“Senseless war, Speck. Redshirts a plenty.”
“Our past, Cpt.” He arches one of his non-spiraling eyebrows ever higher while checking the tricorder he holds in his hand. “Aand. Our future I’m detecting.”
“How– can… that be, Speck. I… mean…”
“I know what you mean, Cpt.” says Speck, the person playing him thinking that Don is overdoing it again. Shakespearian actors, pheh. He: a Marlowe fan. “Time… doesn’t seem to factor into the equation. Nor space.”
“Space and time, Speck,” gruffly cussed Doc just offcamera here. “Is that all your Vulcan mind can comprehend? There’s such things as *feelings*.”
He turns toward Doc and thus offcamera as well. “I understand feelings too, Doctor. I’m half–”
“Just… stop it– guys.” Cpt. again of course. “This is just– what the Daruvians want us to do. Bicker… amongst ourselves.” He turns halfway toward the camera, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He’s hatching a plot in his mind, a play within a play. “What if… *we* become the actors they *want* us… to be.”
“Or not to be,” Speck chipped in with a rare kind of joke.
Doc — offcamera still — huffed. “You *act*, Cpt. — like the Daruvians are also anything but barbarians. They’re not, dammit. I’ve seen what they did to Jed. Right in the head in bed until he was dead.” He stares intensely at the Cpt. and then Speck. Or so I’ve been told.
“Jed was… an anomaly, Doc.”
“He was a *person*,” counters still fuming Doc. Always angry. Grumpy. “Just because he had 8 arms and a head the size of Nebraska–”
“I’m picking up on something else,” interrupts Speck, always checking for logical developments. “The situation inside the arch has slightly altered to make it a bit more interesting. The primitive weapons known as muskets… are now hoisted over their right shoulders. Not their left.”
All watched as the guns were then lowered and turned. At them.
“RUNNN!!”
Sunklands 