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allmhadadhOnce everything was finished with the repairs, and all had quieted down, Scotty had tagged along loosely with the... the... other Scott, the unknown element, building a little bit of a mental map of the impossible ship he was on, in an impossible time and an impossible universe. They didn't talk, aside occasional repair suggestions, and he acted as mostly a shadow and assistant. And then, after that, he was escorted to some guest quarters on Deck 6 and firmly told not to cause any more trouble.
And he listened, and obeyed.
That other impossible Scott had looked tired; not so much in how he moved, even though there was some obvious soreness, but mostly in some note in his voice and some underlying expression on his face. For what little Scotty could make himself look at the man (and all of that fighting the instincts that screamed for him to run), he could read him fairly clearly. At least, so far.
He just couldn't grasp it. The man had the same surname, but looked very little like his mother's side of the family. He looked far more like the other side of the equation -- blue eyes, and lighter hair; not the jet black hair that hearkened to ancient Irish roots, and that Scotty had inherited very directly from his mother. There were enough common lines and expressions that the relationship was undeniable, and enough sheer uncertainty in where this other Scott fit that Scotty was left both trying hard to figure it out and almost desperately not wanting to all at once.
It made those quarters on Deck 6 feel painfully confining. He didn't stay in them for all that long.
He didn't go get into trouble. If anything, he went far out of his way to be a model human being. He took his borrowed toolkit and pulled up the repairs list -- whoever had these quarters before him had broad access to the systems and no one had yet revoked them -- and picked out a slew of repairs he knew he could do. He hadn't had more than a few semesters in the University of Aberdeen's Engineering School, but he had enough to have the principles all in his mind. He also was a fine mechanic. And finally, he'd gotten a bit of additional training in Basic.
So, he picked fairly simple repairs, the kind universal knowledge would be able to handle, and took back to the corridors. He didn't bother to really gauge the time he was out; he lost himself in the work, finding his way from point to point. A door control here, a lighting system there. Small stuff, but it'd take some weight off of the engineering staff. Tightening screws, rewiring a bad connection in the control panel of a comm. Busy work.
He didn't know how long it took, and lost track of time long since, but by the time he cleared his self-appointed duty assignment, he was mildly exhausted and genuinely starved, and mercifully not thinking too much about the things he couldn't bear to look at in whole. He went back to the guest quarters.
The replicator thing bothered him on levels he couldn't put to words. It was... like magic. It just made things, no ingenuity required, no physical effort. No growing food, or farming it, or raising it, or fishing for it. It just made it. He supposed it could probably make anything, if it could do that. That led to more troubling thoughts: Why fix broken things, then, if you could just instantly make new ones? And what happened to broken things when no one needed to repair them anymore?
He raised a lip at himself, at the stab of heartsickness that accompanied that thought; gave himself a mental slap as a reminder that none of those thoughts would change things. His business was surviving, by the minute if necessary. A tall order; he was a non-entity out of time, with no paperwork, no identification, no bank account, nothing to his name at all.
If he even had a name left.
It was a very small mercy when he drifted off with his head down on the desk, unable to make himself eat anything from a replicator because the thought alone made his stomach twist on itself, sore from fighting with guards and landing on his ass from a decent height, dressed in clothes that weren't his, from someone who shouldn't exist.
Small mercy, but he would take it and did.
And he listened, and obeyed.
That other impossible Scott had looked tired; not so much in how he moved, even though there was some obvious soreness, but mostly in some note in his voice and some underlying expression on his face. For what little Scotty could make himself look at the man (and all of that fighting the instincts that screamed for him to run), he could read him fairly clearly. At least, so far.
He just couldn't grasp it. The man had the same surname, but looked very little like his mother's side of the family. He looked far more like the other side of the equation -- blue eyes, and lighter hair; not the jet black hair that hearkened to ancient Irish roots, and that Scotty had inherited very directly from his mother. There were enough common lines and expressions that the relationship was undeniable, and enough sheer uncertainty in where this other Scott fit that Scotty was left both trying hard to figure it out and almost desperately not wanting to all at once.
It made those quarters on Deck 6 feel painfully confining. He didn't stay in them for all that long.
He didn't go get into trouble. If anything, he went far out of his way to be a model human being. He took his borrowed toolkit and pulled up the repairs list -- whoever had these quarters before him had broad access to the systems and no one had yet revoked them -- and picked out a slew of repairs he knew he could do. He hadn't had more than a few semesters in the University of Aberdeen's Engineering School, but he had enough to have the principles all in his mind. He also was a fine mechanic. And finally, he'd gotten a bit of additional training in Basic.
So, he picked fairly simple repairs, the kind universal knowledge would be able to handle, and took back to the corridors. He didn't bother to really gauge the time he was out; he lost himself in the work, finding his way from point to point. A door control here, a lighting system there. Small stuff, but it'd take some weight off of the engineering staff. Tightening screws, rewiring a bad connection in the control panel of a comm. Busy work.
He didn't know how long it took, and lost track of time long since, but by the time he cleared his self-appointed duty assignment, he was mildly exhausted and genuinely starved, and mercifully not thinking too much about the things he couldn't bear to look at in whole. He went back to the guest quarters.
The replicator thing bothered him on levels he couldn't put to words. It was... like magic. It just made things, no ingenuity required, no physical effort. No growing food, or farming it, or raising it, or fishing for it. It just made it. He supposed it could probably make anything, if it could do that. That led to more troubling thoughts: Why fix broken things, then, if you could just instantly make new ones? And what happened to broken things when no one needed to repair them anymore?
He raised a lip at himself, at the stab of heartsickness that accompanied that thought; gave himself a mental slap as a reminder that none of those thoughts would change things. His business was surviving, by the minute if necessary. A tall order; he was a non-entity out of time, with no paperwork, no identification, no bank account, nothing to his name at all.
If he even had a name left.
It was a very small mercy when he drifted off with his head down on the desk, unable to make himself eat anything from a replicator because the thought alone made his stomach twist on itself, sore from fighting with guards and landing on his ass from a decent height, dressed in clothes that weren't his, from someone who shouldn't exist.
Small mercy, but he would take it and did.
