Post by Dr. Dahlia Anne Delancey on Sept 26, 2020 6:23:40 GMT -5
Personal Log: Stardate 97534.61 - Citadel Station
-- Dahlia sits in front of a computer terminal in a spartan temporary Citadel quarters. Just off to the side, one of her shadowboxes hands on the wall, with an Ankh beside it. Nothing else seems to be on the expanse of walls visible behind her. The background noise of the station is dulled by the sounds of an ancient Pink Floyd album Dahlia is dressed apparently in a black robe tied in front of her, and looks as if her mind is elsewhere while she is fidgeting with a crystal pendant around her neck.--
Computer: Open personal log.
I regret leaving Risa. I went there for leave with Marcus, he was busy a good deal of time which was alright. I like to have my time to think, to enjoy the air, and the sun. He wasn't the only one that was busy. Half of the people I would have spent my time with were recalled to their ships. Including the 2nd reason for going to Risa, Dr. Xylvaren. We were supposed to meet, but she was busy with an active event, overseeing it's mitigation. I still feel like I am in a limbo of a sort, my future unknown.
-- Dahlia can be seen rolling a crystal point pendant between her fingers, looking away from the screen as she sighs, drops it and threads her hand through her hair and leans forward. --
I even found a grey hair today. It made me look more, there were half a dozen of them. I suddenly feel old. Oddly, I feel less stressed though. Maybe Risa did me some good after all. I'm just not sure I got enough of it. My therapy came to a hold, and I had headaches 9 out of 12 days, but those last three days were very good. Oddly, there was a lot of Deja vu.
I first went to Risa when I was 17, my secondary school graduation. I lied and told people I met I was 18. I was there for a week then had to come home, not much happened except for getting hammered my first time and dancing. I wanted to go back though, so when I graduated prep school first in my class, my friends from school and I made sure to make it a party. It was supposed to be 10-14 days over Christmas and New Years, I extended it because I met a guy, figuring if I made it back for the January 21st, I'd be good for the start of Medical School.
-- Dahlia's face goes dark with sadness.--
Everyone knows what happened then. I went back again for two weeks in September of '15. The Captain hardly ever left my side, he knew it would be rough for me. But we were done at onDonia Prime, and it was a rough assignment for a starship crew.
-- Dahlia sighs and takes a drink from a glass beside the screen.--
We spent 17 months on the ground with Dr. Sundaei, and though our mission was technically successful, it won't be known for sure for decades yet. For spacers, such work is really hard, they all had lead in their boots most of the time. The trip to Risa was a compromise since we were so close and the Captian knew with our next assignment it might be another year till we got downtime away from the ship to blow off steam.
Computer; Delete the last paragraph... damn classified information, and delete the names 'Donia Prime' and 'Sundaei'.
The crew had a tough 17-month ground survey and clean-up assignment, difficult for officers on a spacecraft who want to be in the stars exploring. Risa was a compromise, roughly on course to our next assignment doing planetary surveys for potential colonies. The Captain thought it might be another year till he could give us this kind of downtime. He made bearable for me, kept me from crawling into a bottle for the trip. By the time we left, I was mostly able to associate Risa with the good memories and not just the tragedy of Vega.
Even still I didn't go back again till the summer of '22, partially because I was afraid of ghosts, and partially because I kept myself busy. Aisha though, my counselor through the university, all but begged me to take a month off before reporting to my new assignment. She told me to make sure I shook off all the space station dust, dance, drink, and -- Dahlia laughs, and smiling does an Indian accent-- 'and by all the gods girl, get yourself laid.'.
I never expected to go back to Risa every year. Short visit last year, because of hitting both Rome and Philly during the leave. This year, the ghosts came back. It was like, normal for a number of times going to the beach, unlike the last couple of times even the family beaches instead of the adults-only beaches. I visited the shops, the Riverboat, and walked the trails as I would normally do.
But unlike normal, at least a dozen times, my breath caught in my throat. I'd turn a corner, and I would get this flash as I had JUST been there seconds before. Take a few steps and expect to see the exact people or the exact way the suns reflected off of certain surfaces or the song being played. The latter was ... possibly explained because I'd come in at the end of a song, and swear I had left that place the day before or more just as that song was beginning.
-- Dahlia takes a deep breath and rubs her eyes.--
A number of strange things happened beyond that. For the first time at Risa, someone broke into my room. They didn't take much, but they ... touched, everything it seemed. And they were not trying to hide that fact, I could see that it had been moved. They took my guitar, just a replicated 20th-century style acoustic I replicated when I got here, it wasn't valuable, but I had it tuned right. And they stole a bikini of all things. I would feel violated, but it was still in the bag, I had just bought it, easily replaced.
The next day, the guitar is returned from the front desk, with a paper note with just my first name on it tucked into the strings. I opened it later and discovered there was some music written on the pages. I... it... the music when I played it on the guitar flowed as if I knew the songs by heart. I swear I had never seen the music before. I checked, neither song is in the Federation Cultural or Delancey Foundation records. I guess you could say, it is the biggest Deja vu of them all.
Then there is this... -- Dahlia lifts the crystal pendant to the camera.--
This was left for me, given to Marcus while I was playing my set at the Riverboat. The woman who gave it to him said her name was Ann Gale. A woman whose body was found in 1996, dead, on Earth. She would be my great, great, ... well, 8 greats, grand aunt. We were not exactly close. But, it was her life insurance payout that was the initial investment in the Foundation that is my family legacy. So I know who she is.
-- Dahlia stares into the camera still holding onto the pendant in her left hand. From this range, it can be noted she is wearing the pendant and the Eagle ring on that hand, but no other jewelry.--
But why would she know who I am?
-- Dahlia looks down at the crystal and then leans back against the chair.--
Does it matter? The fact is, the last two weeks since she gave this to me, my dreams have not been, disturbing. Dreams, yeah, still having a lot of them, but they are not so disjointed, and I don't remember most of them when I wake up. But the thing is, when I wake up, I feel rested and not so distracted. If this were the only factor, I'd give it another two weeks and cancel my leave of absence from the Pilgrim. But it is not.
Captain Razzor, I can't get what she said... --sigh-- she said that she had personally encountered previous timeline versions of myself. This Risa leave had been disrupted by temporal instabilities which according to what I heard, resulted in individuals being found from a wide variety of timeframes, and some apparently from different worlds even. Though I don't know of any examples of the latter, you know how rumors can be.
If it is true that I crossed into the future I don't have knowledge of it, despite what Captain Razzor said. But cannot get the Deja vu experiences out of my head. They might be proof of what Captain Razzor asserted. All this comes back to things that are more complicated than I thought. Even if she seemed sure that I was soon to get the help I needed to heal my mind, I find myself still impatient. What is the truth, and what does the truth mean for my future?
Computer: End log.
-- Dahlia sits in front of a computer terminal in a spartan temporary Citadel quarters. Just off to the side, one of her shadowboxes hands on the wall, with an Ankh beside it. Nothing else seems to be on the expanse of walls visible behind her. The background noise of the station is dulled by the sounds of an ancient Pink Floyd album Dahlia is dressed apparently in a black robe tied in front of her, and looks as if her mind is elsewhere while she is fidgeting with a crystal pendant around her neck.--
Computer: Open personal log.
I regret leaving Risa. I went there for leave with Marcus, he was busy a good deal of time which was alright. I like to have my time to think, to enjoy the air, and the sun. He wasn't the only one that was busy. Half of the people I would have spent my time with were recalled to their ships. Including the 2nd reason for going to Risa, Dr. Xylvaren. We were supposed to meet, but she was busy with an active event, overseeing it's mitigation. I still feel like I am in a limbo of a sort, my future unknown.
-- Dahlia can be seen rolling a crystal point pendant between her fingers, looking away from the screen as she sighs, drops it and threads her hand through her hair and leans forward. --
I even found a grey hair today. It made me look more, there were half a dozen of them. I suddenly feel old. Oddly, I feel less stressed though. Maybe Risa did me some good after all. I'm just not sure I got enough of it. My therapy came to a hold, and I had headaches 9 out of 12 days, but those last three days were very good. Oddly, there was a lot of Deja vu.
I first went to Risa when I was 17, my secondary school graduation. I lied and told people I met I was 18. I was there for a week then had to come home, not much happened except for getting hammered my first time and dancing. I wanted to go back though, so when I graduated prep school first in my class, my friends from school and I made sure to make it a party. It was supposed to be 10-14 days over Christmas and New Years, I extended it because I met a guy, figuring if I made it back for the January 21st, I'd be good for the start of Medical School.
-- Dahlia's face goes dark with sadness.--
Everyone knows what happened then. I went back again for two weeks in September of '15. The Captain hardly ever left my side, he knew it would be rough for me. But we were done at on
-- Dahlia sighs and takes a drink from a glass beside the screen.--
Computer; Delete the last paragraph... damn classified information, and delete the names 'Donia Prime' and 'Sundaei'.
The crew had a tough 17-month ground survey and clean-up assignment, difficult for officers on a spacecraft who want to be in the stars exploring. Risa was a compromise, roughly on course to our next assignment doing planetary surveys for potential colonies. The Captain thought it might be another year till he could give us this kind of downtime. He made bearable for me, kept me from crawling into a bottle for the trip. By the time we left, I was mostly able to associate Risa with the good memories and not just the tragedy of Vega.
Even still I didn't go back again till the summer of '22, partially because I was afraid of ghosts, and partially because I kept myself busy. Aisha though, my counselor through the university, all but begged me to take a month off before reporting to my new assignment. She told me to make sure I shook off all the space station dust, dance, drink, and -- Dahlia laughs, and smiling does an Indian accent-- 'and by all the gods girl, get yourself laid.'.
I never expected to go back to Risa every year. Short visit last year, because of hitting both Rome and Philly during the leave. This year, the ghosts came back. It was like, normal for a number of times going to the beach, unlike the last couple of times even the family beaches instead of the adults-only beaches. I visited the shops, the Riverboat, and walked the trails as I would normally do.
But unlike normal, at least a dozen times, my breath caught in my throat. I'd turn a corner, and I would get this flash as I had JUST been there seconds before. Take a few steps and expect to see the exact people or the exact way the suns reflected off of certain surfaces or the song being played. The latter was ... possibly explained because I'd come in at the end of a song, and swear I had left that place the day before or more just as that song was beginning.
-- Dahlia takes a deep breath and rubs her eyes.--
A number of strange things happened beyond that. For the first time at Risa, someone broke into my room. They didn't take much, but they ... touched, everything it seemed. And they were not trying to hide that fact, I could see that it had been moved. They took my guitar, just a replicated 20th-century style acoustic I replicated when I got here, it wasn't valuable, but I had it tuned right. And they stole a bikini of all things. I would feel violated, but it was still in the bag, I had just bought it, easily replaced.
The next day, the guitar is returned from the front desk, with a paper note with just my first name on it tucked into the strings. I opened it later and discovered there was some music written on the pages. I... it... the music when I played it on the guitar flowed as if I knew the songs by heart. I swear I had never seen the music before. I checked, neither song is in the Federation Cultural or Delancey Foundation records. I guess you could say, it is the biggest Deja vu of them all.
Then there is this... -- Dahlia lifts the crystal pendant to the camera.--
This was left for me, given to Marcus while I was playing my set at the Riverboat. The woman who gave it to him said her name was Ann Gale. A woman whose body was found in 1996, dead, on Earth. She would be my great, great, ... well, 8 greats, grand aunt. We were not exactly close. But, it was her life insurance payout that was the initial investment in the Foundation that is my family legacy. So I know who she is.
-- Dahlia stares into the camera still holding onto the pendant in her left hand. From this range, it can be noted she is wearing the pendant and the Eagle ring on that hand, but no other jewelry.--
But why would she know who I am?
-- Dahlia looks down at the crystal and then leans back against the chair.--
Does it matter? The fact is, the last two weeks since she gave this to me, my dreams have not been, disturbing. Dreams, yeah, still having a lot of them, but they are not so disjointed, and I don't remember most of them when I wake up. But the thing is, when I wake up, I feel rested and not so distracted. If this were the only factor, I'd give it another two weeks and cancel my leave of absence from the Pilgrim. But it is not.
Captain Razzor, I can't get what she said... --sigh-- she said that she had personally encountered previous timeline versions of myself. This Risa leave had been disrupted by temporal instabilities which according to what I heard, resulted in individuals being found from a wide variety of timeframes, and some apparently from different worlds even. Though I don't know of any examples of the latter, you know how rumors can be.
If it is true that I crossed into the future I don't have knowledge of it, despite what Captain Razzor said. But cannot get the Deja vu experiences out of my head. They might be proof of what Captain Razzor asserted. All this comes back to things that are more complicated than I thought. Even if she seemed sure that I was soon to get the help I needed to heal my mind, I find myself still impatient. What is the truth, and what does the truth mean for my future?
Computer: End log.
-- End Log --