Wash away the troubles

Posted on Sunday March 3rd, 2019 @ 21:29 hours by Mayterial Droz & Kari Pahlmihr
Edited on on Friday May 15th, 2020 @ 07:48 hours

Mission: Pixie Dust
Location: Captain's Quarters, Deck 1, Fawkes
Timeline: MD02 - 0500 hours
1082 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Ever since she had been thrown to the floor it had been a mad dash. The messages coming in becoming more and more odd. She decided that what she needed was some more time to recenter herself and possibly to wash off some of the smells she had accumulated over the past day and a half since she last took a shower. With her groggy head, she stepped into her quarters and walked around aimlessly for a moment. She stepped on something and twisted her ankle, hurting her only recently repaired foot. Looking down she saw the two halves of the stone man on the floor, "Hey man, you were supposed to protect us." She pushed it to the side with her foot. There really wasn't any time for her to linger on it now. She walked to her wardrobe and pulled aside one of the doors. Starting to sort through some of the things in there.

With a small stack of clothes under one arm and washing up supplies under the other May headed for the showers on deck 2. Her eyes were half open and she just wanted this day to be over before it even began. The doors parted and immediately she was met with the sound of one of the showers running. She didn't think much of it and put her stack of clothes neatly on one of the benches. She sat down and took a deep breath, before taking off her shoes and socks. Another moment of pause, another deep breath. She took off her vest and groaned loudly in protest, not against anything or anyone in particular, just in general protest.

It seemed to elicit a response from whoever was already in the showers, there was a whimper and then a very eerily hissed whisper, "Go away."

Mayterial frowned. She prided herself on knowing who was on her boat but she couldn't quite place the voice. She stopped undressing and in her tank top and cargo-pants made her way to the shower area, "Hello?" She walked further into the room, her voice echoed off the bare walls.

"Go away, before it comes back and hurts you too." The voice was still whispered, the sonic shower running made it difficult to discern the identity.

"There's nothing here. We just hit a patch of turbulence." Mayterial wondered why everyone was suddenly going crazy around her, sure it wasn't like on the top of the line Starfleet vessels where this sort of thing barely bothered the internal dampeners, but everyone was overreacting, "We've scanned the area and are finding a safe patch to jump to warp again. Nothing to worry about."

"No! Stay away! It's coming for us!" The hiss became more panicked now. More scared.

May rounded the corner and saw one of the deck hands curled up in the corner of the booth, fully dressed. She must've been one of the people on duty on the lower decks during the night shift. "Kari, right?" She said looking down at the Trill, she squatted next to her, the sonic shower still running, "Everything is going to be alright." She reached out and squeezed her shoulder to reassure the woman. Immediately she felt nauseated, the rush of emotions coming from the woman on the floor was almost immediately overwhelming, a feeling of dread overcame her and she looked around her, almost immediately equally paranoid as Kari had seemed to be not a moment ago.

"Dark matter ghosts. They steal your life force. They killed Keith." Kari hissed again and then pointed at the sonic shower, "They don't like the frequencies of the sonic shower."

Swallowing a huge lump in her throat May pulled back her hand and tried to refocus herself. It was difficult to handle, somehow she was starting to lose control over her empathic abilities. She saw a shadow figure flitter in the corner of her eye. Was that what happened? It couldn't be. "Focus May, focus. Nothing is wrong. We got kicked out of subspace. There's no such thing as Dark Matter Ghosts." She looked at Kari again, finding her courage and rationale again, "Kari, you have to come with me. We're all... we're all inoculated against dark matter ghosts. Keith is fine." She made a mental note to herself, she had to find Keith. Whatever happened to them, whatever was happening to the crewmembers across the ship. Whatever was now affecting her. They needed to find out, before somebody did something very stupid. "Let's get you to a doctor, they'll give you a shot. It'll be fine." She reached out her hand, hoping to have gotten through to Kari.

Hesitantly Kari looked up and around. She didn't want to come away from under the shower and inoculation seemed very unlikely against things as freaky as this, "What do you inoculate with against such a thing?"

"Back in the early days of space travel crews used to eat a lot of carrots, the carotene contained in them gave them natural protection against the effects of the drain. What you call ghosts are actually a collection of spores, when they try to latch on to you it can knock you out, it certainly makes you queasy, but they don't like carotene in your bloodstream. Have you ever seen someone with a carrot allergy aboard a space ship? You wouldn't have! They simply can't travel in subspace, too dangerous, nobody would want to ensure their travel." If there was one thing Mayterial could do it was to work a naive mind susceptible to suggestion. "The inoculation is just a stronger, longer lasting, version of that."

Finally Kari seemed to reluctantly accept the explanation, she almost seemed ashamed now for not knowing about this before signing up for a stint on a civilian freighter. She reach out her hand towards the Captain, "Please stay close, I didn't know I had to get an inoculation."

"Learn something new every day. I bet you'll never forget now." Mayterial felt the dread that she got earlier very slowly eb away, she was able to give a comforting wink to the greenhorn deck hand. Somehow the bullshit story she spun had connected with the Trill woman. Perhaps once she had delivered her to the medical bay she could finally get the shower and some well-earned rest, however short the night still was once she would get around to that.

[OFF]

Mayterial Droz
Captain

&

Kari Pahlmihr (NPC)
Deck Hand (Ordinary)
(As written by Mayterial Droz)