>Day 2 early morning
Seven had discovered that if she slept instead of regenerated, she tended to need eight hours of sleep for a good night's rest. With the stress of the last day, she had even managed almost nine this time. She looked over at B'Elanna's bed and saw that it was folded up against the wall. She looked around but didn't see the brunette. Confused she got up and checked the cockpit. Not there either.
As she passed through the little connection corridor she noticed that the wet room showed a green light, indicating that it wasn't in use. Still she opened the door to check. In the back of her mind she realized that she had just proven the Lieutenant right about the human nature thing. She knew that the wet room was empty, and yet there she was looking inside the room. It was indeed empty.
Seven glanced around the wet room. It was square and small. If Seven stood in the middle she could easily reach all four walls with her fingertips by stretching out her arms. Seven didn't do so, of course, her ocular implant had already told her the measurements of the room the first time she entered it. To Seven it was sure that it would be big enough for permanent use over years. The only problem she could see was B'Elanna needing to use the toilet if Seven was under the shower.
Seven herself didn't need to use the toilet; a result of her abdominal implant turning all food and drink into energy. As Seven had once told Naomi in order to explain it, her implant worked much as a replicator when it removed rests of food. It turned the matter into energy to use another time when something needed replicating. Seven's implant turned matter into energy which was then passed on to the main power regulation implant to be stored and then power her implants over time.
A result of that was that Seven simply didn't produce any waste; the matter/energy transformation was a hundred percent. It also resulted in Seven technically also being able to eat and drink things that were poisonous to Humans. The only poisons she wouldn't be able to safely take in was poison that was absorbed by the body before it reached the intestines in a normal human. Anything that would enter the blood already when in the stomach would also be deadly to Seven. This was also one of the reasons why she could actually get drunk; alcohol was already absorbed into the body when in the stomach.
But that didn't mean that she didn't understand those biological functions. Just like she also knew that sometimes the body could be so demanding in the need to get rid of the waste that it could physically hurt. So there would be a chance that at some point B'Elanna would need to use the toilet so badly that she couldn't wait for Seven to be finished with her shower.
Therefore, Seven decided, one of the things they would look into was getting a second toilet. They would be able to replicate the working parts, but not the housing. Then she reconsidered that thought. They could if they used basic metals. Even in the present time, steel and stainless steel were still used for certain things on a starship. A square of stainless steel would actually take less energy to replicate then a PADD of the same size would. They could use the welder of the tool kit, or even replicate one, and then use squares of metal to build things if they were not too big. And the best thing was, though items would have to be replicated in parts in order to fit into the replicator, those parts could still already be formed in the design needed. They could easily make a toilet, maybe a table to use outside the shuttle, some chairs with padding. Seven was not above enjoying the luxury of having padding on the surface she had to sit on.
Speaking of doing stuff outside, Seven knew that it was the only option left where B'Elanna could be. She opened the door and glanced around.
~~~
>Day two, early morning.
She stepped outside once she saw B'Elanna sitting on the ground with her back against the shuttle. "Am I intruding?"
B'Elanna looked up, and Seven was glad that there was not even a trace of hostility or annoyance to see. Whatever it had been that had stopped their conversation earlier, it apparently wasn't carrying over. "Nope, pull up a chair."
Seven looked around her in confusion before looking back into the shuttle.
B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "That translates into, sit your ass down."
"Ah, I see," Seven said as she gingerly sat down on the ground. She looked out into the total darkness before looking back at B'Elanna. "I estimate it to be another three hours before dawn will start."
"Yeah, don't worry, I did set up the sonic fence, no night critters will be able to reach us."
"Actually, technically they can," Seven felt it her duty to point out. "The whole idea of the sonic fence is that animals will start to feel the effects and turn away from the source. However, it will not stop animals that are enraged and charge you. There they might even get angrier from the pain the increasing sonic waves are causing them."
As a reply, B'Elanna lifted something that was lying beside her that Seven had not seen. "I am not a complete moron," B'Elanna noted as she tossed the phaser up and caught it again.
"I did not think so, or wanted to indicate I did," Seven assured. "Why did you leave the shuttle?"
"Because I can," B'Elanna said with a grin that Seven could only barely see in the very weak brown light that was reflecting of the gas giant. "Because I was bored stiff," B'Elanna finally explained. "I don't need much sleep; another thing I inherited from my Klingon side. I can function perfectly well on four hours of sleep every night; for months on end if need be. But I do prefer six. Eight hours I consider sleeping in. It's the only reason I can work the hours I work on Voyager without going insane. I simply don't sleep long. I woke and was faced with either just lying in the dark and wait for morning, go to the cockpit and read some there, or come out here. I decided on the last. I figured that the heat would be down a bit and I wanted to sit in the breeze."
She pulled a deep breath of air through her nose. "Smell that? It's nature at its best. That's what living on a starship does for you; it filters out all of the smells."
"With 140 people, I would consider that a good thing," Seven noted.
"Well, yeah," B'Elanna admitted, "But it also means that you can never smell something like this. They could easily add a fragrance to the air."
"It would be difficult," Seven disagreed. "Not technically, but on a personal scale. You would for instance love the smell of this nature, while it would remind Samantha Wildman of her hay fever and make her extremely uncomfortable."
B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "Can't you just simply talk along once in a while?"
Knowing what the Klingon meant, Seven shook her head. "I do not see why."
"It's called having a conversation," B'Elanna sighed.
"I would call it ending a conversation," Seven disagreed.
"What the hell do you mean with that?" B'Elanna asked frustrated.
"Maybe you and I both are too much used to needing to have arguments with each other that others would call fights. As a result we both fail to realize that if between other people those fights would indeed just be called an argument," Seven pointed out. "If you would not get upset at my statements it would be a conversation."
B'Elanna shrugged. "Maybe. Problem is that with others I can assume that they want to talk to me. With you I can pretty much assume that you will disagree with me."
"It will help pass time if nothing else," Seven stated reasonable. "And as for what I meant, if I had merely agreed that it would be nice to add a fragrance to the air on Voyager, that line of discussion would have been over since we agree, at most you could add another 'yeah'. However, if I point out the difficulties of doing so, it would open the discussion further if you wanted to. You could have started to talk about the potential possibility of having no fragrance in public spaces, but do have specific fragrance pumped into the quarters of people. Or finding fragrance levels at which people would not be bothered by it even if they normally do not like the smell, but that it would still be pleasant for people that do like it."
Seven had a point, and B'Elanna knew it. But she wasn't about to admit that any time soon, so she changed the subject somewhat. "That's what I do. I actually us perfumed candles. Kinda cool actually. My Klingon side is all into burning candles because it feels ritualistically, and my human side is fully into smelling the traces of the perfume even hours later."
"The temperature is more pleasant at night," Seven offered after a few minutes of silence. "We will have to..." She paused before correcting herself just to make sure B'Elanna would not get irrational again, "...If it turn out that we are truly on this planet for a longer time, we will have to make a decision."
"About what?"
Seven lifted a hand to indicate their surroundings. "Whether we stay or leave. In fact, whether we stay together or not as well. Until now the discussions centered on the shuttle. We are in a position only a few are in when they made an emergency landing. We have a fully functioning shuttle,"
"Fully functional except for the flying part," B'Elanna interrupted.
"True," Seven agreed. "However, for the rest it is functional. It is even positioned at such a small angle from horizontal that one could say that we have a level floor to walk on. As you already pointed out, we will never have to worry about food for the rest of the time we are here; even if that is the rest of our life. We will always have clothing, we will always have weapons to defend ourselves against animals if needed, we,"
In other words, we have all to make a great week or so of vacation," B'Elanna interrupted once more, getting the point. "But after that the fact that we have nothing that needs doing will drive us insane. Hell, literally insane if we aren’t careful."
"Indeed," Seven agreed. "This ties in with the second part. We both know that we do not get along together perfectly, to say the least. If we were to have to spend a long time together, small things that merely irritate us now could cause major problems. For instance,"
"Oh, and just what is it that I do that would piss you off in the long run?" B'Elanna interrupted hotly.
"Well, always interrupting my sentences is a good start," Seven countered.
B'Elanna had opened her mouth to already start talking about stuff Seven did that was annoying, but now she closed it with a loud click of teeth on teeth.
"So we might want to contemplate separation, even if it is only so far that we can still reach each other within a day's walk if needed. Also, while we do have the shuttle here, the temperature in this region is good for a vacation spot, as you called it, but not too much to spend the rest of one's life in. If we decide to stay together we might want to contemplate leaving the shuttle and moving to a place that is further away from the equator."
"Well, still talking 'what if' of course," B'Elanna said thoughtfully as she went over the things Seven had said. "I think us splitting up is not an option. People, even you miss 'conversations are irrelevant', need someone to talk to or else they go insane. Completely alone sounds great if you say it, but within a few months you want someone else around, even if you hate their guts and just want to scream at them to vent frustration. Plus, let us not forget, here we are it. We would need each other. Take the shuttle's plating that we removed to look at the thruster engine. I was able to remove it because I could just let it drop to the ground, but you needed to hold it in place when we put it back while I fastened the first screws. If that happens there, it will happen again. A second pair of hands is sometimes a literal lifesaver."
Seven dipped her head to indicate that she could see and conceded that point.
"As for moving, I don't think it's a good idea," B'Elanna continued. "Yeah, it's hot here, and it will be so the entire year. But we didn't scan the planet long enough to know en entire year's worth of weather patterns. We might settle somewhere acceptable, only to find that we did so in the middle of summer and a few months later we freeze to death because the climate changed faster than we could move out again. Also, it's hot now, but eventually you will get used to it. Eventually this would be normal, eventually the temperature would dip five degrees one day and you will actually call it chilly. Don't let the heat fool you. You think that people can't live in such temperature zone continuously? Far as I know most Humanoid species actually evolve in warm zones. Exactly because there those animals don't also have to cope with a winter. "
She thumped a fist above her head against the shuttle. "We have a readymade home here, we will never have to spend a single night not being able to sleep because it's too damn out for it."
"Eventually the shuttle would become too small," Seven pointed out. "Even now you felt the urge to leave it. Plus there is such a thing as needing personal space."
B'Elanna shrugged. "So, it would give us something to do at least. Who says we can't build a little roof here so that we can sit outside here as well as in the sun, or still be outside even if it rains. Sleeping we will have to do inside the shuttle for now anyway until we are sure what kind of animals are around. I'm just damn glad that the sonic fence apparently is also working against insects. Anyway, even if it's so hot like it was yesterday when we landed, if you have a roof and can sit in the shade, it's doable. I think that our biggest problem would be to just what the hell to do. Yeah, we have the entire Starfleet base computer knowledge in that ship. We can read plays and novels until we die, but the point is, eventually you will get bored of that."
"I like to solve puzzles in my free time," Seven offered. "But I would not want to do them the entire day, and certainly not for months or years."
B'Elanna nodded. "My point. I'm lucky on Voyager. As much as I complain about the fact that I make twelve hour work days as Chief Engineer, my work is my hobby and I kept busy. What am I gonna do here once the first two or three days are over? Doing nothing for a few days is fun because normally I do so much, but doing it every day?"
"You sound more and more like you accepted my calculations and the fact that we are stuck here," Seven noted.
B'Elanna shook her head. "Nah, I just don't feel like continuing to say 'just for the sake of argument'. There is nothing wrong with talking about what we need to do if we are here for a longer time. It's just talk that passed the time if we get rescued in a few days, and it is good preparation in case you truly turn out to be right. Plus, the original plan was for us to be on this planet for three days. Ignoring what those time zones might have done, if they didn't exist, we would still be stuck here for at least seven days because, yeah, we would leave in three days, but then there would be the four days we were to travel back."
"Voyager is in a position right now where it cannot leave the starbase because repairs are being done on the outer hull," Seven said in understanding. "If they do not hear from us at the agreed upon time, they only have the option of sending another shuttle or wait for the day that we would be back before starting to think we need rescuing."
"They would wait," B'Elanna was sure. "Kathryn won't go sending a shuttle after a shuttle only to run the risk that the second shuttle runs into the same problems the first one is having."
"True," Seven agreed.
"So we can assume that we will have to wait until voyager is fully repaired before they can come," B'Elanna surmised. "Which means that, if you calculate it all, the traveling, the them compensating for the fact that they think time goes faster here, then what do you think a realistic time would be for them to show up?"
Seven thought for a moment. "There are also variables that cannot be calculated. For instance, exactly because you and I have a special place in Kathryn's life, she might be tempted to break off repairs before they are finished and come for us sooner. Yes, hull plates have been removed and the warp engine is getting an overhaul to already prepare it to also work with the dilithium kind we were send here to get. However, old hull plates can be put back in place too instead of waiting for the new ones to be finished, and the warp engine can be brought back online by putting the old parts back in."
B'Elanna shook her head. "Nope, that's where us being, um, more, to Kathryn actually works against us. Remember, she is the Captain and is not allowed to play favorites. She would throw a schedule out of the window to go get the Delaney sisters if they were in trouble, but for us... she will stick to the schedule unless she receives a mayday."
"Which we cannot send," Seven concluded. "Or more to the point, which they cannot receive. So to answer your question of how long it would take before Voyager shows up... I believe your original guess yesterday was extremely accurate; twenty-eight days. We should not expect to see them before that time."
B'Elanna sighed. "Alright, then how about this? We give it those twenty-eight days, days on this planet, not star date days, with yesterday being the first day and now, the coming sunlight being the second day. From then on, as we discussed before, a day is one full cycle of day and night here in the planet. Se see it as a month of forced vacation. Just spend with some nice relaxing, and just waiting for the next day to come. After those four weeks, if we haven't been rescued nor had any contact, then we start thinking about in just how much shit we are. Until that time, we treat this as that vacation?"
"There is not much we can do otherwise as it is," Seven pointed out. "Other than planning what we might do if we truly are stuck here forever. But we were already talking about that just now. I do not see us stop doing that because it is something we can in fact talk about. At most I can see it changing to talking about more long term plans."
"True to both," B'Elanna agreed. "But, well, I guess you could call it conscious denial. I don't want to start thinking now about how we will never see our friends again if we might having a drink with them in a few weeks. So I'm gonna fully expect a rescue and in the meantime replicate myself a hammock and enjoy the sunlight."
"An interesting approach," Seven said after a moment of silence.
"A disillusioned one in any other situation," B'Elanna admitted. "But the thing is that if being stuck in the Delta Quadrant taught us one thing, it is that at the end of the day, Kathryn and the crew finds a way to save people from impossible places."
Seven was quiet as she looked out into the darkness.
It took B'Elanna a moment to understand that for once the blonde was making a statement without words. She grinned. "The proverbial day, bitch, and you knew damn well what I meant."
"I did," Seven admitted, not at all offended by the insult. Ironically enough, coming from the Klingon, being called a bitch could sound as an big insult as well as sounding fondly. All by how she used her voice. And about how angry she was of course.
After that they both fell silent and just sat there waiting for the day to begin. Both deep in thought about the 'what if's' of their situation.
~~~
>Day two, morning.
The star was slowly creeping higher in the sky as they stepped out of the shuttle after having gone back in for the morning activities like taking a shower and eating breakfast. It was daylight for three hours now, and Seven started to notice that the heat that the night had broken up a bit was quickly coming back. She looked out into the clearing and noticed the movement. "The grazers are moving back between the trees. Either the animals that hunt them are only nocturnal, or they learned long ago in evolution that the heat and direct daylight will kill more of them than predators do."
"That, or they might actually have good senses," B'Elanna suggested as she moved to the left side of the shuttle. "It's easy to assume that in the forests the predators have the advantage because they can sneak and hide. But predators can also do that in the high grass out there. In the forest prey animals have advantages too. Then speed is not as much a factor as agility. Be quicker on the turn than your hunter and you will live. And under the trees even sneaking animals have more chance of making a sound."
"A good argument," Seven had to agree. "More so since we do not actually know these animals and their behavior."
B'Elanna started to open one of the storage compartments that you could only reach from the outside. Seven kept her eyes on what B'Elanna was doing, but her ears on the surroundings. Sometimes being a former Borg was convenient. She was very capable of having and focusing on a conversation, and at the same time scan general sounds around her for all sounds that might be of interest.
When Seven had just joined Voyager and saw that some of the storage compartments of the shuttles could be only reached from the outside, she had complained to the captain about the illogical design. The Captain had disagreed though. Had explained to her that there were some things on a shuttle you could only use outside. So what was the use of storing them in compartments that you could only reach from the inside of the shuttle? It meant only more room that could not be covered by a bed or cargo. So some things were stored between the double hull of the shuttle, in places where you could impossible reach them from the inside.
Like the compartment that B'Elanna was rummaging through now. It was actually located where on the other side of the hull there was the shower inside the shuttle.
"Can we make more of these fence staffs?" B'Elanna asked as she lifted one of the five staffs she hadn't already used in the sonic fence.
Seven looked at it for a moment. "No we cannot. However, the design is not complex. If you want I can redesign it so that a staff exists out of several parts. Then we could replicate as much as we need. The question is however, why would you need more?"
"Because the fence that is part of the shuttles standard kit has only enough staffs to make a nice decagon around the shuttle; ten staffs, ten sides."
"Though that is how they are normally used, that is not their limitation," Seven pointed out. "People simply have a tenancy to make a decagon because they want the same amount of protection on all sides. So they prefer to sit in the middle of an almost circle."
"Hmm, I got to admit that I never gave it much thought," B'Elanna admitted. "It's just how it’s normally done. Even now I was thinking about adding ten more staffs so that we could make a nice big icosagon around the shuttle. And with twenty sides, it would truly almost be a circle."
Seven dipped her head in agreement. "True, but that also proves my point. If you add more staffs that will change the angle between staffs. It proves that the angles are no limitation. There are sensors in the staffs to scan for sentient life, which is why we do not notice the sonic fence when we walk through it. It is weakened and even temporarily switched off as we pass through it."
"Point being?" B'Elanna urged on.
"Point being," Seven repeated, "That those same sensors also scan for the closest staff and then makes a sonic fence to it, while the staff on the other side makes a fence to the staff in question, building the fence one section at a time by doing so. So if you were so inclined you could also put the staffs in a square form and they would still work. Or in a more complex form that follows the contours of a terrain."
B'Elanna nodded her head a little. "Yeah, I do know that. The staffs have to be in line of sight when you put them down. No obstruction. If you put them on either side of a tree the fence will not activate because, um, I guess the sensor can't find that clear line of sight?" She added a bit weakly. She was the Chief Engineer of a starship, she felt uneasy of she didn't know something technical. Even if it was in this case simply because the device in question was so often used that you didn't think about it anymore, and if one stopped working, you simply put it in the industrial replicator to disintegrate and then get a new one that did work. She doubted that anyone, save the people that designed them, had seen the inners of a sonic fence staff since they started to be used in mass in Starfleet fifty years before. She rallied a bit by adding, "In such a case you need to move both staffs a bit until they are past the tree."
"That is correct," Seven agreed, before correcting, "Or only one. There is a kind of puzzles I like to do, it is called 'connect the dots'. It is also a Human saying. Do you know it?"
B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "Who doesn't?"
"The placement of the staffs could be seen as such a puzzle, even adhering to the same rules," Seven continued. "The dots, or staffs, can be anywhere, but in connecting them you cannot cross the lines. With the staffs you cannot cross the sonic fields because then they might cancel each other out. The lines, or distance between staffs, can only have a certain length. In the puzzle because it complicates the puzzle, with the staffs because the further away the staffs are from each other, the more scattered the signal becomes; once again leaving holes in the fence. And lastly, as just mentioned, the lines cannot go through a solid object. If there is such an obstruction you will need a different way of connecting the dots."
"Or in our case, move a pole," B'Elanna grinned.
"And you want more of them, why? Now that shape has proven to be relatively unimportant," Seven asked again.
B'Elanna bent down and picked up a half decayed branch. "Because the maximum distance between staffs is twenty meters, and they strongly suggest only ten so that the signal stays strong. I don't know about you, but if we really are going to be here for a week, I want to be able to step away from the shuttle a bit and still not be eaten by bugs. So I was thinking of creating more room around us, move it a bit into the forest as well so that we can go hang out there when it gets really hot. And here up front..." She threw the stick as hard as she could and watched where it landed, "...I want to be able to go further than that. If I don't need to work, I need something else to do. Way back when I actually had free time I liked to jog a bit. Burns energy and is great for thinking at the same time. And I want to be able to make decent sized laps around the shuttle and still not get eaten by bugs."
"Very well," Seven agreed. It was not like redesigning the staffs would be hard, and it would give her something to do. "Though I must point out that I noticed an interestingly lack of insects around us so making the sonic fence larger only for the insects would be useless."
B'Elanna snorted. "And what was all that buzzing and chirping a few hours ago?"
"A lack does not mean none at all," Seven reminded. "There are insects. I was merely pointing out that compared to other planets we visited there are surprisingly few insects here. I would estimate about only twenty percent of the last planet we visited."
"Yeah, but that place was damn bug infested." B'Elanna hesitated before adding, "But I see what you mean. Yeah, now that you mention it... it's kinda like nature has just the right balance here. Just enough insects to do stuff like pollination and feeding birds, but not more than really needed. Like nature knew that making more would only cause problems."
"Indeed," Seven only said.
B'Elanna walked around the side of the shuttle to the back and looked at the place beside the door. "I'm getting tired of sitting on the dirt. I guess we can try to remove the folding table and chair from the shuttle and place them here."
Seven shook her head. "That would be unwise. They can be folded up from the floor if need to, but in order to do so there are fastenings that click into place when you pull them up. Here we would not have such fastenings. Plus the ends of the chairs would only sink into the ground. Considering the fact that the day last just as long as the night here, I would suggest leaving the chair and table as they are now, so that we can use them at night. Since neither of us has a habit of sleeping fifteen hours per day, we will soon find ourselves in need of a table to sit at."
"Alright, fair enough," B'Elanna had to admit. "I guess I could replicate and axe and go looking for a tree to cut down so that we can at least sit on that."
"Or we could build a table and chairs," Seven counted. "I thought about that last night before coming out here. The replicator can make base metals with ease. Steel or even stainless steel would not take that much in regards to power. We could make parts that fit in the replicator, and then merely weld them together. By doing so there is proverbially no limits to what we could make. Proverbially because we would be limited by our knowledge, skill, and patience."
"Patience?" B'Elanna asked amused.
"For instance," Seven explained, "You said last night that it would be nice to have a roof at this side of the shuttle to sit under. This could easily be made by stainless steel, but with plates at best forty by thirty centimeters, do you really think you would have the patience to weld all of it together?"
"Would keep me busy at least," B'Elanna noted amused.
"It would be a useless waste of time," Seven counted. "The replicator is capable of making things that appear in the replicator folded together. We could easily replicate a canvas of ten by twenty meters at once. So we would be better off to make a frame of stainless steel, and then pull the canvas over it. If we were to use Andorian wire fabric we would have a roof that would last at least forty years without maintenance, and that would be completely waterproof."
"Well, maintenance free, not counting any potential storms," B'Elanna countered. Seeing Seven's confused look she added, "Most planets I know, in the tropics they tend to have a dry and wet season instead of summer and winter. Normally there are storms tied into that wet season. Who's to say that this won't be the case here? As already established, we didn't scan long enough to be able to predict a full year's worth of climate fluctuations. Plus, let us not forget that if we truly did travel back in time five thousand years, the climate might be totally different anyway. I did notice yesterday that it was hotter than we scanned for and from the feel of it, today won't be much colder either. To be honest, I'm amazed how much it cooled overnight. At least ten degrees."
"Twelve," Seven corrected. "Between dusk and the coolest moment this night was twelve degrees Celsius difference."
B'Elanna glanced up at the star she was already thinking of as the sun instead of the star. Funny how that stuck with people. Because Humans made a difference between 'a' star and 'their' star, universal replicators had never been programmed to translate the word sun into star. And so, as Human kind started to explore more, went to different planets, they started to make that same difference there. There were stars 'out there', but the star that was giving them light on that planet was 'the sun'. And now it was normal thing in the Federation. The solar system's star was 'the sun' which also gave you 'sunlight' and a 'sunny day'. But other stars were still just stars. They merely gave 'starlight'.
B'Elanna sighed. "Alright, it's getting hotter. How long do you think it would take you to redesign those sonic fence staffs?"
"About one hour," Seven guessed.
"Great, then how about we get going?" B'Elanna suggested. "Redesign the damn things so that we can set up a fence around the shuttle. I don't want to spend the entire day cooped up in the shuttle." She pointed to the trees at the front of the shuttle. "And it seems like a great idea to me to have a bit of forest we can stay in when the sun gets higher up. Maybe I can even replicate that hammock."
~~~