Daily Weekend Fan Fiction
Untitled Ode to the Rez ! Kaia kicked her flip flops into the dirt near home plate. Easier to run without them she reasoned. The yellow plastic bat felt weightless in her grip as she steadied her gaze at younger brother Keenum on the mound. He looked impatient, eager to strike her out by scaring her into thinking she’d be hit by each pitch. Grandma’s laugh broke his concentration. “Ahhahaha come on now Keenum! You ain’t no Randy Johnson! Just throw the ball to her! Hahaha.” Keenum smiled at Gram, sitting in her folding chair in the shade, wound up his lil arm and threw his next pitch. It was a ball, barely making it to the plate. It hit the ground and rolled through a patch of grass left of home plate. Kaia laughed too. “Gram called your bluff”. She threw the baseball back to Keenum and readied her stance, but became distracted by the only outfielder sitting down. Two and a half year old Mariah was rolling her head back and forth talking to the ants nearby. “Mariah!” Kaia yelled as the pitch flew past her knuckles. Gram and Keenum burst into laughter. “Strike one!” Gram chuckled, “see, Mariah’s a good outfielder, caught you slippin’.” Kaia smiled at Gram and pointed at Mariah. “Look at her out there!” She was now log rolling over the ant friends she’s made, giggling as they scurried from her crushing weight. Keenum collected the ball and hurried back to the mound, proud of himself and his teammate. Kaia was ready for his next throw and swung her hardest. Her bat connected with the well-loved baseball solidly. Its red stitching split
apart a bit more to reveal a flap of leather. The ball changed course in mid-air and sailed toward neighbor Dave’s cabin. Keenum and Kaia ran as hard as they could. Keenum disappeared into the shade of some trees in Dave’s yard and Kaia rounded second base with the dusty clay fluffing up in a trail behind her. Gram was overjoyed, hands in the air and hollering with laughter. Her right foot kicked over the iced tea she had set by her chair and Gram had yet to notice. Mariah looked up from her ant rolling, but realizing Gram wasn’t yelling for her, returned to her business. Kaia rounded third with Keenum nowhere in sight. She continued pumping her arms til she’d run all the way through home and passed her sandals. She slid them back on to go hunt for the ball with Keenum. Gram was still catching her breath and clutching her hands over her chest. “That’s my girl Kaia! What a hit!” and with an extra deep breath added “Wow, what a hit!” She watched her grandchildren search through the tall grass and shade of neighbor Dave’s yard. Gram stretched and stood up to reach for her tea, but seeing it wasn’t where she’d left it, laughed. “Oh, haha! I was really losing it.” “Mariah! Come here baby girl, let’s help brother and sister find the ball so we can go home for lunch.” Mariah didn’t leave her ants on the ground until Gram scooped her up. “Look at you all dirty, Momma’s gonna shake her head when she sees you child!” Mariah wiggled in Gram’s arms to get down. “Cookies?” she asked. “Ants might want cookies!”
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Remember my name.
Wesley the Crusher! ! ! God, I hate fucking Romulans... ! !
He double checked the readings one more time just to make sure. !
! Another fucking decoy... goddamn pointy eared sons of bitches. ! ! “Computer open up security channel Crusher 11049”! ! “Channel open”! ! “Lt. Crusher to Captain Ali”! ! “This is Ali”! ! “Captain it was another decoy”, I’m not reading anything, but if I had to guess I’d say there is a cloaked Warbird within 1 light year. Does the Titan’s sensors pick up anything”!
!
“No... but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Come back to the rendezvous point early. We still need to pick up Taylor and Nguyen. So we can’t meet you till tomorrow,
but it’s best you leave the border now. We’ll discuss this more when you are back”!
! “Aye Aye”! ! “Computer close channel”! !
Even when we report this, the federation isn’t going to do shit about it. Well better write all this down, I’ll probably barely remember this in the morning. !
!
He finished his report, in the great detail Wesley Crusher was known for. Walked back to the storage unit, removed the silvery case... His hands were already beginning to shake... He could feel the butterflies moving up from his upper stomach and into his throat. The excitement was almost too much. Almost. !
!
He entered the 24 digit code. The next 11 seconds passed as they always do. He went through the ritual of rolling up his sleeve and examining his arm. The final beep, meant that all systems were off. As he lifted the top away, his emotions almost got the better of him. He removed a cylinder of the milky white substance, loaded it into his hypospray, set it for 10 CCs. A smaller dose than usual, but it had been a while since his last spray. He pressed the hypo tight against his skin, and tssssss. It was in.!
!
With the beta the rush comes on quick, but it passes quickly, when it comes to varieties of Ketracel-white the beta was his favorite. As usual his thoughts began to scramble quickly. If you asked him to decribe the initial rush, and for some reason he decided to answer he would describe it much like being an ameba in a turbulent sea. Helpless but oblivious to danger, a passive observer floating in thought. He would reach consciousness via a path unchosen by him, or at least the sober him. !
!
As he fell deeper into this sea he could sense something moving to the top. It was like a bubble rising in turbulent water, he followed it as it moved to the surface, then pop! !
! Oh shit I forgot to set course!! !
With his last grasp of the physical world he yelled “Computer set course Crusher 9, warp 3”!
!
A course heading he had entered earlier, for this purpose. He heard the warp drive initiate, and knew he’d wake up 2 light years from here. That was his last moment in reality. As his eyes began to see a palate of colors he faintly heard the words “...birds... decloaking”. He followed those birds through canyons of sandstone, with blue sky above and blue waters below, he lost track of which was which. The birds flew in a ring with there backs to the center, as if they were in a tunnel of gravity
pointing radially away from the center... The rest he would never recall. !
! ! !
He woke up soaked in sweat, and with a headache that would kill an Andorean. He was so hot and thirsty, and his lips felt cracked. It’s not supposed to be like this, I always wake up cold, did I reset the environmental controls. It’s so humid... what is that smell, why can’t I hear the hum of the ship? !
!
It took him far too long to realize that he was lying on his back in hot shallow mud on some planet with a most heinous Jungle. It took him even longer to realize that his scout ship was stuck in the branches 8 meters above and behind where he was lying. The trees here were huge, their limbs alone would put the trunks of the biggest north american redwoods to shame. His ship was stuck in a tree whose trunk was at least 30 meters in diameter, he couldn’t see the top, in fact he couldn’t see the sky. However, there was a significant amount of light coming through the large bluish green leaves, though none of it direct. !
!
He could tell that the aft door was open on his ship, he figured he must have opened the door and fell out after he crashed. Seemed reasonable enough. He supposed the ship began to have troubles at some point and he had
managed to pilot the ship to a M class planet during his “trip”. He’s never done anything that complicated while on the white in the past, but thats all he had to go one for the moment. !
!
Alright, the ship probably sent out a distress call, and the Titan should be here in 2-3 days, depending on how close I got to the rendezvous point. I just need to stay alive until then. I doubt I’ll freeze to death, and the lack of food shouldn’t be a problem for the next couple days. Water... I’ll need that.!
!
He looked up at the ship. His heart sank. Did I close the case? Fuck.!
!
He’d need to get up there anyway to get emergency water and a tricorder, but for the moment he only thought about the case. Both his and his mom’s career relied on that case being closed when Captain Ali shows up. He started to climb up the tree, well try to climb up the tree, he never really made it more that two meters. The bark was smooth, like Aspen, but soft. He could press on it and a clear liquid would come oozing out. It looked like water and felt like water. What the fuck is it? Should I drink it?!
!
His priority of hiding his stash seemed to vanish as he realized how much he was sweating. He needed water, he needed a lot of water. Certainly more water than was in the Star Fleet emergency kit. !
!
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! D !
Th us sa m
!
H be ne w w
!
A w na fa
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! He pushed the bark again, as the clear liquid dripped from his thumb he took a sip. It was bitter, and he immediately felt all the little moisture he had in his mouth retreat. The trees began to sway and the ground began to shift. He didn’t even have time to say “shit” before the meager contents of his stomach were lying on the dark brown dirt in front of his feet. The trees and ground stopped there dance and he was left with a burning sensation in his esophagus. !
! Don’t drink the tree piss, got it. What about the mud?! !
The ground was covered in patches of mud, he pondered using his shirt as a filter to remove the dirt, but when he saw the hoards of worms already feasting on his last meal, he thought better of it. !
!
He made the guess that since he was in what seemed to be a very wet area, there may be a larger body of water nearby. He grabbed nearby stick, it was withered and wrinkly, the moisture was completely removed, but it was not decayed.!
!
As he walked he made periodic lines in the dirt and mud, with such a dense canopy he had no other way to navigate. It took him no longer than 2 hours to find a fairly large river, it flowed slowly over large boulders, but
even here the canopy did not allow for a glimpse of the sky.!
!
The water was not cold, but it was not has hot as the air. It had a brownish haze to it. About a half meter of visibility. By this time his thirst was beyond painful, and reached the terrifying stage. He wondered if the water contained the same toxins as the tree. If it did, he was dead, if not he might be OK. Only one way to find out. He pooled in in his hands and took a sip.!
!
No barfing, thats a good sign. He drank as much as he dared (which was quite a bit_, and decided that he’d better boil it if he was going to drink more. !
!
After a short trek back to the crash site he fashioned a rope from some vines he found along the way. This made it easier to get his slightly overweight body up to the ship, but it was still a struggle of course. !
!
The ship was surprisingly in good shape, the main and backup power systems were offline but the majority of the ship was intact.! ! He closed the case which contained 30 or more cylinders of the white and tucked it back into the storage unit, it was too heavy to lug around and he wouldn’t need it for a few more days anyway. He found the emergency kit
and quickly gulped down 1 of the 2 liters of water he found inside.!
!
The tricorder made finding the river much easier this time, and the phaser would have made starting a fire quite easy, and there were plenty of dry fallen sticks from the squishy trees. However he couldn’t help but wonder about the fumes they might put off, and seeing as how he wasn’t in danger of hypothermia he decided to just use the phaser to heat up river water in the metal canteen he had already emptied. This worked quite well, the water boiled and cooled by the time he had finished the other bottle. !
!
The effects from the white were beginning to fade away, and the 40º C air temperature with no breeze was beginning to feel worse. As soon as he would empty a canteen he would phaser another and set it in a pool to cool. This was keeping up with his needs but his sweat wasn’t cooling him down, heat stroke could still be a factor here.!
!
Over the next few hours he took several dips in stream to cool off, while he set up the subspace beacon to notify the Titan of his location. He also took this time to check the water with the tricorder. Lots of minerals and some even vital, and plenty of organics but no toxins. He also checked the tree sap, which ended up containing a very large and complex organic molecule with no name in the
Star Fleet database. He made a note about it’s toxicity and left it at that. He used the medical hypospray to provide a dose of immune booster to combat any microbes that he swallowed with the unpurified water and a pain killer to combat his headache.!
!
Over 14 hours had passed since he woke up, and now the effects of the white were completely gone, and any detectable trace was already sweated out of his body. He ate a meal of Star Fleet rations almost unidentifiable as food. However with his belly off his mind he began to consider his surroundings.!
!
Aside from the worms and microbes he had yet to see any visible sign of animal on the planet so far. However the tricorder gave readings of hundreds of thousands of life signs. All above in the canopy. The density was so high that very little could be said, other than there were many more living creatures up there than down on the jungle floor. !
!
He also noticed that the amount of light coming through the trees had not yet changed, and the spectrum was similar to type G star. However there was an odd abundance of gamma rays. Not a dangerous level, but more than what could be accounted for by a solar-like star.!
!
Hours past and it never got dark, in fact the luminescence never changed by more than a few percent. Also the life signs never changed, yet he could hear no sign of life. It was silence up there. On earth, the noise level from birds alone would be mind numbing. He stared up at the canopy, his back to a Star Fleet emergency ground pad. What the hell is up there?!
!
His eyes lids had been growing heavier and heavier as the time past, but the silence began to give him the creeps. He could feel nothing but loneliness. Isolated yet surrounded by unseen life. This canopy could go up for hundreds of meters. He began to imagine how life evolved here, how they would survive, what traits they would pick up. He began to drift. His thoughts turned, he thought of his case in the ship in the tree. He thought about the white inside. Maybe he could get some more when he woke up. It would be out of his system before the Titan arrived. With this thought he let sleep take over. !
!
He awoke to the same silence he fell asleep to, and to the same amount of light. He checked the tricorder and 10 hours had past. He was soaked in sweat and his mouth was dry. The two canteens were gone, and so was the phaser. Fuck, well there’s something alive down here, and it was smart enough to steal the essentials without waking me up. At least it didn’t murder me.!
!
There weren’t any tracks left behind, which was amazing since there was so much mud around, must be even more intelligent. He took a few sips of river water and walked back to the crash site. As he approached the gigantic tree, a figure appeared from the opposite side. It took a moment to realize it was a Romulan female in an officer uniform. !
!
Now he was pissed, if a Romulan was here and stole his water bottle, but did not kill him, then there was a good chance he could get it back. She must be stuck here too, and just wanted my supplies, therefore diplomacy could work, and the best diplomacy when working with a Romulan is to tell them the way it is, they don’t like the truth and often times are intimidated by anyone who uses it. So Wesley yelled, “Hey you! Romulan! Did you take my shit?” She turned, made eye contact, and without hesitation she reached for her weapon, which happened to be a Romulan disrupter and not his phaser. Alls wesley could do was stare, like a moron who just realized he should have ran when he had the chance.!
!
Many people say that when faced with imminent death their life flashes before them, which is probably bull shit. As for Wesley, being the good junkie he was, he just thought about his stash of Ketracel-white, which would be a terrible and idiotic last thought to have, which was actually his next thought, because before the Romulan could raise her weapon she was hit by a bright orange
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beam originating from behind Wesley’s right shoulder. She was instantly vaporized. Ah my theif has come to save me. Wesley turned to his right and saw a tall half naked Klingon female holding his phaser. She signaled him to run, and so he did, and as they ran he could hear the sound of disrupter fire from behind, with an occasional green flash whizzing past.!
!
Weekend& Over&