Author's note:
1, repost all to mailing list if posting this, too many (time) changes, it won't make sense otherwise.
2, for now you won't see any chapter indications, only 'part X' with x being a number. And even that is nothing else other for me to keep track of stuff I write. The real chapter, or part, indicators will be added of the edit once the story is finished.
>Day fourteen, morning.
B'Elanna looked out of the shuttle's door and sighed. Then she felt arms slide around her and a chin being placed on her shoulder. "It's raining," She stated the obvious as they both looked out at the falling water. Overall, it was a light rain, nothing that indicated the coming of a storm. But the whole picture, the rain, the grayness of the sky, the way animals that were of course used to the rainfall on the planet were staying in hiding, all indicated that it was going to rain for a long time. It was one of those rainy days where you just knew in the morning that it would still rain in the evening.
"Good," Seven approved as the pulled her lover against her. "That means that we will have to find indoor activities to do."
B'Elanna grinned, knowing only too well what Seven was referring too. "I don't know, there is something very sexy about making love in the rain. Plus we have to, you know? So that I can compare the real thing to my imaginary image of you holding me in the rain."
"Yes, however there is the rest of the day to think about," Seven reminded. "The rain will be fun for only an hour or so, after that we will definitely have to go inside and have more fun."
B'Elanna turned in the arms and was about to say something, but then she saw Seven's distinct lack of dress and changed that to, "Ooh, naked hot babe, lucky me."
Seven lifted an eyebrow before teasing, "Yes, at least twice a day."
B'Elanna shrugged. "It started off with us being new lovers, and being on a planet with nothing to do but play with each other. Sure as hell am I gonna screw you every time you look at me like that. We may be intimate for two weeks now, but the nothing else to do still stands. Why start making less love if we both enjoy it way too much to slow down?"
"I am certain that most people do not make love twice per day once the first rush of the new has been settled," Seven pointed out.
"Most people aren’t stuck here," B'Elanna reminded. "Normally it's daily life that sets the break on it. Once you know for sure that it isn't a one day screw then, yes, going out to dinner takes priority over making love that evening. Or hanging with friends is more important than being at home even though the being at home is fun. Once we are back on Voyager we have all of the daily crap to deal with and we can be lucky if we get to make love three times per week. So yeah, I'll screw."
Then she grinned. "But had someone being listening to what I just said, they might have noticed that I said, 'every time you look at me like that'. I'm the Klingon here, baby. We have the name for being horny all the time. You on the other hand are,"
"The Ice princess," Seven interrupted with a smile. "The cold hearted, frostbite infected, snowdrift that could not even get a volcano hot?"
"Um, something like that," B'Elanna agreed, recognizing some of her own words. "I wonder if people on Voyager even suspect that you are hornier than me."
"Doubtful," Seven assured. "Because, my little volcano, I may be the one who wants it most, but it is you who causes that. On Voyager, having sex once a week, twice at most, was enough for me. But with you, I just can't get enough."
B'Elanna noticed how Seven had worded what she had said, how she had deliberately left out a certain name. And that was cool with her. Seven and B'Elanna both had a history, and they were confident enough with each other that sometimes they could refer to that history to make a point, but what use was it to get more detailed than that? What use would it have been in that statement to add the name and remember just who Seven had been sleeping with? They both know, so why say the name?
She put her hands on Seven's behind and pulled the willing woman close, sliding one leg between those of the blonde. Not to really stimulate, but just because she could, and because they both enjoyed the intimate contact. After they shared a few kisses, she asked, "You think this will last long?"
Suddenly Seven pushed her back against the wall and put her hands against the fall on either side of B'Elanna's head; giving the Klingon a bit of a trapped feeling. "Yes, this will last long. You are mine forever."
B'Elanna loved the feeling, loved when Seven was so bold with her, it contrasted so nicely with when they were making love, where Seven tended to be just a tad more of a follower, wanting B'Elanna to take change. So moments like these, where Seven reminded in those flashes that things 'could' be different if she wanted to, were a real thrill for the Klingon, and all she needed to know that the roll division between them was pretty damn well awesomely balanced.
"I'm cool with that," B'Elanna assured before pulling Seven in for a passion kiss that more than reflected her words. Once they broke apart and the heartbeats were back to a more casual level, she added. "But I was actually talking about the rain."
"Wait," Seven said as she moved away. She walked back to the front of the shuttle, and as she was doing so she added, "And stop looking at my behind."
"Only if you turn around and give me something else to look at," B'Elanna stated boldly, more than happy to admit that this was what she had been doing. But who could blame her? The female body was an artwork in her mind, an artwork of aesthetics and physics playing nice together. Breasts changed the balance of the body, so there had to be an ass to compensate for that. And with Seven's breasts, her rear compensated in the most awesome of ways.
Seven came back with the PADD she had gone to get and showed it to her lover. She plunged her assimilation tubes in it, and B'Elanna noticed that there were already little holes from where Seven had done that before, indicating that she was using the same PADD that she had using since the night where Seven had shown B'Elanna what was truly happening around them at night, when they had seen Shadow for the first time. Seven only used another PADD if she needed more than one to look at several sources of date, or if she needed the designing PADD that was bigger to house the bigger screen. Funny how even though a PADD was a PADD, people, including Seven, still had favorite items to use.
"You do that a lot," B'Elanna indicated, nodding to the PADD, and clearly indicating the tubes.
"Now that I can, yes," Seven admitted. "On Voyager I do not do this unless I am certain I am alone and it is unlikely that someone will enter the room. It is much easier for me to communicate with devices like this, than to use the tactile or audio input. However, I do know that people on Voyager do not like to see the assimilation tubes, because it reminds them that I could use them for just that; assimilation. Here I do it because I know you have seen it and do not have a problem with it."
"Ah, so what you are saying is that you like to do that because you can talk better to your family like that; you know, the other machines," B'Elanna teased, hoping and wondering that Seven would take it well. There were still some lines she didn't know if she could cross them.
Seven lilted her head a little and deducted, "You basically just called me a walking machine. Should I be insulted, or should I call you a pervert for getting horny from looking at a machine, and in fact, actually go so far and screw the machine in the most literal way possible?"
B'Elanna laughed, "Ooh, nice comeback. Yes, call me a pervert, because I sure like screwing around with you. And I really love to feel those ridges on your fingers as they,"
"Take you," Seven added.
"Oh, yes," B'Elanna purred as she looked back at the PADD, only to have her eyes drift to the hand that was holding the PADD instead.
Seven saw the wandering eyes and smirked after a moment of silence. "Let me guess, you are thinking back to when I took you bent over the table."
B'Elanna laughed, freely admitting to the fact that the guess was spot on. "Come on, how could I not. That was amazing."
"Look at the screen, love," Seven said eventually after a long shared look of total understanding. "Let me explain why I know for certain that it will rain the rest of the day."
B'Elanna did so and saw a round image of the area. "The radius that the scanners can reach right now?" She asked, having recognized them image from when Seven ad show something similar to her after they had crashed... landed... crash landed.
"Indeed," Seven agreed. "For this I could also have used the full planet image scan we took from space, but I believe that this is more suitable since it shows what happens to us and this way I could include up-to-date data from the last two weeks."
B'Elanna nodded in understanding and a moment later she saw clouds start to for in the vicinity of the lake. "You explained that before. It's actually the lake that provides rain to most of the inner land. Hmm, come to think of it, we had several cloudy days where we thought it might rain, but this is the first time it actually does so."
Seven nodded. "I will touch on the reason in a moment. I also know that you know the cycle of water, so do not feel that you need to humor me by just listening to it. Instead really do listen and file that away with the strangeness of this planet."
B'Elanna merely chuckled.
"The lake is fed by the rivers from the mountains that surround the inner land mass," Seven continued. "Which, on a side note, is also strange. As you know, planets can be only fully self-sustainable if there is tectonic movement. If there is no such tectonic movement, a planet will eventually lose its atmosphere because it is the swirling motion of a fluidic planet core that creates the magnetic field. If there is no fluidic core, and thus no tectonic plates floating on top of it, the magnetic field of the planet is not strong enough to prevent the atmosphere from being blown into space by solar winds."
"Like Mars," B'Elanna said, mostly to show that she was still listening. "You get planets that are great for terraforming and, on a planetary scale, easy to maintain. But you do need to maintain it. If Humans were to leave Mars today, um, today in the time out there, then the atmosphere would be blown off the planet again by solar winds in two or three thousand years. Or at least up to such a point that you would need a spacesuit again to be there."
Seven nodded her agreement. "The thing is that tectonic movement creates mountains, yes, but it does this where two tectonic plates collide and the earth is pushed up."
"I see where you are going," B'Elanna said in understanding. "This mountain forming is natural to happen at those points, but absolutely physically impossible to conveniently happen around the entire edge of a continent. Which elaborates on our earlier findings. We agreed that this planet has to have been at least terraformed, if not created, so those mountains tie into that."
"They do," Seven agreed. "But it also shows that this terraforming is still going on, or at least maintained. If not certain mountains would have crumbled while others would be higher still. You would not have this even distribution. I do know that we are talking about time in a place where time can change. But still, this entity that is doing the terraforming must have the power to change the direction of tectonic drift at least every ten million years or so."
"A little bump on this side, then a little bump there, to keep all the mountains around the continent equally high," B'Elanna clarified. "And not just here, this may be the biggest continent on the planet, but it's not the only one."
"Which brings us to the weather," Seven continued. "Since there are mountains all around the edge of the continent, relatively speaking of course since there is still land on the other side of those mountains, there can never be any strong storms on the inner side of the mountains."
B'Elanna tapped the screen where an image of a cloud was being stopped by the mountains. "Because all the storms and even heavy rain clouds smash into the mountains, like a shield. Some of the clouds do get over the mountains, but the momentum is stopped and the rain falls in the mountains as snow. And from there we get the melting snow, the streams, the rivers, all of which ends up in the big lake."
"Where it then evaporates in the heat of the day and the vapor is blown in the direction of the wind," Seven continued. "Which results in there always being a nice and gentle rain fall when it rains. It will never storm, and the rainfall will always be at a constant. More or less depending on how much water there is in the clouds, but I can assure you that in three hours the rain outside will fall at the same level as it is now. And it will rain for as long as we are in the path the wind takes from the lake. Once the wind shifts then the rain will fall in another direction."
"Like a giant irrigation system," B'Elanna concluded. "And let me guess, the wind shifts enough for all the inner land to get enough rain for all the green stuff we see out there?"
"Indeed." Seven changed the image on the screen to reflect the scan they had taken of the strange solar system in its entire from space. "However, as you can see, the planet has a tilt to it, so as you move to the poles you will get the summer and winter cycle as we discussed when we were stranded here. Here, closer to the equator this will merely translate into the wind patterns shifting and the winds blowing more from once side in the summer, and more from another in the winter."
"So this place doesn’t see a winter, but it does see a rainy season?" B'Elanna asked as she looked from the PADD out the door to the rain.
"In a way, yes," Seven agreed. "However, it does not compare to what people normally envision when they think of a rainy season. The severity of the rain will not change much. If it rains it will always be something like what you see now. A bit more, a bit less, but that is the extend of it. The difference will be in how often it rains. On this I can only give you an educated guess."
"Guess away," B'Elanna prompted with a grin.
"I Estimate that in the time one would call a summer, it will rain on average once every three weeks. And in the winter season it will rain on average about three days per week," Seven explained before adding, "And since this is the first time it rains since we are here, I would say it is safe to assume that we are closer to summer then to winter."
"And in the times in between if slowly builds and lessens?" B'Elanna guessed. "So spring will be noticeable not by temperature, but by it starting to rain less. Only twice a week, then once, and so on, and in the autumn the reverse?"
"Indeed," Seven agreed as she threw the PADD onto her bed. "And that is why I suggested that you file the information away. As unlikely as it was, until now all information on the planet could have happened by nature. We just knew that it had to be done by someone because it may happen by nature, but not all at once. Still, there is the small chance of possibility that it would. This however settles the discussion, because it is physically impossible for mountains to form like that, for tectonic plates to act like that."
B'Elanna nodded her agreement. "Yeah, but the weird time zones already proved that. So I would say that what this indicates more is that this entity has more than merely... well, I say merely like it's nothing, but hey... merely the power to influence time. Besides that it must also have the power over one of physics core powers; magnetism."
"Which can tie into each other," Seven reminded. "Magnetic fields can influence time. So if we still believe that this entity has power through knowledge, one might merely have come with the other. It might actually have been having the knowledge over the magnetic force that opened up the knowledge over time."
B'Elanna nodded, "That could be." She once again looked at the rain. "But it's still raining here and now."
"Good," Seven approved before pushing B'Elanna out.
"Hey, my Jammies," B'Elanna objected halfheartedly.
"You can replicate new ones," Seven said. "It will give us something to remove and as you know, I love stripping you naked. Now, as you like to say; we screw like bunnies. It is time we started doing that where the bunnies live. I want you. I want to make love to you in the hammock as the rain falls down on us."
"The hammock didn't prove to be one of the best places to make love," B'Elanna reminded. "We fell out. And as much as I would love to make love in the rain, I don't want to make love in the mud."
"I believe the hammock deserves a second chance," Seven insisted. "Before we did not know the limitations of it, now we do. So now those limitations will only enhance the fun since we have to keep them in mind."
B'Elanna merely chuckled. Who was she to argue? When a sexy, hot as hell, very well endowed, blonde told you that she wanted to have sex with you, really was there anything left to say other than, which position? And even that wasn't a real question because the hammock decided that.
~~~
> Day 21, early morning.
B'Elanna woke and noticed that she was alone. It wasn't the first time she woke up without Seven beside her. They were lovers for three weeks now, and about twice a week B'Elanna had woken without finding her lover still in her arms. B'Elanna knew the reason why Seven sometimes wasn't there in the morning. It was basic to the extreme. The blonde needed less sleep than her. From the side of the concerned partner, B'Elanna was glad that her lover got up and went to find things to keep her busy. There was no reason for the blonde to just lie there and wait for B'Elanna to wake up.
From the totally selfish side though, and something B'Elanna would never tell Seven, she wanted the blonde to stay in bed and still be in the Klingon's arms when B'Elanna woke up. It was selfish, stupid, and unconsidered, but yes, a small part of B'Elanna wanted Seven to be there so that they could start their day together. So that the first thing B'Elanna would see in the morning were those blue eyes that could so easily watch straight into her soul.
But there was also the small fact that waking without Seven right there managed to fill B'Elanna with this empty alone feeling that scared her a little. It scared her because of two reasons. One, because she never had that before she and Seven became lovers, and her independent mind didn't like the fact of needing someone that much. And second, she feared what might ever happen if Seven deiced that she might be better off without B'Elanna. Which, of course, then filled her with shame for thinking that Seven would think that. But still, insecurities were a real bitch to deal with sometimes. And for some reason, at that moment there was a knot in her stomach telling her that something was off.
B'Elanna sight as she woke up a little more. And that, apparently, was another reason why she preferred to wake with Seven in her arms. If the blonde was there, B'Elanna didn't start thinking crazy thoughts that she knew she really should be ashamed to be even thinking.
She got up and put on her nightshirt. This brought a smile to her lips. Funny that, putting a nightshirt on when you got up. But there was definitely something to be said for sleeping naked with Seven. But unlike Seven, the draft from walking around the shuttle naked got on her nerves. She glanced towards the cockpit to see if Seven was there and frowned when she saw that the door was closed. Seven was not someone that needed the occasional 'alone time', or at least not with B'Elanna. To the contrary, the blonde was surprisingly clingy, witch suited B'Elanna just fine. There was something to be said for having a sexy as hell blonde that you happen to love wanting to touch you, hug you, kiss you.
B'Elanna pushed the access button and was glad to see that the door opened. Well, at least Seven hadn't locked her out. Maybe B'Elanna was just overthinking it all and Seven had simply closed the door to make sure to not wake her. B'Elanna saw Seven sitting inside, completely nude; showing that she had gone there straight from the bed. "Hey sexy, isn't it still a bit dark out to enjoy the view; Borg implants or not?"
"I did not come here to enjoy the view," Seven finally said after a long moment of silence that had been only a fraction away of becoming awkward.
"Did I do something to upset you?" B'Elanna asked as she sat down in the other chair, having heard the strange tone in Seven's voice.
Seven managed a smile and reached over to caress B'Elanna's face. "You did not. And even if you had, I would have told you. That was after all part of the deal. You are my flawed perfection."
B'Elanna leaned into the caress and smiled at the words. One day Seven had called her her perfection, to which B'Elanna had pointed out that she wasn't perfect, that she was flawed like every person, and that she would no doubt eventually do something wrong. To which Seven had merely amended that in that case, B'Elanna was her flawed perfection. It had been an endearment ever since, not often used, and therefore all the more special when used.
"Then what's wrong?" B'Elanna finally asked. "What are you doing here, with the door closed? If you were bored you could have read some; we know by now that it won't wake me."
Seven looked at her and shook her head slightly. "I did not come here because I was bored; I came here to die."
"Wha?" Was all B'Elanna managed to say in total amazement.
"I was awoken by an internal alarm," Seven explained. "One of my implants was failing. One of those rarely talked about, but paramount in keeping me alive." She glanced down to indicate the implants between her breasts.
"Your heart implant," B'Elanna said in understanding. "But, but you told me that your implants can't break."
Seven shook her head. "I told you that the chance of something happening to them was actually smaller than the chance of something happening to the part of your body that is replaced by the implant with me. The chance of an implant malfunctioning is small, but still a chance. Once again, if you believe in a person only having a limited amount of good or bad luck, then I would say that our chance of being rescued must have risen by at least two million percent, just to compensate for the extremely small percentage of bad luck chance that something could happen to my implants, and yet it did."
"Alright, alright," B'Elanna said, trying to stay on the subject. "So, you woke up, knew that an implant was not working right... and decided to come sit here? Why not wake me? Why not,"
"There is nothing you could have done," Seven said softly. "The alarm is meant so that a Borg Drone can be beamed to a repair bay where the implant is replaced. Here there is no option of replacing the implant. Here there is supposed to be only one option; I die. Since I knew I was going to die, I came here so that you would at least not wake up beside a dead body in the morning."
"And you think finding you here would make a difference?" B'Elanna said in disbelief.
Seven gave her a ghost of a smile. "Love, I was dying. For once rational and deductive thinking was not exactly on my mind."
B'Elanna's sails were deflated by that and she managed a weak, "oh." But she had to admit that she didn't mind the fact that Seven had left to go to another room too much. Because deep down, in that hardcore absolute selfish part that every person has but always tried to pretend they don't, there was this small part to the statement that hit home so hard that the selfish part was well fed and taken care of for at least a couple of weeks. The fact that, in what Seven knew for sure were her final moments, the blonde's final thoughts had been of B'Elanna. What was an 'I love you' compared to knowing for sure that you had been the last thing on your lover's mind as she was passing on? It was a thought that B'Elanna was ashamed of even thinking it, and at the same time craved.
She shook her head to get rid of the thought and frowned. "But you are still alive, for which I'm very thankful I might add. So was your alarm wrong?"
Seven shook her head. "No, the alarm was right. My heart implant was malfunctioning. I was dying. I even felt my heart stop beating."
"And then?" B'Elanna wondered. She wanted to shake her lover to get the answers, but realized that this would be at least on a romantically level, a move she would regret the rest of her life. So instead she tried to find some patience.
"And then," Seven said slowly, "it started beating again."
If it had been part of a story, B'Elanna would have been upset because of the anticlimactic nature of the statement. But this was real, and on top of that she was an Engineer; she knew the physics of machines. "That is..."
"Not possible," Seven agreed. "And yet here I am. However, that is not the troublesome part."
"You dying is not troublesome," B'Elanna asked outraged.
"No, because I did not, in fact, die," Seven reminded. "The troublesome part is that obviously I did a scan to see why I was still alive, why my heart had started again."
"Was it your Human nature peaking up?" B'Elanna wondered. "It has happened before, that I know. There have been implants of which it was sure you needed them. And then they were damaged, they had to be removed, and you could function just fine."
Seven shook her head again. "That I would not call troublesome as such, other than the fact that the last thing we need right now is for us to start wondering what implant will stop working next and if my Human immune system is actually causing it. No, the troublesome part is that my heart is working again because the implant that was broken stopped being broken. I scanned it, and it is as new as the day it was created. And I do mean that literally and not merely as a figure of speech."
B'Elanna just looked at Seven with open mouth for ten seconds or so, before finally managing, "You mean, somehow, out here, somehow you managed to get a brand new Borg implant in your body without you even noticing it? Are the Borg somehow involved in all this nonsense?"
"No," Seven disagreed. "Not a brand new implant. My implant, my old and existing implant, is suddenly as if it is brand new. It is the same implant, I checked. Even the serial codes of each part are the old ones. It is the old implant, just... new."
Finally, a realization started to form with B'Elanna. "The old is new again, just like someone turned back the time? As if it traveled back in time to the point where it was just created? To where going even one more day back in time would mean it is just parts since it isn't assembled yet?"
"That kind of new, yes," Seven agreed. "And before you bring it up, I know that we are on a planet where time is behaving not natural, to say the least. I did check if there was a chance that luck had graced us with a gift of her visit. For instance, maybe my implant just coincidentally being touched by an erratic time loop that is the result of the time changes on the planet."
"No, hu?" B'Elanna guessed.
"No," Seven agreed. "Because even if that had happened to the extreme of measurements, somehow touching almost nothing but the implant, some of my Human tissue would still have to be affected as well. If nor nothing more than the points where this wave traveled in and out my body."
B'Elanna nodded her head. "Yeah, if the device is renewed, then so must the flesh that is surrounding the device. You were assimilated at age six, I guess you got this implant then?"
"I did," Seven agreed, and couldn't help but add," That might also explain the position of the device. An six year old girl has a flat chest; I grew a bit since then."
B'Elanna snorted a launch, not having excepted the little joke in their serious conversation. "Yeah, just a bit though. So, if it was just a time wave, then some of your body should now we six year sold, and it's not. And I don't even want to go into the gruesome image that this would mean that some parts of your body would have been replaced with smaller parts since a six year old is smaller than you in more than just the chest area. You would have bled to death by now."
"That only leaves one more option," Seven said, mentioning what both of them were thinking by now. "It means that the same entity that is in control of the time on this planet, must also have been around here and, for some reason, decided to save me by resetting the time on my implant, so to speak. And since I am twenty-eight years now we now also know that within twenty-two years the implant will fail again. After all, the implant was not changed as such, so it will wear down in the same manner as it did before. Give or take a few months depending on how active I was in the last twenty-two years and how active I will be in the next."
B'Elanna nodded her head. "Yeah, if there is a flaw in it, it will still be there and will still once again take this long to show up. Since it was never discovered on any of the scans the Borg, and later the Doctor did, I doubt we will see it before it happens, even if we were to monitor your implant constantly." Then she frowned. "Twenty-two years. On one side it's a long time for a device to work without maintenance, but on the other, isn't that kinda short for a Borg device? I thought the whole point was for Drones to get the implants once and then keep them until they need new implants for another job, or until the drone is dead."
"You have to keep in mind that not all Drones are Human," Seven reminded. "Some Drones can become thousands of years old. Eventually all implants have to be replaced. That is why the Borg implants are designed to have a minimum working life of twenty tears. After twenty years the implants are removed during standard maintenance, and replaced with new, and maybe by that time, upgraded ones. Had I still been with the Borg instead of with Voyager now, this implant would have been replaced two years ago. Having said that, since the implants are designed to last at least twenty years, no matter what, it is safe to say that most can last a lot longer. This implant is flawed and still worked for more than twenty years. Implants that are not flawed can be assumed to work for at least a hundred years. The Borg merely replaces all implants after twenty years because it has been proven that implants at least work that long."
Kinda like big maintenance," B'Elanna compared. "Just like starships have a refit cycle. Federation ships are basically ripped apart and rebuild every ten years, Klingon ships every twenty-five years. Same with drones. Replace all implants once every twenty years, and while you are at it, replace the implants with the new and more advanced technology you developed during those twenty years."
"Ships are not ripped apart when being refitted," Seven pointed out. "Items that are out of date or have a known limited lifespan are being replaced. And the only reason why the Federation maintains a ten year refit cycle is because the antimatter containers have proven that they 'might' start to weaken after ten years."
"And the Klingons simply go for the more practical approach of replacing them just before history has proven that real problems start occurring. I know that babe, I was just using it as an example to show that I was understanding what you were telling me," B'Elanna noted with a small grin. "What I was basically saying is that this means that we don't really have to worry about the rest stopping to work. That is a fact, right? I'm not just thinking stuff up to make me feel better?"
Seven nodded. "That is a fact, yes. I still stand by my statement that the chances are higher that something happens to your real body parts than to my artificial ones."
B'Elanna sighed. "And that brings us back to the issue that we can now even say that not only must this entity that can play with time still be on the planet, it must even know what we are here and it must be watching us. And on top of that, it knew why you were dying."
"Maybe that is an explanation for a lot of it though," Seven said thoughtfully. Until now we thought that this entity must be higher evolved. On a level that would class them with beings like the Q. But what if it is not? What if it is higher evolved, on a mortal level?"
B'Elanna's frown said more than words could at that moment.
Seven reached out and touched one of the main monitors in the shuttle. Even powered down, the cockpit monitor came to life at the couch and brought up the main starting screen of a normal computer. Knowing that since the shuttle was powered down, normal computer use would have been the only reason to start the monitor. Seven nodded to the monitor. "We are surrounded by technology we take for granted. That we both know how to maintain and fix. That we two combined, could almost certainly improve. I with my Borg knowledge, and you with your engineering knowledge of knowing how far you can push and still have something be safe. And yet, most species in this universe would see us as gods for what we can do. Just look at a hand-phaser. For most people it would look like we are shooting a beam of deadly light from our hands. "
B'Elanna nodded. "Yeah, it's the second biggest reason why we have to pass up on planets on Voyager. The first is that a planet can't sustain life, but even that we can get around with space suits on a big part of them. But all these planets that can sustain life, and do? That have a civilization on it that is so basic that just coming into contact with us would change them forever? That just the knowledge that one day people can fly in metal boxes will change then forever. It's the whole basis of reverse engineering isn't it? Someone tells you something is possible, and then you go try to make it so. And because you know for a fact that it's possible you don't stop trying just because of one failed test. Same here. If primitive people knew that it's possible to fly, they would try to do it. So many species out there that are too primitive to even be allowed to know that there is life outside their planet."
"And maybe this time we are the primitive people," Seven pointed out. "Maybe the advanced person is able to do all we already discussed simply because of technology that is so far advanced that we would not even recognize it if we were standing on top of it."
"Like the mountains around us not actually being from tectonics, but from some technology that makes the gravity there work in reverse so that the mountains are basically pulled out of the ground?" B'Elanna suggested.
"And yet is so advanced that it only works on the planet," Seven reminded. "And not on the living things on it. So trees still grow on the mountains under the snow line, animas still run under the trees. And yet, the mountains get bigger until the designed high. Of course, if this entity knows we are here, there is a big chance that the reason we are still alive is because it is studying us. Just like the federation likes to do on planets that are close enough for them to send an observation team that can live amongst the people invisible thanks to technology. Maybe that is why Shadow does not attack us, because just like we can set up a sonic fence, this entity has set up some zone where animals like her become more passive so that this entity can continue to study us instead of having us function as lunch for another animal."
B'Elanna's eyes darted to the window of the shuttle. The dark of night was slowly making room for the gray of morning. And for a moment she could imagine seeing the slight disturbance that an invisible suit always gives. Just like someone was standing in front of the shuttle, looking in. And then she gave her imagination a mental slap to make it stop seeing things. "Alright, that's just creepy. How about instead it just checks up on us every few days, and saw that you weren’t around anymore. So it rewound time to the point where you were alive again and then fixed the problem. It's basically the same thing, but it sure won't make me jump at shadows."
"It could have been so," Seven gratuitously agreed. They both looked to the monitor when it powered down after not being used for a certain time. Finally Seven noted, "It is interesting. All species think that they are the best and most advanced. The Borg thinks so because they take all that is more advanced and make it their own. The Federation thinks so because they pride themselves on being civilized and they make a point of making care that not a single person is forgotten. Unless they turn down all help, a person will never go hungry in the Federation, will never have to live without a house. The Klingons think they are the most advanced because they are the best warriors around."
"And yet," B'Elanna said when Seven went quiet, "In reality we might all be considered less than cavemen by some species that also thinks that they are the most advanced around. Only difference there than being that in comparison to them, we are those cavemen."
Seven looked at her for a moment before noting, "This is almost worthy of being called a philosophical discussion."
B'Elanna shrugged. "I can do the deep thinking if needed." Then she grinned. "But since we have such a long day ahead of us, why not give that a try? I sure won't be able to fall asleep again not, not after knowing I almost lost you. So how about I go get you your jammies so that I won't be distracted by your divine body as we talk, and we then sit right here in these comfy chairs as we do some heavy talking in which I prove to you that I can also be a philosophical partner, besides a sexual one."
Seven leaned over and gave her a kiss. "If you are so good at one as you are at the other, then I am in for quite a ride."
B'Elanna chuckled as she got up. It scared her shitless to think that Seven might have been dead now. It troubles her deeply to know that there was some entity out there that was probably studying them as one does with some interestingly colored slime found at the bottom of some lake. But on the flip side, she was in love, they were both still here, and they really did need to find something else to do then just make love and cuddle. So, starting to do the random talking about topics that were only talked about to do the talking actually seemed like a good idea.
~~~