The Malleable Laws of Physics

Posted on Sun Dec 11th, 2011 @ 7:11pm by Petty Officer First Class Tanner Willeg

517 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Mission 78 - Colonial Uprising
Location: Starbase Common & O'Dell's Tavern
Tags: Melody Johnson

A general rule of logic and common sense is... when confronted with an immutable object, you must change course.

Tanner didn't know this rule, as she'd never spent time in a think tank surrounded by logistics experts. She had, however, spent plenty of time in engine rooms. Despite the diversity of species, personalities, and thought processes of those found in an engine room, the common thread was insanity. At their worst, engineers could be obnoxiously loud, generally rude, terminally arrogant bastards with a hard-on for over-excess. Even at their best, they were still over-confident, over-competitive, novelty-driven lunatics.

A general rule of engineering is... if it don't move, give it more power.

Staring at the screen, lips pursed, Tanner squinted at the words before her. Those words remained stagnant. They didn't lift up, shift, or move about to make something new. They very stubbornly continued to state the need for a co-pilot, familiar with the Galen system, engine systems, and someone who was discreet.

Tanner was as familiar with the Galen system as a beetle might be with a swimming pool. She knew it existed, over that direction somewhere, and there ended her familiarity. This lack of knowledge and qualification did not, however, deter her from making the decision to offer her assistance as a co-pilot. Her lack of skills as a pilot likewise did nothing to stop her. She had decided, without regard to things as ridiculous as possible danger, general safety precautions, and inevitable catastrophe, that she was going to go on this trip. She was going to spend a few hours, maybe a couple days somewhere other than this station, which was beginning to make her skin itch. But... there was a problem...

The qualifications weren't changing before her eyes, and she was not miraculously gaining said qualifications through osmosis via the computer terminal. She could change the qualifications listed on the screen, but she could not change the memory of the message's author upon meeting them. And while Tanner could certainly change her qualifications, she couldn't do so quickly enough for this particular situation. Which meant that she was, in essence, faced with an immutable object... and it was too late to change course. More power was not going to fix this problem.

A general rule R&D (the only group entity with any argument for being more fully and wholly insane than engineers)... when confronted with an object that will not move, build a new power source that allows you to go through it.

With that mentality, Tanner straightened, headed toward the tavern, and reminded herself that while she wasn't familiar with Galen, she was perfectly capable of reading a map, while she wasn't an officially trained or licensed pilot, the qualifications were not for a licensed pilot, but for a non-specified CO-pilot, and while she wasn't exactly a person known for discretion, she could keep a secret if she needed to, and 'Captain Mel' didn't know her well enough to have reason to call her on it. And she was familiar with engines. One out of four was better than nothing, right?

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