Getting Right Off the Starting Blocks
Posted on 01 Jul 2023 @ 12:05pm by David Minton & Krosin R'Trerah-Johnson
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 10:42pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Promenade
Timeline: M3 D12 0840HRS
1726 words - 3.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Another early morning and David Minton was strolling from his quarters to his job at manning the promenade’s central kiosk. The day before his weekend off, his manager, a Benzite woman named Renni, had told him to look out for some new hires. He’d asked Renni for the profiles and she had absentmindedly not followed up. That was okay. David knew that managing the kiosk could sometimes be like a game of whack-a-mole, answering the most pressing questions and staying bright and cheery to face the public. Besides, it meant he would get to be surprised at whoever he found waiting to check in.
He fished in his pockets for his lanyard with the control chips embedded in the metallic cut out of the space dock, SB-201 engraved in bold print from top to bottom. The badge matched his own communicator, specially issued to the personnel in hospitality who were civilian hires.
As he rode the escalating stairs, he looked down over the expansive central lobby. It was never especially busy in these hours, making it one of his favorite times of day. He always arrived early enough to get himself a drink and take a stroll, to try to be ahead on anything that might have changed, or any new scuttlebutt circulating among the merchants. Today he planned to take the new hire he was meant to greet along on his stroll and make introductions.
An orange-furred Caitian was standing next to the Kiosk. She wore the uniform of a member of the Civilian Affairs Unit, minus any kind of footwear. She was looking around watching people as they went about their business. She seemed to stop looking around upon spotting David, pausing for a moment before walking forward to meet him.
"Hello, I'm Krosin, I'm newly moved here from Starbase 74." Her voice had the slight purring quality normal to Caitian speech. She had a nametag that read: Krosin R'Trerah-Johnson.
"David Minton," He returned politely, looking up at Krosin. David quickly slipped his lanyard over his head and reached to shake her hand. "Welcome to Obsidian Command. I see you got the replication pattern for the uniform. You settled in to your quarters, then?"
Krosin returned his handshake without hesitation and replied. "Thank you. I Haven't exactly had much time to settle in yet, I just arrived today."
"Getting right off the starting blocks then." David said brightly, then explained more awkwardly. "It's a running reference. My Aunt Sandy used to use it all the time since I ran a little track in highschool. Came to all my races. Which is not to say very many. Didn't usually make the qualifying rounds." He waved a hand as if to suggest with the gesture that everything he just said please be forgotten. "Anyway, I'm glad you came in early. Means I can give you the tour so you can actually get a sense of the place." He waved her along as he started off in a direction. "What kind of station is SB74?"
Krosin nodded, she understood the reference, and she also noticed the fairly obvious effort to change the subject. She fell in beside him, appreciating the offer of a tour. "Starbase 74 is a Stardock class as well so generally the same as this station, and I was in Civilian Affairs there. But all the civilian establishments are very different here so a tour would be nice." She looked around as she went trying to read the signs on the various shops as much as she could.
"Oh good. The general layout can sometimes change station to station, but you know how huge these promenades are!" There was a bot sweeper that twisted and motored to one side to accommodate them as they walked. Its little display screen formed a holographic happy face and it said 'excuse me please' in twelve different languages. David smirked when it said 'bug off, stupid' in Tellerite, and 'Clear the way' in Klingon. Both perfectly common for the situation.
"So we begin here near the kiosk, obviously on the ground floor in the center of the promenade. You may have already taken the lifts down the central core—" he motioned to the visually striking semi transparent tubes collected in the middle of everything, where people and personnel were trek to and from the promenade or heading to the levels below. "You likely came down from the quartering levels, and if you were to continue past the ground floor here known as level one of the promenade, you'd have come to the security floor, and a little further to the infirmary and the sciences. a trip further up leads people to the common destination of the Environmental Deck, which is quite impressive as a naturalistic landscape, including walking paths and forests and even an amphitheater and sporting fields."
David pointed to massive stairwells, some of them stationary and others escalating. "There are four levels of the promenade. Some people get a little dizzy looking down over the rails, but we of course have safety field nets in case anyone's too tipsy to mind the ledges. Since replication provides most people their needs, most shopping is novelty or antiquity or other kinds of unique or non reproducible artifacts for gifts or personal interest. So you'll see antique shops, used book sellers, pawn shops, art and craft outlets, custom clothing and vintage fashion, parts and supplies, repair shops, that sort of thing. Then there's entertainment and salons and all that sort of thing."
David motioned to various locations as they passed them. "There's hundreds of shops and stalls. The promenade has filled up very quickly since the station reopened. At first the place was a ghost town, but now applications for leases are on a wait list as some of the old spaces are being remodeled. it'll probably be a while, looking through the charts and memorizing the names and locations. Really, we could have computer avatars do our jobs better. But for some reason people prefer to ask a real person questions. If you ask me, i think they take a kind of perverse pleasure in having another soul to blame when something isn't quite to their ideal satisfaction. Or I guess it's just that need to get a recommendation or directions from someone who can relate to the experiences more or less like themselves where a computer would just be averaging their history and giving them something it knows they would like, but not something that feels like a discovery. You know?"
Krosin looked at the young human for a moment thinking of how to respond to that. "I suppose there are some people who just want to be unpleasant to someone, I know I have had some encounters like that but usually nothing too bad. I think most of it though is people like socialization, that's something a computer simply can't do as well as a living being. And we can relate more as well, I know for example I often recommend the Environment ring to people, some of my best memories on Starbase 74 were going to its Environment ring with my husband." Her ears flattened for a moment and her expression changed, then returned to normal as she continued to look around. "The overall layout is just about the same, the physical configuration of the Promenade does seem a bit different and I'm sure the Environment ring has its features positioned differently. But the various station sections all seem to be in the same places."
"Let me buy you a raktajino at the Dynasty," David pointed out the Klingon Fusion spot that was already open with a brunch menu. There were big black and red banners in klingon characters. Ostensibly they said 'Welcome' but directly translated it was more like 'Dare to Dine Here'
Krosin looked at the banners with a smirk, Klingon translations were always amusing. Checking her chronometer, she found there was still time before they had to be back to the kiosk. "Sure, I won't turn down a raktajino. " She said as she started to walk towards Dynasty.
"Qapla'!" The Klingon behind the counter was a young adult, a female. Her clothing was traditional, in the Klingon sense, made of leather and metal and showing off a lot of lifted cleavage. Her hair was dense and crimped. She was taller than David, but not as tall as Krosin. She did wear a black apron tied around her hips, with tools and materials in the pockets.
"Good morning, Griselle," David said cheerily.
"Who is this comrade of yours?" Griselle tapped her talon like nails on the counter in series. "A new concierge?" She lifted her upper lip to show her teeth. It was almost a smile but read more as a threat to most humans who didn't understand the display.
David folded his elbow on the order counter and relaxed a little. "This is Krosin. I'm just giving her the tour. Starting with some of your brew for us both."
"You will like it." Griselle said, ambiguously between a promise and a directive, as she began to prepare the Klingon Coffee.
"They don't take special orders here," David said under his breath just to Krosin. "That's why there's no coffee menu."
Krosin chuckled slightly "My husband would probably say I'm practically addicted to raktajino." She stated while watching Griselle work. "He has never quite warmed up to it himself."
Griselle put their mugs down definitively and wiped the counter with her rag, smiling with her canines like fangs once more. "You will tell him to try my raktajino and to change his mind!" She put her hands on her hips as some more customers entered and then turned to greet the new guests.
David smirked, picking both drinks up and handing one off to Krosin. "There's a lot more interesting people to meet around here."Then he echoed Griselle's appoach, half jokingly. "You're gonna love it."
Krosin took her raktajino, she smelled it slightly and nodded before taking a drink from it. She paused for a moment processing the taste then smiled brightly. "This is probably one of the best raktajinos I've had." She paused to drink more and watch the crowds starting to form in the rest of the promenade. "Yeah, I think I'm going to like it here."
