Settling In

Posted on 01 Jan 2019 @ 7:14am by Viola Avalon PhD

449 words; about a 2 minute read

Viola stretched out on her bed, spreadeagle, and stared at the ceiling.

"Computer, open log."

When it chirped, she began.

"It's been a couple of months now, and I'm just getting around to my first personal log. Sorry. It's been a little busy around here. Well, at least in the arboretum, where we've got the fish tanks and sea plants. That part has been busy. The fish started out doing really well, then one of them got sick, and it spread to the others. By the time we got it taken care of, half the fish were dead. That was the bad part. We had to remove the fish and plants, then scrub the tanks, prep them, fill them, replace the plants, and then put the fish back. At each stage we had to carefully measure the salinity levels and the stress on the plants and fish. But we're now back in business, we had to create new monitors for the tanks, and rotate the fish. I never thought I'd be using my Marine Biology to take care of fish tanks, but it's an interesting challenge. I read Doctor Sandoval's paper before I took this assignment, so I was familiar with the theory. In practice, I think we can actually expand to feed everyone once a week. Or we could, if the captain would give us permission to use more bulkheads. That's the problem, the bulkheads are full of conduits and relays. The entire ship would have to be rewired for long-term use. But on a colony ship, it could be done. Theoretically. What we really need is to find a small sentient mammalian that could live in the tanks and tell us what's going on, much like dolphins do in the oceans. But that's not something I'm going to mention outside of my logs because to date there is no such thing, and I really don't want anyone trying to genetically manipulate a poor dolphin to the size of a chihuahua. So forget I said that. It's something for science fiction, not reality.

Beyond that, I'm getting to know the other people in science, especially those who work in the arboretum. It's nice to have real trees to relax under when I'm taking a break. As for the rest of the crew, I don't socialize much, so I haven't really gotten to know any of them. Occupational hazard.

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully it won't be another three months before I do another log.

End log.

Oh, and computer, could you play Peer Gynt?"

Music began to play and she closed her eyes. Maybe she could take a short nap before her roommates showed up.

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