Anastasia sat in her small office, paging through service records and cross-referencing to crew members who still needed to come in for their routine psychiatric evaluations. So far, her shipboard experience had been sheer busywork, but she wasn’t particularly complaining. The routine of psychiatric evaluations was so similar to the routine of the qualitative data collection she was familiar with that it almost felt like she was back in her research lab. She’d barely had time to complete that thought when the sudden jolt threw her out of her desk chair and her stack of PaDDs went flying throughout the room. She felt a bump on her head and swatted whatever the projectile was away, noting with amusement several moments later that she was now covered in multicolored lollipops.

“Not a research lab…” she thought with a grimace as she rubbed her aching head. She’d have a knot there, but luckily nothing more serious, she thought to herself as she tried to get back to her feet in the dimness of emergency lighting. Taking care not to step on the lollipops, she knelt down and started trying to sweep them back into their container.

Darren