Log_16
SD: 0222.03
Man out of time, or tell me why you cry:
Much to say, but where to start? The club? It's nice. The first place on this world that doesn't look like it had been ripped from a Romulan world. There is laughter and fun, and none of the feel of impending doom that seeps from every person or thing outside these walls.
Speaking of walls, I noticed a picture on the wall that caught my attention. A picture of Captain Lee and a fellow that looked a good bit like Ironbottom. According to the dating, the picture had been taken sometime in the 21st century. I thought at the time that perhaps the Lee family had some bad karma and were being punished down through time by the spirits of Ironbottom's family. More on that in a moment.
The club owner is named Grog, and seems OK for a Ferengi. He talked to us for a while during which time K started getting more and more friendly to me. Pushy even. I was suspicious when Grog asked me to go with him to his office to talk, but also relived to be away from K. She seemed to be pushing me to my limit, touching and teasing me without mercy.
We went into Grog's office and he revealed that he knew much of the Freedom, and of my mission. It struck me as odd that the highly xenophobic Ironbottom would choose such a total non-human as this to entrust as an agent. Anyway Grog asked whom I would like to investigate. My first thought was of Riit, but the picture of Lee and the odd looks I'd been seeing him give sense our arrival had captured my imagination. So I asked him to check on Lee's history on the off chance that he could find more than the official records. I wasn't too surprised that he could come up with nothing more than I had; however the picture gave me another path to follow.
I had Grog check the records for the Lee in that picture and guess what. He was a 100% match for the current Captain Lee's dental records and fingerprints leading me to many speculations, but the most interesting thing to come of it was the man found with the missing Lee's automobile. He was a security man from the Freedom! This seemed to link the missing Lee to our Captain Lee too fully to dismiss. Had our Captain been somehow flung through time to the here and now? Could the trauma of that have caused his amnesia? If this were somehow a plot to put him into place as the Captain of the Freedom, why such a spectacular way of doing it? Why not just take a person from our time and making an agent of them and putting them into place?
I will get this information back to Ironbottom and have him look into a man named Gary 7. He seems to have been an agent for some power and has had run-ins with Federation personnel before in the person of one Captain Kirk. The same old codger that had given the rambling disjointed speech to our class! Anyway, I now have a direction to go in, and a name. I wonder if Lee will react if I mention Gary 7 to him? Only time will tell.
It did strike me that I should look into Ironbottom's past as well, but I wasn't about to ask one of his people about his past! I just wonder if he could also be a man out of time.
As I left Grog with my info, I found K out dancing. That was sort of cute and something about her had been attracting me to her from the time we had met on the dock, but her dance changed and I found myself feeling both frightened and, well other emotions were starting to play within me.
It got very bad for a time, and I went to my safe place. I do remember that she was yelling at me at one point, just like any woman, then she did something that no other woman had done, she said she loved me, looked shocked and burst into tears, and ran away. I was shocked. No woman had ever treated me like that, and the only women that had ever said they loved me had done so just to embarrass me, or to ask for money.
She ran off and hid herself in the bathroom. Feeling on top of the situation with a woman for the first time in my life, I went to the door and called her out. Wonder of wonders she obeyed me and came. She collapsed at the door crying looking so pitiful I had to do something, so I offered her comfort. Slowly she came out of it and told me something of her life. It was no different in content from the report that I'd reviewed, but the details were wrenching, and reminded me of my childhood. I knew that I was being drawn in, empathizing with her, but I couldn't help it.
I touched her, and found her warm and soft, first scratch her head, then her back as she came out of it and hugged me. I told her to go slowly if she wanted to be my friend, and she agreed. Whatever else we would have said to one another was lost as trouble seemed to have started. It may have been going on long before and we had been just to involved too notice, but when we looked around, Demian and Lee had gone outside, and the doorman was saying they were in trouble. Here we go again!