trans_9 | The more things change... [OPEN]

It had been an interesting couple of days. Whatever she had been expecting upon finding herself on an alien spaceship, the chance to meet a good friend she had mourned - alive and relatively well, if also kidnapped by aliens - hadn't been it. Seeing Grace alive, that had been a pleasant shock.

It almost made up for the fact that her Samson would have to be given up for lost until the next time they landed on a planet... if they landed on a planet. The crew had made it sound like that kind of thing didn't happen very often.

Still, it wasn't every day you got to sit down and talk with someone whose funeral you had attended. So Trudy had taken it upon herself to find Grace - and she knew exactly where to look for her. Anything with 'lab' in the title was probably where she would find the scientist. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same after all.

True to her initial thoughts, medical hadn't been very hard to find. And with the help of the directions she'd gotten on the omnicomm, she was able to find the lab relatively easily. Trudy walked in with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her plantsuit, her service rifle still slung over her shoulder. "Hello? Anyone home?"

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His voice was cool, almost emotionless, and Trudy shrugged off the fact that he apparently had no sense of humor. Wasn't the first time she'd met someone socially weird - and who knew about his species?

"Captain Trudy Chacon," she said. She kept her hands in her pockets; if he hadn't offered his hand to shake, it probably wasn't culturally applicable. "Sorry if it's rude to ask, but what is your species called?"

"An honest question is never offensive," Spock replied easily. "My people are known as Vulcans. We originate from a planet of the same name, although my mother was human, from the city of Seattle, on Earth." He tilted his head slightly at her. "Are you Captain of a ship?"

"Captain is my military rank," Trudy said. "I'm a pilot for the Marine Corp - did you say Earth?" Now she was interested - as far as she knew, the Na'vi were the only species humans had encountered.

So many Earths here. Kind of weird.

"I see." He was unfamiliar with this 'Marine Corp' she spoke of, but Spock respected anyone with such a background. "I hold - or held - the rank of Commander in the Federation Starfleet. In my universe, Earth and Vulcan were members of the United Federation of Planets, a governmental body dedicated to upholding the rights of sentient life forms, preserving peace with intergalactic neighbors, and expanding our knowledge of the universe."

"Commander," Trudy said with a nod. "I'm pretty sure we come from different universes - in mine, interstellar travel was really slow and the only other species we've discovered is called the Na'vi." She shrugged. "It'd be a nice planet if we could breathe the atmosphere, and if you didn't have to spend six years in cold sleep to get there. It's kind of strange to hear about such an overabundance of easy intergalactic travel."

Her mouth twisted in a frown for a moment. "Although maybe it's a good thing. I'm not sure humanity in my universe is ready for encounters with other species."

"Deep space travel is, to some extent, impossible without warp capability," Spock said in agreement. "That is, the ability to travel faster than the speed of light. There are many planets in my universe which possess atmospheres breathable for humans, although that is not the only consideration. Atmospheric density, for instance, can vary greatly among habitable planets."

He paused a brief moment at her last statement. "In my universe, it is generally acknowledged that a species is not ready for contact with other life until it has attained the technological capacity to travel in deep space, as well as the moral development required to understand the potential consequences of such actions."

Trudy huffed out a breath that blew her hair out of her face. "Would have been nice if the company that found Pandora had held to that," she said. "The Na'vi don't have spaceflight and the RDA didn't really care about the consequences. I don't know which was worse, them or-" she paused for a moment. "No, SecOps was worse."

Damn Quaritch.

"That is highly unfortunate," Spock said, and he meant it. It was clear to him that Trudy was speaking of genocide. "It is always difficult to predict the outcome of a civilization attaining knowledge and technology. For some, it becomes a tool for good. For others, a tool for exploitation."

Trudy shrugged, not liking the sudden direction the conversation had taken - it was getting too deep for her. "United Federation of Planets, huh? There a lot of planets in it? Pandora's the only place we've ever found like that wasn't ours. Mostly by chance, too."

The more things change... [OPEN]

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