allmhadadh | Entries tagged with cadet!scott

New Fairfield tended to be a quiet kind of place. Peaceful. A good place to be, if you happened to be displaced from your native timestream by about two centuries and some change.

The downtown was cute, and Scotty liked grocery shopping there. Mostly because there were a bunch of organic foodie types who lived in the area, and so that meant that the local stores had a decent selection of food that wasn't laden with all sorts of pesticides and whatnot. Today had been quiet, which was just a nice bonus.

Well. It was a nice bonus until he got the most eerie feeling, upon stepping out of the little grocery store. Inside, the clerk had barely been paying attention to the register, for watching the television. Outside, it was unnervingly quiet for an early Sunday evening. It took him a few moments to place it.

There weren't any birds.

Scotty adjusted the bag into his opposite arm, looking skywards.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Wait...

He saw a speck of something, up high. After another second, he identified it as a jetplane. Just a regular, run-of-the-mill passenger plane. As he watched, the trajectory of it seemed a bit off. And it seemed to be getting bigger, too, as it disappeared behind the treeline and hills.

A few more eerie moments later, he started around the corner for where the car was parked. Figured that right about now, he was quite keen on retreating back to their little time-share place off in the woods, and shaking off the strange sensation. He nearly ran into someone on the other side, and barely checked himself.

Fuck.

The person he ran into was... was bloody. Literally bloody. Scotty backpedaled automatically, eyes gone wide. "Are ye a'right?!" he asked, trying to see where the person was wounded.

The person let out the most horrifying sound from somewhere in its chest and lunged, even as the sound of a massive crash rumbled in the distance.

All it managed to catch was a whole cloth bag of organic food, and a glimpse of a black-haired Scot running for his life.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

When the sun is high
In the afternoon sky
You can always find something to do
But from dusk til dawn
As the clock ticks on
Something happens to you...

-Frank Sinatra, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

The thing that stuck most strongly with Scotty about October in New Jersey was the smell; it was musty and sort of sweet, in a way. He couldn't quite get over it. Then there were the leaves; even in the darkness of night, where there were bright enough lights, they showed in reds and golds and browns and still some greens.

Scotty had never given a whole lot of thought to environments, not like a naturalist would, but he decided that he really liked the fall.

Those leaves were slick underfoot, as they crossed through a band of trees between the walkway and where they parked. Between the trunks, he could see the lights of the New York skyline across the way, but mostly Scotty focused on the ground underfoot. It was chilly out; Harold had grabbed a blanket, and while Scotty wasn't feeling too cold, he still had to take some time to get genuinely readjusted to a non-climate controlled environment. He figured the blanket was to keep warm... dawn was a good ways off.

"Tourists really seem to like this view," Harold commented, offhandedly, as they crossed over to Sinatra Park. He didn't sound very enthusiastic himself, though. Scotty couldn't entirely blame him -- while Aberdeen hadn't had much of a tourist industry, San Francisco had been crawling with them, and they were a bit annoying as they swarmed the Academy grounds taking holos or pictures.

Still, he figured that the view might be nice. And they could spend more time getting to know each other. He was still trying to wrap his head around the change in time, in culture, in everything; it wasn't so much that it was hard, but it was just unreal in a lot of ways. And the world, at least so far, didn't look all that desperately different than the one he'd come from. Cars, instead of skimmers. Airplanes, instead of shuttles or a transporter pad. Not very eco friendly, but then, matter/antimatter energy hadn't been figured out here yet.

Just from what he had stored in his own head, Scotty could have probably put civilization a whole century ahead. But honestly, he really knew better, too. And some part of him didn't really want to; it would only be taking from them what they would someday earn on their own.

For now, though...

The Manhattan skyline, burning bright even at this late hour in oranges and the occasional splash of some other color, came into view when they stepped out of the trees, and Scotty had to stop.

Just for a moment to breathe.

It was dark again when Scotty woke up, half-twisted in sheets and still a little groggy. It actually took him a few moments of laying there in that darkness to get his bearings, and remember where he was, and remember when he was.

Right. New Jersey, North America. October of 2009. The year made no sense to Scotty at all; it didn't even remotely seem real. More like some very distant past where nothing particularly noteworthy happened, except that mankind had stagnated worryingly in the space race. Decades to go before World War III broke out. He would maybe be alive for that. Maybe.

He laid there for long moments, shaking off the last of the NyQuil sleep. His dreams had been troubled and surreal, and it appeared that when he was actually awake and not in shock, reality felt that way too. It was both immediately recognizable, and yet wholly different, all at once.

Harold was still asleep; Scotty got up quietly so as not to wake him up. He had to go make coffee, and he had to make sure blondie was still alive. The apartment smelled better, now, than it had when he'd crashed. And he found the light switch, pausing to eye it -- plain old electricity. A simple switch. Those still existed in his century, actually, at least in the universe he had come from. So, he turned the lights on and went to figure out the coffee machine.

Another fairly simple thing; it took him about ten minutes, and that was mostly because he had to figure out the coffee to water ratio.

After that, he went back and checked on Neil. Who was actually worryingly still. But he was breathing steadily and had a steady pulse, albeit not terribly strong, so apparently he wasn't dying. At least, Scotty dearly and sincerely hoped not: He might not have liked being kidnapped, called a pixie or having to deal with the madness, but he sure didn't want the nutjob dead.

There wasn't much to do after that. So, feeling like the Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or at least a vampire given that he was waking up at night, he sat down at the kitchen table to watch the coffee brew.

After hanging around the galley, and helping Harold with the yeoman bit, Scotty had very little else to do with himself. He didn't want to go back to his quarters, and he didn't really want to just hang around idle anymore. So, finally, he got ahold of some buckets, and some soap, and some rags and headed back to the Riviera. He might not get to sleep with her tonight, but he could make up for that with some TLC.

He eyed the black Riviera for a long moment, a sort of half-sad look, half-still-in-awe, and then pulled his shirts off, setting them aside. There was little point in getting them soaked. And then, knowing that it probably wouldn't make up for his absence (at least in his own mind), he turned his attention to washing the car.

At least whenever Len came back, she'd look her very finest.

I realized clearly that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him close in my arms as if he were a little child; and yet it seemed to me that he was rushing headlong toward an abyss from which I could do nothing to restrain him... His look was very serious, like some one lost far away.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

He could not bring himself to attend the party, so Scotty did what he was apt to do as both an apology and a gesture of gratitude, and sent food. He wasn't sure why he couldn't make himself attend, except that it seemed harder and harder to be here at all with each passing day. He was not unaware of his reasons for coming aboard this ship, when he would have stayed on Risa and lived under a pier or roamed the planet finding odd jobs. He was also keenly aware that those reasons had not truly mattered, in the end.

It matters, he had written on the bottom of Perera's theory, in ink, on paper.

Scotty now dwelled in a world where it seemed few things did. It was not that he didn't care about the people here; there were a number of them he liked and wanted to do well by. Captain Kirk -- both versions, even -- Commander Spock, Doctor McCoy. Len Nimoy, who owned the Riviera he had taken refuge in since leaving Risa. Harold Lee, who reminded him of the sand, and the suns, and his spot under the pier. He still carried his shell in his pocket with him, a hidden talisman. The people mattered, and he cared, but it didn't seem to be enough to overcome the oppression that had dogged him since leaving Risa, and had only lifted in dreams of the road.

He felt trapped. Like the car, like something boxed into a cage. It didn't matter if the cage sailed the stars -- he had no room to run, no places to hide and become invisible; no pier to take shelter under, no warm sand. He had a beautiful car to visit, but she wasn't his either; her owner obviously loved her dearly, and Scotty quietly relinquished the building possessiveness of the Riviera he'd been gathering so long as he thought she was as lost as he was.

Regardless, he still went back to her; spent the rest of his day off on general maintenance and then cleaning. Scraping cruddy build-up off of her engine mounts with a wire brush, oiling door hinges. Then, he cleaned his own hands in the nearest public restroom and came back to wipe down her dash and interior, polish her up with a clean rag. He would likely not stay another night with her; he told her this. A quiet confession to a dash -- he loved her, and was grateful, but she was never his and her Len still needed and wanted her. But he would check on her and care for her while he could.

He stayed one more night, though. One more night smelling the miles and the road dust and the leather; smelling the years and distances. Some place for a dream.

He set his PADD to wake him up before the morning watch, then curled up in the back seat to go to sleep.

Scotty managed to get together the requested cat food fairly easily (and early); that was a matter of using scraps and turning it into a stew of its own gravy, then individually sealing each container. Then, still early, he got the note from Mister Nimoy; luckily, he was still in the galley. Given that it was his day off, though, he didn't mind it -- the busy work allowed him to actually do something, instead of sit idle with his own thoughts. So, he put in a work request...

To: Chief Engineer Scott (

amplenacelles)
CC: Assistant Chief Riley
From: Montgomery Scott (

allmhadadh)
On Behalf of: Leonard Nimoy (

len_not_spock)
Repair Request #: 10967-B
For: The replicator in Mister Nimoy's suite appears to only be able to produce variants of cat food. The galley is currently covering the meal requirements for him and those sharing the suite, but a request has been put in to have the replicator repaired. Thank you.

Once he sent that, he put together a breakfast tray for the suite, with a thermos of coffee and hot water (with tea bags), and three plates (the listed number of occupants) of basic eggs, bacon, toast and hashbrowns. The problem was, he couldn't seem to find anyone to actually deliver it; the galley was busy today. That just left him.

Wincing a little internally, though, Scotty made sure he had everything in hand (and it was quite a lot), the tray of food and drink on top of the flat crate of cat food, and made the somewhat long and carefully balanced journey to Nimoy's suite.

After he sent off the finalized initial concept to Harold, and dealt with a surreal and disturbing sort of message, Scotty went back to the Riviera. It must have said something that, even after his hiding spot had been repeatedly discovered, he still came back to it regardless. Frankly, it was the only place on this whole ship that he truly wanted to be.

He was beat. Still beat. He'd ground himself down handsomely between twelve hours a day on shift and more besides working on that concept; now that it was sent off, he would likely try to catch up on his sleep. So he crawled into the back seat of the Riviera, propped up on his pillow and burrowed under his blanket, flipping through commercial listings for Earth on his PADD. He didn't know if the place would still be there in this universe, or eighteen years after he had vanished, but he tried to find it anyway.

( His stomach felt a little like stone when he did find it. )

After a brief noncommittal message from the other Scott, and Scotty's equally noncommittal reply, he went back to work. He was just finishing up inputting the last of his concepts into the PADD, keeping the papers for himself. He wouldn't have paper for all that much longer; he was running out. But he kept every sheet aside those he gave away.

The final concept for the intuitive shielding system was based strongly on what Scotty understood of the Constitution-class in his own universe. Kirk had been right; this new Enterprise relied on far fewer shield emitters that ran a great deal more power, whereas the Constitution of his own universe had a far higher number of emitters, which output less power each, but that offered somewhat more flexibility and redundancy. Scotty's proposal, therefore, was to add between one hundred and two hundred new emitters to this Enterprise, all which were somewhat weaker than her native ones, but that would increase flexibility of her shielding system and allow for up to thirty percent of them to be taken out before her shields would drop below 100%, even if the loss occurred in one spot. One hundred was the minimum, but two hundred was the optimum.

He also included his equations on power curves and expenditures for all possible predicted numbers -- minimum and optimum and all in between -- and then finally proposals on where the new ones could be fitted to her hull and where and how they would link back to her main shield arrays, that distributed the properly modulated power. Mostly, he relied more on mechanics than computers for that part; simple stopgaps to avoid feedbacks and such.

His proposal for the intuitive shield system was therefore two-fold -- one to increase power and flexibility to the Enterprise's current system, and two, to make it more intuitive. That proposal was somewhat more simple; he proposed a set of ten processor units (four more than absolutely required, allowing for safety engineering and redundancy), which bridged external sensors to the shielding systems. Those would nearly instantly pick up trajectory readings from incoming fire and then send on that information to the shield arrays in order to boost power to areas that would be hit. Even at it's fastest, it was not a perfect solution, but it wasn't a bad one.

He also made certain that if the intuitive system blew, or even if external sensors blew, there were mechanical failsafes that would catch the power surge and automatically flip shields back to their default, non-flex coverage of the ship. And finally, he designed a push-button proposed interface that could be used manually by someone to redirect shields as fast as human hands could do it, in a last-man-standing scenario.

He did all of these on very little sleep, but he'd checked his work probably twenty times before he picked up his PADD and sent it all off to Commander Spock with a note:

Mister Spock:

Attached here are my initial concept proposals, including schematics, drafts, equations for curves and expenditures and projected differences between the current system and the proposed. If you could please make certain to check for any errors before I send everything to the captain, I would be very much in your debt.

-Scott

He pressed send with a little flip in his stomach, and then practically trembling with exhaustion, he crawled into the back seat of his Riviera, curled his blanket around himself, managed to whisper, "Night, lassie," to the car, and then tumbled hard into oblivion.

After a bit of very helpful advice from Commander Spock, Scotty headed onto his tech shift in Engineering. Of course, today it meant the same thing as yesterday: That there wasn't anything to be done aboard a ship that's just out of drydock. And that Riley (the native) gave him the same orders as before; namely speaking, to familiarize himself with the ship. He figured that he could do that at the same time he worked on the intuitive shielding concept.

Needless to say, sleep was something Scotty hadn't been spending a lot of time on. He sat with the Buick for his four hours, and then he came back after a bite of dinner to sit for a few more, working away with the light of a PADD and the steady scratch of pen on paper. He talked half to himself, half to the Riviera; occasional commentary on the differences between designs of the original Constitution-class and the new one here, sometimes just random notions that came to mind. When he was doing something that didn't require much thought, like copying numbers down, he hummed Welsh lullabies.

However, given that sleep wasn't something he was spending enough time on, and given that the Riviera was about the closest place he had to his own -- even belonging to someone else -- he ended up drifting off in the driver's seat, head back, eyes closed. Back to dreaming of the road.

Current Location: The Buick Riviera

The Enterprise was in top form, which pretty much meant there wasn't really anything for a low-rated technician to do, not even for four hours. Scotty reported, and Riley (the native) told him that he could just use the time to familiarize himself with the systems and work on updating his body of knowledge to keep up when they did need a quick repair tech. He hadn't seen his counterpart, though he knew the older Scott was around, but Scotty didn't seek him out. Just did his job, and since Riley never specified where, Scotty studied whilst sitting in the front seat of the Riviera.

He'd occasionally read out and comment on different things he studied, though the Riviera couldn't really answer. Just aimlessly speaking, for no reason other than to break the silence.

( Read more... )

He'd spent most of the night and into the wee hours manufacturing tools to work on a Buick Riviera, and had been fairly well tired by the time he'd gotten the serpentine belt tightened up properly. He didn't know the car front to back or anything, but mechanics were still mechanics. And some jobs took two sets of hands, including that; he'd still managed to make due with just one set. His own.

He had sat with the car for a little while after that, and then finally went back to his quarters on Deck 9, caught a nap, then woke up again to recreate his Cadet dress uniform for his own universe. He figured it was a uniform he'd earned the right to wear, and so he had.

Now, after that meeting, and after he changed back into his regular duty clothes, Scotty went back to the Riviera.

The problem with never having had a home was that it made it very hard to find someplace to retreat in safety; someplace quiet, someplace where you could let your guard down and trust that you wouldn't be hurt for the effort. He felt further from that simple ideal than he had even on Risa, and it hurt rather more than he expected. Especially when he was surrounded by any number of happy people, good people who he knew he should trust, and couldn't.

It was very little wonder that Montgomery Scott had spent most of his life in the company of machines; he had nothing to fear from them.

Therefore, it was little surprise as well that he found his way back to the anachronistic Buick Riviera, which was trapped aboard a ship it didn't fit on, surrounded by people who probably couldn't understand it, in a universe that didn't really have any place for it. He had a shift in the galley in the morning, which would give him something to distract him from this feeling, and a half-shift as a technician.

He crawled into the driver's seat, closed the door, wrapped his arms around the steering wheel and pressed his forehead to it with his eyes closed tight.

For now, a guy with a car and no road to drive.

( To: Chief Engineer Scott )

( To: Galley Supervisor Leah Lawton )

"The men where you live," said the little prince, "raise five thousand roses in the same garden — and they do not find in it what they are looking for."
"They do not find it," I replied.
"And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water."
"Yes, that is true," I said.
And the little prince added:
"But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart..."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Harold had said he'd wait in the transporter room, some steadier after he'd vented his anxiety and sorrows, and that left Scotty and the light of two early evening suns that would not sink into the sea before he was gone. And for his part, he stood under the pier and watched the water, in the pale gold sand that had served as something of a bed and something of a comfort, and which would not likely be disturbed by living feet again anytime soon.

Scotty was good at finding hidden spaces, where a whole city could flow around them and yet not touch them, and this spot under the pier was one. Above, the crowds of tourists chattered or talked or played or relaxed over top his head on thick wooden beams. Below, he was insulated, and separated, and though he was only here for three or four days, he had grown attached to this place. He had bled here and laughed here, and he had been able to retreat here, and it was his own for the time that he had spent. Through the eyes of a man, it had been a fairly sensible shelter. Through the eyes of a child, he wondered if it would remember him; would miss him, as no adult would ever imagine such a space having feelings.

They were silly thoughts, and he knew it, but they came unbidden anyway.

He had resigned himself to leaving long since, but the actual time of parting wasn't made any easier by it. He called Aberdeen 'home', in truth, just because it was a useful tag. But he had never felt at home, not even there. He may have, with enough time, found that home here. But there was never enough of that.

He was certain he would never see this spot again, and he was likely correct. It would settle into some memory in the back of his mind, like the trail to Tennessee Beach and the Pacific ocean, and like the fireflies in the heavy blacks and greens of Georgia. He would continue on, into the some unknown future. He took something small from this place; a pretty pink and orange and blue and purple shell. He thought, too, he'd left something of himself here; childish dreams of living forever under a pier, Crusoe or Pan.

With a breath to steady himself, pushing down the childish sorrow, and the constant thrum of anxiety, he held his worldly possessions in one arm and his communicator in the other. And for a long moment, he closed his eyes; one last moment of sorrow to leave this place.

Then he opened them again and flipped open his communicator.

"Scott t' Enterprise. One t' beam up."

After the last of the party last night, Scotty took his food and bid a goodnight to Harold. From there, he went to grab his stuff from his locker and managed to catch a good shower before the public beach houses closed for the night, then change into his clean clothes. And, since he didn't have to worry about starving, he also finally picked up a comb. It took him about a half-hour to untangle his hair, in all. He hadn't properly combed it in a week, and it was apt to be uncontrollable even when it was neat, let alone when it wasn't.

But finally, after all of that, he went back to his spot.

His last night here. He still didn't want to leave. He still thought those plaintive, childish thoughts that he could be Robinson Crusoe or Peter Pan and just spend the rest of his life under a pier, scraping by, maybe building a small shelter under the eves of civilization. Scotty was only ever one step removed from the wilderness. Not even because he loved wilderness, but because he understood it and it meant not being around people. It meant he could live or die by his own hands.

Still, he had given his word. He hadn't heard back from the other Scott, but he still wasn't all that surprised by it. Man probably finally came to his senses.

He didn't sleep brilliantly, mostly because he was a little anxious and partly because he felt like he was mourning, but he was up with the suns and resolved to carry through on what he said he would. It wasn't easy; he kept having to jerk himself back on task, away from everything in him crying out to run.

The first thing he did was type up his proper transcripts into the PADD, including name, rank, serial number and everything else. He wasn't a member of this Starfleet, but he included all of his Basic Training information, included all of the classes he'd taken and scores -- universally above average -- and then the classes he'd already been released from in Command School thanks to his time at the University of Aberdeen, and his class-credits from those. He was, in his own universe, a first-year Command Cadet, but he was sure that wouldn't translate.

The second thing he did was draw up a contract. He wasn't ready to commit to being in this Starfleet; far from it, he wasn't even sure if he could commit to being in this universe. So, the contract he drew up was that, if accepted, he would work as a privately contracted civilian at a pay-rate of a crewman third class, answerable to senior warrant officers and commissioned officers, but not a member of the crew officially. He could, then, leave if it proved to be a bad idea. He would be able to wear his own clothes, but he would be under the command of everyone from senior warrant officer on up. It was the best he could do to honor both his own Starfleet, who he had made his commitment to, but likewise be fair to the crew of this starship and properly pull his weight, and to put himself under their code of conduct so long as he worked with them.

He read over it a handful of times, then send it off:

To: Yeoman Harold Lee, USS Enterprise
From: Montgomery Scott
Re: Contract Proposal for Captain Kirk
Attached: transcripts.doc, contract.doc

Yeoman Lee,

Herein is my formal request to join the crew of the USS Enterprise as a privately contracted civilian, as well as my qualifications for such a position. Please forward this to Captain Kirk as priority allows. If said contract is approved, please pass on my formal request to work one full shift rotation in the galley, and one half shift rotation as a technician, and any/all pertinent information I would need (reporting officers, schedule, quarters) to adequately perform my duties.

-Montgomery Scott

It was a formal note, but it made Scotty grin briefly. He wondered if he was the first person to send paperwork to the newly minted yeoman as something of a loose introduction to his job. And he imagined Harold's face as he tried to figure out what to do with it, which made him laugh outright.

It was still morning when Scotty was all finished with that.

And all that was really left for him to do then was wait.

He half-slept, something between dream and reality; a restless doze, where he would stir himself awake just to make sure he was still breathing. And then, confirmed, in the rain tapering to a sprinkle, then a mist, then the clear and clean and hazy scent left afterwards, he would drift back into that half-asleep state again. It wasn't that bad, really. It hurt, but it wasn't that bad. He knew he wasn't in any mortal danger from injury, just beaten.

He drifted there, in that place, breath shallow to avoid making the pain flare across his left side. Counted himself lucky that all of the hurt was on the left, and he could lay on the right. A matter of fact thought, like most of his waking thoughts. His dozing thoughts were less settled; fragments and pieces and when he woke up to see the suns rising, he realized all over again that he was far more afraid of leaving this place than he was of any number of beatings.

( Read more... )

"He was beaten (he knew that), but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law." -Jack London

( Read more... )

After the very failed attempt to get a job as an escort -- he would never mistake that for tour guide again, no -- Scotty hit the streets again. He was definitely hungry, so he needed some kind of fast credits. And, he really wanted a cup of coffee. Now, more for the comfort factor than as a wake-me-up, but regardless. He wasn't given to relying a whole lot on creature comforts, but he still really wanted a coffee.

A courier job was considerably less well-paying, but Scotty was fairly sure that it would be far less painful to his pride. Besides, he was in good enough shape to jog and Risa did have a decent public transit that was free. With that and his PADD, he was sure he could pull off being a courier enough today to maybe earn a meal, and a room for the night back in his little hostel.

( Read more... )

Consciousness did not begin without coffee. Unfortunately, coffee did not happen without credits. Credits did not happen without being conscious to work.

Bloody universal paradoxes.

Sleeping in the sand had been pretty pleasant even after the suns went down, but eventually there was a chill in the air as the darkness wore on, and he was awake again well before the suns came back up. He'd still managed a fair amount of sleep, so that was good. Being awake and a little cold without coffee, though, was bad. Well, sort of awake. If you could call sitting under a pier with your arms wrapped around yourself, shivering a bit and staring and yawning at an ocean awake. And sort of bad, if you considered that yesterday was the first day he didn't suffer some kind of asskicking, at least physically speaking.

Considering his luck on Risa, he didn't hold out a ton of hope for today.

Regardless, after shivering and staring out at a dark sea for awhile, Scotty finally made to start the day. Motivation and initiative, at least in the work sense, had never been a problem for him; he wasn't afraid of hard labor or even menial tasks if it kept him fed and sheltered. So, firmly giving himself something of a pep talk (a drowsy, decaffeinated pep talk) he managed to climb back up from his spot and hit the streets. First he went to his locker; quite a hike from his 'bed'. The suns still weren't up, but the horizon was getting lighter. Then he took the complimentary soap from the hostel, and caught a shower in one of the just-opening public beach houses. Still, unfortunately, decaffeinated; the shower felt pretty good, though. Then he took his newly scrubbed and cleaned self and hoped that he could charm someone into giving him a job.

His PADD listed a few odd jobs that were open to college-age workers, and he figured he qualified for that. Courier... he could do that. Escort... Scotty supposed that was probably akin to tour-guide. It paid pretty well. Actually, it paid really well, if all he was going to be doing was escorting people around and rambling on about Risa. After a quick check of local landmarks and attractions, he figured he'd go for the gusto and give it a try.

The guy hiring for that job didn't seem really put off that he had lost his ID -- a technical truth -- in the least. He gave Scotty a once up and down, probably to go and guess if he was physically up for walking tours, and Scotty remained utterly oblivious. Hell, if he managed this, he could probably be fairly well ahead of the curve by nightfall and he would certainly be able to afford a cup of coffee. So, naturally, he put on the best good-natured, well-mannered look he had.

He got the job.

It was the shortest job he ever had.

Three minutes and twelve seconds later, there was a surprised Risan and a very baffled 'agent' looking after a very furiously blushing Scotsman as he stormed out of the building muttering under his breath a number of less than complimentary things about using the right words to describe the right jobs.

And he still didn't have any coffee.

After pausing on the beach (if a few hours counted as a pause), Scotty went to put his stuff away in the locker and go and find himself the cheapest of accommodations. Namely speaking, somewhere he could sleep unaccosted and with three credits in his pocket, which was about as much as it would cost for him to keep that locker until the Enterprise departed. He figured he would find some sort of odd job tomorrow if possible; he couldn't bring himself to accepting charity, even well-meaning. He'd been fairly self-reliant for a huge chunk of his life, and that wasn't erased in a day. If ever.

( Read more... )