Turning the [Fuzzy] Tables

Posted on 23 Aug 2014 @ 6:36pm by Lieutenant Oren Idris Ph.D. & Lieutenant Asahi Kita

2,342 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 7, CEO's office
Timeline: MD07 - 1600hrs

[ON]

Feeling extremely determined after his epiphany in the storeroom, Oren just barely managed to sign into his shift at the lab before he was out the door again, heading to the nearest turbolift to take him to the engineering deck. He was a man on a mission but, as he jumped over Tribble herd after Tribble herd, the nature-loving pacifist was seriously considering just throwing them out of the airlock. He'd heard how quickly Tribbles bred but this was getting ridiculous!

After finally exiting onto the correct deck, Oren stripped himself of the half a dozen or so Tribbles that had latched on and neatly threw them back into the turbolift before heading into Main Engineering. The minute he stepped inside, a sense of ultimate dread washed over him. The entire floor was crawling with the useless little parasites and the short trip to the Engineering Chief's office looked more like a trek than the short walk it usually was.

Sliding his feet on the deck and pushing the Tribbles away with his hands seemed to be easiest way and still, a full ten minutes later, Oren finally found himself in front of Kita's office door. There was a handwritten sign taped on it, saying

"Don't open the door, just shout to get a hold of me. Comm's not working"

"Lieutenant Kita!" he called out awkwadly. Looking around afterwards, Oren realized no one was paying any attention to him, so he assumed this wasn't a new development.

From the inside of the office came a loud 'jUST A MOMENT!', followed by the distinct sounds of a sheep dog's yip, getting closer and closer to the door as the seconds passed. It took moments for the door to slide open, revealing a black and white puppy dog sitting where a neatly herded path had been created. "Come on in, before the tribbles decide to get mutinous again."

Oren smiled at the little puppy, then looked up at the engineer. "Hey, Lieutenant. I'm Oren Idris, I'm from the Science department," he said, "and I have an idea on how we could possibly get rid of these Tribbles." He walked through the cleared path. "Maybe I should've gotten a herding dog too. Mine's biting them and bringing them to me," he commented.

As the scientist walked through the path, the door slid shut. The tribbles flooded in, filling the space behind Oren as he continued on, leaving clearings when the dog ran back and forth, yipping at them to do so. "I had an unfair advantage. I know where the tribble that started this mess came from, so I took the foresight to get myself Hojo here. But, an idea? I'm all ears, Oren. Call be Asahi, by the way. The Lieutenant thing makes me uncomfortable." He gestured towards where he assumed a chair to be, eying the lump of tribbles all over it. "If you can find the seat, you're more than welcome to sit in it. Asahi himself had sat himself upon his desk, losing the other chair to the tribble disaster. "Otherwise, I'm not sure how tribbles feel about you sitting on them."

"I don't think they'd appreciate it," Oren said with a chuckle, looking down in the hope of finding a small clearing on the floor, but there was no such luck. "I think I'll just stand. It seems safer." he finally decided, wanting to get to the point of why he was there.

"Anyway, about the idea. The whole process of how exactly it came to me is irrelevant, but I thought, what if we just put the Tribbles in a kind of storage? And by storage, I mean, what if we use the ship's transporters to simply beam them into the pattern buffers. I met Louis the other day and he was in the buffer for days. I assume Humans are much more complex than Tribbles, so why couldn't we just store them in the buffer? At least for a few days until we find a more permanent solution."

"Huh." Leave it to a scientist to find an idea like that. The brainstorming session he held with his engineers the day before proved fruitful, but seemed to miss the vital step of there being more tribbles. The Galileo was only a small ship, and, without a proper method of humanely putting them all down and their resources stretched as thin as they already were, they needed a temporary solution for the poor fluffballs.

If there was a temporary solution, this was it. "I'm not sure how that would work, or how many tribbles it would take before even the pattern buffers freaked out... but that's not a bad idea, considering the worst thing duChampe had was a case of dignity loss, I don't see much worse happening to the tribbles. The only issue is finding the fine line between keeping them there and overloading the transporter..."

"Hmm." Oren was quiet for a moment, thinking. "Well, if we put a few in the transport buffer and saw how it reacted, wouldn't it be easy enough to calculate how many it can take before it encountered difficulties? And if we put even half of the Tribbles into the buffer, and found some way to herd the rest into one place, like a spare storeroom, it would make things much easier."

"... Trust a scientist to have the science answer." Asahi chastized himself for not thinking about the obvious option. "But I definitely don't see much of a problem with it. Unless tribbles have some weird trait that allows them to rematerialize of their own accord, I say we go for it." Of course, Asahi was at wit's end, and the sea of tribbles in his office wasn't helping. "We'll have to talk to the transporter chief about this, though I can't imagine anyone would oppose any decent idea at this point."

"Well, do you have time now?" Oren asked, eager to begin. "I probably won't take long." He couldn't imagine it take a long time to pop up to the transporter Chief and ask for their advice.

"Maybe it would be easier if we beam up groups of Tribbles..." Oren thought out loud. "I guess the Chief would know what would be easier. No idea how we could do that though. I'm gonna guess you don't have a little army of these." Oren knelt down in the middle of the tribbles to hold his hand out to the puppy to sniff.

The pup was more than happy to sniff Oren's hand, yipping happily and wagging his tail when his inspection was complete. "If I had a little army of puppy dogs, this whole thing would have been so much easier." Asahi leaned back in his chair, dismissing Oren's first thought with a wave. "We can corral them just fine. It was just finding a place for them that was the most difficult part."

Petting the puppy and scratching behind it's ear absentmindedly, Oren thought about their predicament. "Well, there's a storage closet up on Deck 4 that doesn't have any Tribbles," he revealed, his voice taking on an airy tone now as he looked down at the puppy, thinking.

"Before it was the geology storage, it housed some of the Archaeological artifacts. That means it's been isolated to make sure the temperature, humidity and air quality never changes, no matter the state of the rest of the ship," Oren explained, scratching under the puppy's chin. "I think that's why they could only go through the door. If we managed to fit one of the larger store rooms that way, maybe we could put what we can't teleport into it?" He finally looked up at Asahi to see his response.

Asahi leaned forward, eyes narrowing at Oren in an attempt to ascertain whether the other was intentionally keeping a tribble-free zone from the rest of the ship or not. It may have been too small to house the crew, but something like that shouldn't have escaped his eye. Then again, so many little things had escaped his notice, that he wasn't sure he felt all that qualified to be chief of anything this way.

There was time for self-depreciation, and now wasn't it. "We had a few ideas playing around, but if there's a storeroom like that, then we might be able to find a good use for it. If not to house tribbles, then to house the medbay patients or something. The only issue is getting the tribbles out first... but I guess we could easily transport the tribbles out, fit the room up, and throw in what we can't fit... These are all very good ideas... it'll just require a lot of work... I wonder if we have the manpower for that."

Oren listened, wondering if Science would be happy to help with anything that wasn't scientific. After all, most of them were in highly specialised fields so he seriously doubted the veritable zombie apocalypse happening in the mines was someone's forte. They were the biggest department; surely they could spare some people.

But, whatever the situation, it wasn't Oren's place to speak of such things. That was Stace's job. Instead, he tackled another part of Kita's theory.

"Honestly, I don't think the storeroom would be big enough to house all of the Tribbles. It's barely more than a storage closet and I imagine the most it could be used for is to house a couple of patients. But, those kinds of fortification parameters seem to be working. What about a holodeck?" As soon as he said it, Oren shook his head, dismissing the idea. "But that might pull too much power to have running all the time and I imagine the Tribbles are already causing chaos with the power grid.

"As for getting Tribbles out of storage closet, I assure you, there are literally none in there. I just came from it. That's where I got my inspiration for the idea. I accidentally stumbled into it when I realised that someone had put a few relics in another storeroom so I just moved them back into the proper one only to find it completely empty and Tribble free." He didn't mention Elijah since there was really no point to it.

"So, where do we start and what can I do?" he asked, looking at the engineer.

"There have been multiple places that are easily up for suggestion and overhaul, but we'll have to sort something out real soon. It'd have to be something we can shut down and rig up like that storage closet, but somewhere... big, that isn't a cargo bay." The thought of sending a few tribbles over to the Cardassian warship just to spark a little 'fun' crossed his mind, but he dismissed the thought as Stace's words echoed in his head. He may not have been a diplomat, but he had to at least attempt to think like one. "So the holodeck isn't completely ruled out yet."

Asahi's brow raised skeptically as Oren offered his services. He wasn't entirely certain to the other's expertise, but he didn't think it had anything to do with a spanner. "... Depends on what you can do. I suppose you could help me convince the transporter chief that this isn't going to explode his pads, but without knowing what you're capable of..."

Oren looked at him with confusion for a moment before letting out a small laugh and shaking his head. "Engineering? Me? Oh, no! I'm terrible at anything technical like that. In fact, I have the nasty habit of accidentally breaking most equipment I come into direct contact with unless I have training for it," the young man revealed. Engineering had never been something he was good at it. For all he knew, the warp core worked through elaborate dark magic.

"I meant if you need me to do speak to anyone or do something outside of engineering so that you could focus here. I could go and speak to the science department and see if any of the methods of controlling this infestation could be combined with this," he suggested.

"Oh..." Well, now Asahi just felt a little off-kilter. "That'll... that'll be helpful. If you find some people in science, I'll find some people in engineering, and we'll see what we can come up with?" He made a mental note to contact Stace later as well. It was probably a good idea to keep everyone in the loop.

"Excellent!" Oren said with a bring, satisfied smile. "Personally, I doubt we'll be able to beam them all up considering their numbers, but I'm sure if we combine several plans, we should at least buy some time for ourselves until the mission on the planet is finished," he admitted, looking a bit more serious now.

"Buying some time might be all we need." Asahi snagged the PADD that surfaced from a small wave of wiggling tribbles, already calling up his communications display to contact and set people out to start the process. "I'll make sure my end is starting the process, and you should do the same. I should probably confer with your Department Head before I nearly snag you away from her... but we can keep in contact if something comes up." He looked to Oren, nodding. "Let's get to work, shall we?"

"Great!" Oren agreed. He seriously doubted he'd be missed in the science department considering his word did nothing for the current mission. "I'll try to find the quartermaster and see if he can move some cargo around and maybe give us a possible, free store room."

"I'll leave you to that, then." Asahi nodded curtly, tipping his PADD toward the other. "Good luck to you, ah... Oren."

Returning the nod, Oren gave both Asahi and the little puppy a quick wave before leaving the office.

[OFF]

LT. Asahi Kita
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

&

Oren Idris, Ph.D.
Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Galileo

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