Mikali sh'Shar - Much Ado About Benna
David Adams
(( "Deja Brew" cafe, Iana Station ))
Mikali sh'Shar was meeting her contact, Tasha MacFarlane, at a coffee bar before work properly started. It was important to orient herself and make sure that she was ready to give this task her all.
She had no room for error, no margin for failure. They had exchanged greetings and Tasha had, very reasonably, asked about her skills.
sh'Shar: Well, I am a qualified mechanic, certified to work on worker bees, shuttles, and other auxiliary craft. That's where I'll be helping out. I'm also a pilot, although I don't think that will come up.
MacFarlane: Aye, probably not at first, though if yer program supervisors deem yeh t’ be settlin’ in well there is a slim chance we could get yeh in a pilot seat near th’ end o’ yer year. Supervised o’ course.
Even the idea that she could fly again spiked a surge of hope within her. For all her talk of "the job doesn't matter", flying was a primal thrill for her, something she was good at and loved, and even the idea of it was tantalising.
sh’Shar: ::softly:: You shouldn't get my hopes up like that, you know.
MacFarlane: I dunnae mention it lightly. Yer record on th’ station will ‘ave t’ be impeccable f’ yer supervisors t’ even consider it.
That much she knew. Putting someone like her in the pilot's seat again was something she had not even considered remotely possible, nor until that very moment, wanted.
But she would trade it all for her real goal. If Mikali sh'Shar never flew again, that was okay. There was always the holodeck.
sh’Shar: Let me just unequivocally state, my intention with this program is to be, as you say, impeccable. I will arrive early every day and go home every day. I'll work to the letter of the law in everything. That's the plan. But if I can't fly, I can't fly, and I'm okay with that. That's not why I'm here.
MacFarlane: Yeh ‘ave an interesting record sh’Shar. They dunnae let just anyone fly an FA-150. Starbase one-eighteen, Independence-A, an’ a pilot on th’ Avandar. All good postings from what I read about ‘em. Then yeh dropped out after th’ Avandar was decommissioned in ninety-one. Six years later, yer tryin’ t’ come back. May I inquire as t’ what brought yeh back?
Her gut instinct was to say "No, you may not inquire, thank you", but fortunately the tiny lump of muscle that was sh'Shar's brain understood that was not going to work. Being confrontational with her supervisor so early about a trivial matter, one that really did deserve to be put in the open air, was... unwise.
sh’Shar: I'm back because of a nine-year-old girl named Benna sh'Shar. Who has the misfortune to be my daughter.
Mikali took another sip of her water, just to calm her nerves. Discussing this was difficult, but talking was the easiest thing she was going to do in this program, so she might as well get used to it.
sh'Shar: Benna lives on Andoria with the other three of my group. Until I... fell off the wagon, she would visit me for three months of the year, a quarter of the time as is fair, and she still messages me often. But all that ended. Now, over the last couple of years, there's been a disturbing trend in her messages. And now she needs my help.
MacFarlane: Response
Mikali had not told anyone this, not even Serren. She had only alluded to it. But it was important for Tasha to know what drove her.
sh'Shar: As an engineer, I'm sure you understand when I say... Benna has the smart person's curse. School bores her. They teach her things she already knows. She gets put into advanced classes, which helps for a little while, but then she learns everything they have to teach too. They can't just make a "Benna Class" so she has to go through the motions, waiting a whole year which is an eternity when you're that age, waiting to get bumped up another grade so she can learn more things. Every new year she has the best time of her life, every end of the year is a misery. Her messages are full of the same things: "I want more. This is too easy. I hate it. Nobody understands me."
MacFarlane: Response
sh'Shar: Benna's already well ahead of her age in everything and it's not enough. She's starting to act out, out of frustration, because she's trapped in a room learning things she already knows. She has no friends. She's lonely. She hates her teachers and wants to quit school. Her other parents think it's a behavioural issue but I see it for what it really is: she's just so smart that she can't relate to her peers, because her true peers are about sixteen or seventeen or eighteen, not nine. What she needs is... what she needs to be surrounded by the best and brightest in the galaxy, in an environment where she doesn't know everything, where she has to study and apply herself, where she can genuinely be challenged, where there is an infinite amount of "Benna Classes" for her to go to, and I can't think of a bigger pond for that very big fish that is her brain than a starship.