Parking the Pakleds

[Tachyon 0]

Duty Log

Stardate 0406.23

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Arthur Dent soon realized that being Flight Operations was either incredibly difficult or incredibly dull. There was no middle-ground, no reconciliation of tasks. He survived his first two duty shifts through heavy application of tea and the ability to English. The computer had been out to get him that day and decided to temporarily switch off the Universal Translator, leaving him talking to some person who only spoke English, not Federation Standard. Luckily the Translator decided to behave itself a moment later.

 

He had the distinct misfortune of dealing with Pakleds. They really had no idea what they were doing—which reminded Arthur greatly of his own predicament. Those manuals he had studied on the trip from Earth to Aegis, all those hours reading Starbase Flight Operations for Dummies had helped only to the point that he wasn’t completely confused.

 

The crew was amiable, though, and Arthur received help when he needed it. Scott Sabourin, the other unfortunate soul who got the Station Operations job, was probably the person most qualified to help—and therefore the computer always found ways to keep him busy, thwarting Arthur in the process.

 

Right now, Arthur sat in the Control Tower trying to explain to the Pakleds how to dock at the pylon. They insisted that all they had to do was point the ship at the pylon and “make it go,” but Arthur was less optimistic. He tried feeding coordinates directly into their computer, but found out that the Pakled computer was from an old Earth company called Microsoft, and had the particular operating system known as Windows XP. Therefore, it did nothing of the sort that resembled following commands, and generally messed up anything you told it to do.

 

This docking procedure had been going on for about half an hour, and Arthur was really getting quite fed up. He wasn’t paid to be nice—heck, he wasn’t paid at all. He had this terrible thing called a code of ethics, however, the prevented him from seizing control of the station’s weapons systems and blasting the Pakleds and their computer.

 

“Now, do you understand?” Arthur asked one last time.

 

The Pakleds chattered amongst themselves slowly, and then one replied. “Yes, we know.”

 

Rather apprehensively, Arthur watched as the Pakled ship moved up to the pylon and docked with it. He let out a sigh of relief—at least he hadn’t managed to break the station after only two duty shifts—and drank some more tea.