Passing Go

Posted on 24 Apr 2024 @ 9:06pm by Lieutenant JG Maxwell Tilmer & Ensign Marcello Wiser & Crewman Recruit Zuzal

Mission: M4 - Falling Out
Location: OC, Sickbay, Jup's room
Timeline: D14-D15 (New Years Eve) Following "A Capitalist Sendoff"
2822 words - 5.6 OF Standard Post Measure

At first, Marcello Wiser had been the only one to show up to the hospital room, exactly at 2000 hours like he had told everyone in the invitation he had forwarded. But only the little green crewman recruit nurse was in the room when he showed up, used game box in hand. It wasn't a small room either. Nurse's Assistant Zuzal had done just as she promised and special requested the spacious accommodation for Jup's last night on the station before his medical transfer tomorrow. The Ferengi was still breathing on a machine, otherwise as still as he had been hours before. But seeing his friend moved to another location let Marcello lie to himself, imagining Jup had had some measure of involvement in arranging the game night.

Setting down the game on a large side table that had been provided for the visit, Marcello mimed giving Jup a fist bump, touching their knuckles together, although Jup's fingers didn't flex at all to meet his.

"Hey man. Thanks for hosting." He said to Jup. "Where's everyone else hiding?"

Neither the comatose Jup nor the mousey nurse's assistant responded, leaving Marcello clearing his throat. "Nobody else coming so far, huh? Well maybe give 'em a few more minutes. Saaba and Tilmer, they're out on patrol anyway. Never sent them an invite. So we're just waiting for Zletze and Wonai. Just a nice little five player game."

He pulled up a chair. Sitting down he pulled up a miniature display device from the pocket of his slacks and quietly checked his messages. He found that he hadn't gotten anything back from either of the friends he'd invited, although the system reported that both Zletze and Kaiki Wonai had received and read the note. He frowned, unsure what to make of the lack of any kind of confirmation or even acknowledgement. 

Kaiki Wonai he knew hated him, although he wasn't sure if it was because he'd given her that bad score in the holodeck training that had lead to her having her bridge access revoked, or if it was a grudge for that incident where he unintentionally encountered her walking around sans clothing in his assigned quarters after whatever she and Tilmer had been getting up to. Marcello scrubbed his face to try and get the memory clear but it had been burned to the back of his retinas. He sighed and slouched back in the guest seat, trying to focus on the array of equipment and monitors Jup was plugged into. Ultimately the one visual available that was strong enough to purge the memory of Kaiki's curves highlighted in the glow of nightlights, was Jup's remaining lumpy and creased massive earlobe complete with its moles and little hairs.

 In any event, be it the bad marks or the surprise flashing, Kaiki hadn't said two words to Marcello since they had gotten back to base. Zletze was generally an amicable guy though. Marcello couldn't imagine why the flaxian wasn't already here, turning the Monopoly box lid over to read out the rules like a pilot taking to the flight manual of a new ship. They had always gotten along, having their conn and piloting training in common, and giving them something to share and do together as they worked constantly on upping their qualifications, testing one another and sharing the flight simulator. There wasn't any reason Marcello knew of that would prevent Zletze from showing up tonight... Unless Kaiki had poisoned Zletze against him too. Or... maybe Zletze was just not able to admit that he would be uncomfortable seeing their buddy Jup in the state he was in. It was difficult to take in without getting emotional about it, Marcello had to admit.

Marcello looked at the Orion girl, but she stayed rather awkwardly still, only shifting the weight on her feet. Wondering if she had stayed after her shift or left and come back, he pushed a nearby seat out for her, but she didn't move to take it. Either she didn't get the prompt, or she was just too nervous. He felt a little bad for keeping her.

He was sure more minutes had passed since he last checked the chronometer, and he had his face in both of his hands now, admitting to himself that maybe this attempted arrangement really wasn't going to turn out to be anything at all.

"Hey, it's been a long day." Marcello said to the girl who was faithfully, patiently still standing around, "For you I mean, to be here at work. You don't have to stick around on our account. I don't think there's going to be a game, after all." His voice was cracking with emotion he didn't really want the Orion to see, afraid it would spill out of him again. Like it had when he had it out with Tilmer and busted the engineer's lip, or the episode he'd had in the Sickbay lobby a couple of weeks back, shouting at all the medical personnel.

"Do you think," Zuzal said softly. "That the game still plays... with three?"

Marcello let his hands slide from his face to regard her. His face soured. He wanted to bark that it would just be the two of them, delusionally moving around a dummy piece to pretend to be a third, and no, a game like Monopoly would suck horta eggs with just two players, because it already sucked with any number of players and what had he even been thinking when he even had this level-one awful idea in the first place?

But even while the bile of words was rising in him he could feel her big doe eyes staring through him, her little hands wringing each other's fingers.

Was she scared? Of him?

Unable to let himself lash out at her, Marcello turned and flipped the monopoly box off the table; it got great air, flinging parts and scattering a pastel rainbow of colored monetary slips in a mathematically satisfying arc.

The girl gasped and flinched, and Marcello stood while the paper rained down around them.

Marcello felt himself breathing heavily and he tried to remember any of the calming techniques that Melanthio had made him repeat back in their sessions, but it wasn't coming to him, not the counting or the breathing or anything. Just a crushing feeling of guilt, piled on by other guilt.

And the girl bent down to start to gather up the game pieces and paper.

"No!" Marcello exclaimed, reflexively. He got to his knees and began to greedily grab around at the mess. The only thing worse than having caused it would be to see this innocent crewman recruit crawling around picking up after him. "No. I've got it. It's my mess. I've got it," he said.

Zuzal remained on the floor, her knees folded, at a loss for what to do if she couldn't help. She'd heard that Ensign Wiser wasn't exactly stable. When she had arranged for the private hospital room for Ensign Jup in order to facilitate a New Years Eve party and game night for Jup's friends, no one in the nursing staff could deny that it was a wonderful idea for the young officers to ring in the new year and have a kind of goodbye with the Ferengi Ensign whose future was so uncertain. But they also felt it was prudent to warn the little crewman recruit that Ensign Marcello Wiser had been sent to counseling for emotional outbursts and possibly battle inflicted trauma and she'd been cautioned to be careful around him.

She was, at the moment, incredibly conflicted as she watched the anxious young man messily grasping at the papers and crumpling and stuffing them back into the box in such a manner there would be no hope of closing it. The long narrow cardboard container was already old, faded, ripped and worn. It was also becoming battered, bent, and shearing at the corners now. 

Her eyes flicked to the open door and then down again at her knees. Should she make her exit? Or was she somehow actually needed here? She knew how to take Ensign Jup's vitals and to replenish his fluids and flex his limp limbs and keep him from getting bedsores. But what could she do for someone like Marcello Wiser?

While she was trying to figure out what she could do, another voice came from the doorway.

"Sorry we're late," said the Flaxian, grinning guiltily, which made his facial whisker-fins lift around his mouth and eyes. He came inside the open hospital room door with a dark skinned human woman trailing behind him. Neither one was in uniform, but Zuzal felt she could guess that they must have been Ensign Wiser's guests.

With the badly stuffed game box under one arm, Marcello looked gobsmacked for a second and then managed to state the obvious. "You guys came."

"Of course we came. Why wouldn't we come?" Zletze said. "We've come to all of your lame New Years Eve Game Nights." 

"Speak for yourself." Kaiki said with a haughty sniff. "I wasn't going to come this year, but since it was technically Jup's party..." Not to mention Zletze had hounded her all afternoon until she had given in at the last minute.

"Well? What's the hold up?" Zletze motioned to the disaster under Marcello's arm. A couple of pewter game markers fell out of the bent side and made a tiny clatter on the hospital floor between them. Both men continued to look at one another as if things weren't actually falling apart. "Is that the 'Moneyopolis' thing you were talking about in the note? I thought you'd have the game set up by now."

"Uh yeah. Yeah." Marcello moved to the table, doing his best to reshuffle everything so he could put the board into the middle of the table and organize the bank and the cards. "Pull up a seat. Everyone is here."

"Not everyone." Zletze said. He raised an eyebrow as a cue to Kaiki, and she walked around the table putting a small puck in two of the seats. Little soft lights and chimes lit both of them up and a couple of holograms constructed, see through at first in erie blue phases as the computer compiled the ship-to-station transmission information. A few moments later, there, at the table were both the skinny mustachioed Junior Engineer and the stout, tough bolian Tactical Officer.

Wiser's jaw hung open dumbly. "Max? Saaba?"

Saaba, her hologram just becoming dense enough to interact with matter, smacked him playfully in the back of his head. "That's for not inviting us!" She laughed.

"How? I didn't know you could..."

"When Zletze forwarded us his invitation," Tilmer said pointedly turning his hand around and resting it on his knee, his bony elbow sticking out under the short sleeve of a hawaiian shirt, "Sabba and I reserved the holodeck and requested time off shift. Commander Zahn approved it before we finished asking."

"I signed the holographic emitters out of the science lab. We've been using them for long distance department meetings with staff on patrol. I got permission from Commander Rue."

"So... like everyone knows about this?" Wiser said, anxious about how many senior officers sounded involved in permitting his game night to happen.

Sabba patted him on the arm. "Just deal us in, or however you start the game."

Tilmer flipped the badly warped lid over and reviewed the rules. "I think I played this before. Mercy sakes, did you dig this battle worn copy out of a trash heap?"

"Replicating it just didn't seem appropriate. I... bought it down at Pog's Emporium."

"So that's a yes." Kaiki said smirking as she pulled up a chair. Everyone laughed.

"That place is a dump!" Zletze confirmed while he helped flatten the crumpled monopoly money, patiently unfolding the corners and running them on the edge of the table until they would pile more easily in the slotted box insert. "Who makes currency out of something as worthless as paper, anyway?" he muttered, wishing for tokens or credit counter transfer padds.

"I had to cite Pog all the time when I was on promenade patrol duty." Saaba said. "He kept violating code for merchandise displayed outside of the shop. That place isn't a store. It's a horde."

With everyone sat down around the table, the orion girl slipped in on one side and put down several little pewter pieces which she had gathered from the floor, but held back one tiny little object. The little statuette must have been the 'scottie dog' that Ensign Wiser had mentioned earlier that same day. She'd only ever seen dogs since coming to the federation. They were fascinating to her, coming in so many sizes and types...

"Zuzal claims the scottie dog--" Marcello said protectively.

Everyone looked at the crewman recruit. But before she could make any excuse, Saaba had gotten up and slid a rolling stool in behind her skinny little butt, seating Zuzal with them.

"--And Jup is the top hat." Decisively, Marcello set the said piece on the corner of the table closest to Jup's biobed. Something told him that Jup would have picked it himself, it being the icon of the rich cartoon figure featured on the box and on the board and cards... He'd probably have also insisted on being the banker.

"I'll be the Banker." Zletze said while listening to Tilmer droning through the rules out loud, the lid held up in front of his face. "Zuzal here can move the pieces for Jup. That's your job, right? Helping this guy out? That's good. He's going to be teaching us a thing or two. You shoulda seen him whipping out the tongo game last year."

"Great Exchequer!" Kaiki swore. "He cleaned us all out of chips."

Zletze shook his head. "I never understood how anyone ever would have told him he was bad at business."

"Because," Marcello said, solemnly. "He always let friendship get in the way."

"How many of these do we start with?" Zletze asked, holding up a fist full of bills.

Tilmer read off the denominations and amounts and everyone passed around the paper. "A little seed money to build our capitalist empires before we all get our hopes and dreams crushed as one fat cat comes out on top."

"I have a fat cat." Zuzal volunteered awkwardly as she set her dog figure on the starter square with everyone else's, and then moved the top hat there too, remembering Jup was also playing.

"What's your cat's name?" Kaiki asked kindly.

"Mister Nurbs."

"Nurbs?" Tilmer repeated, his ears perked at a familiar term. "Non-uniform rational B-spline?"

"I... I think so? He was a hand me down pet from someone in Engineering on the Ardishir. Her fiance was allergic."

"No kiddin. Mister Nurbs. That's funny."

"She said she named him that because 'he changes his planar shape when manipulated'."

"He's a squishy cat?"

"Yeah." Zuzal said proudly, a little embarrassed at how much of the conversation she had diverted to her cat, but somehow... the young officers seemed to welcome the easy conversation.

At the outset of making the arrangements, Zuzal had her reservations about a four hour game session. But the time passed much faster than she would have thought, with all of these friends joking and playfully bickering. She felt like a part of their lives, and they made her feel like a part of theirs, especially as she answered for Jup in the game, pretending to carefully listen before she accepted or declined any trade offers, and even getting the hang of suggesting trades herself. The dice rolling was kind of exciting, and she found herself out of the game in the first couple of hours, which was a relief as she took the scottie dog off the board and could just focus on the top hat.

Zuzal hadn't even realized it was coming around to midnight until Ensign Wiser shushed everyone and pointed to the chronometer on Ensign Jup's monitor.

When it switched to 00:00 the group of junior officers broke out in about three different songs and as many languages and the skinny engineer snatched the human woman in an embrace and they caught a kiss from one another. 

"Not bad. For a subspace hologram..." Kaiki teased.

Standing, Marcello walked himself around to the side of the biobed and shook Ensign Jup's hand. Zuzal thought she saw him crying and looked away so as not to make him uncomfortable. 

"Happy new year, man." Anticipating that no one really wanted to play down to the last bankruptcy, and everyone would want to call the game in Jup's favor, He tucked the little pewter top hat into Jup's hand. "Here's to a much better fortune for you in 2398. You can always stay in my hotels free of charge."