Part One: A Hundred Years Ago
It was all so long ago, fifty-two years or so I've been reminded on several locations. There is ancient earth saying about events feeling like they were a hundred years ago even if the amount of actual time isn't anywhere close to a hundred years. I suppose that in my old age thats how I feel and would venture to guess how my friends and even enemies feel to this very day. One thing I have never had to be reminded of is how it all began and most importantly, how it all ended.
During our long voyage back home I took a lot of notes of which some didn't survive the trip because I wrote them out by hand using paper and an old style ink pen. Call me old fashioned but dictating to the computer or using a PADD just isn't the same so in attempting to assemble my notes into a workable account of our journey I'm doing my best to recollect what I had written in those missing pages so I should endeavor to point out that my account my not be completely accurate and in fact it will probably conflict with the accounts of others who have published similar works.
As an old writers axiom goes, the best place to start is at the beginning. The stardate was 0331.10 and my day had begun fairly routine and not as some have said, with a surprise. I had gone to bed the night before after an exhausting sixteen hour shift in stellar cartography. Late 24th century ships were notorious for random A.I. artifacts or put it another way, sometimes the computer would decide not to take orders or simply corrupt some data. Personally, I think all these old ships wanted was some attention since they had been out of service for so long.
In any event the A.I. Artifacts never did any serious damage except maybe to my sanity. What had happened was that I was on temporary assignment to the USS Maelstrom to make a copy of their database. To this day I still don't know why it took over twenty years to archive their computer but I took the assignment because stellar cartography has always been a hobby of mine. I had the unfortunate lot in life of being born to parents who thought journalism was more of a noble profession.
I'm not saying that I regret my career or resent my parents for pushing me into journalism but The Federation News Service isn't all the exciting but still I managed to file a few good stories in my time excluding this one. Maybe later I'll tell you about the time I met The Founder known as Odo, he told me some stories that would put my entire life to shame but thats for another time. As I was saying or writing in this case, I was running a very slow level 2 diagnostic of the computer core to ensure that the data would survive the transfer.
I started the diagnostic, told the computer to alert me when it was done because with anything old it could take sometime and I went to the mess hall to get some coffee feeling it was going to be a long night. I wasn't more than two meters from the mess hall when the lights began to flicker on and off but I just attributed it to a minor malfunction in the ships power grid, again not really surprised but what did surprise me was how well the doors on the ship worked. In the week I had been aboard not one door stuttered and from what I heard the chief engineer Lt. Doone was quite proud of that fact.
I suppose with all the other things on the ship that refused to work it was the only thing he had to be proud of but I don't think anyone ever said that to his face, detached Vulcan's can be quite proud. Now, the replicators didn't have the same perfect track record as the doors but most of the time they worked well but this was not one of those times and this is probably what caused all the trouble in the first place.
Without thinking I asked the computer for Vorta berry flavored coffee then about two seconds later it registered in my brain what I had done but by then it was too late. The Maelstrom was one of the few ships to survive The Dominion War and soon as it realized I was ordering something from an enemy that killed a lot it's crew and tried to destroy the ship it's self it went crazy but crazy is a polite term for what had happened. While I'm not prone to swearing, I would have to say that bat shit was more apt in this scenario.
The old style red-alert alarm blared loudly and suddenly gravity increased by ten percent causing me and presumably the rest of the crew to feel as though they suddenly gained twenty pounds in a matter of seconds. The doors which up until then had never malfunctioned where opening and closing without purpose except maybe rage and indignity due my innocent slip of the tongue. With some effort I made my way through the door, back into the blood red coordinator.
Along the way I encountered other crew members who were heaving them selves a long. A few had asked me if they knew what was going on but I simply denied any knowledge, after all it was the computer fault, not mine. One thing that did strike me odd is how the crew reacted to this incident, it was as though they dealt with malfunctions like this on a regular basis, again that's a real surprise. I should also mention, that a few years after this incident the only crew member was still mad at me was an Elysian.
Star Fleet Medical had finally perfected a treatment that allowed Elysian's who came from a low gravity planet to finally experience earth normal gravity without the encumbrances of technology. Melanie or Mel as I came to call her just received the treatment a few days prior and now was suffering the indignity of being at the mercy of gravity once again. She eventually forgave me but it took three dates with her to get it, well worth it I would say.
So as I was saying I dragged my self innocently (avoiding the urge to whistle down) down the corridor back to stellar cartography. I was crossing my fingers hoping that the computer wasn't going to be petulant enough to make assignment any more difficult, I guess I should have replicated a four leaf clover and a rabbit's foot instead. I managed to get through the doors back into stellar cartography and to the main console and after five seconds my fears were justified. The data that was I supposed to archive was corrupted.
I'm really not sure why but perhaps out of a sense of desperation I apologized to the computer and after apology version 2.0 the blare of the red alert ended, the doors went back to normal and I was twenty pounds lighter . No sooner had the chaos ended then Captain Williamson called me to the wardroom where I expected to be on the receiving end of severe tongue lashing but it was worse than that. When I arrived in the wardroom the senior staff most of whom I am still friends with began to clap and cheer.
The captain made a gesture of silence to the senior staff and said “Andrew, I know your only here for a few more days but we just wanted to congratulate you”
“On what sir?” I replied.
“No one in the long history of this vessel has ever upset the computer that much and that's saying something given what my first XO did on his second day”
“Thanks, I think”
“If you don't mind, what exactly did you say to the computer?” asked the captain.
“Nothing really, all I did was order coffee from the replicator”
“And?”
“Well I might have asked for a Vorta flavored coffee” Andrew replied.
I half expected stunned indifference from the senior staff but with in five seconds they all busted out laughing, came over to me to shake my hand and pat me on the back. Captain Williamson was the last one to leave but before he did he said to me while still holding back laughter “In the future, be careful of what you ask the computer” and with those words I was left alone still in a bit of shock at what had just taken place.
It's strange thinking back on that incident how even though I was just a guest on that ship how easily a crew that had been together for years had welcomed me as family. Aside from my parents and one brother I had never quiet experienced anything like that before or since. So after that I headed back to stellar cartography and along the way apologized several more times to the computer. Weather or not it actually acknowledged me is still in question.
It was all so long ago, fifty-two years or so I've been reminded on several locations. There is ancient earth saying about events feeling like they were a hundred years ago even if the amount of actual time isn't anywhere close to a hundred years. I suppose that in my old age thats how I feel and would venture to guess how my friends and even enemies feel to this very day. One thing I have never had to be reminded of is how it all began and most importantly, how it all ended.
During our long voyage back home I took a lot of notes of which some didn't survive the trip because I wrote them out by hand using paper and an old style ink pen. Call me old fashioned but dictating to the computer or using a PADD just isn't the same so in attempting to assemble my notes into a workable account of our journey I'm doing my best to recollect what I had written in those missing pages so I should endeavor to point out that my account my not be completely accurate and in fact it will probably conflict with the accounts of others who have published similar works.
As an old writers axiom goes, the best place to start is at the beginning. The stardate was 0331.10 and my day had begun fairly routine and not as some have said, with a surprise. I had gone to bed the night before after an exhausting sixteen hour shift in stellar cartography. Late 24th century ships were notorious for random A.I. artifacts or put it another way, sometimes the computer would decide not to take orders or simply corrupt some data. Personally, I think all these old ships wanted was some attention since they had been out of service for so long.
In any event the A.I. Artifacts never did any serious damage except maybe to my sanity. What had happened was that I was on temporary assignment to the USS Maelstrom to make a copy of their database. To this day I still don't know why it took over twenty years to archive their computer but I took the assignment because stellar cartography has always been a hobby of mine. I had the unfortunate lot in life of being born to parents who thought journalism was more of a noble profession.
I'm not saying that I regret my career or resent my parents for pushing me into journalism but The Federation News Service isn't all the exciting but still I managed to file a few good stories in my time excluding this one. Maybe later I'll tell you about the time I met The Founder known as Odo, he told me some stories that would put my entire life to shame but thats for another time. As I was saying or writing in this case, I was running a very slow level 2 diagnostic of the computer core to ensure that the data would survive the transfer.
I started the diagnostic, told the computer to alert me when it was done because with anything old it could take sometime and I went to the mess hall to get some coffee feeling it was going to be a long night. I wasn't more than two meters from the mess hall when the lights began to flicker on and off but I just attributed it to a minor malfunction in the ships power grid, again not really surprised but what did surprise me was how well the doors on the ship worked. In the week I had been aboard not one door stuttered and from what I heard the chief engineer Lt. Doone was quite proud of that fact.
I suppose with all the other things on the ship that refused to work it was the only thing he had to be proud of but I don't think anyone ever said that to his face, detached Vulcan's can be quite proud. Now, the replicators didn't have the same perfect track record as the doors but most of the time they worked well but this was not one of those times and this is probably what caused all the trouble in the first place.
Without thinking I asked the computer for Vorta berry flavored coffee then about two seconds later it registered in my brain what I had done but by then it was too late. The Maelstrom was one of the few ships to survive The Dominion War and soon as it realized I was ordering something from an enemy that killed a lot it's crew and tried to destroy the ship it's self it went crazy but crazy is a polite term for what had happened. While I'm not prone to swearing, I would have to say that bat shit was more apt in this scenario.
The old style red-alert alarm blared loudly and suddenly gravity increased by ten percent causing me and presumably the rest of the crew to feel as though they suddenly gained twenty pounds in a matter of seconds. The doors which up until then had never malfunctioned where opening and closing without purpose except maybe rage and indignity due my innocent slip of the tongue. With some effort I made my way through the door, back into the blood red coordinator.
Along the way I encountered other crew members who were heaving them selves a long. A few had asked me if they knew what was going on but I simply denied any knowledge, after all it was the computer fault, not mine. One thing that did strike me odd is how the crew reacted to this incident, it was as though they dealt with malfunctions like this on a regular basis, again that's a real surprise. I should also mention, that a few years after this incident the only crew member was still mad at me was an Elysian.
Star Fleet Medical had finally perfected a treatment that allowed Elysian's who came from a low gravity planet to finally experience earth normal gravity without the encumbrances of technology. Melanie or Mel as I came to call her just received the treatment a few days prior and now was suffering the indignity of being at the mercy of gravity once again. She eventually forgave me but it took three dates with her to get it, well worth it I would say.
So as I was saying I dragged my self innocently (avoiding the urge to whistle down) down the corridor back to stellar cartography. I was crossing my fingers hoping that the computer wasn't going to be petulant enough to make assignment any more difficult, I guess I should have replicated a four leaf clover and a rabbit's foot instead. I managed to get through the doors back into stellar cartography and to the main console and after five seconds my fears were justified. The data that was I supposed to archive was corrupted.
I'm really not sure why but perhaps out of a sense of desperation I apologized to the computer and after apology version 2.0 the blare of the red alert ended, the doors went back to normal and I was twenty pounds lighter . No sooner had the chaos ended then Captain Williamson called me to the wardroom where I expected to be on the receiving end of severe tongue lashing but it was worse than that. When I arrived in the wardroom the senior staff most of whom I am still friends with began to clap and cheer.
The captain made a gesture of silence to the senior staff and said “Andrew, I know your only here for a few more days but we just wanted to congratulate you”
“On what sir?” I replied.
“No one in the long history of this vessel has ever upset the computer that much and that's saying something given what my first XO did on his second day”
“Thanks, I think”
“If you don't mind, what exactly did you say to the computer?” asked the captain.
“Nothing really, all I did was order coffee from the replicator”
“And?”
“Well I might have asked for a Vorta flavored coffee” Andrew replied.
I half expected stunned indifference from the senior staff but with in five seconds they all busted out laughing, came over to me to shake my hand and pat me on the back. Captain Williamson was the last one to leave but before he did he said to me while still holding back laughter “In the future, be careful of what you ask the computer” and with those words I was left alone still in a bit of shock at what had just taken place.
It's strange thinking back on that incident how even though I was just a guest on that ship how easily a crew that had been together for years had welcomed me as family. Aside from my parents and one brother I had never quiet experienced anything like that before or since. So after that I headed back to stellar cartography and along the way apologized several more times to the computer. Weather or not it actually acknowledged me is still in question.
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