Bugs and Gators

[Cdr Rian Kwai 0]

"Pppppppppppbth!"

      A beautiful cool evening, with ribbons of purple, red and orange dancing across the horizon, soft cotton candy clouds floating by and a light breeze ruffling her hair. And here she was, sitting at the top of the hill overlooking the lake, taking in the beautiful scenery....

      ....picking bugs out of her teeth.

      "Pppppppppppbth!"

      Rian Kwai sighed softly and leaned back. The only thing she hated about this job was the bugs. Other than that, this summer wasn't half as bad as she thought it might be. Perhaps one of Evie's half-baked schemes had finally worked out. The Trill stretched her legs out over the fender of the all-terrain hover vehicle called a "Gator" and sighed.  This wasn't half bad...not half bad at all.

      It was the summer right before her first year at the Academy. Three months ago, she had learned she had been accepted into one of the Alpha quadrants premiere academic institution...and been denied admission into her own race's Symbiont program. Needless to say, she tended to be moody, reserved and down right hard to live with. Evie Morgan, her best friend and fellow new cadet had somehow conned the Trill into spending her last free months as at a summer camp on Earth of all places. It was the longest the Trill had spent on a planet in her life and would be good preparation for living at the Academy for next four years of her life.

      To gain medical experience, Evie worked and lived in the Health Lodge. On the other hand, the camp staff wasn't exactly sure where to put Rian. She liked children well enough, but these were human children...and she was technically an alien here...she tended to be a bit timid, hesitant and cautious around them (which meant she was 'fresh meat' in the eyes of the older campers).  And the camp staff didn't understand that there was a difference between piloting a space freighter and paddling a canoe (the later Rian discovered she wasn't very good at...as the swapped canoe still stuck in the muck of the lake proved to.) So they assigned her the duty of "Acquisitions Manager". A glorified camp gopher who tooled around camp in the green "Gator" dropping off supplies, delivering mail and any other odd jobs around camp.

      What surprised the camp staff was just how good at the job the Trill was. Her inventories were impeccable, supplies were delivered on time, and she could always find whatever it was they needed with in minutes. If they only knew that she had learned all these basic skills after a lifetime of living on a space freighter, perhaps they wouldn't have been so impressed. Not that she was going to burst their bubble or anything. Especially since it left her with enough free time to ponder what career tract she should take at the Academy. Or, on nights like these, truly appreciate what she had been missing by living in space for seventeen years of her life.

      Of course, the only one hazard to the job she could not avoid when driving around in an open-air hover craft at night.

      "Pppppppppppbth!"

      The bugs. If they weren't flying into her mouth, they were going up her nose, into her eyes or becoming trapped in her hair. And there was something called the ecosystem that made eliminating them all impossible. Her friend laughed when she complained, given her a pair of ugly goggles and told her to "deal with it". Rian just rolled her eyes.

      A loud chirp sounded over the communication radio, and Rian slowly sat up in the driver seat. She responded with an "aye...on my way," then turned the ignition access card to bring the "Gator" to life. In moments, she was hurling her way across the property to the storage shed to pick up whatever supplies were necessary.

     "Pppppppppppbth!"

     Spitting bugs out along the way.

 

      Evie had an evil sense of humor and Cdr Rian Kwai knew it. The last message she received from her best friend included a picture imbedded in it and a threat to mass e-mail it to the rest of the crew if Evie didn't hear from Rian soon. The holo-picture showed a gangly young female Trill with big plastic goggles sitting on a small green hover-craft. It made her smile. And thankful that her job on the Republic didn't have the same job hazards as that job. No more bugs in her teeth.

       "Pppppppppppbth!"