Dinner at Work

Posted on 30 Apr 2022 @ 1:40pm by Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater

406 words; about a 2 minute read

The cheek, the sheer cheek, of that ex-marine. Counseling's down on Deck 3. Absolutely unbelievable. She'd been avoiding the mess hall ever since that encounter. She could lie to herself and say that it was because she didn't want to bump into Lamar again but she was savvy enough to know that the person she was really avoiding was Aria. Every morning with Tarin's stupid barrage of exercises Sofie found new ways to embarrass herself - in front of her colleagues and more importantly in front of her friends.

So rather than going to the mess now she just hid down in the labs. Geology was where she normally made her home, it was known to be her specialty and so it was left to her for the most part, nobody except the odd technician ever came in.

Also it had a replicator.

"Computer, goulash and knedlíky with a glass of water." She would say, her preferences for them long since saved in the computer's memory. A stream of light would flow down from the machine, conducting its inscrutable magic and then, moment later, there would be food lying there on a plate. Almost as good as when her brother made it.

And then she's eat it.

And it would taste wonderful.

It had been the same ever since the battle. Some days she'd hardly eat at all and on others she'd stuff herself full to bursting. She couldn't bring herself to care too much about it though, she had much bigger things on her mind than food. From the continual work of an ensign aboard a starship, the clamoring of the fear and guilt in her head, the weight of failure, and the stress of avoiding her friends; it was all so much.

There wasn't much that felt good any more for the ensign, but the dumplings were delicious and in her little lab she could feel safe for a while each day. This place was her sanctuary, within the walls of her lab she didn't need to feel afraid, it was her impregnable fortress of mud, sand and dust. Microscopes and spectrographs lined its ramparts bringing with them a precision that the outside world seemed to lack. Within these walls this was still an expedition of science, there were no Tholians, no secret missions, no dangerous crystals, no frightening people.

Nothing bad ever happens here. Nothing much at all ever happens here.

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