driftfleet | (no subject)

Who: Beverly Crusher and Friends!
Broadcast: No
Action: Blue Fish
When: October 13th

[Dr. Beverly Crusher, Personal Log, October 13, Seventh Month after arrival. Today is my birthday.

Theoretically.

With a sigh, Beverly stops typing. Normally, she is all about birthdays, both her own and everyone else's but today... frankly, today is weird. By her own calendar, her birthday should have been two months ago, yet time isn't flowing normally back home. Or time isn't flowing here normally. Or something. Damn alternate universes. And does it even matter when no one is aging anyway? She rubs her temples. This is too much to think about before breakfast (though admittedly, the vagaries of traveling through spacetime are better to focus on than the fact that there is no one from home to celebrate with in the first place).

Once she has some coffee in her, she comes to a decision. Real birthday or not, she's going to give herself a little holiday. Which means people aren't going to be seeing her around the dusty moon, or much at all really. After taking a nice long hot bath, and changing, for once, into something other than the fleet issued jumpsuits, she spends most of the day in her quarters, reading and listening to old letters on her tricorder. Even if she can't be with them today, she at least wants to hear Wesley and Jean-Luc and Deanna, surround herself with their voices. It doesn't make her as sad as it once did. Instead, she finds the recordings comforting, for the most part.

Late in the afternoon, however, she will emerge to set up shop in the kitchen where she's going to bake herself a cake! If anyone wants to find her (or that yummy smelling cake), that's where she'll be, humming a jazzy little tune as she cooks.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The Force has very good timing, as the cake is just about done. Beverly takes it out of the oven and gingerly sets it down on a cooling rack. It's only a small yellow cake, one layer, but she looks very pleased with herself nonetheless.]

Oh, it's just my birthday! Or at least, it is according to the calendar here. It's hard to keep these things straight.

Yeah, I'm not used to the calendar yet either. The months and the day names just sound like someone made them up--they're not even consistent. [at least all the days end in 'day'.] So it's your birthday, huh? How old are you? You should have let people know--I would have gotten you a present.

[tact she's good at it.]

[She laughs.]

Oh no, one of my calendars is the same, as far as the names of the months and days go... they're historical Earth names, pulled from several different cultures, though I don't know the etymology of all of them. But you see, when I arrived, it was May at home and March here. I don't know which date I should be calculating from. And no matter how long I'm here, from all accounts it appears that I will return to that May. So am I always the age I was when I left, or do the years here count, even though none of us physically age while we're here?

Oh, that would explain why they don't match up right. [wait, several Earth cultures? More than one per planet?

but the timey-wimey stuff, as usual, puts Vima in a state of befuddlement.]

That's a puzzle, all right... I guess when you go back, you'll be your normal age? [She frowns.] And wait, we're not physically aging? Should I even ask how Atroma accomplishes that?

Something with the augments, I imagine, though I haven't yet been able to figure out exactly how.

But to answer your previous question, I'm either 46 or 47, depending which view we take of things.

[Vima grimaces and puts her hand to her ponytail. Augments, augments, augments.]

I'm getting sick of these things doing weird stuff to us. [she's been lucky so far, but she knows that won't hold forever. The idea of it affecting them physically as well as mentally is even more galling.

Still... cake, she should be cheerful. 46 or 47, huh? That's about ten years older than Nomi, but on the other hand, sometimes Nomi looks older than Crusher.] We should stick to 46 if we're in age-stasis. Just add letters for year-to-year: 46-aurek, 46-besh, 46-cresh....

[aurebesh letters.]

[Beverly blinks. She sure as hell not be here for 46-cresh. Three more years of this is an unbearable thought. But she knows Vima is only trying to help make her feel better, so she smiles.]

Works for me! There are certainly worse ages to be stuck at, anyhow.

[It's okay, Vima realizes the implications when she's done with the count, too. Three years away from home, career, and family? And three years would mean that she would turn 17 while her body stays 14... that's probably not healthy.]

Like mine, maybe. And I like you, but I sure hope neither of us are here for that long. [She looks back at that cooling cake.] So what kind of cake did you make.

Just a yellow cake. Not too many other options I am afraid, with the ingredients we have.