"You're sure the force field will hold him?"
"Based on the doctor's analysis of his biology yes, there's a dampening field inside the force field to keep him from draining it, so I'm certain it'll hold him." My head felt like it was pounding, the noise of these people talking grating against the inside of my head. I noted that physically I seemed fine though, fingers, toes, everything seemed okay. A bit dehydrated given the dry feeling in my mouth, so some water might help, but otherwise no worse for wear considering what I'd just been through. Getting up my courage, I decided rather than playing possum, It might be best to find out just where I was and who these people were.
"You really don't need to restrain me, I mean you no harm." I sat up slowly, trying to keep my head from feeling like someone stabbed a spike through it. Gently touching the edge of the energy barrier I sensed around what looked to be some kind of science fiction medical bed, I could feel the two fields acting concurrent to one another. The inner one drained anything above a certain energy level, and the outer one created a dense energy field that could be considered solid to the uninitiated.
"That has yet to be seen. These are incredibly unusual circumstances, and the doctor tells me your DNA shows genetic augmentation from baseline human. On top of that, you were traveling through space, at warp, without a ship." The taller dark skinned man seemed incredibly familiar, his uniform black with yellow shoulders, then I noticed his ears and practically facepalmed, realizing I definitely had not come home.
"Okay, before I answer any questions, I need to know the date." I looked around quickly picking out the forehead ridges of the chief engineer, the balding head of the medical officer, and just entering the room in command red, the captain herself.
"The current stardate is five three two oh three." stated Tuvok clearly curious about my questioning
"No not the stardate, sorry, the current date, earth gregorian calendar."
"March fifteenth, twenty-three, seventy-six."
"Crap, okay so if I'm here, and it's the twenty-fourth century, and you guys don't get home until, scratch that I need to be careful what I say here, I have my own prime directive in this circumstance." That seemed to draw the attention of the group, with the captain quickly making her way to the forefront.
"Make it home? You mean, we actually make it back to earth?"
"Okay, enough, nothing else said leaves this room, am I understood?" the captain quickly put a damper on B'Elanna's enthusiasm
"Yes captain" everyone repeated, the chain of command clear.
"Okay, I'm going to have to get used to that while I'm stuck here until I either find a way home or can find the guardian of forever."
"Alright, introductions, My name is Zalost. I'm a traveler from another universe. And I stumbled into yours quite accidentally, in fact I'm pretty sure I was thrown out of my journey home and ended up wherever you found me. No idea how I was able to fly in space either, pretty sure it was a one time deal."
"Zalost? Why would you name yourself depressed in an obscure earth dialect?" The vaunted EMH, ever curious, but never a great bedside manner.
"Why would you choose Joe after so long?" I asked, seeing the look of confusion on his face, clearly not getting the reference or meaning. Though B'Elanna clearly thought it was at least a bit amusing, given she was trying not to laugh.
"Madam Captain, I'm asking for your help, I was augmented yes, by accident, and I just want to get home, I think you can sympathize with that given your current predicament? Besides, if my guess is right, we're a very long way from federation space, so you can't exactly do much other than lock me up in the brig anyway."
"We can discuss this after the Doctor has had a chance to check you over. Given the strange readings our sensors were getting, we can't be too careful."
"I can respect that, but could you at least lower the force field, It's really not doing much, and I promise not to hurt anyone, I've really gotten very good at being gentle when everything feels like cardboard strength wise." standing up I gently touched the force field to indicate my dislike of cramped spaces before the Captain nodded, and it ceased to be allowing me to walk away from the bed and reach out my hand in greeting.
"Now that's out of the way, It's a pleasure to meet you all, and I'll be happy to help however I can until a way back to my own reality can be created."
