Navkiran Khangura's Personal Logs

[KendleRJ]

Nav had curled into a heap on the floor, toying with a design she had made, now colouring it to give it perspective and that hint of realism. It had become like other gadgety things in her life: a minor obsession. But she took in stride and decided that not only was there a method to her mornings, but now, aboard Frankie, there would have to be a method to her evenings. Starting, or perhaps ending, with her personal log. Whatever, it was going to happen, and of course... all she had to do was talk to herself. Being a creative writer, well, that was an easy task, wasn't it?

"Computer," she said, voice clear and even a bit giggly; this was her first log in space on her first voyage after her first day... she was going to make a high pitched girly sound that she hadn't since she was 10 and got her first tool box. But it felt just. Like. That. There was a tonal acknowledgement that meant it was waiting for her. It was a basic programmed response, but somehow, everything was made that much more because... it was her first.

"Please record personal log, Navkiran Khanguara, Ensign, Engineering."

"Recording," came the regular, even and soothing tone of the computer.

"Day 1," she began. This was going to be fun. Tedious maybe in 6 months when they would be filled with boring emptiness about how Frankie was still working, and that life was still proceeding, but not today. "Stardate 2261.5. My first day." Her face lit up with a smile and she would have thrown it right at the computer until she realized that she was still on the floor. Peeking up over the tabletop, she threw a sheepish grin and then beamed all over again. "Hi," she said, as though speaking to a person. "Sorry about that, I was sort of... well, nevermind, I'll get to that in a moment. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?" Tugging the paper upwards as though she would be doing show and tell, she smoothed it, upside down on the surface in front of her. She was 10 all over again, in space...

"It's my first day. And I met Frankie for the first time." Her face softened and she settled into her chair. "He's the ship, and he's made of pieces and parts from those that had fallen at the Battle of Vulcan." She gave a suitably sombre look; she understood loss acutely. "We call the Legacy, Frankie, after Frankenstein, a resurrected creature from different people parts." She shrugged. "He worked just fine until someone got it into their head that they were scary looking, even though at the heart of him, he was like a kid." She bit her lip. "Well, no one should be afraid of our Frankie, because he's in perfect working order, and is the best ship in the Fleet." It was pride, and a love of the place she'd be calling home for five years. "It'll be up to me and the Engineering crew to make sure he stays that way. Which kind of brings me to what happened today in Sickbay..." Her fingers tapped impatiently on the paper.

"Oh here, I'll talk you through this little baby, and then tell you why. I can't help myself. It's going to be beautiful!" She held up the paper, newly coloured and ready for actual measurements. If it was going to be approved. But that was a requisition that was just waiting to happen. "Look here," she pointed at a part of the page enthusiastically. "I've actually managed to create a smart morphing technology with the parts we already have aboard!" She went into technical jargon for about a half an hour, gesticulating wildly and pointing, standing and demonstrating, and adding more colour, and even a few more requirements before she sat down, hair askew, a smear of red across one cheek, and a smile a mile wide across her face. "Oh, and I'm doing it for the Huanni Doctor we have aboard in Sick Bay!" She laid down the paper and grabbed the saline bottle she had as though wild cats might sprint through her cabin at all hours of the day and night. "Ok, this is what happened."

She smiled, recalling the call to Sick Bay, and suddenly realized something. "Hold on, I'll get to Sick Bay in a moment." She shook her head slowly. "I'd like to start at the beginning, but well, there's no point in editing me, because well, this is my personal log, and no one else will see this except for me. So, I'll understand me. And maybe a hundred years down the road, someone else might understand me too. But then, I'll be history." She sat down and bobbed her head, eyes upward as though going through the day visually in her head. "Ok, I was calibrating and monitoring power couplings and relays on the various decks of the ship when who should be making the rounds but the Captain and the Commander!" Leaning forward as though sharing a secret, she said softly, "She's pretty, and tall, and she's nice too. Her name's Cindy, and she wants me to call her Cindy!" Her eyes sparkled. "Can you imagine? Navkiran Khangura calling a Captain by her first name?" She giggled, wholly un-technical like. "They'd mess their drawers back at Starfleet if they knew. In fact, I thought that the Commander might have had a bit of a minor melt down, but he seems a nice sort of man. We even had tea in the Mess. I think it's going to take some getting used to talking to the higher ups... But, I'm an Ensign, so I'll have plenty of practice!" She laughed and then, as though she had spoken her token piece, she got back to where her head had been for the majority of her off duty time.

"Ok," she began. "I was called into Sickbay to repair a biomonitor. It seems that the new Doctor is a bit jumpy, and the Captain and the Commander wasn't just visiting Engineering. They... there..." How could she say what happened when she wasn't there when it did? This might be good practice for the requisition... "Ok, there was an accident, and the Doctor, well, he's a Huanni." She breathed. "He's like nine feet tall, and a big kitty cat, and I'd never met one before. He was tall, and kind of scary looking but really, he's just well, a big... cat. I said that already, but well, he is." She grabbed the spray bottle. "Nurse Greenberg gave me one... oh!" She realized she'd interrupted her own story and sat it back down. "Ok, remember, this is my first day," she said apologetically to the monitor. "Ok, so, I got a bit nervous, but we got everything all straightened out. He was eating Tribbles," her voice was low and almost in awe. "I didn't even know those things were allowed on board of a Starship. Not even as take out." She nodded solemnly and then continued. "So it seems there was an accident, a mishap, with a large bladed something that sliced nicely through the circuitry on the wall and took out a biomonitor as though it had been decapitated." She gestured with the classic thumb across the throat and accompanying "Khhhhack" sound. "So, I went there, to repair it, and had to look up at a big furry..." What might she refer to him as other than cat? Although he was a felinoid, she didn't look at him as an alien, because they shared, like all creatures shared, certain similarities. "Man." She shrugged. "Creature? But he's not, he's crew. I think creatures should be left for unknown species and those things that attack us during scary old time films I used to watch as a kid."

"I know, Big furry person." She was a bit more satisfied with that. "He's like nine feet tall, and I was completely surprised, but I held it together pretty well, meeting captains and commanders and cats, oh my..." She laughed. "Wizard of Oz." She looked around self-consciously for a moment, half-expecting the computer to give a small chuckle of encouragement, but there was just the steady whirring of it recording. Well, it wasn't loud, but she could hear a hum different from the other hum. "Anyway, he was going to scan me and THAT'S when it happened." She paused dramatically. "I noticed something. About the size of his hand-paw-thing, and the size of the medical scanner. It was too small." She nodded as though she was the first to discover such a vast difference. "So, I figured, why not make something so that nothing can be too small. AND won't damage, disturb or molest any equipment in the process!" She pulled up the paper again. "So, all I have to do is get proper measurements of the Huanni's hand-paw-thing and that will give me the scale. I'll have to requisition parts and also request permission to work on it in Sickbay with him to ensure that the specs, the design and the finished product all deliver what I know they will." She nodded again. "So, yes, then there's the thought about the biobed, but well, first things first."

This was her crowning joy of the day. "Oh, I met some more people walking around the ship. Some seem nice, a few well... it's like a regular community. Not everyone can get along, but I'm not worried about that professionally. There are plenty of people I haven't met yet, so who knows about personally?" She laughed and leaned back on her chair, tumbling to the ground. It didn't recline. On the floor she checked the set up and smiled, peeking over the edge. "Ok, I can make my chair recline, just a quick thing about adjusting a few bolts. I'll write up the requisition to submit in the morning to Engineering and Medical, and then get into bed for plenty of rest for my second day!"

Her head disappeared underneath the table and a hand shot up, colliding with the water bottle. "Oh, and Nurse Greenberg found a magical way to stop the Huanni from hugging me," she said, voice muffled. "Which was more like a friendly gesture from a Venus flytrap, but I think I made a friend. Anyway, she sprayed him with this water bottle, and he left Sickbay a little damp, and a little forlorn looking." Peeking back up, her eyes twinkled mischievously. "I'm armed at least when I have to take measurements. But he's nice enough, and very enthusiastic." She went to go back to working on the chair and bumped her head. "Ouch. I don't understand that sort of behaviour," she said and laughed all the way down to the floor. It had to have been a good 10 minutes before she realized, between her coaxing and her swearing at the bolts, the chair, her tools and pleading with Frankie to let her have her chair, that she hadn't yet ended her log. "Oh, Computer," she said sheepishly. "You can delete the last bit and then, end log." Last bit was not an official command, and so, it was kept in its entirety for posterity.

And for Nav, that seemed about par for the course.

[KendleRJ]

Day Two... was it really only Day Two?!? Maybe it was three... no more than four, and certainly not one... well, regardless, she owed the computer a log, and so she began.

Nav, a little dizzy from a lot of beer and concussion meds, sat on the edge of her bunk and said into the air, "Computer, begin recording." A soothing voice responded, "Recording..." And so she began. At least she'd hoped to, but today was one hell of a day.

"Holy shit." Nav slapped a hand over her mouth and she began giggling; a little silly and a lot uncontrollably. "Today was jam-packed and totally confusing." She squinted at the monitor and said, "Computer, please put a warning on this log, because I have a feeling I might get a bit... expressive." The computer dutifully tagged it with a big red flag, marking it for first reading if anything ever happened on the ship, by its colour alone.

"I talked to everybody!" she waved her hands around, momentum getting the better of her as she slid slowly off the edge of her bunk and landed with a dull thud on the floor. "Well, everybody I knew anyway, and that... well, that wasn't really that many, but wow." She looked at the box she'd placed carefully in the centre of her countertop, the box still looking new. It was a direct contrast to Nav herself who hadn't yet changed out of the uniform she'd worn to have dinner with Cindy. She could have had a food fight in it, and her hair had small clumps of roti in it after the mishap during dinner. "I talked to Dr. Vodden, and she really likes me, I think. The idea about the thing for Keth really made her happy. But then..." her face lost its expression for a moment before continuing... "Whitney." She said his name as though the tone said it all. "He hates me." Her face was dark for a moment, her eyes a deeper brown... thoughtful. "But that's ok," she said, brightening. "The feeling is really mutual."

She sighed and looked around as though suddenly realising she was on the floor, and crawled forward towards the computer that had been recording a disembodied voice for however long she had been speaking. "He gave me hell... for being creative, for trying to improve things, and for not coming to him first." Nav's face was now in extreme closeup and she loomed into the small camera as though she were trying to eat it. "So, then, we got our first Mission, and it was..." She blinked a little, looking like she was deep in thought and then opened her eyes wide. "I have no idea what I was just saying," she said and then said, "Oh!" like a cannon. "Mission. I can't really describe it with one word, but I can... hm... ok."

She took both of her hands and rubbed them furiously over her face, spreading the remnants of the meal and a bit of hot fudge across her features like camo paint. "I was on duty, and it was just after my meeting with Him," she said and scowled a little, "but then I was called for an Away Mission. Which freaked the hell out of me." Nodding a little, she narrowly missed hitting her head on the desk and continued. "I went with the Lieutenant from Tactical, Ensigns Norson and Soban and the Captain." She leaned forward a bit conspiratorially. "That guy from Tactical is a bit over the top. I mean, I admire a guy for doing his job, but seriously, the heat he was packing could have been distributed to all of us going, and there would have still be some left over!" She laughed at her old time reference and thought how proud her dad would have been for finding a way to use that term in a personal log. She felt a wave roll over her and she sucked in a breath, letting it out slowly. This was no time for emotions... she was trying to record her thoughts for the day, regardless of how jumbled they were. "But we had to come up with a solution for invisible ships... and Keth thought up whiskers." She nodded and hit her head against her hand. Lucky shot, and she let herself slide back to the floor. They'd only need the audio anyway, wouldn't they?

"Built them, a bunch actually, and coordinated people in Engineering. Had Norson come down to help... and then we were attacked by Romulans. I hit my head, which hopefuly can help explain a bit about the log." She took a breath. "Well, we survived, and then I went to Sick Bay to get myself checked out." She went quiet for a moment, then two... so long in fact that the computer's voice asked out, "Log ended?"

Nav said softly, "Negative, computer." She took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. "Keth thought I had died, and he went a bit... well, he was really angry about that." She shrugged, but only to herself because she was still below the visual line. "He burst out of Sickbay determined to do something about the threat and then ended up in the Brig." Her voice was sad. "He should never have been in there... I should never have gotten hurt." There was a thickness to her voice. "Don't ever do that again if you can help it, ok?" She bit her lip before continuing. "Well, that was in the middle of the crisis, and to be honest, I would have rather gone to see him, but the ship, the crew, they needed us all." She cleared her throat attempting to dislodge the lump that had formed there. "We made it through... well, that's kind of not surprising since I'm recording this message..." her voice was playfully sarcastic... "And then, Dr. Vodden and I went to visit Keth in the Brig." The whiskers were recorded in another message, specifically for technical data and professional detail, so didn't feel remiss about mentioning them in here. "He's going to Security." She sounded disappointed and worried, but then resolved. "To protect the ship... to protect all of us." She leaned her head back against the bunk and sighed. "I hope he stays safe, and he's ok," she said. "He's one of the few friends I've made here, and I kind of relate to him."

She rubbed a hand across her forehead and spoke softly. "Without any family here. Alone. He finds it hard to fit in and is so happy when he does." She took a deep breath and let it out even more slowly. "I'm glad he's finding his place here." And she suddenly snapped out of her mood, her head shooting up into view. "Oh! The dinner with Ca-Cindy!" she moved as quickly as she could to the desk. "She promoted me! 'Cause of the whiskers! 'Cause of what I'd done today... and made me Assistant Chief of Engineering!" She almost clapped her hands gleefully but lost her balance before catching herself. "Let's see what Whitney does about that!"

She blushed a little and said, "And the Captain wants to find me a man... probably throw every one of them at me and hope one sticks... or something..." Her brown eyes sparkled gently as she looked directly into the camera. "I'm not looking. I've got Frankie, and friends, and that's all anyone should ever need." She rested her chin on the surface. "So, I guess that's all for now, and if I forgot something, I'm sure I'll remember it to record it another time." Leaning her head sideways, she yawned widely. "So this is Ensign... I mean Lieutenant Navkiran Khangura signing off." She stretched, and slid slowly off the desk. "Tomorrow, after all, is a new day." Her voice muffled as she spoke into her arm, cradling her head on the floor.

"Computer?" she said after a minute. "End log." And yawning even more widely, she climbed out of her old uniform and into bed. Tomorrow would indeed be a new day. For whatever it held...