Memories

“So you guys have all know each other for… what?”

We were sitting, somewhat predictably, in a bar on Heaven’s Rim station. It was one of my favorite stations, and had one of my favorite bar’s, Pinky’s. Unusually, all four of us–me, Shandra, Buzz, and Adam–were in the bar, enjoying a rare combined moment of downtime. Buzz was not off terrorizing aquatic creatures (the station had none). I was having a beautiful Lowlands Scotch, Shandra and Adam were enjoying a very stout-looking beer, and Buzz was sipping slowly from something that was green, putting out its own blue fog, and bubbling gently. The bartender had overhead us joking about past misadventures, and brought up the question.

“Quite a few years, on and off,” Shandra said. “We’ve got memories.”

“Storytime!” I said happily.

“What is this nebula called again?” Ryan asked.

“The Black Death Spiral,” Shandra replied.

“Because…?”

“It’s got a weird gravitational anomaly. If we do it right, we’ll pop right out the other side in about fifteen minutes.”

“And if we do it wrong?” he asked.

She shrugged. “We’ll bounce very aggressively off the edges of the anomaly field and damage the ship pretty badly.”

“Ah. And, just one more question, why am I sitting down here with you and Don is sitting in my chair?”

“He’s driving.”

“Are we ready?” I asked.

“No,” Buzz said.

“Yes,” Shandra said, punching a button on her console. Brassy music began playing from the bridge loudspeakers.

“Is that…?” Buzz asked.

“Theme from Indiana Jones,” I confirmed. “Here we go.”

“It was fine,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think we got much over one-third c the whole time.”

“It was way too fast,” Buzz muttered.

“We did learn a valuable lesson, though,” Shandra added. “That was when we removed the nav controls from the command chair. Buzz kept insisting he could have steered it better, and we figured we needed to remove that possibility.”

“No, trust me, you’ll like it. The food is good,” Shandra said.

“What do the serve?” Buzz asked.

“Something noodle-y,” I replied.

“Can you be more specific?”

“We don’t really come for the food per se,” I said.

“Then what… are you just going to eat all the bread, then?”

“Om, dmfntlmh,” Shandra said, her mouth full of the last small loaf of warm, piping hot bread. “Ah,” she said, swallowing. “This is the good bit.” She looked at me, her eyes bright.

“MORE BREAD BILL!” we screamed in unison. Several fresh rolls came flying over the other diners’ heads, landing in our hands, on the table, and one bouncing gently off Buzz’ head.

“You’re idiots,” he said, slathering butter on the roll.

“So does this guy ever get involved?” the bartender asked, gesturing at Adam.

“Only in a non-canonical way,” I said. “But sure.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Buzz said, grinning from ear to ear.

“It’s extremely immature,” I added. “Adam, are you ready back there?”

“Ready. This is a terrible idea, you know that, right?”

“We know!” Buzz said gleefully.

We were positioned about half a light-year out from… well, the best description is probably a “stellar picnic.” A Starfleet ship–the USS Powhatan, to be precise, commanded by Shandra’s dear own mum–was orbiting a small moon. Most of the crew had shuttled and beamed down for a day of recreation. The moon had a warm, habitable atmosphere, and small groups of crew members had spread out in its open, airy meadows with sandwiches, beverages, and other goodies. We’d been eavesdropping on their communications, and knew they were planning games, team-building exercises, and more.

We couldn’t resist.

“PUNCH IT!” Buzz cried. I punched it. We took off toward the moon at a respectable percentage of light speed, on a slingshot course.

“Ten seconds,” I said, as we approached. “Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Get ready! Three! Two! LAUNCH!”

“Launching!” Adam cried out over the intercom. The hundreds of small chunks of comet ice we’d stored in the depressurized salvage bay were released. They continued on-trajectory, as I pulled the ship out of its course and away from the moon.

“Oh my God, this is so good,” Shandra whispered.

On our forward view screen, we could see the chunks of ice striking the atmosphere and breaking up. We’d calculated exactly the size of chunk needed–oh, the maths–and within a few minutes were rewarded with video of the Powhatan crew being pelted with chilled comet-water.

Buzz laughed hysterically. “Get us out of here,” he said, holding his stomach and panting. “They’re going to kill us.”

“You attacked a Starfleet picnic with the equivalent of water guns,” the bartender said.

“Yup,” Buzz replied. “It was very immature. We enjoyed it immensely.”

“What did they do?”

“Oh, nothing,” Shandra said. “They just got a little wet, and it’s not like starfleet can make a big stink about getting a little wet. They’d look like pansies.”

“Pity you couldn’t have dropped water balloons into the atmosphere,” the bartender said, chuckling.

“We’d already used balloons,” I said.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” we screamed as Buzz clambered down from his shift on the bridge. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU,” we sang, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!” and so on. We’d hung streamers all around the galley area.

“Hey, thanks guys,” he said, blinking and rubbing his eyes. “Um, did you have plans?”

“You said yesterday that you wanted to take the skiff out for a quiet spin,” Shandra said. “So we’re going to park the ship right here and let you have your quiet time.”

“Guys… thank you,” he said. “I really appreciate it. It’s been a long week, and–”

“AND YOU’RE THIRTY!” I screamed with delight.

“Yeah, yeah, the old guy, I get it,” he said, smiling. “Okay, I’ll be back in a few hours then.”

“HAVE FUN!” I said far too loudly. Shandra kicked me under the table. We watched Buzz go into his cabin, closing the door behind him. We could hear the sounds of the floor hatch to the skiff being unlocked and swung open. There was a moment of silence. Then the cabin door opened up again.

“Why is the skiff full of balloons?” Buzz asked.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” we cried, jumping up from the table and waving our arms in the air.

“I don’t get it,” the bartender said.

“You had to be there,” Shandra said. “There were, like, three thousand balloons. It took us his entire bridge shift to blow them all up.”

“It took me hours to clean them out,” Buzz said. “I had to pop them all.”

“Well,” I said, “you didn’t have–”

“Pop. All of them,” Buzz said firmly.

“And you never did take the skiff out,” I said. “You came out of your cabin again in that ratty blue bathrobe–”

”–with an enormous can of chocolate pudding,” Shandra finished. “Man, you ate a lot of that pudding.”

“It was my birthday,” Buzz replied.

“Yeah, anyway, we’ve a lot of good memories,” I said. “Mostly goofy ones, which are the most fun.”

“Oh,” Shandra said, “you remember that time when we had you hold that glow-in-the-dark–”

“Oh,” I interrupted, looking at my wrist-comp. “Look at the time! We’ve got to get back to the ship. Bye, then!” I added, standing and leaving them with the check.