Not the scientist I was looking for

Posted on Sun Sep 13th, 2020 @ 9:07pm by Ensign Elegy Nascimento & Ensign Alexandra 'Lexi' O'Connery
Edited on on Tue Sep 15th, 2020 @ 12:29pm

Mission: Mission 3 - 100
Location: Deck F - Science Lab
Timeline: Day 47, Month 2, Year 0 00:12
3462 words - 6.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Lexi was bored. Bored of the pain from her shoulder, bored of how lame she felt whilst everyone was working away on getting rid of the Vrav, bored of the sympathy from her crewmates and worst of all bored of being bored with nothing to do. It was how she found herself in the science lab.

The blonde communication officer had thought to ruffle Darru’s feathers over his pet project of matching the crew. But she slipped into the only working lab and found him not there for once. Why was he not there when all the times she had tried to avoid him she had found him almost waiting for her. How boring?

Hunched over the life sciences workstation, a raven-haired Science Officer jerked backwards. He was perched on a stool, and all the sharp edges of his gangly limbs flew into motion -- but he never came close to losing his perch. As soon as his cochlear implants had detected Lexi's entrance, his whole energy shifted from engrossed in his computer simulations to spinning on the stool so he could face Lexi's direction. In his excitement, Elegy Nascimento clapped his hands together forcefully.

"Come in, come in, blonde ensign -- Ensign Blonde," Elegy announced, like some ancient circus ring-master. Although he remained sitting on his stool, his sapphire eyes locked into eye-contact with Lexi. For a heartbeat here and a heartbeat there, his gaze flitted to watch her lips in case she began speaking. "I have a crucial question to ask of you. A life-or-death question," Elegy told her. Speaking in an increasing rapid-fire, he instructed, "I don't want you to overthink it. Don't censor yourself. I'm asking you to open yourself to the question and listen closely to your gut-instinct. As soon as you know your truth, spit it right out.

"What, may I ask," Elegy said --his voice lowered because of the gravity of the question; seriously, he didn't even blink-- "are the most perfect ingredients in a salad?"

Lexi grinned at the fact he called her ensign blonde. It could have been a lot worse than some of the names she had been called over the years. Something about the way the man was holding himself had him excited and she could not think of what it could be seeing they still had no regenerators so it could not be something fun for lunch other than algea. But it was something to do with food and it made her raise an eyebrow. It conjured up the image of a few pale leaves of iceberg lettuce topped with an thin slice of tomato from her childhood but that was not something she had wanted since leaving home and joining the Acadermy.

"That is a very good question." She mused taking the stood next to him. "I hate salads with big chunks you have to cram awkwardly into your mouth! "romaine letter, spinach, baby carrots, yellow pepper, cucumber medium, seeded and chopped, cherry tomatoes, garbanzo beans. I like my salads to be a little bit sweet sunflower seeds, raisins and avocado as well. And for the dressing balsamic vinegar, mustard and maple syrup. Someone introduced it to me in the academy and it is just perfect." Good salads had to be be rich in color and offer a variety of textures and that suited her. She had never discovered if it had a name as she always went to same place on earth for it. She just hoped that eventually the hydroponic bay would have some of the ingrediants.

Elegy's impromptu chair dance of curiosity came to an abrupt halt. He froze into position, as if shocked into pantomime by intense emotion. Speaking slowly, and with immense gravity, Elegy stated, "Chunky salad. Is. Poison. No salad should require a knife." He shook his head twice, and then returned to where he started from. He spun back to the life sciences computer interface and typed in his notes, to document this conversation. To himself, mostly, he smirked and muttered, "Raisins. Hmmm." Only after he documented Lexi's salad desires did he cast a glance back in her direction.

"And you're... what?" Elegy asked, squinting at her appraisingly, "One-hundred and sixty centimeters tall?"

“You are really missing out on the good kind of salad then. Not just a side salad kind of girl here.” Lexi had no idea where this conversation was going but it was certainly more interesting than bothering Darru and his genetics project. She was barely past wondering why he wanted to know about her favourite salad when his next question came her way. She looked down at the floor and then back before shrugging. “Roughly.” She mused not having the energy to change it to the way the knew to what he had asked.

With just a hint of a self-satisfied smirk, Elegy murmured, "Thought so," as he typed Lexi's answer into his notes. It was only after the equation had been solved that Elegy fully remembered where he was. That Elegy remembered he was a person, inhabiting a body, inhabitant a starship, and sharing this space with another person. Sucking in a gasp-like breath, as if he'd forgotten to breath too, Elegy said, "My apologies, Ensign Blondie." --He spun on his stool to consider her directly-- "I suppose I've been rude." --He didn't sound certain if he believed that or not-- "My name is Ensign Nascimento. Elegy. Who have I had the pleasure of interrogating this evening?"

Lexi grinned as the man finally came down to earth so to speak and realised who was in the room. "Ensign Alexandra O'Connery but most people call me Lexi. Alexandra seems such a mouthful. I am one of the communication Officers. We have had lunch together a few times in the past before we got lost in space." The woman laughed. it had been a while but on a small ship with 80 people you vaguely who people were even if you did not see them often.

Mouth agape, Elegy's sapphire eyes lit up like a supernova of fond-remembrance and belly-aching shame at the same time. "Yes, of course. This is happening. So many new people. You've learned my shameful secret: I'm terrible with names," Elegy said, in admission. He stopped talking long enough to hide his eyes with the palms of his hands. Then, Elegy took a breath, and lowered his hands.

"I adored you," Elegy added in a conspiratorial tone, but his delivery turned flippant as he explained, "And then I landed on night shift, and..." Trailing off, Elegy swept an arm out to gesture to the empty science lab. There would have been more crew on duty at this hour, if only so many of his colleagues hadn't been killed. The mission patches from their uniforms had been collected in the glass case on the bulkhead, piled on their pet rock.

"It was another time for everyone." The woman reflected on it all herself. It had been so simple fifty days ago when the world had not just a three hundred and sixty-degree shift on them all and then some. "Yeah, we feel the same in comms." She looked around and grinned at the pet rock. Comms at the least there were two officers and several crewmen to cover, science and medical were specialities that would take time to recover. "I cannot believe the Vulcan's allowed you to keep Rocky the Rock." She mused moving to the glass caressing the uniform patches for a moment.

Following her with his gaze, Elegy offered, "They continually surprise us..." in agreement. To her earlier statement, Elegy muttered to himself, "Comms, that's right..." Perking up enough to stand from his stool, Elegy inquisitively said, "Lexicon Lexi, did I read in a starlog somewhere that you actually met one of the Vrav?" --His sapphire eyes lit up like lightning at the possibilities-- "First hand?"

Lexi wanted to snort at being called Lexicon Lexi, it had been a long time since she had been called that and she really did not want to encourage the return of it. "I met several of them when the ship was boarded." She pulled down her tee that she was wearing to show where she was healing from that meeting. It was hurting less by the day but it would never be perfect. She was just lucky that her job was not as physically demanding as other ones.

Recognizing the signs of medical-ministrations that had been tended to a wound --a wound that Lexi had suffered as a result of the Vrav boarding-party-- knocked the wind from Elegy's lungs. He quickly regretted his excitement for any knowledge that Lexi must have suffered to obtain. As his expression soured into a frown, Elegy nodded his acknowledgement of Lexi, as he rolled up the sleeve of his uniform jumpsuit. Using the sleeve of his undershirt, Elegy wiped away the liquid foundation that was hiding the last of the bruise on his cheek. A bruise that had been similarly earned during the Vrav invasion of Atlantis.

Not wanting to be a towering presence, lurking over Lexi, Elegy took a step back and he perched himself against the edge of the computer workstation he'd been using. "What happened?" he asked Lexi.

"I was leaving Constaines Quarters and found them sneaking around before the alarm was raised. They shot me with one of their ballistic weapons." She admitted putting her uniform back into place. It did not good showing it off, it was a wound that she would always carry. "How about you? And you should not hide them. You survived."

For the first time since he'd met her, Elegy risked missing one of Lexi's facial expressions or reading her lips. He looked away, when she told him not to hide his bruises. Elegy feigned half-interest in the results of a simulation that had completed on his console. He poked at the display screen absently, but he didn't open the report. Speaking softly, Elegy said, "I don't like to see myself that way." --He sucked in a sharp breath and he brushed a hand through the air dismissively; suddenly his injuries felt very very small compared to Lexi's ballistic wound-- "I took a tumble down a service tube," Elegy said diffidently, by way of explanation. He kept it brief, plainly embarrassed for even bringing it up now.

"Oh, dear." The English woman said feeling that she was now seeing the man under it all. It made sense to be embarrassed if that was really the reason. "It can be our secrete and that is a lovely tone for you. I did not even notice it under it." She promised quickly noticing the console and the readings that were waiting for him. "So what are you working on then? Anything I can help with properly?" She was growing restless and bored on restrictive duties and she did not want to make someone who was treating her normal stop doing that.

When Lexi offered to keep the secret between them, Elegy signed, thank you, with a flat hand near his lips that he lowered in Lexi's direction. His posture straightened up and his shoulders relaxed, when Lexi offered to help him. Although he was looking right at her, an idea visibly crossed over his sapphire eyes. Positively bounding with boyish energy again, Elegy replied, "You're honestly everything I need right now." In his renewed excitement for the mystery of it all, Elegy explained, "After the processing, we've done to the algae we took from the Vrav, the engineers want to build a better protein resequencer that can return the algae back to its original state. The resequencers we have on Atlantis just aren't up for the task. But given the desperation of the Vrav, the clear scarcity of their food source, I'm trying to design a better algae. An algae super-food that's compatible with our protein resequncers and compatible with the Vrav digestive system."

Waving a hand excitedly at Lexi, Elegy remarked, "Your observations of the Vrav would be invaluable."

Lexi nodded brushing stray hair behind her ear, she really did need to get someone else to cut her hair next time or just let it grow enough to be able to put up. She knew about the resequencers but she did not know about science and their attempts at another approach. It was brilliant and only a scientist could have thought of it, exactly what their original mission was all about – diplomacy and trying to do what was right. "Well my observations are under times of stress but they complicate with clicks and things outside of our hearing range." It was frustrating that she just was not designed to speak it.

From his perch on the work console, Elegy nodded at what Lexi shared. Staring into the middle distance, Elegy rubbed the back of his neck, as he absorbed the information about the Vrav language. "I'm curious about what we can infer about the origins of the Vrav language, based on the way they speak," Elegy admitted. His words came out more slowly now, as he pulled together disparate thoughts into a single thread. "There are studies about how the origins of a language can be revealing about the culture that created the language -- including any hunting and feeding behaviours."

"They remind me of Dolphins and toothed whales with how they use echolocation to navigate and locate prey. In those animals, they use echolocation in the form of a rapid series of clicks, often emitted at ultrasonic frequencies. The reports that the doctor put in and how they affected her it would make sense. They almost look fish in origin as well." Lexi shrugged. She was no biologist or anything but it something that she had been thinking on since she had first seen them.

Elegy's sapphire eyes danced from side to side as if he were reading from a computer terminal in his mind. "...Dolphins," Elegy said, absently echoing what Lexi had said. His mouth hung open as if he was about to say something, but that something was clearly stuck on the tip of his tongue. He drummed his palms against his thighs, murmuring, "Dolphins, dolphins."

Lexi grinned a little as she saw a spark of something in his eyes and watched as it became something a lot more behind his blue eyes.

Sucking in a sudden breath, Elegy spat out a sudden recollection. It was a random fact -- something he'd read in a text book or a journal or had been told on a date some years ago. "Dolphins have three-chambered stomachs for mastication and digestion. And whales... toothed whales have absolutely massive livers to produce sufficient bile to digest all they eat." As soon as the words came out of him, Elegy squinted at Lexi in an expression of confusion, as if the knowledge had simply passed through him, like some kind of demonic possession. He squinted harder, as he made efforts to understand what that could mean.

"That kind of digestive system," Elegy supposed, "could explain why their algae is so drastically high in protein and minerals -- so much higher than what we would eat in a single meal." Elegy grinned at Lexi like she was the most important person in the world. "Dolphins. Huh. You're brilliant, Lexi," Elegy exclaimed. "No one else has made that comparison."

Lexi shrugged a little blushing. She was not used to any sort of praise or anyone looking at her like that. It was unnerving but she nodded. "But they are not listening to them in their native language as often as I am." She did a very good impression of the sounds a dolphin made and then the sounds that she had heard Vrav say. They were similar but she was sure the Vrav had more under the surface.

Before he could forget what Lexi had observed, Elegy typed a few shorthand notes into the workstation's computer console. Even if his own suppositions were baseless, he could share them with his Vulcan colleagues, who always viewed new data with a completely different perspective. As he typed in the last few words, Elegy looked back over at Lexi. "What else have you noticed about their language?" he asked, hopeful for more of her expert insight.

"That was it really. It is all clicks and it makes your skin almost prickle but I do know there must be more as the computers pick it up and so did our doctor." She murmured trying to remember everything. She curled up a bit in the chair suppressing the yawn that was going through her. "It made her quite sick." She shrugged a little not sure what it would suggest.

Nodding at Lexi's description of the sound of the Vrav voice, Elegy typed a few more notes into his datafile. Looking over at the way Lexi had curled up, Elegy shook his head quickly. "I'm sorry. We don't have to talk about the Vrav," Elegy suggested. "After what they did... to you... to us. The computer is going to need processing time for the next simulation. I'm sure you must have come here looking for something else...?"

The blonde offered an apologetic look at her yawning but it came with her body repairing. "Oh, I came with the simple purpose of relieving my boredom by talking to Darru in Vulcan." She mused softly. It was a simple purpose but the man was not there but that did not matter she had relieved her boredom.

Elegy cocked an eyebrow at Lexi and his lips curled up into an amused smirk. "Darru?" Elegy asked, and he did a poor job of hiding the suggestive lilt to his voice. Elegy well knew the kind of research his colleague had engaged upon, to plan for the crew staffing needs, if Atlantis were to continue on its voyage back to the Sol System for over a century. "You came here looking for Darru? Does that mean you're looking for a husband to alleviate your boredom?"

The Communication Officer saw the look a second before his words came out and regretted her choice of words. "Oh dear no." Lexi giggled at the notion and imagined how Mattias would tease her over it. It would not be repeated elsewhere. "No, it means I came here to practice my Vulcan." Darru for his preparedness and wanting to assist his humans he was actually a nice guy.

"Vulcan, eh," Elegy asked back, clearly a little suspicious that Lexi was simply hiding her desires for a genetically-matched husband by Darru. He rubbed his chin and he supposed it would be natural for a Communications Officer to speak Vulcan. "How many languages do you know?" Elegy asked.

Lexi grinned sleepily at his suspicions around her still It would be something to share with Matt. “I know six earth languages after English. French, Spanish , British Sign language, Mandarin, Arabic and Portuguese. And four alien languages enough to get by.” She admitted. It was not as impressed as some people but she had no finished learning or acquiring knowledge.

Somewhere in the middle of Lexi's list of languages, Elegy's sapphire eyes lit up like lightning. "Huh," he breathed out. Raising his hands to his chest, Elegy used his hands to sign the question: Where did you learn sign language?

Elementary school. I had a friend who used it to communicate with her family who was deaf. It is just a different form of language. It is beautiful and full of a rich history. She replied grinning at him as saw his eyes light up. "I am using British compared to American though. Is that okay?" There were subtle differences but she was sure it would not be a big deal.

Unbothered by the prospect of miscommunications in this setting, Elegy shrugged gently, and he replied, "Let's find out." He cast a glance back at his computer display to make sure it was still crunching the numbers for the next simulation. Satisfied that he had some time before he got the results, Elegy signed at Lexi with his hands: I grew up on Vega Colony. My parents taught me United Earth Sign Language. Maybe you can practice with me?

Without a doubt I would love to practice. People will think we have a secrete. Lexi grinned leaning back into her chair to get comfortable.. She might not have found a Vulcan to practice that language with but she had found something just as worthwhile practising.