the city on the edge of forever

Docking in Dolios in 2 days, friends. If you haven't already given all your have-to-haves to Miss Forbes, come find me this afternoon.

It's been longer than usual since their last trip planetside, almost a month, which means Bert's afternoon and evening should be completely sewn up in orders.

So the shuttle door is open and Bert's inside, slouched in a threadbare damask easy chair with a cigarette burning steadily beside him in its tray. He's using one hand to prop up his tablet and using the other to punch numbers on an outmoded keypad. The room is filled with the smell of tobacco and the musty, slightly spicy smell of antiques and old books and something else that's harder to place, green and herby. This is what passes for the sitting area though there's only one real chair; the rest are metal crates draped in sackcloth and one aggressively saffron leather ottoman. There's a Frankenstein's monster of an apparently digital gramophone playing complacently on the bookshelf across the room, nearby a curtained door that leads to the cockpit.

Bert's frowning at the screen, fingers perched in midair as he considers some of the ingredients he's been asked to source for the sake of Mister Grauza.

"Offal," he mutters to himself, expression slightly curdled as he reluctantly adds it to the list, fingers clicking busily on the pad. "And people say there's no truth in advertising."

Just then, Bert looks up to find someone standing in the doorway.

It's late, but still a fairly respectable time to be up and about. He passes a few people on his way up to the holodeck but thankfully, when he gets to the door, he finds there's nobody else in sight. He lights up a cigarette and stands in the center of the dimly lit room, a blank page waiting impassively for his command. Bert takes a long, easy breath and sighs; the cigarette smoke is toasty, familiar, divine. The first one he's had in days.

"You wouldn't happen to know Mejis, would you?" he asks. His tone is polite-- it sounds like he's already forgiven the computer for not having the first fucking clue about where Mejis is, but before he can explain himself, the room has already started coming to life.

It flickers a few times through scenes Bert's not sure he recognizes as even from his world, but when it finally settles, he finds himself standing on one of the rolling hills overlooking the little town. The oil derricks, far over the hills to his left, are backlit by a fiercely beautiful sunset. On his right he can see a wide, treeless horizon that tells him he's not far from the Clean Sea.

It must have been a market day. The people below are packing up their stalls and loading up their carts. There's a tense moment where he's terrified he'll see something, someone he'll recognize before he realizes that the computer's brought him to a Mejis about fifty years prior to his ka-tet's infamous visit.

He heads down the hill and wanders a bit, trying to stay out of people's way, but enjoying, as he usually does, the novelty of secret immersion, not even minding when a woman gives him the obligatory small-town stink eye reserved for unfamiliar, unaccompanied young men. In fact, it makes him smile. It doesn't seem to improve her opinion of him any, but he can't help it. He walks through the market with that shit-eating grin, hands stuffed in his pockets, enjoying the alien quaintness of it all with a bizarre brand of contentment he figures can only be enjoyed by holidaymakers in other worlds.

He's in another world even now, though, isn't he? The station? The idea is an uncomfortable but not unwelcome knot at the base of his skull. He's spent nearly all of his time here doing penance, even if he hasn't realized it, but the last month has actually been penance in earnest. Bert had been drinking whiskey when zombi Alain had helpfully suggested he eat a bullet to better cope with his guilt, and mayhap it was a blessing, because the stuff just hadn't tasted the same after that. Or mayhap it was his own self-pity that didn't go down sweet anymore.

Cuthbert wasn't sure what he'd expected to feel, standing in the red dirt of Lower Market, surrounded by the smells and sights and sounds he's spent the last seven or so years trying to smother from memory. And mayhap it'd be different if he'd been dropped in at the right time and seen ole Kimba Rimer or Cordelia Delgado strutting through town. Mayhap.

But right now, the air feels clean, and somewhere a hundred wheels away, Cuthbert Allgood hasn't even been born yet. He closes his eyes and lets the idea sink in.

Behind him, the holodeck door opens, and he smiles-- that wide, idiot grin that says he's actually pleased for company-- and squints to see who it is.

"Hey there," he calls out, his voice warm and animated. "Just mind the cow pies."