Enterprise Gothic (TOS edition)
It takes 430 crew to run the Enterprise. A landing party is sent out. It takes 429 crew to run the Enterprise.
Everyone keeps saying that your ship’s first officer is the best first officer in the fleet. It’s true that he’s very good at his job, but you’ve been keeping track and he’s tried to hijack the ship on at least three separate occasions so far. What the hell is going on with all the other first officers in the fleet, you wonder.
You order a chicken sandwich and coffee. You receive a plate of tribbles. This is different from every other time you’ve ordered a chicken sandwich and coffee, when you’ve received a plate of Play-Doh cubes.
Another landing party is sent out. It takes 428 crew to run the Enterprise.
You don’t even remember what chicken sandwiches and coffee taste like, and yet you keep ordering them anyway. One day, you hope, the replicator will deliver. Something other than those cubes. Something other than tribbles. You hope.
You wonder if it’s a sin against god to eat a tribble.
You wonder if god could even find you in space.
You find god in space.
The landing party fights him.
It takes 427 crew to run the Enterprise.
The first officer and the ship’s doctor are insulting each other on the bridge. This is how you know you’ve made it to safety.
The first officer and the ship’s doctor are working together as a coordinated team. This is how you know there is an imminent threat of absolute destruction.
There have been so many imminent threats of absolute destruction.
You find a chicken sandwich and coffee. It is almost definitely a mind trick conjured by an incredibly intelligent race of aliens millennia beyond human development.
The aliens want you to stop fighting. They do not give you the chicken sandwich or the coffee.
You’ve been en route to shore leave for six months. Strange things keep urgently diverting the ship along the way. You worry that you’ll be sent out in a landing party before you ever get your leave.
It takes 426 crew to run the Enterprise.
