Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Check-Ins | Step 1: Bug the Captain

Posted by Lieutenant Tal Abara (Senior Researcher (Cognitive Science)) in Check-Ins | Step 1: Bug the Captain

Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Check-Ins | Step 1: Bug the Captain
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Tal Abara – accomplished nurse practitioner, ceramic frog collector, and champion of wrong turns.

Directionally challenged and without the internal compass to point her ‘North’, Tal found herself bewildered and staring awkwardly at a PADD nestled between her fingers. ‘Lost’ hardly fit what she was experiencing. Eyebrows knit together, Tal shifted her gaze from the Leviathan’s layout to the corridors, searching for something familiar. Slowly, a frown tugged at the corners of her lips and pulled her features into a grimace.

“Hmm,” she tapped the display then waved her finger hopefully at a nearby door. “You’re..” she leaned forward, tilting her head enough to catch the plaque perched at its side, “yes! Okay. Then the turbolift must be..” She whipped around and hesitantly gestured down the hallway. “..that way.”

Feigned confidence infecting her gait, Tal found her way through a sea of metal doors and the occasional tight-lipped officer. It felt like an aeon before she happened upon the destination of her (purely professional) dreams. A grin quickly replacing her frown, Tal hurried her pace and waved to the Ensign just about the step before her. “Wait!” She called out, earning a confused glance which happened to last just long enough for her to slip into the turbolift. “Thanks. Where are you headed?”

“Deck 24,” he tersely informed. “You?”

“Uhm,” Tal regarded the PaDD once more. “23 – that works out great.” Respective requests made, Tal settled against the far wall and submitted to the patience of a short, silent ride.

By the time the doors peeled open, and she bade farewell to her companion, Tal had regained her composure. She trusted – as long as she didn’t meet the same difficulty finding Cobb’s ready room – composure would grant the gift of persistence. Seconds passed like minutes before Tal wandered up to the Captain’s ready room doors. Promptly, as not to encourage the strange concoction of curiosity and ambivalence bubbling in her belly, Tal raised a hand to chime and palmed it.

– Tal Abara, Cognitive Researcher

Zachariah Cobb was not a patient man. Nor had there ever been occasion to describe him as gentle or delicate, or even stable a great deal of the time. Which is why his latest obsession had been met by raised eyebrows and disbelieving glances from almost every soul he dared impart the details to.
Tal Abara, being newly arrived on the Leviathan, would not yet have been confided in on the nature of this obsession. Although while she waited for a response to her hail, she might consider the CIC to be unusually quiet. As if every officer at their station was listening intently for sounds from the captain’s ready room…

Tal’s stormy gaze flickered between the CIC and Cobb’s ready room. There was an odd silence consuming the cacophony of idle chatter that Tal had come to associate with duty officers. She pursed her lips in thought and followed the wayward glances occasionally cast her way. Curiously, she meandered a step closer and tilted her chin…

At the exact moment that her chime rang out, the sounds finally came.
“Bloody ridiculous, irritating, meaningless, waste of time contraption! Damn you!”

Tal thrust her head back, her eyelids lifted in innate shock, but the subtle familiarity in his curse afforded her a flicker of nostalgic amusement.

Seconds later and the doors would slide open, to reveal a silver-haired and red-faced man slumped at the desk, surrounded, for at least four feet in all directions, by what appeared to be small, thin pieces of silver metal. And on his desk, a crystalline base, now broken (or possibly snapped) into two.

Sensing he had company, the man at the desk looked up and, with a desperate sigh gestured to the scattered debris and roared, “Who the bloody hell was it that invented kal-toh? Because I would like to ring his bloody neck!”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

“I’m sure 90% of the galaxy would join you,” Tal meandered forward, knelt and reached out to snag a stray t’an. Patience was a virtue Kal-toh exploited. Though she suspected everyone aboard Leviathan had found some semblance of ‘order’ among the profound disarray of their work, it wasn’t quite comparable to a game of sticks and crystalline bases.

“Frankly,” she set the rod by his snapped base and gestured to the debris, “the t’an are much better as decor than game pieces.”

Mirth danced in the echoes of her gaze, but it soon faded into a sense of schooled professionalism. She thought to offer him a glass of water or something to ease the red plaguing his cheeks, but she thought better of it, choosing to advance her status from ‘stranger-in-my-ready-room’ to ‘maybe-a-familiar-name?’

“I’m Tal Abara,” she stepped back and leaned against her cane, managing a slight smile. “If you’re.. preoccupied, I can return later, Captain.”

– Tal Abara, Cognitive Researcher

At the woman’s threat to leave him alone with the infernal puzzle, Cobb’s eyes widened in desperate horror. “No call to leave! Please, sit. Whatever you have come to talk to me about will be preferable to this Vulcan instrument of misery!”

“Mm. Leaving you to suffer at the whim of this.. torturous instrument would be a tad cruel.” She weighed his plea, her grin consuming any semblance of sobriety she’d schooled to that point. “I suppose I’ll say.”

Rising to his feet, Zachariah rounded the desk and drew out a chair for his guest, before heading for the tall, antique cabinet on the far right wall and producing from somewhere within it a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. He filled both without confirming her preference. If she wanted tea then he would just drink both whiskeys to himself.

Tal propped her buoyant cane against the chair, lowered herself to its cushion and let her gaze wander after Zachariah. The eerie calm in her eyes tempered by curiosity, she edged forward just enough to steal a glimpse of his liquor cabinet. Abara wasn’t sure from where he’d produced the whiskey or on what authority he possessed it, but she wasn’t about to complain. His ship, his rules. Right?

“Tal Abara,” he echoed her name from his tongue as if it were a liquour to be savoured, returning to the desk and placing one of the glasses in front of her, before settling back into his own seat.
“Or there is tea, if you prefer…” he murmured quickly, while neglecting to specify exactly where such tea might be found.

Tal quickly shook her head. She’d endured enough finicky replicators to know that, without water boiling on a nearby stove or the aroma of loose herbs rising from a metal jar, it wasn’t safe to accept the tea. That is unless she was aching for another cup of ectoplasm-chamomile delight. The very thought of it sent a shiver scaling her spine.

“I’ll stick with the whiskey,” Tal assured.

“Tal Abara,” Cobb said again, then almost instantly the recognition was etched across his face. “You’re our new researcher. I have been studying your file. Or, what little detail I have been graced with, anyway. But perhaps you might fill in some of the gaps. Like…” he shrugged as if the question was not already burning a pit into his brain, “…what is it that you hope to study onboard my ship? Is it the anomalies? Or does your interest lie with the crew ourselves?”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

“Both, sir,” Tal hummed. “My research – cognitive research – shouldn’t be limited to ‘anomalous’ or ‘non-anamlous’. To comprehend the effect one has on the other, we must first understand what makes them tick. How do they respond to external stimuli? What effect do their responses have on the environment, the people around them? What subtle and vast elements separate their neuropsychology from a humanoid’s – from each other?” She shrugged, but it wasn’t enough to mask the unfounded enthusiasm dancing behind her feigned composure.

“I have limited data on these anomalies, so I cannot detail elaborate hypotheses or experiments just yet.” She was tossing a match into a cavernous abyss, hoping to illuminate something she knew almost nothing about. Tal Abara was a woman driven by wonder and concern. “But.. I can say I’m interested in examining the effects of anomalous encounters on the humanoid psyche, and vice versa.” She paused. “My service aboard the Viking has rendered me a little more.. conscious of methods to improve these encounters. I believe a key factor is recognising the behaviour, motivations and needs of these beings. Well.. at least the anomalies that take corporeal form.”

– Tal Abara, Cognitive Researcher