Obligatory Broken Holodeck Time

Posted on Thursday November 18th, 2021 @ 8:22am by Lieutenant JG Brolga

Mission: Jeepers Creepers 2: Creepers In Flight
Location: Holodeck

For as much as the holodecks cost to run, they sure liked to break. And for as much as Brolga liked complaining about them, they were actually quite fun to fix.

The Klingon stood outside the holodeck, leaning against the wall. He had a small box of supplies beside him, a sort of toolbox. Despite the man's rather annoyed looking facial expression, he was a fine mood and ready to fix the holodeck. He did not, however, want to go in there blind. Who knew what sort of program the person had been running? Just because it was empty right now didn't mean that there were no dangers in it.

So Brolga had asked for some help from the ops department. After all, the poor ops department was the one who had to shut down and clean out the holodecks all the time. While engineering might have more theoretical knowledge of how it functioned, it was ops who knew how to get a safe, clean shutdown every time. They had the practical knowledge of it. So Brolga was waiting for whomever the ops department had sent.

Said person would not, perhaps, expect a Klingon. This was a big station, and the Klingon found himself occupied too often lately with coordinating all the projects of the ensigns and crewmen. He enjoyed the hands on work like this, so when the petty officer who was supposed to look at it, a young human lady, suddenly fell ill Brolga gladly offered to take her place.

Ensign Jo Grant being just another wrench turner, got a call from her boss to head down to the holodeck. She asked what the problem was but apparently Petty officer Turner had suddenly come down with an acute case of acid reflux. She hadn't been able to diagnose the problem. On this base it tools and was Jo part engineer, part ops, part science officer and part diagnostician to figure it out. She grabbed her set of tools and padded down to the holodeck.

It didn't take her too long. She saw a large Klingon male in engineering gold with a set of tools of his own. He was as big as she was small.

"Hello Sir, did you call for assistance? What seems to be the problem. My name is Ensign Jo Grant, how can I be of assistance?" Jo asked.

Brolga spotted the ensign as she approached, and watched her grow close. This time, he was not going to get snuck up on. Perhaps the look might be intimidating, but it was preferable than somebody catching him unaware and startling Brolga into a pulling a knife.

"I did call for assistance," Brolga nodded to her, speaking in his regular growl of a voice. "I am Lieutenant Brolga." The Klingon picked up his toolbox and turned towards the closed door of the holodeck, never taking both eyes off of the smaller human. "I need this holodeck shut down for some servicing. I believe it is frozen."

"It could be the bio filters. When they get full, the whole system locks up. They have to be manually purged. Do you know if the holodeck currently unoccupied, Sir?" Jo asked.

"Probably is the biofilters. But this holodeck has been having issues; they asked engineering to check the programming. So here I am." The Klingon stepped to the side, so that Jo could access the panel beside the holodeck's door. "It is not occupied. The former occupant is safely in his room. I have been told to expect some sort of... beach setting. Can you get us safely in?"

Yes Sir, but make sure to hold your nose when I open the bio filter it can get pretty rank.

Jo opened the holodeck door and as Lieutenant Brogla said the program was still running.

"Computer Arch" the Ensign ordered.

The arch appeared and jo knelt down and pulled a panel. The bio filter was indeed full. Jo pulled her head back as far as she could when she pulled the panel because the foulest smelling gas erupted from the filter connection point.

"Not a very glamorous job by any means, but a necessary one." Jo said.

The Ensign replaced the bio filter with a new one then put the panel back on and ran a level 2 diagnostic.

"That should do it Sir. You can do what you came here to do. The system is now unlocked." Jo stated.

Luckily for Brolga, what was considered an awfully foul smell to a human was only mildly unpleasant to the Klingon. "Thanks," the engineer responded, stepping into the holodeck. The program was still on - as it would need to be to run programming diagnostics - making the holodeck itself seem like some sort of beach resort. The user had apparently been in some sort of volleyball match when it stopped working, and the ball itself was suspended in midair. Brolga regarded it curiously for a moment before turning to the control panel on the arch.

"Please, Ensign," he spoke as he started typing. "Stick around. I'd appreciate your help to reinitialize it."

"Yes Sir" Jo said.

After starting a download of the current program, Brolga turned once again to look at the beach setting. The simulation was frozen, of course - even if it were just the biofilter that had caused it to initially freeze, nobody had unpaused it - and a few folk still stood around the volleyball net, one of them positioned to hit the ball. It must be some human game, the Klingon thought to himself. Humans had many such games with balls and nets, but Brolga did not recognize this one.

"What game is that?" Brolga motioned towards the net, partially talking because he didn't want to stand there in awkward silence while the download finished.

"It looks like Volleyball to me, Sir. Do you want me to resume the program?" Jo asked.

Oh. Resuming the program. That had not occurred to Brolga as a possibility. He was curious as to how the game was played, however... "This game. 'Volleyball'. Is it dangerous?" Given it was a human game, probably not. Humans did not usually have dangerous games. But Brolga did not want to be caught off guard.

"Not really Sir. I mean there are possibilities for injuries but nothing too serious. Its not like hunting or combat training at all, though it can get quite competitive." Jo said

"Then I see no reason to not resume the program," Brolga shrugged. As he turned around to look at the humans, he leaned against the exposed arch of the holodeck, curious. He himself had never been a Klingon "games" growing up. They were much too violent for him, and given his relatively small size as a Klingon, usually led to him losing. Human games seemed much more interesting to him.

Jo shrugged. "Computer resume program."

There was the usual beeps but the game was on the breeze started working, the gulls were flying again and the waves were crashing on the beach. The game itself was competitive but friendly. Jo had never been to a beach before she grew up on a farm. She did however like the smell of it.

Jo walked over to where Lt Brogla was and she enjoyed the game with him.

"I used to play this in high school but it was indoors in a gymnasium. I think I would have preferred the sand." Jo said.

"In high school, huh... Was participation in such games mandatory?" Brolga still always tried his best to learn about human culture. While he was usually a quiet sort, that didn't mean he was uncurious.

"The class was mandatory but the game wasn't." Jo replied.

"And which class was that?" Brolga watched as they dropped the ball. The humans laughed as they stepped out of the rectangle to grab it. The Klingon noticed the teams were of equal number, and continued playing even without the holodeck's previous occupant. Interesting. So had he just been an observer of the game? Or perhaps the game was only happening for ambience. Either way... Brolga turned his attention back towards the young ops officer. Most of the Klingon classes had at least some physical aspect to them, so the way that humans organized their childhood education was not quite intuitive to the engineer.

"Physical education was the class it was usually the last of the day. However I think they just wanted students to run around and use there up there energy. It was a great stress reliever though." Jo said.

"Interesting." Brolga commented. "Back in my childhood, all the classes consisted of some sort of physical education, instead of putting it all into one class." The Klingon turned around to download the file that he had pulled onto his PADD for further analysis. Brolga had not, in fact, like the more physical nature of his classes. He would have done better in the more math and science heavy classes that he had heard the humans speak about. "I believe we are good to shut down the program now. I saved a snapshot of it."

"Where did you grow up id I may ask, Sir?" Jo asked.

"I grew up on Qo'noS. The Klingon homeworld." Brolga paused. The Klingon might have assumed that Jo would have assumed that, but given that she didn't he felt a bit strange now assuming that she was from the human homeworld. "And where did you grow up, if I might ask?" He repeated the woman's same formality but it sounded a bit strange through his growl of a voice.

"I grew up on a farm on the planet Axanar. I was born there too, though I'm obviously Human. My Parents moved around a lot and went to Axanar to grow exotic grains. At the time of the move my Mother was pregnant with me. I don't much care to be a farmer so I joined Starfleet to make a new life for myself and try to be useful."

"Axanar." Brolga hadn't heard of it. All these different planet names and place names that they tried to teach him at the Academy; well, he had done his best to forget all of them. Those were things that could be looked up easily. How to fix things; that was what he really had to know. "I am glad that you found a new life for yourself. Are we ready to restart the holodeck?"

"Yes let me put the panel back on. Its ready to go."

Jo snapped the panel back on.

"Ready to go.." Jo said.

"Great," Brolga smiled. As a Klingon, it was a particularly pleasant smile but the emotion was there nonetheless. "Thanks for your help, Ensign."

"Any time Sir." Jo replied.

[End]