By Lt. JG Rada Dengar
80422.1830
Concurrent With Opportunity Knocks
-=Office of the Chief Engineer, USS Serendipity=-
80422.1830
Concurrent With Opportunity Knocks
-=Office of the Chief Engineer, USS Serendipity=-
Rada couldn’t believe that it had come to this. It felt like just yesterday that he had received his exam results from the Academy and been sure that his passing was somehow attributable to either a computer error, a long drawn out conspiracy in which the administrators had been drastically over inflating the results of students they knew weren’t honest enough to point out their mistakes the purpose of which he could only assume was to establish a reputation for the select few as exceptional educators or simply the result of someone in power hating him enough that they’d rather pass him than risk him repeating the year and being stuck with him again.
Now all of a sudden he was the Chief Engineer on a starship, sure that his accomplishment was somehow attributable to either a malfunction in the performance evaluation process, the result of a complex conspiracy by the enemies of the Federation to mutilate the Serendipity’s Crew Roster which he could only assume was intended to bring the ship to the point where they wouldn’t have to bother attacking because it would simply fall apart on its own with him as Chief Engineer or that it was simply the result of someone in power hating him enough that they couldn’t wait any longer for him to crack so they decided to speed things along by turning up the pressure. Things had changed so much.
He didn’t know how he was going to do this. He had at first been so glad to have his own office, somewhere he could simply lock himself away, but that had quickly transformed into a disaster. This was his current dilemma, what should he do about his office door? Leaving in unlocked was out of the question but unfortunately so was locking it.
Obviously leaving the door unlocked would be ridiculous, aside from the obvious fact from letting people enter and hence negating what was to Rada’s mind the entire purpose of having a door, the real problem that arose was that people would inevitably come to expect the door to be unlocked. If ever anyone were to come knocking and find the door to be locked then they would inevitably assume that some kind of closed door conspiracy were taking place and that could only lead to distrust and descent within the department to the point where a rumour or miscommunication would lead to mistakes being made and warp cores overloading. The only way to avoid this would be if people who found the door to be locked were aware of the goings on within the office to the point where they could conclude that its being locked were an act of kindness not malice or conspiracy.
The slight problem with this would be that closing a door to be kind would be something Rada believed a person would only do if it could be reasonably concluded that the consequences of a lack of privacy would be detrimental to good name of the party involved. Such as if Rada had to give someone a poor review of their work. Inevitably of course this would mean that were Rada to take the kind action under these circumstances and lock the door then rather than protecting someone’s good name he would be dragging it through the mud because best case scenario; anyone who happened to knock on the door and find it unusually locked but who didn’t assume a conspiracy due to their understanding of how it being an act of kindness would have to be aware of someway which letting the news out would damage the good name of those involved and would therefore have to assume that such news were to exist, would naturally spread the word that such news existed resulting in the immediate destruction of the person involved’s reputation which was something Rada couldn’t risk.
Having the door constantly locked on the other hand was just as bad. Aside from the fact that it could encourage the same accusations of conspiracy including all of their ship destroying consequences it would also risk creating a rumour amongst those too trusting to blow up the ship that Rada simply kept the door always locked because he was some kind of foul tempered old ogre who loathed being disturbed, exactly the type of bloke who would be murdered by the older brothers of a series of disgruntled young recruits who felt that their siblings had been unfairly treated by their contemptuous Chief Engineer. Alternatively of course the distrust and fear evident in having a door always locked risked revealing Rada for whom he really was; to his mind a much worse fate.
The only other option would have been a system whereby Rada kept alternating between locked and unlocked but it occurred to him that someone with his history of mental illness probably wouldn’t instil too much confidence in those around him if he were to start demonstrating symptoms of a split personality. He was at a loss; the decisions a Chief Engineer had to make really were hard.
To complicate matters of course were these new departmental cross-training exercises. Rada wasn’t sure what he would end up having to do. He would have to participate in Defensive Shuttle Piloting exercises; to put in lightly if some people can be considered to be strong pilots then Rada considered himself to be a ‘frail one to the point of not being able to stand up’ pilot. He thought that in all probability if he ended up at the helm of a shuttle that he would fail miserably and possibly crash into the ship. Whilst that was most likely and in many ways the best case scenario it was by no means certain, there was always the risk that Rada would actually in a moment of desperation prove himself to be very good at defensive shuttle piloting, so good that he would if he were lucky be sent to fly on some kind of suicide mission through the heart of the Romulan Empire in a ship without shielding to avoid drawing attention by using a Federation shield configuration, that was of course only if he were lucky.
If he were unlucky, which Rada considered much more likely, he would be so good that his defensive piloting would cross over to the offensive and he would destroy another shuttle, be deemed an enemy of Federation and be incarcerated until such time as a Galactic famine forced the Federation to hand all of their prisoners over to the Ferengi, as they could no longer afford to feed them, whom would use them as slave labour until such time as they could be no longer of any use to them and they would be sold to the Cardassians to practice torture techniques upon. It was possible that Rada would simply have to undertake training in the holodeck but considering the number of malfunctions he’d seen in his time this was not all that comforting. Even if he managed to avoid all of this then he would go through the almost exactly the same thing learning self defense.
Of course it didn’t stop there. He would have to work as a medic which could, in Rada’s opinion, lead only to him accidentally killing every patient he came in contact with, even the ones only in there complaining of a sore toe which was actually the result of wearing the wrong size shoes.
As horrible as it would be working in departments where Rada didn’t have a clue what to do, it would be even worse to work in departments where he did; departments such as Science. Engineering and Science covered a lot of common ground; both required a high degree of knowledge in theoretical sciences and an ability to predict the consequences to this ship of any external phenomena. This posed the greatest problem that there were two different ways of doing the same things; an Engineering was and a Science way. A single instance of Rada doing things the Engineering way instead of the Science way and BAM you have an inter-departmental war for supremacy where only one department can survive intact. Rada was certainly not looking forward to the concept of butting heads with Dabin Reece, aside from being a senior officer, Reece also has seven life times on Rada as well as half a dozen more years in this life time which means that if Rada is seen to be trying to say that his way is somehow the best then he could end up seeming like the smart arse of the two. A fate he considered worse than death, ironic as he felt he’d probably die of embarrassment if it happened.
Adding to this was that Rada would have to be giving instruction to whoever needed it in engineering duties. He didn’t know how to teach. To teach you have to first know how to learn, to learn you need to be able to ask for help and to ask for help you need to admit what you don’t understand, and whilst Rada constantly admitted what he didn’t understand to himself even when he did understand it he had never been able to this with anyone else. Ironically an inability to ask for help meant that people assumed he always knew what he was doing and meant that much of his time at the Academy was spent tricking people into believing he’d taught them how to do things which he didn’t even understand himself. He hoped that these skills would be transferable and that he’d be able to trick people into believing he’d taught them things that he actually knew.
Still this would all be irrelevant if no one was talking to him. This was what Rada considered to be an almost inescapable result of his lessons in Universal Sign Language, half way through a class he’s sure that he will be thrown out when he tries to say a friendly greeting but messes up the position of his hand and accidentally makes a highly offensive remark about the fatalities during the Dominion war. He was not looking forward to this. He wouldn’t mind learning the language in isolation but as long as there were people who understood the language around, Rada had no desire to learn it.
He had been racking his brain for a way out of this, many of which involved jabbing of himself with white hot pointed sticks or injecting himself with some kind of flesh-eating nanites but whilst these would have been much more pleasant than what he was expecting to go through already; he did still have to worry about at least appearing sane.
He sighed in frustration before finally relenting. He realised that he would have to step up and do what was necessary, he had to face up to what life on a Starship meant. It would be tough but he knew that the time had come. There was only one thing he could do. He slowly rose from his chair. He exhaled deeply to the point of wheezing and ordered “Com…” he stalled for a moment before regaining his composure. He then spoke more surely and in defiance said “Computer… Lock Door”.
He then quickly sat back down and asked himself *Now, how do I get out of these training exercises?*
Lt. (jg) Rada Dengar
Chief Engineer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Chief Engineer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012