"Act Your Age!" -- Part Four -- "Confusion and Panic" **** Greg Goodwin on Wed, 1 Dec 1999 07:30 PST **** **** Subject: Double Confusion **** Previously, on "Act Your Age".... The ship shook again, even more chaotically. Elowe hurried toward the security station, where Nomad was. As he did, he wondered what "his" Nomad was doing, now that he was with the "wrong" Elowe. Probably was fulfilling the mission that he and the later Nomad had come back here to perform. "Alright, I'm ready," Elowe said as he reached the station. "Ready? For what?" Nomad asked, somewhat confused, which was somewhat understandable under the circumstances. His look of confusion was shared by Qethea, the FAR STAR's computer prgram holo-projection CLU with Bitt, and even the ever so knowledgeable Doctor (fourth incarnation). * * * Confusion was echoed throughout the ship. "Ready?!… what in the world could you be ready for?" Elowe asked Nomad. Nomad did a double take. "Wake up Elowe… I know it's been a while since we've been here, but common!! Don't get amensia on me now." Nomad started working on the TARDIS console egging Elowe along. "Nomad, seriously! What's going on here! Where are the others? You know, the Doctor, Qethea, Stasis, CLU…" "Fine, last time I saw them, they were fine. Strange time to ask though. Let's talk old school later on alright." "OLD SCHOOL!?" Elowe errupted, "That does it! I've seen some weird stuff today. Men giving birth to babies, women turning into strange dopplegangers looking like other people… you're acting just as strange! Something is not quite right here. I tell you what.. WHOEVER or WHATEVER you are, Let's just call a truce. You let me out of here, and things won't get ugly." The light was starting to dawn on the grey matter of Nomad. "You really don't remember do you?" "Remember?" Elowe stepped to the door that would exit the pseudo-TARDIS, and gave it a push, but found it wouldn't budge. With a tinge of fear and a fire in his eyes Elowe spouted, "There is nothing to remember, so let's just drop it and unlock the door." Elowe started to reach into a pocket on the inside of his coat. "Now really Elowe, we don't have time for this…." From within a pouch, Elowe whipped out a miniture but efficient cutting torch and ignited it, producing a stream of blue flame that shot out nearly half a foot. Elowe and Nomad both had to look away from the intensity of the flame, but while doing so, Elowe held the torch out at arm's length and trained it in the direction of Nomad. "You're right… we don't have time for this." **** Suisei@aol.com on Tue, 28 Dec 1999 16:51:57 EST **** **** Subject: Yippee! My segment is done! **** Nomad struggled to make eye contact with Elowe. "What are you trying to accomplish with that thing?" he said, the quavers in his voice betraying the tinge of fear he felt. Suddenly, Elowe whirled around with the torch and began to cut the door open. His previously calm rage ignited into a blazing flame as he screamed, "I'm getting out of this place!" Nomad breathed a sigh of relief as Elowe turned the torch away from him. "But why?" countered Nomad. "We have to complete the mission." "Mission?! My mission is to open this door!" he screamed, becoming more and more frantic as the metal of the door held out against his torch. "You mean you don't remember?" asked Nomad, realization dawning on him. Elowe whirled back around to face his interlocutor. "Remember? Remember what? Get me out of here!" he screamed, and began to work even more hurriedly on the door. Slowly the door began to give way as the torch cut through the heavy metal. Nomad's eyes grew wide. "Nooooo!" he screamed as the door fell open . . . * * * * * * * * Meanwhile . . . Elowe stood at the console, working single-mindedly on something or another, as Nomad, Qethea, and T4D looked on. Clu and Bitt stared at the console, trying to determine what was happening. Neither of them could, however, as Elowe's hands were moving much too fast, even for a computer hologram. Qethea had absentmindedly begun to move to a position of safety behind T4D, but other than that, the others were not moving. All was silent except for the quick clicking of Elowe's fingers . . . but then one of the walls groaned as if under great strain. Nomad, Qethea, and T4D spun around to face the noisy wall, immediately behind them, and Clu and Bitt remained riveted on Elowe's hands. Nomad spoke first. "What's that noise?" he asked to no one in particular. T4D responded, "It sounds like the wall . . . " he began. ". . . is being opened!" finished Qethea as she darted back around to once again be behind Nomad and T4D. A red-hot oval appeared in the wall right where the noise came from, and the metal began to burn away, opening a hole just the size of a door. * * * * * * * Elowe laughed maniacally as the torch burst through the last edge of the door. The heavy door fell away, revealing the interior control room of the FARSTAR. The Elowe at the controls slammed one last button, cried "Eureka!", and vanished out of existance, along with the Nomad on the pseudo-TARDIS visible through the hole in the FARSTAR. The Elowe holding the torch staggered through the hole he created, handed his torch to T4D, and collapsed to the floor. Qethea's hand slowly reached out from behind T4D and shut off the torch. "Well," said Nomad. "I wonder what that was all about." **** Nomad of Norad on Mon, 31 Jan 2000 00:26 **** **** Subject: Time and Tide Waits for Nomad... **** The SHADOWSPEAR parked itself along side the FAR STAR, a bit like a 747 parking itself next to a hang-glider. In the meantime, Devastator's science team -- if one could call a motley crew of hairsuit has-been third-year enginearing-school dropouts a science team -- worked on outfitting one of his shuttlecraft with a time-shield. Fortunately, the SHADOWSPEAR had its own time-shield built into the ship's drive systems, but getting across to the FAR STAR was going to be a problem. Fortunately, the so-called science team pulled a rabbit out of a hat and got the shuttle's time-shield working. Unfortunately, they installed it on the wrong shuttlecraft, one that was due to be mothballed soon and had a distinct tendancy to pull to the left, There wasn't time to re-install it on one of the newer shuttles, so Dev simply said "Screw it!" and took off in it anyway. * * * * * * * Meanwhile, back on the bridge... "Well, the process seems to have worked," said T4D, staring at a display at the science station. "We no longer have energy lancing through the ship's systems and unbalancing things." "We're still in the time-rift," said Nomad, staring at the main screen, "so the `other' Elowe was right when he said that the warp-field shunt-stunt wouldn't drop us out of the rift." "Speaking of the `other' Elowe," said Clu, "what happened to him? Where did he go?" "Well," said T4D, "the sensors detected a sudden time-distortion that flashed through the bridge at the exact same moment he and the other guy vanished, presumably they must have gotten swept up in it." "You sure the second Elowe wasn't one of those shape-shifters?" said Qethea, now looking over his shoulder. "Well," said T4D, "I can scan the ship for all the Nurossissians, see if we can account for them all. Do you remember how many of them there were aboard originally?" "Well," said Qethea, "there were actually two members each from the three alien races: two Nurossians, two Xoonakrone, and two Drimfallo." "Well," said T4D, "I can scan for the latter two groups quite easily, but the shape-shifters, by definition, are going to be really hard to spot unless they're in their original form." "You can't do something to even the odds?" said Nomad, joining him at the science station. "You know, like feed it the medical-scan data from your multiscanner and tell it to scan for that?" T4D gazed into the air for a second, contemplatively, about that notion. "You know, that just might work." He plucked the multiscanner out of his pocket, brought up the sensor scans he'd made of the fake Stasis while he was stuck between forms, and fed that into the ship's scanners. At that point, Nathan and Dia walked out of the pseudoTARDIS. "Well," said Timothy, "we've got the new console completely assembled and tied into the TARDIS systems." "Ah, good!" said Nomad. "So now Elowe can detach his TARDIS systems from ours, in case he needs to take it elsewhere or something." "Got them!" said T4D. They suddenly showed up as little blips on the deck-plan display on the screen in front of him. "Looks like one of them just left the engine-room-slash-dungeon, and the other apparently just left the TARDIS. Looks like the second guy has healed quite nicely already." "That was quick!" said Clu. "Makes sense, I guess," said Elowe. "Being shapeshifters, by definition they'd also be able to heal fast." "I don't detect any other Nurossissians," said T4D. "I guess that rules out the duplicate Elowe and Nomad being shapeshifters." "You mean the second duplicate Elowe," said Nomad, "as apposed to the *other* duplicate Elowe earlier who turned out to be Zeen-poo-reck-tuss, or however the heck you pronounce that name." "Yeah," said T4D. "Now what about the other two sets of aliens," said Nomad. T4D mashed some more buttons, each one emitting Classic Trek bleeps and bloops. * * * * * * * Devastator's shuttle came in contact with the outermost shields of the FAR STAR, and suddenly red lights popped up on the control board and alarms started to sound. She shuttle came to an abrupt, bone-jarring stop, and then started to buck, jolt and gyrate like it was caught in the jaws of an angry bulldog that was being electrocuted at the same time. * * * * * * * Alarm claxxons started sounding on the bridge. "Uh-oh!" said T4D. "I'm reading time-distortions all over the board here!" "What happened?" said Nomad. T4D brought up another screen, studied it. "Looks like Devastator's shuttle did something to the FAR STAR's shields. His time-shield seems to have become melded with the FAR STAR's shields, rendering them unstable, and it's unbalancing things again." And then the claxxons stopped. "Things seem to have settled down again, though," said T4D. "What about the time-distortions," said Nomad. T4D checked different registers. "There are no more of them forming, and the ones that have already formed appear to be starting to disperse, at least some of them anyway." "Are any of them within the engine-room?" said Qethea. T4D pulled up that display, shook his head. "The engine-room seems to be impervious to that sort of thing." "That's good," said Nomad. "Probably why they put all those people down there to begin with," added T4D. "That makes sense," said Nomad. "I suppose we'll have to take the TARDIS out to rescue Devastator now," said Elowe. "Possibly," said T4D. "He'll probably be chagrined about it, though," said Nomad. They started towards the TARDIS. "You were about to check on the status of the other two groups of aliens," said Qethea. "Quite right," said T4D, turning back to the science station again. He sat back down, pulled up intra-ship life-form scanning again and scanned for the other aliens. "Well, I see one of the Drimfallo down in the armory--" "Yikes!" said Nomad. "--and the other Drimfallo tinkering around in sick-bay. Hmmmm.... *That* doesn't sound good, either." "Any people down there?" said Nomad. "No, just the Drimfallo guy," said T4D. "And now..." started Qethea. "...what about the Xoonakrone?" finished Nomad. "Xoonakrone..." said T4D, punching buttons. "Let's see, there's one down in the cargo bay, and there's one up on the.... *Uh-oh!*" "`Uh-oh,' *what*?" said Qethea and Nomad in unison. They saw where he was looking on the internal layout of the ship, and then they all, as a group, turned their heads ceilingward. >>Crash!<< >>Bang!<< >>Clatter-clatter!!<< A sudden purplish blur came flying at them out of a service panel in the ceiling, tentacles waving like crazy, and landed right in their midst. There came a bizarre, crazed struggle between six persons and one writhing mass of muscular tendrils, rolling back and forth all over the floor. The Xoonakrone became more and more panicky as the struggle went on. Nathan was thrown clear, rather suddenly, and landed flat on the floor. It smashed his time-shield, and suddenly he started to age rapidly. Realising he was in serious jeopardy, he jumped up and ran like mad for the TARDIS, where he'd be protected from the time-distortion bubble that had evidently formed on the bridge, and he reached its doors about as he passed middle age. In the meantime, the other five wrastled the alien to the ground, and one of them grabbed a phaser and stunned him at point-blank range. The five extricated themselves from the now-limp tentacles and let them drop. "So, that is a Xoonakrone," said Clu. They were looking at a creature that had two bundles of thick tentacles, arrayed round it in a circle, one at the bottom to provide locomotion, and another group above that to function as manipulators, and then it had two stalks sticking out the top, each with an eyeball at the end. "He must have been watching us down here," said Nomad. "And then panicked when we detected him," said Qethea. "Hey," said Dia, "where's Nathan?" "The alien sent him flying," said Clu. "Over there." He pointed in the general direction Nathan had been flung. "Uh-oh!" said Nomad, spotting pieces of the time-shield lying on the floor. "Uh.... Doctor, was one of those time-distortion bubbles centered on the bridge by any chance?" T4D went to the science station, pulled up the appropriate readings... Nomad, meanwhile, had already run into the TARDIS. Inside, he found Nathan, looking rather elderly, wrapping himself in a long jacket that had been hanging on the coat-rack by the door. His regular clothes had fallen to tatters, and then fallen appart, and anyway were now way too small to fit him, had they held together that is, so he was covering himself out of courtesy for the others. "You okay?" "I feel okay," said Nathan, "I guess." There were tears in his eyes, though. "I mean, other than the fact that I'm ready for the retirement home and I've barely even started junior high!" "Don't worry," said Nomad, "we'll find a way to reverse this." T4D strolled into the console room to join them. "Well, we just beamed that Xoonakrone down to the cargo deck to join the other Xoonakrone." The others came in after him. T4D went to the console, and moved the door-close lever to closed. "And now we need to go rescue Devastator." He circled around to the coordinate and demat controls. * * * * * * * And so the TARDIS left the bridge, and in doing so it disrupted the time bubble that had ruined Nathan's day, and also disrupted an earlier, different kind of time distortion that had been there first. Suddenly the other Elowe reappeared in the now empty bridge, and so did the other Nomad, in the other TARDIS. "I did it! I did it! I *did* *it*! WAHOOOooo!" Elowe danced around the enginearing station, elated. And only then noticed that he was alone. "Uhhh... where'd everybody go?" The other Nomad walked out of the other TARDIS. "They all vanished the second you finished... uh...." he gestured at the workstation, "...that." He thought about it a moment. "Or rather, I think *we* vanished there for a few moments." He smiled wanly, at an old memory. "At least, that's the way it was from *their* point of view, anyway." "Whose?" "Our earlier selves, don't you remember?" "Well, anyway," said Elowe, heading for the TARDIS-in-the-wall, "let's get away from the bridge, we have a mission to complete." * * * * * * * And so, T4D's reclaimed pseudo-TARDIS materialised aboard Devastator's shuttlecraft, and Nomad, Elowe and T4D filed out of the doors to join him. "Having a mite of trouble, are we?" said Nomad. "You could say that," said Devastator. "Your time-shield seems to be disrupting things," said T4D. "We need to either fix it, or shut it down." "I say we shut it down," said Devastator, "this shuttle was due to be mothballed soon anyway." "I dunno," said Elowe, glancing over the jerry-rigged time-shield apparatus, "it might be handy to keep this thing, and I might be able to fix it." As if on cue, the apparatus started smoking, from several different places. "Uh-oh!" said Devastator, Elowe and Nomad in unison. They all ran for the TARDIS, and got past the doors just as the shuttle's time-shield blew itself apart. The TARDIS tossed and turned, bobbed and shook. The cloister bell rang. "I think we'd better get out of here!" cried Qethea. T4D slapped the door-close lever. Shake, shake, rattle. Elowe reached wildly for the demat lever and punched... something else. "Whoops! I think I just hit the distress-call button!" He grabbed the demat lever next and threw it. Devastator, meanwhile, was rolling on the floor, laughing. "What's so doggoned funny!" said Nomad. "I think *that* was the distress call that originally *brought* me here!" Devastator started into a deep belly-laugh, and the others started laughing, too. At that point, the TARDIS stopped shaking and settled down to normal. And on the big screen, the shuttle suddenly exploded spectacularly. **** Nomad of Norad on Fri, 15 Sep 2000 16:47 **** **** Subject: Panic Time! **** Meanwhile, back aboard the FAR STAR, claxxons started claxxoning again, this time set off when Devastator's shuttle's timeshield went kerflooee and exaccerbated when the shuttle itself went kerblooee, throwing all sorts of crazy instabilities into the shield system, and therefore into the control systems aboard the FAR STAR. And somewhere, some large piece of apparatus overloaded and went kersplooee, blowing out two or three minor pieces of apparatus. And about then, there came a general, ship-wide, canned announcement saying, "I do not want to alarm anyone, but right now might be a really good time to abandon ship! I do not want to alarm anyone, but right now might be a really good time to abandon ship! I do not want to alarm anyone, but right now might be really a good time to abandon ship! I do not want to alarm anyone..." And on and on it droned, alarming just about everybody. And so, the Nurossian who had recently left the erzats dungeon panicked, and started running madly along the corridor... which just happened to be a rather circular corridor... which meant he was actually running around in a great big circle. The Nurossian who had just left the from-earlier-in-time TARDIS ran back aboard it, getting it prepared for departure. The Drimfallo in the armory dropped the rather large kilozap rifle which he'd been examining and admiring, which then landed squarely on his foot, giving him the most terribly pleasurable waves of pain such that he doubled over in ecstacy. The gun then, upon hitting the floor, also went off, blowing a rather sizable hole in the wall, consequently shorting out several rather minor pieces of apparatus beyond it. Meanwhile the Drimfallo in the sick bay, having been transforming one of the diagnostic beds into a rather fetching paingiver, dropped a tool into the innards of the thing and shorted the whole thing out. And down in the cargo bay, the Xoonakrone that had been there before was trying to get the other Xoonakrone awake by direct telepathic stimulation, and wasn't having alot of luck with it. He gave it up, slung the fella onto a handy antigrav cart and headed rapidly for the corridor. Some moments later, with the two Xoonakrone in an ultra-lift, the stunned one came awake... and heard the canned announcement, still droning on and on. "Hey!" he said. "There's a TARDIS up on deck 17. If we can get all of our group there, we can escape in it!" The other Xoonakrone brought out a communicator, flipped it open and said, "Krilli-freep Koor to Walhemmerous..." In the armory, the still ecstatic Walhemmerous suddenly came to himself, upon hearing his name over the communicator imbedded in -- pierced jaggedly through, actually -- his left earlobe, and picked himself up off the floor. "Walhemmerous here. What's up?" "Grollo-ghlik Ghronk here tells me we've got a time machine on deck 17," said Krilli-freep, "sitting ready for us to grab if we need it." "It's just down the corridor from the bowling alley," said Grollo-ghlik into Krilli-freep's communicator. "I'll meet you there then," came Walhemmerous's reply. And so Walhemmerous sent out a general announcement, via their collective communicators, to meet at that particular corridor, and bring anything with them that they didn't want to leave behind. And then he picked up the kilozap rifle, hefted it onto his shoulder, and headed out the door, thinking of all the meyhem he would bring about with it once he landed on some unsuspecting planet. And about then, the mangled-inside-but-mostly-repaired TARDIS2 arrived back at the bridge, and the Intrepid Group piled back out. "...really good time to abandon ship!" the canned announcement was still droning. "I do not want to alarm anyone, but right now might be a really good time to abandon ship! I do not want to alarm anyone..." "Well, you sure are doing a good *job* of not alarming anyone!" quipped Nomad, barely hiding the alarm in his own voice. "Hey, look at this," said T4D, gazing at the display at the science station, which he'd forgotten to switch off earlier, "looks like all the bad guy aliens are heading for our previous TARDIS!" "That's good," said Qethea, "that will leave us one less problem to deal with." "Gary," said Nomad to T4D, "*please* tell me that we or the ship aren't in immediate danger of destruction!" "What IS it that's set off that warning, ANYway?" said Elowe. T4D pulled up another screen. "Uh-oh! Looks like the engines are slowly building up to overload!" "Uh-oh!" said Qethea. **** USER on DATE **** **** Subject: TITLE **** **** USER on DATE **** **** Subject: TITLE **** **** USER on DATE **** **** Subject: TITLE ****