Language
Posted on 31 Aug 2022 @ 10:50pm by Ensign Marcello Wiser & Lieutenant JG Maxwell Tilmer
Edited on on 15 Oct 2023 @ 7:30pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Jr Officer Quarters, Pathfinder
Timeline: MD 06 morning
1576 words - 3.2 OF Standard Post Measure
When Marcello Wiser woke up to the chime alert set for his shift, he felt as if he had hardly even just finished lying down. Last night, after the Captain's visit, he'd known he was up too late bemoaning the *right* thing to do from the *nice* thing to do. The last thing he did before shutting down the simulation review in the holodeck was to backspace the passing marks he'd put down for Ensign Kaiki Wonai. But with the spaces blank slates again, he couldn't actually bring himself to write down the truth. She might have passed her bridge training on her last assignment, but in the present drills she wasn't making the grade in her response time, nor with communication or support functions, and when it came to confrontational situations she wasn't just not an asset, she was a detriment to the function of the bridge crew. Ensign Wonai was great on a sunny day when the solar wind was pushing the sails the direction you wanted. But when the dark tides turned against you... she had potential and that was the best that could be said. Until something changed from the inside, that potential was going to stay in reserve. Marcello imagined the marks he should assign to her would set her career back and keep her out of the higher profile survey missions she was aiming to get. She might even have to seek out a smaller deep space research station and consign herself to lab analysis until she figured herself out.
Kaiki was gonna be mad. And it was going to be his fault.
Still, it was right. It was best to make sure the right people were in the right places, especially when it came down to those split second calls under pressure, with so much in the balance—
A drop of sweat hit the screen of the scoring padd Commander Zahn had entrusted him with.
This wasn't his job. This was supposed to be Zahn's and she was passing the buck on to him, he reasoned bitterly.
The cursor flashed, each pulse burning into his conscience.
Finally he flipped it over and tucked it under his arm, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. "Sleep on it, Marcello," he'd told himself, copping out and shambling through lifts and corridors to the double occupancy quarters he'd been assigned, through the shared living room, into his bedroom, and ultimately stumbling into his bunk face first, still in his uniform, barely managing to kick the shoes off his feet.
Now the following morning— half awake, half asleep— Marcello ambled through his small bedroom with neither lights, nor incident, at first. When it came to housing junior officers, these quarters were fairly cookie cutter. Bed, side table, vanity and drawers, closet... then he slammed his pinky toe on his own footlocker— all he could think was pain and disbelief! He'd perfectly aligned his footlocker! How did he run into it! But shouting nonsensical made-up swear words at it *was* a little therapeutic as he got into the spirit of telling off his luggage.
"You stinky, mold booger, meaty slug nuts, dumbdunn mucker troll, bag of farthead mole grungebuggy—" He eventually finished his pseudo invectives and was just sucking air through his teeth when he hit the button to open his door. Cringing, Marcello raised his arm to shield his eyes. "Gah! Why the devil is it lit up like high noon under Loki in here?"
"Good morning, Sunshine!" Ensign Max Tilmer sounded like he'd had a full night's sleep, and also appeared to be choking back a laugh, having been audience to one of Marcello's attempted swearing spells that never quite landed like real swearing should. Max loved those. He might have, in fact, turned Marcello's perfectly stored footlocker a bit crooked for the express purpose of triggering his pal's pinky toe. Chowing down his egg sandwich, some yolk brushed up into Max's less-than-filled out mustache while he chewed. "Slept in the uniform? Don't blame you. The fabric really breathes. They're making them more comfortable these days."
Marcello sneered at his friend.
"The fleet should make a line of pajamas. Identical to the uniforms. You know. So we're always ready to go at a moment's notice."
Squinting, Marcello watched the egg yolk bobbing around over Max's lip, then dragged his feet along the carpet until he came to the replicator.
"I made that recording the Commander ordered," Max said between licking grease off his fingers. "Told my parents the dog already likes my younger sister more. And they can give any of my stuff they don't want to my cousin Elmar. He hates everything I own, what with his 'cultured taste', so I'd go to the grave with the last laugh!"
Marcello just stared at the replicator menu, not fully registering anything Max was saying.
Max pushed past him to return his plate. "Man. What's eating you? Did you make the video?"
"What video?" Marcello croaked.
"The 'last words' one, dumbass.Who gets your ugly sweater collection? I gotta know." He waggled his eyebrows. "You leaving them to Zahn?"
Marcello shoved Max back away from the replicator. "Coffee. Black coffee," he ordered like he was commanding the starship to fire, his eyes targeted on Max.
"I knew it! You were in the holodeck so late. I bet you didn't even record it." Max tsk tsked, clicking his tongue. "Commander Zahn is gonna know it's not filed. You better get it done or she's gonna be insufferable about it. Probably take it out on all of us to drive home her lesson about 'us mortals' like we haven't been put through that grinder before. Psh. And I've already got shit work up to here—" Max indicated his ears which stuck out quite a bit from his head, a feature that was highlighted by his fresh hair cut and only made him look all the more kid-like.
*The insufferable prat*, thought Marcello.
"—what with Commander Quinn acting like every stem bolt we install has to be fashion plated in vintage latticed latinum over print and exceed all the operating indices known to humanoid-kind. God forbid you grease a coaxial without giving it a spa treatment first. Theoretical bastards. Never got their hands dirty up to the elbows before and all of a sudden they're reading you procedure manuals til your ears bleed."
"Max."
"Yeah Cello?"
"I don't want to hear it."
Max's lip twisted in thought, his gob stopped for a second before he chugged down his juice glass. He regarded his friend, feeling like Cello was going through something. For months on the station, Marcello had seemed delighted at all the after hours shit talk Max had to dish about about working for Quinn. He was sure it was connected to Marcello's barely subconscious crush on the man's wife. It wasn't advanced quantum theory as to why— the more of a chilly, heartless monster Quinn seemed, the less guilty Marcello had to feel. It was tough to imagine Max's growing caricature of Quinn able to really love someone like Marcello's warmhearted, idealized version of Zahn. With every after shift pint, the two imaginary versions of the senior officers seemed less and less likely to have a fulfilling marriage. And as capable and well behaved as Max was able to be on duty, he was equally as capable of playing up a tall tale over a brew. Marcello was always ready to lap it up and Max was too happy to oblige.
But it didn't seem to be cheering up Marcello today.
"Okay, 'Cello. I'll see you after shift." Max picked up a spoon and examined his own cartoonishly distorted visage, brushing off his prized scraggly mustache with a napkin, and licking a bit of bacon out of his gumline, before ultimately dropping the used spoon in Marcello's black, untouched coffee. Max dematerialized both while still in the replicator knowing that his friend Marcello didn't even drink coffee. "Clean up, man." He told him, fixing Marcello's rumpled collar and patting him on the chest once, with a brotherly shove. Max smiled. "You look like targ barf."
As Max Tilmer grabbed his repair kit and headed out for his shift in the engine room, Marcello smacked his forehead against the replicator.
"Crumbs!" He said in his childhood swear he used to get in trouble for using in place of "the 's' word" as a kid. It was the attitude his father wouldn't suffer him having, not the words he used. Now Marcello was an adult but it was the worst thing he could think in that moment.
The replicator obliged, the computer guessing at his meaning according to other popular results and produced a slice of apple crumb pie with one scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.
Marcello picked it up and almost cried. "Thank you," he told the computer in a whimper-laugh. It might have been the best thing that had happened to him since coming aboard the Pathfinder.
The computer gave a happy little affirmative noise which some programmer had thought to add to please polite users who thanked it.
He shuffled into the living room with his pie and sat down on the coffee table's edge, beside the scoring padd he'd apparently left there in his overtired stupor the night before. "Okay." He told the padd, looking down at it as if it could understand him. "Okay. But *after* my pie."
