Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 6: Perpetual Change
Scene 3: Medical Center
6.3
Medical Center
Dr. Tentis Uto reached for his ever-present cup of hot sog, looked at the mug, then stepped over to the window of his office in the U.S.S. Beagle’s medical center and poured it out on the ground below. A few young medical students walking by, carrying their student med-kits, looked up at him in puzzlement.
They had every right to be as puzzled as he was. Uto had acquired a taste for the pungent, bitter drink due to its psychoactive effect, muting his unusually powerful telepathic abilities, making it easier for him to suppress the pandemonium of non-telepathic minds. Those endowed with telepathy learned, like babies learning the social mores about screaming, how to quiet their thoughts.
Humans, klingons, tellarites, denobulans and others never had to learn that skill, making living among them similar to spending time in a pre-school full of screaming toddlers who had not yet learned to use their “indoors" voices. Very few of these people ever learned. Skip Howard was one of the very rare ones who did, making him unusually peaceful company for a human.
But at this moment, Uto was having a harder and harder time hearing his shipmates and the growing silence was unnerving. It wasn’t just him. His medical staff were reaching out to him throughout the medical facility and alerting him that they were sensing that isolation as well. Of the dozen betazoid medical staff onboard, only 8 of them were in the medical center, including his wife, Dr. Bettes Uto.
That left four betazoids desperately reaching out to him telepathically - their voices fading as if they were separated from him by increasing distance. This effect was confirmed by his wife and other staff present. By now, the minds of all the other members of the U.S.S. Beagle’s crew were gone.
Uto walked out of his office into the Beagle’s medical center to comfort his staff. A picnic would definitely help. It was a gorgeous day on campus, so he had a picnic lunch replicated and ushered his staff outside. There were a few picnic tables, shaded by an awning, just outside. They sat there, communing in thought, some looking out at the mountains in the distance, others looking back at the beautifully designed U.S.S. Beagle Medical Center building - a triumph of blended vulcan and betazoid architecture.
6.3