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Cdr Alces

Chaos Probability

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

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