Just Your Standard Seven Course Pre-Lunch Meal

Posted on 06 Feb 2014 @ 12:05pm by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Crewman Apprentice Sigrid Thelin

3,886 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 05 - Solstice
Location: Alta Plaza Garden Cafe, San Francisco
Timeline: MD 21 - 1100 hrs

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Olsam was a firm believer in the early lunch, as that always made room for a late lunch, too. If you only had the one lunch in the middle of them, then you'd be waiting all the way until the evening to have another meal. It just seemed inadvisable, purely from a nutritional point of view, of course.

He slipped into a booth near the door, folded his hands, and waited impatiently for service. Beneath him, his feet shuffled nervously on the floor. Really, he was starving. Breakfast had been a whole three hours ago, and he was pretty sure he was going to order at least one of everything on the menu here.

Sigrid had heard the chime on the door. Normally she was the first to be excited about a new patron, but it wasn't her table this turn, it was Karen's. She slumped back down on her seat in the kitchen. She lifted the PADD that she had been studying. Not the usual school work of course, no, Sigrid was busy flipping through pictures of shoes with her painted finger nail. Each flick, brought a bigger 'Ooooh'. With the slowness of the cafe, there was no way she would be affording any of these.

Karen suddenly came running into the kitchen. "Sigrid! Can you take my table, pleeeeese?" She danced in one spot wringing her hand in her apron nervously.

She sprung up from her spot. Sigrid Thelin didn't pass up a table. Suddenly her Vegan suspicion brought her back to reality. "Why?" She asked carefully.

"Um, I, well I'm just not feeling well enough for...this kind of customer." When it looked like Sigrid was going to sit back down she grasped her arm, "Oh, please Sigrid! I don't have the patience to deal with it, please, can you just take it for me?"

"Alright, fine." She shook her head. How did any of these girls make money. She walked out of the kitchen to retrieve the coffee pot and the carafe of orange juice at the servers line. She was annoyed at Karen for waiting this long to come get her. The longer a patron waits to be greeted the smaller the tip would be. She came around the corner and walked in to the front of house area and then skidded so hard she thought she was going to lose her balance. Her eyes were wide when she saw the man sitting at her table. With a shuffle and quiet squeal of excitement she very quickly returned to the servers line.

"Bolian!" She squealed as she practically threw the coffee and the orange juice down. "Fire that second grill! You -- wait no...you. Get that fish from the back of the freezer; the smelliest. Someone call in Pierre to help in the kitchen, tell him we just got slammed." She wheeled around and pulled a small bowl of lemons and grabbed a pot of hot water instead. Her mind kept going through those brand new shoes she was going to get after work. It was never hard to inflate a Bolian's check. Bigger check, bigger tip. She gave her best smile then approached the blue man in the booth.

When Olsam looked up, he seemed to be a shade paler than when he walked in. They were pushing hour four of no food, and he thought he could feel his blood sugar bottoming out. He smiled back, but the smile hid desperation. "Hello! My friend told me the food here was really awful, so I thought I'd come see for myself."

"Your friend wasn't wrong." She said sweetly. She put the hot water and lemons on the table. She knew the smell of the lemons would be soothing to the Bolian not really knowing why it did but in her experience it also worked to increase their appetite. She noted the lack of menu and made a mental note to wring Karen's skinny neck. Without being phased she produced one quickly from the booth next to them and opened it for him to inspect. "Do you need time with the menu or would you like to order now?" She was hoping to give Pierre enough time to stumble in from his day off to help in the kitchen.

Olsam almost didn't hear the question. "Ooo, lemons." He grabbed one and stuffed the whole slice in his mouth, rind and all. He inspected the menu briefly and then through a mouthful of lemon he said, "Well, at least your lemons are good. I think I'm ready... I'll take an order of the golden trout, lightly fried; two eggs, over-medium with cheese; a bowl of cottage cheese; and one banana pancake, hold the bananas."

"The trout comes with your choice of steamed vegetables, roasted potatoes, or rice." She didn't write anything down, but she was entirely focused on Olsam. That was all he was going to order? Haark spit it was.

"I'll take all three, please," he said, eyeing her. Wasn't she going to write anything down? Must be one of those waitresses with a good memory. "And then I want the pot roast with extra gravy...like, a whole bowl of it. Three fried chicken breasts with extra crispy skin. Uh, hmm... Maybe some more of those roasted potatoes. Do you have any onions? I'll take some of those. Just cut up is fine. I'll need six more lemons; a carafe of orange juice; three cups of coffee - two creams, no sugar; and a cheese sandwich with the crust cut off. We'll worry about dessert later. Oh, oh, wait. Do you have a soup du jour?"

Sigrid managed to keep the squeal to a tiny squeak in her mouth as she bit her lip, at this rate she'd be able to afford the left shoe. She slipped into the booth opposite from him. "First, it's more of a soup de la semaine than du jour and even then I don't know why they call it that because it's been chicken noodle since the place opened. 'Soup du always' I guess. Ooh and if you order a bowl with the sandwich you save money. Aww see? Now we're almost friends. Sooo, just to confirm when you say three fried chicken breasts, you do mean three of the Baba Anne's Fried Chicken Dinners?" She tapped the item on the menu with a long painted nail. "They each come with one fried chicken breast and a side of your choice or do you just want three individual breasts without the sides?"

Olsam gave a loud laugh that ended abruptly. "Oh. Oh, you were serious. Sorry. Yes, please, I'll take the dinners with three sides of mashed potatoes. And some rolls, too. Maybe an extra side of potatoes. And I'll need another bowl of gravy for those. I'll take the soup with the sandwich, too. You can bring the crust, I just don't like it attached to the sandwich. I'll eat it separately, though. No use in wasting food, hm? Say, do you have any pies? No, no. Wait. Don't answer that. I'll just focus on this for now."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Karen give the signal that Pierre had arrived. "Let's see, we've got one, no banana banana pancake. One pot roast, with a keg of gravy. One order of lightly fried golden trout, two over-medium eggs with cheese. Three Baba Anne's Chicken Dinners, extra crispy. Cheese sandwich with chicken noodle soup, crust on the side. A whopping seven side orders of potatoes, I believe." She did a quick mental count in her head to confirm. "Yup, four sides of roasted onions and potatoes and three sides mashed, that's seven. One side of steamed vegge, rice and cottage cheese. Let me go put that in for the kitchen and I'll be back with your lemons, orange juice and coffee." She squeezed his arm gently. "It's best if I bring this out in courses so the food stays hot? It starts to take on the flavour of the plate the cooler it gets. Also, do you want your sandwich toasted and on what kind of bread? White, brown or rye?"

"All three, toasted," Olsam blurted, looking flustered. He was horrible at making snap decisions, so he usually just said the first thing that came to mind. "Courses is okay...but what's the flavor of the plate? Do I have options?" He turned his attention back to the menu, looking for the plate flavor section.

Seizing the opportunity like a slobbering Haark smelling blood she slid out of the booth, "So then you're adding three toasted cheese sandwiches one with white bread, one with rye bread and one with brown bread. Will you want a bowl of chicken noodle soup with each of those sandwhiches?" She grinned widely tapping the part on the menu that shows how much he saves with the combo. She didn't give him time to respond. "As for plate flavour." She straightened up and in a brilliant display of misdirection waved her hands dramatically. "It's a mystery flaaavour." She crossed her arms and whispered conspiratorially, "It's not listed on the menu." At this point she didn't even care if he ate all of it. Which, surely even a Bolian couldn't do...could he? She just wanted to inflate the check.

Doubtless the easiest mark in the galaxy, Olsam's mouth was just sort of hanging open as if a sentence was forming very slowly. He thought he was starting to see spots around him. Everything was growing dark, distant, fuzzy. "Um. Okay. I'm just really hungry, please."

"I'll be back with your beverages then." She said brightly and bounded for the kitchen at full tilt. The sounds of yelling, and crashing items came from the back of house that lasted almost a full minute then abruptly stopped. Sigrid suddenly appeared from the kitchen carrying a tray. It seemed overloaded, but she managed to bring him orange juice, lemons, rolls, and a small bucket of chicken noodle soup. Now she had to practice the fine art of stalling while they made everything.

Olsam launched himself at the chicken soup like a Ferengi after a latinum crystal deposit. Was there any soup more divine in the universe? Any orange juice more orangey? Any lemons more lemony? Or any rolls more roll-like? He thought not, for as he fell upon the food it satisfied in him a deep hunger, the sort of hunger that could only come from going 4 hours and 17 minutes without having food.

"This really doesn't seem all that awful to me," Olsam mumbled, mouth full of roll. "Do you know when the other dishes will arrive? Did you cook this? I am so hungry... Do you have any hot pepper sauce? I love hot pepper sauce. It goes so well with chicken, don't you think? Are you from here? I'm not from here at all, I'm from Bolarus. But I've lived here a long time, so I'm like an honorary Terran." How Olsam managed to eat and speak so much at the same time seemed a mystery, though it was something like watching a master at work.

The look on Sigrid's face implied she was witnessing something disturbing, not art. When he finally stopped talking and they briefly made eye contact the look vanished and she smiled, fully recovered. She pushed the small bottle of hot sauce sitting next to the salt shaker closer to his plate using her nail as if that should create enough distance between her to not have her hand eaten. "No, I am definitely not from here." She didn't seem that phased by the quickness of his speech and she seemed at ease with keeping up with his train of thoughts, even if he himself didn't seem to. "I'm a born and bred Vega IX colonist. And no I am a hoorrrrible cook." Like some sort of internal timer only veteran servers had she looked at the clock just a brief moment before Karen wheeled out a cart with a large metal chafing dish. Sigrid reached out and pulled off the lid to reveal the chicken breasts and the pot roast, swimming in a sea of gravy. "Have you ever been to Vega IX?" She asked him taking a small involuntary step back.

Olsam applied the hot sauce liberally to the soup and then dashed some all over the newly arrived chicken. Seeing the arrival of a new course, he took the liberty of just drinking down the rest of the soup by bringing the massive bowl to his lips. Shoving all of the dishes to the side to make room for the roast and chicken, he said, "No, I don't think I've ever been to Vega IX... Or Vega II or III or IV... None of the Vegas, that I remember. Sometimes I go places and I forget, if you can believe it. Isn't the Vega system near the Rigel system? Great Ocean below, they have the worst food in the Rigel system. The Rigelians and the Rigellians and the Kalar - they wouldn't know a spice if it jumped up and slapped them in the face. I think living in the colonies is just fascinating, you know? They're always a little adventurous, even the well established ones. Well, except for like the Martian colonies or Luna...they're like retirement communities or something."

Olsam decided to forego the use of his fork and just picked up a fistful of pot roast. "So, what do you do? Were you a restaurateur on Vega IX?"

She waved the last question away, "You can make good money as a waitress back home if you're persistent." She said dismissively. "More importantly I'm surprised you haven't tried ghussa berries. You can get the best kinds imported from Rigel V in the Pak'it mountain regions. Oooh, those are so good. The seeds make a beautiful spice, oh what's it called, oh I can't remember but ya, grreaaat fruit. What do you do?"

Olsam had tried ghussa berries, of course, and ghussa berries couldn't hold a candle to the super tart sylvin berries of his homeworld. Still, he appreciated her enthusiasm for food and gave a big smile. "Me? Oh, I'm just a doctor in Starfleet. I just got reassigned to the USS Galileo, a Nova-class ship. Do you know those? They're the little ones... Well, the little ones that don't really shoot things. There are other little ones that just go around shooting up things."

Her face lit up at the word 'doctor'. Doctor's had money. Then in an instant the word 'Starfleet' made it sink a little. Those doctor's didn't have as much as the doctor's she was thinking of. Oh well. "There are little ones? They all look so huge I wouldn't even know what a little one looked like. Back home when I was little my brother's and I would try and count the starships in orbit. They were bright little dots in the sky, but you could always tell they were ships and not just other satellites by how fast they were going along the sky. Do you like living on a starship? I've always thought of them as mini cities zooming through space."

"Well, relatively little, I mean. Like, a Galaxy-class ship has more than a thousand people serving on it; our ship only has 100. But it's better that way in some regards. You know your crewmates better. And there are less injuries to treat," he said, winking while stuffing another wad of pot roast in his mouth. "I like it quite a lot. I've had several offers to stay and work on Earth or elsewhere, but nothing beats space travel. Did you like the interplanetary transport from Vega IX? I heard they're cramped!"

"And smelly!" She put a hand on her chest as if she was remembering a great hardship. "I mean it wasn't so bad past the second stop and we were closer to the Sol system, but I wouldn't want to experience it again soon. Are you on vacation then?"

"Vacation?" Olsam repeated, thinking. "I guess you could call it that. My ship is in drydock for refitting, so we have a few months to lounge about. Have you thought about applying for a civilian position on a ship? I think our bartender just quit, right before they installed this fancy new bar. Do you know how to tend a bar? I'm not sure what it involves, I've never tended one before. I usually just tend to patients."

"Patrons are similar to patients." She laughed. "At least it can feel like that sometimes, or rather I guess more like I'm their pharmacist than a doctor. Ooh, no, it's like being a psychiatrist, just not with the same payroll." She thought of the analogy and laughed again. "I'll have to ask them about the Galileo. I applied for a civilian job a short time ago, and I'm waiting to hear back. Being on a starship sounds so amazing, which is why I was wondering how you like living on one." The rest of his food had arrived by now and she started to help clear his plates away.

Olsam attacked the fish first, as it was the most fragrant and pungent of the dishes. As he was eating it, he closed his eyes and let out an odd sort of groan. "You know, the Bolian digestive system is such a hostile and corrosive environment that food breaks down almost as soon as it enters the system." He opened his eyes and smiled. "Just a little trivia; you can use it to impress your Bolian customers. Being on a starship is a really interesting experience. You seem friendly, I think you'd do fine. I know some people...not a whole lot of people, nothing like an Admiral or that kinda thing, but anyway, I'll put in a good word for you, Ms. Uh...? Did you say your name? Sometimes people say their name and I forget."

She brightened considerably when he offered to put in a word, she considered running to get a copy of her resume, but thought better of it. Instead she smiled and replied, "Ms. Thelin." She tapped her name tag that said 'Sigrid' and smiled brightly. "Nice to meet ya."

Olsam looked at the name tag as if he was noticing it for the first time. "Oh. Oh, look at that, they label you here. What does that mean, 'Sigrid'? Like, first officer? Chief of Serving Operations? We get labels, too, see!" He pointed to the pips on his collar and ran a hand along the blue cloth of his uniform. "I'm a lieutenant junior grade. I think they don't give us badges cuz 'lieutenant junior grade' would just make for a really big name tag."

"Mine stands more for Chief Complaints Listener." She thought about it and laughed. "At least your label doesn't give others a license to stalk you." She said it brightly.

"Chief Complaints Listener," Olsam repeated, considering the position as he chewed a mouthful of fish. "Sounds like ship's counselor to me. Without the stalking though. At least I don't think counselors get stalked. My friend is a counselor, I'll ask him. Do people stalk you often? Is that why you left Vega IX? I don't think anyone has stalked me before. I can't imagine what it might be like! It must be dreadful. Unless they're like a food cart vendor..." Olsam suddenly stopped chewing, as if he remembered something important. "I have been stalked! By a food cart vendor! He used to follow me around the Starfleet Medical campus when I was a student. Every day, right around mealtime, there he'd be. Just staring at me, all wide-eyed and eager."

Sigrid bit her lip as she thought about the ingenious business venture that food vendor had stumbled upon. She shook her head to return her attention to the Bolian. "Imagine for a moment that every one of your patients, say...I don't know, like 125 of them," the number seemed large, but that was the sitting room at the Stagger Inn restaurant, "all came to your clinic--bay--thing all at once at the same time every day all demanding medicine that they needed to treat whatever ailments they had. Then imagine that you had to run all around treating every one of them in the span of only a few hours. All of them need different medicine, all of them want to talk to you about their ailments, and all of them want to be helped instantly or they become impatient or even violent. That my blue friend is what it's like being a bartender." She flicked a lock of blond hair over her shoulder and put her hands on her hips confidently. "Only, I get gratuities out of it."

Olsam had been staring at her intently, even going so far as to stop eating while she established the scenario. He smiled brightly and shrugged. "I think it sounds like fun! I love patients. Big ones, small ones, cranky ones, green ones. They each have their own fascinating little story, and I get to fix them all up to make them better. Sometimes I even make a new friend! Although I guess if 125 of them came by everyday at the same time, I'd probably need to investigate the possibility of a chronic illness or an epidemic or maybe some sort of virus that erases memory engrams..." He trailed off and put his fork down, staring into the distance while contemplating the medical conundrum she'd outlined.

"Alcoholism?" She offered.

His eyes focused then he nodded and picked up the fork again. "You're probably right, it can be a serious problem in the fleet. You should consider becoming a nurse. You have a pleasant table-side manner and excellent diagnostic skills! You know, this food really isn't all that awful. And the service is good, too. Dr. N'Veldara had no idea what he was talking about, not that that's anything new." Almost as soon as he'd said it, he pursed his lips together and raised his brow in surprise. "Oops. I probably shouldn't have said that out loud. My colleagues tell me I have a tendency to ramble. One of them, a rather rude little Tellarite, once told me I had 'diarrhea of the mouth.' Which is the most absurd diagnosis I've ever heard in my entire life. It's anatomically impossible in virtually every species."

"Virtually." She agreed. She thought about his words, "I thought about being a nurse once or an EMT, but body fluids seriously gross me out, and," she flashed her dazzlingly painted nails, "these." She crossed her arms thoughtfully, "And if a Tellarite told you that I wouldn't worry too much. It's best just to treat everything they say as compliments. It makes the interactions go by smoother. Are you ready for the dessert menu?" She added just as smoothly, herself.

"Sigrid Thelin, Chief Complaints Listener, you will find that I am always ready for the dessert menu."

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Lieutenant JG Olsam Mott
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

&

Sigrid Thelin
Chief Complaints Listener
Alta Plaza Garden Cafe

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