STF

Changing Times - Bridge Main Sim

Posted Jan. 24, 2022, 10:52 a.m. by Gamemaster Wookius Furrius (Senior Gamemaster) (Gene Gibbs)

Posted by Lieutenant Jasmine Wynter (Chief Medical Officer) in Changing Times - Bridge Main Sim

It was hour three of a status report update with the principle officers** of the Manhattan. Taking place in the main briefing room all eight places were taken up plus a few extra chairs brought in for it. This was unusual. Typically this was done monthly with the senior crew and was quite brief. Thanks perhaps to bureaucracy it was deemed helpful to have everyone present and to have a long presentation of Federation news highlights so that the officers would feel closer to home than they were. Interesting perhaps to start, it went long. Outside they were stationary, hovering not too far from a system with an orange-yellow star and several planets - one of which might be able to be terraformed for habitation. Science and astrometrics were scanning as the meeting progressed.

Additionally, accompanied with this status report update where the ship and departments would give a briefing of their activities and goals for the new year was a trio of counselors who were conducting a group assessment of ‘officer dynamics’. As the Manhattan was in effect, so distant, Fleet determined that this would be a way to dynamically assess morale, realistic goals and interpersonal communication. In short, it was to the more cynical crew a group counseling session. To others it was a long meeting. To others, perhaps, the snacks were plentiful and good.

Breaks were frequent as well. At the moment Commodore Leilani Kahale had called a break where, when they convened, she would hear goals from science and engineering. Overall it has been long, dull and with little sign of it ending .. the audio was also muted on both sides.

Wookiee

** When I say principle officers I mean essentially all the crew on the roster who has a rank just to, you know, cluster everyone in one place so when a bomb goes off I get everyon .. er, yeah never mind that part .. ahhhh .. consider this a ‘oh wait, a sim starting?! post’ and for people to make a responsive post before …

Cochrane looked and listened attentively until the precise moment the Commodore called a break and the comm showed the brass all those billions of kilometers away had left their conference room, at which point he threw his head back and said to no one in particular “Three weeks leave on Delta V for anyone who cares enough to shoot me in the face. Just bring me the PaDD with the order on it and make sure your phaser is set to ‘End this excruciating existence’.”

Cochrane, CO

OOC: fixing a split. ~ Kate

IC:
Celina got up and moved around the room stretching her legs. Feeling her personal communicator go off in her pocket she pulled it out. The first smile of the day spread across her face. The room was way too crowded to take a call but they could send messages.
Rapidly she typed You shouldn’t contact me like this. My husband would freak out. Leaning against the wall she crossed her ankles and waited seeing the three dots moving indicating a response was coming.

Your husband is an idiot if he left you there all alone. What are you wearing? ;) The response elicited a chuckle from Celina as she rapidly sent back a reply biting her lip. Moments like this with Jack made the distance seem far less. He had only been gone a few days but the lonely housewife and milkman role play spiced up the time they were apart.

Black skirt, boots, and that oh so sexy tunic shirt with the pips on my collar. You know the one. she typed back stifling a half-laugh with the back of her hand and a cough reading his response. Life rarely worked out the way you wanted but adapt, overcome, and carry on was the Creed’s motto. The situation right now was temporary and Celina could sit around and cry or make the best of it. The best of it turned out to be channeling her inner teenager and texting Jack whenever she got the chance. Letting the room blur into white noise, she continued talking to him as long as the break would allow.

Celina Creed

Shedda rolled her shoulders and then arched and twisted her back from one side to the other. The next part of the meeting should at least be interesting, to her anyway. There was a lot going on science wise in the area and on the Manhattan specifically. But after the science update it would be another test of mental endurance of never-ending hours of ‘meetings.’ Shedda looked up rubbing a crick out of her neck, “Cpt I’ll take you up on that, but instead of 3 weeks on Delta V, you take a matching phaser we count to three and both shoot.” Mal’athar pushed her chair back, where she was on Cochrane’s right and hissed as blood flow shot through her legs and returned feeling to her lower extremities. Had they really been sitting there that long that her feet went numb?

Mal’athar, XO

Jasmine moved immediately to the snack table pulling Max’s arm along with her. She ignored his questions until she arrived. “Here hold this,” she handed him two plates and began stacking it with the largest items on the table available until it looked like a plate at a buffet and not a light refreshment.

“Okey, Honey.” Max’s voice had that tone where a guy was doing as he’s told but not sure why, or how complicit he was going to be when they were caught. Then, he frowned slightly looking at the food. “Are you trying to tell me something? You, didn’t like my cheese on toast for breakfast or you’re eating for two?” Watching as she kept stacking the plate, he changed the last word. “Three?”

“I am teaching you an old medical school conference trick I learned for Lauren. See,” Jasmine licked her thumb and then picked up two more deviled eggs placing one on Max’s plate as she started to fill up a plate of her own, “at those medical conventions there are pharma representatives. All they want to do is talk and sell you stuff. So you fill up a plate and if they try to corner you in a conversation you take a huge bite of something. This prevents you from replying.”

“Right, but I don’t see..”

“To answer why we need this is simple.” Motioning her head to the trio of new counselors in the room. “We do not want to get caught up in the happy patrol. Think of them as big pharma reps. If you are eating you aren’t talking and if you are eating it’s not rude to just nod so chew slowly and save the big things like the eggs for when they look like they are going to approach. Got it?”

It was not that Jasmine hated counselors or even disliked them. All the ones on the Manny were super helpful and easy to talk to but the trio of team builders, Jasmine found suspect. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Jasmine Wynter CMO

“Okay baby, stop for a minute.” Max pulled the plates away from her reach slightly. “Think about it, I’m an Engineer, when have you ever seen me chew slowly?”

Max thought for a moment and then looked at the three counselors, then pushed the plates back towards Jasmine. “I chew fast, so keep piling it up baby, stack it high. Gimme another one of them eggs, Engineers need deviled eggs.”

Max Wynter, CE

If this gathering was awkward for others, it was especially awkward for their new counsellor, who, in addition to being new to the ship, was also a civilian and still trying to find her place amongst the crew. Sair was trying her best to stay focused on what was happening, but her mind would drift now and again to her son and mother, wondering what they were up to. This was a big transition period for her and Koro and she was glad her mother made the trip. As she got up to grab a cup of tea and something to eat she debated whether she should check in on them, the battle claiming her thoughts entirely. No one won that one.

OOC: Absolutely LOVE the replies here folks!
IC:

All too soon the break ended and they could see the small tight knit group filing in all those light years distant, though by their look it was almost as though it would take years to get through whatever agenda they had planned. Those who had been tagged as ‘counselors’ were seated off to the side, almost like a game show panel of judges, and looking equally so. The other four slowly took their seats before the screen focused more upon the Commodore who was to start the session off.

When all was ready and the crew had taken their places the mutes were lifted. “Let us begin ..” was all that was heard before alert claxons sounded and a rushed announcement came over the comms =^= Brace for im .. =^=

In the midst of that the ship lurched drunkenly as a rowboat caught by a single wave that came and went leaving it bobbing on the sea. Those in the room were not thrown anywhere but felt more like someone bumping into them – if all in the same sidelong direction. The greatest tragedy would have been Max missing his mouth with fingers full of deviled egg, or Celina’s PaDD sliding along the table close to the XO, perhaps revealing an all too personal message.

Over top of that the computer voice came over the claxon saying =^= Proximity alert! Warning. Proximity alert! =^= Those near the viewscreen would see a large asteroid virtually the size of the Manhattan slowly tumbling by them, albeit within meters of the ship. Beyond that, a large red sun shone dully in the nearby system.

What was more, the transmission was cut (which, in all consideration, may have been the best part of the day). Two other things stood out. After some moments of nausea from the wave, everyone present had a touch of a headache. The other thing was that the food that was out was a black, mouldering, stinking mess.
- Wookiee

Celina’s precariously perched position against the wall gave her little chance of bracing for the impact of the asteroid on the ship. In fact, if she had been standing on one leg, she probably would have fared better. As the ship rocked, Celina pitched with it. As with all things there were good points and bad points to every situation. The good point was Ensign Kramer had been standing slightly next to her when the ship listed not so lazily to the left. The crossed ankles made Celina more of a rolling pin than a human. Tumbling into Ensign Kramer he performed the stop short maneuver employed by many o’ man in moving vehicles for centuries. Throwing out his hands he caught Celina in the one asset area no man would ever touch if he still wanted to retain his hands. Jack was Persian and fully believed in hand for a hand and eye for an eye payback of Mr. Hamurabi’s code. Knowing this, fear spread on Kramer’s face as he looked down at what he was now holding to stop Celina from falling. Celina wore an equally stunned expression as she looked down and then up at Kramer with her mouth opening slightly.

“Don’t tell Jack,” Kramer yelped; however instead of simply removing his hands from Celina’s ample assets, he pushed her back as if she were across the room when this nightmare stopped the event never happened.

The second shift of momentum threw her into Max’s back again breaking her fall with her back impacting his. Her personal communicator however now slid out of her hands and across the floor directly at the XO.

The impact of a body on Max’s back threw him off balance for just a moment as he was already compensating for the roll of the ship. Max was already fairly good on his feet, after all he had been a champion on the Mintaran Ninja Warrior show before he joined Starfleet as an Engineer and was a wiry meat bag of muscle and balance. Celina’s impact on his back did make him lurch forward suddenly as he tried to right himself.

Jasmine looked up chewing as the Klaxon went off. The good thing about being a woman when the ship got to rocking and tossing was typically there was always someone close by to break one’s impact. Since the first T-Rex tried to chase down the first human hominid, there was a male human hominid there to grab a female hominid to tuck and roll out of the way. Over the years this simple defense mechanism had evolved as did humans. Eventually, the throaty grunt to alert those that an impact was imminent had been replaced with the female saying “catch me” and the male saying “jump I will catch you.” Unfortunately when one was eating there was no way to alert Jasmine’s counterpart he was required to catch her as the momentum of the ship tossed her forward and directly into his body. Like the circle of life, Jasmine reverted to the grunt of her ancestor as the signal she was bound for impact directly into Max’s chest.

Jasmine Wynter CMO

Celina’s impact had two unfortunate consequences. The first was that her impact was on enough of an angle on Max’s shoulder that the plate of food he was holding was flung forwards, propelled by Max’s right arm. That forward motion was only stopped by Jasmine face receiving a plate full of food as she lurched forward. It wasn’t hard but it was enough to smear the selection of eggs, pate and crackers and assorted treats into a mushy paste between her face and the plate, which helpfully dropped away as Max’s arm reacted by letting go of said plate and wrapping around behind him to grab Celina to hold her in place. Unlike the lucky Ensign Kramer, Max only managed to place his hand on her stomach but did hold her against him, stopping further body missiles.

The second unfortunate consequence was Max’s sudden step forward plus Jasmines forward motion into his chest caused Max’s left arm, which was already raised to his mouth as he unluckily missed his first attempt to eat the egg as the ship lurched, to be hit by Jasmines shoulder in exactly the right position to force said egg in his hand straight into his mouth. Deep into his mouth.

“Oh my god, what was that,” Celina looked around stunned. They were in space. Space was vast swaths of openness except for planets which no one ever won playing chicken with a planet.

Jasmine’s hands went to her face which was now covered with the heaps of snacks from the plate. She was too busy blinking crab dip from her eyelashes until she heard Celina scream. “On your knees,” at the top of her lungs.

Max’s eyes went wide as he realized that he could no longer breathe, the devilled egg was doing the devils work and was choking the life out of him. Looking at Jasmine and her face of food, Max raised his hand and wiped some of it away, enough for her to see him and then turned to Celina and pointed at his throat. Max began to make the characteristic lurching, gagging motions of a person choking, both hands going to his throat.

“Oh crap I gotta Heimy him.” Jasmine moved around behind Max who was on his knees. The height difference allowed her to place her hands around his middle and thrust her fist up into his rib cage. She grunted as she squeezed once, then twice, and finally a third time a pop could be heard.

Falling to his knees, but giving Jasmine and Celina now behind him a look with a raised eyebrow and frown, Max leaned forwards and closed his eyes. Moments later, and the Egg exploded from his mouth. No longer was it a pristine white egg of devilled goodness, but a black mush with an age that he could taste. Gasping for breath, Max immediately regretted being able to breathe again as he very clearly turned green now instead of red and clamped his hands over his mouth and nose. “Oh my god,” he gasped. “What the hell was in those eggs!?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see through the food from the plate in my face,” she came back around smearing it on her cheeks with the back of her hand trying to get it off.

Turning to Celina and Jasmine to thank them, he saw Jasmines face and the mess that was over it. “Um, baby do you want a hand to clean that up, let me get some wet wipes, oh!” Remembering the one thing he always carried as an Engineer, Max pulled the rag out of his back pocket and began to clean Jasmine up with the attention that only one other girl ever received, the Warp Core. The headache for the moment ignored by the foul taste in his mouth and the need to get Jasmine tidied.

“Uh Max,” Celina said looking at him wiping the rag on Jasmine’s cheek and replacing the tanish pink crab dip with a long black streak. Celina didn’t need to say more. Max would notice his rag was not pristine and while removing the food it was leaving random streaks of grease along her cheekbones.

“It is off,” Jasmine said using the back of her hand to now spread the grease onto her forehead.

Taking a double-take, she looked at Max and brushed the hair at his temples with her fingers tips. “I think you got some in your hair. Strangely enough, the small sprinkling of salt and pepper did not wipe away nor smear.

Shedda returned to her seat giving her neck and shoulders one final roll before resuming her seat. She was scrolling through the upcoming agenda for this session when the warning came across the comms. Mal’athar glanced up sharply at the first alert and then was gently bumped against her chair. Well that was anti-climatic Mal’athar grabbed the small PaDD, unsure of who it belonged to, glanced down hoping the screen was labelled with the owner. She gave a mental cough. That was not anything she needed to see. She turned the screen off. They’d been on break so not her concern, she hoped it hadn’t been during the meeting. Then it would be a problem and that was one she didn’t particularly want to engage in; they all had family they missed and you did what you could to make it a little less unbearable. “Lt Creed,” Shedda leaned over passing the PaDD back as if nothing was amiss until she caught sight of Wynter. She had to admit the light fare being offered wasn’t enough considering they’d already missed one meal today.

Celina picked up the PaDD and relief washed over her face. The image was of their Risan weekender but not the one that would have had all the men at her door asking her what page on the Kama Sutra was that position taken but of Jack wearing the Pimp coat, board shorts, a tie and the caption I Make Casual Wear Hot. For the first time in existence, Celina was glad the man was wearing the coat. Flipping open the message area, Celina’s face wrinkled up in confusion. The sexy words and playful texts were replaced with several lines of messages. “Lina”, “Break up”, “??????”, and then finally “Baby where are you”.

Celina Creed

At the next claxon Shedda stood up from her chair and noticed her head was throbbing and then the smell hit her, her eyes widened in disgust and her lips parted slightly so she could breath through her mouth rather than having to inhale the stench. She hit the comm button on the table. =^=Bridge, status?=^=

Mal’athar, XO

There was a moment of pause before a reply came. NL Boris Gontovnick’s tone was an octave or so higher than normal even with his accent =^= Bridge here. No impact beyond a .. =^= Whatever else was coming in the report was drowned out by a scream, not by Boris, followed by a “Jackson!!” NE Tyler Jackson was manning the science station.

Songz was distracted by the nausea but as it cleared and she noted her head felt off, her eyes swept the room, taking in everyone and their response. She was very used to emergencies but of the health kind. Whatever was happening here just now put her on alert, but she wasn’t entirely sure what her role here was other than keep an eye on folks. Not that she was alone given there were three other counsellors present. She moved over to Cochrane with a questioning look on her face.

~Sair Songz, CNS

As the seconds passed by and the relative nausea cleared Sair would feel light pangs that was suggestive that she was due for a deuridum treatment, however, according to her, that was not due at all anytime soon.

“Everyone to your stations. Command officers to the bridge. Junior officers, report to the bridge as well to assist with your respective divisions and await ordes from your DH’s.” Cochrane said calmly. Eyeing the rotted food, he looked up at the assembled crew and said “And if I have to fill out Temporal Investigation forms, everybody is filling out Temporal Investigation forms.” and he stood up and made his way to the bridge.

Cochrane, CO

“Temporal Investigations?” Max said sideways to Celina as they turned for the door. “Everyone always blames temporal shenanigans. You know, that’s not a bad idea. next time Jasmine cooks I’m going to simply say we hit a Temporal eddy of timey wimey stuff and that’s why her Lasagna was rock hard or too dry. It was simply aged by a Temporal event.” Catching a whiff of his own deviled egg breath, Max winced. “Jaz, baby do you have a breath mint?”

As the food clutter was cleared Jasmine could have a good, if quick look at Max. Could she see a few grey hairs at his temples that were not there before?

The doors slid open to a familiar yellow alert status with softly pulsing lights. The main screen was split between three views. The dominant one was toward the system that they were near to holding position. A red giant star was glowing dully there. Another smaller screen was following the slow-moving path of the asteroid. A third was showing scrolling data.

A group of three was around where Jackson’s station was. He was slumped over, unmoving.

Boris was alone at the fore of the bridge just finishing up a comms that ended much like =^= .. think he is dead. =^=

Wookiee

“Dr. Wynter to NE Jackson! Commander Wynter, damage report! All departments check in with status reports asap, and somebody tell me how we didn’t see an asteroid that size before we got hit!” Cochrane said as he assessed the bridge and took his position.

Cochrane, CO

“Maybe it was dark and the lookouts didn’t see the black ‘berg in time.” As he walked through the door Max offered the Titanic like explanation, then gave the room a quick look around for visible damage.

There was no visible damage. The ship had been stationary and still was.

Max grunted in satisfaction. No damage on the bridge meant no overtime for his crews making it presentable for the Captains backside.

Mal’athar was right behind Cochrane as the scream of ‘Jackson!’ came across the comms. She moved over to the science station moving everyone back away from Jackson to make room Dr Wynter. “Lt. Argimeau can you take the auxiliary science station and see what our sensors are telling us?” Once she got the crowd moved away from Jackson, she turned to them, “What happened?”

Mal’athar, XO

As the people moved away they would see Jackson more clearly. His previously sandy brown hair was white. While his skin did not appear that different there was a stretched look to it. However, he was dead.

Jasmine moved next to Jackson and read the scanner. She did not need a device to see he was dead. What she needed and was scanning for was a reason why he was dead.

Jasmine Wynter CMO

“Sir,” Jasmine stood up feeling a small ache in her knees. It wasn’t huge or pronounced. It reminded her of the feeling like she had been crouched down like that for hours. The last time she felt like that was when she had run the certified CPR classes and spent 8 hours on her knees demonstrating mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Herman the Heimlicher Victim. Standing up over Jackson, that is exactly how she felt. The slight ache of over use even though she had only bent down for about a minute and a half. “Preliminary scans showed Jackson died ot heart disease,” she wrinkled her nose up in confusion or maybe it was that she caught another whiff of the rotted food from her uniform. Stripping off her shirt, she tossed it across the room leaving her in the black t-shirt that was always under her tunic.

Jasmine did remember that CPR class and, whether it was psychological or not she had felt stiff from it but recovered quickly. It could just be her imagination. Still things didn’t seem too different. However, in catching a profile shot of the Captain Jasmine could swear that he looked more .. boyish.

“I need to do more formal scans and possibly an autopsy to confirm. While heart disease still kills people when left untreated, we just don’t leave it untreated. It is easy to diagnose and fix so I have no idea why he would have died from it. It also suggests that Jackson’s rate of cellular decay is not commiserate with his chronological age.”

Jasmine Wynters CMO

There did appear to be almost selective elements to Jackson’s aging as though not all of him was quite caught up with whatever change was there

The scanner raced through various diagnostics to deduce what happened to Jackson. In the end, it came out that he died due to untreated heart disease which damaged the valves in his heart combined with advanced age related issues. In short he died of old age where genetic complications had taken over. There was a flagged note in his file under family history of heart issues.
- Wookiee

NL Boris spoke up, his voice more under control. “Sirs, Jackson called out that there was a wall of energy approaching fast. He said ..” He paused to recollect. “.. a broad wall of energy. Unknown configuration coming in fast. I asked how fast. He said, seconds to impact. That was when I sounded the alert. I was looking at the screen. One minute it was clear. Whatever wave was invisible. When it passed us the asteroid was just there. And that wasn’t there either.” He pointed to the swollen red sun.

Max moved to the Engineering Station and nodded at the NE that he was taking over, then began to run the diagnostics for damage. “We can’t be hit that hard, Cap. An asteroid that size would do more than nudge us gently if it really hit. It must have scraped our shields and the residual energy wave washing over us acted like turbulence. Bringing up damage.”

Max Wynter, CE

By all indications the ship wasn’t hit at all. There was no hull damage from an impact. Max DID see, however, a secondary list of 3,694 overdue routine preventative maintenance operations marked incomplete.
- Wookiee

“Plow me,” Max muttered, “what the…” Max ran the calculation that would tell him how long the maintenance schedules had been missed, ran a check on ship critical systems checking for warning flags then looked over the console to bring up the stardate.

The times were inconsistent. Max could see primary life support diagnostics were missing four routine checks while the secondary, which would have been the same, was only two. Elements were clustered, however, depending on how mechanical the unit was verses how automated it was. It would require a longer check on data to see any more detailed patterns emerging.

“Captain we have no damage, no impact” he said as he started the calculations, “but according to the logs we have missed a heck of a lot of maintenance cycles.”

Max Wynter, CE

Off to the side, whomever was looking at the sensors, would report there were no other ‘near’ asteroids. There were a few scattered ones in the vicinity but none threatening or would threaten on short range scans.
- Wookiee


Posts on USS Manhattan

In topic

Posted since


© 1991-2024 STF. Terms of Service

Version 1.15.9