Thunk.

The silence of the night was pierced by a substantially booming noise of a heavy tome crashing to the ground, directly from the bookshelf which held André’s textbooks and other miscellaneous trinkets that had been hurriedly stacked upon his arrival. Clearly, he had more important matters on his mind at the time of his boarding than the pesky physics behind why gravity makes things fall to the ground. Unfortunately, this had encouraged the forces of nature to attract some obscenely oversized classical physics textbook to the deck, in a stunning display of natural irony.

The Ensign remained perversely oblivious to the audial intrusion, his body seemingly entombed in the catatonic state - the first sign that perhaps something was not quite right. Although the physicist’s physical form remain frozen, his mind was nothing if not racing; an eclectic selection of images, sounds, and even olfactory sensations rushed through Montanari’s mind at a blinding pace. At once, a flurry of scenarios entered his mind that were slightly less than savoury, slowly creeping lower and lower on the scale to which one might find something morally acceptable, until…

André awoke from his series of nightmares suddenly - torn out of the dark void and horrors by the grip of the shrill tones that constituted his alarm. This was his first night on the Europa; how fitting, then, that his first appointment of the day was with none other than the ship’s counsellor?

The Italian pulled on a ‘newly pressed’ uniform replicated moments ago, which hugged the ensign’s form neatly and conservatively. How much we take for granted, a replicator which can tailor uniforms specifically to fit our measurements? André derailed his train of thought, before it delivered him far from the destination that was Lt. Nox’s office, and into some fantastic land of procrastination. Picking up the PADD he had strategically placed on the table near the exit of his quarters, Montanari shook the exceedingly frivolous thoughts from his head, whilst making his way to deck 6.

Arriving at the door of the ship’s counsellor, the scientist checked the time once more - not a minute too soon for his appointment, nor late - before tapping the chime, to allow the CNS to know he was present for his evaluation, at her leisure.

Ensign André Montanari,
Scientist