White Glove Test

Posted on 11 Nov 2018 @ 3:35am by Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexander Rylan

2,076 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Fractured
Location: Talons
Timeline: MD 6 | 1430

Alex poked his head into Talons looking for Selah. He'd been in a few times off-duty, but never really had the chance to converse with her beyond ordering his drink. Today wasn't a social call, though. The ship had suffered power fluctuations during the recent crisis, and was still having some issues, which meant that things that were supposed to be kept at a certain temperature to avoid spoilage may have spoiled, specifically: foodstuffs. Most of the fresh food stored on the Black Hawk belonged to or was managed by Talons and its manager. Alex saw Selah behind the bar. He smiled and walked over to her.

"Hi!" he said. "How's things? Ready to get this inspection out of the way?"

“Ugh!” replied Selah with a roll of her eyes and a slight grin. “You have no idea how ready I am. I think I got rid of everything that was spoiled. Most of the stasis units made it. Unfortunately, the one with ice cream in it did not. So it’ll have to be replicated ice cream for awhile. But! The good news is that we have plenty of steaks and potatoes and oh! Cheesecake,” she added in a conspiratorial tone. “Come on, I’ll show you,” she added, motioning him to folllow her.

Alex took out his tricorder and followed Selah. "If you've got real cheesecake, I'm bringing Jayla by ASAP before you run out."

“Oh my goodness, yes!” Selah said with a little too much enthusiasm. “I meant to tell her- I finished writing that holonovel! See, we came up with this random idea for girl crime fighters. Selah and Jayla. They rhyme! Anyway, I took the liberty of writing it out and I was going to ask her if she wanted to try it out, but then we’re got all tossed about and then we were in different times and blah blah blah, you know you were here. Okay!” she exclaimed suddenly. “So here are the stasis units. This is the dead one. The rest were okay.”

Alex chuckled at Selah's bubbly attitude as he inspected the unit and scanned it with his tricorder.

"Okay," he said. "This is totally unprofessional, but you and Jayla were crime fighters, I'd become a criminal just to get arrested by you two. Okay, looks like Ops cleaned up this unit really well. No contaminants left. Let's just check the good stuff, just to be sure. I trust you, but, you know, rules."

“Absolutely,” replied Selah. “Plus, I’d rather be able to tell people, “oh, look, the health inspector was here, he says it’s fine.” Gives a certain credibility to the place, you know?”

Alex started inspecting the other stasis units. He scanned them for bacteria and the food for spoilage. Nothing jumped out at him. While he worked, he chatted with Selah.

"So," he said. "I've been in here a bunch but it's always been busy. We've never had the chance to get to know each other. Where are you from?"

“Yegorah,” answered Selah. “I’m actually part of the royal family, but this job is much less stressful. Plus, I’m like way down the line of succession, so I don’t foresee ever having to take the crown. I might just stay a barkeep my whole life!” She gave him a smile so big, it threatened to cleave her face in two.

Alex was briefly, very, very briefly, unnerved by the someone out sized smile, but he didn't show it. He'd once walked into the barracks and found an Andorian Marine and a Tellarite Marine 'in flagrante delcito'. After that, very few things seemed all that weird. "I can honestly say that I have never heard of Yegorah. And you're royalty? Should I bow and use a title when I talk to you?"

He grinned and winked at the last part to show he wasn't being serious.

She laughed, smile relaxing to a more natural size. “Please don’t,” she replied. “I get enough of that at home. But, you’ve never heard of Yegorah? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s not a particularly big moon, after all, but it holds 6 billion people with room for at least twice that many more. Actually, come to think of it, it is a pretty big moon, isn’t it?”

Alex shook his head and laughed.

"You know that the even the known Galaxy is a big place, right?" he said. "You know, like 'we don't really know how many planets are in it' big? Even just narrowing down to the populated ones isn't enough to make it a manageable number. So, no I haven't heard of...oh, wait, Yegora...home to the...Telino? That Yegora?"

“Yes!” exclaimed Selah excitedly. “See? You have heard of it! I’ll bet you even know the name of the ruling monarch, too.”

Alex had disappeared behind a stasis unit and was using a PaDD to remote access the ship's intranet. It was no Google Subspace, but it had an extensive library from which he could draw information and it was regularly updated.

"Why of course I do," Alex said. "Queen Nualan ZyMach XVIII! Doesn't everyone know that?" Alex slipped the PaDD into a pocket on the leg of his pants and came out from behind the stasis unit he'd been using for cover. "The units over here look good. Let's go see what those over there look like."

"Absolutely," replied Selah in a sing-song voice as she dance-skipped over to the other units. "She's my cousin. The Queen. Her nickname is Nala. It makes it kinda hard to take her seriously when she's making grand state speaches, but her mother would absolutely murder us if we giggled, so we sit quietly and behave. Thank goodness for Vulcan training. Anyway, how do these look?"

Alex ran his tricorder over the stasis unit, then linked to it with his PaDD to run a system's check. "Looks good to me. So, if Her Majesty Queen Nualan is your cousin, does that make you a Princess? Or are you a Duchess or something like that?"

“Princess,” replied Selah. “Although thankfully my cousin is having children now so I won’t be for much longer. It’ll be a huge weight off my shoulders when I have to go back to train her daughters to take over.”

"This one looks fine," Alex said, moving on to another unit. "So, how big is the Royal Family?"

"Pretty big," Selah answered. "Besides my dad, the queen mother had three other siblings. And they all have multiple kids, so there were a lot of cousins running around. In my immediate family, I'm the middle. I've got an older sister, Ciara, and a younger brother, Ephraim."

"This one is fine, too," Alex said, moving on again. "I'm an only child. After my mother experienced 'the miracle of childbirth' the first time around, she had zero interest in doing it again. Besides, living on a starship with one child was nerve wracking enough. More than one would have been a nightmare for my dad. He wasn't just a passenger, following Mom around. He was a published author and had work of his own to do. He was great about being an active parent, but, though his schedule was a little easier to plan around, he still needed time to research and write. He had his hands full with me. I don't think he really wanted another child. He'd been fruitful. He'd multiplied. He was happy to be an author, a husband, and a father to one child. So I was enough for him, too."

"So your parents stopped at perfection," Selah replied. "Mine did, too, you know, but then my brother sorta came along as a surprise, so...." She grinned and winked.

Alex chuckled. "I wouldn't say they thought I was 'perfection incarnate'. More like 'a cautionary tale' against having another child. My parents are arguably brilliant and highly educated, one doesn't necessarily mean the other, but they're both. I, on the other hand, while not a complete simpleton, am not higher education material...at least not in the traditional sense. I didn't get accepted at any of the schools I applied to after secondary school. My parents were horrified, even more so when I decided to enlist, of all things. I like think they've come to terms with who I am and what I've accomplished in my life. At the very least, they've stopped openly acting like my career is a phase of some kind and that at any minute I'm going to resign and head off to some prestigious university. And, again, it's the education aspect, not the Starfleet aspect that used to really bother them. My mother is a career Starfleet nurse, a Captain in the fleet's nursing corps. I think they just figured I'd be more like them, instead of striking out and doing things my way."

“Parents are like that,” agreed Selah. “My mother keeps hoping I’ll stop playing barkeep and get down to something real. But, I absolutely love this job! It’s like i was made for it. I mean, I’m probably smart enough to be a doctor or something, but I’m not motivated enough. I’m lazy! And I’m not too proud to admit it.” She grinned, eyes sparkling.

Alex laughed and headed over to another stasis unit. "It was never laziness with me. I worked hard. I just didn't seem to get the marks everyone else did. That all changed when I enlisted. Something about the way they trained us. As I moved through my career, some of my training was the equivalent of graduate school level training, my advanced medical training in particular, and, though I had to work at it, I did very well in those programs. I guess I just had to find my own way. So, I get it, the career choice. Sometimes you just have to find your own way of doing things and sometimes 'your own way' is not at all what your parents and your family expected of you or wanted for you."

“Yeah,” Selah agreed. “My dad doesn’t care much, but then he’s the royal. The royal family is pretty easy going. Mum mum isn’t even Telino, so she doesn’t really understand, even after all these years. She’s kinda stuck on Earth’s idea of royalty. I keep hoping she’ll get it, but... oh well, I love her anyway. She’s a good mum, after all,” she added with a grin.

"Mine, too," Alex said. Alex checked off the last stasis unit. "Well, looks like these are all set. Let me just take a walk through your food prep area and we'll be all set."

"It is, of course, in excellent shape," Selah assured him cheerfully, skip-dancing over to the area in question. "And clean, which is more important."

Alex followed the skipping bartender into the little kitchen area and started his scans. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He made a visual inspection as he went and found nothing worth mentioning in his report, beyond the fact that the kitchen was clean, orderly, and free of contaminants, and showed no evidence of the presence of insects, rodents, or other pests. The ship's bio-filters were very thorough, but even so, things got through now and again and when they did, they set up shop wherever their food source was.

"Looks good to me," Alex said. "You're all set. Thanks for cooperating."

"My pleasure," replied Selah. "Actually, it's to my advantage to cooperate. Because now, I can open back up and start making credits again!" And she beamed happily at him.

Alex laughed. "Always good to have your priorities straight! I've got to run, but it was a pleasure to meet you, Selah."

"Nice to meet you, too, Alex," Selah replied. "And don't forget to bring Jayla in for some of that cheesecake!"

"Will do," Alex replied as he left Talons. "Very soon. Have a great day!"

"You, too!" Selah called after him. Once he was gone, she excitedly pulled out a PaDD from under the counter and sent an announcement to the ship's digital bulletin board. "Talons is open for business!" she said as she typed in the message. "And send!"

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