Posted by Chief Petty Officer Oscar Cameron Cascarrabias Demalia (Engineer (Grouch)) in Side Sim - USS Silversides - Enter Oscar
=/\= USS Silversides - Balao Class - Main Engineering =/\=

It was third shift, and Petty Officer Caraascabias had been working hard to get the pump-jet systems back on-line before his ship went on an oceanographic mission five light years away. He was chosen in part because nobody else could figure out what was causing the system checks to have a cascade failure. There was something about Oscar’s understanding of ship’s systems that made him able to simplify tasks that utterly confounded others. That comment was repeatedly on his service record - from his previous five captains.

However, the Chief Engineer may have also sent him to do the job because of the isolation suit that was a permanent fixture of his personal effects. He had worn one when he was a young boy in Spain, and still carried one around for several reasons. Normally, such covering was to protect the wearer from others. In spite of numerous medical advances in the Federation, some individuals still developed incurable auto-immune deficiencies. In Oscar’s case, it was the opposite; Oscar’s suit was originally to protect others from exposure to him.

He had accidentally been exposed to a strong fungal growth that had bonded with his hair follicles - all of them. It had turned his skin and hair green (the primary color, not the emeralds and olives present among Orion people). The fungus also altered Oscar’s body chemistry so that he emitted an unpleasant odor that was potentially noxious to several Federation species, such as Benzites and Caitians. Even if an individual didn’t have strong olfactory senses or non-standard respiratory systems, Oscar’s smell after he exerted himself physically was likely to make someone at least vaguely nauseated if not render them completely unconscious. Hence, he was raised with a barrier separating him from others from the age of six until he was officially cured at sixteen. He was still green, almost twenty years later, but he only smelled as bad as an average human with similar hygienic habits.

The problem was that, given how he had been living for ten years, his personal hygiene was atrocious. His isolation suit technically decontaminated him, but as it couldn’t do much about the smell, Oscar had turned off the scent improvement protocols when he was ten. He’d fallen out of the habit of regular clothing changes because his suit contained the smell and the poor appearance of dirty laundry. Although he didn’t use the suit as a waste disposal unit - even a young man with little sense for cleanliness didn’t want to live in complete filth - he had learned to live without regular bathing or perfectly clean clothes.

As such, even now, Oscar smelled unpleasant to most people. His uniforms were grimy and potentially ripped. His face somehow managed to look dirty even with the green pigment hiding a lot of what would normally discolor human skin. He’d kept his isolation suit into adulthood mostly so that he could get by without failing uniform inspections; Starfleet had always been his dream, and he wasn’t about to let personal appearance standards get in the way. Combined with a natural affinity for Engineering, and nobody could quite figure out how to get him out of the fleet - especially since he wasn’t an officer.

As he walked up to the Officer On Duty - Ensign Vestol, a Vulcan who could not help but express disapproval for Cascarrabias - Oscar placed a handheld computing device in front of him. Vestol turned to Oscar with a look that was the closest a Vulcan could be to petulant.

“Yes, Petty Officer? You have only been on Deck 11 for two hours ship time when you estimated that you would require your full shift to complete the task.” Vestol had a way of making the most innocuous of statements seem like an accusation.
“I got done faster because I figured that a bunch of officers would have looked at the actual moving parts of the system before complaining to me. Turned out that some filter switches were jamming in place, which blocked some valves during testing.”
Vestol got to the point. “I take it that you removed the cause of the blockage.”
“You could say that,” Oscar said, reached into his bag, dug around for a few seconds, and pulled out a rotten creature’s body that had once been something analogous to a fish. “We need to recalibrate the bio-sensors for the pump-jet before we get to our destination.”
“Why did you feel compelled to bring that… thing… here?” Vestol was clearly finding the stench unpleasant. The few other people in Engineering were already keeping their distance, and we’re glad for it.
“I thought that it would be a nice present for you, Vestol. I know you have a side interest in exobiology.”

Along with his hygienic issues, Oscar’s relative isolation had robbed him of any social graces.

“Get it out of here. In fact, if the system is functional, don’t return until the start of first shift. Lieutenant Commander Kolenn wants to see you.”
Oscar shrugged. “Thanks for the night off. More time to sort my sock collection.”
“Dismissed, Petty Officer.”

With that, Oscar headed to his quarters. Whatever the Chief Engineer had to say to Petty Officer Cascarrabias could wait.

Oscar Cascarrabias, Engineering

=/\= USS Silversides - Balao Class - Deck 8 - Carrascabias’s Quarters - 5.5 Hours Later =/\=
Oscar may have been a curmudgeon by nature, but he hadn’t been lying about using his spare time to organize his sock collection. Unlike most enlisted crew on the Silversides, Oscar had his room to his own. This was partly due to having a decade and a half of experience in Starfleet, and partly due to the fact that he had a reputation around the fleet that had every Operations officer giving him solo billets out of mercy for the rest of the crew. This allowed Oscar to use what would normally be space for other crewmen on larger vessels - or another crew member, in the case of the smaller Balao-class - for his personal effects, of which there were many. To say that he rarely disposed of items was to put things mildly; not only did he hold on to items, he held on to items that other people would likely feed into the replicator for recycling. As such, he had cargo storage bins with not only collections that some would consider reasonable - as an example, one crate held about 250 paper books on various topics, and was carefully curated, albeit every last book had been taken from collections that were about to be disposed, while a smaller box had one of the most varied arrays of harmonicas in the Federation - but also collections of items that others had literally discarded. Oscar’s sock collection was of the latter.

If socks were still functional as socks, Oscar would wear them. The moment that they ripped, torn, or wore through, they went into his collection. He had a separately sealed segment for the ones that had to be retired due to the accumulation of dirt, sweat, skin cells, and grime - not because he wanted to prevent mold spores from escaping, but so that nobody would dare to wash them. He had all of his socks carefully arranged, just like the rest of his collections. It started with year of acquisition, then type of damage or degradation, then type of fabric, then an alphabetically sorted pattern type. He had added a total of twenty new socks (none of them matching) to his collection when his alarm chimed. Oscar sighed wistfully, updated the electronic catalog on his case, closed it up, and returned it to one of the lower slots of his massive array of storage. It was time to meet the Chief Engineer - likely for a surprise inspection.

It was at that moment that Oscar realized, in horror, his massive mistake. In his excitement that he had been given a majority of his work shift free, he had removed his isolation suit, but had forgotten to engage the sterilization protocols for said isolation suit. It was a matter of pride that, in spite of his personal proclivities, Petty Officer Cascarrabias had never had a negative remark on his personal appearance record. True, Oscar appreciated the fact because of how completely inaccurate that record was, but still, a man had to have standards. The isolation suit required two hours to be completely sterilized. To his dismay, there was really only one solution for him to be presentable to the Chief - he needed to shower and put on his dress uniform, the only uniform that he had managed to keep within regulation. He cleaned up quickly, much to his dismay - six months worth of perfectly good filth, gone in a matter of minutes with a sonic shower. As he got dressed, he made sure to transfer his rank insignia to the dress uniform. A quick look at himself via the mirror in the room, and Oscar knew that, as much as he was loathe to be so, he was quite dapper - save for the fact that his skin and hair looked like moss. He left his room, wondering what would have gotten the Chief Engineer’s attention.

=/\= USS Silversides - Balao Class - Chief Engineer’s Office =/\=
The door chimed, and Lieutenant Commander Kolenn Hizra opened the door remotely via a command on his desk. When Petty Officer Cascarrabias came in, she was a bit taken aback. Admittedly, she was used to being a little unsettled whenever she met with Oscar in the first place - he was just that kind of man - but Hizra’s unease this time was a little different. Oscar was, for lack of a better term, completely presentable. In fact, the dress uniform made her wonder who had let the news slip. Still, Oscar actually came in at a march, stood in front of her desk, and stood at attention.

“Petty Officer Cascarrabias reporting as ordered, Chief.”

Hizra hated being called “Chief”; she preferred “boss”, “Lieutenant Commander”, or “ma’am”. Oscar got away with it because it was the only honorific that he ever used with her. Technically, she couldn’t even reprimand Oscar for it, since it was her position. That was something that every last one of Oscar’s performance reviews included - variations on the term “malicious compliance”. Commander Kolenn was glad that the CO had approved what was about to happen, or Oscar probably would have been her problem until she got promoted to a bigger, more advanced vessel.

“Petty Officer, I have good news for you, and you seem to be already dressed for the occasion,” Kolenn said as she pulled a small case out from an alcove in her desk. She opened it to reveal a rank insignia and said, “Congratulations on your promotion to Chief Petty Officer.”
Oscar looked at the case in disbelief, as he knew that he had been passed over for promotions repeatedly through the years, but said, “Thank you. But I’m used to promotions being treated as a big deal. I know that I had to attend some mandatory promotion parties - Young’s promotion to Lieutenant comes to mind.”
Hizra nodded, but said, “This promotion includes a transfer to another vessel that’s in need of your… unique ability to perceive unusual ship system maintenance requirements. I remember from your records that you have repeatedly stated that you don’t want a sending off party whenever you got reassigned, and a promotion party would effectively be that, so I respected your request.”

Oscar shrugged, and then switched out his rank to show that he was, in fact, a Chief Petty Officer now. It was odd to no longer be able to make the joke that he was always First Class, but he just realized something - with the promotion came certain privileges that he was certain that he would use once he got to his new ship.

“So, Chief, where’s Starfleet shuffling me this time?”

Thus would begin Oscar’s trip to a vessel where his hygienic preferences would definitely be an issue. A hospital ship with somebody who sometimes needed a biohazard warning - if ever a juxtaposition were to be found, the choice to put CPO Oscar Cascarrabias on the hospital ship USS Ogawa that was the one.

Oscar Cascarrabias, Engineering