End of Shift
Posted on 30 May 2024 @ 3:25pm by Lieutenant JG Kai Nokamura
584 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission:
M-18 The Past is Future
Location: Engineering and Holodeck, USS Phoenix
End of shift was pretty much the reverse only with more yawning and stretching. Jeffries tubes were not designed for comfort and the work often required long stretches of maintaining uncomfortable, contorted positions. The tools got put away first. Everything back into its proper place as decided by Starfleet when the whole place was set up. There was no such thing as decided on the spur of the moment to change things up not unless you wanted three shifts of cranky engineers glaring at you … forever.
Ensign Dearborn. First assignment out of the academy had tried that. Reorganized parts storage according to his own internal logic and it did make a sort of sense when you took a moment to figure it out but still. Wasn’t worth what happened afterward or how long it took for him to live it down. Poor kid. Crushed in his first week. Time and frequent conversations, plus a few holodeck adventures, had straightened him out but still. He never did get the hang of the whole everything in its proper place.
From there, Kai walked over to the main display to make sure that everything he’d done, logged while he was crawling around Jeffries tubes, had updated the display because there had been mistakes and he did not like being screamed at in the middle of the night because some Gamma Shift engineer had taken one of the things he had already done and found out, after opening everything up, that there wasn’t anything to do. Nope. Didn’t want a recurrence of that nightmare.
Corky. Ensign Richard Cochrane III. Short and square with a voice like a bullhorn. He’d managed to get into Kai’s quarters and shouted at him, his mouth three inches from Kai’s ear, at three in the morning. Corky had gotten an official reprimand for breaking in and extra duty which Kai helped him with because he hadn’t checked the board and felt responsible. And hey, it had only taken twenty-four hours for his hearing to come back. So, all good, brah.
After that, was back to his quarters to shower and change. Then off to his workroom to get started on the second half of his workday. The details of the murder were all laid out now and he was building the algorithms that the computer would use when the program ran. He told the twins to give him two hours, with a half-hour’s grace if he asked for more time, and then change the setting to the beach.
Specifically, the Backyards on Oahu’s North Shore. His specific conditions were always the same. Eliminate the tourists, the surf shops and restaurants. There should be a cabana for changing, his favorite surfboard ready to go, and the twins could handle meal prep based on a list of preferred dinners.
That was a necessity. Glitches in their design had left him with a couple of fairly repulsive meals. Now, they focused heavily on Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean specialties. Over time, he would expand their repertoire. It was, after all, on his list of things to do but not yet and certainly not tonight.
Tonight, he would make more progress on Auntie’ murder mystery and then spend some time on the water. If such a thing were possible, he’d live on the water.
Maybe he should. That bore some thought.
Lieutenant JG Kai Nokamura
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Phoenix
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