STF

Side Sim: Arboretum

Posted Feb. 12, 2022, 12:36 a.m. by Lieutenant Alexis Bonner (Assistant Chief Medical Officer) (Jennifer Ward)

Posted by Captain Willow Taylor (Commanding Officer) in Side Sim: Arboretum

Posted by Lieutenant Alexis Bonner (Assistant Chief Medical Officer) in Side Sim: Arboretum
<snip>

Willow nodded. “Thank you, I’d appreciate any advice.” She glanced around again. “So I trust things are actually more settled now?” She asked and sipped her tea.

Willow Taylor
CO

Alexis gaze settled on that middle space between them and a stylus appeared out of nowhere that began to tap out a rhythm on her leg. “When I was 17, I was boarding the Hathaway for my first tour of service. I skipped my cadet tour and went straight to my assignment. I would have been very angry, very…” Alexis wasn’t really efficient at describing qualitative information like feelings (what was with the people on this ship?). “Frustrated and useless if I had been given a room to tinker in and not real work. Experimenting and tinkering are amazing, but I needed purpose too. What does Cai like to do, what does he like to study or experiment with?”

Willow pondered “Everything…I’ve got us space tutors and academics from as many subjects as he wanted. I set up some academy courses too but he stopped doing the work…he likes to build things especially more physics and chemistry than anatomy or biology based.”

“Have you considered finding him a job or an internship? A real one. Real work that has an impact, not just a hypothetical or practice, but has real purpose? Everything you mentioned is…purposeless. It won’t be seen or affect anyone. It makes him feel like a child and unimportant, he’s simply being amused. If he likes physics what about working with an engineer? Or perhaps if he likes chemistry someone from the science department? Not everything we do on board is about medicine. Let him see how is efforts, or lack of, make a difference to the real world, not just a classroom with a teacher that is light-years away.” For Alexis that had mattered. Knowing her work meant something, had an impact other than some arbitrary number given by a teacher.

To her second question Alexis paused again and then nodded, “Yes more settled. That problem won’t be bothering anyone ever again.” She drank, almost gulped, the water from the glass. “I don’t know what to do with it, Cpt. It was a prop to make our unwanted visitor think we were engaged. I…I’m not very good with relationships. My experiences have been few and somewhat horrific.” Alexis supposed that was the closest word to describe it. “It’s not that I can’t socialize or don’t understand, it just never really interested me. I don’t relate to others and they don’t relate to me. But Kane does. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this ring or the questions that people are going to ask. It’s not like I can tell them classified information. Kane would tell me to do whatever I want to do. But I don’t know what that is.”

Bonner, AMO

Willow considered. “People will ask questions or assume whatever they think best suits their version of what a ring like that means culturally. But ultimately what others think isn’t important it’s what you want. Experience isn’t always the best way of deciding if a relationship works. Sometimes people meet and start their first relationship that’s it. I suppose I always thought about it like conscious and unconscious response to stimuli.” She chuckled. “Is being around person X something you have to think about or is it like breathing.”

Willow Taylor
CO

Ooc: thank you for the bump!

Alexis didn’t really care what others assumed or asked. She didn’t socialize and share her personal life so even if she did know what to say she wouldn’t. But the realization that people would notice had made her wonder what to do with it and how she felt about it. And she didn’t know how to answer those questions for herself. The last thing Taylor said had Alexis looking at her, head tipped slightly to the side, tapping a stylus (who knew where it came from) against her leg. No one had put in a way that she got so immediately. Well Solomon did, but that was different, everything was different with him. “It’s like breathing. It’s easier than breathing.” Was it that simple? After Soulis the counselors had made it seem that everything needed to be examined and evaluated to ensure she wasn’t making a mistake because of that experience. “Kane…he asked me if…” She stopped, context, she needed to give context. “The man…the one that was the problem…I was engaged to him years ago, before I came to Ogawa. Kane asked me if he had ruined the idea of marriage for me, because one day he, Kane, wanted to ask me.” Alexis knew her relationship with Soulis wasn’t real or substantial. She had thought it had been, but she knew now it was only a ruse, a form of manipulation. “Is it really that easy? This one works and the other didn’t? They are not the same people. Should it be more complicated?” She let out a little huff, she was frustrated or confused. This wasn’t easy like a lab experiment or a medical diagnosis. “I don’t want it to be complicated.”

Bonner, AMO

bump


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