AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I ask that my fellow-Trekkie friends forgive me for my pseudo-science. LOL
I also want to let you know that if you've missed the several updates that I've done, you will want to go back and make sure you're caught up before reading this chapter!
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"What the hell is all this you're givin' us?" Daryl asked, hovering close to Carol.
Ensign Connie Reynolds had been delighted to be asked to join the away team. She'd been the first in sickbay and, as soon as the doctor had given her a clean bill of health, she'd immediately headed for the science lab to gather the materials they would need for their initial inspection of the planet.
Chakotay had already been given his clean bill of health—other than the slight lingering effects of the fever that would plague everyone for at least another day or two, but was considered harmless by the doctor—and he hung close by to keep an eye on things since the doctor still believed Daryl to be annoyingly unpredictable, and Kes was on a temporary leave to rest after the anomaly induced elogium. He'd asked Daryl and Carol if they minded him staying—and if they saw it as a breach of privacy—but neither of them had seemed bothered in the slightest. Of course, he'd also allowed them to be present for his physical, so perhaps they saw it as something of a case of quid pro quo.
Daryl had insisted on going first, as he always did, to be sure that whatever was happening to them was safe. It was clear that he had an unapologetic dislike to the hypospray, and updating his inoculations had proved an annoyance that practically had him ready to fight since, Chakotay imagined, the hissing sound startled him every time. He clearly didn't like the element of surprise in any environment.
Daryl had received his clean bill of health, though, and now he hovered around Carol as she waited her turn to be inoculated and scanned for a quick check of her overall health.
"I have no health records on you," the doctor said. "But I can access historical databases enough to know how many things you would be susceptible to, given that you're coming from an entirely different time period. The inoculations will help ensure that you will not become ill with anything that can easily be avoided."
Carol was less startled by the hissing of the hypospray, and she sat and waited as the doctor updated her to a point with which he was satisfied.
He ran the medical tricorder over her, and Daryl walked around him to try to look over his shoulder at the machine. The doctor glared briefly at Daryl before stepping so that he blocked his view.
"How do you even know what all that means?" Daryl asked.
"It's part of my program," the doctor said, irritation showing through in his voice. "And anyone can be trained to read a tricorder."
"I'd like to learn to read one," Daryl offered.
"Some other time," the doctor said with the same tone that he might use to dismiss a child. Daryl furrowed his brows at the hologram like he might argue with him, or even simply scold him for treating him rudely, but it was clear that he decided to let it go.
"She OK?" Daryl asked.
The doctor smiled to himself and then smiled at Carol.
"Other than a touch of the fever, she's in perfect health," the doctor said. "The regeneration work that I did when you first arrived shows no signs of damage or decay. You take very good care of yourself."
Carol laughed quietly.
"It's not like it's hard to take care of ourselves here," she offered. "We have food and water whenever we want it. We can sleep without—without worrying about what's going to happen to us."
"I can see some damage on your lungs, Mr. Dixon," the doctor said. "Since my regeneration work. It's likely from the habit of smoking. I can repair the damage easily, but you could save us both trouble by giving up the habit."
Daryl crossed his arms across his chest.
"Regeneration work? Repair the damage?" He questioned, clearly ticking off what he simply didn't understand. He purposefully ignored the doctor's recommendation that he stop smoking.
Chakotay stepped forward.
"A great deal has taken place in medicine since your time," Chakotay said. "We're able to repair organs. Re-grow them, even, in most circumstances."
"You mean like—you get cancer or somethin' and you just grow a new lung?" Daryl asked.
Chakotay laughed to himself.
"Many times, yes. It works that way."
"It's a little more involved than that, Commander," the doctor offered.
"That's the gist of it," Chakotay said. "Cancer was once a serious disease. Now it's all but been eradicated. And, if you do get cancer, it's nothing more serious to treat than a relatively minor illness."
"Many of the illnesses that plagued people of your time have been eradicated," the doctor said. "That is one of the reasons that I did as much regeneration work on both of you as I could when the Araulians brought you onboard the ship. Both of you were suffering from evidence of past illnesses and injuries, so my work did both of you good, but it also allowed me to cleanse your systems of the Millennium Plague and any other illnesses that you might have brought onto the ship."
"Without treatment," Chakotay said, "you might have started a plague or two of your own on Voyager. Most of us are naturally immune to many of the things that were common during your time, but there are other things that have been dead for quite some time. It could be possible that we would have difficulty fighting them off. We immediately placed you both in containment fields, filtered the air from any contamination you may have released into the ship's atmosphere during the few moments between when the Araulians released you from their field and when we were able to contain you, and the doctor performed regenerative work to restore your health and inoculated you against illness that you would be susceptible to. The treatments were as much for your good as they were for ours."
"So, you're saying our whole bodies are—new?" Carol asked.
"Not exactly," Chakotay said. "But—much of your body is newer than it used to be. It's theoretically younger than it used to be."
"There you go," the doctor mused. "Grossly oversimplifying."
Chakotay laughed to himself.
"Unless you're seeking a medical degree, Doctor, the oversimplification will do to answer their questions."
Chakotay had the absolutely full attention of Carol and Daryl. Carol hadn't moved from the biobed, and Daryl had moved to stand closer to her. The doctor assumed his work was done and stepped away to do what he needed to do with his equipment.
"So, does that mean people don't die anymore?" Daryl asked.
"Unfortunately," Chakotay said, "people die every day. Perhaps they don't die quite as frequently as they did during your time, but they do die regularly. We're not immortal."
"But couldn't you just—make a new body when yours wore out?" Daryl asked.
"There are limitations," Chakotay said. "People die, it simply means that they don't die as quickly as they once did. The change in medicine also means that people don't exist on the same timeline that they once considered normal. You're not in quite the hurry to do things just for the ancient concept of running out of time, so to speak."
"How long do we live?" Carol asked.
"If my history is correct," Chakotay said, "then the lifespan of a seventy-year-old in your time would be roughly comparable to a 120-year-old in our current time. Of course—some people die very young, for one reason or another, while others live to be even 140 or 150. A great deal of it is genetics."
"As it always has been," the doctor offered, coming back over to simply gather up something he'd forgotten, and needed, for whatever work he was doing. He couldn't resist making himself part of the conversation. "Of course, a lot of it is always going to be how one cares for oneself. And we cannot discredit the incredible strides made in science and medicine."
"Thank you, Doctor," Chakotay offered.
"That's why—we feel better," Carol mused. "I feel better. Much better. I've been noticing it just—here and there. That's why."
"It may have something to do with it," Chakotay ceded.
"Does that mean we'll live as long as you will?" Carol asked. "Are we going to live to be 120 years old?"
"You may," Chakotay said. "You may live to be far older than that. I think the oldest human recorded—at least before we left the Alpha Quadrant—lived to be about 174. As I said, a lot will depend on your genetics. But—barring unforeseen accidents or things like that—you will likely live to be somewhere around 120 or 130."
"Wait a minute," Daryl said. "How are we supposed to know this shit is even true? It's not like we can see it. I can't see if I got new lungs or a new liver or whatever. Who's to say that you ain't just lyin' about it?"
"Daryl," Carol chided quietly.
Chakotay laughed to himself.
"I'm not certain what I—or anyone else, for that matter—would gain by lying about such an issue. Still, you are correct. There's nothing you can do to really see, for yourself, that what we're saying is true. Just like, in the past, if you'd gone in to have your gallbladder removed, you would have had to take the word of your physician that such an operation was actually performed."
Daryl seemed satisfied as he chewed over that response.
Chakotay enjoyed talking to the man. The more he got to know him, the more he appreciated Daryl's inquisitive nature. Even B'Elanna had mentioned it. He learned quickly. He absorbed information well. And he wanted to know more. He always wanted to know more. He wanted to understand everything around him at a level that was deep enough that he could consider the knowledge truly his—something he possessed, instead of only knew at the surface level.
Carol was inquisitive, too, but Chakotay couldn't help but notice that she was a bit different in her inquisitiveness. She accepted a lot of things as truth—science, medicine, technology. She seemed to see the advances in front of her as reasonable and to be expected. They didn't alarm her. She was inquisitive, though, about the species around her. The lifestyles. The planets. The way that society thought and functioned three hundred years beyond her time.
In addition, Chakotay felt like she was always "seeing" something from the way he caught her, out the corner of his eye, looking at the beings and things around her. She was friendly, warm, and everything they could want her to be, but she was always observing.
They were both observant. Their survival skills would make them wonderful candidates for away missions, but Chakotay could imagine that it would be their observation skills—in all walks of life—that would serve them best as they lived out their lives on Voyager and helped in the many ways they could.
"If I'm so new, though," Daryl offered, "then why is it that nothing about me looks new? Or even younger? If I'ma live to be 120 years old, then I'm a whole lot younger than I used to be."
"You're the same age you were," Chakotay offered. "You'll only live longer. A child is still a child for a finite amount of time. That hasn't changed. Unless—of course—we're discussing different species or people who are, essentially, hybrids of different species. But—if it's your appearance that concerns you, there's plenty that the doctor could offer you."
"Like plastic surgery?" Carol asked.
Chakotay hummed.
"It's much simpler and more effective than it used to be," Chakotay offered. "It's the same idea, however. It uses basically the same technology that we used to heal the burns you suffered from the Araulian weapons."
"For instance," the doctor offered, moving closer to both of them again, and pretending to look for something when, clearly, he simply couldn't stand to be left out of a conversation for too long, "I was concerned that you two would be much harder on your bodies given the amount of trauma you've both clearly suffered in your lifetimes. You've proved, however, not to be nearly as accident prone as I had feared."
"There's not much here that tries to hurt us," Carol offered.
"Still, your bodies were so riddled with scars, that I wasn't sure to what I should contribute everything," the doctor said. Chakotay noticed that both Carol and Daryl dropped their eyes. He didn't have to know too much about them to know that the scars in question were, more than likely, tender subjects for them both.
"Where the scars came from doesn't matter," Chakotay offered quickly.
"Not at all," the doctor said. "Except that—answering some of my questions with a bit less reluctance and a bit more honesty and completeness would certainly help to complete your medical charts."
"Maybe some other time," Chakotay said. "I believe we were talking about cosmetic dermal regeneration, Doctor?"
"I had the option of removing the scarring from your bodies," the doctor said, picking back up with the topic that interested Carol and Daryl instead of making both of them divert their eyes from everything and everyone around them.
"It was Captain Janeway who suggested that the doctor not remove your scars," Chakotay said. "Even now, some people choose to keep certain scars for different reasons. Sometimes it's an aesthetic choice. Something they appreciate in the scar. Other times it's because the scar is tied to a memory or a particular life lesson. She knew that the doctor could remove your scars at any time, if you wanted them removed, but she wanted you to be able to make such a choice."
"You can just—erase them?" Daryl asked.
"If you should so desire," the doctor said. "However—it will require your cooperation, Mr. Dixon. And a good deal less fidgeting if you would like me to remove them."
"You have plenty of time to think about it," Chakotay said when he saw that Carol was no more comfortable with the conversation than she had been minutes before. "You can do something like that at any time, if you decide it interests you. For the time being, though, it's important that we go find Ensign Reynolds and report to the briefing room. Now that everyone has a clean bill of health, Captain Janeway will want to fill everyone in on the plan for the mission."
