Meet the Motts (Mott Family Saga, Part 1)

Posted on 11 Nov 2014 @ 12:05am by Lieutenant Olsam Mott

1,499 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84, Airlock 12-B
Timeline: MD08: 1100hrs

[ ON ]

Standing outside the airlock, he'd almost swear you could hear them before the ship had even docked. It was like the faint buzzing sound of a colony of bees, working harmoniously to convert pollen into honey in an orderly and efficient process. But there was nothing harmonious about this colony.

As the freighter docked with Starbase 84, couplings attached and airlock prepared to pressurize, it became apparent from the shift in tone just how discordant they were. Forty-seven different voices were on the other side of that bulkhead, all speaking and shouting and arguing at the same time, jostling with one another to get a prime spot near the door.

He could hear them through the airlock as the seal between freighter and station was completed:

"...Federation docking regulations, I swear, if they...."

"...two different soups in the whole replicator database - just two!"

"...really ought to tell cousin Zepam just how ridiculous that toupee...."

"...decontamination protocols, of all the nerve! As if we're a bunch of common...."

"...I didn't travel a hundred light years to just sit around and...."

"...fat, just plain ol' fat!"

Olsam heard the airlock opening behind him and his chest tightened. His breath grew ragged, though he wasn't sure if it was from the panic or his rush to make it around the corner and out of sight before they spotted him. Hearing them had induced a change of heart. It wasn't too late, he told himself. He could requisition a shuttle and leave. Or he could apply for an emergency transfer to a deep space mission. Or maybe he could just hide for a month - Starbase 84 was probably big enough for that. Oh, this was all a mistake - a terrible, terrible mistake! But he still had time to fix it if he could just make it around the-

"Olsam!"

"Oh, there he is! I'd recognize that fat bald head anywhere."

"Cousin! Oh, cousin! We're here! Over here! What's the matter with him, he's not stopping."

"I don't think he hears us... Has he gone deaf? I always said he was going to go deaf. He never cleans his ears properly."

"I think he's blind and confused - you know he was always reading in the dark, it's probably ruined his eyes and his mind!"

Olsam suddenly wished Starfleet bulkheads were standard blue instead of standard grey. Maybe then he could just blend into the wall. Then, if he stayed still long enough, one of them would catch a whiff of something cooking on the promenade and-

"He's not deaf or blind," came a booming voice and suddenly the sea of Bolians parted, letting through a squat little blue woman leaning heavily on a cane. "He's trying to get away. Look how his shoulders are hunched up like that. And the way the back of his head is wrinkled. His knees are bent and his hands are balled up into fists. Like he's about to run... See?"

Several murmurs of agreement issued from the group of Bolians until they were all doing it, sounding not unlike the bees Olsam had imagined them to be. When he turned around, he saw them - all forty-seven of them - a sea of shaved pates and platinum blonde hair, comically arranged toupees and shiny blue domes. His family, with the diminutive matriarch hobbling up to greet him.

"Uh, heh," Olsam managed, shifting his eyes from side to side and darkening to a deeper shade of blue. "Hi, everyone."

As a unit, they burst into their own individual greetings, each one trying to outshout the other. The shuffling group became a wriggling mass then a surging tide, threatening to roll over him completely as they competed to squeeze down the narrow corridor toward him. Bright blue faces, all grinning. Forty-seven sets of pearly white teeth, eyes wide with wonder and delight, all looking at him like...well, like a bunch of Bolians heading to the buffet.

But before they could reach him, the small woman's hand shot up, palm open, holding them back with nothing more than a gesture. The tide came to a halt, as if suddenly crashing into a sea wall. Some of them stumbled, particularly in the back, but those in the front managed to hold the line.

"Ow, that's my toe, you fatty!"

"Who are you calling fatty? You've probably gained forty pounds alone since the last time we saw you!"

"Well what does it matter? You stepped on my toe."

"I did not!"

"Yes, you did!"

The discordant buzzing started up again immediately as battle lines were drawn, opposing halves of the family lining up behind this fatty or that fatty, ready to argue the issue into the ground. The absence of empirical evidence certainly wouldn't stop them nor would they be deterred by the completely trivial nature of the argument. Honor was at stake. The issue must be resolved. Who stepped on whose toe?

But the argument came to as abrupt a halt as their movement had earlier when the woman snapped her fingers on the upraised hand. The murmuring died down quickly.

"Olsam, dear, it's so good to see you," the little Bolian said, hobbling forward with a smile. Olsam looked apprehensive at first and almost took a half-step back at her approach, but the smile seemed so warm and inviting that he relented and soon developed one of his own. When he was but a few steps away, the tip of the cane bounced harshly off his right temple. "You big oaf! Making us travel all this way just to see you! Six months I've had to nag Rixx about this trip and when he finally agrees to it, you turn up in the middle of nowhere. Starbase 84... Pft. What kind of ship has your captain got that you can't be given shoreleave some place decent?"

"Well, um, momma, I..."

"That's enough gibberish out of you! Now, are you going to show us where we'll be staying?" She smiled brightly, sounding almost sickeningly sweet. Olsam rubbed at the sore spot on his head. "Or should we just go ask the station commander ourselves?"

----------

In the end, they'd been forced to draw straws. Those with the long straws - twenty of the forty-seven Bolians - were allowed to stay in his temporary quarters while those with the short straws had to return to his co-father's freighter to sleep. His mother, Olba, was not among the latter group.

"A bit small, don't you think? I thought you were a full lieutenant now?"

"I am!" Olsam protested, snatching a relic carved from petrified wood out of the hands of a cousin while scowling at him. "But there aren't that many suites on the station. I'm not a commander or anything. This is the best a lieutenant can-"

"Right, right," Olba muttered, squinting her eyes to peer inside one of the drawers full of his personal effects. She lifted her cane up and began poking the tip of it around inside the storage space, shuffling his items to and 'fro as if she couldn't be brought to touch anything with her hands. "What is all this junk? Are you a doctor, or a junk collector? No wonder you're not married. Nobody wants to marry a junk collector. One minute you have a pristine new house on Egax Island and the next morning you wake up to find it's full of useless junk. Like this."

"That's a hypospray!" Olsam protested, frowning back and forth from her to the device in her hand.

"Whatever," Olba replied, tossing it carelessly back into the drawer. Elsewhere, relatives were making themselves right at home. The replicator had been fired up immediately, first to make bedding and then to start producing the food for their mid-day meal. Olsam wondered on whose account all those replications were being made...

"Oh, I broke something! I broke something here, Olsam. It's broken. I think I broke it. It looks terribly broken..."

Olsam turned from his mother to look at a cousin, standing in the corner over a shattered vase on the floor. It was so thoroughly broken that there could be no other possible description for it. The cousin gave him a sheepish grin and furrowed her brow beneath a bright shock of platinum blonde hair. Olsam sighed - Quala was the cousin who could never keep her hands to herself and always broke something. Although, frankly, that applied to the overwhelming majority of his-

"When are we going to meet your friends?" Olba asked, interrupting his train of thought.

Olsam froze. Meet his friends? Well, there was just absolutely no way in hell they were going to-

"Tomorrow afternoon should be fine, we'll just start making the rounds and work our way through the list," Olba continued, answering her own question.

"Uh, okay, momma," Olsam said, finding himself agreeing with her. "Tomorrow afternoon..."

[ TBC ]

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

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