Partition

Love and Starships: Chapter 6

Francis had acclimated herself to the work shifts and waking up early for them. At the end of the night, she had finally found the energy to not fall asleep instantly after ending up in her bed, as small an uncomfortable as it was. That particular night, she found herself strew out on top of the covers, listening to a book from her tablet and playing with the curly strands of her hair as the computer spoke words into her ears.

Skee had joined her in the room about a half hour previous, but had hardly conversed with her, aside from his usual greeting. He sat intently on the edge of his bed, legs crossed like normal, his unusual brown eyes moving back and forth over reading material of his own.

Francis picked uncomfortably at her underwear that had began to bunch up past her thigh under the slick synthetic fibers of her off-duty clothes. Man, I wish I could just lounge around in my skivvies like back in my apartment. She quickly peeked back at Skee who had not moved a muscle. Her gaze turned up to the low ceiling, made of a thin-looking coating.

“Hey, Skee?” She finally spoke up. The alien looked over a few more words before turning to her as she sat up on the bed.

“Yes, Francis?”

“You mind if I… try something?”

“What is this something you wish to attempt?” Skee said back, his head tilting to the side.

“Just bear with me.” Francis insisted. She stood up and moved to the side of the room where the synthesizer was located. “If you don’t like it… then we can tear it down, I guess. How tall do you think this room is?”

“About 2 and one half meters.” Skee suggested.

“Computer, generate a sheet 2.5 meters tall, uh… 3.5 meters long. Polyester.”

“Are you cold, Francis?” Skee suggested.

“No, I was just thinking if we could divide up the room.” Francis explained, extracting the slightly warm, folded piece of fabric from the synthesizer’s tray. “Just like, a little extra privacy, you know?”

“I understand.”

Francis looked up at the ceiling and the neat edge of the fabric. “Computer, generate… thumbtacks, 10 of them.” She said, turning to the synthesizer once again.

“I don’t believe…” Skee interjected as the moleculizer hummed to life.

Francis looked back up at the textured panel back on the ceiling and shrugged. “Hmm, yeah. It could be pretty thin. Computer, recycle. Generate… 10 neodymium magnets, 10 grams each.”

Skee watched the tray as the objects clinked into existence from the beam of light and latched onto each other from their magnetic fields. “Are you sure magnets are safe for this sort of application? There may be systems above the deck head that may be affected.”

“You think?” Francis pondered. “I mean… maybe Trish could tell us… maybe also if I had my instruments…” The magnets clunked around in her palm as she scanned the ceiling. “Well, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

“I’m not sure I trust the logic of such an idiom.”

Francis had already pulled the room’s chair away from the wall and placed it in the middle of the room. She stood atop it precariously and held the light cloth to the ceiling.

She had carefully wedged the magnets between her ear and her shoulder, and she began peeling them off each other one-by-one to stick against the polyester to the ceiling. Slowly, the length of the cloth began to stretch across the room, from just near the door and most of the way to the bathroom slider.

Francis stepped down and adjusted the placement of the chair several times to move the blanket up and down the room. With one final tug, she stepped down off the wavering object and inspected her work. The blanket was just slightly longer than the room was tall, leaving a small bunch on the floor. She stepped around to the opposite side to double check that it had been placed just center enough. Skee sat silently, admiring her ingenuity.

“Your rudimentary guesses for the dimensions and the symmetry of the room were quite accurate, Francis.” The alien noted.

“You don’t mind it?” Francis asked back.

Skee shook his head and readjusted his posture atop the bed. “If it makes you feel more at ease, I have no objections to it.”

“Well then, excellent.” Francis nodded and moved back to her side of the room. She gave one last peek around the corner. “Just… don’t cross over without asking first.”Continue reading “Partition”

Drill

Love and Starships: Chapter 5

Francis turned back and forth in the narrow bed, trying to fall asleep. The embarrassment from the dining hall still rolled around in her mind, although her roommate didn’t seem to have changed his demeanor since the incident.

“Hey Skee.” She spoke up, hoping to catch the alien awake.

“Yes, Francis?” Skee called out in the dark, not an ounce of tiredness is his voice. She could hear his covers rustle as if he was turning over to look at her.

Francis pondered her words, not having thought of what to say after having woke him. “Is that, like, your real, full name? Skee?”

“You are not the first person to be interested in my full name.”

“It just seems kind of abrupt, doesn’t it?” Francis said, her mind wandering.

“You call your female friend ‘Trish’ when her full name is Trisha, is that not correct?”

“Yeah, Skee must be a nickname. Short for something.”

“Skeepx’ugemae, if I try to force it into phonemes familiar to you.”

Francis sat up and attempted to mouth out the name. One, two, three, four, five, six, syllables, she though to herself, tapping her fingers together with each sound.

“You must understand it doesn’t fit well into the alphabet you call ‘latin’ that is used as the de-facto written word aboard the ship.”

“No, of course not.” Francis shook her head, attempting to fudge the spelling in her mind.  “I must say; I am interested in how you might call the members of your family. Like, do you have brothers and sisters?”

Francis’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud, sudden buzzing through the ship. The yellow emergency lights came on under the paneling of the room. Skee shot up from his bed and attempted to walk across the room while Francis kicked at her shoes to get them out from under the bed.

“It is an emergency drill, Crewman Arnold!” Skee somehow exclaimed with his voice at an even pitch.

“Obviously!” Francis returned, finally having the boots around her feet, untied. “I read the reminder in the briefing it would happen some time, but it totally slipped my mind.”

Skee bumped into Francis, his hands moving up and down her arms. “Crewman Arnold, I cannot see anything. Something is wrong, we must remove ourselves from the room.”

Francis felt herself being pushed back into the edge of the bed as the alien continued to fumble against her. Francis gave him a shove, and the sudden disconnect into the middle of the room left Skee disoriented. Francis finally found a comfortable footing into her boots. “It’s just a drill, Skee.” She said, finally able to grasp onto his flailing wrists.

“I am unable to see.”

“It’s a code yellow, and not even real at that.”Continue reading “Drill”

Communication

Love and Starships: Chapter 4

Francis had found a comfortable position on the bed to pull out her tablet to start reading, but her attention would continue to drift back between Wil’s rugged features as well as the sound of him hitting his forehead on the beam. Francis cringed at the thought and rolled over to shove her head into the pillow.

The door opened suddenly and Francis sat up with a jolt out of reflex. Her bangs fell over her eyes in rough bunches as she looked over at Skee who had entered without a second look. “Hey, Skee.” She greeted him, shoving the tablet under her pillow.

The yellow alien paced a bit before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Hello… Crewman Arnold.” He returned the greeting and peered across the room at her.

“You can call me Francis, you know.”

“Francis.” Skee repeated, nodding his head slowly.

“Have you… finished your duty shift, then?” Francis said, attempting to make conversation.

“Yes.” Skee said shortly, in the process of slipping the boots off his feet.

“That reminds me, I never got to hear where you work.”

“Ah!” Skee perked up. “I get to use my skills in the botany lab. My people have a great knowledge of plant life. May I ask you the same?”

“Where I work?” Francis asked, receiving a nod from the alien. “I was trained in communication engineering; you know. Relays, tracing conduits and stuff. I’m also trained to communicate with other ships if somehow nobody else gets to them first. Looks like me and my teammates are gonna get tossed a variety of jobs.”

“So that is how were able to identify me as Reedeen.” Skee remarked, crossing his arms across his chest.

“You’re the only one on board.” Francis returned. “The Staff Sergeant referred to you as ‘our Reedeen.’”

Skee tilted his head to the side in his usual manner. “What was the reason you went to the Staff Sergeant for?”

“Oh, uh-” Francis faltered. She waved her hands up in the air while Skee continued to look at her with a puzzled gaze. “You must find it hard, being the only one of your species around.”

“It is not so hard with an amicable roommate.” Skee said, gesturing with his palm towards Francis.

Francis turned her face down before jumping off the bed to retrieve her brush from the bathroom. She returned with it in her hand and jumped up on the bed to begin brushing out her unruly locks. “Hey, you’re not so bad yourself.” She finally responded, her eyes focused on the tips of her curly bangs hanging down just in her view.

Midway through a stroke of her brush, Skee stood up from the bed and took a few steps closer to her. His face drew closer to hers, examining the instrument in her hands.

“Uhh…” Francis hummed, her eyes turning up to follow the alien’s movements.

With his dainty fingers, he picked at a loose hair sticking out from the brush before pulling it away and examining it. “You are shedding.” He noted, looking up and down the coarse, curly strand. “Are you sick?”

“No.” Francis let out a singular laugh as Skee retreated to continue examining the hair. “Humans normally have so many follicles that losing a few is natural.”

“In my observation…” Skee spoke up, twirling the sample between his fingers. “There is one crewman I work with who has no hair atop his head, simply on the sides. I cannot determine if it is a sickness or not.”

Francis stopped brushing for a moment to imagine the couple of shiny-headed professors she had seen in her time at the academy. “No, that is not uncommon with certain men… males for our species. It can be seen as a defect, and for a long time it could not be reversed. Some men still do just… go with it, I guess. It can be seen as something distinguishing, like a position of seniority.”Continue reading “Communication”

Duty Shift

Love and Starships Chapter 3

Francis awoke to a high pitched whistling akin to air leaking out of a balloon. The low environmental light had begun to rise, alerting her that it was almost time to awake for her duty shift. She turned over away from the wall and to the center of the room. Skee was turned to face her, his eyes open and staring her down.

“Whoa!” She shouted, throwing the covers off herself and sitting up. The whistling stopped suddenly, and the alien blinked several times in quick succession before sitting up himself.

“Is there an emergency?” He said, looking about the room.

Francis stood up and stomped to the wall to hit the button for the main light. “No, just-”

“I’ve read that newly commissioned ships tend to discover anywhere between 15 to 85 minor to major malfunctions upon their first week in regular service, causing-”

“Hey, no.” Francis interrupted. She paced around for bit before waving her hand in front of Skee’s face. “You were just staring at me while I was sleeping.”

Skee straightened up upon the edge of his bed and blinked his vertical eyelids several times slowly. “Ah, forgive me. Sometimes my eyes stay open while I sleep.”

“Sounds uncomfortable.” Francis quipped and quickly turned away.

“I have a third, clear eyelid which keeps the membranes underneath moisturized. Also, it happens during the second stage of my sleep cycle.” The alien noted. “When I… dream, I guess is the word.”

Francis listened patiently while picking up the discarded socks and uniform off the floor. “…What were you dreaming about?” She asked.

Skee folded his long arms in front of his chest as if to think. “I awoke so suddenly, I think I forgot it. It is a flaw in Reedeen brains.”

Francis balled up the dirty clothes and shoved them into the synthesizer. “Recycle.” She ordered the computer. The uniform crumbled and disintegrated into the grate below the moleculizer. “Believe me, it happens just the same to us humans. They say we only remember five percent of the dreams we have throughout the night. Computer, synthesize uniform under specifications FA Arnold.”

“Accepted.” The circuits buzzed.Continue reading “Duty Shift”

On Staff

Love and Starships: Chapter 2

Just as predicted, the Staff Sergent resided on the floor two up from engineering, in a smallish room on the other side of deck from medbay. The man was a weathered Hispanic no-nonsense looking fellow named Jorge Ford, and after waiting behind at least twelve other people in line, Francis finally was able to enter into his office.

“Francis Arnold.” The man remarked and looked up from his glowing computer screen. “Ah, so you are indeed a lady.”

Francis ran her hair through her fingers to hide the rolling of her eyes. “That is correct, Staff Sergeant, Sir.”

The man’s lips curled up for a split second before returning to its normal stony state. “At least we can confirm that now so that I can no longer be persuaded by the bets some of my colleagues have made.”

“Great, I have something I need addressing immediately.” Francis said, planting her hands on the man’s desk.

“And I shall try to address it the best as possible, but I also have a lot on my plate.”

“There is a man in my room.” Francis said, her eyes locked to Ford’s.

“If your roommate invited over a fellow crew member for a… romantic encounter without informing you first, I would say that is in poor choice, but you should first work out some ground rules before coming to me to settle such affairs.”

“The man IS MY ROOMMATE.” Francis said, slamming her fists on the table.

Ford pursed his lips before looking back down at his computer screen. With a quick tapping of his fingers, his expression changed. “Ah… Ah! I see. Our Reedeen. Is that it?”Continue reading “On Staff”