SD 04/5/03 *Addition* Some days, there are reminders others have it worse than you.
Actually, I see them daily. The redshirt pulling Security who's bored out of his skull, the engineers trying to fix a never-ending stream of problems. Some minor glitches go unfixed for weeks or even months because something more important like the restrooms need work.
Sometimes the reminders are more personal. I sometimes wonder how Lott feels, coming from a world where everyone could change their sex at will and it was no big deal, and now in an enviroment which although treats genders equally still have certain ... issues. Just looking at Brundle and recalling he once looked normal, one knows he's gone through hell. Demian Tempres, he's a major pain in the gluteus maximus with his flying off the handle with occasional near- catastrophic results. Yet, I can feel sorry for him. He never asked for this madness gnawing at what sanity he has. Then there's Dr. K'Lynxyl, the product of a horrible crime on her mother, treated by her father's society as property and a barbarian by her mother's. Although welcome in ours, her appearance never made her truly one of us.
But, my position disallows me to dwell on their problems for long. I'm supposed to keep the men and women running this tub in line and able to keep it in one peice and working order and to carry out our duties. I'm supposed to be the rock of stability they all can rest on. I'm supposed to be an example they can look up to ...
Whom am I kidding? I got here because there was no one else available. If I truly got to where my talents merited, it would have been commander at some supply base, or stayed a lieutenant on some non-vital starship post, that is, if I truly deserved to graduate from Starfleet at all.
I'm supposed to order these men and women about to carry out our orders as I see fit. Yet, I don't feel any better than them. This rank insignia may give me the right, the duty, to issue orders. I may have a few more years experience wadding through the B.S., yet am I otherwise any more qualified than they to pass judgment?
Back to the issue. One more man with problems is Milton Dammers. He'd single-handily crippled the Romulan beaurcracy, and never quite got the credit for it, then ended up one of two survivors of a disaster, one which I can find little about except Milton's occasional references to it and I'm reluctant to ask him for more. The experience undoubtedly tramatized him, and on top of that thrown in cryo for twenty years. In a society much changed from the one he knew, and many of those he once knew are long dead, and those he still knows older and different.
He and Lynx have been becoming close friends. That mis-mailed diary entry suggested she was looking for a little more, and hopefully I managed to squash some of the inevitable gossip before it resulted. Considering her upbringing, AND two kids who could use a male role model I certainly can't blame her. Maybe on top of that I felt a relationship would help calm Dammers down. Yes, I know, the comparisons to Lera. But Lynx is a more complex person. On the other hand, maybe it's different when you're looking at such a thing from the outside.
But a meeting with Dammers at his room put things in an entirely new perspective. The "thank-you gift" she had told me she was going to leave behind in his room turned out to be redecorating the whole darn place! In Dammer's words, "Well, at least she didn't touch my guns." Boy did I ever feel dumb. Dammers spoke in a peading voice about Lynx "stalking" him, and not knowing what to do about it.
Then Dammers revealed something else. He had been recruted by Admiral Ironbottom! Perhaps drafted is a better word. He had been told not only to keep an eye on the ship, but to get closer to Lynx to get some information. At one point, he showed me a bottle he told me Ironbottom had sent him, Viagra. "This is what Ironbottom wants me to do!" he told me in a plea.
I didn't know what to say. I mostly stood there in shock as he unloaded this. All this time not only had Ironbottom been more scheming that I realized, but he had been manipulating this poor man into an impossible situation while doing so, and almost certainly not caring a Phirana-Rat's arse while doing so.
Dammers showed me a small part of Ironbottom's feelings, in his words, "he has it in for you and Lera." That I knew for a long time, though by this section of an e-mail he had somehow gotten (what is it about missent emails these days?). In it, Ironbottom dismissed the oppressive Council of New California as "minor pests," deciding not to go after me only because one of them had a record of hijacking a Starfleet vessel and apparently getting away with it because at the time he was the son of a forgien ambasador before the planet joined the Federation. More importantly, he went on and on and on about Commander Lera t'Resan, seeing every little quirk of hers as evidence of some great neaufarious Romulan plot. It matters not that I refrain from a closer relationship to her, he automatically assumes I have and that I and the ship are under the control of the Romulans. Fortunetly, Lynx's position keeps him from trying to remove her as he also distrusts Kzin, but from what the note says, he's now taken to working to deny us data files he sees as sensitive (and as paranoid as he is, he defines sensitivity broadly) and away from sensitive areas. Has be been behind our increasing difficulties in getting spare parts? It wouldn't surprise me.
But the note also had fewer but equally harsh words for K'Lynxyl and the Kzin. What is this "seismic planet cracker" he refers to when wishing "we had the chance to put all those flea-bitten ratcats for good" ? This does not look good.
Before we could discuss things much, Lynx came by. Wearing a particularly stunning dress and set of jewelry too. Dammes brought up the subject of the room, and hearing it, Lynx lost her temper, ranting about how her previous boyfriends never told her, and that "I'd kill them if they were still alive!" When she calmed down, she explained that not all died, just three. Still, I'm sure it was enough to make Dammers nervous. But Lynx apologized for her blunder, and thanked him for his "refreshing honesty," which was a first for her. They made up, and Lynx and I were soon leaving to take care of other duties. But that look on Dammers on my way out, was he urging me to leave, a reminder for me to help him?
Dammers is in an unenviable spot. He considers me a solid friend and does have some feelings for Lynx, but wants her to slow down. Perhaps what happened today will help, but Ironbottom is still there. He felt a few scraps of information about the Kzin and Romulans to feed Ironbottom might be enough to satisfy him, but with the seldom-updated database, I can offer little. Maybe some conversations with other ship captians we meet, provided there's a reason for personal meeting, would help. In the meantime, I'm going to see what I can find about this "Admiral Degas" in Starfleet HQ. It's a start.
*sigh* This is not how Starfleet is supposed to operate. Then again, from this ship's point of view, everything seems all-to-ready to fall apart at a single touch, including perceptions.