Discourse Delayed

Posted on 21 Oct 2014 @ 3:10am by Lieutenant JG Dorian West & Lieutenant JG Wakeham Paul Alasia Ph.D.
Edited on on 21 Oct 2014 @ 11:47am

2,934 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 3 - Counselor's Office
Timeline: MD -22, 0715 hrs

ON [Alasia's quarters]

Paul was irritated his body hadn't let him sleep later. There was almost nothing that needed his attention right away and he doubted very much anyone would have noticed if he had made it a late morning. Picking up a PADD next to his bed, Paul sifted through his messages and was almost pleased to discover that he had fallen through the cracks on his psych evaluation when boarding the Galileo. At least, Paul thought to himself, now today could be about something.

Paul pressed his combadge as it side beside him on his table and leaned closer to it: =^="Alasia to... shoot."=^= Paul clicked the combadge again and picked up his PADD, scanning for a name. He clicked the combadge again. =^="Alasia to Dorian West..."=^=

=^= West here, =^= he replied lightly, pulling on his uniform jacket as he watched himself in the mirror, getting ready for work. =^= What can I do you for? =^=

=^="Hello, Counselor. It would appear I've been in great dereliction of duty." Paul said in breezy embellishment. "I apparently need to schedule a psych eval. Or rather, I should have scheduled a psych eval like, two weeks ago. I know this is last minute, but do you have any availability this morning?"=^=

=^= Er....let me check.... =^= Dorian held his hairbrush between his teeth as he stretched out to catch hold of his PADD, skimming over it before tossing it back onto the bed and dropping the hairbrush back into his hand. =^= Yep, I have an hour at 1000hrs, that work? =^=

=^=Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much for being so accommodating. Alasia out. =^=

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[Counselor's Office, 1000 hrs]

Paul chimed the door on the nondescript taupe and gray door. Whenever venturing to a new location, he always had a nervous moment worrying that he was disturbing someone he had no business disturbing.

"Come in," Dorian called out, stood over by the long, narrow table under the replicator, pouring himself a cup of tea from an old fashioned pot. He glanced up as the doors opened. "Can I get you one?"

"I'd love a water actually, if you don't mind." Thanks.

"No problem," West grabbed a glass of water from the replicator, carrying both drinks over to the table, sitting down on the sofa. "Please, come and join me."

Paul sat down and took a sip of his drink. "So, I guess it'd be pretty bad for the ship if it turned out I'd be running around doing whatever I wanted and it turned out I'd been crazy the whole time, huh?" Paul chuckled softly.

"Pretty much," Dorian chuckled, sitting back with a small smile, crossing his legs. "Mind you, from what I hear, the ship itself has been pretty crazy recently. So how have you been?"

"I'm going to go with 'pretty good.'" Paul said with smile and a sigh. "I... to be honest, this has been a weird couple weeks. And I know that, um - space is - space is weird, right? I mean... I don't know. Is this normal? Are these last couple weeks - is that what it's usually like to be on a starship or was this an especially strange mission?"

West laughed softly at that words, shaking his head as he watched him. "I only got here a few days ago myself. It seemed like stepping through the looking glass," he clicked his tongue, sipping his tea before lowering the cup slightly. "Is this your first position out on a ship then?" he asked, leading him just a little.

"It is. I'm just trying to set my expectations, I suppose. I kinda had no idea what I was getting myself into when I joined up. I had never even met someone in Starfleet. Have you done ship duty before? Is stepping through the looking glass the norm?"

"Yes," Dorian replied with a nod, holding his eyes honestly. "Every mission tends to throw something at you. And when you think you've seen it all, something always surprises you. How do you feel about being sent out into the wide unknown?"

"Nervous, mostly. More about the known than the 'unknown.' I feel like coming aboard I had a pretty good sense of people at least. Space is scary and unknowable but the people - I thought I knew a little something about people. I'm not even sure about the either. It's disconcerting."

"Why?" Dorian asked with a small smile, picking his cup back up as he watched the man. "All people are different, it can make for surprises in life."

"I'm not saying different is inherently bad. Yeah, I guess I don't know what I'm saying. So, how does this work? Do I need to take to neurological tests or something?"

"No, you just need to talk to me about how you're thinking and feeling," Dorian assured with a chuckle, sitting back to cross his legs. "That's why I'm interested in why you're disconcerted...it's the sort of thing we can talk about and work out. Maybe it will make things more comfortable for going forward."

"I'm not really used to a military lifestyle - and I think I was a little naive coming aboard. The dinner with the Cardassians - I really feel like it got away from me. I, uhh, I was reading some of the reports about what happened on the surface, the schmozz in the, uhh - in sickbay. I guess I figured a science ship... I don't know. I don't know what I expected. I just worry I'm not up to it."

"Do you think HQ would have sent you if you weren't?" Dorian asked with a small, knowing smile...knowing because it was easy to point that out, but not always easy to remember when in the fire.

"It's funny in a way, hey say academics suffer from feeling like a fraud. You know, you claim this level of expertise and then you secretly think about how fallible you are; You know so little. I've always felt that way - felt like a fraud. Out here, though... the stakes are so much higher and that feeling of being a fraud is so much more acute. We're out here representing our species; we are the ambassador's of an entire way of life. I'm sure I have HQ's confidence but I mean, what an awesome burden. Perhaps even they don't comprehend the full ramifications of our mission. I mean, I try not to think about because it's paralyzing."

"Then maybe instead of thinking about the bigger picture, you should look at a more...manageable aspect?" Dorian suggested with a small, half smile. "If you think of something being that immense, it's only natural to get nervous. Focus on each task at hand, as they come, just your bit."

"Yeah, no, that's good advice. Even as I sit here whining about this stuff I know ultimately I have to just... act. Irrespective of anything."

Paul smiled "I read once in a biography of Zephram Cochrane that the first thing he did after making contact with the Vulcans was basically get them drunk and take them dancing. How they ended up the closest friends of all humankind after that... Christ knows what will work and what won't. I mean, I guess we're all just making it up as we go along out here."

"With a little help from our training and experience," Dorian chuckled softly, a slight teasing smile on his lips as he shook his head. "Take every chance on the ship to do new things. The more you do, the less intimidating it will be when you have to be dealing with a diplomatic issue in a hostile situation, or a new environment. We're all part of a crew. Although we all have our own jobs and responsibilities, at the end of the day, we're all in it together to make sure the ship stays in one piece and we all get home safe. No matter what else happens, if we can manage that, we've accomplished something."

"Do you find these are unusual feelings? Everyone in Starfleet seems so consistently sure of themselves. I always wondered if that was a put-on or if the people who self-select into Starfleet are just that much more confident than everyone else."

"No," Dorian chuckled softly, shaking his head with a small smile to him. "Confidence is something easier to convey than to feel. However...part of being an officer is knowing that you have to make choices. Sometimes quick ones. And your training and experience help you make the best decision you can. And once a decision is made, well....you have to see it through, whatever happens," he said softly, shaking his head slowly from side to side. "What's worrying you, Alasia? Really?"

"It's hard to put a finger on it, exactly. I've lived a life of the mind, all throughout my adulthood. My only training is in questioning conventional wisdom, not accepting it. By definition, when military personnel are in a spot they act - they act out of training, out of habit."

Paul paused briefly to search for the right words. "And there's a good reason for it and I wouldn't have them act any other way. But I'm starting to notice that thinking carries over to other moments. Relying on that training becomes too habitual. It becomes habitual to point I find it troubling, if that makes sense. I've already come up against a couple moments where I've disagreed with orders - during OCS, on the Starbase and onboard Galileo but I've done them. And for the most part, it's not a big deal because I'm not passionate enough about the orders to raise a fuss. But following those orders -- it's not how I'm wired. I don't feel good about it in those moments and frankly, if I changed that part of myself - the part that questions the orders - I don't think I would be any good to the ship anyway. My critical thinking is my skill. So, I worry because I feel myself hurtling headlong toward a break - a conflict - and it weighs on me. It makes me feel like I don't belong here. I joined Starfleet because I thought I could make a more direct impact - put my training to good use. But I'm questioning that now. Maybe it's different for counselors. Have you ever received an order you disagreed with? I mean, like, vehemently, passionately disagreed with?

"When I was in Security, yes, but not as a counsellor," Dorian shook his head, giving it some thought as he finished his tea with a soft sigh. "That's when you have to remind yourself that your orders are filtered down to you from higher ranking or superior officers. Usually, they've been there a longer time, they have more experience with the kinds of situations at hand, they have more training. They're in that position because they have a good grip on what they're doing and those kinds of situations. You have to trust them, and if you can't trust them, you trust the rank. That's what the Academy is about, it fuses that in to you," he shrugged softly, letting out a gentle breath. "Just because we have a strong opinion, it doesn't always make it the right one...and even if it is right in some situations, it doesn't necessarily make it right in that moment. It took me a while to learn that, and it finally clicked on an Away Mission with Security."

"I didn't know you'd been in security. How does one make the transition from that to here?"

"With frustration but patience," Dorian laughed warmly, shaking his head as he watched him with dark eyes. "So I assure you, it really is possible to...focus your way of thinking, to adapt to a new way of life. To use your instinct to drive your skills but keep a balance within a Starfleet hierarchy. The most important thing is that you need to want to do it," he met his eyes. "Do you want to explore the stars with Starfleet?"

"That's exactly what I want to do. It's the exploration -- the chance to be a force for peace in the galaxy - that's what appeals to me so much. I wonder, though, if I came too late -- if that part of Starfleet is over and now it's just about circling the wagons. I'm sure these feelings subside over time and honestly, it's not like this weighs on me constantly. These thoughts mostly sit with me during the quieter moments and there's been a lot of those the past couple days."

"There is a military aspect to Starfleet, but there always has been," Dorian shook his head lightly. "But we're still about exploration and discovery. From what I hear, this ship has its fair share of that. Even in the last mission, we discovered a new people and civilisation. It sounds as if you might be....anticipating problems before we get to any? Meeting trouble half way, as they say. We nickname it 'fortune telling' in the business," he chuckled, setting his empty cup down with a careful 'clink'. "Generating anxiety over imagined, predicted events that aren't real rather than preserving energy and sanity in just dealing with what we have here and now and what is real."

"I mean you're probably right in that I'm too worried but I don't agree that Starfleet is now as it ever was. We discovered that new race via a firefight and amid a turf war between us and the Cardassians. Then we just sort of handed off some pets for them and left - we didn't stay to study them and measured against the counterfactual I don't really think we learned all that much - as a ship or a species. I mean, I don't even necessarily think it was handled badly -- I just -- if you don't think Starfleet is a more militant organization than it was even 30 years ago... it makes sense - The Borg, Romulans, Typhon Pact, the Dominion - there are a lot more threats than we were aware of 30 years ago. But, it still troubles me. What Starfleet is today troubles me. It may not be healthy from a psychic standpoint, but institutionally, I think it's necessary."

West nodded slowly, thinking over what he said. "I think things were just as militant and combative in years gone by. Cardassians and borg were a threat for years....and Romulans, they were a problem for a long time. And before that, Klingons. The threats have just changed. As has the technology and the way we protect ourselves. Things out here, on a ship, they're not always easy. We're on our own more often than not, away from the pack. When we're sent on a mission, even a science one, it's often because it needs the protection that a Starfleet ship can lend to a scientific study. Starfleet life isn't always easy, but it can be very rewarding."

"That's definitely my hope. Whether or not it's the ideal way to do things, Starfleet is where things get done. It's not that I don't love my ivory tower and it's not that I wouldn't love to get back there someday... but I really couldn't believe how much I loved putting on this uniform or getting these pips. I don't know if it's the formality or the prestige or what. I'm definitely happy to be here." There was a slight pause in the conversation. Paul shifted in his chair and raised his eyebrows. "So, am I crazy?"

"No," West chuckled, shaking his head as he glanced down and picked up the PADD from the table. "No, you're not crazy. Unsettled though, and maybe uncomfortable. I'd recommend that you take some counselling sessions, just to help get some of those thoughts and questions out so you can get it all straight."

"Is that a requirement?" Paul laughed. "I could maybe use someone to talk to. What's the official capacity of a Counselor around here? Who are you guys beholden to?"

"Consider it a...strong suggestion," West shook his head with a small smile, looking back to him. "I'm not going to make you, but I think it might help. We're not just here for full on therapy, we can offer a quiet half hour to just talk and sort your thoughts out too."

Paul smirked warmly. "I'll take it under strong advisement. In the meantime, is there something you need me to sign or some form I need to fill out?"

"Nope," West shook his head, tapping on the screen for a couple of moments before looking up to him with a small smile, motioning with the PADD. "Done. You're cleared. If you want to book more sessions, you can do it through the computer."

"In all seriousness, thank you, Counselor. It was nice to talk." Paul stood up and offered his hand.

"Anytime," West assured, giving the hand a firm shake as he offered a smile in return. "It's what we're here for."

Paul stood and turned turned, hit the door button, as it opened with deep woosh. Paul returned his gaze to Dorian. "Have a great rest of your evening." With that Paul spun on his heels and exited.

OFF:

Lt JG Dorian West
Counsellor
USS Galileo
[PNPC Blake]

Lt JG Wakeham Paul Alasia
Diplomatic Officer
USS Galileo

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