Of webs and wormholes

Posted on Thu Jan 17th, 2013 @ 4:05pm by Ignatius Reilly & Elijah "Eli" Samuels & Eldren Tohr

Mission: The Struggle Within
Location: Aboard Jolliets Revenge
Timeline: 1 hour after Life Of Spiders

The ship in motion, course laid in and guest asleep, Eli stood up and stretched, trusting the autopilot to alert him when they approached the wormhole. Space being limited as it was on the small ship, he couldn't help but see the cage the spider was kept in.

This is insane. There's no such thing as sentient spiders. Then he thought about the Tholians.

"Aw, fuck me." He muttered, then raising his voice only slightly, hoping to not wake Tohr, he called toward the cage, "So, what's your story, spider? You gotta name?"

I most certainly do, the arachnid replied tartly. I am Ignatius J. Reilly Zeferino. Oralia gave me the shortened name of 'Iggy', as well. I was her pet, now I am..., uncertainty came trembling along the threads of her mental energy. I am unsure what I am.

"Zeferino?!? As in the security chick? Oh man!" Eli threw his head back both hands in his long, scraggly hair. "Oh, this is bad. This is so not good."

As a supplier of questionable goods, Eli had learned the secret to success was to stay under the radar. Be nice,don't attract attention and Starfleet left you alone. But here he was, bugnapping the freaking head of security's talking spider. He wasn't quite surr of a better way to become front and center on the fleet's radar. He'd have been better off kicking an admiral in the groin. At least then someone might have aggreed with the action and cut him a break. But stealing a pet, especially a smart one? He might as well plan on a trip back to New Zealand and the penal facility there.

Sitting back forward he blew out a breath. Time to calm down and think. Thinking required information. And the only source of information available had 8 legs. Finally he looked back at Iggy.

"So....ugh, Iggy, how'd you get to be like this? I mean you get bitten by a radioactive human or something? And can you read minds or just project?"

Chick? Iggy shifted in her crate and tapped the box holding her male companion; he responded by scratching on the wall of the box. Thinking of Oralia as a small, immature bird disturbed her... small birds, immature or not, were food. I can read some minds, depending upon the person. Oralia, for example, I can read, but then, she's easy. Others, such as Li, I can read because she lets me. And then... There are those like you and this foul creature with us, whom I cannot read, though I might be able to if I were touching you.

Again idly playing with the box her male was in, she pondered how to answer his other question. No one is quite sure how I got this way. I'm unique, they tell me. She then changed the subject, Are we going faster than light?

Eli gave a slight huff of nervous laughter. “Unique, huh? Yeah, guess you are at that.” Squeezing the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, he fought off an impending headache. “No offense, you seem nice and all, but I gotta a thing about small creatures with more legs than me crawling on my person. So, I’m not sure I want to test your theory.”

He then looked out the window at the stars streaking by. “As for your other question, yeah, we’re knocking down a bit over warp 4 now. You, ugh, you never been on a ship? I mean, if you can’t see the window from there, I could….you know….umm move ya closer….or sumthing.” What the hell am I thinking? He really, really, really disliked anything creepy and crawly.

Eli quashed that line of thinking. Fangs or not, this spider obviously was intelligent, and to discriminate on the basis of the fact that she had 8 hairy legs and fangs…..fangs that could be driven into unsuspecting flesh and hairy legs used for creeping and crawling and….

Stop! Just stop it. came the mental admonishment. Think hoverball, hoverball, warp field injectors, plasma relays…. Samuels fought to put what he hoped was a reassuring smile on his face, but looked surprisingly like a grimace of pain.

One thing Iggy hadn't yet quite learned, particularly with bipeds she didn't know well, was how to read faces. When she looked at a biped, she saw an inadequate number of eyes, a disgusting breathing hole, and even worse maw filled with wetness and teeth and a tongue that slithered about like an eyeless snake or worm. So it was that she missed that Elijah's face had changed. Plus, her curiosity overwhelmed anything else she might have noticed. Oh! I would like to do that, yes, please! Oralia told me that I was on a ship before, in the before-intelligence phase of my life. I do not recall that time very well. And since then, I have been on the Station. Funny, though, I do not feel as though we are moving fast.

Crap!

Well, he had offered. Standing, he stood over the aquarium. Letting out a sigh, he reached down toward her enclosure.

"Ok....ummm....maybe...well....", Finally, he found an angle that didn't completely creep him out and picked up the aquarium moving to the viewport.

"How's that?" The stars whipped by outside. "And about not feeling it, we're actually in a warp bubble, it's the space around us that's moving, not really us."

Did I really just try to explain warp field theory to a spider?

You are powerful enough to move space around you? The arachnid sounded incredibly awed - and she was, she couldn't understand that concept. When she moved, she moved; she didn't move the space around her. How could bipeds have accomplished such a feat? The stars make beautiful ribbons. Thank you for showing me.

"You're welcome. And the whole movement thing's all kinda realitive really. If anyone in real space sees us, we'd just be a streak, moving faster than light. But if you saw us from inside the warp bubble we're sitting still watching the stars stream by." He took a long look at the zooming stars. "And yeah, it's really pretty. I love just sitting here looking at 'em sometimes."

Crap, did he just make nice with the kidnap victim? The one that belongs to the head of freaking security, no less?!?

Not good, Eli. So not good.

Fortunately for him, he was saved by the bell. Or, the autopilot alert, to be exact. Standing, he pulled his hat on his head.

"Well, that's the buoy for the wormhole, time to see where the boss wants to go."

As if on cue, a groan came from the bunkbed behind them followed by a low growl as Tohr jumped to a sitting position, his stare a thousand light years away from here. He shook his head and his eyes focused on Eli, regaining their usual icy quality. Colder than outer space. His earring glittered in the shuttle lighting as he stood to come closer to the piloting console, the wormhole alert was still blinking.

“It seems we’ve arrived at the right place.” He stated taking out a small padd-like device. “I’m going to connect with the customer.” He ended granting Eli a side glance as his right hand held the pin to be plugged in JR’s console.

Iggy shifted in her crate as Eli set it, and her, down. 'Customer' didn't sound like a good thing.

After a while a low scrambling sound filled their ears and a picture came up on the screen of the small device.

“This is Eldren Tohr. The package is on its way, please give me final coordinates.”

The incredibly fat blue-greenish face, equipped with at least four chins, cackled and commented in a strange language not readily recognizable by Eli, the poor quality of the transmission being of little help, though.

“Now you have your route, Captain.” Tohr said with a grin.

Pursing his lips, Eli laid in the course. "That we do." As the JR vanished into the wormhole, he turned back to Tohr. "How quiet you want us to go in? I figure I can drop us out in the nebula and come in from the starward side of the system, won't appear as much more than a blip in the background EM field. Or we can drop in the commercial lanes, then disappear in traffic, assuming there is much to be had at....", he glared at the coordinates. "How you pronounce where we're going anyway?"

"I don't pronounce it."

Eli gave a slight shrug. "Off to Wonderland we go." With that, the Jolliett's Revenge shot to warp.

___________________________________
Elijah Samuels
Making creepy, multilegged friends

Eldren Tohr
Not Willing to be Tongue-Tied

Ignatius J. Reilly
Going Faster Than the Speed of Light