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Cdr Alces

STSF GM
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About Cdr Alces

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  1. The real reason you don't let David Copperfield enter an aircraft before you.
  2. Yoda waits patiently for Luke to return to the Dogoba system for the completion of his training.
  3. In spite of his lack of technology, Huck Finn had no problem defeating the Decepticons.
  4. Huffy birthday? I had no idea that the woman actually aged. She seems timeless, somehow.
  5. A9 and Fred would have won the costume contest for sure, if only they'd been able to get to the party.
  6. Personal Log, stardate 10901.07 There were few things that Zar Alces had an aversion to doing in public, much to the chagrin of his travelling companions. Anyone who doubted it had only to check his Starfleet dosier. One would find pictures from when he attended Admiral Janeway's annual New Year's Eve party dressed as a Borg Drag Queen, or transcripts from the court proceedings where he tried to justify his consumption of the 24 cases of Romulan Ale he confiscated from a Smuggling operation (how else was anyone going to tell it was real?). And there were extreamly detailed videos of the skinny dipping affair at the Fontana de Trevi in Rome. And those were just some of the incidents in Federation space. The meer mention of his name could prevent entire cruise ships from docking at Risa. And one of his past hosts was the highest priced courtesan in the history of the Segalian empire, a record that still stands after an indiscrete number of decades. But ever since the live gagh eating competition on Q'onoS, Alces refused to throw up in front of witnesses. This was a rule he was having great difficulty with at the moment. The corridors of Aether filled his heart with dread, and his stomach with unmentionables. He was obsessed with the fact that there weren't really any corridors. The only thing that separated him from the cold vacuum of space was a transparant energy shield, which meant that his fate was in the hands of the most incompetent engineer on the Aetherian staff. His body was buffetted with sensations that his intellect couldn't talk his way out of. He was cold, in spite of the heat. And he felt pulled towards the Aeherian sun, even though the station had it's own gravitational center. And he was embarassed ... embarassed at his lack of control; embarassed that he wasn't more interested in one of the technological wonders of modern civilization; embarassed that his host body still kept secrets from him. He'd lived inside Zar long enough that he should have known it had a glass stomach. What other secrets did it have? What other surprises would he discover at inappropriate moments? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the circutry behind the machinery that kept the energy field in place and prevented him from freezing on his way to a fiery death. That helped. The imagined diagrams in his head helped to ground him, the flaws in his knowledge distracted him sufficiently for the panic to subside and his stomach to settle. He began looking forward to the technical breifing on the station's systems they were about to attend. And then he saw an upside-down Klingon five corridors away eating bloodworm on a stick ... Cdr Alces USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E
  7. The CSI team made sure that the chalk outlines of the victims stayed intact, even though the corroner had come and gone.
  8. Chaos Probability, Stardate 10810.22 The crew stared at his as if he were mad. He couldn't stop giggling. They were stranded in the Cloud of Pacifica and all he could do was laugh. Someone would fail at getting a navigational beacon, and he'd laugh. Sensors would indicate nothing in the immediate vacinity to pinpoint their location, and he'd laugh. The crew was getting terminally annoyed with him at each passing second, and that made him giggle even more. It wasn't that being stranded in the Cloud of Pacifica was a laughing matter. It was dense and hard to navigate. And since the ship was designed to ride in the wake of the serpents, and the serpents never left the cloud, you could be carried along for decades without any idea of which direction was out. None of this was funny. What was funny was that Alces was stranded. Again. Over and over and over again, he gets in a spaceship and the spaceship gets stranded. The Devil's Nebula, an alternate dimension, 10 million years in the past ... it didn't matter where. He'd get stuck. In fact, every one of his adventures with Virax in the Coalition Research Pod fit the pattern. Go somewhere, get lost and arrive somewhere else, fix the pod so you can get out of there, get lost heading to the new destination, rinse, repeat. His giggling was compulsive and completely inappropriate. That made him giggle even more. The odds against this happening defied normal probability. No, this fit into his theory of Chaos Probability. Certain events always happened regardless of the normal probability of their occurance. Washing a ground vehicle always causes rain. Mentioning your mother-in-law's name out loud makes her appear with suitcases. Beautiful women with large shoulders always win at cards, unless they learn the rules. Normal probability for all of these events is actually quite small, yet they always occur. The results can be quanitifed, even if they can't be explained. And now there is another event to add to the roll call of Chaos Probability: Put Alces in a spacecraft and the craft will get stranded. How long this time, he wondered? This sobered him up slightly and the giggling stopped. They would have been stuck in the past forever if a freak accident hadn't sent them forward again in time. He spent over a decade in the Devil's Nebula. He knew this ordeal wouldn't be quite that long. After all, ten years is an extreamly long time. Life support would only hold up for six months. That made the giggling start all over again. Cdr Alces, First Officer USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E
  9. Zar Alces should have been in his element. He was the eye in the center of a scientific hurricane. The Cloud of Pacifica lay before him, an uncharted wonder of the known galaxy. You had to traverse the cloud in unique and complicated solar sailing vessels. And the space serpents were fascinating specimens, hiding ... lurking in the cloud waiting for him to uncover their secrets. There was no time to plan this expedition thoroughly. Time was short. You had to just throw yourself into it and punt as the challenges came your way. This was what he was good at. In fact, few beings in the universe were as suited to situations like this as he. Yet it brought him little joy. Alces was anxious for the other teams. He was concerned for Jordan. Would she be able to complete her mission? The dilithium she was searching for was their emergency exit strategy. What would happen to the crew if she couldn't find any? What direction could he steer her in that would ensure her success? And he was worried about Riley. The man had a price on his head in New Atlantis. Riley felt that would be an asset to him, but honestly, that would be true only if the price were low. And everywhere he turned, Alces found himself face to face with Samantha Kent. Her stiff upper lip and cheery disposition was not convincing enough to hide her concern over Riley. She was so smitten with him, and Alces was sure she would rather be facing danger by his side. But Alces couldn't allow it. Their relationship was still in that early adoration phase, where everything still revolved around the other. Riley would be likely to sacrifice himself, and possibly the entire team, to prevent her from breaking a nail. So instead, Alces made her come with him into the cloud, and opened himself to the possibility of having to tell Samantha that he'd sent her lover to his death. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He sighed deeply. Yes ... it was. He was the first officer. This is exactly how it's supposed to be. It's just not what he wanted. And he had naively convinced himself that it wouldn't happen. He had taken the job to protect himself, not to send these children to their deaths. He was aware of the irony. Some of these people were older than his biological body, but he still thought of them all as children. Even Arphazad, who held a good three hundred years over the rest of them, seemed young to Alces. But it was easy Alces to forget that the ship's Captain was joined. He seemed to move through this life as if it were his first. Was that normal for a host / symbiont relationship? Was Alces really overwhelming his hosts, as the Symbiosis Commission had accused him of? When he had been first deposited back on the Arcadia, staying aboard wasn't even an option. It was too dangerous. The ship was being run by young people, full of zest and enthusiasm, and very little street smarts. All Alces needed to do was stay alive until Virax returned. Then the two of them could poof out again to parts unknown. But as time went on, Alces had realized that survival was not going to be easy. The doctors and scientists didn't know how to defend themselves, the security team was all muscle and no guile. They were falling victim to alien manipulation and exploding androids and all sorts of physical anomalies that threw them backward and forward and backwards in time again. Hayden disappeared, leaving them in a void. And Alces realized that he would not survive in this democracy. Although he had never been a fan of fascism, if the ship was going to stay in one piece until Virax's return, then Alces needed to step up and control as much as he could. So why was he now standing here, more worried about their welfare than his own? When did the good of the many start to outweigh the good of the one? This mob of children had evolved into a group of individuals, each with their own hopes and fears and desires and lessons to learn. Each of them deserved that chance to grow, to thrive, and reach their potential. And instead of being their organizer, keeping them in neat, efficient patterns to ensure their peak operation, Alces had turned into their Sheppard. He now felt responsible for each and every one of them. In his lifetime, he had lost generations of friends and loved ones. He had begun to see every life as transient, except for his own. Now, he had carelessly allowed himself to get attached to another group of short-lifers. If he were lucky, he would outlive everyone on this ship ... if you call that luck. Children in seafood restaurants are discouraged from seeing the creatures in the tanks. They tend to personify them by giving them names and talking to them, playing with them, until dinner arrives on the table and they see their new best friend on a plate. I never should have learned their names, he thought. He knew better. He tried to go back to work, pushing the other missions out of his head and concentrating on the one he was leading. Cdr Alces USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E
  10. Congrats and welcome, Rook. You should have listened to all those warinings about how dangerous the internet can be. : ) Cdr Alces USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E
  11. If you keep having birthdays, pretty soon you'll be old enough to drive. Happy birthday, dear.
  12. Stardate 10809.16 Cdr Alces sat in commissary, slowly eating a large bowl of Iocastan grapefruit. A half-empty bottle of Altair water sat on the table next to him. This was day six of his twenty-one day grapefruit and water diet, an age-old routine for purging one's flesh of toxins. His body felt out of sorts after consuming 312 memory supplements, so he decided to endure this ritual that was introduced to him by a holistic guru on Earth in the 22nd century. The man had been a perfect specimen of health up until his 32nd birthday when he got hit by a truck. Life was short, thought Alces. The guru should have enjoyed more steak. Alces wanted a steak the way a drowning man wants air. Not only the steak, but cheddar scalloped potatoes and asparagus with hollandaise, accompanied by a nice bottle of Merlot and half of a New York cheesecake drenched in raspberry custard. He would have gladly consumed this gluttonous feast, except that Lt. Bryant had day 6 in the pool, and he was determined not to give her that satisfaction. She sat across the lounge, smiling at him, almost as if she could read the hunger in his mind. No, he wouldn't cave on day 6. Ens. Prieto had day 7, and Alces didn't like him any more than he liked Bryant. Yeoman Alba had day 8. She was blonde and perky. Maybe he'd break his diet for her benefit? Thoughts of the Yeoman were pushed out of his head as quickly as thoughts of food. He was the 1st Officer. Technically, everyone worked for him. His second-favorite vice was just as off limits as his first. It wasn't really against regulations anymore. Deep space expeditions caused that rule to be broken so often that it fell into the "don't run with scissors" category. But it was something worse than being against regulations ... it was tacky. But still, there was a restlessness in him that he found irritating. Maybe it was due to the piles of replicated fruit doing their job in his system. Or maybe it was all the dalliances he had been witnessing. He could barely go anywhere in the ship without this one wagging their tail at that one, or this one pouting in his beer while that one went to dinner with some other one. But he had to admit that the crew had been working hard, and there were limited ways of relieving stress on a starship. God forbid anyone should try exercise. Alces needed a diversion, and the astrophysics research they were gathering just wasn't it. He needed to play, and it needed to be something unique. There were only so many times he could sneak powdered dye into Marx's antique water shower and still be amused. He stared out the window, watching the stars drift by, and wished for inspiration. Suddenly, a constellation caught his eye, and in a single moment, his wish was granted. The Triton cluster was right there, not 100 light years away. And right on the border of Triton was the Cloud of Pacifica and New Atlantis. The Cloud of Pacifica was the only place where you could find flying space serpents. Aside from the skins and the oils they produced, the flesh of the space serpents was a delicacy on 27 known worlds. They fetched top dollar on the open market. You couldn't travel through the cloud by warp, and impulse engines drove the beasts away. The antique space sailing vessels used for harvesting were no match for the creatures if they caught wind of what you were doing and decided to stampede. This made them difficult, expensive, and dangerous to catch. New Atlantis grew around the serpent trade. After all, the sailors needed somewhere to sell their catch, and an even bigger somewhere to spend their loot. It was a rough spaceport. In spite of the wealth, everyone there was transient. Fortunes were made and lost in an instant. Some people were trapped there waiting for the next big score, others took off the second the check cleared. And everyone had a deal for you to buy into There were too many bars, and gambling halls. Alces remembered one in particular called Cleo's where they employed Cameliod hostesses who would change their sex and features based on the preference of their clients. He wondered if it was still there. He wondered if he'd be allowed back in. Alces had won a large amount of money once from the owner, who was running a rigged poker game ... or so he had thought. Well. that shouldn't be a problem. It was over 150 years ago. And besides, Alces had a different body now. No one would recognize him as the woman who had cheated a boss who was probably long dead or gone. Yes, a vacation. A fishing trip. It's exactly what everyone needed. Well, it was what Alces needed, and the crew needed him not to be crabby. It sounded like a win / win for everyone, provided he could get the Arcadia to New Atlantis. Arphazad would never agree to a fishing expedition, the bleeding-heart pacifist vegetarian that he was. No there had to be a scientific reason. They were the only starship within days of the sector and they were studying the astrometric effects of solar radiation. Solar radiation could endanger the serpents. The entire economy of New Atlantis would collapse if the serpents disappeared. Maybe they were lucky and there were poachers. It was worth a visit as long as there were there anyway. Alces was an excellent spin-doctor. He was confident that he could find a reason why it was time for a Federation starship to pay a visit to this out-of-the-way seedy port-of-call. Thoughts of food and other vices aside, Alces left half his grapefruit sitting on the table and went to look for Captain Lo'Ami. Zar Alces First Officer USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E
  13. Personal Log, Stardate 10809.10 A long line of people wrapped through the computer imaging lab and out into the hallway. Some were amazed at the spectacle before them, but most were simply annoyed. The object of their annoyance sat motionless, staring blankly ahead as hundreds of images sped past him on the monitor. "Commander Alces, please ..." begged Lt. Bryant from the front of the line. "There's a very large holodeck project going on, and no one can do anything until you approve the resource allocations. We all just need a few moments of your time." "I don't have a few moments," he replied in a trance-like tone. "I have to find his face before memory suppliment #278 wears off." "Whose face," she asked? "Kordov, the Inechian representative," he replied. "I don't understand." "That's because you've never experienced a zhin'tara. It's the most amazing sensation. One of your past lives actually leaves your body and inhabits another individual. YOu actually sit there and talk to yourself." "Really, Commander," she scolded, not hiding the fact that she prefered Alces when he was in stasis. "I have work to do." "The last time I checked, you worked for me," he replied dryly. "Now where was I? Oh yes, the zhin'tara. Memory suppliment #278 produced an effect similar to the zhin'tara. Except in stead of my past lives coming out to visit, there was this face. It wasn't Kordov, but I knew it as Kordov, and then I realized that is must be one of Kordov's ancestors. So I started with an image of the Kordov that we know today and I'm having the computer manipulate each feature one dna strand at a time to see if I can de-evolve him back to the face that I saw within thirty generations." "Which means that we're not going anywhere," said Lt. Bryant. It was a statement, not a question. "Exactly," he replied. "Not until #278 wears off or I find my face." The collective groan emitted from the line could be heard all the way in engineering. Cdr Zar Alces First Officer USS Arcadia, NCC-1743-E
  14. There were over 4,500 legal substances listed in the Federation databanks that were credited with restoring long-term memory. Many of them were derivatives of long-forgotten narcotics, whose appeal died centuries ago as modern technology met the drug trade. The rest were biological wastes and by-products of thousands of different alien animals and insects. Very few were from organic plants, and those few were remarkably similar from species to species. It seemed that every planet in the Federation had culitvated some version of Ginseng. Zar Alces looked over the wide array of substances in front of him. After analysing their chemical compositions, he determined that only 347 of the memory enhancers could be replicated. He was able to harvest another 62 substances from the hydroponics bay. So far, he had tried 78 of the 409 variations. One of them was bound to work. He swallowed substance # 79, wishing he could follow it with a Pinot Noir chaser. He didn't need long-term memory to know that would have been counter-productive. But he did need long-term memory. The Inechie and the Nevulsians were about to go to war. Captain Lo'Ami felt this was could be diverted if we could prove that they were really one large, expanded tribe. An away team had just risked their lives on the surface to try and find genetic or historical records that could prove it. And Alces knew it was true. He didn't know how he knew, he couldn't remember why he was so certain of these events from 1,000 years ago. He vaguely remembered being here in one of his past hosts, but it was so long ago that he couldn't even remember which one. Yet he was just as certain that the Inechie and the Nevulsians were brothers as he was that Ginseng tasted bad and had no purpose. Substance # 79 was clearly doing nothing. He swallowed substance # 80 and began to write test results in his journal. Suddenly, the room started to swirl. Everything turned blue, then orange, then blue again. The hum of the ventilator shaft took on an urban street-beat, and everything moved in time to the rythm. Oh great, he thought. # 80 was a hallucinogen. It was the fifth one today. There was no reason anymore to deny the pinot noir. He poured himself a glass and lay back on his chaise for a mid-afternoon nap. Zar Alces First Officer USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E
  15. Zar Alces is a male joined Trill in his late 30's. The Alces symbiont is one of the oldest living Trill symbionts. It is impossible to tell if Alces' erratic behavior is due to the eccentric nature of his hosts, or if it's a sign of symbiotic dementia. His prior host, Ronan Alces, was put on the 'Do Not Transplant' list on the Trill homeworld. Ronan Alces was the mission leader on a Federation project to develop Gigaphasic shielding. The shields allowed him to take the USS Caruso into a dense area of space known as The Devil's Nebula. The ship was destroyed in the process and Alces and the crew was trapped for over 10 years. Most of the crew died during their ordeal, including the Ronan host. When he died, the remaining crew members decided that Alces was vital to their survival, so they defied the Trill homeworld decree and transplanted him into a new host. The Zar host was the only remaining Trill on the crew. He was chosen to receive Alces. After 10 years in the Devil's Nebula, the survivors were joined by the crew of the USS Arcadia. Starfleet had continued its Gigaphasic shielding project, and the Arcadia had been selected to repeat the Caruso's experiment. The Arcadia succeeded in penetrating the Devil's Nebula, and the crew was trapped there as well. Several of them died, including the Arcadia's counselor, a Vulcan woman named Dr. Virax. However, unlike the Caruso, the Arcadia was not destroyed by the journey. Zar was able to use his knowledge of the nebula to guide the Arcadia back to Federation. He and the few remaining survivors from the Caruso were finally free. Shortly thereafter, the Trill homeworld learned of Alces' return and of the unapproved joining. They ordered Alces to return to Trill, so that the symbiont could be removed from Zar. Captain Moose of the Arcadia quickly hired Alces as his Chief Science Officer, unearthing an old agreement between Starfleet and Trill Prime. As long as Alces remained an officer of the fleet, he could not be extradited back to Trill. His travels with the Arcadia took him to an area of space governed by a group of Academics known as The Coalition. Coalition science was decades ahead of Federation research, due to their ruthless and aggressive research methods. The Coalition had evolved beyond warp technology by developing the 'fold-drive', a method for bending space which allowed them to travel almost anywhere. Alces learned that small Coalition research pods had been able to fold space and penetrate the Devil's Nebula. In fact, the crew of the Caruso had been under observation by the Coalition for the entire time they had been stranded. One of these pods had actually rescued Dr. Virax and nursed her back to health. She had joined the Coalition as was assigned as the Federation Liaison when the Arcadia was in Coalition space. Alces defected to the Coalition and became Virax's research partner. The two of them found a deactivated research pod in a Coalition junk pile and managed to activate it. However, the pod was difficult to control, and they spent many months being deposited randomly across the galaxy. Not only were they travelling randomly through space, but through time as well. Eventually, they reappeared back on the Arcadia, but this was not the Arcadia that Alces had left. This Arcadia was commanded by Captain Dacotah and had fallen through a spatial anomaly which had trapped them 20,000 years in the past. Virax left Alces on the bridge and tried to use the pods sensors to pinpoint the Arcadia's exact position. The pod disappeared and she never returned. Alces travelled with Dacotah and the new crew back to their proper time where he discovered that Captain Moose had never reported his defection to the Coalition. Alces had merely been listed as M.I.A. He was a Federation hero and his status was quickly re-activated, preventing his extradition back to the Trill homeworld. Zar Alces currently serves as the First Officer on board the USS Arcadia.
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