allmhadadh

Fishing on the sea shore was virtually impossible for any number of reasons; the biggest being, of course, that they had several seriously pissed off dockhands who would probably have an eye out for them.  But another reason was that it was too busy and bustling for any such thing, and therefore any attempt at fishing would have to be made somewhere slightly quieter.

Risa's weather-net system controlled everything.  Rain, temperatures, everything.  It was a fine tightrope to walk, controlling the climate of an entire world, and when the system fell it tended to be nearly catastrophic.  Luckily for the inhabitants and tourists, it only rarely did that.  But it was a fine tightrope and certainly there had to be some balance towards natural ecology.

On the interior side of the city, among mountains and cliffs and trees were the rivers that fed the sea; deep cut rivers that were still surprisingly untamed on a world where everything else seemed to be.  And the fishing there was good.

Scotty had stopped back at the locker to grab his paperwork, and the PADD for the other Scott if he so wanted it to navigate them, and they hopped the public transit system that was pretty much free to get out of the city for a few hours.  Back in those mountains and trees were plenty of hiking trails, but it was surprisingly bereft of parasitic insect life, or at least the kind with a taste for human blood, and it was likewise bereft of all that many people.  The sounds of the city faded to the sounds of leaves and water and echoes off of rock; the light filtered down in dappled yellows across near-black dirt and green ferns.  They certainly weren't the only people who would fish here; in fact, they rented their poles at a shack catering to fishermen up the road from the trails, but it was fairly quiet.

The younger Scott thought any number of times that he should beg off, that he should tell the older one that he had no right to go interrupting shore leave, that there was no obligation and about a million other things that were far too ingrained into his thought patterns.  Somehow, he stopped himself each time.  That had gotten them no where, and it was fairly clear now that they tended to make the other Scotty unhappy.  He didn't really understand why they did, but he knew he didn't want to cause that look anymore.  He just kept reinforcing in his own head that if the other Scott didn't want to be here, he wouldn't be.  It would probably take him awhile to believe that, but he worked on it.

He himself was not sure how to feel, except still half-exhausted.  But in a good way.  Where you were too tired to be so jumpy, but awake enough not to miss things.  He still felt off-balanced and like he was in rough waters, but not on his beam-ends, waiting for the sea to take him down.  Ultimately, if he had any specific way to describe it, he would probably say that he was a little lost, and a bit afraid, and rather warmed, and trying to both retain himself and still flex enough to let someone else do the leading, even if this outing was his idea.  He was pretty sure all that was a first, in his living memory.  He didn't try to wonder if it would be the last; just lived the now.

The night watches on the Enterprise were surprisingly quiet, and that had left Scotty to mostly work unaccosted and uninterrupted. It was a bit more tricky without some kind of repair list, but he'd kept himself busy. All the minor, silly things that weren't critical. Well, and shower sabotage, but that was more for the sake of principle than anything else. He had a lot of issues with doctors, but he had even more of an issue with Harold's acceptance that what McCoy threatened was remotely acceptable. If someone would have threatened him like that, he probably would have tried to tear their throat out.

And likewise would not have realized that he did until it was too late.

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Yet again, everyone on the USS Enterprise was in motion.  It seemed like most of their time recently was spent in that constant state of alert.  Lieutenant Uhura gathered together all of the notes, equations and formulas that had enabled the first transport bringing Scott and McCoy home, then transmitted them compressed on a tight beam subspace band to the new Enterprise, repeating the transmission as many times as it took to get it through in whole.  That was inside of the first ten minutes.

The next half hour was spent putting together the strongest subspace communicator/beacon they had.  Ultimately, all information that was sent by either communications or via the transporter was essentially digital; with something strong enough to lock onto, hopefully the other Scotty would be able to pull McCoy aboard.  The best this Enterprise could offer at this point was to act as a subspace beacon herself so that the signal would be as strong as possible.

Then it came to getting McCoy in order.  The doctor was in rough shape, though he made the best show of it that he could under the circumstances.  At this point, it likely wouldn't be much of a difference if he took something along, so he went to his own quarters, as well as Spock's and Kirk's, and gathered a few of their personal items.  If they did get trapped in that other universe for an extended period of time, they could at least have something of their own worlds and lives with them.

Another risk.  But then again, it seemed like risk was the order of the day.

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[[OOC: Hopefully McCoy's usual player will forgive me for writing him here.  All on you folks, now.  I'll explain the box via PM, Scotty.]]

    So I assumed a double part, and cried
    And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
    Knowing myself yet being someone other—
    And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
    And so, compliant to the common wind,
    Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
    Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
    We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
-T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding


He woke up with a start, not immediately knowing where the Hell he was, or what the Hell was going wrong, but it didn't take him all too long to get his bearings.  And with a half-groan, a sound mixed between genuine displeasure and actual frustration, he fell back again on the bunk to stare at the ceiling for a moment, not exactly pleased with being conscious and knowing too well that going back to sleep was out of question.

Needless to say, he was entirely too understanding of this native Uhura's earlier existensial crisis.  Not that he was actually worried about his own place in the universe, mind.  But he wasn't in his own universe, either, and he was more aware of that now than ever.

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