Temporal Observations

For his part, the stranger took it well. The Doctor had a tendency to miss the more intricate parts of behavior, but he knew when something was right. Maybe it was a quiet part of a Time Lord's telepathic ability, but he preferred to think it was because he was very, very smart. Whatever the case, he knew that this man was not right. He wasn't sure whether he was wrong, but he certainly was not right. Much in the way the Doctor himself was not right.

He made his way to him, though he was slowed as the cat began to move around his legs. "Hello," he said, softly, to the animal, reaching down to offer his hand. It was possible the action was dangerous even if the cat was normal, but how was he meant to resist? Beautiful creatures, cats. He straightened to answer, but was told that the cat had something to say before he got the chance. Ah. Not a normal cat, then.

"Cats that speak are also impossibilities." Not an answer in the slightest, and he wasn't all that eager to give him one at the current moment, even if it seemed that the cat had enough information to form an opinion on his validity. Cats were also judgemental creatures.

.... and supposed to be extinct. But, well, that was time travel for you.

He pondered how to politely bring up that the man's species was supposed to be a casualty of the Temporal Wars, that his universe was a cautionary tale, then decide it was best to leave it. For all he knew, none of that had happened yet on this man's relative timeline. The truth of the story was far, far beyond his guesswork.

But, still, they were fellow travelers, weren't they? So Khaius decided to keep his lies to a minimum. He took the servo out and presented it to the stranger. His reaction would be informative, if nothing else.

"Chroniton radiation," he murmured. "Which you are practically swimming in. Neith says you have two hearts... and I'm sure her own scan picked up other anomalies. I trust her judgment, usually."

He ignored the telepathic laughter echoing in his mind at that.

LET’S:

🌈 — attend a parade together

🎨 — make each other Pride bracelets

🌻 — go on a picnic date/friend date

📸 — take selfies at a Pride event

🎵 — exchange playlists

🛍️ — shop for Pride outfits

☕ — have a deep (or fun!) conversation around identity

🍿 — watch queer movies all day

🎆 — watch fireworks together

💖 — have my muse confess something personal

💌 — receive a Pride month letter / post-it/ text from my muse

🎲 — learn random headcanons about my muse during Pride

🌙 — spend Pride night stargazing

Speaking of flaky. They return their attention to the quiche. That was definitely on their list of 'untested' foods; there'd be no knowing whether their body rejected it or not until they tried it. Well, it would be rude to refuse, especially if they didn't know it would make them sick for certain. Might as well.

"Vulcans have used wireless transfer for many centuries. I could set your computer up with a simple subspace transceiver. Khai-- Sirun used to give all new residents to our era a quantum discriminator upgrade to whatever device they were already familiar with."

She hesitated and glanced at Acht. "The mystery of your arrival and subsequent illness... must have caused him to forget."

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The Machine had sat motionless, quiet save for the occasional click of interior machinery. Outside, the galaxy twinkled and glowed like it always did, and his focus was on a small shot glass on the table in front of him, filled to the brim with an iridescent oily fluid.

"49999 Hours, 30 minutes, and 10 seconds."

The words escaped him in a flat, even tone, no movement accompanied it, a purely synthetic diagnostic, and in thirty minutes and 5 seconds, it would be 50000 hours since he got back up and started walking again.

A lot had changed in that time, not least of all him. His optics focused on the smooth artificial skin that now covered his once heavy plated frame. It wasn't in emulation of organic skin, at his insistence, grey pallor and visible seams a declaration to the world that although he had made himself softer, he was not keen on becoming something he wasn't.

He decided to procrastinate leisure by getting some food. Which is how he stumbled onto Solander's ritual. He eyed the fluid in the glass, then ordered his own meal as quietly as possible. Kreyla and plomeek soup. He was nothing if not predictable as a machine, himself.

If there was ever going to be a Star Trek spinoff show it should have been whatever is going on in the background with the Watchers over the past 60 years

If only Nero had caught on that Varus-Two wasn't who he said he was. There was a certain irony to the fact he'd sent anybody to work with the hidden counter-strike agent and tried to badger him right back. Khaius by comparison was not given so much regard. Free to do his work as he saw fit and left to his own devices when his shift rotated. In some unspoken way that was the form that something akin to respect started to take form with the Technician-Adjutant.

"Hm. Maybe next run you'll be on a top-tier fleet vessel. For now, I guess... hope this might feel more like home? Makes the journey a bit easier."

The word hope was weird on Nero's tongue. Like he only said it out of necessity rather than genuine belief in such a thing.

He filed all of this away under 'Varus is dangerous but perhaps inexperienced' and made a mental note to ask Neith for research.

But he caught the inflection, raising an eyebrow. "Simulac-rooms? Is that recreation or training?" He checked his new communicator. Small screen, but nothing too bad. He would have to link it with his servo later, push it beyond its limits for extra-ordinary functionality. "Understood. Comm me if you need help."

a series of randomly assorted headcanon questions for character development. feel free to adjust or expand on any questions when sending and specify muse if you're sending to a multi.

Something was wrong. There was an alarm going off on the TARDIS console, not quite the terror-inducing cries of the klaxon alarm, but a beeping of a registered error. If he ignored it, the klaxon could start, but this was still something he could fix. Even if he couldn't, he would still go, because something was wrong with the Department of Temporal Investigations.

Oh, of course he wasn't supposed to know about it, but he wasn't supposed to know about a lot of things. But UNIT had a lot of information on a lot of things, and he'd spent a lot of time there over the years. Besides, you didn't spend as much time in and out of time as the Doctor did without learning about who else was out there doing the same thing.

He didn't quite know what was wrong, only that something was, and that the impact could be great. So, if something was sick, if there was a wound in time, what better to do than call a Doctor?

Not terribly far from where the other man exited into the park, the Doctor landed the TARDIS. It reminded him, as it often did, of a junkyard so long ago. He missed that place, sometimes. He missed the people. He missed so many things. But now wasn't the time to think about that. Now he had a crisis on his hands, and nostalgia wasn't going to do anything to help him to solve it.

The idea of past and present meant nothing to him, the idea of what was now, and what was then. There was no past, no future, no present. Only time. And for this matter, the time was the early twenty-second century. Nothing terrible happening here, for the most part. At least, not counting the imminent destruction of time, but he was going to fix that. He had to. He was very attached to the existence of time.

The park was nice, for what it was worth. Beautiful. People enjoying themselves, exercising and talking, a man talking to his cat with a portable scanner in his hand...

Well, that was interesting, wasn't it?

Khaius's scan was... inclusive. This area, holding a park and a museum, did not scan with much by way of technology: some energy sources where the buildings were, and--

--and one tachyon surge, somewhere over... He turned to look at a distant box he was unsure had been there before, but was definitely the source, and a man walking directly towards him.

He put the servo back into his pocket, standing casually--fake casual, keeping his limbs loose in case he needed to spring into action--and tilted his head at the stranger. "May I help you?"

Neith was less subtle. She ran over to the Doctor like any Earth cat looking for attention and began to weave around his legs. What better way to slow him down while also taking measurements of her own?

He did not smell Human. That much was obvious. And after a moment the devices in her collar informed her he certainly was not. That heartbeat was highly unusual and distinctive.

<Careful, Khaius. I think he's a Time Lord.>

"Well. See, the support-survey series is the welcome mat for proper fleet and convoy missions. For instance, the Wishbone here used to be a freighter. They gave it a cutting edge science lab, standard-issue defenses, and we scrounge up most everything else ourselves. Capable, but... expendable. Worst of the best."

Where it was begrudgingly conducted business he had with Varus-Two, Nero actually felt somewhat more candid after hearing Khaius speak. He pulled a teledex from his tool-gunbelt and put in an equipment requisition, before pulling out a personal cartridge and passing the device to Khaius.

"Walk with me, I'll take ya to Quartermaster Ragripp, and you can custom order your own comms device from 'em, plus standard issue everything else."

Then to the two ironic questions while leading the way.

"Mm. The cook's 'famous frittata no. 9' if you see it on the freshmades of the day section on the mess hall menu. Varus-Two back there, the guy who insisted on cleaning every nook and cranny himself... very similar attitude to our would-be bugler, who kept waking everyone up at odd hours out of a ~sense of duty~ or whatever."

Once arrived to Ragripp's station, a red multi-legged alien with no arms (and a sash with the emblem patch and a communicator badge) strained itself somewhat to telekinetically offer over an ID cartridge like the one Nero had. Ragripp would also push keys on a metallic pinpad over an enmat replicator, programming it to create a communicator with proper clearance levels, a screen previewing potential shape configurations for Khaius to choose from.

"... Varus Two? His surname is a number?"

Great. That must be the agent. And now he was walking in the wrong direction. He tried not to glower. That would look weird, considering his cover. He fell back into step to follow Nero to the quartermaster.

"That is not surprising," he said in answer to the question. "My homeworld is careful with outsiders. And INTERPLAN is new to the galactic stage. Politics isn't my strong suit, though."

Not totally inaccurate. None of the politics he knew applied here. He watched the fabrication process with interest, selecting a design that resembled the badge-mounted devices he was familiar with.

They eyed the food she'd brought them curiously, taking a moment to deliberately inhale so they could get the smell. It smelled nice, at least. Come to think of it, had they remembered to eat before coming here...? Ah, well, this was a chance to correct that, at least.

She looked at her food. Her, to her, very weird food. Though it certainly smelled good. Still, it was for Acht, not for her, which is why it included meat. She calculated a 97% chance that the combo of robust and fatty proteins would put it in the 'comfort food' category for any species.

"... an experiment. I combined two Ni'vari recipes into one. The result is similar to a Human dish called a quiche that my research says is comforting. You will have to tell me if you like it."

Seemingly, Nero was going to provide the counter-strike agent with the disdain and lack of attention that would have enabled his mission to be undertaken nearly unnoticed. But it seemed that a contradictory component was thrown into the mix.

"Buuuut it's also rare that somebody actually wants to do their job beyond the minimum around here. Tell you what: I'm gonna assign you a work detail to help you out. No Buffers, which ought to slow things down a bit. But hey: just means you get to flex those skills! I expect great things from you, so I'll check back reeeaaaal soon."

Nero tapped at a casing akin to a digital watch, preferring his comms device wrist-mounted. Hollering for some layabouts to assist the agent in question. Whether he wanted them there or not.

Khaius watched as he stormed off to 'do his job', then looked at Nero's wrist-device curiously, assessing the technology he was dealing with. At least the tech seemed more-or-less parallel to his universe. Not that 22nd century tech was all that familiar to him... not Human, anyway.

"Someone--- hacked their way into the ship's computer to remove themselves from bridge duty? Why?"

This really was a different universe. Anywhere else, he would have imagined someone hacking into the computer to add themselves to a more prestigious position. Maybe this was a clue to follow.

"Of course. I am here to learn from you, not the other way around." He thought the question over. What questions were important? "Daily routine? Where might I access a map?" He nodded to the wristcom. "Do I get one of those? What not to eat at the galley? Are bugle-inspired rebellions also 'old hat'?"

He parses the scans, looking for any inconsistencies that this small floating blob could be natural, but everything he was seeing seemed to further confirm his suspicions. Without further fanfare, he hands the PADDcorder back to T'yel.

"He's engineered. no doubt in my mind. For what purpose I couldn't tell you, but given his high prey drive, the first thing that comes to mind is ecosystem management."

Like a sickle, he observed silently in his mind.

She hesitated. Maybe that was not... normal. She clarified, "It is one of the safety features on my 'valiit colony' program."

'Valiit colony' a.k.a. her holo-pets. With advancements in photonics, he last thing anyone needed was a rapidly reproducing colony of rodents known for burrowing under buildings until a sinkhole inevitably formed.

Okay so we joke about how we're "the most neurodivergent station in the Federation" but, no, no T'yel really is very autistic even by Vulan standards, and Khaius is very much ADHD-coded, so Laleen's already kind of doomed to be an AuDHD kid even with excellent parenting.

This resulted in the Pelsh't and the Clan of the Eye acquiring cultural supremacy in antiquity, which resulted in the forced evolution of double eyelids and pointed ears across the entire species. Nothing about it was natural, and keeping old bloodlines intact, or keeping psionic gifts closeby, or just acquiring useful traits for your clan is still part of the equation. In Spock's World Surak's family business is literally trafficking mind-talents. Even in Spock's time, this is a problem: there's a book plot centering around Spock's niece being bonded to a Romulan boy as a political gesture, and that book does spiral into basically a very Vulcan version of Taken. Every time we're presented with a Half-Vulcan character the writers make a point to show us how speciesist they are.

So like... there's this unspoken truth underwriting a lot of Vulcan stuff where eugenics is bad, but only if you use technology to do it. The 'why' becomes abundantly clear in Vulcan's Soul: on ancient Vulcan, mixing the soul with technology was heresy; this logic extended to even the simplest uses of technology for reproduction, which led to a dwindling Romulan population in the exile fleet, which led to a Technocratic uprising, which led directly to the Ruling-Queen and Reman species.