Welcome aboard, Ensign
Posted on Mon Aug 26th, 2024 @ 10:08pm by Ensign Hakunetsuno (Hakune) Hinkyaku & Commander Martin Sorenson
Mission:
Take My Hand
Location: Medical Bay
2729 words - 5.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Ensign Hinkyaku walked beside the ship's doctor, as they left the turbolift and made their way toward the Medical Bay. Something gnawed at her about their encounter with the captain, and her worry was enough to trigger a soft glow. She decided eventually to say something, "The captain doesn't think much of me, does he?"
Martin's brows lifted, surprised at the question. "I wouldn't say he thinks little of you," he assured. "I've known the Captain for some years now. His first love is engineering, so it would be odd, honestly, for him to think highly of a young officer unless they showed indications of being a prodigy in that field." He paused, thinking. "That said, expressing ...poor expectations... with respect Vesta's facilities or technical capabilities is probably not the best approach to making a good first impression."
She nodded, and her glow faded. "I deserve that, I suppose. Growing up among the Tanae, I've not had much reason even to think about technology. What we have of it at the abbey was pretty rudimentary, usually built on the spot and specific to the task at hand, so to encounter problems with it was always the result of forgetting something. We had people there who were engineers and technologists before they manifested, of course, but when one's main duties involve little technology beyond a knife and a pestle and mortar, there's not much need to talk about spatial compressors and jump drives and the like, and you just try getting a former quantum engineer to dig out a medicinal root with a pointy stick, even if he has got twice your strength."
They rounded through the doorway to the medical bay, and Hakune bounced over to one of the biobeds and lifted herself to sit on the end of it. "Well, doctor... you don't mind if I call you that in preference to 'Sir' I hope... if you intend to poke and prod me, now is as good a time to start"
"Doctor is very much my preferred title," he replied with a small smile as he set up the medical scan. Honestly, he tended to be a little suspicious of the medical officers who preferred 'sir' - unfairly perhaps, but he did feel a need to supervise them more closely until he was sure they were good at medicine as well as Starfleet protocol. "I'm not sure what you're used to from the abbey you describe, but I doubt any poking or prodding will be necessary. However, before we begin, are there any medical concerns I should be aware of?"
Hakune caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked off to the side as she considered the question, "Hmmm... Nothing internal that I can think of. I don't think I have any, but I do have to warn you... make sure you keep any blood and hormones samples taken from me isolated from each other. Not sure if it's the blood or the hormones that carries the tanae mutation, maybe it's both, but any mixing the two could result in... undesirable consequences."
That sounded like it came from experience. Which was odd. Taking blood had not been a normal part of exams for centuries, and moreover, for most species any assessment of hormones was done via blood test (which did raise a question as to how hormones circulated in her physiology, and one he'd have to spend some time researching since it was apparently related to a mutation and not part of the standard species medical profile he'd received). "I have no intention of drawing blood or any other samples," he assured, finishing the set-up for the biobed scan. "I'm not sure when you've ever had such samples mixed - perhaps a laboratory sciences class? - but standard check-in exams are entirely via medscan. Anything further would only come because an issue was identified." A thought hit him; she was after all the first to join Starfleet from her fairly unique species. "Has that not been the case for you?"
Hakune lifted her hand in a halting way, "I just wanted to give that warning before it came to needing a blood sample. But what the medscans I have had thus far don't seem to identify is how the nature of a tanae's blood changes when it mingles with significant infusions of stress hormones. It's just never come up at the time. Separately, they're inert, but put them together and they're highly reactive. Inside the body, it causes bioluminescence, outside... well... umm... my curiosity about it might have burned a building or two down a few years ago."
Ah. "I hope you won't be repeating any such experiments here," Martin replied jokingly, but only half. "Since there's some chance of stressful situations occurring here, may I ask how bright the bioluminescence is? Barely noticeable or I should have sunglasses on hand during a MassCal?"
"That very much depends on the level of stress or the strength of the emotion I'm feeling. The greater the stimulus, the stronger the glow... and the quicker fatigue sets in." She paused, and closed her eyes, drawing upon a variety of memories. Her brow furrowed, and she started to glow, a glow that grow steadily in brightness, enough to create a secondary set of faint shadows in the well-lit medbay.
He hadn't been expecting a demonstration and blinked at the rapidly increasing glow. It wasn't blinding, but more photosensitive species might find it uncomfortable. More importantly, despite alien features, he could see the distress on her face. "Enough."
Hakune opened her eyes again, and lifted a hand to wipe a tear that had made its escape and was tracking down her cheek. As she did so, the glow that came from her entire body quickly faded once more, "That's about the limit of what I can do willfully. There are some who manifested after several millennia in the warrior caste who have weaponized it, like everything else, in keeping with their former lives, but I manifested in utero, so I've only ever been tanae. I don't have a former life to foster such affectations."
"Are you all right?" he asked. The biobed readings that had shot up were decreasing, but he was distressed that she had somehow taken his query as a command to induce a traumatic response in herself. He'd clearly assumed too much of acclimation from time in the Academy and a first cruise. The doctor made a mental note to think more along the lines of a Second Contact in their interactions. "I only wanted information. It was not my intention to ask you to stress yourself. Sorry, if that was unclear. For the record, I take 'Do No Harm' seriously and would never ask a patient to deliberately experience distress unless it was absolutely necessary for diagnosis and treatment."
Hakune's lips curled in an easy, calm smile at the doctor's apparent concern. "I'm fine... really. Your concern over this, while touching, is... unwarranted. We call it 'kerning', and it is something every tanae does, on at least a daily basis... a meditation, if you will. Indeed, there is more harm that comes from not kerning for an extended period. Think of a river. That river is life, and its flow, its current is the stress inherent to living. Our mind is a dam built upon that river. It resists the river and its flow, but it does not, can not, forever hold against it, for as the river rises behind it, the pressure of its current grows until it exceeds the capacity of the dam to resist, and when it does, the dam inevitably bursts. Kerning is the opening of floodgates built into that dam, which releases that pressure before it can threaten the integrity of the dam."
She gave the analogy a few seconds to find its mark in the doctor's imagination before shrugging, "A short kerning now both answered your question about how bright my bioluminescence gets... well, consciously, at least... and satisfied my need to do it anyway later today. But if it puts your mind at ease, I can tell you that among those elixae who are not tanae, the rationale behind kerning is at best poorly understood, and it is no easier to explain it to them as to you."
"You'd characterized it as a stress response and said it could leave you fatigued, so I'd thought it was something better avoided, but I'm glad to have been wrong," he explained, smiling relief. "But rationale isn't difficult to understand. The concept of mental and emotional stress relief was well-established on my homeworld since long before we first ventured into space. 'Kerning' is new to me, but the idea of 'getting it all out' via one therapeutic method or another exists in nearly every other culture in the Federation." The doctor paused to make a note, thinking that whenever they managed to find a Counselor, she was going to be a very interesting patient. If she had any reason to speak with a Counselor, that is; kerning certainly sounded preferable to talk therapy. "Is there anything else we should be aware of?"
"Ummm... let's see." Hakune paused a moment, compiling a list in her head. "Bones are lighter than those of humans, so they break pretty easily, but also heal much faster... Blood has hemocyanine and chloro-carbonyl-triphenylphosphine-iridium metallic elements... Feathers are heat-ablative, but before you send me in to pull anyone out of a fire, and I'll do that without question or hesitation, by the way, once the heat causes them to mat, they have to be carefully cut away, and if you're the one that sends me in there, then I'm going to make you deal with that task," she said with an impish grin.
Martin chuffed a laugh. "No worries there, Ensign. I've had part of leg reconstructed after pulling someone out after a plasma breach, so I know firsthand that it wouldn't be anyone sending you in - there's never time for that. It's all spur of the moment, no-time-to-think-it-through reaction." He grinned back at her. "But if you ever do run into a fire, I promise I will use every gram of skill I have to properly cut away matted feathers."
"Then I'll trust to that skill, and pray that the rest of the crew prove to be as competent, though I've been reminded on many occasions, not just by members of my own kind, that there is never a shortage of stupid in any large group." Hakune heaved a deep sigh, "Euchari knows I've seen more than enough proof of that even in a group of one, and that's with no-one else around."
"I don't think I've ever met a sentient being who isn't familiar with that lone group of one," he replied, ducking his head slightly. Starfleet might have given him a commendation after that plasma breach, but once he was recovering his friends in medbay made a show of scanning for brain damage because 'there was no prior indication you could be that stupid!'. "And on that subject, I don't know what your experience in Starfleet has been so far, but here, if I'm ever being an idiot, please tell me. Preferably, politely, of course, but don't imagine the difference in rank means you should stay quiet."
Hakune resumed her impish grin, "Differences in rank haven't had an impact on me since I set foot on earth... I'm joking, of course, but I've never been one to hold my tongue when I've had something to say... once I've figured out what that is. But I'm reasonably sure I won't find occasion to call you an idiot. A fool, maybe, but not an idiot. I cannot imagine Starfleet Academy greatly raised their intellectual prerequisites between your graduation and my first day there."
"Well, colloquially, 'fool' and 'being an idiot' are pretty interchangeable in Standard," he offered by way of of hopefully avoiding misunderstandings. Particularly since his head nurse had no compunctions about telling anyone they were being an idiot. "Besides, I enlisted after working as a doctor for years, so I never went through the Academy, only officer training. Their standards are high, but don't assume I'm a result of them."
At this point, she huffed a cynical laugh, "Then again, they did let a pretty average adolescent elixi girl in, from a world that is such a backwater that it is absent from most starcharts. If you met me on any street in any city on any planet in the Core Systems, the only things that you might notice were different about me would be this whole tanae thing, and how short I am compared to those around us. You wouldn't know, for instance, that I am the only elix ever born in the Periphery, like that's supposed to be a valid reason why the Conclave wanted me for this exchange. Until I arrived on Earth 6 years ago, I was the youngest person I knew by several tens of thousands of years, with practically no life experience. Hell, I didn't even know what night was until after I entered the Academy. I don't like the dark at the best of times, but night is so pervasive, it terrified me."
Martin had worked with very long lived species enough by now to be unphased by a casual reference to ten of thousands of years of life. Age, life experience, and maturity tracked differently for different species, and individuals. In a lot of ways, Rufus at 16 was far more mature than Nolan despite a 400+ year difference. Still his heart went out to her - he knew what it was like to be younger than most of your peers, and adjusting to an environment so different that night was a new and frightening thing spoke to how much she had had to adapt. "I haven't met others of your species, but still I doubt that tanae and a circumstance of birth is all that makes you beyond average. Coming from a 'backwater' as you term it to the heart of the Federation is not an easy thing or adjustment to make, and you not only made it but succeeded in an extremely rigorous program while doing so."
"I did, didn't I? Maybe I'm not so average, after all." Hakune's expression brightened for a moment, before her brow furrowed again, as though a concerning thought crept into her consciousness, "It strikes me as odd though, that so many of the papers I took at the Academy felt like refresher courses of what I was taught as a child... I mean, like, word for word. As though I had been chosen for this exchange within months of my birth, and they've been grooming me for it from the day I started my formal education. I think I'll have some questions for the Conclave about that the next time I speak with my liaison." She shivered slightly at the idea that the scenarios that flitted through her mind, before she craned her neck to glance at the monitor.
"So, Doctor, what's the verdict? Fit to assume my duties?"
If some of the stories he'd heard from people from 'fleet families' were true, being groomed from an early age to get into the Academy and pass with high marks was not as unusual as she might imagine. Which he imagined the Academy knew well enough. From what he understood it was much like medical school in that having the course work down pat would only get you so far - at some point you had to face situations that required understanding how to apply it in decidely non-textbook situations. The doctor glanced at the medical scan of quite non-textbook readings, but ones that fell in healthy range for her species, and smiled as he signed off on his PaDD. "Yes, I believe you are fit. Welcome aboard."
"Great. Thank you, Doctor." Hakune retook her feet, and glanced around, "Since everything is in order, I have my quarters to prepare, and explore the decks." As she headed for the door, she lifted her arm and pointed toward the ceiling, "Better to get lost before I need to be somewhere on a schedule, than to need to be somewhere on a schedule and get myself lost."
