Lieutenant JG Doz Finch - There Is No I in Genius, Oh Wait There Is
Doz Finch
((The Arboretum, Deck 10, USS Gorkon))
Surrounded by plants and flowers in all of their bright, and sometimes deep-coloured majesty, Doz had found the company of Jo Marshall quite pleasant indeed. It had been needed since their debacle on Sargasso V. Moving from one panic to the next, they’d had no time at all to really forge any sort of real connection beyond that which was surface level…all the while doing everything they could to actually *get* to the surface level.
Finch: He’s married! To a lovely Boslic woman who works on the same ship as he does. She’s gorgeous. Has this sort of mauve coloured hair. And their children! Well, you can only imagine.
Marshall: Stunners, the lot of them. ::She grinned with a soft chuckle.:: Good to hear. I always wondered where he'd collated his ideas and put them into practice. I'd be grateful for the chance to meet him if we come within transport distance on a shore leave stretch.
Finch: Of course! And actually, I think you’d both get along very well.
They both had that certain sort of wit.
Marshall: I'd love to pick his brains about the enhanced targeting systems he proposed way back when. Engaging multiple targets simultaneously with independently modulated beams would be outta-this-universe-useful if we ever did have a run in with a dynamic enemy again.
She loved hearing Jo recount in detail some of the precise ideas her brother had come up with over the years. One of his earliest adjustments, as far back as her Falkland days, had been to a deactivated phaser he’d been given as a gift from their grandfather for his birthday. Somehow he’d managed to turn it into a water gun, much to the chagrin of her mother Iris.
Marshall: Beyond useful. Imagine the tactical simulations.
Finch: Not only that, but the ideas that come from those ideas. One leads to another, and then another, and before you know it you’ve wound up nowhere you thought you would be, but better off all the same.
Her commissioning had been an idea. Not hers, of course. An idea put forward by someone else, one that she’d resisted to begin with. In recent times, she’d started to wonder how different her life might have been had she joined the Academy all those years ago. Whether it would have been any different at all. Murphy was never keen on the four year stint himself anyway, and she probably would have followed him into a tornado, given the opportunity.
Marshall: You know, it's funny. We spend our lives looking to the stars, always reaching for what's beyond. The next grand idea that'll be galaxy-bending. ::She gestured around them, encompassing the lush greenery of the Arboretum, meaning the ship at large.:: This, all of this, wouldn’t be possible without geniuses like you and your brother.
Finch: Oh, Ernie’s definitely the genius. But I’m just…well. I’m just an engineer.
The summits of her cheeks rosy with warmth, she started pulling apart a panel, revealing within it the temperature and atmosphere controls for the arboretum.
Marshall: Response
Finch: No, I know! You’re right of course. But you know what I mean. It’s very hard to think of yourself as a genius when you’ve done a thing for as long as you have. I was never an inventor. Was just always a fixer. Not just of machines either, mind you.
Of families, friends. Certainly, for much of her younger life, she’d been the glue holding the Finch family together until one by one they began to drop off, leaving little behind but broken gadgets as their residual, the sort that needed care and attention all day everyday. Ironic, really. she’d spent her entire life fixing everything *around* her, but had never quite mastered fixing anything *within* her.
Still, she lightened her words with a sprinkle of laughter.
Marshall: Response
Finch: Here, can you smell that? ::She said, nostrils flaring curiously.:: One of those flowers just coughed up a right storm behind you! Suddenly I feel rather…floaty!
Marshall: Response
Engineering Officer
USS Gorkon NCC-82293
C239809SH3
"There's nebula in that coffee."