"What's that?" Clark asked, with a certain amount of distraction from Xander's dilemma.
"The reprogramming was halted, but each of the groups is fairly far advanced," said the Star Fleet officer. "I'm not the best at interpreting alien systems, but it looks like the Voyager crew was halted at 81% and your friends at 87%. It was kind of tricky just to halt it, the process is something like defragmenting one of those ancient hard drives of your time. The information is read off the individual, then the original data erased and the new data recorded. Interrupt at the wrong time and you've got corrupted data at worst or a big blank spot at best."
"So even if we recover them," said Clark sadly, "they'll be like those." He indicated the happy amorous girls hanging around Xander.
"Yes," admitted Paris. "The choice is do we free them now and have them imprint on us so that they're at least not in Ataru's power, OR do we leave them in there so that we put off a decision. If we free them now, we might not be able to return them to normal. If we don't, we still may not be able to return them to normal and we take the chance that Ataru can open their capsules by remote and feed in a hologram or something so that they imprint on him."
Technician Honey spoke up. "I've gone over this setup three times and I haven't found any indication that a backup of the original data has been made. What if we had them imprint on themselves?"
"Most likely they'd either be catatonic or completely self-absorbed," warned Paris. "This technology isn't strictly from one of your ahkneemay universes and more concrete physical laws apply. This is all Clarke's Law stuff."
Clark winced. "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic to someone from a significantly less advanced society."
"Well, that's the gist of it, different universes - same truth I guess." Paris looked over at Ranma's capsule. "Another twelve minutes for sleeping beauty there."
"Hmmmm," hmmed Clark. This was not the sort of situation a teenaged boy from a small farming community really anticipated.
"Hmmmm," hmmed Honey. She didn't care for the competition, but on the other hand did she want to leave ANYONE at the mercies of Ataru? Well, maybe Panther Zora. And there were a few other criminal types that might deserve that sort of thing.
"Hmmmm," hmmmed Alita and Ifurita.
"..." pondered Rei Ayanami.
"Hmmmm," hmmmed a middle aged guy in a beard.
Clark and Paris reached for weapons until they recognized the gender of the newcomer. Ataru didn't seem the type to collect male servants, so... "You must be here to affect a rescue as well," said Clark as he recovered quicker.
"You might say that, I am Theodore Diggers. My wife and two of my daughters, as well as a number of their acquaintances, were all captured by this person and brought here." The archmage frowned. "As there is a preponderance of metal here, and my form of magic is impeded by such, my abilities are limited at the moment."
"I don't care at all for having my commanding officer, or a number of my friends and colleagues, as my loveslaves," said Paris.
"Same here," said Clark. "Well, except for me not having a commanding officer."
"I'm going to examine those girls and see if they can be restored," said Theodore Diggers simply as he walked down the corridor to Xander's current crowd.
"We have to do something now," said Paris. "Ataru is likely already recovered and if nothing else he can simply evacuate the majority of his forces and try again later."
(Posted Thu, 10 Apr 2003 12:36)
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