With an appetite so dangerous (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 26 Jun 2012 @ 6:33am by Commander Andreus Kohl & Chief Petty Officer Lucalin Mrina Ph.D.

3,535 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, Mess Hall
Timeline: MD07 - 1644 hours

[ON]

Lucalin was growing extremely tense. His hunger was excruciating, his skin felt too tight, his stomach felt as though it were twisting in on itself. Around 1700, he stepped into his quarters and rolled his shoulder forward, pulling his pack off and prodding at the nutrient package inside. Still full. He frowned. It should have been nearly depleted by now. He fumbled at his neck, disengaging the line and testing it. Nothing came out. No wonder it wasn't working. Something about the pressure in the shuttle must have altered the consistency of the fluid or something he'd done had kinked the line or... He angled himself towards a corner of the small bathroom and shut the door, issuing a series of low whistling calls. He couldn't feel or sense anything wrong with the port itself, but at this point he didn't care anymore. He needed calories. Right now. He rifled through his pack, dragging a pair of butter sticks out and shoving them into his mouth, chewing and mashing them greedily and swallowed hugging the wall and waiting for the worst to pass. Flim Flam was nyaking worriedly around his legs. "It's okay, really, it's..." He groaned, pressing his hand to his stomach. Food. He needed real food.

Meanwhile, It was only after Andreus Kohl found himself in the middle of a balancing act --a literal balancing act-- that he questioned if he'd perhaps approached his entire situation wrongly. After an excessively, self-indulgently long shower, Kohl had bolted out of his shared quarters at a sprint. He would hardly have time to eat before the start of his first duty shift, and his CMO had already allowed him a later start-time. Arriving even later still would make him appear ungrateful, Kohl supposed, or he supposed that's what his father would have said.

Atop Kohl's flattened left hand was a tray of food: carbonated water and a ham & cheese salad. At the same time, his right hand was gripping the back of a small chaise lounge, the feet of which were being propped up by his right boot. The singe-seated chaise had been facing a dull wall of the mess hall, but Kohl was trying his damnedest to face the chaise lounge towards the tall viewports. All without putting his food down.

Lucalin was piling a mess hall tray high with everything that smelled remotely edible; he took a huge mouthful of a cake and shoved it into his mouth before he'd even left the line and... stopped, turning his head towards a pitched squealing sound. He canted his head to the side, navigating easily through the crowd guided by smells and heat signatures and sounds, and found his way to an awkwardly posed humanoid holding a tray and- he whistled and Flim Flam trotted up behind him, her purrs revealing more detail on the situation. Assessing the pose and the position of the chaise, Luca lifted his foot and shoved along with the humanoid. The chaise turned. His stomach groaned loudly and he winced at the shudder of pain in his gut. "I hope you don't mind. I need to sit down," he murmured apologetically as he sank onto one end of the chaise and shoveled the rest of the first slice of cake into his mouth. Pure energy. Too fast. Protein. Protein. He lifted a bowl of high protein and fiber rich dikyeda beans in broth and slurped them like a dying man. Which he was, in a way. On a sigh of relief, he blinked and let his head fall back as his digestion made mincemeat of the beans. "You were on the shuttle," he said, recognizing the scent clearly.

"What?? No, I wasn't," Kohl said far too sharply. His immediate reaction was to think about that shuttle, the shuttle he was obsessing about. The shuttle he hadn't been anywhere near close enough to do anything about the crashing and the dying. But that wasn't the shuttle Luca was talking about. Kohl closed his eyes to avoid seeing the expression on the other man's face. "Except I was," said Kohl, "I was on the shuttle over from starbase one-five-two. You were sleeping, yeah?" Since Luca had taken over the cushion of the chaise lounge, Kohl perched himself on the arm of the chaise.

Luca flared his nostrils quizzically, sniffing again. He'd been sure... then the other reversed his assertion. The negation and reversal made very little sense to Luca, but he was fairly unconcerned with that. Lots of things didn't make sense to him. Either he'd figure it out, someone would explain it to him, or it was something he didn't need to know. "Yes. Sleeping," Lucalin agreed with the other male's guess. His eyes were open, shifting slightly from side to side as he listened intently to the space around him. Flim Flam made a little 'oof' sound and clamored up to squeeze in beside him, sniffing at the contents of the tray. Luca lifted his arm to give her some space and dropped his arm back down to rest on her back as he felt around on his tray for the next thing he could find: another bowl, this one full of a glutinous pudding. He slurped at it and pressed his lips together over the mouthful, slowly feeling his stomach unwind from its knot of tension as his hand roamed the tray again to find a pastry tube full of cream. He dipped the tube into the pudding and took a big bite. Chewed. Swallowed. "Did I miss anything?"

"Ah, the gespar. It's been peeled and carved into the shape of a, uh, I think a bird," said Kohl. He extended an index finger to point at the fruit. By now, Kohl's embarrassment had passed, and he was watching Luca eat with blatantly apparent curiosity. Kohl noted the movements of Luca's eyes and the way Luca grabbed at the food. "My name is Andreus. I work in Sickbay," Kohl said. There was distance in his voice, because he wasn't certain if Luca would respond. All-consuming hunger seemed to have won forefront of Luca's thoughts. "I reckon I should always introduce myself when I'm sitting close enough to give someone a lap dance."

Flim Flam's purring was giving him a vague, general sense of where he was while his mouth was otherwise occupied staunching the organ-twisting hunger, but even without that he could feel Andreus' proximity through thermal cues alone. Humanoid, but not human. He didn't smell human; there was something less iron about him. Luca swallowed the last of the pudding and set the emptied bowl and pastry aside. A lap dance? He couldn't find a reference in his experience for such a thing; although he did have a creative, word-specific mind so a variation of potential situations in which someone would dance on the lap of someone else were immediately forthcoming. All of them made Luca smile; he whistled - a high-velocity sound that lilted, rolling like its own language at a pitch so high it sounded quiet and breathy - in Andreus' direction and had a clearer sense of the man's position, perched on the edge of the chair. "I am called Lucalin, or any diminutive variation thereof," he introduced himself, scooting over into the edge of the chair and relocating his tray onto Flim Flam's back while she nuzzled and purred against his torso. "I work in the science and research department. It is my pleasure to formally make your acquaintance, Andreus." Andreus, Andreus, he repeated the name in his head two more time to soak it in. He touched the remaining part of the chaise, feeling the space available and judged it was enough for the humanoid to fit into comfortably. "It was not my intention to steal your seat, but I'm afraid I can't go just yet. Please," Luca invited him, indicating the space he'd made available. "Sit. Eat." He lightly touched the remaining items on his tray and found a collection of hardboiled eggs of some variety and began to eat them like jellybeans, shells and all. The eggs were doing the trick, almost magically. They'd be easier to carry too, than the butter he'd be hauling around. It could get quite messy. As he ate, he scented for the gespar Andreus had indicated and found it with the hand not shoveling food into his mouth. It was, in fact, in the general shape of a bird, he discovered. He chewed the two eggs in his mouth, focusing the attention of both his hands to the carving someone had done to the fruit. He was still unclear why it was that some races felt the inclination to carve fruit and ice into the shapes of other things. It was time spent artistically affecting something that would eventually disappear, was intended to disappear. Odd. "And so it has," he agreed, because it was true. He wasn't entirely sure what the shape of the gespar had to do with the shuttle flight over, but it was an observation he'd failed to make. That was interesting.

Careful to steady his water glass with one hand, Kohl was haphazard with the rest of his movements. He scooted off the arm of the chaise lounge and landed on a narrow square of cushion. In doing so, Kohl bumped against Luca, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. Since such was to be expected from squeezing into a tight spot, Kohl didn't pay the physical contact any mind. With almost as much gusto as Luca, Kohl speared the tongs of his fork into the leafy bits of his ham and cheese salad, and set into devouring his supper. After swallowing a couple of mouthfuls, Kohl began assembling a perfect bite on his fork -- picking for the right ratio of cheese, ham, bread cube and lettuce. He explained his thesis on the perfect bite of his replicated supper, and then he turned his attention back to Luca himself.

"I apologise if you've heard this ten times today already," Kohl said to Luca, as he twirled his fork over his salad bowl, "but what is your area of research?"

Lucalin was very used to sharing confined spaces with others; he'd spent the first fifteen years of his life underground, squeezing through sometimes very narrow tunnels to get from one place to the next. It hardly registered with him anymore; it was, in fact, somewhat comforting, to be pressed between Flim Flam and the other crewman. He swallowed his latest mouthful and brushed a flake of shell from his lip, popping it into his mouth to grind between his back teeth. "Bioengineering," he answered, perfectly happy to answer the question. He loved his work; adored it. "It's a fascinating line of study," he went on, obviously thrilled to be able to share his passion with someone else, "the universe is chock full of billions of as yet unidentified and unstudied living organisms with often completely unique genetic patterns and the more we learn, the more we're able to access and effect our own constitutional matrices and those of the creatures we rely upon to create a wholly harmonious existence. I'm very pleased to be able to travel from this sector and have more access to what is out there." As he spoke, he inserted minute 'tik!'s and 'tchiuk!"s every few words, assessing the contents of his plate and searching for the next. He popped another egg into his mouth and chewed, already picking up the next before the first was fully swallowed. "You are from somewhere else, though. Yes?"

"I come from the second planet of the Argelius system," Kohl answered, using the Federation's nomenclature for his homeworld. He continued to prod at and chew on his salad, interspersed with sips from his glass. He was eating quickly when Luca spoke effusively, but Kohl ponderously picked at his salad when he had his own words to choose. "The spaceport over my world is an integral node in the Federation's supply and transport routes, but my people..." --He faltered when he could hear his mother's judgmental tone in his own words. He reconsidered, and found himself remarkably wistful all at once.-- "My people aren't much bothered by that sort of thing. They strive for harmonious existence through applied sociology. Have you ever visited Argelius Two for shore leave, Lucalin?"

Luca had a vague academic awareness of where the Argelius system was, but that was about all. He made a 'no' sound - a doleful roll in the back of his throat. "I have never been on a planet other than my own," he explained. "I have studied the molecular construction of organisms from other worlds, but it's not the same. I am very much looking forward to visiting other planets, though! Have you been to many? And what do you mean by 'applied sociology'?"

Kohl nodded at the question about visiting other worlds. Travel had come naturally from his parents' careers and now in his own service to Starfleet. A smile came to his lips, but it felt strained and unfamiliar to Kohl. The smile wasn't born from the memory of traveling to other worlds, but it came from Luca's shameless excitement at the prospect of doing so. Hearing that excitement was a little bit delightful. Kohl couldn't entirely remember when interstellar travel had seemed so exciting.

"The society I come from is considered hedonistic by Federation standards," Kohl said in an impartial manner; "Pleasure is the only thing anyone strives towards, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual. But it's usually the physical. Since joining the Federation, my people have delved even deeper into the pursuits of pleasure. They allow the Federation to administers the planet's workings and infrastructure. ...There aren't very many Argelian scientists anymore."

Luca assessed the bobbing motion of Andreus' head and it took him about twenty seconds to remember that was a way other races expressed agreement. Hedonistic, Lucalin considered. "But discovery is intrinsically pleasurable as well!" he volleyed, picking up slices of avocado and coating them with ranch dressing before popping them into his mouth and licking his fingers clean. Flim Flam snuffled against his chest, her lengthy tongue snapping out to pull the bird-shaped gespar into her mouth. "If it weren't for discovery, for science, for the brilliance of complex chemical and atomic compounds, Flim Flam would not exist. You and I would not exist. This ship would not exist. Sex would not exist. Food would not exist. These are all integral to pleasure, are they not?"

"Be that as it may, a body doesn't need to understand the secret science to enjoy food and sex and starships. If they're handed to you on a platter, you can take them at face value for a lifetime or two," Kohl said, trying hard to convey through his tone that he wasn't disagreeing with Luca, exactly; he was just making a different point. As he spoke, Kohl watched the way Luca was coming close to polishing off every scrap of food on his tray. Kohl stabbed a meaty chunk of ham from his salad, and he proffered it by holding the tip of his fork near Luca's mouth. Kohl said, "I don't totally understand how replicators work, but that doesn't stop them from making my life delicious."

Luca's nostrils flared as he inhaled the scent that was suddenly close to his face. Meat. Cheese. Fats and proteins. His hand moved up to his face as he continued to breathe the scent, wondering how he'd gotten the smell of meat on him and where exactly it was coming from. He trilled quietly and jerked his head back, realizing Andreus' hand was suddenly directly in front of his face. Flim Flam's continued to chew her fruit silently. He trilled, chirped, and clicked, assessing Andreus' posture, the density of his muscles and the lack of tension in them. Non-aggressive. Posture, extension, providing. "Ah," he breathed, "thank you." Replicated, Andreus had said, and Luca could scent the fact that this meat, however chemically sound, had never belonged to a living creature. Luca rested his fingers lightly on Andreus' wrist, then traveled out down the utensil - he trilled again - fork, and held Andreus' hand on the metal tool still with a gentle pressure, steadily clicking until he located the cube of meat with his mouth and tugged it free of the fork. Chewing, he considered the texture. Rolling the cube around his tongue without chewing it for a while before slicing a section off his with teeth and rolling that with his tongue, then chewing and swallowing the rest of it. "It is very good," he agreed. "I don't know exactly how replicators work either," he admitted. "I never needed the information. But that doesn't stop me appreciating the complexity of the design or its detail." He rubbed his tongue against his palate, clearing a bit of the ham from the barba volito there, and laughed. "Handed to you on a platter. It's such an odd expression. How would one be handed sex on a platter? Food, yes. But sex? Starships?"

Refusing to admit to a lazy idiom or mixed metaphor, Kohl stared at Luca through his peripheral vision, and he smirked at the challenge. "Well," Kohl said, "well, a starbase landing pad can hand you a shuttlecraft on a proverbial platter, of course. And as for sex on a platter..." --Kohl dropped his voice to a whisper and turned his lips towards Luca's ridged ear-- "You have to experience it to believe it."

Luca's ear flexed reflexively; it was the hushed breath and vibration more than the words that set him off - he was so close to Luca's extraordinarily sensitive ear that the mere soundwaves created an overwhelmingly sensual sensation, like rolling in velvet while eating melted butter and chocolate. The muscles in his ear contracted again, flexing the apparatus at large and fluttering the inner muscles. His tongue darted out to wet his lips subconsciously. Automatic reactive systems began churning blood faster, which meant his body was suddenly burning far more energy than it ought. His stomach tightened. Damn, Luca thought and began to deepen and slow his breath cycles, focusing on slowing his blood pressure down in the process. He really didn't want to end up in sickbay on his first day on board. The fats he'd eaten were processing slower, but body was still screaming at him for more. Then again, his body's needs were many and varied. "I will remain open to the next opportunity then," he said quietly. "For the purposes of practical experience," he added with a small, pleased smile and ate another egg.

"Be sure it's Argelian, mind," said Kohl. He regained his normal volume for speaking and was looking at the last of the meal on his tray. Using the edge of his fork, he scooped up the last of the leafy greens from the bowl, and he ate them too. After he swallowed the last of his supper, Kohl toyed with the rim of his glass, swirling the water inside. Conspiratorially, Kohl remarked, "You can't trust those imitators on Risa."

"And I can trust you?" Luca inquired as he swallowed and ate the last of the eggs. He touched emptied plates and bowls on the tray and found they were all empty.

Andreus Kohl's breath caught in his throat at the question. His languid posture of thirty seconds ago became still, and became stiff. He was relieved to be staring at his empty tray if only because it meant he didn't have to look away from Luca's question. At first blush, Kohl couldn't think why the question disquieted him so, at least not until he was saying, "I don't know," because he really didn't. He didn't know why he didn't either. "I guess that's up to you," Kohl said.

Luca's ears flexed and shifted independently when the man beside him stilled. It was such a quick reaction, he thought for a moment that there was something happening in the room, but the noise around them carried on, vague and general with spots of laughter and debate. Then came the words, suddenly dropped in, simple and serious: 'I don't know'. The honesty was so pleasant that Luca closed his eyes and hummed. "Your people are hedonists," he said with a small smile. "Mine are practical, sometimes selfishly. Sometimes to a fault." He held out his hand, "Let's trust each other, then, and see how much we both can learn."

"I can do that," Kohl said, with the certainty of gradual acceptance. He reached over and squeezed twice on Luca's outstretched hand. "But I have an awful lot to learn."

"And a lot to teach," Luca asserted confidently, his eyes shifting slightly, uselessly, nerves reflecting the sounds around them. Flim Flam had gone back to purring, her head resting against his chest. The rumble of her purr shook his body, making the uncomfortable hunger worse. He needed more. Great mountains of calories.

[OFF]

To be continued...



Chief Petty Officer Lucalin Elil Mrina Ph.D.
Bioengineer
USS Galileo

and

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

RSS Feed