THE BORDERLANDS — In what can only be described as a “relaxing day off,” LtCmdr Yogan Yalu of the USS Excalibur (NCC-41903-A) accomplished several tasks on his to-do list.
Meanwhile, his colleagues prepared for crucial diplomatic negotiations which could bring lasting peace to a troubled region.
Yalu’s day began just after 0700 hours ship time, when he finally acknowledged the alarm he’d set for an hour earlier. Dragging his feet all the way into the bathroom, the Joined Trill took an unusually long sonic shower. Computer diagnostic reports have verified the ultrasonic jets in Yalu’s quarters were active for nearly 40 minutes.
“This is a long time to be in the shower,” said Professor Ograx of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Betazed. “If I were his cabinmate, I might have knocked on the door after 20 minutes, just to make sure he hadn’t fallen and been knocked unconscious.
Instead of eating breakfast at the Round Table or the Avalon lounge—and thereby risking having to interact with his crewmates doing important Starfleeterish work—Yalu opted to eat in his quarters. An unconfirmed anonymous source tells the FNS that Yalu ordered the following food items: baked tater tots topped with cheddar cheese and bacon; grilled cheese and corn sandwich; peanut butter sandwich with grapes, bananas, and honey on toasted bread; frozen peanuts with milk; uncooked hot dogs dipped in Swiss Miss; and popcorn popped in bacon grease.
“These reports, if true, are very troubling,” said Crewman First Class Hamsan Dwich, Excalibur’s senior medical technician and ship’s chaplain. “I’m pretty religious, and even I wouldn’t challenge The Prophets like that. As soon as I heard, I asked Nurse Tiberius to be on standby for a gastric emergency. I thought she’d get some kind of device, but she gave me a bottle of something called ‘Dr. W. B. Caldwell’s Syrup Pepsin.”
As morning gave way to afternoon, Excalibur’s strategic operations officer remained in his quarters and tended to a few housekeeping tasks, including rearranging picture frames in a bookcase, sliding a PADD underneath the leg of a wobbly table, and combining the pips from all of his uniforms onto one collar to see what it would look like if he were a “superadmiral.”
“I can confirm that Starfleet confers no such rank,” said Commander Flaut of Starfleet General Administration, before clarifying further, “and no officer in the 250-year history of our organization has ever worn sixteen pips. That’s just stupid.”
By 1600 hours, Yalu began to feel the effects of his unorthodox breakfast. He spent the next 90 minutes behind closed doors, purportedly reading Anslem by Jake Sisko. Sources close to Yalu speculate that, despite his intense concentration on the book, Yalu retained very little of the plot.
Blissfully unaware of the important work his colleagues were doing all over the ship, Yalu dropped his combadge into a boot and climbed back in bed at 1927 hours, whereupon he fell asleep with his mouth open no later than 1950 hours. Internal sensors report his snoring reached 50 decibels by 2030 hours.
Written by Yogan Yalu
