A Strange Matter

Posted on Wed Oct 11, 2017 @ 5:47pm by Commodore Michael Aravan

Mission: Strange Matter
Location: Ready Room
Timeline: MD 30 || 1000 Hours

Michael sat in his ready room and stretched to the left and right until he felt a satisfying crack of his back before he sat down at the massive LCARS conference table. He activated it and looked at it before he deactivated it again. Starfleet can wait a bit he decided as he got back up to his feet.

He reached up and pulled the boxed in pips from his collar and set them down, then went to the table that had the coffee pot and poured himself another cup. "Has it only been three days since we started?" He asked out loud.

"Please specify the dates," the neutral female voice of the computer stated.

"Nevermind," Michael said, annoyed that he had been talking to himself and the computer for being as invasive as it was. "Cancel query."

He poured himself a cup of coffee and added a sugar, then knelt down to open the small drawer under the table and pulled out a pair of pruning shears, a bundle of thin wire and some nutrient pills. Going to the shelf where he kept his favorite bonsai trees, Michael set the tools down and looked at the trees that lined it.

"Computer, ignore voice comments unless addressed," he said as he headed to the replicator to get a large pitcher of water.

"Acknowledged," the voice of the computer said.

Michael carried the pitcher back over to the shelf, added the nutrient tablets and watched them dissolve before carefully watered each one a specific amount. With that done, he set the pitcher aside and picked up the pruning shears and began to work.

Ten minutes later, he came to his favorite plant and started to reach towards it before he stopped. Something was wrong and he had to take a moment to figure out what it was. The growth was more than it should be, he realized, his frown deepening.

He started to ask his computer who all had been in his ready room but stopped before the words left his mouth. All his senior officers had been in his room and none of them could make plants grow more than they were supposed to. "It's only been three days since I last pruned you," he said. "And the nutrient solution hasn't changed...so why did you?"

Finally, Michael went to retrieve a tricorder and scanned the bonsai tree and raised an eyebrow before he accessed the records of the feeding and pruning of the trees. He read the screen twice, then checked the tricorder again. "It seems that you're older than you should be by a few days," he said, thinking he was going to have to have the room swept for any temporal emissions. "Yeah. I can just see the Department of Temporal Investigations sneaking aboard to age my trees," he muttered.

With a sigh, he logged the tricorder readings, then began to prune the tree. A while later, the Commodore put everything back to where he kept it, put on a fresh pot of coffee and waited to see what would happen next.