Kirk feel any better. After all, it wasn’t like he was confronting the real thing. Which was probably the reason that Scotty had tilted his chin down a bit, pressed his lips together into a thin line, and was looking at Kirk in a profoundly apologetic way. There might have been a wee bit of a tiny wince in there, too.
"Thanks." Jim clapped a hand on Scotty's shoulder, "I feel a bit better, actually."
The Scotsman shrugged that shoulder and smiled a little, before saying, "Well, aye, it's not the real thing. But I’m glad it helped, a wee bit? I think."
He shook his head, "No, not the real thing, but I get the impression we got to do that on a large scale. I remember that dream."
"Was I there, because I cannae recall that part," asked Scotty. "Please tell me that I dinnae die? That'd be a wee bit disconcerting, ye know. Ice cube, nearly drowned, nearly blenderized, captured, then dead. Bad six months, all around."
He remembered everything else though, just not the part with the Narada and anything to do with the Earth being actually attacked.
"You were there." He rubbed the back of his neck, "I think you saved our lives. Something about ejecting the warp core and riding the shockwave like a body board."
"Well, aye, that's not exactly standard procedure and....wow that'd leave us in a bit of a rough spot. Usually ye do that if it's overheating and try tae get as far away as ye can, after ejecting them, and hope ye dinnae get jostled about if it goes poof. But ye can have a lucky spot where ejecting cools the core and go back an' get it, though if they detonated, fat chance there...." Scotty furrowed his brow, thinking on it, because he did remember his training and all the work he did on mining ships before. "Did I eject all of them, then? Wait, why would I even do that? What required a shockwave....och, were we caught in a gravity well? That'd do it. Hypothetically speaking, that'd bust us right out, but that's just that. A hypothetical theory."
Scotty paused for a moment and raised his eyebrows WAY up.
"Ye mean I did that and it actually worked? Well, that's brilliant. Well done, other me that probably is actual me!"
He even gave himself a pat on the back. With the hand that wasn't holding the plasma cutter.
"The ship was about three seconds from being torn to pieces," Jim clarified. "All of them. Yeah, same thing that destroyed Vulcan. It worked. Because you're brilliant."
Jim grinned at him, "You deserve the pat on your back."
"Wish I could remember it? Definite ego booster there, I'd imagine. But, if I got me hands on an actual ship, ye can bet yer arse I wouldnae let anything happen tae it. Even at the expense of the warp cores. The rest of you would just be borrowing it tae ride around in, as far as I'm concerned."
That's right and everyone else who isn't a red shirt who trespasses in the engineering decks? They're infringing on his territory.
"Well you are a certified genius, Mr. Scott." He really was starting to feel better. Thinking about the pewpewpewing of destroying that ship, and then the physical act of ripping apart the ship...
"Top of me class in the academy, lad. So I'd hope so." Scotty folded his arms over his chest and nodded like that was that. "Though I did go intae that rather late, as apparently I thought it wouldae been much more entertaining tae fix mining freighters for a while. Huzzah for practical application, I'd suppose."
It was just unfortunate that Montgomery Scott had an infraction record with quite a few marks against him. Whoops.
"Yet I found you on an ice-world. And I was the repeat offender." Jim smirked.
"That's simply because ye didnae have baws as big as I do, laddie, tae beam an admiral's dog aff tae Mars. The point wasnae that it didnae work, either, but that the attempt was made." If Scotty had more patience and was an instructor in an academy setting? He'd probably award a record amount of points and praise for someone trying to incinerate the moon and left a huge blight on the face of the damn thing, based simply on the fact that they had the guts to try it out.
"Oh, guts are sometimes everything," He replied, walking over and picking up a sandwich. "Takes guts to blow out the core."
"I think I'm quite mad to have suggested it, but if it saved the ship...not tae mention everyone's collective arse, then it needed done. Obviously. I hope I remember it, eventually. I’m betting that it was rather impressive."
Of course, he'd probably be remembering that if he had more hair, he looked simultaneously ready to pull it out, crap his pants, and maybe even puke just trying to come up with something on the fly that would actually WORK in a moment like that. But that's something he'll recall soonish anyway.
"Very impressive. I'm not sure how you pulled it out of your ass!"
Scotty just shrugged and gave the only excuse that seemed plausible, "Physics?"
"Well pulling anything out of one's ass would require physics."
"That's not what I meant, smart arse."
Jim grinned wickedly, "Doesn't matter. Involved physics."
Scotty rolled his eyes to the extent that it looked like they might get stuck that way. He also walked off to pick up the dog, letting it droop in the crook of one arm, twitchy paws and everything.
"Shame we cannae have the ship. Imagine how fun that'd be."
"We'd never come back to Earth," Kirk warned. "I'm not sure we want that."
"Technically speaking, lad?" Scotty wasted no time pointing out, giving the dog a little wakey-wakey bounce in his arm. "We dinnae belong here anyway tae begin nor end with. It'd be preferable if we went back tae our own times and places, actually. I'm sure someone's probably missing us, somehow or other. If we're unstuck from our own timeline or misplaced or the likes. Hate tae point that out, but aye, that's true. Makes one think, really."
Porthos yawned cutely, and licked at Scotty's face. He didn't seem perturbed at being stunned. It was like it happened all the time!
"Then we find a way to get back," Jim promised. "But I'd still like to have more of the pieces put together."
Scotty puckered up a moment and gave the dog some smooches like 'forgive me? aww you does forgives me!' Because, yeah, it did and had happened all of the time. It was nice to have a test subject, as long as the test subject didn't get hurt...and he has absolutely no comment on the transporter experiment which involves beaming the dog to an adjacent planet. Mmhm.
"Time travel, Kirk, that's hard tae do. I mean...technically, ye know...ship, enough power at warp, correct conditions...aye, then it's doable. You hit anything like warp ten and yer everywhere at once. You could get enough speed tae seriously foul up time itself, if ye hit warp and slung yerself around the gravitational pull of something massive, just for a bit of added oomph. Then again, it could kill all of us as well if one wee thing went wrong."
Scotty just shrugged and smiled in a way made it known he'd be sorry if that happened, but it'd also be pretty EPIC.
"One step at a time." He laughed, pointing at the engine.
"Aye, I know. I've got it so the engine might break warp one, but we need dilithium crystals tae make it go." Scotty shrugged, hugging the dog against him, protectively (for someone who claimed to hate pets). "It bothers me, tae? Thinking that I might have some actual family here that thinks it's me family, but it might not be. And me real evil sis is back in future Aberdeen, waiting tae kill me and stuff me full of Tunnock's tea cakes. Or have ye not thought on that? Because it's been plaguing me the precise second that I came tae terms with those dreams being something potentially real between the whole lot of us."
Then again the engine could just blow up, which was also a possibility. Ahem.
Porthos seemed very, very happy. Jim patted the dog absently, "Its like we have two of everyone. There's a Sam in my dreams, too."
"Sam?" Scotty questioned, and he looked a smidge disgruntled too for just a split second. "There'd better not be another me again, because if I get back there and there is, then I'm goin' tae insist we settle it with our fists. I've had enough of a time tryin' tae think on the whole there's original us somewhere, the us us that's where we came from, and the now us that knows about the us us that came where we came from, but dunnae know bout the original us. Enough tae melt brains, that is."
"My gay lover," Jim replied, straightfaced. "No, my brother."
"Ha! I was about tae ask if ye were serious." Scotty gave Kirk a very cheeky grin, before feeding the dog half of his sandwich. "See, that's what's worrying me. Me family here seems like a copy of what I had originally, but I remember me sis and everything there. I could imagine they'd be worried sick, if that's the case. I'll also be damned if I didnae finally get tae be an engineer on the ship of me dreams, and had that rug yanked out from under me feet. Someone's goin' tae pay.
"Anyway, I'm sure some sort of temporal anomaly happened tae cause this mess, like the spacetime continuum had a hiccup and the world reversed in on itself intae a parallel dimension...a junction point, or the likes."
Scotty was shutting up now because he was eating his half of the sandwich.
Jim had a thought, "Are we sure that we're not copies or clones? Or somehow sharing memories? Scotty, what if we show up and create a paradox?"
"Well, that's the problem. If we were in this place, we shouldnae have memories at all of other us filtering in. We'd be blissfully ignorant of it, which leads me tae believe that we had tae have previous knowledge and-or lived through it at some point or other, or this wouldnae be happening. See, there shouldnae be any blending. If anything, we're the paradox here because we have knowledge we shouldnae have and are contaminating this timeline with..."
Scotty simply held a hand out to the engine like it was exhibit a and then pointed at Jim's phaser like it was exhibit b.
"Goin' back technically to where we belong, as long as we keep to the directives where we aren't supposed tae be dredging things around intae places that arenae ready for it? It shouldnae do that much harm, as long as we went back tae the right spot. Or some time after the point of departure. Otherwise, if we showed up tae early, once we even figured out a way tae get back? That could cause a wee bit of a overlap tae happen, which would mess up things further when whatever occurs tae cause our original departure here. I mean, what if we didnae know what the catalyst was and warned ourselves when it was tae late? Because, ye see, then there'd be the potential for two of us here, and for history to repeat itself, only tae keep right on adding intae the mess. It'd cause a causality loop, ye know, a predestination paradox."
Scotty sighed and took another bite out of his sandwich, chewing while looking thoughtful, because he was wondering if the world could contain at least two Captain Kirks in one place.
"What about the other people having dreams?" Jim pulled out his phone and paged through a few things, "This Stark guy built some kind of reactor. We're all contaminating the timeline."
"Cannae say, depends on how much is done, I'd suppose. Us simply being here has contaminated things, tae be honest. I mean, do ye not remember the classes they had on this or did ye sleep through them all?" Scotty suddenly questioned, because he could remember all the notes he took and precisely how many vending machine pouches of pretzels he'd burned through to stay awake through lectures, with a perpetual hangover. And he still retained the knowledge of it all.
"Anyway, we've fouled it up already, simply being here. Theoretically, what might have happened originally, here, further doon the path? It couldae derailed. It depends on how much of this stuff gets out tae the public. Ye know the minute we make it tae the moon in under a minute once we get out of the atmosphere, they'll want tae know how. There's another leak right there, along with that reactor mentioned on the valar net. Ye cannae make everyone take a vow tae keep quiet, because there's opportunistic people wanting tae make money aff things. Or those who'll gloat a wee bit, such as meself being tempted tae do that, because of NASA. Really. They're practically a museum full of the equivalent of metal dinosaurs in our timeline, ye know. I can damn well see why."
"I haven't remembered much about school." Jim shook his head, "Giant red monsters? Check. Shooting a Romulan? Check. School, not so much. So if its too late, we might as well try to make the world a better place, right?"
"Agreeing tae a crazy plan involving the rings of Saturn? Aye, vaguely remember that bit. Transwarp beaming like a crazy arse? Aye. I've got the formula in me head still. Snow planet? Aye. Fixing mining ships? Aye. Admiral Archer? Starfleet and university, all of Scotland the way it was then? Aye. Look," Scotty stopped himself because he could go on and on. He set the sandwich and the dog down and held up both hands like they needed to halt, immediately. "The longer we're here, the worse it could get. There might not be people here, having dreams, that are all good or, once they remember shite, are goin' tae have the best of intentions. Just pointin' that out, ye know."
Jim eyed him, like 'gee Scotty, did you have to mention bad people?' Then he folded his arms, "I hope we get more phasers, then."
"That'd take a wee while tae make more of those things. Maybe we'll get lucky and have them pop up for the rest of us. Until then, mind that one ye have got there, and dinnae let anyone get ahold of it. It could cause trouble."
Scotty imagined what else could happen if he did manage to throw some photon torpedos together. Even if he really really did want to. So, so badly.
"If there was some way tae send them all back where they belong as well, different story. But we'd have tae figure out why any sort of anomaly happened, tae begin or end with. Because I'm willing tae bet it was a real intergalactic cluster fuck that day."
Too bad they didn't have replicators. Boo.
"Maybe its a convergence of universes," Jim mulled. " I really need to talk to Spock."
"I'd like tae as well, but...ye know, I dinnae want tae be a bother, either. Seems like he wouldnae appreciate it much." Scotty quickly added, "Of course, yer a bigger bother than possibly anyone on the planet, and he hasnae snapped again on you. Yet."
Yet another vote of confidence. Enjoy, Kirk!
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Jim replied, dryly. "I'll see about setting up another group playdate."
"Brilliant. I'll make sure there's a fresh pile of scrap for ye tae kill," Scotty said with a huge grin, like he had no problem giving that vote a resounding yes, at all. "Are ye goin' on yer real date now, you sly devil?"
"I do need to get cleaned up..."
"Yeah, you stink." Gaila threaded her arms around Scotty from behind, "Both of you do, what the hell did I miss?"
"I dinnae stink. I'm not the one who broke a sweat and I showered this morning. It was Kirk that destroyed a ship. As for what ye missed, is that we're all goin' tae implode this universe simply by breathing," Scotty explained, though he did give Kirk a thumbs up for good luck.
Jim saluted them, and the jogged out, and back to his car, which then peeled out like a mothafucka! Gaila watched him go, and then pinched her nose, "Sorry, still stinks. What's this about imploding?"
"I dinnae stink that bad. It's not even that warm in here." He pinched his t-shirt out and gave it an experimental sniff. "Oh, we were just talkin' about how we dinnae belong here, and everything we're doin' could contaminate the timeline, such as engines, phasers, reactors...and that, ye know? How everyone who may have converged here, might not necessarily be good. We'll probably find out who they are when people start goin' bonkers and destroying things. How was yer day, lovey?"
"I made money? I think I'm going to keep Maeglin on. He's a good listener and he's not scaring anyone away."
"Is that the gloomyfaced lad? He's a bit creepy, dinnae ye think?"
"I don't mind?" Gaila smiled, "He's kinda cute."
Scotty turned just enough to give her a stink-eye stare.
"I'm allowed to look! Just not sample!"
"Fine, then I'm allowed tae look, also." Which he's not going to, he's just saying that.
"Fine! Look!" With that she handed him a big jug of bourbon, "Its not selling, so you can has."
"Maybe I will." He won't, but he's just being stubborn. He took the jug and grinned, right before he hugged it to him with both arms and gave her a big thank you kiss right on the cheek. "I can has bourbon. Thankie, lass!"
"Consider it a peace offering." She grinned at him.
"For what? Why's it a peace offering? What'd ye do?" He was grinning but staring at her warily, at the same time.
"For all those fights we've had."
"But that's been a while since we've had one. I hadn't even thought on it. Or worried about it either, for that matter. Wait? Och! It has been a while since we had one. I didnae get you a present. Um...here, have this...dog."
He nudged the dog toward her, since they were getting along better too. If the dog didn't comply then he'd have to give her some scrap metal or something nearby, because he didn't know anything about the peace offering make-up-for-fighting gifts. And she had gotten him one but he hadn't gotten her anything.
Porthos dog!flailed, obviously not in the mood to comply. Gaila didn't look particularly like she wanted the present, either.
Scotty noted the dissent and reached out, grabbed...what looked like his idea of a artistic lump of metal that was not rusty, and held it out to her.
"Thanks."
"Yer welcome." Eyedart.