I'm The Map, I'm The Map...

Posted on Sun Jan 31, 2021 @ 11:50am by Civilian Jason Haines

1,995 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: Pangaea
Timeline: MD 3, 0900+

[ON]

After his swim, Jason slowly packed up his camp, scanning each item with the old tricorder he had bought at Quality Personal Comms. He was concerned about how Temporal had found him so easily. Agreed that a human as far away from the settlement that he was would stick out like a sore thumb on sensors, but there was only a couple of people who knew where he was and only one knew his true name. So, he wanted to check for bugs.

Jason didn’t find any bugs. There must be another way they had tracked him, but he couldn’t think of anything right off, so he spent the next hour deactivating the new tricorder’s ability to transmit back to Starfleet databanks. He had been suspicious of the assignment when he first came to DS5 and had disconnected equipment from the data systems and had saved all his information locally. He didn’t trust the Temporal – Intelligence task group for many reasons.

After he was done his tricorder surgery, Jason was faced with his larger conundrum, where to begin looking for his underwater prize. This was made harder by the fact he had no clue what he was working for. The things that popped to mind were ruins, some sort of under-water anomaly, a sea cave, or all the above in one. All in all, he was looking for a needle in a haystack.

He stood on the edge of the water wracking his brain while tossing rocks. Then he had a thought. Who better to tell you about the haystacks in a field than the farmer himself, or in this case herself? He needed to talk to Eeshna. Where in the water her people stayed was a big mystery, but they would be a bit more common than the needle and somewhat easier to find.

Two hours later, Jason had himself a make-shift raft / surfboard, as he knew he wouldn’t be able to swim around as long as it might take to find Eeshna. He would be able to paddle around however, so he could stay out much longer. He stowed a good portion of the gear he had where it could not easily be found. He had his scuba gear, knife, staff that he would use as a bit of a paddle, and some sealed food bars and his canteen. With a slight sigh hoping that he knew what he was doing, Jason set off into the surf.

The further he got away from shore he got, the more at ease Jason started to feel. The water, the sun, and all the underwater life he was seeing through the clear water was soothing. A few times Jason lost track of why he was out there. Then again, he didn’t really know where he was heading, so it was hard to have a timeline.

He had been out on the water for a couple of hours when he found a small island, perhaps just a jut of land coming out of the water was more accurate. He got off his raft to rest. He looked back landward and could see he was about a mile offshore. Luckily, the water hadn’t gotten too deep so he would still be able to dive. He sat down and took a drink of his water and from the corner he saw some movement from the water. As he turned to look, he smiled because it was the person he was looking for, Eeshna.

He waved to her and trying to get the pitch and volume right he said, “Eeshna.”

Eeshna smiled and laughed and Jason knew he hadn’t gotten it quite right.

Eeshna in turn slowly said, “Jason.”

She looked at him quizzically, “Why?”

“Why, what?”, Jason replied.

Eeshna looked at him, looking a bit frustrated not being able to say the words right and Jason hadn’t been able to bring his makeshift universal translator with him. She thought a moment and then pointed at him and then pointed at the ground and once again said, “Why?”

Jason nodded and knew he couldn’t answer her in her language, so he paused and then knelt and dug a hole in the ground with his knife. He then pointed to himself, then his eye, and then out at the water, and then at the hole. He had to do the pantomime a couple of times for Eeshna before her eyes showed the comprehension, but there seemed to be some fear in them.

She shook her head back and forth and said, “No”.

“Why?”, Jason asked.

Eeshna stamped her foot and said, emphatically repeated, “No.”

She pointed at the hole and then drew her finger across her neck in a slashing motion.

Jason nodded his comprehension. Death seemed to have some universal signs. He needed her to show him though. He sighed a bit. He had to convince her he would be able to handle himself. He pointed to his knife, his staff, and then flexed his bicep. She frowned at him.

He pointed to himself and to the hole again and then said, “Please.”

He she frowned again and looked at him gauging whether to tell or show him. Her lips twitched a bit and then she pointed north. She took his knife and then drew a line from the hole and made another small hole. From the distance, it didn’t seem too far away.

Jason smiled, “Thank you.”

She nodded a bit curtly. He took her hand in his.

“I’ll be ok”, he said.

He gave her a thumbs up before he got back on the raft and moved off the direction she had indicated. It took him a couple of hours to get to the area and scout about before he saw a dark area in the water. There weren’t as many fish swimming about. There could be a few reasons for that, current pattern, gases, and of course large predators. Securing his knife, staff, water light, and making sure his mask and re-breather were set, he rolled into the water.

He swam down into the water and nestled at the base of a reef there was what looked like the beginning of a cave entrance that was rather wide. Flipping his light on, he moved closer and then just peered in. There were all sorts of barnacles growing on the inside of the whole. Not seeing any immediate dangers, he started into the hole.

The cave structure got smaller rather quickly, being some 5-6 feet in diameter. Some might have gotten claustrophobic, but Jason had been diving in many environments with his father since he was ten years old. Moving carefully along, exploring everything. Some small fish and eel like creatures swam near him but didn’t come too close. Various crustaceans crawled along the cave floor. Distracted by the environment and having no sunlight filtering through the water, Jason lost track of time.

He came to an area that was bubbling rather quickly. There must be some sort of gas escaping. There was no life about it. This must be what Eeshna was worried about. He could see why. If one didn’t have a way to see the bubbles, one could go right through them and who knew what would happen. Jason wished he had an underwater tricorder to figure out what this was. Before doing anything too rash, he watched the bubbles to see if there was an area where there were less activity. There was indeed an area to the left, which he took.

As he swam through the area, Jason really wished there had been another way as whatever it was, it was hot, and felt somewhat acidic. His right leg seemed to have gotten caught in the bubbles and started to hurt. Swimming a bit harder to get out of the area, Jason finally felt the bubbles stop. After swimming just, a bit more Jason paused a moment and flashed his light on his leg. It was quite red, it hurt, and it was only the water that made the pain bearable.

Not being able to do anything about the injury, Jason pushed forward. After about five more minutes of swimming crustaceans started to become more plentiful again. There were no more odd encounters for Jason for the next hour and then the passage started to go up, get wider and then before he knew it Jason was coming out of the water into a large cave.

He flashed his light about. The cave was probably twenty feet high, thirty feet wide, and another thirty feet long. As he moved his light about, he saw something that he at first thought was a person and almost called out, but he realized it was a statue and that instantly piqued his curiosity. How far had he swum?

Forgetting about the pain in his leg, he moved closer to the statue. When he got near it, he couldn’t believe it. It was terribly similar to the ones in the portal cavern, then he saw what looked like heavy marble table, and beyond that there was another statue.

Jason ran his hand across the table. It was wet and had some light bits of rubble on it. He cleared the rubble off the table.

“What are you here for?”, Jason asked as he looked about nervously as if expecting someone to come out of the dark.

Looking at the table closer he saw indentations that looked like where one should put their hands down onto. Hesitantly Jason placed his hands down and the table started to glow dimly. Then in front of him an image appeared. It was almost like a heads-up display.
There was a bold center dot and numerous other dimmer dots. On the right side of the HUD there was what looked like a vertical dial of sorts. At the bottom of the HUD there where characters he didn’t understand slightly above a horizontal dial. To his right, displayed on the actual table, there seemed to be a grid that had rough, interconnected shapes that almost looked like they were hand drawn on it, each having a character of some sort in the middle of each shapes.

He reached out and touched one of the dim dots on the HUD and a dotted line appeared between the bold dot and one of the characters on a shape in the grid panel began to flash. The other shapes in the grid blacked out. Jason didn’t touch anything else and after a few moments the character stopped flashing and the line between the two dots disappeared.

He reached to the vertical dial and moved it just a little and some of the dim dots disappeared and others in different positions appeared and the characters near the horizontal dial changed. The characters in the middle of the shapes on the grid changed as well. He carefully moved the horizontal dial. The characters above it changed as well as the dim dots. Two of the shapes in the grid disappeared altogether. Jason took both hands out of the impressions and the HUD went away and the table stopped glowing.

Jason started to think of what it all represented as he flashed his light about the cave and at the statues. Something on the base of the statue caught his eye. He knelt to get a closer look at it. Wiping the gunk off the spot, he realized it was one of the characters he had seen on the HUD. The statues looked just like the ones in the portal caves. There were a number of portal caves that were somehow interconnected. If there had been real light in the room and people in it, they would have seen Jason’s eyes grow wide.

“Damn”, he muttered. “It’s a freaking map.”

[OFF]

Jason Haines
Resident Beach Bum
Deep Space 5

 

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