Dinner Party, Part I

Posted on 11 Feb 2015 @ 12:59am by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen M.D. & Ensign Jaana Voutilainen

3,734 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84, Wasabiya Sushi Cafe
Timeline: MD9, 1900 hrs

[ ON ]

Olba Mott hobbled along at the head of a pack of Bolians, slowly making their way through the promenade crowd as one solid unit. They didn't have to do much weaving as the crowds sort of parted before the older woman, who was heavily favoring her cane today. There was a hum of excitement about the group, eleven different voices each talking about the same thing: food. Olba had been pleasantly surprised to receive the invitation to dinner from the Voutilainen family and commended their choice of restaurant, Wasabiya's Sushi Cafe. The invitation itself had caused quite a fuss among the family as everyone vied for a spot among the dinner party, leading Olba to eventually mandate that only Olsam's siblings and parents would be attending.

When they swarmed into the Wasabiya, it seemed as if virtually all activity ceased. The staff, as one, turned in shock, horror and amazement at the group pressed tightly into the restaurant's foyer. Olba, finding the hostess's station empty, promptly rapped her cane against it loudly and scowled.

"Hello?" she asked loudly, looking from staff member to staff member. "We have a reservation. Mott-Voutilainen, party of sixteen."

"Party of six... teen?!" stuttered a nervous waitress, looking down at her reservation book. Her sister had clearly made a mistake when taking down the reservation. She was only expecting six. A few panicked words in Japanese later, and a couple members of the wait staff were frantically placing tables on either end of a long table seating three humans.

And no one said they were Bolians. The kitchen was going to be slammed.

Jaana was sitting opposite from her parents, still waiting for Tuula. She was late. When she looked up at her parents she saw a look of complete shock on both their faces. She looked behind her to see the reason for their response and saw that the Mott family had arrived. Great, Jaana thought. Not only do I need to tell mom and dad about the marriage, now I also have to introduce the families to each other. Tuula really needs a good reason for being late.

She stood up from her seat and approached the leader of the group. The woman who she assumed was Mott's mother.

"We don't want to be seated there," Olba said to Jaana, mistaking her for a member of the wait staff despite her similarity to Tuula. She motioned with her cane to the opposite side of the restaurant from where the wait staff had hastily thrown together the tables. "We'd like to sit over there, by the fish tank. And we're expecting some guests. Honestly, is this the way your establishment handles reservations? I can only imagine the ordeal walk-ins have to deal with."

Behind her a chorus of Bolian voices murmured their objection at the delay.

Jaana looked at the woman and followed to where she was pointing the cane. She took a moment to find the best words. She might be shy and a-social, but that didn't mean she let herself be treated like a doormat. "If the location of the table is a problem to you, you should take that up with the restaurant's staff."

A long moment of silence stretched out, seeming to go on forever, until the Motts all burst into various grunts and shouts of disapproval. Wherever they went, they seemed to be a mob looking for an opportunity to riot, and being sassed by restaurant staff seemed like as good a trigger as any. However, they all fell silent when Olba held up her cane.

"Shut up, you idiots," she snapped, and all the idiots promptly shut up. She narrowed her eyes at Jaana for a moment and then her face cracked into a pleasant, friendly. "Oh, you must be Tuula's sister, Jaana. I'm so sorry, I didn't catch the resemblance. She's so much more...unorthodox, shall we say? I'm Olba, Olsam's mother. It's such a pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you," she said in reply. Glancing to the rest of the group and further to look for any sign of Tuula and Mott. "As the couple of honour isn't present jet, I would like to introduce you to our parents." She walked back to the table and saw her father stand up. "Aksel and Anya Voutilainen,"

Aksel walked up to Mott Matriarch and offered his hand, per human tradition. "It's a pleasure to meet you, although I must admit. When we decided to visit our daughter during their shore leave we hadn't expected to meet Tuula's family in law." He turned around to his wife, who was still recovering from the number of Bolians that were standing in front of her. She had barely managed to get over the shock of her little girl getting married without telling her, and now she was going to meet a large, loud and extravagant group of Bolians. "Anya!" Aksel said, calling her out of her thinking. "Excuse me for my wife, she isn't very good with impromptu changes."

"We can certainly sympathize with the impromptu change, can't we?" Olba asked, turning to her two husbands. Mo was far more engaged in eyeing the fish tank on one wall, looking as if he'd like to dive right in, and Zipok seemed bored. Olba rolled her eyes after seeing she'd get no help from them, and then motioned to the table. It's placement was absolutely horrendous according to Bolian dining protocol, but that was something they'd overlook. She shot a look over her shoulder at the group to make sure they understood they would be overlooking it, then turned back to Aksel and smiled pleasantly.

It took about ten minutes for everyone to seat themselves as there was much jostling and arguing and jockeying for prime positions around the table. Olba made certainly to select the best seats for Olsam and the as-yet-unseen Tuula, whose lateness was wearing on Olba's nerves. Who came late to dinner with Bolians? If she waited much longer, Olba would be forced to go into full-on riot control to keep the rest of the family in line. Dining at 1900 hours translated into the Bolian language meant eating at 1900 hours. Grumbling to herself, the Chief Mott turned to her left to address Jaana, the much more normal looking and, apparently, respectful of the Voutilainens.

"So, Jaana, do you also serve aboard the Galileo?"

Confused by the sudden interest interest in her persona she nervously looked around once more. "Yes, I do. I'm a Science Officer. Stellar Cartography." she said.

Next to Olba, Mo had begun grumbled about the lack of appetizers being delivered to the table. His grumbling was threatening to spread, inciting rebellion among the Bolians up and down the table. While still smiling at Jaana, Olba discreetly pinched a notoriously sensitive part of Mo's thigh as hard as she could, causing him to yelp and quiet down. "Oh, a stellar cartography? That seems like very admirable work. And are you married, too?"

"No," replied Jaana, chuckling slightly at the question. While she might have wanted to be married someday and have children, right now she didn't even date.

"Sorry we're late," exclaimed Tuula as she rolled into the restaurant, Olsam in tow. "We had to do some emergency surgery to remove a gallbadder; you should have seen the stones." Scanning the room, there were more Bolians present than she expected. She turned towards Mott. "I thought we said immediate family only," she said in a harsh whisper.

"This is my immediate family," Olsam whispered, baffled. He looked up and down the table, silently counting, and then nodded in confirmation to Tuula. Sometimes a cousin or two managed to slip into these things, but this was truly just his parents and brothers and sisters. "Do you want me to ask them to leave? It's probably not a good idea, and I'm not sure if they'd go even if we asked. They'd just move into the corner over there and stare at us while they ate. Oh no, my mom is talking to your sister..."

"What's wrong with--"

"Tuula!" Her question was interrupted by her mother's joyous shout. Joyous, no doubt, because it helped tip the balance a little in the direction of the pink-skinned. "We clearly have a lot to catch up on!" she added, her voice outwardly excited, but with a hint of admonishment for not telling her own mother about her marriage earlier. "And you must be Doctor Mott. I'm Anya, Tuula and Jaana's mother. And this is Aksel."

Aksel turned in his seat towards Olsam and, looking over the reading glasses he was wearing to help him make out the menu, politely nodded in his direction before getting out of his seat. "Aksel Voutilainen," he said, extending his hand towards Olsam. "I wish I could say I've heard so much about you," he added in a deadpan tone.

"I wish I could say I've heard so much about you, too," Olsam said in the same deadpan tone, mistaking it for some kind of odd Finnish introduction. He shook Aksel's hand and turned to smile at Anya. "And I don't know anything about you, either."

"I'm Anya, mother of the bride," she said, getting up to give Olsam a big hug to welcome her new son-in-law to the family. "Why don't you take a seat and tell us how you two met?"

Olsam happily returned the hug and then sat down next to Anya, prepared to relay the tale he'd carefully crafted the day before after reviewing several dozen movie scripts. "Well, we met in Sickbay, of course. She was the young resident, I was the handsome attending physician. We began an illicit love affair that circumvented the rules and regulations of our department, a defiant and passionate romance confined to medical supply closets and dark corridors. Before long, the intensity of what we shared demanded that we no longer hide in shame. That's when we decided to get married and challenge the system to dare to deny our love."

Anya and Aksel's jaw dropped. They were stunned to say the least.

"That's... how it happened," added Tuula, herself a little surprised at Olsam's description. She didn't know he had such talent for romantic storytelling. "Fortunately, we haven't been court martialled yet," she added.

In shock, Aksel decided to change the subject. Figuring now was as good a time as any to get rid of the eerie device that he had been carrying around, he turned to Tuula and pulled out a small wooden case. "Tuula, I brought a gift for you," he said as he slid the case over to his daughter. "Olsam, I'm sorry," he added with a hint of a smile, "had I known you had married my daughter, I'd have got you one too."

Tuula stared at the case for a moment, wondering in anticipation what could be inside. But as she opened the latch on the case and lifted the lid up just enough to see what it was, her face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. "Oh my god, how did you know!" she exclaimed, before leaning over and kissing her dad on the cheek.

"Is it food?" Olsam asked, leaning across Anya in such a way that she was nearly smashed into the back of her chair. It was pretty much a rhetorical question, he knew, because someone could only get that excited about a rare and delicious foodstuff. "Are you going to share? I think you're supposed to share with your husband."

"No," she said, still in awe at the gleaming metallic tools in front of her -- a tiny hammer and what looked like an ice pick with some markings on the shaft. "It's an orbitoclast. A rare antique medical instrument used during the mid-20th century." Holding a clean napkin in her hand, she picked up the pick to examine it. "It's perfect," she said in awe. "I've wanted one of these forever!"

A voice from near the end of the table shouted; from the volume and content it was most certainly one of the Bolians. "Look! She brought her own seafood pick!" Murmurs of excitement and wonder rippled up and down the table as the Bolians all leaned in closer to Tuula in unison, eager to examine the orbitoclast. It bore an uncanny resemblance to Bolian seafood pick, a pick and hammer set used to crack and dismantle the hard outer shell of crustaceans on Bolarus IX.

"It's not a seafood pick!" exclaimed Tuula, carefully tightening her grip on it to keep it safe from about a dozen pairs of grubby, greasy hands. "It's an orbitoclast... an antique medical device used to perform lobotomies." Seeing a confused expression appear on the faces of all the Bolians except for Olsam, she held the pick up to Olsam's eye socket and continued. "They would use the hammer to bang it in here, behind the eye socket and into the frontal lobe. A few swings of the pick, and the procedure was complete."

Someone down the table wretched; Olsam seemed fascinated. "How primitive! Unwieldy, imprecise, but effective. I don't think we had anything similar on Bolarus. But then again, we never performed many lobotomies. Mental illnesses and the like were somewhat glossed over in favor of actual treatment." He looked down the table briefly, unaware of how much his family emphasized his point, then smiled at Tuula and her father. "That's a very thoughtful gift, Aksel. I just got her a ring. Maybe I should have gotten her a big meat cleaver or whatever it is you people used for surgery a century ago."

"I'm sure she would have appreciated it," replied Anya, barely concealing her distaste for her daughter's macabre hobby. She was just glad to be rid of the thing more than anything. "So, Olba, aside from raising these..." she looked up and down at the assembled mob, scarfing down edamame beans at a rate that was as impressive as it was gluttonous "...fine specimens, what do you do?"

"I'm an oceanographer," Olba replied while reaching for a shrimp off the freshly delivered appetizer. With one hand she managed to shuck the shell, remove the tail and pop it in her mouth in record time. "Mostly I study deep-ocean environments. Bolarus IX is largely covered by water, so we actually know more about our solar system than we do about the oceans on the planet. There are some very bizarre forms of life in its depths." Down the table, one of the Motts seemed to be choking on a shrimp hull. Olba turned, grimaced, then looked back at Anya. "As well as on the surface. So, tell me, did they relay any news of their marriage to you? Or did they just decide to surprise you, too? Your girls seem much more responsible than my Olsam..."

"No, it was a total shock. We had barely gotten aboard when Jaana here decided to tell us," said Anya, gently nudging her on the shoulder. "I'm not surprised that Tuula didn't tell me, but I always thought Jaana was more responsible than that."

"Mom!" protested the twins in unison.

"What?!" She looked back towards Olba as she reached for a piece of tempure. "It's true. You should have seen them back in high school. Jaana was always a studious little angel, but Tuula... why, this one time, some of the popular girls were picking on Jaana, calling her a geek and a nerd--"

"Mom!"

"Anyways," continued Anya, feeling that telling the matriarch of the Motts a few stories about their childhood would be punishment enough for Tuula and Jaana's deception. "I get this call at work saying that Tuula was suspended for--"

"Mom!"

Seeing the protestations of her daughters, Anya relented with the embarrassing stories. But not before twisting the knife one last time. "Where she got those live snakes from, I'll never know. Isn't that right Tuula?"

Tuula sighed. Her mother had a way of doing this to her. The best she could do in a situation like this was to change the subject. And the best way to do that was to talk about food. "Mother, father, why don't you tell Ms. Mott about your lutefisk recipe? I'm sure it's something a Bolian would find quite delicious," she added, damning that cursed dish with faint praise.

Absolute silence fell over the table as all Bolian-related talking, chewing and moving came to a halt. Each blue face was intently fixated on Anya and Aksel, waiting with baited breath to hear the revelation of the lutefisk recipe.

"I'ts nothing special, just some whitefish soaked in lye," explained Anya, nervous at the Bolians surrounding her, just staring at her. "I... suppose I can send you my recipe," she added.

The response sent a wave of murmuring up and down the table, largely disbelief over someone describing a dish as "nothing special" and "just" anything. Even Olba, usually the most diplomatic of the Motts, seemed somehow offended. The murmuring descended into a few grumblings as the lower end of the table began chattering about the perceived slights that seemed to be aimed at the Bolians. Some things could be chalked up to a misunderstanding, but others?

"Well. Yes, that would be nice. Thank you," Olba replied curtly. She chewed thoughtfully on another shrimp and then turned back to Anya. "Your daughters are very...different...from one another. Tuula seems... Well. Unique."

"Yes, that she is," replied Aksel, placing a hand on his daughter's shoulder. There were times when he didn't understand her, but in spite of everything, he was more proud of her than anything else in the world, except for Jaana of course. Still, those spiked collars though...

I'm right here, thought Tuula, refraining from vocalizing her thoughts. mostly out of fear of a caning. She had heard stories about how vicious elderly Bolian women could be with their canes. Especially towards family, which, in her eyes, Tuula now was.

"I would have thought Olsam would have found Jaana the more attractive of your offspring, but perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part," Olba said, shrugging off the last part almost as if she'd been talking to herself. "It's not the first time a man was seduced by someone under his tutelage, and I doubt it'll be the last."

The loud sound of chewing and chattering was interrupted by the clatter of chopsticks falling onto plates in unison as the four humans at the tables sat, slack-jawed at Olba's comments.

Tuula, likely the most offended, was the first to vocalize her thoughts. "What!?" she exclaimed.

"What!?" Jaana exclaimed in unison with her sister. She the more attractive one? Yeah, right. In what world?

Olba's hairless eyebrows raised in unison. "Well, I just assumed that's what happened. Olsam was supposed to be training Tuula, was he not? And now we see what's happened. A man in a position of power and authority can be very attractive to a certain type of woman. It's a galactic constant, I believe."

"Mom, stop!" Olsam pleaded, stepping in for damage control a little too late. His eyes shifted from Olba to Tuula to the Voutilainens. "You don't need to give your opinion on everything in front of everyone. There's nothing wrong with Tuula! Or Jaana, either. They're both perfectly lovely people." He scowled at her a little bit, which got a look out the older Bolian that could kill. "I can choose whoever I want to choose, and I chose Tuula. Not that there's anything wrong with Jaana. She's very nice. Maybe she can marry one of my brothers..."

Olsam turned to look down the table at his brothers, all of whom seemed to be in one stage or another of ripping apart crab legs or stuffing entire sushi rolls into their mouths.

"Jaana isn't marrying any of you!" exclaimed Anya, loud enough to get the attention of the entire table and draw the ire of a dozen highly offended Boilians. That comment was the last straw. She tried to be polite and supportive of her daughter, even though she married without telling her, but she had had it with her new inlaws. "Come on, Aksel, Jaana, lets go," she added, standing up from the table.

"But--" protested Aksel. However, his protests melted away under Anya's glare. "I'm sorry, it was quite... interesting... to meet you," he added, following his wife out.

The table erupted in what could only be described as outrage. A few of the more hotheaded Motts jumped to their feet, flailing arms and speaking in raised voices. To get up from the dinner table, mid-meal, and depart? It was unthinkable! The last time such a thing occurred on Bolarus it sparked the war between the eastern and western continents that killed tens of millions.

"Are they just going to leave?" Olba asked, astonished. She turned to Olsam and scowled. "Is this how your wife's family behaves? This is completely unacceptable!" She turned the scowl on Tuula. "And you're just going to let them? Don't you know anything about Bolian customs and traditions? We could declare war on your house if they walk out that door!"

"Mom, please!" begged Tuula, staying at the table.

"I'm sorry, Tuula, this is just too much," replied Anya at the door. "You married into all of this without even telling me. I... need some time to think."

As the Finnish woman vanished through the doorway, the room was intensely quiet. You could hear a seafood pick drop, which it did, out of the hands of Uncle Toobin. It was the surest sign that something was deeply, terribly wrong as Uncle Toobin was renowned for his iron grip when it came to eating utensils. Angry blue faces all turned toward Tuula, as if she and she alone was responsible for the highly offensive and reprehensible behavior of her family.

Olba, sitting to her left, was the only one to speak up, and her voice carried grave and ominous undertones. "Something must be done..."

[ OFF ]

Lieutenant (J.G.) Jaana Voutilainen
Stellar Cartographer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (J.G.) Tuula Voutilainen
Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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

RSS Feed