And We Danced (Masquerade Overflow!)

[thespaceopera]

The Captcha is upon us, but the party isn't over! Feel free to continue your threads here, start new ones, and continue the dance party!

- Original Mingle
- OOC Post

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BEVERLY CRUSHER

[tobeajedi]

[cont from here]

He's a Tchuukthai--my mother trained under him when she first became a Jedi, but they mostly keep to themselves. What's a triceratops?

[dancingmd]

They were a reptilian species that lived on Earth over 70 million years ago.

[tobeajedi]

70 million? Wow. Were they sentient? Are they still around?

[civilizations last an inordinately long time where she's from species might too, ya never know]

[dancingmd]

They were not sentient [That's what you think Bev!!!] - or at least, we've found no evidence that they were - but they were wiped out in a Mass Extinction Event that altered Earth's ecology significantly and eventually brought about the dominance of mammalian species instead.

[tobeajedi]

Wow, that's some history. It's sad to think that there's a whole era of life that's completely gone now... but then if it hadn't, I wouldn't be talking to you here now.

...I'm still not sure how humans got from one galaxy to another, though.

[dancingmd]

I can't give you the answer to that one. I don't even know if your galaxy exists in my universe. Our knowledge of galaxies outside the MIlky Way is very limited. Warp speed travel can only take us so far.

[tobeajedi]

Hyperspace is the same way. It's a tunnel that lets you bypass lightspeed, but it's still distance to travel--and it's dangerous to find new routes.

...How did your Galaxy get that name, by the way? It's kind of a funny one.

[dancingmd]

Ah... It's an ancient human name for it. When you're on Earth and you look up in the sky on clear nights, you can often see one arm of the Galaxy - a dense cluster of stars that looked to the ancients like a river of milk.

[tobeajedi]

[A river of milk? All right, well--it's descriptive, if nothing else.]

And it stuck all the way until you got into space? [She grins.] That's cute. I like it.

Have you gotten to exploring that particular arm?

[dancingmd]

Just a little - we've only explored barely a quarter of the whole galaxy.

[tobeajedi]

[Just a quarter? That's not very much.]

Really? What kind of propulsion do you use? I thought your ship looked pretty advanced.

[you know, the ship that she's the captain of.]

[dancingmd]

The warp drive is fueled by a matter-antimatter reaction. The galaxy is 100,000 light years apart, so even at maximum light speeds, it'd take over a hundred years to go from one end of the galaxy to another.

Which is not to say it's impossible - we have been outside the galaxy, even outside the known universe, but that was through no technology on our part, but rather through the abilities of a species fare more advanced than us, and we did not stay long.

[tobeajedi]

Hm... well, we've been exploring our Galaxy for a few thousand years, and there's still plenty of Unknown Space around the outer arms. [She thinks about Dr. Crusher's wording it as quarters--does she mean like pieces of a pie, quarters? But then, there's a more interesting question to ask.] What was it like out there? Was it like your home? What did you see?

[dancingmd]

[She laughs, delighted by Vima's curiosity and amused at the idea of trying to encompass her entire career in those questions.]

Well, I've been in Starfleet for twenty years now. I've seen quite a lot of things. Is there something in particular you're curious about?

[tobeajedi]

[Vima laughs too.]

For now, just leaving your own galaxy. I don't know of anyone from mine who's ever achieved that, whether it was on their own or some other alien.

I mean, besides this situation. I sure hope it wasn't like the Fleet.

[dancingmd]

No, it was much, much stranger.

[Yes, that is possible. Anything is in Star Trek land!]

There is a being, who calls himself the Traveler, from a race far more advanced than ours who was living among us, observing us. He didn't mean any harm - in fact, he later helped save my life - but he accidentally sent us to not only a galaxy two million light years away from ours, but to the very edges of the universe. It was almost like... it wasn't a geographical edge so much as a mental one. I know that doesn't make any sense, but it's the best way I can describe it. When we were there, our thoughts could influence reality directly - memories became real and unfortunately, destructive.