Month: December 2008

Ensign Sparky, A Fable

Stephanie Zvan11 Comments

Sometimes, things just collide in my head. In this case, it was these posts from Dr. Isis and these posts from DrugMonkey. This particular story, however, is in no way their fault. Yeah, it gets a little strange in here.

Ensign Sparky heard a high-pitched scream and ran forward, pulling out his phaser. Rounding the corner into the Enterprise’s dining area, he saw only his captain. Confused, he looked into the corners of the room.

“Ensign!” It came out as a squeak.

Sparky turned back toward his captain and took in the details he had missed in his haste. How could he have failed to note that Kirk was crouching on a chair? His hairpiece askew, his lower lip clenched in his teeth–those were things he could have overlooked. The cowering posture? Not so much.

Kirk cleared his throat. “Ensign!” His voice dropped back to normal.

Sparky snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”

“Is it gone?”

“Sir?”

Kirk pointed to the floor without letting go of his legs. “Is it gone?”

Sparky looked around, unsure what he was supposed to be seeing. Just as he was about to declare the room clean, he saw movement near the replicator. It was just a tiny flick of…was it a tail? Then it was gone. He marched to the replicator to investigate.

“Be careful!” Kirk’s voice drifted upward again.

Sparky pried loose the panel below the chute. More than a dozen tiny things scurried out. He didn’t know what else to call the half fuzzy, half leathery creatures that rushed away into shadows.

Kirk screamed again. “Get them! Get them!”

Doubting the propriety of permanently zapping anything that moved like his favorite pet lizard, Sparky set his phaser on its lowest stun setting. As the ensign moved around the room, Kirk squeaked out bloodthirsty encouragement. Then, just as Sparky stunned the last of them, the captain screamed again.

Sparky whipped around. Another of the strange creatures was wriggling its way out of the guts of the replicator. He stunned it too. “All taken care of, sir.”

Kirk was still huddled on the chair, staring at the replicator.

“Uh, sir?”

Kirk blinked but didn’t look away. “Get me out of here.”

“Yes, sir.” The captain didn’t move. Not sure what to do, Sparky stepped up and held out a hand. “May I help you down, sir?”

Kirk shook his head vigorously. “There might be more of them!”

“Yes, sir.” Sparky stepped around behind the chair and tugged on its back. The chair didn’t move but Kirk wobbled. He squeaked again.

Sparky sighed. “May I carry you, sir?”

“Of course, ensign.”

Scooping the fetally curled captain into his arms wasn’t easy, but Sparky managed. Kirk relaxed slightly.

Once they’d passed through the doorway, Kirk uncurled enough to run one finger along Sparky’s collarbone. “Blue isn’t really your color, ensign. Do you have any engineering background?”

Sparky swallowed. “No, sir.”

“Tactical it is, then.” Kirk snuggled closer to Sparky. “You’ll look so much better in red.”

Sparky didn’t say anything. He knew about Kirk’s young men. Everyone did. Cushy assignment while it lasted but all too likely to end in disaster when Kirk got bored.

Luckily, they heard footsteps ahead just then. Kirk pushed frantically at Sparky’s chest. “Put me down!”

Sparky was happy to oblige. The captain straightened his shirt and his hair.

A small squad in red came into sight just ahead and stopped. Their leader stepped forward. “Captain, we heard a report of phaser discharge. Is everything okay, sir?”

Kirk waved away their concern with an excess of nonchalance. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” He looked down. “Still, you may accompany me to the bridge.”

Sparky was trying to slip away when he felt the captain’s hand on his shoulder. “You too, ensign.”

Kirk tapped his communicator. “Bones meet me on the bridge in…” He glanced from Sparky to the floor. “Oh, better make it right now.”

Sparky had never been on the bridge before. It was a little intimidating, especially when Kirk made him stand just behind the captain’s chair as he chewed out Dr. McCoy.

“Bones, you said this was all taken care of after the Tribbles incident. You were supposed to recalibrate the ship’s contraception field for every new animal brought on board.”

McCoy looked somehow even more sour than usual. “Damn it, Jim, I did. The creature you saw matches the description of Chekhov’s new pet, and Nurse Kelly and I recalibrated the field for that.”

“Doctor Kelly.” A young woman stepped out from behind McCoy. Sparky noticed that she was wearing nonregulation boots to very good effect. “I’m every bit the doctor that you are, McCoy.”

Kirk held up a hand to forestall an explosion from McCoy. “Then perhaps, Dr. Kelly, you can explain to us what happened.”

“Of course.” Dr. Kelly shrugged, which did fascinating things to the hem of her tunic. “Dr. McCoy didn’t allow me to test the contraception field thoroughly.”

“What!?” Sparky thought McCoy’s head might explode. “I told you to use the standard protocol!”

“Standard protocol is to test the males, McCoy. This little creature has six sexes.”

Kirk smiled. “Six? How interesting. Why didn’t you tell me this, McCoy?”

“Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a veterinarian. Who cares whether some animal has six sexes or thirteen?”

Full-on squabbling broke out between McCoy and Kelly. Kirk tapped his chin thoughtfully with his forefinger. “Thirteen? Really? Hmm.”

Eventually, Spock stepped between the doctors. “If I may?”

Kirk started from his reverie. “What? Oh, yes. Bones, nurse!”

“Doctor!”

“Whatever.” Kirk looked at Spock. “You were saying?”

“It seems only logical, captain, that one should test a device in all the sexes available. Human ideas of contraception depend on a standard male-female model, and if the device is only proven to work on males, any females who come into contact with a nonstandard sex may not be protected–obviously, as today’s incident shows.”

McCoy exploded in earnest at this point. Sparky could barely make out the words, although “green Vulcan blood” was repeated several times.

Dr. Kelly moved away from the fight toward Uhuru, who looked suddenly upset. Sparky was confused. Hadn’t she heard McCoy swear at Spock before? Everyone else on the ship had.

The doctor and the communications officer left the bridge together, and Sparky thought it was a wonderful idea. However, as he took a step toward the door, he heard Kirk clear his throat.

“When you boys are done fighting and making up, do see if you can’t do something about keeping these things from breeding. I’ll be in my cabin when–” He looked over at Sparky. “I’ll check back in later.”

The captain caught Sparky’s arm on the way to the door. “Walk with me, ensign. We need to discuss your transfer–and your uniforms.”

Sparky sighed and resigned himself to the inevitable. “Yes, sir.” They left the bridge.

Ensign Sparky, A Fable
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5:56

Stephanie Zvan3 Comments

Peggy tagged me with the new 5-56 meme. It combines an existing meme (fifth sentence on page 56) with a guessing game.

– You can pick and choose the books to find the most interesting sentences.
– At least five of the books should be fiction.
– Try not to use books that are so obscure no one could guess what they are.
– You can give hints, if you so desire.
– Tag some other bloggers to pass the meme along.

I don’t know how much good this information does as hints, but here goes. All are fiction. I went with writers I’ve met and at least chatted with, so as I write this, I’m not sure how interesting the sentences will be. Most of the authors don’t live in Minnesota. There are fourteen authors for the ten books, but only thirteen are listed on the covers. Of course, one of those is a pen name, so the question of who is actually credited is, well, complicated.

1. The worst were one her arms; the biggest burn, under her chin, was the size of her palm.

2. Though I preferred to think of it as vengeance.

3. She drank too much and invited the forge’s handsome foreman to her new bed.

4. Can’t he find satisfaction interfering in the lives of his parishioners and browbeating them to feel obliged to invite him to dinner?

5. I wince as he probes around the edge of the prosthetic arm, feeling the scarring.

6. Steep-roofed old townhouses still lined its narrow streets, but bits of their elaborate stonework had given way to the elements and bits had been stolen to replace other bits.

7. Bella slid the score gently across the table toward me.

8. ‘You could have asked me to stay the night,’ she said, in her cold-stone voice.

9. Gringras was sitting on the fire escape above her, his legs dangling down.

10. I lay on my side facing away from her, my hands clutching my injury.

I tag Mme. Piggy, Greg, Lou and anyone who recognizes one of their books above.

5:56

Globalization and Global Awareness

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

I almost went into work the day after Thanksgiving, even though I had the time off. Why? I have coworkers in Mumbai, and the only way I was going to find out how they were doing was to log into the intranet.

In the end, I stayed home. I realized that whether I knew or not made zero difference to what was happening there. In fact, I don’t know any of these coworkers, have never spoken to them.

But I was still relieved yesterday to find out that they were all safe, freaked out to hear that one had been rescued from one of the attacked hotels, and hurt by their losses of friends and family. Even not knowing them, the tie we share, just by working for the same company, makes the whole tragedy more real to me.

We talk a lot about the pitfalls of globalization, but we don’t talk much about the positive side effects. There are frequently improvements to infrastructure, standards of living and education that go along with companies dumping even small amounts of money across the world, but I think the connections made across national borders are nearly as important.

Would we know nearly as much about child labor practices if someone weren’t able to point at people and tell them that what they’re wearing was made by an eight-year-old? Isn’t it harder to think of someone as completely other when you see them marked with the same brands that surround you? I know it’s much harder to think of world tragedies as distant events when my company tells me that the people they’re affecting matter to them and should matter to me.

This doesn’t just happen through business, of course. I’ve traveled outside the U.S.–four countries. I went to school with someone who moved to another. Through this blog and others, I know people who are personally affected by events in at least a dozen countries, just off the top of my head. Because I mentored an exchange student for a while, I know more about the presidential politics of one former Soviet country than anyone else I know will ever find interesting.

Still, I work for a company with offices in more than forty countries (I think; I don’t have to keep that straight anymore). That’s a large chunk of the world about which I get “this is the scope of events but everyone is okay” messages. That’s a large chunk of the world that heard that I was okay when the 35W bridge collapsed last year. That’s a lot of people who aren’t ignoring each other.

For all the problems of globalization, this little piece of it is a very good thing.

Globalization and Global Awareness