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Side-Sim A Cure For Boredom

Posted Oct. 30, 2021, 11:02 p.m. by Ensign Quinn Dagget (Helmsman) (Riley W)

Posted by Ensign Kovan ch’Sirhc (Engineering & Communications Officer) in Side-Sim A Cure For Boredom

Posted by Ensign Quinn Dagget (Helmsman) in Side-Sim A Cure For Boredom

Posted by Ensign Kovan ch’Sirhc (Engineering & Communications Officer) in Side-Sim A Cure For Boredom
Posted by… suppressed (6) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Nearly a week of space travel. Before long they’ll have reached this Abyss place and then the real work begins. Kovan normally avoided Deck 9, but a week spent crawling up and down engineering preparing for their trip through the nebula could wear any man down. Kovan needed a change of pace. A different setting to settle the nerves scratching up his spine. Something different, surrounded by different people. New things to calm the boredom that crawled over him like insects across his nerves.

So Kovan made a rare appearance in the crew lounge. He ignored any greetings, and took the only open table. Settling down, he set a pad of real paper down and began to draw with a charcoal pencil. With each stroke he pushed aside the background noise, and focused on putting the image within his mind to the page before him. Slow but surely, the landscape of an alien world appeared on the page. Strange alien birds filled the sky, and in the foreground accurate renditions of the native sentient life performing an ancient but still honored religious rite.

Kovan

“Hey there, dude,” Quinn sat down across from Kovan without asking. She held a thick book and plopped it down onto the table. Kovan probably wasn’t curious about what book she was reading, but if he did look he’d find that she was reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. “What’s up?”

She didn’t examine his drawing - as curious as she was, Quinn knew well enough that some people didn’t like it when you nosed into their art.

Quinn, Helm

It was easy to tune out background noise. Not so much the sound of someone sitting across from you and speaking. Kovan glanced up, blinking away the eye strain from focusing upon the page for too long. Much of the foreground was finished, leaving the background a scatter of strokes that hinted at mountains and clouds. He recognized Quinn, and figured there were worse people to speak to aboard this ship. He couldn’t be picky. “Quinn,” He answered and noticed their book.

“I know it’s called the lounge, but I wouldn’t call this the best place to be reading a book.” He added, his usual sarcasm completely lacking from his words. Then, as if to prove his point there was a loud cheer from one of the other tables as that group played some kind of board game.

Kovan

“I disagree,” she said with a small smile, leaning back and picking up the book. “A busy place is the best place to read. For me, at least. My brain thrives on chaos and activity. “You draw?” she gestured to the paper. The fact that Kovan actually referred to her by her given (chosen) name and not by her surname made her very happy. He was probably the first person other than E’usah to do to, which was strange given their animosity on the bridge. Maybe he wasn’t so much of a jerk after all - at least when he was off duty.

  • Quinn

Thriving off chaos and activity. Kovan didn’t like how close to home that hit. Quinn could prove dangerous to him. Not in the literal sense but as a reminder of his old life and the temptations he fought to resist. Humans have an old myth about cats possessing nine lives. If Kovan was a cat he’d be on that ninth life already. “When I can,” He said. Drawings are art were an easy topic. A safe topic. He flipped the sketch book around to show the picture. “Planet Laxa, these are the Laxians. Space-fairing, but not interested in exploration or colonizing. Once deeply religious, and though they no longer worship any god, they still honor the old rites and rituals. This was a harvest-time rite.” In the picture, two Laxians, one male and one female, were offering the first of the harvest to an alter shaped like an upturned shell. A fire burned below, heating the metal shell.

Kovan

She examined the drawing intently, leaning over to get a good look at it. “It’s gorgeous. Can I ask how you learned to draw this well?” she looked up at him, a smile on her face. It was, indeed, a very impressive drawing. She’d never been to Laxa. She’d never even heard of the planet. But clearly Kovan had seen it and it stuck in his mind well enough to reproduce this.

Quinn hadn’t spent much time planetside, other than Earth. She wondered what kind of drawings she could have made if she was an artistic person. Probably nothing so impressive as this. Technical drawings of spaceships they’d raided, maybe.

Dagget, Helm

How he learned. Kovan stared at the image rendered in precise strokes of charcoal, and unwillingly remembered memories better forgotten. Recollections that carried the smell of thick scent air, the buzz of alien insects and helpless hope. Then that faded way, leaving behind a sense of sadness that he hated more than the memories. “Just practice.” He said, somewhat subdued. “I remember the places I’ve been and then I draw them. Used to pick up women by offering to draw them. Usually they were impressed enough for. . . well, you know.”

Kovan

Quinn noticed his low mood and pulled away, putting a hand on her book. “Well, it’s really impressive,” she said with a small smile. “Definitely more than just practice, there’s got to be some skill there that I haven’t ever been able to grasp. ” She chose to ignore the comment about what girls were impressed enough to do. That kind of thing wasn’t something she was interested in hearing about. “I’m sorry about what I said on the bridge last week. I shouldn’t have been such a… Well, you know.”

Dagget, Helm

Kovan seemed to recover quickly enough from his low mood. “Perhaps,” He conceded. Art was never difficult for him, and came almost as naturally as languages did. Then he blinked, “Last week?” Kovan reflected on the past week and after a moment’s thought remembered a certain night-shift on the bridge. He’d almost forgotten. Sure, it was annoying when people assumed that because he was andorian he knew this or that about his culture but it wasn’t anything to hold a grudge over. Besides, he acted far nastier than Quinn.

Which left him struggling for a response. “Uh, don’t worry about it.” Hell, Quinn could have decked him (then or now) and he’d been more comfortable. “Uh, what’s that book you’re reading?”

Kovan

Okay, good, the subject had changed. Quinn grinned and put the book down on the table and patted the cover. “It’s called ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.’ It’s a book from 20th century Earth, all about space travel in a wacky and wonderful world imagined up by the author. It’s hilarious.” She would have descended into a rant about how funny the book, plot, and characters were, but she wasn’t sure how that would effect the slight truce she’d garnered with Kovan.

“There’s this fellow, he’s supposed to be from a planet around Betelgeuse. He was doing research on Earth and figured a name that would let him blend in would be ‘ford prefect,’ except that was the brand name of a particular vehicle that was popular around the time of the books publishing. So he was named after a car instead of getting a person’s name. It’s kinda dumb but it’s also pretty funny.”

  • Quinn

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