The Winter Festival (Part 2)

Posted on 21 Mar 2014 @ 11:24pm by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Commander Andreus Kohl

2,731 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 05 - Solstice
Location: Starfleet Medical, San Francisco, Earth
Timeline: MD 04 - 1100 hrs

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Olsam loved favors. Loved them. And the greatest thing about being in Starfleet was that you had an entire military and scientific organization just brimming with brilliant people to call upon. Need a customized waste extraction unit? Call your engineer friend. Want that special Rigelian fruitpod? Call your operations friend. Going into neuroleptic shock? Well... Seek immediate treatment, then call your doctor friend for palliative care.

As far as he was concerned, you didn't even need to know a person to call upon them for a favor if they were serving on your vessel. For what was a ship full of Starfleet personnel but an informal family grouping floating through space? And every Bolian knew an informal family grouping was just another name for some people who could do you a favor, or vice versa.

And so he found himself in the rehabilitation branch of Starfleet Medical tracking down a man he'd never even met. Despite that, Olsam had already started to think of Lieutenant Kohl as a sort of long-lost cousin; his personnel file had made for bizarre but interesting reading on the intraplanetary transport from Paris, leaving the doctor with the impression that he knew far more about him than he actually did.

"Hey! Lieutenant Kohl!" Olsam shouted, waving across the room at who he thought was the correct Argelian. Not that you could really tell with all the humans milling around.

That Argelian was walking steadily in place upon a forcefield-generated treadmill. His pace was nothing like his workout regimen from six months ago, but the Argelian was standing upright, and he wasn't wearing motor-assist bands over his caramel-coloured athletic shirt and shorts. In response, Andreus Kohl took one hand off the grab-rail and waved back at Olsam. "Hullo!" he declared, just as enthusiastically.

The Bolian just stared at him for a moment and then smiled brightly - about time someone on the ship showed as much enthusiasm as he did. Olsam jogged over, and, despite the short distance, he was out of breath when he arrived.

"Hey...there...," he gasped, holding up a hand to ask for patience. Some seconds later, he managed to recover. "I'm Dr. Olsam Mott, the Galileo's new ACMO. You can just call me Olsam, though. Or Dr. Olsam in a medical environment. Except this medical environment. You don't have to call me Dr. Olsam here. But every other medical environment, probably so. I don't know - maybe not the morgue. But just because I don't like talking at all in morgue, you know?"

"The why?" was what came out of Kohl's mouth, but he didn't look at all sure about which was the word he had meant to say and which was the slip of the tongue. He lowered his gaze and busied himself with swiping the touch panel on the handle. The treadmill slowed to a stop, and so did Kohl. Then he looked up. When Kohl made eye-contact with Olsam again, a puzzled expression still clouded his sapphire eyes. "Why don't you like talking in a morgue?" Kohl asked.

Olsam seemed to turn grave, lowering his voice. His eyes were wide and full of haunted concern. "What if they start talking back? You know, the dead people... What if you're asking your assistant, 'Can you hand me the laser scalpel?' and the body says, 'Yes, of course.' It could happen."

Squinting slightly, Kohl appeared to consider this most seriously. He rubbed his lower lip with a couple of fingertips, as he stepped down from the treadmill. "I think I would be thrilled, mostly," Kohl said, and it came out in a deadpan. "One fewer operation to perform." And then he blurted, "Oh, and, of course, someone's not dead! Yay for not dead." He raised his palms and waved them around in a gesture of celebration.

Olsam's furrowed brow seemed to indicate he disagreed. "I prefer for my patients to remain dead, Dr. Kohl." In the blink of an eye, he was smiling again. "Hey! I came to ask you a favor, and then I read your personnel file and I found out you used to be a doctor but now you're a scientist and you're recovering from neurological damage." Somewhere within there may have been a question but it was unclear where.

Kohl pursed his lips and shook his head. "I've actually never been a doctor," said Kohl, as if it were a juicy bit of surprising gossip. He leaned closer to conspiratorially say, "Don't tell anyone."

Some of the blue color drained from Olsam's face, and he looked around nervously. He was trying very hard to keep his mouth shut, which was an almost impossible task. A nurse as the chief medical officer of a ship? By the Great Ocean, who'd make a decision like that? Honestly! A nurse! "Uh. Oh. Okay," he stuttered. "So, um, Lieutenant... Anyway." His mouth twitched. "I came to..." Eye twitch. "I needed a faa-...faaav... You were a nurse and the chief medical officer!? Did the doctors all die?"

"No," Kohl said starkly, and for a moment, it might have seemed like that was all Kohl was going to say on the matter. He turned his body as if he was going to walk away, but, really though, Kohl never passed up an opportunity to say his piece. "All of the doctors reported to me," Kohl said with just a hint of torturous glee. The glee dropped from his timbre. "I must have been one hell of a nurse if they put me in charge. Before they gave you my job."

"Oh, I didn't mean I don't think a nurse should be the CMO," Olsam said, for once catching on to the subtlety of the conversation (it happened at least bi-annually). "I just mean most other doctors don't think nurses are cut out for leadership roles, especially the Terrans. I don't really understand it myself. Everyone in Sickbay is part of a team, right? We work together to make people better. It's more of a team than any other department! I mean, sure, most doctors have more training and education but that doesn't mean there's some kinda hierarchy. It just means there are technical limitations. I think nurses would make great CMOs! They're really good at paperwork, and I think they work faster than doctors, too."

Olsam let the monologue linger for a moment before adding, with no small amount of curiosity, "Why did you switch to the Science Department? Do you not like Dr. Allyndra?"

"No, it's not that," said Kohl, but it came out in a slow drawl. His eyes wandered around, like something a caged animal might do. "No, I'm very fond of Allyndra," he said, and he smiled like he meant it. As he continued to speak, he narrowed his eyes on the middle distance over Olsam's left shoulder. "I never actually made the decision to switch departments. Not really. It was only ever meant to be a temporary measure. I was injured in the Borg attack on Galileo. Paralyzed. I got out of the biobed with some painful, relentless rehabilitation, but I couldn't meet the physical demands of a nurse practitioner. Working my duty shifts in Science was supposed to be temporary..."

Olsam nodded. "I saw that in your personnel file... Will you be returning to your duties in Sickbay after your rehabilitation? Or will you stay in the science department?"

"I don't know yet," Kohl remarked, with a shrug and a shake of his head. "There is no position for me in Sickbay. If I return to medicine, it would mean leaving Galileo. I'm, uh, I'm not sure which means more to me these days."

"Maybe one of the nurses will die during our next deployment and a position will open up," Olsam offered morbidly. "So, uh... I came to see you cuz I needed the help of someone from the science department. Dr. Allyndra recommended you."

While Olsam wished and hoped aloud for the death of one of his subordinates, Kohl nodded thoughtfully. He grasped for his towel, hanging over a handlebar, and he wiped excess sweat from his face. "What form do you expect this help I'm giving will take?"

"Well, I don't need much help... I just need to engineer a bacteria or other simple organism that reacts with a white bio-luminescent glow when exposed to a burst of alpha radiation. The glow should last around 4 hours. Also, it needs to be completely safe. Oh, and it should die within 24 hours. That'll take like, what? An hour?"

In response to Olsam's question, Kohl cocked his head to the side and draped his towel around his neck. "Well, that depends," Kohl said in consideration. "Does it have to be an engineered bacteria reacting to alpha radiation, or can I replicate a fungus that already exists? Exists in reality?"

"A fungus?" Olsam wrinkled up his nose. "That doesn't sound very appealing. What if people are allergic to it? Is it hideous? Because I can't spray historic buildings with hideous fungi. If it's not hideous, and it glows white...that's okay. Except I already got Mr. Darius to agree to disperse the alpha radiation... Hm. Do you think you could modify it to react more strongly to alpha radiation? It needs to be really bright! And beautiful. And grand..."

"If you're concerned about hygiene then, would holographic projectors be a better option?" Kohl asked, waving around an open palm as if the idea were sitting there. "Or are you married to the notion of exposing all of the building's residents to alpha radiation?"

"Oh, I don't have the budget for holoprojecters," Olsam said, looking aghast at the thought of budget overruns. What sort of festival planner would he be if he went over budget? How could any municipal pseudo-official possibly even entertain the notion of spending more money than they had? "Alpha radiation isn't so bad! You know, in low dosages. We're exposed to it all the time. It's not like, say, gamma radiation... Oh, that would be a terrible mess. A terrible, bloody mess...."

The speed with which Kohl began to speak suggested he hadn't listened to much of the back-half of Olsam's tirade. "I am familiar with some varieties of gammaproteobacteria that are used for biolumisence imaging," Kohl said, and there was an edge of hope to his delivery. He gripped the edge of his towel around his neck. "I... believe there is one that has been engineered to react to alpha radiation..."

"Oh, really?" Olsam asked, eyes going wide with anticipation. "I hope it doesn't smell like horses or anything. The mayor hates horses."

"If it smells like anything, it's more likely to smell like calamari than like horses," Kohl deadpanned. He didn't even blink. "Who's this mayor we're concerned about? The mayor of what?"

"Oh, His Honor Bastien Florian Dufour, Mayor of Crecy-la-Chapelle," Olsam said. Then he blinked hard. "Wait. Did I forget to tell you about the winter festival? I thought I did... But it must have been in my head. Or at least I think it was in my head. Now I'm not sure..."

Kohl squinted at Olsam, and winced out a lopsided smile at him. "Maybe you told your personal log?"

"Well! I'm the chairperson of the winter festival in my little village in France, just outside Paris, and I'm going to make it the grandest festival the Federation has ever seen," he said with a glassy-eyed look into the distance.

Watching Olsam's eyes, Kohl guilelessly asked, "Can I come?" Pursing his lips, Kohl took a step back and shrugged. "Or am I just the help?"

"Huh? Oh. Of course you can come! Everyone's invited. I'd love to have you there! Maybe the mayor will give you an award for helping. No promises though, he's a bit miserly with them. And everything else, I guess. I'm on a minuscule budget, even smaller than last year. If I didn't know him better I'd say he wants the festival to be an absolute disaster under my leadership. But I have a lot of friends and a lot of favors!"

"Why," Kohl asked, "would he want you to fail?"

"Oh, well," Olsam said dismissively. "There's a rumor that the mayor doesn't like me. Something about I wiped out his rose cultivars one year, or he got really mad that time I backed over his marble statue outside of city hall and knocked the nose off of it. I think some kids stole it. I certainly didn't do it! And it was an honest mistake.

"He's been the mayor forever, and he almost lost a race once... I may have spoken out for his opponent, but he was my friend! What was I supposed to say? I just supported my friend and called into question the mayor's fiscal and social policies. I was only telling the truth. I mean, who gets upset about that? Oh, wait, I also gave him a strawberry tart once right before the Secretary for Planetary Affairs came through the village on a little Terran goodwill tour. I thought it was raspberry! He's terribly allergic to strawberries. It was a simple mistake! He swelled up like a tomato, and before I could get an antihistamine, the secretary arrived. She was quite understanding; we all had a good laugh about it."

Kohl looked down so he could wrap his motor-assist bands around each of his thighs. "I know I always feel like a good chuckle when my airway is swelling closed," Kohl muttered, but still loudly enough for Olsam to hear. He glanced up. "You don't think His Honour would do anything to intentionally sabotage the festival, do you? I mean: mistakenly sabotage."

Olsam blinked, as if he'd never considered it before. "Well... I guess... That would mean he actually does dislike me. I don't think that's possible." He smiled and waved a hand. "Everyone likes me."

Shrugging away any trace of doubt, Kohl brightly said, "Then you have nothing to worry about." He crouched down to floor level, and wrapped the second pair of motor-assist bands around his calves. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

Olsam looked increasingly concerned. Why did he say 'nothing' so many times? People only did that to emphasize a false point. Did the mayor really hate him? Did Andreus Kohl know the mayor? Did he have the inside track on the gossip of Crecy-la-Chapelle? Did the village council pass some resolution of censure against him, and everyone knew but him?

A light sweat began to break out all over his bald head, tiny beads of moisture. His eyes darted back and forth as he neared full on panic. Why would someone not like him? He was specifically likable. Not only did everyone like a Bolian, everyone like a Bolian doctor. Especially a Bolian doctor like Olsam Mott, who was kind and giving and apologized for destroying your roses and backing over your statue and giving you strawberries and speaking out for your political opponent...

"Um. Well, okay, thank you, Mr. Kohl," Olsam said, shuffling in place as if he didn't know which direction to depart. "You can just...uh, get that information to me on the bacteria soon, please. If you would. I owe you a favor... I just need to, uh...go. Now."

Through most of Olsam's sweaty paranoia-fest, Kohl was largely focused on adjusting the settings on his motor-assist bands. By the time, Olsam said he had to go, Kohl was raising himself into an upright position again. Catching the back-half of Olsam's discomfort, Kohl responded to it with a breezy shrug. "Okay," Kohl replied. "Do you keep your combadge with you?"

"Huh, what?" Olsam snapped his head around to look at Kohl as if that were the most baffling question he'd ever heard. "Yes, of course. Why?"

"That's how I'll contact you," Kohl said, his timbre caught somewhere between cautious and impassive. He remained standing where he was awkwardly. "About the bacteria."

"Oh. Right. Yes, well, I suppose they're used for just that purpose, aren't they?"

[ OFF ]

Lieutenant Andreus Kohl
Science Officer
USS Galileo

&

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

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