Janeway Lambda Two | Glowfic Constellation

"He appears to have... extracted... a character from my holodeck program."

She turns to Laurence, momentarily at a loss for words.

Laurence is still deeply confused, but he heard her speak to a man out of sight and caught a few words.

"I beg your pardon. Are we on a vessel at this moment?" The room is small and dark; they must be near the belly of the ship. "Would you call Captain Tochakotay here, so that I may present myself to him? Is he an officer in His Majesty's Navy?"

By their strange accents, Laurence suspects he may be on a ship with rebels from the colonies. Technically England is not at war with them anymore; he hopes these will not treat him the worse for being an Englishman.

(He's never heard of such shocking salaciousness in modes of dress in the colonies, but it's the best guess he can come up with for the moment.)

There are too many misconceptions there to deal with at once. She tries to figure out how to start to explain.

"You're aboard the USS Voyager..."

How does she address him? If the Reliant was real, of course it would be "Captain Laurence", but it isn't. On the other hand, it's just as real as anything else about him. If he wanted to talk about his parents, it wouldn't seem reasonable to quibble about it. And it would also be offensive in the extreme, she suspects, to deny the legitimacy of his rank.

"... Captain Laurence. Please come with me: I'm afraid we have quite a bit to discuss"

She sets off towards sick bay.

Somewhat to his surprise, Laurence finds himself following her. Her tones of command are unmistakeable, despite her being a woman. Her manner and dress would be shockingly illegal in England, but it seems that he now finds himself in a strange country indeed. When in Rome.

He's never heard of that ship, but the term "USS" is vaguely familiar. "United States Ship? Is she a frigate from the colonies, then?"

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't beat around the bush."

"By your calendar, it is the year 2371. Voyager hails from the United Federation of Planets, a union of over 150 planets, including Earth."

What.

"One hundred and fifty... planets? Then... where are we?

"And, if I may be so bold, er--" he is no longer sure how to address her-- "what is your own role on this vessel?"

"Easy question first. Captain Kathryn Janeway, at your service. I am in command of Voyager. The man you heard be talking to, Commander Chakotay, is my first officer."

"As to where we are, the short answer is 'space, a very, very long way from home'".

They reach the holodeck doors, which open with a quiet hiss, revealing a carpeted metal coridor, with white lights shining down from the ceiling. There are no windows in sight.

Laurence takes in the magically moving doors, the strange decor -- so perfectly clean, unlike a sailing ship, yet strangely bare -- the unnaturally bright lighting, and her words, all with an increasing sense of unreality. It's becoming clear that a female captain is the least of the strangeness here. For all he knows, they don't birth children here, they spring fully formed from their fathers' foreheads.

"A very, very long way from home," he repeats, more to himself than to her. He's familiar with the notion of the space between planets, of course, but the idea that men could go there is fantastical.

And then the next realization hits him. The year 2371. Five hundred years after he -- and most likely everyone he knows -- should be dead and gone. How is this possible? What would a Captain William Laurence even be in such a world-- adrift without family, without friends--

And more to the point, what would become of the world without him? His ship, his crew? The war? He was there just a moment ago-- And in that moment, he realizes what he must do. He almost asks her what became of Napoleon-- but no. It would be better not to know, for he intends to do his duty to England regardless.

"How can I return to my ship? To my own time?" he asks her urgently.

What are the options here...

Option 1: Maybe Q could be persuaded to put Laurence back into the holodeck program. It seems unlikely that Laurence would want that if asked.

Option 2: Maybe Laurence could be transported to the real 1804? There are many recorded instances of time travel in Starfleet records. Just three years ago, that android on the Enterprise was transported to the late 19th century, which isn't even very far off. But of course she's not going to pursue that course. The temporal prime directive prohibits tampering with the past.

Option 3: Could Q be persuaded to send Laurence to some sort of alternate dimension? But Q is gone, and unlikely to want to undo his meddling in any case. Why did Q do this?

"I'm sorry, Captain Laurence. I'll consult with my crew, but I see no way to return you to your own time."

The crushing weight of it hits him then. Everything and everyone he ever knew, gone. He grasps onto that "I'll consult with my crew" with the hope of a dying man.

But, Janeway did not sound hopeful. It had the sound more of a sop to frustrated hopes than a true expectation that anything could be done.

He takes a deep breath and asks a question that should perhaps have been before the last several. "Where are we going?"

"Sickbay. The manner in which you arrived here is novel to us, and I want to make sure you're not suffering any medical problems from it. It's just a precaution."

They arrive at a turbolift, which obligingly hisses open.

So he's going to some sort of hospital. Fine. "And after that? Am I a free man, or a prisoner here?"

Laurence gives her a quizzical look-- why are they entering this tiny room, which does not appear to be a hospital?-- but follows her anyway.

"Deck 5"

The turbolift doors close and a whirring noise briefly fills the air before the doors open again on a different hallway.

"You're not a prisoner. I would say you're therefore a free man, but as I said we're a long way from home. I'll put you off the ship, if that's what you want, but frankly I doubt there will be anywhere you'd like to go. If you rescued someone from a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean, and treated them with every courtesy you could, would you call them a free man?"

This, he regretfully understands. "I see. I am acquainted with such situations from my own time at sea." And in such situations, men were pressed into service whether they liked it or no, out of sheer necessity. "When do you next expect to make port? And where?"

"We'll likely make port within a month or two, to stock up on necessary supplies. But as to where, the short answer is we don't know."

She's going to be forced to explain aliens at some point, but she's hoping to defer that shock for as long as possible.

"We're not lost, exactly. We know where we are and where we're going. If you'll permit a metaphor, we know our longitude and latitude exactly, so we know which way and how far to go. But we don't know anything about the lands we'll pass along the way. And we expect the journey to take 70 years."

That statement is incomprehensible. He gropes at understanding. "Seventy years? But how... Surely some of the crew must disembark before then. Do none of them have wives on shore? Er, families?" he amends, glancing at Janeway.

Being at sea is one thing, but traversing uncharted territory like Captain Cook is another entirely. Laurence is beginning to be concerned for his fate even if these people have the friendliest of intentions.

"You're quite right. In the normal course of events a starship would spend less than a year between visits to a federation world."

"Unfortunately, two weeks ago Voyager was pulled from Federation space by a powerful entity called the Caretaker, which then died, stranding us here. To my knowledge, no Federation vessel has ever been this far from home."

"Captain," he says, finally using her title because it seems important now. "You were stranded two weeks ago? On a journey you expect to take seventy years? And you have no idea if or when you will next make port, or even find supplies?"

He pauses, realizing that he expects no answer to any of these questions. Then he says, "I hope an additional man will not strain your stores. I have been on short commons before, at need, and will not complain of rationing. Nor of labor, if there is any-- I am certain there must be, in such a precarious situation as you find yourselves."

"Rationing? Oh no, Captain, there won't be any need for that. Voyager can make food and water out of just about anything. The supplies we'll need are to maintain the ship itself."

William Laurence

Laurence grimaces faintly at her amused use of his title. She's right: clearly he's no captain here, qualified though he might be to command a ship in his own time and place. "Mr. Laurence will do for the moment, Captain," he says quietly. "I have no desire to pretend to a rank I no longer possess."