Ensign Kettick: The horror... The horror.

[Dekas]

Okay, I know I just put quotes from this in the littler appreciations forum, but I keep re-reading this because it makes me laugh and wanting to think there were many pieces of gold I could have also put. So I might as well put the whole sim here, haha! @Kettick has a sense of humor that just speaks to me. There's not a single time where Kettick's humor hasn't hit me at least a little. It's excellent.

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((Main Engineering, Deck 15, USS Juneau))

Dekas: ::to Sera:: Alright I’m starting to think it’s better we go see nurse Pelley or whoever’s working in the sickbay sooner than later. Nothing permanently unfixable aside from maybe that specific replicator. I don’t fully understand how the acid didn’t burn right through it, to begin with, but I’m not going to follow that line of thinking yet. The more important thing is we don’t end up like the replicator, no?

Sera: Yes, Ensign Dekas.  I would prefer not to be disassembled after producing a corrosive vegetable.

 

A very sensible goal in life, and one with which Kettick entirely agreed.

 

Dekas: ::to Kettick now:: Hopefully you figure out if this is the error of a person or some sort of terrible malfunction of technology. If not, we’ll likely be back to help sort it out in a short enough amount of time. I can help write the report about the, ah, pickle and its effects once we’re back. As can Sera. And if it is a person’s mistake? I know some good words to use to really bring the point home that this was not great and someone needs a talking to if they’re going to try this type of thing.  

 

Kettick nodded in silent assent at the departing duo. Words were not his forte, and apparently, reaching an acceptable level of tongue-lashing involved him being stripped of his body and thrown into a telepathy-run alien simulation. Better leave this kind of task to someone more at ease with flamboyance.

 

Now, the maintenance logs...

 

:: Some time after. ::

 

The rubber duck had been retrieved from the industrial accident of a replicator, and placed on a nearby workbench. From time to time, a spindly, chitinous finger prodded it, making it wobble and eliciting a somewhat indignant "quack".

 

The logs were... illuminating. Apparently whoever had worked on this replicator last, one crewman 3rd class Lee R. Jenkins, had encountered an issue with corrupted software, and decided to rewrite the missing parts of the code instead of resetting it to factory parameters and going through all the necessary patches from the ground up.

 

The resulting logs reminded Kettick of some fiction he had read, presented as the journal of someone who had discovered a tome of eldritch knowledge and narrated its study, the writing reflecting their slow descent towards madness.

 

Kettick had managed to listen to the logs past the point where the crewman started singing nursery rhymes ("One hundred little errors in the code, one hundred little errors... Take one down, patch it around, One hundred seventeen errors in the code."), but had not made it further than the part where the poor soul started giggling.

 

And, Queens preserve him, he had looked into the fruit of the poor crewman's work.

Which had looked like the digital love-child of a one-night stand between Escher and Dali after a three-day absinthe bender at Lovecraft's.

 

Being himself, he had not blanched or screamed, but he had very deliberately shut down the interface, formatted the replicator, and put an electromagnet to the remains before decontaminating the lot with plasma. And as far as he was considered, it was not overkill, but *mercy*.

 

Shuddering a little, he decided to call it a night, closed the sessions on the various consoles, waved absently to the next shift, and made his way back to his quarters.

Only there did he realize that he had put the duck in his pocket for whatever reason.

 

END

 

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Ensign Kettick
Engineering Officer
USS Juneau
G239107LR0