Lovelier Even Than An Electric Sander

Posted on 20 Nov 2014 @ 1:59am by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Commander Scarlet Blake

2,453 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, XO's Office
Timeline: MD-21: 1700 hrs

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Olsam shuffled backwards down the corridor, dragging an obviously overburdened medcart along with him. He'd tried pushing it but that put entirely too much strain on his lower back and had been unwieldy besides so he'd been forced to walk backwards and pull it along with him. Between the short distance from Deck 3 to Deck 2 he'd managed to smash a security officer against the bulkhead, run over the toe of some poor crewman from Ops and almost knock over someone he didn't even recognize from either command or flight control, leaving behind the usual sorts of devastation and misery that seemed to mysteriously appear in the wake of Lieutenant Olsam Mott, M.D.

When he finally arrived at the Executive Officer's office, the Bolian struggled to get the medcart positioned correctly in front of the door so that he could pull it inside. In the process of wedging the medcart and himself between the bulkhead and the door in the cramped corridor he managed to accidentally press the door chime with his backside no less than three times only to end up turning around and pressing it a fourth time to gain entry.

"What is this? Trick or bloody treat? Come in!" Scarlet called out with surprise, lowering the PADD she was looking at slightly. She was sat safely down at her desk, but she was starting to feel much more like her old self now anyway. Just as well. She'd been going kind of mad over the last week.

Olsam grimaced at the response, but it was hidden as he backed into the room dragging the medcart along with him. His right leg began wildly kicking out behind him like some sort of hyperactive burro as he tried to push the chairs arranged in front of the desk out of the way to make room for the cart.

"Hi, Commander Blake," he said, sounding like absolutely nothing at all had transpired between them and this was a completely pre-arranged meeting. He continued shuffling backwards until he felt himself bump into her desk and then stopped, finally turning around. "I brought you a gift. Well, gifts. A lot of them, really. I may have gotten a little carried away and used all my replicator rations for this month..."

The Bolian turned to the medcart and removed the giant gaudy shimmering red piece of surgical cloth from the top to reveal an absolute interstellar feast stacked on top and arranged among the various trays. The medcart listed dangerously to one side as, for whatever reason, he'd chosen to laden it with heavy meat dishes. Olsam took two steps back, gestured to the cart with an enormous grin and wiggled his hairless eyebrows at her. "Huh? Huh? Well? What do you think? I made it myself."

Scarlet just stared for a long moment, eyes wide with utter surprise at what she was witnessing. She pushed herself up to stand at her desk, forcing the grimace back as she rested her hands on it to help with her balance. The smell was pretty darn amazing. She couldn't remember seeing so much food together at one time. "Am I dreaming?" she blurted out, shaking her head with complete confusion.

"Well, I don't know, maybe," Olsam said, squinting one eye in a look of confusion. Maybe she was sleepwalking? Seemed like an unusually high level of interactivity for that, but then again he'd seen stranger things. Regardless, the stimulant in the glaca-soaked sageem leaves would wake her up quickly. "It's a traditional dinner for the Bolian Feast of Apologies! As I'm sure you're quite well aware, we Bolians are a fairly boisterous and argumentative people and that leads to a lot of ruffled feathers... So, once a year, we gather together with our friends and family for a great consecrated feast, offer our apologies to one another, and let all the arguments digest away."

The Bolian fell silent for a moment, blue brow furrowed in thought as he reflected on what he'd just said. "Well, sort of, at least. Sometimes it only makes them worse, everyone getting together like that. There are a lot of fights, really, now that I think about it. Last year my cousin Pone knocked Uncle Mehad out cold, and the year before that my brother Gwidon 'accidentally' stabbed my sister Darsana in the hand with a butter knife. And then there was that time Aunt Odi caught Uncle Toobin with the neighbor... Well, uh, anyway. It's the thought that counts, right?"

"Hm, well so long as there's no blood spilled...I guess...." she rubbed the back of her neck with a crooked smile for a long moment. "You better come and bring something over here for us to taste then...." she said quietly, taking it as a goodwill gesture, and not wanting to rebuff that if it was the case. Quite enough tension had been had already.

Olsam quickly jumped to the task, grabbing two plates and piling them high with various delicacies as if they were a Bolian-Zakdorn pair at an all-you-can-eat buffet on Risa. The plate in his left hand wobbled from all the weight and strain being placed on the relatively weak tendons there but he managed to make it to the desk with it and slide it in front of Commander Blake. He produced a set of utensils, seemingly from thin air (begging the question, "Did he always keep a set with him?"), and placed those next to the plate.

"Oh, wait! Hold on, don't eat, yet. I wrote an apology poem for the occasion."

"An apology poem?" Scarlet blinked a few times at the declaration, sitting back and crossing her legs, perplexed...but also curious too. She shook it away, lifting a hand, self conscious under the attention. "Lieutenant, you really don't have to..."

Olsam cleared his throat and pressed on, as usual. He held his head high, cleared his throat again and began reciting the poem he'd memorized:

Scarlet Blake is a wonderful commander
Lovelier even than an electric sander
She even appreciates my Bolian candour
I promise this poem isn't to pander

We had a fight
But it's all right
Uh...
Cuz now ... we're friends
And everything's okay
Um...
And nobody is disagreeing anymore

The End

Olsam gave her a sheepish grin and swept his eyes around the room, avoiding eye contact. "I forgot the last part. I'm not a very good improvisational poet, either."

Scarlet just stared for a long moment, genuinely speechless, her breath caught in her chest. Whatever she had been expecting when the word 'poetry' had first come up, this had surpassed it by far. A small smile pulled at her lips as she leant forward, resting her elbow on the desk and her chin in her hand as she watched him. "Lovelier than an electric sander, hm?" she arched an eyebrow, clearly musing the concept. "Wow, that's a pretty special poem, thank you..." she let out a long, audible breath. "I don't have to reply in poetry do I?"

"No, of course not. Unless you prepared one. I wouldn't want to deprive you of the opportunity, but if we keep sharing poems then the food is going to get cold," Olsam said, taking an uninvited seat across the desk from her in front of his own plate. A pair of utensils seemed to come out of thin air again, and he pushed around at the things on his plate, eyeing her. Finally, he broke his silence, "You're s'posed to eat first. It's traditional."

Scarlet took a moment to just watch the laden plate, tilting her head to one side. It was somewhat daunting. Still, faint heart never won fair lady. Or anything else. She picked up her fork and gave the closest thing on her plate a try. Her eyes widened, pleasantly surprised by the taste. "You did this? It's good...."

If she'd been eating with anyone else but Olsam Mott, they might have taken exception to the surprise. But Olsam Mott was Olsam Mott and completely missed the surprised tone, focusing more on the words themselves. "Yes, I did, indeed. I have a kitchen in my quarters, and I traded a shift with Dr. Voutilainen and used up almost all my replicator rations so I could spend the better part of the day preparing the most sumptuous Apology Feast ever served aboard the ship." A sudden look of uncertainty overcame him. "Right? It is the most sumptuous Apology Feast ever served on board, isn't it? I'd like to see another Bolian do better! I don't think they could. In fact, I don't think a whole department of Bolians could do better!"

"I can quite safely say that this is, indeed, the most sumptuous Apology Feast on the ship," Scarlet assured with a small smile, taking the napkin to press to the corner of her lips for a moment. "Mott, I know that you might find it difficult, but you really must learn to take a breath, count to five, and keep quiet when it's....appropriate, like with what happened," she met his eyes, giving him a small smile. "It's frustrating, for me. Because you're very good at what you do. You're a damned fine doctor, and part of my job is to look after this crew. To me, that means to help develop them, as career officers. Now, as a damned fine doctor, you deserve to be a damned fine officer too. When you have your outbursts...it goes against that. And the very last thing I ever want to see is a damned fine doctor getting knocked because of the officer etiquette side of things. Does that makes sense?"

Olsam tried to make it look like there was nothing in the world that made more sense, but there was something about his shifty-eyed demeanor that belied her earlier point about it being hard for him to keep his mouth shut.

"Yes, of course," he agreed quickly, thoughtfully poking at some sort of dumpling on his plate. He probably should have just left it at that, but when did he ever leave it anything? "Bolians don't always fit in Starfleet very well, it's what helps account for our sizable civilian and commercial fleets. We're very...opinionated. We work well with others, but we have trouble keeping our mouths shut."

"Opinions can save lives in the right circumstances," Blake met his eyes, shaking her head with a small smile. "It's just understanding when the right moment is to hold fire. I want to see you flourish," she shrugged lightly, as if it were obvious. "And that means paying attention to the officer side of things as well as the doctor bit."

"Easier said than done for most of us," Olsam replied, stuffing a chunk of something that looked like turkey drenched in gravy in his mouth and chewing as quickly as he could to continue his statement. "I think there's a reason you don't see too many medical doctors rising up through the ranks in Starfleet, or even demonstrating ambition within the officer corps. We have a hard time remembering that we're officers in addition to our professional responsibilities." He stabbed at another piece of food on his plate - something that looked like raw moba fruit - but let the fork hang in the air. "Some of us are better at it than others, and some of us definitely have room for improvement." He stuffed the moba fruit into his mouth, chewed, swallowed and gave a grin unintentionally full of moba seeds. "I'll try to flourish a little more."

Blake nodded with a small smile before reaching to try some more, letting out a long, tired breath. "Good, because I think you can do it. With style, actually. Trust me."

"I usually do things with a certain style, I agree. My superior officers have always said I have a unique way of doing things. Maybe I should take a teaching position at the Academy so others can learn my style," Olsam said, looking off thoughtfully while he chewed up some sort of spreadable meat that had been processed beyond all recognition.

A slight smile touched her lips as she watched him, sipping her drink carefully. "I'm glad you agree. You're Assistant Chief now, you are an example to others. It's even more important that you understand and respect the hierarchy now. You're a part of it."

Olsam nodded. He'd been part of the hierarchy aboard the Odyssey, too, but things were run much differently there. The Chief Medical Officer had been a stolid Vulcan so there really wasn't much of a hierarchy, just a bunch of paperwork and absolute authority resting in the hands of the ship's chief physician. Now things were a little different - he had significantly more leeway and authority under Allyndra's direction, and he supposed he had to admit he was actually part of 'the system' now.

"Right," he replied simply, reflecting on the hierarchical design of Starfleet and how much it could chafe against the collective nature of Bolian society. There were many challenges to military service but that certainly had to be chief among them. "Do you find officers have difficulty with that sort of thing? Sometimes I think I'm the only one that doesn't quite fit in, which is ludicrous of course because I fit in everywhere. Usually. Sometimes I don't physically fit in, like tight spaces, you know, but personality wise, I mean."

Scarlet shook her head softly, leaning a little closer to him with a small smile. "Mott, I have yet to find anyone who does fit perfectly. We're all different, and we all have different things we struggle with. If we were all the perfect fit, we'd be bloody borg. It's about learning, with each thing that didn't go quite so well, so the fit gets a bit better each time and to make sure we don't make the same mistakes twice."

"Just like medicine," Olsam noted through an oversized mouthful of...something. "If you kill a patient, you have to ask yourself, 'How can I not kill a similar patient in the future?' And then you improve."

"Something like that," Scarlet gave a half smile, although she wouldn't necessarily have picked such a severe likeness. "Well, one thing is for sure," she took a deep breath, lightening the mood with her tone as she stabbed some food with her fork. "Whatever else we have to face, we're going to be well fed..."

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

&

Commander Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo

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