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Engineering office- It happened one day on the fifth grade field trip

Posted March 8, 2021, 11:47 p.m. by Commander Jacen Drayke (Chief Engineer/2O) (Steven Sigle)

Posted by Civilian Maybelle Spunkler (Maybelle Spunkler) in Engineering office- It happened one day on the fifth grade field trip

Posted by Commander Jacen Drayke (Chief Engineer/2O) in Engineering office- It happened one day on the fifth grade field trip

Posted by Civilian Maybelle Spunkler (Maybelle Spunkler) in Engineering office- It happened one day on the fifth grade field trip
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
It was Tuesday. That meant lunch with the Irish chief. When Maybelle started having lunch with the crew, it was difficult at times, especially with Mr. Jacen. People said she had ants in her pants but Mr. Jacen never sat down. Lunch with him was always sandwiches because he complained he didn’t have time to sit and eat. Walking down the hall, Maybelle pondered a career in engineering. Of all the departments, they had one of the coolest layouts. Stairs, ladders, and turbo lifts meant one could pop up and down the levels anyway they chose to go. Very few places had stairs on the Atlantis and even fewer had ladders. This was why Maybelle used them every chance she could get. Sticking the brown paper bag in her mouth, she began to climb down the level to reach the chief’s office. She could have done it one-handed but the adults just hissed and moan like she was on a trapeze instead of a metal rung. Using two hands she was also able to practice her ladder slide. This is what she called the emergency move all engineers did in a crisis.

Twice the warp core burped, as Maybelle called it, sending all the adults into a frenzy. It was not that Mr. Jacen was old but he was old enough not to horse around in the halls like some of the other crew. On one day , however, when the warp core burped, Mr. Jacen showed he could not only run but probably would have been a state champ in track and field events. The day was like any other until the burp. One second they were eating and chatting. The next, Mr. Jacen hurdled his desk in one leap for apparently no reason. It was then Maybell noticed someone yelling Jacen’s name as warning lights flashed and klaxons began to ring out. Maybelle, close on his heels trying to see what was going on, watched as the chief deftly lept over two crew bent over fixing a console, slid under a panel like a baseball player scoring a home run, and jumping over the floors safety rail. Her heart stopped for a second before she saw Jacen catch the rail to the ladder and slide down it like a fireman. It was well worth the detention skipping school for the next hour as she watched Jacen and his men scurry about the warp core as it made burps, gurgles, and what sounded like hiccups. If Mabelle hadn’t mentioned that the bizarre colors the core changed into during the hour-long emergency was something Jacen should keep because it looked so cool, she was positive Mr.Jacen wouldn’t have thrown her out of engineering.

Sliding down the three rungs, Maybelle pushed away the hope that something fun would happen today again in engineering. She had important business and didn’t need something dumb like a nacelle sparking pulling Jacen’s attention off of her. Reaching his door, Maybelle walked in without knocking. That was another awesome thing about Mr. Drayke’s office. The entire wall was glass so it wasn’t like he wanted privacy. If he did he would have real walls like the rest of the officers.

“Hey, Mr. Jacen. Today is your lucky day. Iiiiiiiiit’ssssss Tuesday lunchtime with Maybelle Spunkler,” she said happily plopping down in the large chair across from his desk.

Maybelle Spunkler

Jacen was working at his desk as he had his feet up. He didn’t seem angry be he held a deep sigh. Above him, she would see a display of all of the ship that seemed to follow the direction Jacen was looking. Maybelle most likely hadn’t noticed on the side of his head a small device attached to his right ear that was giving him a look at the ship. “Come in…” Jacen said as he looked over at her, the display moving as he moved his head in her direction before he turned it off.

Getting up from his chair he removed the device as he pointed at the couch, as that was the designated zone she knew he wanted. “In fact....” he said as he looked over the device with a small smile. “You just might be able to help me,” he said as he walked over as he plopped down on the couch as he tossed the device into her lap.

“Lt. Spunkler at your service,” she saluted him with a grin. Of all the places she had been, Cap’n Kelly was the most relaxed about the saluting thing. Some ships had people snapping off the gesture so much as they transversed the halls, the crew looked like they were part of some jazz Broadway musical. On the Atlantis, the officers only tended to use it when they were in trouble. Maybelle thought back to the day she learned the proper salute from Mr. Mardusk. Her leg had gotten caught in his climbing net and the security chief rescued her. He had seemed so scary until that day. Now she found the huge Orion fascinating and loved spending any time she could get with him. After teaching her the proper salute, he had promised to take her to the armory. Well, he never actually said that he would let her shoot a firearm but he did say she could come back and train with them in PT so armory training had to be on the table as an option sometime in the future.

“Put this on guinea…” he said as he looked in the bag wondering what she brought. “What… is this?” he asked as he took at the items and laid them out on the table. She had gone off course, there were some sandwiches and pizza which was a nice change and fit his on-the-go wish, but there was a third item.

Maybelle fiddled with the device as Jacen inspected their lunch. “Haggis loaf,” she replied in a neutral tone not caring at the moment as she inspected the tech. It was rare that she got to tinker with things and even rarer that Jacen gave her the item to tinker with. “It smelled kinda weird so I used ketchup. A lot of ketchup,” she emphasized breaking her attention off of the device to ensure Mr. Jacen understood how critical this information was.

“Haggis? What… what made you think I eat that?” he asked her as he looked over.

“Well ‘cause your Scottish. I mean you sound Scottish so if you sound like you are Scottish you kinda have to be from there.” Her tone had the duh quality kids slowly began to learn almost as soon as they began to speak. As they aged this duh tone would have more of a snark edge culminating in the oh so wonderful teenage know it all stage but at twelve, Maybelle hadn’t yet learned that manner of speaking. Right now duh meant simply what someone said was either obvious to the galaxy or it wasn’t.

“You think I am Scottish?”

“Well as Fern says if it walks like a duck or in your case Nessie, it has to be a duck....or lake monster,” Maybelle pondered her response. The saying if it walked like a duck and talked like a duck it had to be a duck was well known however the only Scottish animal she knew of was the loch Ness Monster so if she was going to prove Jacen was Scottish, she had to go with something authentic.

“You know if I wasn’t time crunched I would be insulted… we can circle back on that but I am Irish, not Scottish, different people,” he said as he watched with amusement as she began to try and place the device on the side of her head.

“Are they,” Maybelle said. “Are they really?” The first reply might have been a question but the second repetition of the statement clearly showed Mabelle saw little to no difference. “I mean you live on England’s island soooo does that mean you are Irish, Scottish, and English or Irscotlish’cause you don’t sound English?” Fiddling with the head set as she talked, Maybelle continued to probe Drayke’s heritage.

“Wait… wait… do you think Ireland is connected to England? What is EMMA teaching you? We are a whole separate island… we are not the part to Great Britain…” Jacen said with a since its indignation in his voice as he looked at her.

“Fine fine you are British, not English but you speak English so why don’t you call yourselves English?” Maybelle was not only having this conversation with Drayke but she was filing it away for the Thursday Diplomatic lunch with Ian. Part of her wondered if Mr. Ian knew about the trifecta of titles Mr. Jacen seemed to claim his heritage possessed.

“Child I will throw you out an airlock, I am not English either. Our heritage is Gaelic and Celtic. Not English… we have poets and history that’s far more rich than those tea sipping braggarts across the spit!” He said with a level of agitation not often seen in Jacen.

“So tossing logs around is considered rich history?” Maybelle was getting far more history today than she expected. “I have always wondered....do you yell timber when you do that or just when you cut the trees down?”

“Okay… okay, we will discuss your lack of education and uncouth behavior latter. First… let’s get this on you.” Jacen said as he calmed down as he looked back over at Maybelle.

“Yes,” Maybelle fist-pumped the air. It was not that Mr. Drayke’s culture wasn’t interesting but it definitely was not as interesting as the headset he gave her when she entered the room. “So how do you turn it on?” There weren’t any obvious buttons or toggles so maybe it was motion activated like the lights in the halls at night. Shaking it, Maybelle waited for it to come up as she inspected it from every angle. “I think its broke.” Knowing she was most often cited as the one who broke things she quickly added. “I think you broke it when you threw it on the couch.” Hoping this wasn’t the case, she shook it several more times.

“No no no… not that way, you will burn out your retina. Here…” he said as he adjusted the device as he lifted her up from her spot and had her sit on his lap so he could make an adjustment before he turned on the display.

“Does Miss Emma know you are Irish,” Maybelle asked as Mr. Jacen placed the device on her head? While he was moving on with the conversation, Maybelle was fascinated by it. The adults on the ship were so interesting. They did things like paintball, played instruments, and danced. It was hard for Maybelle to see them as officers and people much like it was when you saw your teacher not in a classroom but on a roller coaster or hanging at the beach.

“Yes she knows I am Irish, I designed her… she has full access to all the ship systems and knows who we all are.” Jacen said as he looked at Maybelle with a quizzical look.

“So… what do you see guinea?” he asked her as the display turned on as her vision would light up with a new heads up of the ship. “Here you will need this,” he said as he took off his badge as he slapped it on her chest so it made a new image pop up showing a little red arrow of her.

Suddenly the sight in front of Maybelle changed. No longer was it Mr. Jacen’s office but something that looked like a scene from a movie. “I can see the replicator you took from me. Oh my god, this is sooo cool.” She stuck out her hands in the air as if trying to touch something in mid air.

“You got good eyes, what do you see wrong?” he said as the display narrowed down on their location. The first thing someone might notice was the north-south directions seemed to be going the wrong way. As she moved around her head though there would be words pop up describing objects and reading off diasnosis. This is where he wondered how much she would pay attention cause it didn’t seem to always display in a language that could be read in. The universal translator wasn’t working properly and giving languages outside of the one the user could read.

Drayke, CE

“Yes, the replicator needs to be fixed… in fact if you want we can work on it later. I know you wanted to fix it.”

Drayke, CE


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