Hyper Focus

Posted on Sun Jan 16, 2022 @ 6:08am by Lieutenant Commander Elli-Navine

Mission: S1 M6 Shore Leave - Obsidian Command
Location: Obsidian Command
Timeline: TBR#008 (Mid Session) -- MD11 1800HRS
Tags: TBR#008, Tobias Hirsh, Sattie Krisk

Elli stood in the cargo bay of the Potemkin, watching the repair crews diligently working. They were like a well oiled colony of ants, carrying, marching, crawling along their paths to their tasks according to some set pattern of operations that seemed urgent and a little bit secret. At least to Elli. She knew she could insist to be briefed, but Pax had forbade her to work on the Potemkin while she was on shore leave. So, like a fish out of water, she stood about uselessly flopping her arms into her sides as she observed, until she headed back to the observatory window perched above the Potemkin’s docking port. From there she could enjoy a cup of tea and continue reading the Quantum Mechanics tome that Commander Quinn had supplied her with to “get her up to speed” before he could further discuss the “finer points”.

At least in the digital realm, the thousands of pages of the tome was no heavier to carry around. She had access to the library entry through a data link. The illustrative points were made holographically, projected when she selected them, Which was helpful when dealing with the fields and geometries that were hard enough to simplify into the much familiar 3rd dimension and would have been quite difficult to grasp via simple two dimensional projection. She highlighted several passages and moved through the text on the given hyperlinks, rarely reading in the given order as she was able to condense several chapters in areas with which she was already familiar.

Time seemed to disappear as she became fully immersed in the strange and fascinating maths. She lost track of the hours and the number of times she’d reflexively gone to refresh her mug or grab a snack to go with it. People had come and gone around her in the observation lounge and they barely registered as more than the furnishings and panels and windows. Life and everything outside of the study of particles, waves, fields, and forces was nothing but a fuzzy, out of focus blur as she took notes and stared off between passages, pondering new questions to pose to Quinn about certain spooky action or field interaction or a certain variance range that seemed unaccounted for in one side of the formula. She was sure the trouble was in her own understanding and not the formula itself.

While contemplating the idea of field harmonic cancellation in certain interactive cross reverberations between interactive force conditions, she was so absorbed that she never looked up when someone else assumed the seat across from her. Normally she would have met a newcomer with a grin and a ‘how do you do’ and even gladly invited them, but she was so incredibly focused that she almost resented the very idea of interruption and purposed not to look away from the deep thought she was submerged in until she felt sufficiently content that she had grasped that particular aspect of the study.

Strangely the silence seemed familiar, comfortable, and mutual. As if the interloper were not a stranger at all, but quite contented in the space without having to draw her attention. Being from Grazer, Elli was used to people being less concerned about personal space and crowding around as a matter of course. The shared presence was just like a piece of home. Eventually the other person left, and it was then, spurred by a sudden rush of unexpected loneliness, she finally broke her concentration and looked up. An outline of a Grazerite male with a broken horn was in the doorway for a second before it closed behind him. Putting a hand on the table to stand, Elli found her palm on an old fashioned piece of paper. A flyer.
The top was printed-

Obsidian Oasis
Come for Half off drinks!!
Local Food and Games!!
8pm live music with
~Vibegenix~

On the bottom was scrawled in some sort of marking pen:

Elli, Hope you can make it. -Tobias

“Tobias,” she said as if enthralled in a spell.

She tried to turn around quickly but tripped over her own chair, which threw her satchel wide open and scattered all her tech gear everywhere.

Gasping, Elli chased down a modded tricorder, a hyper spanner, a modulator, three antigrav button units, her hair ties, a spray can of isotope tracer, diagnostic readout goggles, double sided utility tape, a packet of minitaturized flow capacitors, a laser tool, a welding nozzle, and an FTL pocket universe computer.

“Hey, you dropped this.”

Elli looked up at the familiar voice of Sattie Krisk, one of her own junior engineers. Sattie was holding out Elli’s holographic multi tool. It was a much sought after piece of tech, hardly handed out to everyone, and after many unique encounters Elli’s had been specially programmed with many alien adaptive connectors and interfacing forms that could be found nowhere else in starfleet, making it wholly unique. For a moment she realized that Sattie could have just slipped the much coveted tool into her own jacket and gone completely unnoticed. But her assistant was an honest and kind woman and that sort of shrewdness seemed to Elli to never occur to someone like Sattie Krisk. Elli accepted it with great relief.

Sattie watched her boss reassemble her satchel and mused. “You always carry that gear with you? Everywhere?”

“I don’t like being caught without it.” Elli admitted. “It’s not the full kit. Just the basics.”

“I guess I would just feel kind of weighed down if I was hauling kit everywhere, ma’am. I mean sometimes it’s nice to just move around without expecting to be fixing everything.” Sattie pointed to the flyer. “He left you a note?”

“Who? Someone left me a note?” Elli asked, confused.

“The other officer, the one you were sitting with all afternoon.”

Elli looked back down at the flyer, blushing. Had he really been sitting there the entire time and she hadn’t even acknowledged it? She must have looked so snobbish and rude! No wonder he’d just gotten up and left without saying anything. How could she be such an idiot?

“No, I mean not really." Elli played it down. "It’s just a flyer for some bar band thing.”

Sattie took it from her without asking, and Elli found herself reflexively grasping for it.

“Hey!” Sattie exclaimed with some delight, “It’s just a couple of hours from now. Let’s see if anyone else from the crew wants to go have a pint.” Sattie took an image of the flyer to share and before Elli could ask her to at least crop off the handwritten scrawl, it was already being uploaded into the messaging system.

The junior engineer handed the flyer back to Elli. “I’ll see you at 8, Lieutenant! You should shed the gear, you know, so you can dance.” Sattie said as she waved and left the lounge.

Elli smacked her face into the sheet in an attempt to hide her shame behind the paper.