Comparisons

Posted on Fri Jul 8th, 2022 @ 10:22am by Commander Benjamin Jamesson & Lieutenant JG Calanthe 'Cal' Diaz

Mission: Mission 6 - Memory
Location: Various
Timeline: Day 301 10:00
3146 words - 6.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Ben was relieved to finally have some decent food in him and to have had a chance to actually meet people other than Hughes... the communica... the Captain and security but to actually get a chance to move around the ship freely. He had wandered around the gym considering doing some weights to try and do something normal but it felt foolish when he had not eat properly for days nor moved much. He needed to take things slow he shook his head and turned around to head out of the familiar space when he bumped into a much smaller frame.

"Sorry..." He started but paused as he recognised the familiar person and paled.

There were times, and Calanthe was fully prepared to admit it, when she was distracted enough to walk into bulkheads. More often than not, it was whilst she was talking a mile a minute, and that held true as she stepped backwards into unyielding bulk whilst in the process of finishing off a thought that was responsible for her grin. The sudden interruption stopped her mid-retort and the brunette turned just in time to register that the blockade was radiating far more heat than the walls normally did. Just close enough to maintain an awkward intimacy, Cal's gaze travelled upwards to scrutinise the man's features and she raised her eyebrows at their instant familiarity. There were nuances, the beard was a little longer perhaps, but otherwise...

Her features relaxed into a pleased grin.

"Well, holy shit, they weren't kidding." Clearly staggered, Cal made no effort to hide the fact that she was giving him the once-over. "That's wild. Hey," she added as an afterthought, finally greeting him as more than a sideshow. "Welcome back. Well," Cal conceded, "I guess...not exactly back."

The man smiled, she still had a way of fumbling through simple interactions. How she spoke so many languages he did not know when English sometimes failed her. "Sideways... It is how I am looking at it." A psychological professional would have a field day with him but as they did not really have one onboard it was all on him to keep himself positive about his luck. "But hello, Ensign."

Calanthe glanced down at herself to confirm that she was, in fact, in her workout gear, which contained no pips and no other indication of what her rank was. Her initial instinct had been to accept the apparent look of recognition on the engineer's...was he still an engineer?...face but it occurred to Cal, as her thoughts caught up with her mouth, that it was a bit odd. Technically, she was only just meeting this version. That meant whatever he knew about her was not actually...her.

Her mind took off again. It was almost possible to gauge the speed of turning wheels by the way her eyes darted about. That was generally the problem. With several languages vying for fluency and a tendency to exist at a pace several streaks ahead of normal, there were times when it was a wonder Calanthe could communicate at all. She opened her mouth, goldfish-gawped at him, and then shut it again to frown in amusement before finding her voice. "That's a hell of a side-step."

"Yeah..." He paused and looked her over again. "But it is nice to see someone familiar who seems happy to see me," he admitted with a small smile. "Or at least not staring at me like a ghost." He added as an afterthought as he thought about breakfast.

"From what I just walked into, there's no way you're made of wisps of vapor and bad memories." Far from deviating from her curiosity, Calanthe simply took a brief pause to grin at an old tease. Even in their universe, he'd easily made two of her and could probably have bench-pressed her without breaking a sweat. "Not going to lie though, this is kind of odd. Twice as much because you recognise me." A raised eyebrow questioned him.

"Well, you existed in my universe just like I existed here." He said quietly with a shrug stepping back a little to give her a little bit of space. "It is an odd experience all around. Benjamin Jamesson... I guess I am just an Engineer right now." He said holding out his hand to actually shake her hand and introduce himself.

It was totally in keeping with Calanthe's operational mode that she hadn't extrapolated the situation all the way out to even speculate about another version of herself. The revelation was clearly occurring to her now, wide-eyed and frozen for a moment before she grimaced apologetically at Ben and then slipped her smaller hand into his. "I mean, you still have most of your hair," she pointed with her other hand, "So I guess I can't have been too bad."

Except his entire ship was gone by all reports, which meant she...the other she...was...dead? As she pulled her hand back, Cal shook her head as the confusion of that left her with no clear line of logic to pursue. "Were you not an engineer there?"

"You were not bad at all and I was Chief Engineer but I was also the Executive Officer under Captain Leah Morgan. Leroux and Sloan both died in my universe instead of Morgan and myself." He admitted and winced as he saw her confusion all over her face. "I should let you get on with your training. You looked like you were ready for some exercise." He said moving to the side to allow her to pass.

"Well, I don't know about Sideways Cal but I could always be swayed by hot chocolate to skip leg day."

As much as she was a chaotic whirlwind even in 'normal' mode, the linguist was not without her intuitive side. Studying languages made you more aware than most of the subtext that ran beneath the spoken word and, quite aside from her own natural curiosity, which she was never very reserved about indulging, Calanthe had picked up on the strain in the still-an-engineer's voice. She'd been decent enough friends with their Ben before he died, still no where near as good to him as she might have been had she stopped long enough to be intentional about it. It was a bit late now to make amends but maybe this counted, kind of.

"Come on then," Ben said slightly taken aback by the offer but it was just like her to throw his emotions through a loop. "And she could be swayed by hot chocolate for most things." He admitted with a sad smile before it disappeared as they silently walked to the turbo lift that would take them down 2 decks to the mess hall. It would be quiet between breakfast and lunch which meant he would not get stared at repeatedly and would be able to relax just a little.

There was something about his tone that earned Ben a quiet ten seconds or so. It was a strain to avoid over-analysing conversations at the best of times, she had a knack for dissecting people's intent and could be decidedly fierce on calling out what Cal deemed to be 'utter bullshit'. She has zero tolerance for dishonesty, but deceit had many functions and it could be challenging, at times, to navigate the nuances of communication whilst still respecting that some inconsistencies were necessary. Right now, it took the angel on her shoulder to remind Calanthe that the guy had just lost everything. Reading too much into the sad wistfulness in his eyes was likely just under-estimating how potent his grief was.

And so she spared him an interrogation about this 'other Cal', despite the fact that she was growing increasingly distracted by the notion that there was this entirely separate representation of her that she had no control over. Instead, stepping into the messhall to lead the way to her social group's favoured table by the wall, the brunette tried an entirely different tact.

"Was your situation anything like ours?" Slipping into a seat, Calanthe studied his face intently. "Which has me hoping that you've been briefed about our situation otherwise I'm going to have things thrown at my head."

Benjamin appreciated the fact she did not ask more about anything, he really did not have the energy to tell that story. The people he had lost were raw and he really had not processed it at all now that he was staring at someone who less than two weeks ago had been very important. "Very much like yours apart from a few subtle changes. The biggest change is we never met a future ship but a telepathic creature that syphoned our energies." He said trying to think of what was the biggest change from there to here. "Do you take the hot chocolate with nutmeg here?" He wondered stopping the beeline to the table in favour of getting the drinks first. They were alone apart from the sleepy-looking crewman sitting in the corner cradling a drink.

"That's my mother's recipe." It was a small thing but eerie because, typically speaking, Calanthe tended to avoid complicating her order. There was no reason for it other than the fact that her mother was now 150 years away and nostalgia punched you right in the stomach sometimes. Flabbergasted, she blinked at him, bestowing for a moment the unique distinction of having rendered her speechless, and then Cal's features softened to an appreciative, if still not a little baffled, smile. "I haven't had it that way in..." Nearly a year. In fact, the last time had probably been amidst his rampant teasing. "Sure, why not," she continued suddenly. If he could deal with losing his entire universe, she could probably hold it together to drink her mother's favourite blend.

The man felt bad for a moment that he had offered it when she had almost balked at the suggestion but it was her normal order in his universe. He needed to just remember that this universe could be different. “You got it.” The man moved to the protein resequencer to gather what he needed before he returned. He set both drinks down before he sat down opposite her and sipped on his Irish cream latte.

The first sip caught Cal totally off-guard. "You got the proportions right." It was a small thing but a significant deal, since too much or too little just ruined the taste entirely. Dark eyes, now full to the brim with inquisitive confusion, studied Ben intently for a moment before Calanthe visibly retracted whatever she'd been about to blurt out. Instead, she grinned, eyelashes lowered, in her patented 'you got me' style. "My mother would approve."

"I try." He said taking a sip of his coffee and sighing happily at the taste. After nearly a week of rations and then the unusual atmosphere on the ship it was a welcome relief from the storm that his life had descended into. It was nice to be just able to enjoy a simple coffee even if he hurt all over. "I try." He said with a shrug as he looked around. "So tell me about things..." He prompted trying to keep some type of conversation going.

"Things?" She'd already picked up a spoon to stir, a habit that would have been impossible to break even if Cal had any intention of trying. It keeps the flavours from separating, mon chéri, her mother's voice offered an excuse from across the impossible expanse. "Okay, help me out here. Do you want no reference to...our Ben..., or only reference to him?" Sucking the spoon dry, the brunette set it on a napkin and took another sip, eyebrows raised in question as she studied his face. "Current scuttlebutt? Recent events? My prediction for tonight's dinner menu?" As was typical, Cal's features melted into a slow grin. "It's okay, you can ask specifics about whatever you want. I don't have a lot of time for dancing around difficult topics and this must be really hard for you."

"You can reference him. He is a different person. I have just stepped into his universe. I have no intention of taking over from where he left off. Just like I am trying really hard to try and not force my universe on you guys." It was hard to not think of these people as the people he had seen or heard die but he was going to do that to honour them. "It is hard but I am alive so there is something." He said trying to think on a subject. "So what is the scuttlebutt?" He finally settled on.

Once again, Cal felt the sensation of, as her grandfather would have put it, someone walking across her grave. A cold shiver across her shoulder blades, the discomfort of trying to wrap her mind around there being other versions of any of them. Curiosity burned but there was something about Ben's tone that curbed her desire to ask. Maybe it didn't matter, except all the ways in which it did. She wasn't sure the psychology if it was quite as simple as he was making it.

"Well," she started, hands folded around her cup as she sat, elbows on the table, in her typical conversational stance. "To be honest, it's not all that exciting at the moment. Ever since the air conditioning went out, people keep complaining of headaches and going to bed far too early." Cal, at least, seemed relatively unscathed. "They wouldn't last five minutes in Rivadavia."

Ben frowned a little bit as he thought about the interrogation the previous day when Bethasbee had same something similar. "Not exciting is not a bad thing though." The man said quietly. "It would be nice to not have anything chaotic after Jan Kowalski and how it all ended in my universe. You guys making hooch here?" He wondered thinking that he could use a drink despite the earliness of the day for them. His rhythm was well off and it felt late evening for you.

The linguist's expression carried, if anything, an air of increased admiration. For him to ask that question gave his universe an additional point in her book. "If we weren't, the boredom would have broken me out in a rash by now. Lack of excessive excitement, especially the wrong kind, isn't a bad thing," she corrected him with a grin. "Lack of any excitement doesn't bear thinking about."

“It’s nice to be quiet.” He said simply as he cradled his coffee just staring at it. “But I will definitely be checking in with the engineer in charge of that.” It could only be an engineer in charge of creating something like that.

Something strange happened, unanticipated, and yet it caused Calanthe to stop a moment and just study him. It wasn't quite déjà vu, there were too many nuances that were different, but it was a familiar conversation to one that she'd forgotten she'd had once, a while ago now.

Nothing wrong with a bit of quiet, Cal. You should try it some time.

She'd thrown a napkin at him and he'd grinned, and the others at the table had intervened before she followed it up with the sliver of ice she'd threatened him with. Then the whole lot of them had ganged up on her and the moment had descended into placing bets on how long she could sit in silence. The memory was crystal clear and yet she hadn't thought about it for close to a year.

She smiled faintly, albeit a little sadly. "It doesn't taste quite the same anymore, of course." Her dark eyes met his and Cal offered a huff of rueful laughter. "None of the others have the patience he did for it."

“I am sure they did. And if it’s strong it’s all that matters.” The man pointed our feeling like he needed to defend but it really did not matter to him. He watched her watching him intently and offered her a smile trying to cheer her up from the sadness that had descended.

Ben made the best hooch. It was common knowledge and had never been refuted. These days, it tended to be served in his honor, and those who had considered him a friend often lifted a glass to him with the first pour of a new batch. For the first time, it properly hit Calanthe that this was Ben. Perhaps not their Ben, but a Ben, and having him around was going to throw up musings she hadn't thought about since just after his funeral. Trapped by reminiscence she hadn't prepared for, the brunette drew in a sharp breath suddenly and let it out as a shudder.

"I'm sorry." She dropped her eyes and reached for her spoon, stirring the stilled surface of her drink once more. "Just ignore me whilst I smack myself around the head for making unfair comparisons." Her gaze found his again and she pondered, for a moment, changing the subject. In the end, she offered him an explanation that only seemed fair. "We used to sit here, most lunches and dinners. Me, Ben, a group of the others." Her gaze travelled around the space, as if seeing it fresh for the first time, and then she hunched a shoulder and went back to her stirring. "It's just...nice, to hear you talk about something that was important to him."

“Compare if you need to but I am not him. Very much not him, I have an a year of experience on this ship. The highs and the lows.” The man reminded in a gentle way. “It is nice to hear you talk too.” He added truthfully. It really was nice to see her walking and taking even if she was not his version.

"I know you're not." When Cal's tone was gentle, it took on a more pronounced lilt, the impressive combination of competing accents that formed her own unique enunciation. Not quite French, not quite Spanish, not quite anything. "There's no guarantee there's any similarity between what you experienced prior to the date of his death and his time on board anyway." Ben was still dead. A slow blink and a sigh forced Cal to acknowledge that before she managed a slightly wry smile. "I guess we'll just have to figure that out as we go."

He smiled at her and nodded. Neither of them were the same person as they had lost but it would be interesting to see how it went. “I guess we will.” He said simply leaned back in his chair and watched her carefully.