Catch Me If You Can
Posted on Wed Dec 7th, 2022 @ 9:34am by Lieutenant Commander Asahi Kita & Commander Martin Sorenson
Mission:
Between Realities
1906 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure
Rare was the sight of Asahi striding into the medbay with such a pleasant smile on his face. The dinosaurs had been stashed with the hapless petty officer that he met in the mess hall, and he had changed himself up to a much more clean and era-appropriate uniform. But, after re-acclimating himself to the era, Asahi thought it appropriate to at least get himself checked out. At least the current situation made it easy for him to figure an excuse out.
"Heeee~yy," he nearly sang as he entered, "Is the Doc in? Took a little tumble during all that turbulence."
Martin looked up at that and his jaw nearly dropped. In the past ...however many hours or days since everything went sideways he'd seen a lot: medical emergencies from attacks by Jem'Hadr, Borg, Kazon, Gorn, even carnivorous tribbles (thank God the larger and even more carnivorous Cait on staff had made short work of those!); people exposed to some sort of pollen that acted like weaponized laughing gas, another that substantially lowered inhibitions (which he hoped to never encounter in the normal universe), and people exposed to a 'glitter bomb' that caused a rapidly spreading rash that sparkled; and then there were the various creatures and characters who had been randomly appearing and disappearing the whole time. None of it quite prepared him for the sight of Asahi voluntarily and almost cheerfully presenting himself in medbay for an exam.
If it was Asahi, or at least their Asahi, the assumption of an alternate being the obvious cut of Occam's razor here. "Over here," Martin called. "Where do you hurt?"
"Aaaah, mostly my head." Asahi made his way over, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "I must've been working at figuring out what was going on on that Tholian ship when that first bump hit, took a tumble off my desk. Didn't land on my head, but I hit it somewhere down the line." It was not unlike Asahi to perch himself on any flat surface, so he hoped it sounded appropriately absurd enough for this Asahi. Wherever he ended up to.
"Let me take a look." Martin said, running the scanner that had come out instantly, because if this was his Asahi and he was coming in of his own volition and seemingly comfortable about it, that must have been quite a blow to the head. The doctor checked the readings and frowned. No major trauma, which should have been a good thing, but a sudden unexplained personality shift was definitely concerning. "Nothing major. I can give you something for a headache," he said, carefully watching the patient for reaction as he loaded a hypo.
Asahi breathed a sigh of relief. "Great!" His chipper demeanor did not waver upon sight of the hypo. "Whatever you gotta do, Doc." Did something seem off? It did to Asahi too. But maybe this doctor was just a little apprehensive because everything was off kilter. Unknown Tholian technology did that to a person. "Thought that tumble was a little weird, but better safe than sorry, right?"
It was all Martin could do to restrain a double take at the reaction. He applied the hypo half expecting a sudden reversal - a duck or dodge or outright dash away - but what he saw ...relief. It was, rationally, the right reaction; just not one he'd ever gotten from Asahi before. "Um, actually it was very weird. Weird enough I'd like to run a few more tests, including a cognitive assessment."
"I dunno, Doc." Asahi frowned at the man. "You sounded pretty sure it was just a headache a few moments ago. But if you think it's best, go for it."
It was strange. For a long time Martin had genuinely wished for that kind of reaction from the intel officer, but now that it was happening... it set off alarms. He sighed and gave his patient a crooked smile. "You know, I hate to jinx this, but considering it normally takes an act of God, or at least direct orders, to get you to let me check you over, well, let's say I'm concerned."
While there were no immediate alarms, Asahi realized at that moment he made a terrible mistake in going to the doctor's. He was so used to them that he had not thought about this iteration of himself being doctor-phobic...
Though that one time that counselor decided to heal his knee all wrong might have carried over to other iterations...
"Don't be all suspicious Doc," he stated jovially, "What do you think I am, an imposter? Maybe you're the one who's been hit in the head too hard."
"Actually, yes." Martin crossed his arms, head tipping to the side as he considered the unusually at ease intel officer. Maybe this one wasn't afraid of doctors, but quite possibly concealing things was a constant across a multiverse of Asahis. "You wouldn't be the first, or even the twentieth, alternate version of a crew member that I've run into since our run in with the Tholians."
"Hah, what a gas, Doc!" Asahi reached over to give Martin a hearty tap on the shoulder. "You almost had me for a moment. But how do I know you aren't the imposter here? An imposter scanning the crew for imposters, just to say all the key people are an imposter, take over the ship, and pilot this QSD-driving technological wonder to some alternate version of this one where the Tholians are ruling or something?" To Asahi, even this sounded odd-ball. "You're hilarious. But I'm gonna get back to work, where my non-essential self is gonna go pretend to be essential and figure out if the Tholians are following us or not."
He leapt from the bed before he could receive a protest, giant grin on his face as he began to make for the door, facing Martin as he did so. "Maybe you should get a good break in or something. You're sounding crazier than I am."
That almost sounded like the Asahi he was used to - in the sense of Asahi definitely hiding something and trying to avoid having him check well enough to diagnose it, and Martin acted accordingly. Or perhaps simply reacted almost by reflex to Asahi trying to bolt from an exam, and quickly got in front of the intel officer even as he ratcheted up his scanner for a higher level scan. "Hold on there. I'll be the first to admit I could use a break, but you can rest assured I'm not an imposter trying to take over the ship because that would require leaving medbay, which I haven't been able to do for ...I don't even know how many hours it's been... Honestly, if some other me showed up, as long he was a doctor, I'd put him to work." He lifted the scanner, waving it toward Asahi's head. "Which doesn't mean I'm discharge someone who sounds irrational, even for by currently lower standards."
"Or would it? I bet you can reprogram the med bay to be a master control." Asahi ducked out of the way of the scanner's supposed range, hands going up as if he was ready to fight. He puffed his chest out, before taking a stance, clearly ready to dodge the scanner again. "A Tholian sleeper agent would be able to. Take a break, Doc. You sound crazy."
Uh-huh. This at least was familiar territory in the sense of Asahi dodging and fast-talking to avoid an exam. "A Tholian sleeper agent would just stun you and then run the exam," Martin noted tersely as he tried to get in range for a decent scan. "Which is starting to sound like a good idea."
By this point, Asahi had leapt behind one of the nearby biobeds to block himself from an oncoming scan. "You'd have to catch me for that, Doc. And now I've got you all figured out; you're trying to get me second guessing myself. Which, joke's on you, I'm too confident to be second guessing." There was a part of him that wished he had at least one of the dinosaurs here, instead of stuck with that poor intel officer he left them with. At least they weren't hungry.
"Look Doc," Asahi stated bluntly, aiming for another angle, "Aren't there more important things to deal with right now than whether I'm an imposter? I came to you. What kind of imposter would come up straight to the one person who could suss 'em out?"
"I do not care if you're an alternate," Martin snapped, weaving side to side, looking for an opening, or a moment when one direction of retreat was blocked, so he could dash around the biobed for a good reading. Possibly not the most rational move since he did have other things he should be doing, but at his current level of exhaustion strategic thinking had fallen to the wayside. More importantly, he'd lost one patient already. He wasn't about to let another run off only to keel over somewhere from untreated head trauma. "It would be a relief. I'd know my Asahi didn't have some undiagnosed brain damage!"
"It'd be a relief that I was an imposter?" came the retort from the supposed Intel Chief, "How do you figure? On a ship like this, heavily guarded as it is? I'd be in the brig if I was an imposter." He was about ready to grab the nearest item to throw at Martin, but thought against it. That might have been grounds to throw him in the brig right there, and that wouldn't have solved a thing. "We're in a weird who knows what of doom here, what if I'm just here to help, huh? Ever think of that? I don't have head trauma, you'd have caught that already!"
"So you're saying you're just crazy, eh?" Martin snarked, about a millimeter from tossing a scanner at the man. "That tracks for my Asahi, but when he is trying to avoid a scan it's usually because he's hiding a medical condition. So, if you are one of the dozen or so alternate versions of people that have crossed dimensions into here, just say so - I've seen too many, including a couple versions of myself, to bother calling security on anyone not causing problems." He scowled at the dodging patient. "Though you're testing the line on that right now."
Asahi's eyes narrowed. He had been so busy stashing dinosaurs and hiding his tracks that he missed what was actually going on with the rest of the crew. "See, I don't see myself as causing problems. If you, you know, just let me go, I'm not a problem anymore. I can help with other problems. Why get security invol-"
He didn't finish his thought, seizing an opportunity of someone else walking into the Med Bay as a distraction to vault over another of the biobeds to bypass the scanner's range and dash out the door. He was far from lying about his thought. If he could not immediately solve his own issue, maybe solving the issues others were having would have helped him in the long run.
He just hoped he would be able to do it before his dinosaurs decided to seize the opportunity to find dinner for their own.
