A Puzzling Afternoon

Posted on Tue Aug 25th, 2026 @ 3:38am by Lieutenant Juliette Barnes & Lieutenant Daltom Vesper

2,325 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: The Invisible Hand
Location: Starbase 310/Thunderbird
Timeline: BACKPOST- pre mission

Julie had known there was plenty to do around the ship and had attempted to skip shore leave, but her staff had insisted she take some time off. It seemed they were used to Chiefs who never took time off unless forced to, so they had jokingly threatened to have her security clearance revoked if she didn’t go right now. So, pretending to be afraid of them while giggling uncontrollably, she had left the ship to wander the starbase for a bit.

She had done a bit of window shopping, but as she didn’t need anything or see anything she just had to have, she had abandoned it after only thirty minutes. She found a kiosk selling something called Super Nachos and had to try them. Spoiler alert: they were amazing.

Stuffed to the gills of nacho cheese, chips, taco meat, lettuce, pico de gallo, jalepeños, and probably a lot of other things she hadn’t noticed- she wandered for about an hour. She passed a theater poster advertising a modern telling of Hamlet in a theater in Holodeck 7 and a tea room that was absolutely packed before coming across a place called, “I Did Yahtzee That Coming.” Peering inside, she saw it was a shop full of different games. She browsed it for a bit, found a game called “T-shirts?” that looked like fun, and spent some credits on it. Then, promising herself that she would return to check out the night scene, she headed back to the ship.

She decided to head to the ship’s lounge to find someone to play her new game with. Unfortunately, there were only three preople there at the moment and two of them looked fairly cozy. The third was working on a puzzle on his own, so she headed over.

“Wotcher,” she said as she approached the man. “I’m Julie. Mind if I join?”

Daltom had made the conscious decision to do a puzzle in public. Most of the time, he did them in his own quarters. However, as he was new on this ship, he felt it was important to be seen as part of the crew. Besides, he might get to meet some more people and determine what their motives and desires were so he could better operate on the ship. Because of that, he purposely selected a puzzle with 5000 pieces. It was a picture of Starfleet Academy from 2292 and had pictures of the bridge crew of the USS Enterprise-A. Such a neutral picture would not likely raise any eyebrows.

He looked up at Julie with his brown eyes and said, "Certainly. I'm Daltom. What do you do here on the ship, Julie?"

“Chief engineer,” answered Julie, sitting across from him and setting her game on the floor next to her; she would save it for later. “How about you? Don’t think I’ve seen you before, so either you’re new or else I somehow missed someone.”

"I'm Daltom, the new counselor," the man responded as he subtlely shifted so they were not directly across from one another. "I just came on the other day." He gave her a warm smile. "Tell me, what did you have in your hands there?"

“Oh,” said Julie. Picking up the game and showing him. “A new game I just got. I thought maybe some people might want to try it out with me, but it needs more than two players and, uh,” she said, lowering her voice and nodding towards the other couple, “something tells me they won’t be interested.”

"Why do you say that?" Daltom wondered as he stopped looking at the puzzle to see if he could get a better read on Julie.

“You’re joking, right?” replied Julie. “They’re completely absorbed by one another. I don’t think they even realize we’re talking about them.”

"Perhaps, but we do not know unless we ask, and perhaps there are others that are not here that would be interested in it." He shrugged. "But we could put that aside for now. I would rather take some time to get to know you, if you do not mind."

“Not at all,” said Julie with a winning smile as she put her game back on the floor. “That’s why I came over, after all. I like meeting new people.”

"Do you now?" Daltom asked curiously. "Why is that?" Why does she have the need to be extroverted? Did she not get enough attention from her parents when she was young? Is she seeking approval from others?

“Because you never know who might be a friend,” replied Julie cheerfully. “Plus, it helps pass the time.”

She's one of THOSE! Always optomistic and friendly with not a care in the world. What in the world motivates these people? "Just pass the time? Do you not get anything else out of it?"

“Of course!” replied Julie. “I like talking to people. Even disagreeable people can be entertaining, if you don’t let them get to you.”

"Is that a fact?" Daltom answered, raising an eyebrow as well as any Vulcan. "Do tell me more about this theory of yours."

“Well, once they start disagreeing, you agree with everything they say and then watch them try to figure out how to contradict you,” she replied. “It’s sort of fun, really. Although I’ve only met once person disagreeable enough to actually try it on. He turned some very interesting shades of purple.”

"I do not see the point of being a contrarian for the sake of contrariness. That seems counterproductive. However, it seems that you enjoy torturing people. Is that a correct asseement?"

“Only people who really deserve it,” admitted Julie. “And Jarland deserved it. He ended up being court marshaled for throwing the entire security department in the brig for some trumped up reason. Granted, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. He was power hungry and- oh, you don’t care about him. Why are we talking about Jarland, anyway?”

Daltom chuckled lightly, now fully understanding what he was dealing with. Her ulterior motive was that she had to be accepted and noticed. "You were telling me about how you like talking to people and torturing disagreeable ones."

“Oh, that’s right,” Julie replied. “And of course, Jarland was fun to torture. Poor guy. I really think his problem was his mother never told him she loved him.”

"Why do you say that?" Daltom wondered.

“Well, it’s a sort of a joke,” answered Julie, pressing one of the puzzle pieces into place. “You know, people are terrible because they didn’t have good parents? Absurd, I know, but the stereotype stands.”

"I do believe that is a broad overgeneralization. Certainly parents have a profound effect on children but many rebel so that they are not just like their parents," Daltom explained.

“Oh, of course,” agreed Julie. “In primary school, there was a kid who was constantly acting up. Eventually, his mum came to class with him because, in her words, ‘I can’t trust you to behave yourself when I’m not around, so I guess I’ll have to be around.’ That lasted about a week and he was so embarrassed, he never acted out again. Anyway, so yeah that’s one example.”

"You have a story for everything, don't you?" Daltom observed aloud.

Julie gave him a cheeky grin. “Probably,” she agreed, and then paused. “Except for this, apparently,” she added, grin widening. “I don’t have a story for always having a story.”

"Does that give you a conundrum?" Vesper inquired with a slightly amused smile.

“I don’t quite know what to do with myself, yeah,” grinned Julie.

Finally, something that threw this woman off. "Well, what is it that you would like to do with yourself?"

“Right this minute?” she asked. “I’m quite enjoying talking to you, actually. As long as you don’t mind, that is.”

"I don't. However, I meant with your future...."

“Oh, right,” said Julie. “I quite like engineering. Fixing things and such. It’s satisfying. Maybe when I get too old for crawling through Jeffries tubes, I might try my hand at teaching.”

"Teaching? Do you have any practical experience in that? What lends you to believe that you would be a good teacher? And teaching what? Engineering?"

“Of course engineering,” answered Julie as if it were obvious. “I used to tutor classmates in the academy- engineering minors who were having trouble getting the hang of it as well as younger students, you know- and they all said I was a good teacher. So, I dunno, seems a natural occupation for retirement.”

"Perhaps." Daltom smiled slightly cruelly and said, "Though, it is said that those who cannot do, teach."

“In theory,” agreed Julie, “but in practice, I’ve found the exact opposite is true. You’ve got to be really good at what you’re teaching or else you can’t communicate how to do it effectively.”

"Historically, that has not seemed to matter much," Daltom answered with practiced cynicism. "So, I wonder, what happens when you find something that you can't fix. How would you be able to cope with such an unsatisfactory problem?"

“Ask someone else, of course,” answer Julie nonchalantly. “I can always learn something new. And in the case that it’s just not fixable, scrap it and get a new one.”

Daltom wanted to roll his eyes. This woman had a positive spin on everything. If she were abused, she would probably say something about it being a good learning experience and making certain it never happen again. She made him personally ill. Could she possibly be a person without an ulterior motive? No, she had to. He just had to keep searching. Nobody could possibly be that happy forever. "Of course," he finally answered.

Had Julie known what he was thinking, it would have amused her to no end- mostly because it was all true. But, she was not a mind reader, so she had no clue. “Anyway,” she said, fitting a piece of the puzzle into the right place. “I feel like I’ve been talking about myself nonstop. Now it’s your turn. What made you want to become a counselor?”

"I became a counselor to help my people," he answered simply. It was true.

“Fair enough,” she replied. “But why did you decide counseling instead of medicine or law or... or dentistry?”

This was starting to get annoying and Daltom did everything that he could to suppress that irritation. "Beings have to come to you in medicine, law, or denistry with a particular issue. The same is not true of counseling. I can have a greater and more far reaching impact on others in this profession."

Julie considered that for a moment. “Hm,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true. I mean, you go to the doctor and it’s my wrist hurts or I’ve got a splitting headache or whatever. But you go to the counselor and you’re like I’m feeling very depressed lately, but depression might not be the root problem. You might be bored or need a challenge.” She nodded. “I had never thought about it that way before. Thank you for sharing that. I find it very interesting.” And she did, too. She wasn’t just saying that to be polite. She enjoyed hearing why people enjoyed or had chosen their professions.

The concept that Julie espoused was a bit narrow, but if it got the annoyingly positive person away from him sooner, he was willing to agree with it. After all.... Simple answers for simple people. He did not need to explain how many more ways a counselor could be useful or how a counselor could affect lives outside of the office. Vaguely, he answered, "I'm pleased that you could grasp my meaning."

"I mean, I'm sure I've not even begun to scratch the surface," she replied. "It's a bit like calling warp drive a matter-antimatter mix and stopping there. But, that's the general concept, I suppose. Close enough for someone who doesn't have to work with it all the time, right?"

Did this woman ever stop talking? Daltom wondered. She does not even know when a conversation is over. How irritating. Non-committally, he answered, "I suppose that you could ay that."

The answer was, of course, no. Julie could talk about anything with anyone. But there was no way for her to answer his question as she was not a mind reader. She was about to ask him another question when her com badge (attached to her civvies, of course) chirped. “Rascoe to Barnes,” came the voice of her friend Cheryl.

“Wotcher, Cheryl,” replied Julie after tapping her badge. “What’s up?”

“Did you forget about super-ice zero-G handball?”

Julie gasped. She had, in fact, forgotten. That was very unlike her, but her routine had been interrupted- not unpleasantly, mind- and it had completely slipped her mind. “Oh. My. God!” she exclaimed. “Sorry, Cheryl! Give me ten minutes!” She tapped her badge again to close the connection. “Sorry, Daltom,” she said, quickly standing. “It was lovely meeting you! I hope we can do it again sometime!” And she rushed towards the door, doubled back to grab her new game from its place on the floor, uttered a rushed “bye!” and was out the door.

Relieved that the overly vivacious and garulous woman was gone, Daltom looked back to his puzzle and exhaled. Thank God that she's gone. Now, I can have some peace and actually observe. I will have to make certain that I do not schedule any appointments for her absent an emergency.

Lieutenant Daltom Vesper
Chief Counselor
USS Thunderbird

Lieutenant Juliette Barnes
Chief Engineer
USS Thunderbird

 

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