Meet Mr. Nancy

Posted on Fri Dec 14th, 2018 @ 10:46am by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy

Mission: Escaped Pantheons
Location: Corridors of the Hera
Timeline: 2395

The turbolift doors of the bridge opened and Lieutenant Junior Grade Melaine Dox stepped on with the experimental flight control helmet designed by Ensign Mona Gonadie tucked under one arm. She stood for a moment in the otherwise empty turbolift as the doors hissed shut, scrolling through a PaDD in her hands.

=^=Destination?=^= the neutral voice of the computer asked, snapping Dox out of her momentary Haze.

"Uh... Deck four, please." The distracted pilot responded. Immediately, the turbolift began to move as she returned to her PaDD. At the start of their current mission, before being docked with the Worldship of the Gods and before navigating the galactic barrier, Melanie had assigned each member of the flight crew to a tight rotation making sure every shuttle and Runabout was ready to fly at a moment's notice. In the event of a saucer separation, herself and Ensign Gonadie were ready to helm the ship's sections as needed. She had thoroughly done her job as the flight control chief and the Hera was ready for anything... except being parked.

Pilots rarely go on away missions, and that meant she had to now deal with the frustration of waiting for something to happen. Captain Telvan, Commander Paris and Lieutenant Sonak had left the Hera to investigate the Worldship and the supposed gods within. But Melanie Dox's place was on the ship to make sure she was ready to fly. And she was.

As the turbolift halted at deck four, Dox walked out at a quick pace, her head still buried in her PaDD. During the first official flight of the Hera with her using the flight control helmet, something unusual had occurred. Doctor Dael said that Melanie had experienced a potentially deadly spike in blood pressure that was concerning.

Nothing quite like it had occurred in the simulations, and between the health monitoring bracelet the doctor had Dox wearing and the ingenious nanobots they had put in her inner ear to help her mind manage the sensory overload that the helmet caused, that shouldn't have happened. So, Dox was on her way to the Flight Control Office to have Ensign Gonadie look over her invention to check for problems when she stopped dead in her tracks as a cold chill went down her spine.

It was the sloshing sound- a very unique sound to her ear, one that she knew all too well. The slosh of a half-empty liter beer can in the hand of one drunken human.

Turning around slowly, Melanie Dox beheld the sight of a human she knew all too well- her father, one Declan Nox.

The derelict space captain was a familiar sight- a stained t-shirt underneath a jumpsuit of many pockets, and an empty tool belt. He needed a shave, a shower and a change of clothes as he took a few shuffling steps toward her.

Gasping, Melanie dropped the PaDD in her hand and stepped back as he approached. She squinted in disbelief. "Y... You... Can't be here...this..."

"Lookit you, all growed up and joined the space pigs, uniform and all. Officer anna lady," the pater familias slurred as he took another swig of his beer. He reached forward towards her face with the back of his hand.

As his hand touched her cheek, Melanie snapped back as if woken from a trance. DHAT!!! She yelled, the Romulan word for 'no', as she stumbled back to avoid his touch, falling against the floor with a thud.

Looking up at her father, he seemed to have somehow grown. But as she shot her eyes around, she realized she was no longer on the Hera. She was on the Forrager. The smuggling ship she grew up on.

Melanie scooted back along the cold, metal floor panels in fear. She looked at her own legs, no longer clad in her Starfleet uniform but in a small black jumpsuit. She pulled her hands up in front of her to see the hands of a child. Melanie was four years old again.

Angrily, Declan slurred at her as he threw his beer can to the ground. "How many times 'ave I tol' you about that ROMULAN shit!"

Melanie backed up against the cold bulkhead hard, slapping the back of her head.

"Aaah!!!" She exclaimed as she shot forward. But she was no longer a child on the Forrager, but an adult in her quarters on the Hera. Melanie sat up in her bed, still fully dressed in her uniform, as she tried to process what had just happened.

"A nightmare..." She muttered to herself as she nervously rubbed the top of one ear. "Just another nightmare."

As she awoke, her memories caught up with her. The Hera was docked at the Worldship. She was off duty and had come to her quarters to take a brief nap, exhausted after the strain of piloting the mighty Starship through the spatial anomaly. Across the room on her table was the experimental helmet that she still needed to take to Ensign Gonadie in the flight control office.

The computer confirmed that she had only been asleep for about fifteen minutes, ten less then when her alarm was set for. Nevertheless, she didn't feel any more rested and now she was nursing a mild headache. As she sat on the edge of her bed, there was the familiar chirp announcing someone at her door.

"One moment." Melanie responded, as she stood up and straightened her uniform top.

As Melanie opened the door, Dedjoy was looking at her PaDD, tapping at an inventory. "Lieutenant, I'm sorry for bothering you, but as that helmet now is apparently usable, It's going to have to be added to the ship's inventory in an official capacity."

Still nursing a mild headache that she couldn't be sure was from the helmet or her nightmare, Melanie smiled through the uncomfortably as she replied. "No bother at all. I needed to take this to Ensign Gonadie in the Flight Control office anyway for a look over."

The tired pilot rubbed the back of her neck as she talked. "There was an unexpected level of feedback at one point that never came up in the simulations and I need to to make sure it's not going to blow my brain out if I use it again."

Eyeing her friend, Ila hummed a bit. "Yeah, if you don't mind my saying so, you look like you could use a trip to sickbay as well. How about I walk with you just in case?"

"Doctor Dael gave me a quick once over on the bridge but I'm sure I could stand for a visit once this mission is settled. Thanks." Dox replied a little awkwardly, not realizing how just haggard she looked. "I welcome the company." She tucked the helmet under her arm and stepped into the corridor with Dedjoy.

Ila tucked her PaDD back into her pocket as they walked. "If you ever need something, just let me know. I don't sleep as much as most people do so I have a lot of extra free time and the Captain lets me set my own schedule as her Yeoman."

"I will. Though I like to think I'm pretty low maintenance." Melanie chuckled lightly as the two walked down the corridor. "At least I hope so. But I appreciate the back up. I am feeling a bit..." The pressured pilot trailed off as she spoke, feeling a sense of uneasiness again, not unlike in her nightmare.

"A bit... off."

That was when a voice began echoing from down the corridor and around the corner- a man's voice, singing a soft acapello.

"Stars shining bright above you... Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"..."

The exhausted Junior Grade Lieutenant stopped in her tracks at the eerie tune as it echoed towards them as her skin went cold. "Hnaev... Am I still dreaming?" Melanie's eyes darted toward Dedjoy with clear anxiety behind them. "You're... you're hearing this, right Ila?"

Ila nodded, her already large eyes growing supernaturally large. "Yeah, you're not crazy. I hear it too."

"Birds singing in the sycamore trees..." the voice came closer, until a dapper-dressed gentleman stepped into view. His fashion was a modern iteration on an old style that was somehow classic yet unique. His skin was the color of mahogony, and his eyes twinkled beneath the brim of his hat, as if there were far too many of them there for a second, but as he sang his last line, he removed his hat to show that he was a tall thin human with wide eyes and a dazzling smile.

"Dream a little dream of me... Hello, Ila. Hello Melanie," As he spoke, there was a lilt of the Caribbean in his cadence and his pronunciations. "I've many names and many iterations, so in this place and time I think, why don't you call me... Mr. Nancy, hm? I've been around for a looooong time, because I" The immaculately tailored man in the silk suit preened. "I... am the god of stories. Everything that is ever happening, all of existence is stories. This place, this time, so far from my people, it disturbs me. I don't like it here. The dreams here taste bad."

Realizing that she was all too awake, Dox collected herself, stepping slightly forward to put herself between the strange figure that claimed godhood and Yeoman Dedjoy.

"Then I saw you, with this grand enormous sailing ship of the stars, and I could see you standing there big and bold right there in the dreaming. Astral self astride the hull of the mighty vessel, using it to surf the waves like a child at the beach. You have no idea what you hold there in your hands. But with it, I could change the universe. What do you say, eh? Give the god of stories a bit of a hand, neh?"

"The... God of stories, you said?" Melanie Dox replied. "Then you're from the Worldship... From the realm of the gods?" As she spoke, she tightened her grip on the flight helmet. Whatever she was talking to seemed interested in it and she needed to know more and wanted to keep him talking. "What... do you mean, you saw an astral form riding the ship?"

That brought a rousing bit of laughter from the slender-limbed gentleman. "No 'an', YOU. I saw you dere ridin' on the hull projecting yourself." That accent got a little thicker there briefly as he was tickled, then he composed himself again. "I am Kwaku Anansi, Brer' Rabbit, Tokka Morkoth... the weaver of the webs, the patient one. I come to you and ask of that with which you penetrated that veil those of the waking world may not pass, yet you stride through with a starship no less. And no thief am I, no no. Because I will trade for your magic helmet, that which is precious to you."

The names raced through Melanie's mind as she struggled to remember the mountains of research she had read from Intel in preparation for this meeting.

"Your stories. One of you longs to know another's story, and one does not even know her own story. Mistah Nancy can tell you your stories, because he knows. He knows your stories better than you do," The lanky fellow drew his arms wide, which seemed an almost inhumanly wide arm's breadth, then he smiled benignly. "All for a helmet you can build again, neh?"

After a few seconds, it clicked with the anxious pilot. Anansi. A mythic figure from ancient Earth folklore. A trickster that collected stories. Also, a shape-shifting spider, which was a thought Dox felt more than a little squeamish about.

But Dox's mind continued to race. The spike in my blood pressure. It occurred when they were psychically probing the ship. Melanie's mind raced, It picked up their psychic energy!

"I'm... I'm afraid this is the property of Starfleet. It isn't..." Dox tried to stall. Protocol said to inform security Immediately, but her gut told her that might just get Yeoman Dedjoy and herself very dead very quickly. "I'm not authorized to make such an arrangement. Perhaps when the Captain returns, you... can discuss the matter further with her." She looked straight into the eyes of the man standing before her trying to read his face for an idea of what he might do

"The offer is made, it stays on the bargaining table. I let you think on it, both of you. No mad mercenary I, I've no wish for a fight. My offer you know, you tink aboudit, neh?" that accent got much thicker as he stepped back around the corner from where he'd come, and it was as if his legs covered much more ground somehow, then he was gone. Which was when the lights returned to normal, and they realized he'd been manipulating the local lighting for mood lighting.

As Anansi vanished into the corridor, Dox heard the faintest of whispers like a voice on the wind in her ear, "Mnhei'sahe..." and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up on edge at the sound she was sure only she heard.

Stepping back slightly, Dox turned to the wide-eyed Yeoman. "Okay, Ila. I think..." She held up the helmet. "If a god wants this, then we REALLY need to find out why." Melanie turned back toward the corridor where Anansi vanished around the corner.

"Buuuut... there's a turbolift at the other end of the corridor." The anxious young part Romulan pilot turned around to go the other way. As she did, she tapped her comm badge to speak.

"Lieutenant Dox to Security. Yeoman Dedjoy and I have had an... Encounter on deck..." But the familiar chirp was replaced by silence. Dox tapped, again and again, heard nothing. She turned to Dedjoy, "Oh, this can't be good...."

Ila tapped her own comm badge but it too remained silent. "Definitely not good."

"Okay... we really need to move. We've got to get this somewhere safe before... Why does he even want this thing?" Melanie gestured to the Helmet, then began to run nodding to Dedjoy to follow as they ran to the holodeck. But as she ran, she felt dizzy. Ahead of her, the corridor seemed to stretch longer as she stumbled to her knees, tucking the helmet in to her chest so as not to lose it. "Hnaev!!" She cursed in Romulan to herself.

Suddenly, Melanie Dox wasn't on the Hera anymore... but again in the corridor of her childhood home. The smuggling ship, the Forager. From the shadows, she heard Anansi's voice again.

As for Ila, she was in a place she didn't recognize. Some sort of ramshackle space station with a sky ceiling. She was with her old Intel chief and someone else she didn't recognize and they were investigating the locals for some reason. Then there was an explosion and the air was being sucked out and she was going with it! As she lost her grip on the woman she blamed for her twin sister's death, she realized that this wasn't her story, but her sister's. This was how she died. This was how she was going to die as well if this Anansi had his way. She could hear his laughter in her mind as she flailed in the starry abyss, the ancient space station on one side and an intrepid class starship on the other.

Each in their own personal nightmare, trapped in a web of mind games and illusion.