Girl talk
Posted on Fri Jan 20th, 2012 @ 3:54pm by Lieutenant Jimmy Cooper
1,525 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Unmasked Miners
Location: Mess hall
Timeline: Current
Holly found herself in the mess hall. Even though, being a hologram, she didn't need food. She did, however, summoned herself holographic dessert, as not to fall out of place too much. Other than that, she was looking at other people, eating, drinking, courting, fighting etcetera.
Of those pastimes, Birsi conformed best to the former duo. Lunchtime had come upon her the end of extended shift, and after a brief, she opted against spending it in her quarters out of fear that Sisqua's absence would make it impossible for her to resist the lure of sleep. Her body and mind were in accord, but her spirit wasn't keen on taking to her laurels with Ranger exploring a frontier she wasn't truly built to. To that end, Birsi chose to retreat to the mess, where she sat at one of the small fringe tables so as to not take up group space. Too small to comfortably accomodate the kinds of numbers she associated with bustling, the room nonetheless contained a fair variety of people and activities Birsi munched on her hasperat to watching. Naturally, the exotic panoramic of the vast Taylforthian sea proved a popular attraction. And while Birsi was among those eyeing the depths, her interests eventually prioritized an unfamiliar card game.
Holly noticed Birsi looking at the card game, and she looked from one to the other. Eventually, she walked towards Birsi. "Hey there, miss!" the girl said, standing next to her, thoroughly uninvited, "Do you mind if I sit here?"
Birsi met the inquiry with a curious expression. Referring to its poser as a kid might've been hypocritical since she struck Birsi as someone of like age, which numerous Federation cultures would also consider more adolescent than adult. Yet likely as it was that she wasn't the only 'betweener' stationed aboard Ranger, she nonetheless suspected different circumstances. Civilian garb aside, Holly just seemed a little too. . .unfettered.
Thought-laden seconds later, the inklings of a smile eased her visage. "Only if you tell me why."
"'Caaauussee - it's hard to talk while standing?" Holly laughed, and sat anyway. "I saw you looking at that card game over there," she confessed.
"Haven't seen it before," Birsi offered in explanation. "It seems to play a lot like Blackjack, but gives players some recourse against busting. It looks more fun for it. I don't know about you, but thinking about chance and probability isn't my idea of fun."
"Blackjack?" Holly's eyes faded for a second as she accessed the database. Being a hologram had its perks. "Ah, yeah, they're betting against each other now."
"You know," Birsi mused, "I don't think I've ever seen you around before now." Her focus retrained on Holly, she trailed off her statement in tacit askance. She hoped her less pointed phrasing would invite something in the way of an introduction.
"Oh, um, right. I'm Holly," she said while offering her hand to shake.
"Birsi," she added to her acceptance of her new tablemate's gesture. "I work in Stellar Cartography. You?"
"I'm just - floating around, you know." Holly smiled. "I used to help T'kaarch, he's a stupid cat, but he left and now I live with Mister Spikes - eh, I mean Lieutenant Cooper." She dragged out the last bit as if she had trouble pronouncing it.
Birsi didn't know what to make of Holly's disclosure. No peg she forged fit the peculiar hole of the situation laid before her, an admission imparted by the scrunching of her face. Yet she gathered her thoughts relatively quickly, and descended them upon her initial silence. "I get the whole free spirit thing," Birsi began, leaning onto the table until her chin set in her palm. "How you're doing it on a ship you have no obligation to. . .not so much."
"Well, you know, I have friends here. And pretty things!" Holly rotated her head and showed Birsi the earrings she got - well, copied - from Apu, the quartermaster and ship smuggler. "Also, I can walk around on this whole ship, and T'kaarch said I probably couldn't do that on the star base where he is studying."
If she didn't know better, Birsi would've accused Holly of testing the old parental quibble about one's face permanently sticking in a prolonged expression. Her clarification attempt inspired more questions than answers, at least until the Bajoran induced context lent by Holly's actions and words. Most telling and insistent was the bit about freely roaming the ship. Naive an air as she exuded, Birsi couldn't imagine why Holly couldn't go freely on a starbase, which was safer in many ways than the Ranger. Unless. . .
"You're a hologram," she questioningly chuckled after recalling Ranger's shipwide emitter network.
"Geez, did you just figure that out?" Holly pouted with mock insult." You're a. . .Bajoran, right? Isn't it racist to say it like that?"
"Some might be insecure enough to think your tone implies it. But on the surface. . .no, not really. As for just figuring out you're not a biologic. . .I'd have thought you'd have taken that as a compliment."
"I dunno," Holly answered truthfully, "I never really think about it." She gazed to the card game. "Those cards are weird." She didn't purposefully change the subject, she just didn't really know what else to say.
"There's weirder out there," Birsi assured. Quite aware of the topic deviation, she struggled with what to do about it. Holly was the first hologram she'd interacted with at length, and her assertion about her passibility as a biological being was little more than the general conjecture offered by literature she'd studied in high school about artificial sentience. The matter's centuries-old roots didn't dissuade her adoptive parents from thinking it oversentimental bunk, and their Bajoran child took a similar attitude. As far as they were concerned, AI was created by man, for man, and was thus subject to his will the same way many biological beings believed themselves subserviant to their creator.
On the subject of creation, Birsi had to admit she was curious about the circumstances behind Holly's. And that's what she went with in resuming their interaction.
"So, this T'kaarch. . .he made you?"
"T'kaarch is my father, yeah. He's also a stupid cat to leave me alone," Holly pouted.
"That could be considered racist," Birsi ribbed of Holly's second 'stupid cat' reference.
Holly stared at Birsi blankly, then added softly: "But he's my stupid cat. . ."
"Okay, then it's irony."
"Irony?" Still with the blank stare, Holly said, "I guess." Then, all of a sudden, she snapped out of it. "Don't you work with mister Spikes?" She asked enthusiastically.
"Geez, did you just figure that out?" The specialist's return of the familiar line mimicked Holly's earlier instance. "What of it?"
"Well, nothing really - it's just that he lives in T'kaarch's appartment - with me - and he's often talking about people." That Lieutenant Cooper had the strange property of talking to himself when he was in his chambers, she didn't add - often, he forgot she was there at all, with sometimes embarrassing results.
The Bajoran shrugged, uncertain of what Holly was getting at. Her thoughts had seized the possibility of Holly wanting to clarify something he'd said about her, but she wasn't much of a gossiper. As such, she didn't express an overt interest in knowing.
"I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but what of it?"
Still not really having an answer, Holly just stared for a bit. "So, what do you do?" She asked, once again, completely unrelated. Holly's holographic brain worked in weird ways...
"I could swear I already said that I work in Stellar Cartography," Birsi chuckled.
"I meeaan," Holly expolated as if Birsi was being mean, "what do you do exactly? Drawing maps?"
"You could say that. Under normal circumstances, I glance over and archive scan data for both Ranger and Starfleet Cartography. If we catch something odd, I try to collect more data and figure out what it is."
At that point, Jimmy entered. "Ah, gotta go!" And without waiting for an answer, Holly disappeared.
The suddenness of Holly's 'departure' inclined the specialist to trace her last glance. Although she too made Jimmy's presence, Birsi remained clueless as to why her tablemate fled. Well into both his shift and the dive, she doubted the eccentric hologram even had a place in Jimmy's thoughts. In light of his commitment from not terribly long ago, she wondered slightly about what brought him down.
Jimmy noticed the crewman sitting and, being the only familiar face, walked to her. Both his hair and demeanor were. . .fuzzy, at best.
"Crewman, have you seen the captain? I can't seem to find him.." Jimmy enquired
"Him, sir?" A quirked eyebrow joined Birsi's querying tone.
"Oh, sorry, I should be on the bridge, where the other captain is," And without further explanation, Jimmy walked away again.
A girlish post by
Sessan Birsi (PNPC Stensrud),
Stellar Cartography,
USS Ranger
Holly (the Hologram) and Jimmy Cooper,
Chief Scientist Officer,
USS Ranger
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