"Organizing the Chaos"

[Damian Porter 0]

"Organizing the Chaos"

 

A log by Ensign Damian Porter with Samantha Kent guest starring as Chief Petty Officer Wills

 

 

 

Porter was on his way back to the cargo bays. He had to talk to CPO Wills again about the move. It was getting serious now, a lot of stuff had to be taken off the station and into the cargo bays of the Portland and the Mercury. So when he saw Wills standing around shouting orders he walked straight over to her.

 

Wills had seen Ensign Porter come in through the door but she ignored him until he reached her, focusing instead on the boxes of delicate scientific equipment whose shipment to the Mercury she was overseeing. Only when the last traces of the shimmering transporter lights had dimmed, and the shipment's departure had been properly recorded in the computer, did she turn to address the officer next to her. "Just can't keep away from me, can you, Ensign?" she asked, grinning tightly at him and raising an eyebrow. "What is it this time?"

 

Porter grinned: "Ah Chief Petty Officer, I came to make your day, more or less." In fact he had come to give her updates of what still needed to be taken off the station and to get an update on the progress. It would be easy to get all the personnel of the station, but the logistics of this move had taken on enormous dimensions. 

 

"You'll have to get in line," Wills returned, shaking her head slightly and turning away from him, moving towards an approaching midshipman who was proffering a PADD to her as if trying to rid herself of something painful. "I've been having my day made pretty constantly for a week, so you'd better have something awful good." She ticked off her signature on the PADD's transfer request and turned to look at Porter again, her eyebrows raised expectantly, her right leg drumming gently against the floor with impatience.

 

He took his time, knowing it would probably drive her nuts. After a good 30 seconds of just looking at her he finally started to speak: "I got reports from the department heads about what has to be taken off the station, dangerous material and the like, you know. Of course, they all claimed that their stuff is top priority, but I have designed a more feasible system of assigning priority." He took the PADD he was holding to a console and downloaded the data onto it. Then with a few swift movements of his finger he drew up a holographic schematics of the cargo bays on the Mercury and the Portland, all of them colour coded.

 

Wills peered at the colourful display Porter had created, clearly unimpressed with his attempt at a flashy visual, then tapped it several times to zoom the image larger, peering at the displays. "Alright, talk to me, then. What have we got?"

 

Porter looked at her, frowning. "We have got a colour coded holograph of the Mercury's and the Portland's cargo areas. Blue are medical supplies, green are the staff's personal things, red are hazardous materials, yellow are spare parts and other engineering stuff, purple are science supplies." It was really quite easy and a muchly needed way to organise that chaos.

 

Wills quirked an eyebrow at the image, then dragged the deep blue medical triage supplies into a different position. "Keep those in easy reach; if someone gets a paper cut I don't want to be digging for four hours," she said crisply, tapping the panel to save the configuration. After a moment's consideration, she filled the now empty space with the green division. Personal items were about the last thing on her list of major concerns.

 

Porter shrugged, "if you need to change something, change it, as long as you get everything in there. Just keep track of everything and catalogue it, when you're done send it up to me. I'd bet some holodeck time that after we're done we'll get requests for things to be dug out again," Porter paused for a moment before he continued,"all of these requests are to be denied unless it is something really urgent or comes from the Captain, Commander or the Department Heads." Porter hoped that this move would be over soon. He didn't much mind the move as such but already dreaded unpacking everything again, when, of course, everybody would claim that their things be the most important ones.

 

Wills flashed him a dry grin. "If anyone wants something dug out you can just tell them to get it themselves; bad enough my system's getting turned inside out." She looked around at the chaos in the bay with a certain amount of disgust. "Would you believe it, usually this place runs pretty smooth." She laughed, a short barking sound, then shook her head. "Reconstructing it once we get to the new location is going to take more patience than I have on hand." With a flick of her wrist she transmitted the cargo deck configuration diagrams to her team leaders on the receiving end of the storage transfers, over on the ships.

 

Porter was not very happy about what he heard. "CPO Wills, I don't want anybody besides your people running around taking things out and putting them who knows where. Nobody but your people touch this stuff once it's here until it's officially being returned to the departments and crew. I know what a strain this puts on you and your department, trust me." When thinking about what still lay ahead of them he felt a mild throbbing right behind his left eye.

 

"Touchy, Porter?" Wills said with amusement, taking some satisfaction in knowing she was not the only one being driven crazy by this whole process. "Don't worry, no one but us'll touch a thing; I'm not quite that dumb." Glancing sidelong at him she grinned with deliberate sardonic understatement. "Don't have a coronary, Ensign. What's the worst that could happen?" She snorted and walked off, leaving that question to hang in the air as she moved on towards the next outgoing shipment of engineering equipment.