sixthiterationlogs | it's like playing the lottery with you ( OPEN )

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it's like playing the lottery with you ( OPEN )

WHO: Beverly Crusher
WHERE: hospital, House 20, Inn
WHEN: Nov 4th and onward
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: will update as needed

hospital - Nov 4th

Of all the things Beverly had expected to find in the hospital, it wasn't a red, sealed envelope. She was alone in one of the rooms, looking through their supplies. She'd turned around to pick something up and there it was on a table. It hadn't been there before. Frowning, she hesitated for a few seconds before reaching out to pick the envelope up and turn it over. It has a wax seal with the same insignia as the one on her backpack. Not a very comforting thought.

Slitting it open doesn't seem to produce any terrible consequences and she pulls out the letter inside. She doesn't really know what she's expecting, but this sort of letter, or these instructions, definitely weren't on the list. A frown crosses her face, one definitely of disgust and confusion.

"What in the world...?"

House 20 - Nov 4th-5th

As soon as she gets back to the house on the 4th, she builds up a nice fire and tosses the envelope and its letter inside. Whatever the Observers might want of her, she isn't about to obey. That isn't the type of person she is. When it reappears in her room, again when she's alone, on the 5th, she does the same thing again.

"Whatever you want, it's not going to happen."

She stands over the fire with her arms crossed, watching the paper curl and burn, until it's all a mess of ash and fire and she can't tell what is fire and what was letter.

Inn - Nov 6th

Eventually, she ends up at the Inn, throwing the next letter into the fire there, on the off chance that it was somehow the fire that meant it came back. Unfortunately for her, that doesn't seem to have much effect either, so she spends most of the 6th looks really put out and actually more than a little unsettled. Somewhere towards the end of the day, she returns with another, flops into a chair, and stares at the red letter she's set on the table. What do they want?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Beverly glances up at the voice. The letter is still in her hand for the moment, though it won't last long. Holding it feels like holding poison somehow and she'd really like a way to permanently get rid of the thing. That doesn't seem to be in the cards, though, and it's frustrating her.

"Isn't everyone cheerful when the Observers come calling?" she returns, holding onto her sarcasm as best she can. She's not upset with the other woman; she's upset with what she's seen of their captors yet again. Finally, she gives the letter a toss to the table in front of her and then motions towards the other chair. "You're welcome to take a look at it, if you'd like. Maybe you can see the point in it."

Got in one. The stranger had already found Sam's ultimate weakness. Her scientific curiosity. Well. Okay, maybe it wasn't her ultimate weakness. But it was up there. About at the same level as people who didn't know who Mark Sleepwalker was.

Snapping her journal shut, she uncurled her long legs and stood up, strolling over to the table. "New variable in the Skinner Box model? I hope they got IRB approval." Sam didn't bother holding back on the sarcasm. It was pretty much all she had left. An old, faithful friend.

Friend. Defense mechanism. Whatever.

With a slip dip of her head to the stranger, she picked up the letter, scanning it briefly.

Beverly watches her get up and make her way over, though the references aren't something she is particularly familiar with. "Hm?" is all she says at first in response, preferring to keep an eye on the other woman's reaction.

"They seem to want me to... steal something and place it somewhere," she explains, folding her arms across the table and leaning on them. "I'm assuming it's the Observers. Who else would waste paper like this and who else can make the exact same thing come back after it's been burned?" And why? None of it really makes any sense to her.

She read the letter twice, her eyebrows hiking up beneath the synthetic fringe of her wig. Finally, she nodded. She neatly folded up the paper and set it down on the table again.

"Sounds like an ethics experiment," she said, helping herself to the seat across the table. "Along the lines of Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiments, back in the 1970s. Or Milgram's studies of obedience in psychology. They want to see how willing you are to follow authoritarian orders. Probably with some sort of reward. Not much elegance to the design, but what can you expect from social scientists?"

Give her hard sciences any day.

"From your pyro tendencies, I'm gonna assume you're not planning on playing along?"

The more she thinks about it, the more it does sound like an ethics experiment. This would be just along the lines of something Q or one of the Cardassian Guls would do just to mess with her and see if she'd crack under pressure. The Cardassians would love nothing more than to have proof that the famous Doctor Crusher would crack her ethical standards under pressure.

Her jaw tightens. She's not about to bend. Or break.

"No. I'm not. I don't play games like that and I won't be coerced into hurting another. For all that we're a ragtag bunch of people living here, we have to rely on each other a certain amount. I won't undermine that. I've been trying to burn it, but it keeps coming back."

Spoken like someone who was very secure in their ethical standing.

Sam didn't know whether to pity her or envy her.

She smiled anyway, leaning back in her seat. She set her heel on her knee, folding her hands in her lap. "Sounds like the appropriate response to me," she said. "Of course, I'm the living definition of 'this is why we can't have nice things.' So take that with a grain of salt."

With that, she reached a hand across the table. "I'm Sam."

They chose an interesting one for this ethical experiment, for sure. Beverly has always had a strong ethical background and something of a strong sense of idealism. That the Observers would choose to try to sway her is interesting.

Beverly's lips twist wryly as she reaches to take Sam's hand. "Beverly. Nice to meet you, Sam. I think there are a lot of reasons why 'nice things' don't exactly exist here and they have more to do with the Observers than you."

The reference mostly goes over her head, but at least she means well.

Old people were so cute when they didn't get jokes.

Sam shook Beverly's hand, pumping it hard, the way all those women in business seminars taught her to, then she leaned back again. "Nice to meet you too, I guess. I mean, considering our super shitty circumstances."

But they were the only circumstances available.

"Sorry the Observers are being dicks."

Modern-day old people or futuristic middle-aged ones. They probably each have the same entertainment value.

She gives a slight shrug, glancing back at the envelope. "A lot has been happening recently," she comments thoughtfully. "I lost my shadow not long ago. It seemed to fade almost entirely. Other people picked various fruits and had something happen to them. Now this. I've known worse, but it's something to think about."

If this is Q's doing, it would stand to reason that he was just trying to mess with them or get her and Jean-Luc to realize something else about his test for humanity. If the Observers are Cardassians... well, Beverly wouldn't put it past them to start trying to coerce her with punishment just to see if the idealistic doctor with a very strong ethical core would ever actually break.

"Lost your shadow?" Sam said, the corners of her lips threatening a smile. "Now that's super Peter Pan. I think you had to stick it back on with soap? Or, wait, that didn't work. Right...Wendy sewed it back on."

Because, of course, back then, girls were only good for sewing and telling fucking stories.

"I saw the fruit thing," she added. "Apple tree with apples that tasted like lemons. It was pretty obnoxious, even for the Observers."

Beverly gives a light chuckle, amused at the reference. At least it wasn't Robin Hood this time. She could handle getting stuck in Neverland, she thinks. Although the memory of Worf protesting will forever be a hilarious memory to her.

"Well, there wasn't a Wendy nearby for me. It just seemed to reappear one day. I guess it had enough of freedom and wanted to go back to normal." Either that or the Observers got tired of watching her.

"Lemons? Really? I haven't heard that one before."

Sam nodded. At least Beverly seemed to have some form of sense of humor, even if it wasn't exactly cranked up to Sam's pitch.

Actually...

She tilted her head. "Hey, is your last name Crusher?" she asked. Her conversation with Baldy was still lingering in the back of her mind. He'd said his friend was named Beverly Crusher, right?

It was a pretty distinct name. And she'd never met another Beverly.

Admittedly, the biggest reason Beverly's sense of humor isn't cranked up all the way is because she trained herself out of saying what she was thinking long ago. But as Jean-Luc discovered a few years ago, she's almost always got some acerbic remark running through her head.

However, all of that flies straight out of the metaphorical airlock as soon as Sam asks her question. Beverly's eyebrows arch with interest. "It is. Who gave me away?" she jokes, like it's some big secret. Probably Jean-Luc. Few others would use her last name here.

Shit.

What was Baldy's real name? The problem with constantly referring to people by handles was that Sam sometimes lost sight of reality. Blame it on the digital age. Blame it on the Rain of Fire.

She only faltered for a moment though, before it came to her. "Picard." Naturally, she could remember a boozy name. "The French dude. He mentioned that you were from his world. Told me that you were the go-to person for all my questions about advances in genetic sciences in the future when I asked him if they'd found a cure for acute intermittent porphyria."

Even if Sam hadn't come up with the name after a while, calling him "the French dude" certainly gives Beverly a good idea of who she meant. Beverly chuckles softly, her smile turning fond. "Well, he's right about that. I'm his Chief Medical Officer, so I'd better know." Though it is interesting to see how much each of them will tell the people they meet and how much doesn't really matter given they also have a non-Starfleet officer running around, not bound by the same rules that they are. "We've had a lot of advances in the last few hundred years and we've managed to cure just about everything as long as it doesn't fall under the heading of genetic enhancement."

They can do that, though, as evidenced by several still-living cases, but it's extremely frowned-upon.

Sam afforded Beverly another one of her rare smiles. "I'm glad. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had ambitions of being the one to cure it myself, but. Hey. Glad someone in some universe did."

She supposed there was still a possibility that she could cure it someday back home.

But that felt highly unlikely.

Like. Super unlikely.

"What about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?" she asked, because she really didn't want to go down that rabbit hole.

"That, too. You sound like a geneticist," Beverly comments, resting her elbows on the table with interest. She hasn't met that many people here who might even be interested in something like this. Medical people in general seem few and far between as it is. "You never know. You might have been involved in all the research that made it possible, if not the actual cure itself."

Beverly's nearly unwavering optimism might be tiresome to some people, but it's never stopped her and rarely fails her. Sam seems like a nice girl. She deserves a little bit of hope.

"Well, I..."

Wanted to be a geneticist?

Am a geneticist?

Studied the genetics of vampires in order to assist in creating the Path of Rhea?

They were all true, in their own ways. Sam figured it was best to settle for the path of least resistance. "I was a geneticist. Back home, I mean. Before this whole...clown rodeo. I always wanted to either find a cure for a genetic disorder or get a painting hung in the Art Institute."

"I don't see why you couldn't manage that," Beverly says encouragingly. "Even in my time, we could use people with that kind of experience."

Genetics is usually tied up with medical things in Starfleet, but not always. There's no reason someone like Sam couldn't manage her goals.

"Does that mean you're an artist, too, or am I missing some other past reference?" Beverly teases lightly. Assuming they have compatible universes anyway.

It was unlikely that Sam would be curing any diseases in the near future. You needed electricity to operate most of the lab equipment worth using. But so far, she'd managed to avoid talking about her world with most people. It was probably a streak worth continuing for the time being.

No one deserved that fucked-up shit.

"Yeah," she said, lifting her notebook absently. "I studied biology with a genetics concentration and art history with a minor in studio art. Back when I was a student." Her graduation had been...less than traditional. "My favorite medium was paint on canvas. Although, not gonna lie, I was a fucking miscreant and did plenty of paint on a brick wall."

Beverly chuckles at the idea of Sam doing paint on a brick wall. "I'm guessing that's not the approved sort of wall-painting," she teases gently. She imagines that Sam is pretty good at painting all told, though she'd like to be able to see properly.

"I've never been much of an artist myself and neither is my son. At least not that kind."

Now dance and theater were always her passions. Not that she'll likely ever admit to the former.

"You've got a kid?"

She didn't know why that surprised her all that much. Beverly seemed like the mom-type. But the idea of meeting a normal mom was so...absurd. Even forgetting their current circumstances, it had been awhile for Sam.

A frown etched itself into her features. "That must suck. Not the mom part. But...well...I hope your kid isn't here. You know."

Beverly laughs lightly at the idea of having a "kid." It's been a long time since she had a child by age, though Wesley will always be hers. A bit of nostalgic longing slices through her but she manages to keep it off her face. No use spoiling the moment and dwelling on what she can't change.

"His name is Wesley. He'll be twenty-six this year. Not much of a kid anymore." It's still mildly amusing, though it also makes her remember when Wesley was a young kid. "But no, he's not here. I haven't seen him in a few years."

Somehow, they'd managed to step into Sam's weird place. She was never quite sure of anything when it came to parents. Even her own. Especially her own. Probably because some small part of her still believed that she'd never really experienced that sort of 'unconditional love' that parents were supposed to have for their children, and vice versa.

No. Some part of her had always been convinced that the Haplers would eventually decide she wasn't worth the trouble and send her back.

And then there were her bio parents...

"I'm sorry," she said. It was the only thing she could really think to say.

"Oh, he'll be all right," Beverly says, as though she knows exactly where he is and what he's doing. She senses she's stumbled upon a difficult topic somehow, so in the effort of helping them both out, she adds on, "Although, I might be interested in picking a geneticist's brain about how a child can have an ability neither of the parents possessed."

It's mostly teasing. Beverly knows well enough how, but talking about it might be better than whatever land mine they've stumbled across now.

it's like playing the lottery with you ( OPEN )

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