milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Bones McCoy is overjoyed to see the bar today. Not that he looks it, much. He just spent the entire day repairing fractures on arms and legs and heads and just about everything else when a gravity glitch in a good quarter of the decks rattled the crew around like a handful of dice. And while he's pleased to report that there's going to be no lasting harm, if he hears one more person bitching about the amount of time he was taking them off duty he's going to put sedatives in the general water supply and that'll be the end of the problem.

Sometimes he thinks that'd be a good idea in general.

He bellies up to the Bar, and is rewarded with a Shirley Temple.

"Darlin', not tonight."

The sugary drink disappears, replaced by a neat whiskey.

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"Rough day?" Alana asks, sipping her own beer at her stool at the bar. She's wearing a chain-printed wrap dress and a wry expression.

"Rough tour." Bones snorts, sipping his drink. "If it wasn't for this place, I'm pretty sure I'd lose my goddamned mind. How I got stuck on a ship with so many idealistic masochists, I'll never know."

"What's your role on the ship?" Alana asks, tilting her head. She offers her hand. "I'm Dr. Alana Bloom, by the way."

"Delighted, Doctor Bloom. The name's Leonard McCoy - I'm the Chief Medical Officer on board the USS Enterprise, which around here isn't terribly impressive, but it seems no one else wants the job." He drawls, his sunny grin coming out with the accent and his manners.

Her brow twitches at the names, and she inclines her head. "A pleasure, Dr. McCoy," she says, smiling, "and please, call me Alana. Chief Medical Officer on a ship is a demanding job, regardless of how large the ship is. Which ocean are you sailing now?"

"Only if you'll call me Leonard." He insists, settling back after releasing her hand. "If only I should be so lucky to be sailing on an ocean - no, somehow I got myself signed up on a star ship. Wasn't my finest moment." This is partially bullshit - he has done enough research in xenobiology to have a starship be a foregone conclusion in his life.

"All right, Leonard," Alana says, withdrawing her hand only to wrap it around her beer glass again. "A starship! You must be from the future; I'm still light years behind you, technology-wise. It makes me wonder what sorts of medical implements you have that we don't."

"Oh, it's still all useless without a good brain controlling it all." McCoy assures her... not that he'd be caught dead using what she probably has in terms of equipment, no. He does have some standards, after all, and using medieval torture devices is below them.

"Of course," Alana says, smiling again. "I'm a psychology professor, and I'd love to see what treatments are available for mental illnesses in your time. Not to mention what new ones have been discovered. Have you served on the Enterprise long?"

"We've made some progress in that field, thank God, but I think the universe got weirder to compensate - there isn't anything in any paper to tell me what to do with a yeoman who got turned into an iguana for a day." It'd been a really trying day, actually. "Been aboard her almost as long as she's been sailing - just under half a year, now."

"That sounds like something one might encounter here," Alana says, chuckling softly. "Congratulations on your six months of service. How does one sign up for a starship tour?"

"Knowing all the wrong people. Turns out I made an impression at some point in time on the Captain, and when they lost their previous doctor, my name evidently came up." This is... as true as it goes. Also, as much as he bitches about their ship being a glorified tin can in the vastness of space, and the utter uselessness of any medical protocols in the face of the medical oddities they come in contact with... he didn't exactly try to get out of the posting.

"But do you enjoy the work at least?" Alana asks, taking another drink. "I imagine it's quite the challenge most of the time, which can be interesting."

"Well, if it's true that rigorous mental exercise keeps a body young, I'll live forever." He grins wryly. "If I don't die first from sheer exhaustion keeping up with it all. How 'bout you? You said you're a psychology professor?"

Alana matches his grin and raises her glass. "May the former come true, and not the latter," she says. "And I am. I also do consulting with the FBI and guest lecture at Quantico, so I keep busy on my own terms."

She hesitates, running her thumb along her glass. "Well, I used to. My future's in flux, as it were; I'm stuck here for now."

"Not a bad place to get stuck, all and all." Bones points out, though he knows that's a sort of lackluster help. He only enjoyed his last enforced stay here because of the company. "You'll forgive me if I don't get the references - FBI? Quantico?"

"True enough," Alana says, inclining her head again. "The FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigation in my time. It's a law enforcement agency. Quantico is one of their academies."

"Ah, I see. Must say it's encouraging to know law enforcement was interested in the science of psychology back in the day." It doesn't improve his opinion of life back in the day, but still.

Encouraging.

"It's a relatively recent development, so I count myself lucky," Alana admits, nodding. "Did you serve on any other ships before the Enterprise?"

"No other ships, but I had a few planet-side postings - definitely a different sort of life for this Southern boy." McCoy drawls. "Useful though - my two main postings weren't exactly known as medical aid hot spots, so I learned in a hurry how to make a nuisance of myself."

"Indeed," Alana says, grinning. "Do you find yourself going stir crazy on the ship as it is?"

"It happens - there's regulations, of course, of how many shore leave days should be allotted for so many on-duty days... but we're assigned to explore deep space, so sometimes that just doesn't happen. Or something happens because of it to make us wish it didn't happen." He sighs - honestly, sometimes shore leave is more trouble than it's worth.

"Then exploration is the main mission of the Enterprise? I'd ask how much of the universe has been explored in your time but I suspect that'd be hard to quantify," Alana says, amused. "What sorts of things crop up during shore leave?"

"Well, there's the usual - sprains, breaks, the results of bar fights... and then there's the unexpectedly toxic plants, the previously unknown sexually transmitted diseases..." He sighs. "And then there's the stuff out of left field - the god-children, the mutated water molecules that cause insanity, the horrifically lethal and rapid-acting viruses..."

Shore-leave sucks.

"God-children? Mutated water?" Alana asks, raising her brows. "I can see why you'd want to get back to the ship in a hurry. How did you counteract the mutated water?"

Bones briefly outlines the process of finding the odd chemical formation that had triggered an outbreak of insanity on board ship, and the serum used to counter it.

"Of course, first I had to deal with a navigator who thought he was a damn swordsman and a pathologically depressed Vulcan. And if I never hear 'Take Me Home Kathleen' again, it will be too soon."

"I'm glad you managed to counteract the effects," Alana says, blinking. "What about the god-children?"

"... Charlie." Bones sighs, and that earns a larger sip of whiskey. "Boy was part of a crew that crash-landed on a previously unknown planet more than a decade before we found him - and bizarrely we found him not only alive, but articulate and fairly well-adapted. Turns out some alien intelligence took a liking to the kid, and kept him alive... which is all well and good, except it gave the kids all sorts of crazy abilities - telekinesis, mind control, matter mutation... all of that and more, still don't know what his full limits were. He's the one responsible for the iguana yeoman, amongst other things. Teenaged boys aren't exactly known for their self control or their ability to control their tempers."

"What happened to him? Is he still on the ship?" Alana asks, tilting her head.

"No... he's gone. The aliens that saved him decided he wasn't fit to live amongst us any more... not that I entirely disagree with them. They didn't give us much choice in the matter. Considering they were more powerful than Charlie, and we'd already lost a whole ship to Charlie's tantrums, it wasn't much of a discussion."

He'd been pretty sure they were all going to die that day, on the whim of a boy barely old enough to think about shaving.

"Wait, you lost a whole ship to his tantrums?" Alana asks, her eyes wide. "How did that happen?"

"The original crew that found him - the Antares, they transferred the boy to us since they were on a local survey mission and we could go farther afield, get the boy back to civilization without too much fuss. Evidently Charlie felt they hadn't liked him much." His tone is as dry as Death Valley in the summer. "The ship exploded - all souls lost."

"That's terrible," Alana whispers, shaking her head. "Charlie doesn't sound like he was fit to live with anyone; it's probably for the best that the god-making alien intelligence took him away, though sad for him. Good heavens. I suppose you can count yourselves lucky that he didn't do the same to you all, but it's a small comfort."

"It certainly wasn't our best day." Bones agrees. "I hope whatever they did with the boy, it keeps him far away from anyone else for a good long time."

Forever works for him. Forever works just fine.

"I can't help but feel a little sad for him, living in isolation, but he's not fit to be around people," Alana says, finishing her beer. "Do you ever get a relaxing shore leave? After the god-child and the mutated water, I imagine you'd need a vacation."

"There have been a few breaks, but they weren't much to write home about. No, I'm the lucky son-of-a-gun who finds a bar in his quarters from time to time. As far as I know, I'm the only one from my where and when who has. My captain shows up, I know, but he's from my future... which is odd, considerably odd."

He's not entirely sure what to do with an older, introspective James T. Kirk.

"I can see why this place--even with all its own weirdness--has appeal," Alana says, smiling a little. "I know what it's like to have people from your world show up from your future. It's complicated, and messy."

"Or, even better - alternate universe versions of people you know. There was a kid running around here who was someone else's version of one of our pilots. That was bizarre, I tell you."

It didn't help the kid made his Chekov look practically humble and meek.

Combeferre is sitting at the bar, dressed in one of his myriad gray suits, poring over Louis Pasteur's study on microbes. He also has Pasteur's studies on wine and beer nearby, and why not? This is a bar.

The man nearby catches his eye, both because of his strange, indecently tight, blue garb, and because of his lurid pink drink. Combeferre would have asked for a different one, too.

But the whiskey looks good! Combeferre quietly requests one from Bar and sips it as he reads Pasteur, after one last glance at the blue-clad man. His costume is like nothing Combeferre has seen, even in Milliways.

Work long enough as a surgeon, and you gain a sixth sense for when people are staring at you (it's amazing how many of the new nurses can't seem to figure out how to speak up until he prods them a time or twenty).

"You got a question, son?" He drawls, Georgia present in his accent tonight.

"I didn't mean to be rude. I'm Jean-Luc Combeferre--I'm from a different time and place than you, obviously. Paris, on Earth, in the nineteenth century. I hadn't seen anyone dressed like you before."

He also hasn't heard that accent from anyone, and he's heard a few strange ones by now. But then, Combeferre has no idea what his accent sounds like through the Milliways translator. French, he presumes.

"Probably because not too many folks from my place and time show up here - as far as I know, there's... three others, I believe. I'm Leonard McCoy, from... well, originally Georgia, which is part of the North American continent, but right now I haven't seen Earth in months, and it's the twenty-third century." McCoy explains, between sips of his drink.

It's so nice to have a bit of drink that he doesn't have to endure Spock's disapproving glare for.

"It's a pleasure." Combeferre's read about the twenty-third century, or a twenty-third century, anyway. He's not sure if this McCoy is from his world, now that he knows about the possibility of multiple universes, but he'll operate on that assumption for now. "You haven't seen Earth in months...does that mean you travel in space? On a ship?"

Combeferre has read things! He knows about space ships!

McCoy's surprise at that logical leap shows on his face - most things do. McCoy has never bothered to learn to lie (unless he's playing poker and looking to relieve the Captain of some of his winnings) since it's much more satisfying to proclaim his opinion for all and sundry to hear.

"The USS Enterprise - she's a good ship, as far as they go."

Combeferre notices the surprise. It makes sense: Combeferre supposes he must look like a relic. It's as if he himself met a man from the Renaissance, complete with...tunic and leggings and sword, or whatever they wore. Prouvaire would know.

"And you captain this ship, the Enterprise?" The ship name sounds like a name for a naval vessel would have been named in Combeferre's Paris. That kind of thing apparently didn't change.

[ooc: slowtimes? I'll be gone till tomorrow but I can reply then!]

"Oh no, there isn't a person alive that could convince me to take that crazy job. I'm the chief medical officer which... isn't much better, sometimes, but what are you gonna do?" Today was one of those days, he feels - he hasn't yet had the chance to pass his pain on to his captain (that will be the pleasure of tomorrow morning).

(OOC: Slowtime is made of awesome and rainbows and unicorn hair - catchya later!)

"I'm a doctor, too," says Combeferre. "Well, a medical student, but--I had to treat people without guidance with some frequency." He knows telling a 23rd-century physician he's a "doctor" is like a child experimenting with paints for the first time declaring his artistry to Michelangelo. Combeferre feels pretty foolish about it, but--he was a medical student, albeit in a 19th-century way.

He adds, wryly, "And no, it's certainly no better."

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