A curious reverie
Dammit, I had such a lovely dream about VTTBOTS that I don't know how I will document it without losing some of the awesomeness... but document it I must.
Alright, long and short (baww) is that some crazy old guy, his party girl daughter, and her scheming boyfriend wanted to rent the Seaview as a party boat. Well, they needed some excuse to get aboard that wasn't "we want to use it as a party boat", and so the scheming boyfriend posed as a government official or something. (The setup was pretty vague because clearly my mind wanted to get to the good part.)
They all hopped aboard, except for some of the crew who stayed behind at the institute because they needed to test some new technology (this becomes important later). So Lee and Nelson pretty quickly realized that the "government official" was full of it, but didn't know what to do. They only wanted to go a few miles out to sea, which also seemed weird.
Soon, crazy ol dad came flouncing into the control room with some weird ball device full of... well, "PARTY GAS". The episode (or "episode") was in b/w but as soon as the ball began pumping out the party gas, the gas and the confetti (of course there's confetti) were bright pink. Which was awesome.
So there was a lot of mayhem, the old guy was dancing around, some of the crew were intoxicated and couldn't steer, and naturally the ship accidentally hit something and sank.
The daughter turned out to be a sad and mopey "drunk" and began to panic. Which was pretty appropriate, since the ship was flooded with gas that made everyone act cuckoo, and no one could control the ship. (So it was pretty much that scene from "Cradle of the Deep" okay, obviously that was what inspired the dream. Whatever.)
Lee was yelling at her, demanding to know what this was all about in the first place. She admitted that her dad was incredibly rich and irresponsible, and wanted to go on the best trip ever. Yes, THAT kind of trip, far out, maaaan. (He had previously tried autoerotic asphyxiation and liked it, so he wanted to recreate that mindset for a ship full of people. Yes, my sleeping mind actually had her explaining autoerotic asphyxiation to Lee Crane.)
I don't know what happened to her boyfriend, but she completely flipped out and decided to escape. Lee told her it was suicide, she didn't know how to use scuba equipment. But at that point, he began to hallucinate and he saw her as a mermaid just floating out the hatch. She told him she was swimming to such and such islands and perhaps one day they would meet again.
So back at the institute, Chip and Sharkey (the ep was b/w but Sharkey was in it. Why not!) were concerned about some weird messages they'd gotten from the ship. Like, super duper weird messages. Like, the entire crew is bonkers messages. Then they lost contact. They were talking to some military guys and wondering what to do, when suddenly some random admiral (I guess the top-billed guest star) announced to them that he and Nelson had been secretly working on something for months and now might be the time to try it out.
Now, if something like this actually happened on the show (which it probably did and I just have the memory span of a gnat), I apologize. Because it was a yuge deal in the dream. I'm sure it's something that already happened though, but they had this giant laboratory which, upon closer inspection, was identical to the control room of the Seaview! WUT?! It was some weird remote navigating dealy which could be used to literally control the entire ship from a distance in case it was ever taken over or the whole crew was incapacitated. WUT!
Chip and Sharkey were like, "This is super sweet but how do we know that using this won't cause a ton of trouble? What if evil ForeignPowersia people have everyone captive and they're trying to commandeer the ship like in every single episode? If they notice a course change, how do we know they won't kill everyone or blow up the world or something? Also like in every single episode. And since this has never been tested, how do we know it will even work, and won't kill everyone?" Basically they are concerned that they will kill everyone. A sensible concern!
General guy was like, Well Mr. Morton, as the acting captain, (since as far as we know, Nelson and Lee might be dead) that decision... is up to you.
DUN DUN.
But fortunately it wasn't a super hard decision because pretty soon, Nelson contacted the institute, he's also a weepy drunk, but he is a drunk man of SCIENCE and in the meantime had figured out that OF COURSE the party gas could also be fatal (just like autoerotic asphyxiation can be fatal) and the old guy was actually a pretty big dumbass. Maybe the old guy was dead, I know someone was dead. But the party raged on, and now Lee was yelling into the microphone about insane nonsense, so the situation was getting pretty bad. Chip and Sharkey were completely aghast and looked at each other in horror.
On the ship, Nelson finally got Lee to listen to him. They went into the corridor and Nelson said that there might be a way to save everyone aboard the ship and expel the gas (it was scientific gobbledygook and I have no idea what he said). But of course, someone would have to stay behind in some room or other and go down with the ship DUN DUN.
Even though his drunkness, Lee said, "I'll do it." Nelson just smiled sadly and said something like, "In your current state, I don't think you could handle it."
Lee said, "I'm the captain, Admiral, it's my duty to go down with the ship!"
Nelson said, "It's my ship."
And then Lee kind of straightened up a little bit, his eyes cleared, and he said sadly, "Why does it always have to be you?"
It was this really tragic moment of friendship and sacrifice, and really nice.
They didn't contact the base again, and no one knew what was going on, so Acting Captain Chip Morton made his decision to get them out of there and deal with the repercussions later.
Chip and Sharkey and whoever else happened to be there, a teensy little skeleton crew, got "aboard" the fake seaview and maneuvered it back into port. I think Sharkey said some pissy comment about how the real ship handled much better (which is hilarious because they were just in a room, there was nothing to "handle").
There was a big fight between the scheming boyfriend and Lee, over the welfare of the "mermaid", right as the hatch opened and Chip and co hopped aboard the ship and surveyed the chaos. By then, everyone had passed out in piles of pink confetti except for Lee and the guy, so some crewmen had to break it up.
There was definitely a moment of Sharkey with that LOOK on his face, that great look of confusion that he does so well. And he said something like, "Mr. Morton... I've never seen so much pink."
Lee was sitting on the floor, the only one still conscious. Chip crouched down next to him and asked him, "Lee, what in god's name happened?"
Lee just looked up sleepily and said, "I knew you would come, Mr. Morton." And then he passed out and Chip and some other dudes had to carry him out.
(Also, Chip was a man of DUTY and helped carry every single person out because he's awesome. :3)
Everyone was in the hospital later, recovering. Lee and Nelson were chatting and drinking orange juice for some reason, and Lee suddenly noticed the woman (whatever her name even was) across the room.
"What are you doing here?!" Lee cried.
"Where else would I be?" she asked.
"I didn't think you were still aboard the ship!"
Someone said that they found her passed out inside the... that scuba... dealy where they... go out. Oh, boy, I don't know anything about submarines. She never made it outside, anyway.
The woman got angry. "What do you mean? Where else would I be? What was I going to do, swim to (such and such) islands?!"
"Yes!"
Everyone in the room started cracking up and Lee eventually figured out that he had hallucinated the mermaid thing, so he never brought it up again. He just quietly drank his orange juice.
Sharkey and Chip came in to report, the ship was gonna be okay *sniff*. Nelson was upset that they had to use the remote ship thingy before it had been tested.
Chip said something like this was a good enough test in its own right. Some of the men were even thinking about requesting transfer to the fake Seaview, lol.
Nelson said he'd look at transfer requests after everyone had a good long shore leave, they had all earned it.
And then, pff, my dreaming mind. Yeah. Right then, Sharkey got all excited and proud and started gushing, "You should have seen Mr. Morton, sirs! Cool as a cucumber through the whole thing--" Chip just sighed, did that awesome exec eye roll and and said, "That'll be all, Chief."
Sharkey shrugged and left, and Lee and Nelson cracked up. Nelson said something like "You should have let him keep going!" and Chip was obviously super embarrassed. :3
Anyhoo. I strongly strongly doubt that I'll ever write this as a proper fic because the terminology alone would end it right there. But I'm really pleased that at least in my subconscious, everyone stays mostly in character! That's never happened before.