Stardate: 80722:0942
Title: Simple Plans
Author: Ensign Bladen
Time: After "All the King's Horses..."
Scene: Andarus V


Josh had been lost before, that much was true. In fact, he wasn't what you'd call blessed with a sense of direction. It was to be expected, really, that a new crew member would get lost on ship at some point during his first few days on board.

This, however, was a whole new dimension of lost. As he rounded a corner in the USS Horizon's Engineering deck he stopped short in front of what, by rights, should have been the large double doors to engineering.

Instead, it was a tree. And, while he was busy trying to figure out how the hell a tree could have gotten on board the ship, he spotted another. And another. It was, in fact, a veritable forest. And it didn't seem to like him much.

His uniform felt strange, and when he looked down, he saw why. The gold and black colours and polymer spun garments that made up the Starfleet uniform had either changed at the submolecular level, or indeed, he was no longer wearing the uniform. What he actually wore was a flannel shirt, although he didn't recognise it as such, having never seen anything like it before, and a rather baggy pair of denim jeans, held up with braces which strapped securely over his shoulders, crossing at the back to compensate for the fact that his pants didn't fit.

This was... well. A mind so used to logic, and mechanical, ordered processes, was most upset by this. It was an impossibility, it couldn't have happened. And yet it had, blatantly.

He reached into his pocket on habit, fumbling for his tricorder, and instead found a packet of cigarettes, and a lighter.

*At least something is going right today,* he thought with a smile, as he set down the axe that had been a mysotronic charge inverter a moment ago, and lit up a smoke. He then proceeded to choke on it as he realised that he had been holding an axe for fully five minutes without noticing.

As he regained control, once again, of his respiratory systems, he smoked a little more calmly, sitting down on the stump of a tree felled so recently it was in fact still laying on the ground beside the stump, and considered the state of the tree he had first seen. It was, he saw, in a state of some concern, the axe marks in it's trunk lending some weight to the theory forming in his mind, that he was in fact some sort of axe-wielding tree-felling maniac at present.

He shrugged, and continued to smoke in silence, whilst the improbable forest glared at him. He'd had such simple plans for the day; get up, work, sleep, repeat. Maybe eating at some point would have been a good idea too. And yet, here he was, sat in a forest that really, really shouldn't have been here.

He stood up, after a while, and realised that if he wanted to get back to the ship, he was going to have to do something. Presumably, he reasoned, there must be at least some of the other members of the crew down here, wherever here was.

*It would, after all, be big headed to assume that it's only happened to me...* he thought, and set about looking for a direction to walk in. Sadly, the forest was too thick to afford him anything remotely resembling visibility in any direction, and Josh found it nearly impossible to keep thoughts of not being able to see the wood for the trees out of his mind. An idea struck him, and whilst he recovered from the impact, it began to take shape and unfold in his mind.

He picked up his axe, shouldered it, and set off into the forest, logically identifying the best way to travel by process of elimination; governed by the trees, and the pattern of their placement, it was the only clear path. With a smirk, he lit up another smoke, and unwittingly headed towards the castle, smoking jauntily most of the way.


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Ensign Josh Bladen
Engineering Officer
USS Horizon
NCC-72400
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