"Will you show me the ship, pleeease ?" Caitlyn begs. "If I don't do something I think my brain will melt from being forced to think about all this shit."
"Alright, I was going to take you down to sickbay for a checkup anyways, but I want you to let me know if it's too much and we'll take a break, alright?" Hugh gives her a stern look.
She ignores it. "Yessss, thank you! Let's go!"
"What is that?" Caitlyn's eyes are wide as she stares at the device in Hugh's hand.
"It's called a tricorder. It's giving me all your vitals, see?" He turns the screen towards her, pleased to see her trying to connect with her new surroundings.
She leans forward until her nose is just a few inches from the screen. "That is so cool . I have no idea what any of those numbers mean, but they look cool. How does it work?"
Hugh chuckles, "I'm afraid you'll have to ask Paul that question. I'm a doctor, not an engineer."
"What's it telling you?"
"Right now, it's telling me that your heart rate and stress hormones are elevated. That's to be expected, of course, but we'll keep an eye on it. And you don't have that virus from your century, if you were wondering."
" Really?! " A grins spread across her face, "It can tell you all that?"
"A lot's changed in eleven-hundred years. But there are some things the tricorder can't tell me: I'd like to take a blood sample and run a few more tests if that's alright."
Caitlyn bites her lip. "Okay. But only if you'll explain them to me beforehand."
He pats her shoulder reassuringly, "You bet, kiddo. Let me go get some supplies." He disappears for a few moments, leaving her alone in the mostly-empty sickbay. There's a woman sitting at the desk on the other side of the room, dressed in the same white uniform as Hugh, but other than that the room is unoccupied. It's decorated in white and silver, flooded with bright light, and filled with computer screens and beeping, blinking machines. Weird. Vaguely intimidating. But kinda cool.
Hugh returns with a tray of weird, predictably futuristic-looking devices Caitlyn couldn't begin to identify. He picks up one and holds it out to her. "This is a hypospray. It's used to draw blood or inject medications into the bloodstream using miniature transporter technology."
She stares at it, head tilted in curiosity. "So no needles?"
"No needles." Hugh's voice softens as he assures her, "It doesn't hurt, I promise. May I?"
Caitlyn nods and holds out her arm, but instead Hugh tilts her chin to the side and presses the device against her neck. It's cold, and there's a strange hissing noise, but there's no pain. He pulls it back and presses another button to release the vial of blood. "Easy, see?"
"Wow. I'm probably going to be saying this all day, but that's really cool! "
"You do what? "
"We travel from one point in space to another instantaneously using an interdimensional fungal network," Adira repeats. They grin, "It's exactly as bizarre as it sounds. Paul's a genius- Discovery is the only ship in the universe with a spore drive, and he's the only person who can pilot it."
"Is it the only starship, then?"
"The others have warp drives, which allow them to travel faster than light by creating a bubble of spacetime exempt from the normal laws of physics. So does Discovery, actually, as a backup."
"But those require an element called dilithium, which is scarce nowadays," Paul breaks in. "It's been the key to interstellar transportation for centuries. Without it, the universe is a lot bigger than it was in our time, though still," he smiles ruefully, "much smaller than in yours."
"I can't get over the faster-than-light thing. My entire understanding of physics is wrong! Not that I ever was any good with physics... And you guys know aliens! Like that's a normal thing now! And they look like us! I will never get used to this century. But I love it here, I really do."
"You've been here a day!" Adira teases.
"And it's been a fantastic day. But I'm sure I'll be falling apart on your living room floor sooner or later; the shock probably hasn't worn off yet."
"And we'll be there for you when it does," Hugh assures her seriously. "You're not alone."
"Thank you, all of you. I don't know what I'd do without you guys."
"Computer, beef stew."
"Woah, what is that!? " Caitlyn stares at the plate of food which has just appeared seemingly from thin air in the little box in the wall.
"Replicators. They break down matter to the sub-atomic level and reassemble it into new patterns." Paul beams, obviously delighted to share his technical knowledge.
"We're eating recycled waste," Adira simplifies.
"Cool. Also gross. But cool. And it just… makes whatever?"
"Yep." Adira steps up to the control panel, "Computer, grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup." The plate materializes and they collect it. "Go ahead, try it."
"Uh, computer… spaghetti and meatballs, please"
The air shimmers, and a plate appears, exactly as she'd requested. She stares at it in awe. "Woah. That's awesome."
They're about halfway through dinner when it finally hits her. After a day filled with new and exciting things, she's finally getting to sit down and process. That's when she remembers that this isn't a fairytale. It's real, and she's stuck here, and what if she never gets back? She barely knows these people, she has friends and family waiting for her in her own time, and everything is different here. The ship is nothing like her home, all sleek and utilitarian, metal and plastic. Even the food is wrong: it's processed shit that comes out of a hole in the wall! Caitlyn is used to trees and grass and birds chirping outside her window in the mornings, meals she makes with her own hands. The replicated food is delicious, but it's also missing something. It can never be the same as her grandfather's tomato sauce with herbs from her own garden. What if she never sees her family again? What will everyone think happened to her?
She lets her tears run freely, dripping down her chin and into her pasta. Hugh pulls her into a hug, letting her press her face into the crook of his shoulder even though she's leaving snot and tear tracks on his uniform. "It's okay, kiddo, you can cry. I'm right here." Someone is rubbing her back, and someone (Paul, she thinks) is holding the hand that isn't clinging to Hugh. Surrounded by her new friends, she lets herself break. She forgets about her surroundings: the mess hall, the starship, the beautiful terror of empty space. She hardly notices when Hugh picks her up and carries her back to their quarters. She just cries until she can't anymore.
At that point, Adira brings her a glass of water and some tissues. Then the family walks back to their quarters together, and Caitlyn falls asleep before her head hits the pillow.
She wakes up at 6AM and makes it to the bathroom just in time to throw up what's left of her dinner. Paul, always a light sleeper, finds her kneeling in front of the toilet, gasping for air. He lays a hesitant hand on her shoulder. "Caitlyn?" Before she can answer, she's puking again, mostly just liquid by this point. He pulls back her long hair, trying not to touch the ends which are already splattered with bile.
"You think you're done?" He asks when she seems to have caught her breath.
"Yeah." Her voice is hoarse. "Yuck."
"I know, kiddo. Let's get you cleaned up." He brings her a glass of water to rinse her mouth out, and a change of clothes from the replicator. When she's done, he sits her down on the couch with a glass of ginger ale to help settle her stomach. "Do you think you could keep something down, maybe some crackers?" He asks as she sips on the soda.
"Yeah, I think so."
When Hugh gets up, he takes in the lingering greenish tinge to Caitlyn's face and the worried look on Paul's, immediately realizing what must have happened. "You've been vomiting?"
"Yeah. Not fun," she mutters.
"I know, I'm sorry. It's not an uncommon response to stress, unfortunately. Have you been able to keep anything down since?"
"Yeah, soda and a few crackers."
"That's a good sign. Unfortunately, with stress, we generally have to wait it out, but I can give you an antiemetic in the meantime."
"...A what?"
"Something to help with the nausea, and to keep you from throwing up again."
"That'd be great, thanks. Puking sucks."
He almost laughs, "Yeah, it sure does. Let me grab my medkit." He returns with a hypospray and loads a vial of medication. "Just like yesterday, remember?" She pulls her hair away from her neck obligingly, eyes closed as she focuses on quelling another tide of nausea. Hugh holds the hypospray to her jugular and presses the button. She tenses up as he does, still not used to the unfamiliar technology, but she doesn't flinch away. Hugh hopes that in time she'll stop associating medicine with pain, but he knows her fear doesn't come from nowhere- in her time, it was a realistic expectation. Even understanding that it was necessary, it couldn't have been pleasant.
"That should kick in in about fifteen minutes," he says, putting away his supplies.
"Thanks." She leans her head on his shoulder, and he finds himself touched by the gesture of trust. He looks at her and wonders how this kid managed to steal his heart so quickly. He thinks this must be how Paul felt when he took Adira under his wing.