Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: In Memory of Jay

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: In Memory of Jay

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: In Memory of Jay
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
Roman noticed her a little after she entered and smiled. “Rand, you could’ve gotten my attention when you came in.” It was unusual to see her in the lab out of uniform, but he didn’t really seem surprised. She was off duty, after all. “What would you think of an arboretum in the empty storage areas?”

~ Roman

Rand shrugged while rolling the little ball around for Nibbles. “You were working, and I never mind extra time with Nibbles.” A couple of the techs grinned. Rand’s preference and attitude toward the little mouse was well known by everyone. Rand didn’t look up at him when he asked the question, her attention on the mouse. Rand had figured out that Nibbles would take advantage of any inattention. It she gave the question her typical thorough consideration. “Hmmm. That would move some of the experiments out of the labs, open up more space. The crew would probably like it. Helpful and I get no end of requests for the recreational room. The cargo and storage areas are built for a lot weight and capacity. Lt Cleolet will know if that storage area can handle it. Honestly I’m surprised there isn’t one. Most of the deep space vessels have at least a small one.”

Rand

Roman nodded. “We can talk to her about it… After we finish what we’re currently working on.” He knew she’d know what he meant. “It’ll give the lab and the crew a new recreational space. I can’t think of a better thing to do for the ship. And with more botanical space, perhaps I could bring aboard some Aldarian plantlife…” He was clearly already planning the use of the space.

~ Roman

“The animals would probably appreciate a fresh set of plants themselves. Most of them forage on what’s in the cages and the plants are getting a bit bare and wilted.” She palmed a couple of the plants in Nibble’s cage that had only short chewed on stubs left of leaves. Nibbles followed her hand and suddenly reached up and grabbed it, front paws holding on to one of her fingers pulling it down and then began to lick and scrape her teeth across the pad of her finger and then the nail. “What are you doing? No no, stop that.” Rand leaned over to get a better view of the mouse. She did not need to ingest a fingernail. She gently pushed Nibbles away from her hand with her other. Nibbles seemed to not care which hand it was and turned her attention to Rand’s other hand, holding onto her finger and rubbing her nose and face against it. “That’s enough, you don’t need to clean my hands.” Rand picked her up and turned her around and removed her hands. She locked the cage and then washed her hands. Nibbles hadn’t broken skin or even scraped it. Luckily Rand kept her nails short and clean so there was nothing for the mouse to get ahold of.

Rand

Roman glanced into the enclosures and nodded. Rand was right. “I’ll put in a request to Starfleet. They’d have to send a vessel to the planet, so it might be a while.” He watched Nibbles rub up on Rand’s hand. It was clear to Roman she meant no harm… Rather the opposite, the mouse was grooming her fingers. He wore a smile not dissimilar to the one from the videos when he was holding the hopping frog. “She loves you. They do that to their babies.” Roman commented as Rand locked the cage.

~ Roman

Rand dried her hands, moving back over to the cage to write down her observations. His statement made her laugh, which got several glances, Rand was always so quiet and serious. “Oh wonderful. I thought it was the other way around. She was the baby and I was the adult.” She finished writing and then bent down whispering something at the mouse and then stood up. “I’m done.” Roman seemed more relaxed and more himself than he had been in awhile, so she hated to go back to the other project, but avoiding wouldn’t get it done.

Rand

Roman nodded with a small inaudible sigh. He didn’t want to go back either. “Let’s go, then,” he said, and then they headed back to deck 3. The next disk was going to be footage from the planet surface. Roman was not looking forward to it.

~ Roman

Pipkin was ecstatic to be let out of her cage again. Rand had thought to leave her in there so she wouldn’t beg for treats, but figured she’d end up banging on the cage is distract her and make her lose her place. Plus they always let her out whenever they were there. The next video was long and took up most of the disk. Rand had thought it might actually be easy because she had the dictated notes and just needed to find the time stamps but no.

Roman knew which video it was. They’d wanted the ability to go back and see the environment, after they’d left, so they’d created a longer video of that. It would be Roman and Jay pointing out different things on the planet surface, whatever they thought was important.

The note file had apparently been corrupted and pieces were missing. Rand didn’t say anything about it though. She just worked on correcting it as best she could and resigned herself to having to rewatch the video to fix the notes. She didn’t mind, but it was a delay. She could stay up later to fix it. Unless she got lucky and the pieces they needed were all still intact.

Rand

Roman didn’t know it was corrupted, he hadn’t looked through them. He started the video. Chearia was exactly what it was described to be in the notes: A lush rainforest, with a lot of plant growth and life. In the background were a diverse set of plants. Roman and Jay would point to one, describe it and its characteristics and then move on to the next one. Whenever they saw an animal they’d zoom in on it and talk about it. At the end of the video, they sat in front of the camera and talked in general about the state of the project and their future plans. It was similar to the other videos in the way that Roman and Jay interacted with each other.

Roman still felt cried out, and yet somehow his eyes managed to squeeze out more tears. He wondered when he was ever going to stop crying within the first two minutes of the videos. And there were still so many more to go through.

~ Roman