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Dinner for One - Officer's Mess

Posted Dec. 4, 2020, 5:35 a.m. by Lieutenant Priscilla Simms (Chief Science Officer) (Melissa Aragon)

Posted by Lieutenant Bethany Kovra Gadi (Counselor) in Dinner for One - Officer’s Mess

Posted by Lieutenant Priscilla Simms (Chief Science Officer) in Dinner for One - Officer’s Mess

(snip)

Bethany smirked, “Chocolate…don’t tell anyone, but if the dominion had brought chocolate, Betazed would never have fought back.” It was an aweful joke. But at the same time, kind of true. Bethany takes another bite of the ice cream and sighs. “I think I’m just a little homesick is all. I’ve been all over the quadrant, but I always got to go home afterwards. I was stationed out of command and then temporarily ‘loaned’ to different areas. This is my first real long term assignment. I’m excited, but I guess I just miss home a little.” More so though, and she wouldn’t say it, she didn’t feel like she could make this ship home, and just like when she’d joined the academy and gone into intel, she found her ideal, her desire for what she wanted out of life and her career, were so very different from reality.
Lt. Gadi, CNS

Priscilla listened and a soft smile played across her lips. “Not what you imagined, huh? We all have glorious ideas of what running around in space will be like. Adventure, glory, new species to make friends with around every corner. Then we get out here and it’s life or death danger. Half the species out here consider us a nuisance and want us dead. And there is no glory, just isolation in amounts we never fathomed. I haven’t been home since before my last assignment. But that’s been by choice. No need to keep going back, in my opinion. I have everything I need out here. But I know lots of folks in your boat, so to speak. Have you considered a holo program? One of the engineers takes all her correspondence and loads them as a program. The holodeck plays out the letter in an interaction scenario so she is there living the moment and talking to her family instead of guessing what’s happening and merely reading it. She said it’s like a small vacation or going home on weekend furlough. It’s not a permanent fix. And I’m sure you’d rather be home. But it may help. Perhaps you could act out a scene to write home about, maybe with the rabbit, and act it out on the holodeck then have it sent. Sort of a reverse of what NE Blarns is doing with the incoming letters.”

It seemed a plausible option. She didn’t have anyone to write to so it made no difference to her. But if it helped the Counselor, she was all for it.

Priscilla
CSO

Interesting…Bethany hadn’t said she wasn’t able to settle in. So either she was being obvious, and she knew better with her training, the woman was a telepath, or she was just very good at reading people. Either way, Bethany didn’t mind. “My parents, my uncles, wouldn’t know what to do with a holoprogram. That’s a good idea. I’ll have to keep that in mind.” And really Bethany wasn’t homesick for family. She talked to her family regularly, and she hadn’t gone home every night or weekend. It was just a way to cover up what she was really thinking. She scooped another bite of icecream and gave herself a mental shake. The captain and commander were not the entire ship. They could make or break her career but they couldn’t decide if she enjoyed her job here or not. If she made friends or not, was up to her. “What I miss the most I think, is the team I worked with. They were good people, and we worked seamlessly together.” Bethany shrugged good naturedly. “Good people here too, just some growing pains. I probably got a little too comfortable in my last position. It’s good though to have things shaken up every once in awhile.”

“So Priscilla, what brings you out this late? Other than a daily medicinal dose of chocolate?”
Lt. Gadi, CNS

Priscilla grinned. “That’s it. You caught me.” She laughed teasing. “Just the chocolate. Not really, but it’s a good reason. Actually I just wanted to see how far into the black I could go. My first su was about a station on the far side of the Milky Way from Earth.” She grinned taking a mouthful before continuing. “I stared out the windows and decided I wanted to be on the ships that saw further first.” She shrugged and leaned back, setting her spoon down and taking up her drink. “I wasn’t content to be where everyone else was. I wanted to be the one out there,” she absently waved at the window, “seeing stars we’d never seen before. Seeing planets and spacial anomalies we didn’t have names for. I got into science not to see how small we can decipher, but to see how far we can map. My goal is to see and be part of something that goes in a history book because we eventually went home and said, You’re never gonna believe what we saw!.”

Bethany loved her enthusiasm and was smiling the more Priscilla talked. “There are some pretty cool things out there. I’ve never been out far enough to see something new. I don’t measure my career by the newest thing I’ve seen, but by the number of patients that managed to go home again. Or with Intel work,” she glances out the window her thoughts far away as she speaks, “who managed to make it safely back to the field. I don’t like it that way, but that wasn’t my call, but we did manage to change the criteria for who was fit and when.” That’s something, right? It wasn’t all for nothing. She and her team had believed it, and she had to continue to believe it.

She was lit up and animated at this point. So full of excitement at the prospect of it all, she actually laughed. “Oh yeah… and the chocolate.” She winked and nodded to the nearly empty plate between them.

Priscilla
CSO

Bethany laughed. Priscilla was a hoot, as her uncle would say. “Chocolate. Replicated is just not…oh that gives me an idea. There is this amazing confectionary a town over form where my family lives on Earth. I’ll have to ask my mom to send some real chocolate. We’ll horde it from everyone else. I mean amazing chocolate can’t be shared with just anyone,” her voice dropped conspiritorially.
Lt Gadi, CNS

“Gracious lords and ladies, of course not! Can you imagine that stuff shirt Ensign in transporter room 1? I doubt he would be able to appreciate chocolate in any form.” She made a face very similar to the man’s turned up nose whenever someone spoke of something ‘beneath’ his station. Sadly, his station was an old, ancient Earth lineage of dead kings and queens from the 17th century. But he acted like his crown was merely a hand length away and he was granting those around him a privilage in deigning to speak to them. Poor guy… so alone.

Priscilla laughed and nodded. “I’d like that very much.”

They spent the remainder of the evening discussing chocolate ideas and recipes and those on the ship who were fit and unfit to eat them. When they parted, Priscilla was glad she had made a new friend and promised the woman she would see her again in the very near future. And not just for her evals.

Priscilla
CSO
((I’m aware she left, but space was left if a final post was desired))


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