The First Face

[Thomas Jaruq 0]

This log is rated PG for medieval bodily function humor and violence on a planetary scale.

Read with caution ... and be sure to floss.

 

oOo

PADDfoot Productions presents

 

a Thomas Jaruq Log

 

The First Face

 

      "Jaruq?"

      "Yes.  Jaruq.  Thomas?  Furry fellow?  Well, maybe not particularly furry, but he had patches in his hair.  Bit on the moody side, also somewhat--"

      "Oh, the one who disappeared!"

      "Exactly!  'The one who disappeared.'  You could've learned his name."

      "Ok, ok.  Go on.  Why is it all Jaruq's fault?"

      "Because, as I was saying before your stupidity's rude interruption, the report was filed just before Jaruq deserted."

      "You think he deserted?"

      "Well, isn't it obvious?  He certainly didn't like it here, couldn't you tell?"

      "I heard he was yanked back into that alternate dimension that he was lost in with the Captain and Commander."

      "Look, it doesn't matter!  Whatever!  What matters is that Jaruq filed the report but never filed the notice indicating that he filed the report."

      " ... huh?"

      "*GROAN*  Listen, when you file a report, it does no one any good unless you file a notice letting them know that the report was filed, right??.  Otherwise, the report just sort of floats around the computer, unnoticed, until someone accidentally stumbles onto it."

      "Like I did."

      "Exactly!  You accidentally stumbled onto Jaruq's report.  He must have filed it right before he left the ship, never getting the chance to file the notice."

      "You think he definitely 'left the ship,' though?  I mean, who knows?  Maybe he was kidnapped.  Lisa Durn thinks he was kidnapped."

      "Oh, who cares??  Lisa Durn?!  Lisa Durn is a gossip-mongering idiot.  If she knew anything, she wouldn't be the ODN network maintenance supervisor, now would she??  But that's not important.  Jaruq is probably lounging away on Risa, or some other paradise planet.  Meanwhile, we're down here in the basement of the ship, cleaning up two months' worth of the crew's solid waste on account of his negligence."

      "He did file a report, didn't he?"

      "But he didn't notify anyone that he filed the report!  If he had notified someone of the report, the notice would have been sent to Commander Pratt, Pratt would have looked into the report and sent a notice of the problem to the utilities department, the utilities department supervisor would have sent repair orders to the master chief petty officer, he would have passed the orders along to us, and we could have repaired this blasted waste conduit before it burst."

      "Gee.  With all those steps, maybe not.  Uh, Bob, I hate to break this to you, but you're standing in some."

      " ... UGH!  I HATE this job!  This is all Jaruq's fault!"

      "You said that already."

      "Shut up!"

 

      When a person goes missing, and his whereabouts are known not even to his own family, there is always a torrent of questions and theories that is immediately raised.  One culture, the Varunzians of Ectod 47 in Galazy 7GR, has devoted an entire branch of science to the concept of missing persons.  That may sound absurd to a casual observer, but the Galaxy's seasoned sociologists find it quite understandable.  Since Ectod 47 lies directly at the nexus of one of the Universe's largest and most notorious dimensional rift webs, missing persons have never been in short supply there.  Not only have the Varunzians adapted to the knowledge that their loved ones have about a .02% chance of simply vanishing before the day's end (less if they stay firmly planted at home), but they have actually developed a system of both scientific and spiritual beliefs to enhance their ability to cope with the bizarre phenomenon.

      One of the beliefs developed by the Varunzians holds that if a missing person becomes the topic of discussion by anyone, anywhere, that person will instantly reappear.  "Speak of the devil!  We were just talking about him, when he walked right back through the--"  One Varunzian believer will point out before disappearing.  While many of the Varunzians who have vanished have indeed turned up later, there has been no definitive link between the reappearances and the discussions.  The true believers continually debate with the skeptics.  "Just because he didn't show up on the doorstep at the exact moment we mentioned his name," states one argument, "doesn't mean he didn't appear somewhere on the planet.  He may have just appeared in the middle of the vast Aga'bagi Desert."  Or "Ok, we weren't talking about him when he suddenly materialized in front of us in the living room, but who's to say someone else wasn't talking about him?"  The skeptics, of course, pass comments like that off as clever excuses by the believers to refute very logical arguments by the skeptics so they can continue to sell their completely absurd ideas to the public.  Without proof, the Varunzians will never quite know for sure.

      You will, however.  As an all-knowing, all-seing narrator, I can tell you that the theory is rubbish.

      The Varunzians are not complete idiots, however.  Existing for 5000 years at the nexus of a dimensional rift web does give a culture an amazing wealth of insight into the mechanics of missing persons.  While their theory (in the form it exists now) does not hold water, it does approach the truth.

      The big-brained Octorugs of Malakon Z live a few light years off the nexus of the same dimensional rift web.  While this reduces the amount of experience the Octorugs have with missing persons, it also means that their scientists tend to last a lot longer than Varunzian scientists, which allows their theories more credibility.  The Octorug theory linking the discussion and subsequent reappearance of a missing person is much closer to the truth.

      Unfortunately, neither the Octorugs or Varunzians will ever know that the Octorug theory has just been proven true by a Human-Betazoid-Felinian Starfleet engineer 73 galaxies away.  The little tidbit of information would probably put an end to centuries of interplanetary war over whose theory is correct.

 

      The disappearance of Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Jaruq caused quite the stir in the Federation territories.  Well, perhaps not all the territories, but certainly on all of Betazed, Felinia, and Earth and in all of Starfleet.  OK, perhaps not that widespread a stir either, but it certainly caused concern among his families on Betazed, Felinia, and the USS Tolkien, and left his crewmates on the USS Arcadia scratching their heads.  On Earth, Jaruq's grandfather probably wouldn't remember his own name, let alone Jaruq's.

      Since not even said family members could offer any insight into Jaruq's whereabouts, there was little solid evidence to go on.  One night, Jaruq had checked out of Main Engineering for the night, last being seen by a wandering NCO named Lisa Durn in the corridor leading to his quarters, and the next day, Jaruq had simply failed to check in.  A search of his quarters by ship security found all of his belongings very much in place, but the Felinian himself strangely not present.  A shipwide search could find no trace of him, nor any evidence that anyone had departed the ship since the night before.  The shuttles were all nestled snugly in their bays, the transporter logs were clear and showed no sign that any entries had been prevented or erased, and the ship's computer (which also aided the conclusion that Jaruq was, indeed, nowhere on the ship) indicated that no airlocks had been opened in the previous twelve hours.  A hull breach was out of the question, because something like that simply wouldn't avert the crew's attention for very long.

      So, Jaruq was officially declared a missing person, and, as with any person that goes missing, a torrent of questions and theories was raised.  Most of the ship's crew accepted the idea that Jaruq was nowhere on the ship.  To mask his presence would require a great deal of skill in tampering with computer systems.  Even if Jaruq possessed the sufficient level of skill, what cause would he have for hiding on the ship?  And surely his hunt for food and water in a continuing effort to remain alive would get him caught eventually.  Also out of the question was the idea that Jaruq had tampered with the computer in an effort to mask a departure.  Again, neither the skill nor the motive to do it in secret were present.  So, both his presence on the ship and his departure from it had been ruled out.  As intelligent beings are quite uncomfortable with blatant contradictions, the inevitable occured ... rumors began spreading.

      Every wild theory from involvement by Starfleet Black Ops, to abduction by invisible aliens, to the particularly absurd idea that Jaruq never really existed and was simply a joint-figment of everyone's imaginations (a theory supported by his grandfather on Earth), sprouted up to compensate for the bewildering understanding that Jaruq had neither left nor remained aboard Arcadia.  Some had decided to take the simple approach, accepting the fact that Jaruq had merely gotten tired of the Starfleet life and run off, and not bothering to try to understand exactly how or why he had accomplished the feat without being detected.

      Since even the wildest rumors lose their charm, the buzz about Jaruq's disappearance died down after about six hours.  Afterwards, he became known to most of the crew as, simply, "the one who disappeared."  As much as the story of Jaruq's disappearance will raise a man's eyebrow, though, the full story of what exactly had happened, and his sudden reappearance three months later, will prove even more bewildering.

      It had been a hectic night in Engineering.  Jaruq had been rigorously investigating a flow imbalance in the ship's solid waste transfer network when he decided that it was time to turn in for the night.  After once again reminding his poor-short-term-memoried personal assistant, Petty Officer Bob Mack, to file a notice of the report he had drafted on the imbalance, he made his way to the junior officers' quarters.  He passed Chief Lisa Durn and wondered briefly what she was doing on that deck.  There was an air of strangeness about the corridor that only grew as Jaruq got closer to his door.  It was the fatigue, he assured himself.

      The red glow from the corner of the ceiling was the first thing to draw his attention.  It was hardly difficult to notice.  The wide beam of light showered down upon the fish tank in Jaruq's living room.  He grinned at the Algonian Bloodlizard Grippies swimming around inside.  Jaruq so loved to watch them.  In his exhausted state it took him a moment to remember that something was amiss and his eyes lazily drifted away from the distraction and to the source of the bright red glow.  The light was spilling through the crease in the closed hatch which lead to the Jefferies tubes above.  When this fact hit him, Jaruq became concerned.  Red glows in the ship's maintenance tunnels seldom spelled good news.  Without taking a moment to retrieve any protective gear, Jaruq climbed up onto the tank and pulled open the hatch.

      At first glance, there was nothing to panic about.  No fire, no plasma leak, no snarling demons emerging from a rift to Hell.  Just the red glow filling the entire tunnel.  While any immediate threats to the ship were ruled out, what Jaruq did see caused him a small bit of personal alarm.  It was sitting several feet away from the open hatch, on the floor of the maintenance tunnel.  It was his Block.

      Ever since Jaruq found it four months eariler, the Block had been nothing but an enigma.  It was about the size of his fist, with six triangular faces, each bearing a differently shaped and colored rune.  Someone had left the curious object in Jaruq's quarters, but he had never been able to find out who, or for what reason.  His scans of the item had proved futile, since it seemed to resist any attempt to determine its composition.  He had also extensively researched the known runic symbols of several cultures at several time periods, but could not find any matches to the strange runes on the Block.  They resembled the ancient hieroglyphs used by the Felinians, but only to a degree; they weren't the same.  For four months, he had kept it close, and he had kept it secret.  In that time, he was unable to learn anything more about the object, nor did it change in any way whatsoever.  The mystery of the object had been limited simply to its existence and its ending up on a small table in his quarters.

      Until now.  One part of Jaruq wanted to distinctly remember leaving the Block on the table next to his bed before he left for Engineering that morning.  Another part of him wanted to distinctly remember stuffing it in his pocket and taking it with him.  Both parts wanted to distinctly remember never leaving it up here in the Jefferies tube.  The truth was, however, that Jaruq was unable to remember exactly what he had done with the Block.  It was as if there was a concentrated fog on his brain, inhibiting his memory of the morning.  He assured himself that the fog was fatigue.  But the fact remained that the Block had been becoming quite dear to him over the past few months.  To have lost mental track of it like this was an unsettling blunder.

      Jaruq raised himself completely into the tube and crawled over to the spot where the Block was sitting.  You can imagine his surprise when he spun it around and saw that one of its runes was now fiercely glowing a bright red.  You cannot imagine his surprise when the rune rapidly grew to twice his size, reached out, and engulfed him.

      Because the Block was sitting in the Jefferies tubes above Jaruq's quarters, the security team never came across it in their search the next morning.  As the medical chief later collected Jaruq's belongings in a large box that was to be sent to his family on Betazed, the Block remained fixed in place at the very spot Jaruq had found it the previous night, the red rune now shrunk back to its normal size and no longer fiercely glowing.  The quarters were cleared out and closed off until a replacement engineer arrived to occupy them, the Block remaining undiscovered just above the ceiling the whole time.

      It was two months later that Ensign Rachel Fleitcher was dispatched to check on an ODN conduit in that very section of the Jefferies tubes.  Just as Jaruq had first found the Block sitting innocently on a small table next to his front door, Fleitcher found it sitting innocently before her in the tube.  And just like Jaruq, she assumed it was destined to fall into her possession, and claimed it as her own.

      For a month and a half, the Block was investigated and kept close by Ensign Fleitcher.  So long after Jaruq's disappearance had fallen out of the minds of the Arcadia crew, no one would offer any consideration of the possibility that the mysterious object was linked to it.  Even if Ensign Fleitcher had indicated to anyone the tube in which she had found the Block, no one was likely to recall that Jaruq once lived just below it.

      One night, after a particular grueling day of work in Engineering, the recently promoted Lieutenant Fleitcher was awoken from deep slumber by a red glow behind her eyelids and a low thudding sound.  Before she could look around her bedroom to determine if it was real, or just a dream, the glow had vanished.  What she saw instead astonished her even more.  Lying, face down, on the floor at the foot of her bed, was the large frame of a Human-Betazoid-Felinian in a red Engineer's uniform.  Lieutenant Jaruq could not hear Rachel's ensuing scream, as he was quite unconscious at that moment.

      The medical team arrived with all the quickness of medical teams and transported Jaruq to Sickbay.  They took no notice of the innocent looking object that stood atop the short bureau across from Lieutenant Fleitcher's bed, the Block that had just spit the missing officer's unconscious form onto her bedroom floor.  So, rather than answering questions, Jaruq's reappearance had only managed to raise new ones.  Word would soon reach the entire ship that Jaruq had suddenly popped back up on the ship, and a whole new wave of rumors was bound to find itself spilling forth before the patchy-haired engineer could offer his side of the story.

 

      Despite the fresh batch of mystery cooked up by this latest development, the Jaruq reappearance did provide some amazingly noteworthy finality.  It provided the first conclusive proof of a long-standing, but controversial theory stating that a missing person will instantly reappear if a former co-worker mentions his name shortly before stepping in a large pile of his own excrement.

      Unfortunately, Jaruq will never be aware of his award-worthy achievement, as said theory was formed on a world 73 galaxies away that is going to be destroyed by a Varunzian planetkiller in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...