Sapphires are a Geologist's Best Friend

Posted on 29 Dec 2014 @ 11:19pm by Lieutenant Elijah Williams IV, M.Sc. & Lieutenant Olsam Mott

2,637 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84 - Officer's Mess Hall
Timeline: MD 12 - 1400 Hrs

ON:

With a fork in his left hand, Elijah pushed around the food that was on his tray as his eyes were fixated on the PaDD clutched in his right hand. He thumbed a control and scrolled down, lost in the story in which he was reading. He bit his lower lip as he got to a rather explicit part, it caught him off-guard but he enjoyed it nonetheless. He set down the fork, the metal hitting the metal of the tray, a small clang rang out. He pushed the tray out of the way without taking his gaze off the text. He was too last to even realize what was going on around him.

Olsam didn't have time to correct his trajectory. He'd been on track to seat himself at Elijah's otherwise empty table, positioned to plop down into the chair and slide his tray on to the table. But as Elijah's tray slid forward it crashed forcefully into the half-placed one belonging to the Bolian.

The food on his tray jostled wildly and with amazement and horror Olsam watched his dinner roll wobble, slide, bump against the side of the tray and then finally ease over the edge. It bounced once on the tabletop, then made its way toward the floor, and the doctor just stared with a face twisted in real pain. It was as if he was caught in a localized temporal disturbance that slowed the movement of the dinner roll while it spun toward the deck plating, small crumbs flying off the crust and seeming to hang in the air. It finally struck the floor once, twice, three times and then rolled under the table, picking up all manner of filth and pathogens while leaving behind only a thin sheen of clarified butter.

"My roll!" he cried, sounding near tears. "My dinner roll!"

"What the?" Elijah looked up from his PaDD and watched the small piece of bread hit the deck. He looked back up at the Bolian doctor, the man looked like he was going to cry. "It's okay doctor, you can have mine," he indicated the untouched dinner roll on one part of the tray.

"Really?" Olsam asked with hope and wonder, as if Elijah were offering up his first-born son. "You'd do that for me? Uh..."

He squinted at Elijah, struggling to recall his name from the ship's personnel files as he took a seat at the table and reached for the roll. He had something close to an eidetic memory when it came to those sorts of things, it just sometimes took a moment or two to get it started.

"Lieutenant Williams! Elijah Williams IV. Place of birth: Athens, Georgia. Age: 25. Geologist trained in geological research and geomorphology at Starfleet Academy. Most recent medical issues..." Olsam trailed off, going through the record in his mind. Suddenly, his eyes focused and locked on to the human sitting across from him and his face became stern. "You never reported for your pre-deployment physical assessment, Lieutenant Williams. Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we would just overlook it? We are Sickbay. Avoiding physicals is futile."

"Oh, well..." Elijah looked at the Bolian doctor for a moment. "I suppose I forgot, you know the whole mission prep and all." He managed a small smile. "I have been to sickbay a couple of times however. I was wounded on Lyshan Three and before that I sliced up my hand pretty bad."

Olsam nodded, eyes rolled off slightly to the side as he mentally processed the rest of the geologist's medical file. "Well, so you have! I guess if anything had been wrong with you they would have caught it. So we can overlook the physical for the price of...hmmm, shall we say, a dinner roll?" The Bolian grinned and used a knife from his tray to slice open said roll to prepare it for a drenching in butter; he spoke without pause as he attended to the roll. "I hope you don't mind me joining you. You were the only person from the Galileo that I recognized in here, and I saw you reading and I thought to myself, 'I can't just let him sit there and read during dinner.' It would have been very un-Bolian of me."

This caused a smile to break out on Elijah's lips, a light chuckle followed. "Do Bolians not read during dinner?" he queried. Honestly, he didn't know much about Bolians, he knew they were a social race, very talkative and... opinionated. Though he was at an extremely good part in his book, he did welcome the company.

Olsam laughed, then realized Elijah was asking a serious question. "Oh! No. No, not at all. Did you know some humans watch holovids during dinner?" The Bolian shook his bald head with a great deal of disapproval. "We talk during dinner. In fact, if you ever see a Bolian not talking during dinner or - worse - sitting alone and eating, then you know something is wrong. Gravely wrong. Like his mom died or something. Do you often read during dinner? I see you by yourself sometimes in the mess hall, but you always look so engaged with your food that I don't want to break it up."

Elijah had a feeling the food thing was quite important to the Bolian. "I do, reading was an escape for me," he said. "I can be a bit of a loner at times, but I am hoping to change that."

"Loner," Olsam repeated slowly, taking plenty of time to form the letters and sounds with his mouth, like it was an altogether foreign concept. "Well, I think that's good! Changing that, I mean. It's important to socialize, especially on a ship as small as the Galileo. Wouldn't it be kind of weird to leave a posting like that without at least one friend? I think it would." He turned his attention back to his food and began cutting up whatever unidentifiable meat he'd decided to replicate. "What are you trying to escape from when you read?"

"My life," Elijah stated plainly. Sure, it was a simple answer but a loaded one as well. "But, reading is a pleasure humans have taken to for hundreds and hundreds of years. Books are an important part of humanity." At least that was his thoughts on the matter. Though, he used a book to leave himself during the worst times of his childhood.

Olsam couldn't imagine trying to escape his life because if you weren't in your life then weren't you dead? Was recreational reading like dying? The thought made him shiver. "Yes, I've seen some of your libraries before. There's a very big one in Paris full of all sorts of books and lots of people reading and reading and reading like all that information isn't easily accessible through a network or something! Maybe there's something about the feeling of books... I'm not a very tactile person, though. I bet you are! You've got to pick up rocks and stuff all the time, right? Isn't that what geologists do, collect rocks?"

Elijah had to smile at that. "It's more than just collecting rocks but, that is how it starts for most of us in this part of science," he said. "I had a rock collection when I was younger, it's what got me interested to learn more about geology." He recalled the very first rock he had ever picked up. It was a sedimentary rock, but not from the region. It had been unique in it's coloring and lines and he later found out it wasn't even from the North American continent.

"I've collected one rock," Olsam said proudly, as if he'd gone into the field and collected it himself. "My brother Hars is a geologist. No, wait, he's a... You know. The ones who run the tests and stuff... Geochemist! That's it. He's a geochemist. Anyway, he gave me this really big rock, and I keep it in my quarters. It's in storage here because the quarters are so small. Teth probably wouldn't like it. It's called a sapphire, have you heard of those? It's about this big-" Olsam opened his hands to indicate something that was truly enormous given the subject matter "-and it's embedded in this rock. It's not even that pretty. I mean, it's blue. Do you know how many blue rocks we have on Bolarus? Billions. So what am I gonna do with another blue rock?"

"A sapphire, even into the twenty-fourth century is quite coveted, especially if it's rather large in karats," Elijah said, "and no when I say karat I don't mean the orange vegetable." He always had to say that, for whatever reason people did not understand. "If they are common place on Bolarus then the worth is probably rather low, however, places like Earth, Betazed, Qo'Nos, Trill, a sapphire would be worth quite a bit."

Olsam looked a little sheepish; he had been thinking about carrots. "I don't think it came from Bolarus. I don't know where he got it! He told me, but, honestly, I just stop paying attention when you scientist types start talking about rock formations and crustal folding and all that stuff. I went on a double date with him once - I didn't realize it was even a date until like three weeks later, but anyway - and he spent the entire time talking about thrust faulting. Thrust faulting! Say, uh, do you want that sapphire? Can you study it or something? Is there a geologist's black market? I love my brother, of course, but I'm kinda tired of that thing taking up so much of my cargo allocation when I switch ships..."

"Uh..." Elijah found himself at a loss for words as he listened to the Bolian talk and talk and talk. "I do not think there is a black market specifically for geologists, though I am sure there is one for all sort of rocks and gems and high priced stones." He wasn't sure he should take the sapphire, though he was intrigued. "I wouldn't mind taking a look at that sapphire." He wondered just how big the stone really was.

---

Cargo Bay 3 on Deck 3 was Olsam's favorite cargo bay on the ship, naturally. It was on the same deck as both his quarters and his duty station, which further reduced his walking time should he happen to need something out of storage.

When they stepped inside the cargo bay, the Bolian was both surprised and not surprised to find the lights had been dimmed significantly. Most of the ship's personnel were off-ship on the starbase enjoying their leave, so he supposed there was no reason to waste energy keeping them at full capacity. Still, it took him several moments of fumbling with the control panel near the door in the near-dark to turn the lights on.

"There we go!" Olsam said, stepping back from the panel with a beaming smile. He looked for all the world as if he'd performed some minor miracle. "Have you seen a... What did you say it was? A soft-fire? Have you ever seen a soft-fire before?"

"Sapphire," Elijah corrected then looked on. His eyes went wide when he saw the gem. "Holy mother of..." his mouth dropped open and he stepped forward. He wanted to reach out and grab the large, round gem but resisted. "That... that has to be at least..." he paused as he tried to calculate the size. He knew six millimeters equaled roughly one carat. "Twenty carats, maybe twenty-five. I-I've never seen a sapphire so big."

Olsam rolled his eyes and stepped over to the transparent container housing the sapphire. This was the same sort of reaction Hars would have had upon seeing some dull rock, which was ridiculous. It looked as blue and rock-like as every other blue rock he'd ever seen, though his brother indicated it was unique. Something about its internal structure prevented the replicators from accurately replicating the gem, or something like that. Olsam had stopped paying attention about three sentences into the explanation.

The Bolian reached up and took the contained off the cargo it was stacked on then marched it over to Elijah. He used his thumb to deactivate whatever unnecessary security arrangement his brother had insisted on the container having and the transparent sides slid away to reveal the gem itself sitting on a plush black pillow.

"It's hideous," Olsam said, wrinkling up his nose. "I think I'd rather have twenty or twenty-five actual carrots."

"Carrots are good for the eyes," Elijah said, his gaze still fixated on the gem. "You eat that many carrots you might end up turning a lovely shade of purple," he turned his attention back to the Bolian and smirked.

Olsam gave a snorting laugh, imagining himself purple. He was, of course, a very manly shade of blue and would never even consider taking on a purple tint, as was fashionable in some circles on Bolarus. He was something of a blue traditionalist.

"So, will you take it?" the Bolian asked, holding it out to Elijah hopefully. "Maybe you can do something with it. Like... I don't know. Study it? Or drop it on the foot of someone you don't like? It's supposed to be very hard. If you get the right trajectory it'll probably break, oh..." He hefted the stone in his hand thoughtfully. "...maybe three or four bones. Or maybe you can put it up for display in the lounge or something like that. The rest of the crew can look at it and admire a real Earth rock, even if it is sort of ugly."

"For once," Elijah started, "I'm going to be selfish and not share." He shook his head thoughtfully. "No, no, I wouldn't want to hurt anyone with this," he pointed to the gem, "this is waaay to valuable." He reached out for the rock with the embedded gem and took a hold of it. Though he had calculated the weight fairly easily, he was still caught off guard by the heft. "I'll gladly take it, as long as you are one hundred percent sure you are okay with me taking it."

"I'm not a Ferengi," Olsam grinned. "Please take it with my blessing. I'm glad to be rid of it. It frees up more space on my cargo allotment for important things, like eating utensils. Maybe not as luxurious as a shiny rock but far more practical. For me, at least." He grinned again and patted his belly, which certainly seemed to be beyond regulations.

Elijah smiled at that, the Bolian certainly did seem to like his food. "If utensils are important to you, then they are important," he stated. He scanned the storage room for a container, spotted one and snatched it up. He gingerly placed the rock into the container then snapped it closed. He looked back up to the Bolian doctor, a smile still on his lips. "Thanks again doc," he said. "You and I should have lunch more often. I could fill you in on the latest research in geological development and you can fill me in on what the Galaxy has to offer in cuisine."

"Oh my goodness, yes! Did you know they've started using this new technique in the cafes on Salonius V and it's just-" Olsam abruptly cut himself off, making a visible effort to calm himself down. He took a couple of deep breaths, smiled and nodded his head, recognizing - for once - that he was getting ahead of himself. "Right, right. Next time."

OFF:

Lieutenant Elijah Williams, IV
Geologist
USS Galileo

&

Lieutenant Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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