Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: Honoring the Ardent

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: Honoring the Ardent

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: Honoring the Ardent
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
“Let’s go by date,” Roman decided. The reason was personal, Roman knew the later the dates got the harder the memories would be. He didn’t want to break it up by lab and and spread the hardest parts around. He picked up the next data disk and flipped it between his fingers for a moment. “This will be from our first trip to the surface. Sort of like the Kelmao mission.”

~ Roman

Rand was sitting at the desk now, having eaten most of some weird dish that had been on offer. It wasn’t bad it wasn’t something she would ever ask for either. She was excited to see these files and see how it compared to Kelmao. She had a lot of questions. Most in order to make her more familiar with the work and project, so she didn’t have to ask later. The rest were out of pure curiosity and an insatiable love of animals. Every once in a while she had a question about a term or notation. About four pages in she started getting frustrated, flipping back and forth in the notes to the data and scrunching up her face like she was offended.

Roman answered all of her questions patiently, like he always did. This disk was obviously harder for him than the last, some of his answers were a bit clipped, not because of annoyance with her, rather he just didn’t want to talk about it. It was a little ways in that she stopped, flipping back and forth, and Roman leaned over trying see what she was looking at.

Roman’s clipped tone didn’t bother her. Perhaps, months ago, it would have, but she knew the difference between annoyed with the work/behavior of an officer and stress from, well, this. At those times she curbed her own natural curiosity and asked only those questions that seemed necessary for the review.

At first she thought it was scientific notations/terms/symbols she wasn’t aware of, or specific to the scientist that took them, but there was no initial identification of the symbols. She couldn’t imagine Roman ever being that lax, and even if she didn’t understand them, she had been helping in the lab long enough to recognize the common symbols. “Wait wait wait. Hold on.” She actually held up a hand to stop him and kept flipping back and forth. Finally she realized what it was - a personal form of shorthand. And it ranged across several officers notes. A quick check confirmed the Ardent, being a science vessel, had a yeoman assigned to the department. Another few minutes she was able to find the officer’s name and the information she wanted and began to plug it into the computer. It was almost like watching a cipher decoder an encryption. “Sorry, the yeoman who helped was using his own type of short hand. I couldn’t figure it out. But I have it now.” She looked down at the notes and nodded. “Okay continue.”

Rand

Finally she actually held up a hand and told him to stop, and he did, peering at the paper over her shoulder. Then she figured it out and Roman scowled, “If you ever use cryptic shorthands in my notes, you’re fired from note taking.” He meant it playfully, he knew she would never. But it was also true, he like his notes clear and easily readable. They went on going through images and readings of samples they’d taken from the planet surface. Roman has having trouble keeping his focus on the science, and multiple times he had to stop, take a breath, and try to refocus.

~ Roman

That was the best sound Rand had heard in days - Roman being playful. She turned on him looking extremely offended, “I would NEVER. I might use short hand on my draft but by the time you get it it is all long hand. I have standards.” She grinned at him at the last part. Rand has to restrain herself from calling the other yeoman lazy for not fixing it because there may not have been time, but these were early notes. Also the team the retrieved the files may not have realized they needed the ‘key.’ “Actually it’s quite common, we all do it. There is no way to write as fast as someone speaks. But some times we have to create symbols for words that we’ve never encountered. We make a kind of dictionary. The yeoman made a key for it, it just wasn’t attached to the files. That’s what I was looking for. Now it’s all fixed.”

They worked for awhile, but finally she stopped. “I need a couple hours of sleep, or at least to stop looking at the computer before everything gets fuzzy and it looks worse than cryptic short hand.”

Rand

Roman looked ready to argue, but changed his mind and deflated. “Alright.” He’d stay up all night if it were just him but if he didn’t go, she wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t do that to her. He turned off his PaDD and left it on the desk for tomorrow, and then stood from the chair to get ready for bed.

~ Roman

The days continued in that routine. Rand wouldn’t have minded if Roman had worked without her, as long as he kept taking breaks. The disks were getting more difficult for him to go through. Rand found herself rushing through her own work and made a mistake. Nothing major but she was glad she caught it, but it made her more aware. Maybe she should take time off so she could focus just on the project. She had time she could take and it wasn’t like she was going to go anywhere except to Earth and she didn’t have enough time for that. When she met Roman in his office the next time she brought it up. “I was thinking if I took a few days off, we could get more done.”

Rand

Roman wasn’t sleeping. He was going to bed, so Rand would sleep, but he wasn’t sleeping. The disks were getting harder to go through, and so far, Roman had avoided all of the audio and visual files. They had so far only looked at notes and still photos. He’d had to stop and cry once already. Roman didn’t work without her, both because he wanted her there, and because if he did, he wouldn’t take breaks and she’d get angry with him. That morning, Rand brought up taking days off and Roman sighed, “Randy said you might say that.”

~ Roman

Rand grinned at that. Randy knew her very well. She didn’t mind, not really. She’d been saving it because she had nowhere to go. Before Roman she would have waited to go somewhere with Randy. She knew Roman wasn’t sleeping well, and she tried to help. She hoped once they were done it would be better. Another reason to take some leave time. The project was huge. This was day three, but five since they started. “So is that a no? Just to prove Randy wrong?” She still hadn’t seen Randy herself.

They had gone through a lot of preliminary notes across the days. It was so much data. The project was huge. Rand put in the next disk and bit the inside of her cheek to stop from squealing. It didn’t quite work. It was SO CUTE! It was a rabbit, it had to be, but the colors!! “Is that… chameleon like camouflage?”

Rand