Ensign Juliet Banks: Cube Farm

[Juliet Banks]

((Crew Mess, USS Khitomer))

Juliet pocketed her PADD as she entered the mess, feeling as though her fingertips were still lightly tingling from the sonic cleaning needed to get soil out from under her fingernails. Plant care was turning out to be more fun than she’d expected when she first thought of getting a potplant for atmosphere, but also definitely messier.

She looked around for Commander Dewitt; there were plenty of people in gold collars, but none that she could see with three pips. Which meant he was probably the engineer half-embedded in a replicator’s innards. Her curiosity, never deeply asleep, pricked up its ears and wagged its tail. Replicator problems were the best – always something deeply weird and just as interesting, and a lot less traumatic than the Academy stories she’d heard about various near-legendary holodeck malfunctions.

Banks: Commander Dewitt? …Is there something wrong with the replicators?

Her curiosity appeared to be steering the ship, rather than her professionalism, whoops. She felt slightly vindicated when the presumably-Commander pointed to a plate on the nearby table with… a food cube?

C Dewitt: I need a civilian jury on this. Does that look like a flan to you, or a cry for help in food form?

She peered at it.

oO Congratulations, replicators, you’ve made pudding terrible. Good job. Traitors. Oo

Banks: It looks like the replicator thinks it’s a twenty-third century food synthesiser. So I vote ‘cry for help’, sir.

Her brow furrowed. Hm. This reminded her of the prank – excuse her, the creative systems test – that Halen had scoped out with her replicator-programming advice and reluctantly abandoned for fear of getting airlocked. People didn’t like it when you messed with their food.

C Dewitt: Right… Ensign Banks, I presume?

Banks: ::nodding crisply, but with a smile:: Yes sir.

The Commander straightened, consigned the Flan Cube to recycling, and gestured for her to sit.  

C Dewitt: I have to admit I forgot about our meeting in the midst of… ::waving towards the mess:: … this. ::pause:: Ship operations has been managed by Engineering for quite some time now - last officer in operations left the ship some time ago.

Banks: It’s no problem, sir; people really like their food non-cubist, I’ve learned.

She tried not to wince; something about the absurdity of the Flan Cube (it had taken on capitals in her mind) had her speaking far too informally, to the Second Officer no less. She tried to straighten without looking like she was straightening, and focused her mind on the matter at hand.

Banks: As for Operations, that makes sense – that must have been a lot for Engineering to take on, on top of your own responsibilities.

The Chief Engineer wiped some of the replicator… innards… off onto his uniform pants, and handed her a PADD. She scanned down the screen, absorbing info as the Commander spoke.  

C Dewitt: Yeah… So this is what we worked with. A deck-by-deck priority matrix, sorted by department, weight class, and ‘likely to catch fire if delayed’ status.

Juliet looked back through the list; it all seemed fairly barebones, suggesting Engineering would have been hard-pressed to cover any more of it than they already had.

Banks: Right, so… you mostly used predetermined priorities to establish relative access to resources, and then adjusted on-the-fly in response to emergent situations? Am I reading this right? And I assume some typical Operations responsibilities like transporter operation, codebase maintenance and logistics just got folded straight into Engineering chains of command?

C Dewitt: Response

Juliet nodded. She was only one woman but hopefully she could help – wait, no, Ops was no longer a one-woman show.

Banks: We actually have a second Ops officer now; I’m an HCO all-rounder, but Lieutenant Reht just came aboard during Shore Leave, and he’s wholly Ops stream. So between us, we should be able to take a lot of this off your hands – or, at least, the most onerous parts of it.

C Dewitt: Response

Juliet paused – she hadn’t meant to imply that they were going to pick and choose what work they wanted to do. She hoped it hadn’t sounded that way. She paused for a moment, rearranging her thoughts until (she hoped) they would make sense outside her head as well as in.

Banks: Well, sir, I’m… very fresh out of the Academy. Cadet cruise aside, this is my first posting. At the Academy, they were very exacting about the boundaries of each service stream’s responsibilities. But even on my Cadet cruise it quickly became clear that things work differently in the field. My Cadet Coordinator explained to me it in terms of IDIC – that each ship is a unique permutation of mission assignment, ship class, crew mix, and the approach of its senior officers. So, the way I see it is – and please correct me if I’m wrong, sir – my priority ought to be focusing on those elements of Operations that are the most work for the least reward for other departments. I imagine if we just tried to start doing everything Operations is “supposed” to do, we’d be getting in peoples’ way and stepping on toes more than we’d be helping.

She looked down at the list on the PADD again, and then back up at Commander Dewitt.

Banks: So – assuming that is the right tack to be taking – where would you like us to start?

C Dewitt: Response

TAG / TBC

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Ensign Juliet Banks
HCO Officer
USS Khitomer – NCC62400
K240206JB1