tenuous at best

Flight Lieutenant Serra Murray. Queen's Royal Space Agency. Navigator aboard the Argo. Destination: the future.

[serramurray-blog]

emmaihaas:

While Emma did not spend nearly enough time in there, the life support lab most definitely did feel like her responsibility. She had not pieced together everything immediately, but Serra was right; there was a good chance that the oxygenators had been damaged. Those had never had a problem that defied expectation before. Whatever the cause of this elusive menace to the ship, it caused short-term problems that could fold into long-term ones. Literally nothing could continue without the ability to breathe. Oh, the perils of being human with such ridiculous requirements for sustaining of life.

They hadn’t moved yet. Sure, only a few moments had passed, but they probably needed to get going. Emma started to reach for Serra’s arm to urge her to come along, but thought better of it. Withdrawing her hand so that the both of them would not be stuck in the middle of the tunnel, she looked for a good handhold instead. There. Yes. She could do this. Best case scenario, nothing was wrong, or someone already had this down, but double and triple checking did not mean taking up residence next to one’s post. The idea of implementing that did continue to sound awfully appealing, however…

“I’m revising my post-apocalyptic plan tonight,”  Emma said, pushing toward the lab. It was not an incredibly far distance to travel, but it could have been miles since she was not there. “You’re going in my top 3 picks for who I want on my team.” She was trying to be reassuring, and liked to think that she had done a relatively okay job.

She couldn’t help but smile, a little, slightly pleased by the compliment, even if it was probably undeserved -- the second Emma realized that Serra had little to no mechanical knowledge about the way the life support machines worked in anything but theory, she might reconsider that decision.

     “I was always very good at humans versus zombies,” she said, with half a laugh, and then started making her way up (down? across? the lack of gravity was a linguistic issue she still didn’t love) the ladder towards the cross-section, and then through and towards the doorway of the life support room.

The momentary ventilation glitch, whatever the cause, had been enough to cause the emergency pressure doors to shut, so she set immediately to work inputing the code needed to manually release them so they could get inside the station. With the pressure now (hopefully, unless something in there was seriously wrong) equalized, she hoped opening the doors wouldn’t cause any unexpected problems, but either way they needed to figure out what was going on in there.

     “You alright?” she asked, finally, as Emma caught up to her. Physically, sure, they could both breathe again, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were both alright. 

[serramurray-blog]

horationarvaez:

There were a lot of reasons that Horatio liked talking to Serra, but right now, on the brink of either panic or hopelessness depending on how things went, there was one particular reason he appreciated her presence even more than anyone else’s on the ship, despite the topic of conversation. It was because of her voice, her accent. It was so similar to Adrienne’s, so close to that accent that had come to mean comfort, safety, that it automatically calmed him a little just being able to hear it. It reminded him of home in a way that little else on the ship did.

And, right now, it was making it possible to actually focus on what she was saying, instead of moving closer to panic by the moment. It was a good thing, too, because she was bringing up a point that somehow, up until how, he hadn’t thought about that at all. 

“Yeah. There’s not enough time. And we can’t fall behind, or else it’s going to get dire a lot faster. But the thing is, I’m not sure that we’d be able to figure out what was causing this even if we did have time,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “I’m sure you can guess what I think is causing the power fluctuations, even if I can’t explain how.”

     “I know what you think,” she said, and she did: if anyone on this crew was going to blame the aliens that had sent them the message for their systems going haywire, it was Ray. Already primed to assume the worst, already frustrated by the decision to keep going. It was a wonder he wasn’t already huddled in a corner somewhere with a tinfoil hat, only she knew he was a better colleague than that. Always the consummate professional, even when he thought he was hurtling towards certain death. 

She held the tea cupped in her hands, pulling her legs up underneath of her on the bench. Usually, the warmth from a mug of tea was the perfect soothing sensation. Unfortunately, slightly-warm water didn’t quite have the same effect.

     “But you’re a scientist, Ray. Think about it: if we’d listened to them, the ship would still be headed this way. If they understand physics well enough to be communicating with us, they understand we can’t just stop and turn around. They have no way of knowing what we decided to do, so unless they’d resolved to attack us either way when we got this far, this can’t realistically be them.”

[anirudh-rajan-blog]

mission day: 1434 time: 18:24 location: mess hall

@serramurray

Mess duty was easily one of Anirudh’s favourite rotation duties. It wasn’t quite cooking but it was comfortable, easy. Though how much he actually enjoyed the task was dependent on who he was rostered on with. Of everyone he could have been scheduled on with this cycle, he was so fucking glad it was Serra. They were a breath of comfort amongst all the chaos. And it was chaos. Every 437 minutes was another tiny cataclysm.

There were no predictions, no ways of knowing what was coming, seemingly no logic to how big or small the malfunctions would be. Every 437 minutes was something new, something painfully abrupt. It was unsettling because there was nothing that he could do to quiet his brain about it, but equally there was nothing to hook his thoughts into. There were no foot-holes in this, there was no key to solve the riddle yet. There was nowhere near enough data to know why this might be happening. Just a freak occurrence was too much to hope for four times in a row. He was tired of thinking about it, tired of fixing problems and checking for faults. And who knew how many more there’d be.

Ani glanced at his watch. 131 minutes to go.

He sighed and looked across at Serra, tossed her a packet of rice.

“Do you want to know what I miss? I miss McDonalds cheeseburgers,” he said “Crappy, plasticky, horrible McDonalds cheeseburgers. I never really liked them on Earth but then you go four years without a sleep-deprived, stressed-out cheeseburger and you really start to notice the hole in your diet”

[serramurray-blog]

The food they were working through wasn’t particularly appetizing -- grains and potatoes and lots of bland but efficient foods that were easy to eat and easier to ignore the fact that you were eating them. Inoffensive foods, but nothing worth salivating over.

And yet, just hearing the word cheeseburger she was hungry. She’d been a vegetarian for most of her life, and though she’d eased out of that when finished University, most of what they ate on the ship was plant-based proteins. She’d only had a real cheeseburger once, but the mention was enough to bring the taste of it back, a welcome distraction from the tension in the room.

Ani always managed to be the perfect distraction from whatever there was to be stressed about..

     “D’you know what I miss? Curry and chips. Not real curry, mind--” she added, knowing that if anyone on this ship knew real curry, it was going to be him. “British curry. The kind you get at a food truck at two in the morning.” There had been a particular food truck, right in the city centre when she was doing her doctorate, and she’d stop there any time she had to work well into the night for something to eat on her meandering walk home through the quiet streets of the city. 

[serramurray-blog]

carinabell:

“Good,” Carina said with a bit of a nod. At least someone was going to have an easier day. There was a part of her that wondered if she should have even started this conversation. She could tell that her fellow crewmate was also on edge, as she was sure could be said about most of the crew. Nothing was wrong with the navigation at this point, thankfully. But who knew? That could change within the hour, or within the day. It wasn’t something she needed to worry about herself, but she couldn’t help but have her mind wander.

“They were, uh, knocked out completely, but it should be an easy fix,” she said simply, her eyes falling on Serra for the first time that morning. “I know what I’m doing,” she said, giving her a bit of a smile. Not that she had any reason to doubt Carina, but she just wanted to ensure her that there was nothing to worry about. “It’s just…it’s funny, isn’t it? That it all starts to go wrong now,” she said after a few moments. She needed something to fill the silence, the quiet hum of machines not enough anymore.

This was what she’d been worried about, wasn’t it? That if everyone assumed there was some direct connection between the glitches they were dealing with now and the fact that they’d ignored the message, they might get distracted, might start to panic. Carina wasn’t panicking, far from it, but... Slippery slopes, and all that.

There was no evidence that they were connected; logically, it was impossible. Whoever had sent the message couldn’t know what staying away would have to look like, for them, couldn’t know precisely when they received the message and when they decided to continue. Couldn’t know that they had decided to continue. Their trajectory, at this stage, would have looked virtually identical to an outside observer if they’d decided to turn around.

Correlation did not indicate causation, here as in all cases.

It was a coincidence. It had to be. 

     “Quite the coincidence, yeah,” she answered. And then, “It wouldn’t make any sense, for them to be connected.” Never mind the non-sequitur, that she’d spoken as if Carina could hear her train of thought, could know what she’d been thinking about. 

[serramurray-blog]

emmaihaas:

It wasn’t… It was very not good. Not at all.

She was nervous enough in the transport tunnels as it was. While there was something freeing and romantic about the idea of minimal gravity, Emma had decided long ago that it was not at all practical when one just wanted to go somewhere without forgetting which way was up.

Whatever it was, it hit her on the exhale, before she got the chance to get a new breath. So she did the stupid thing, the most panicked reaction, and just let go of the handholds. An amount of time passed, but it could have been three seconds or ninety. If this kept up, she was of a mind to grab some food, hole up in the lab, and not leave it for at least forty-eight hours. This was not supposed to be her problem, but now it had gone and done the stupid thing and affected her.

Emma looked up and realized that she had wound up somewhere slightly different than where she started, and she had company. “Serra,” she managed to say, somehow torn between being shocked and relieved. Goodness, she really had been unaware. “Did it… Did you also?” There was always the unlikely but terrifying possibility that it had only affected her. Ordinarily, her mind would search for the “why” or “how,” but right now Emma was concerned about the “what” and even “if.”

She just managed to turn back to look at Emma as she caught her breath, turning slowly and cautiously around the handhold to get a better look at her.

     “Yeah,” she answered, breathlessly, and then again, a little firmer-- “Yeah, me too. I...”

If that was it, they’d be alright; a momentary flicker that lasted less than a minute. But something about knowing that these glitches could effect the life support systems in addition to the monitors and computers and lights was suddenly terrifying. If it could malfunction for less than a minute, what was to say it wouldn’t malfunction for eight minutes? Or ten? She tried, all at once, to remember for how long a human being could go without air, but she couldn’t remember the precise number.

 They were near the life support room, though, just a tunnel away. There was a chance they were the closest ones there, if whoever was on life support maintenance didn’t happen to be there at the moment.

     “We should--” she faltered for a second, then took a deep breath. “We should go check on the oxygenators.”

[serramurray-blog]

horationarvaez:

He nodded, knowing just as well as she did that it was getting to the point where it was pressure now. Different systems flickering on and off at consistent but unexplainable intervals, needing to reboot them every single time between the fluctuations or else things could go really wrong, yeah, that was pressure. Everyone was on full alert, and after the stress that the vote had put on them all, it was getting hard to see how they could all survive on this level of stress so consistently for much longer. But there were no signs of things changing or getting any better, and Horatio was convinced that the closer they got to the planet, the worse things were going to get for the ship.

All they could really do was keep trying, but there was going to be a certain point where they were all so damn exhausted that someone would slip up, no matter how much they had trained, no matter how much expertise they all had. They weren’t superhuman. They couldn’t function like this for an extended amount of time without problems, not even taking into account that they were hurling towards everything he feared.

Her answer just reminded him of how ridiculous a question that really was, when they all knew that none of them were particularly alright now. “Concerned. Yeah, concerned is the right response, I think. I’m pretty damn concerned too,” Horatio said with a humorless laugh. “Guess all we can do is keep pushing on, though.”

     “Just wish I could feel like we were making progress, instead of just fixing problems. If we could figure out why the systems are glitching so regularly...”

She wasn’t sure where it came from, the statement. It wasn’t something she’d been consciously thinking of. She’d been thinking of the nav problems, the work she had on hand as soon as she finished her tea and headed back to the central control room.

She took a sip of her tea. Lukewarm, sure, but it still warmed her. Still tasted like home, like calmer times. Like hope.

Short-lived hope.

She understood, for a moment, exactly how he felt: the regret and fear of having left everything that mattered behind and wanting nothing to do with whatever was on the other side. Her vote wouldn’t have mattered, if she changed it; he’d been outnumbered enough. But she might have reconsidered, if this had started happening before the vote, anyway.

     “Only, we’ve got to fix the systems every time they glitch, or else we might die. And four hundred some minutes doesn’t give us enough time to focus on why at all, unless we want to fall behind.”

[serramurray-blog]

mission day: 1435 time: 11:00 location: transport tunnels      ( open )

It took her a minute before she realized she couldn’t breathe. Before the crushing lack of oxygen hit her square in the chest and panic flooded through her, a fight-or-flight with nowhere to go and nothing to strike at, like the feeling of being suddenly submerged in freezing cold water. She reached out, grasping for one of the handholds on the side of tunnel, gripping it as tight as she good as she gasped, her heart racing in equal parts fear -- was this it? was this how she died? -- and oxygen deprivation.

And then, seconds later, she could breathe again.

Something must have happened to the ventilation system; it was the only explanation. She glanced down at the watch she’d taken to wearing -- 437 minutes on the dot since the corrupted telemetry reports had come in. Another glitch. 

They were getting worse. They were getting more dangerous. 

[serramurray-blog]

horationarvaez:

As always, he was glad that it was Serra who had overheard his pontificating, knowing that she of all people would at least somewhat humor they worry. Frankly, though, at this point, with the oddly timed power fluctuations, everyone was a little worried, even those who had been so intent on trekking forward despite the danger. He wanted to say I told you so, but he was too anxious to even feel good about that, yet. The I told you sos would come once everything went completely to shit. If he was going to die because everyone else but Carina had made a stupid decision, then he was going to make sure everyone knew he had been right.

But everything kept turning back on on its own, so for now there was little to do but worry and keep trying to figure out what was wrong.

Serra was right, of course. If they were all as completely pessimistic and as put out as he was, then everything would fall apart sooner rather than later. He wasn’t convinced that was necessarily a bad thing at this point. If it happened before they reached Proxima B, then at least they wouldn’t have to deal with whoever had sent the warning message, although at this point he was fairly certain the power fluctuations were related to that very message.

“I’d almost rather it sooner than later, at this point. The sooner everything just stops working completely, the sooner we can stop waiting for the panic to hit and actually go into panic mood. We might work better under pressure than just constant, consistent worry,” he said matter-of-factly. Cope by making light of the problem. “You alright?”

     “I feel like this is starting to count as pressure, to be fair,” she said, with a frown. She didn’t like the idea of things getting worse -- yesterday, if you’d asked, she would have said she was worried that they might, but now that the glitches had hit her systems, the only way to preserve any sense of sanity she had left was to pretend that this was rock bottom, that everything would get better from here as long as she kept working and got through it.

It didn’t seem likely though.

The kettle -- or rather, the poor approximation of a kettle -- chirped that the water was hot -- or rather, a poor approximation of hot -- and she moved over to it, pouring herself a mug and adding in one of the precious, treasured tea bags she had left in her stock for emergencies, for when she needed just a bit of home.

      “I’m-- concerned,” she added, after a moment, bringing the tea back to the table where he was sat and taking a seat across from him. It felt like an understatement.

[serramurray-blog]

carinabell:

Carina knew, rationally, that the crew had these malfunctions under control. They weren’t affecting the entire ship, or even systems that were essential for life support. It was relatively simple things to fix, at least it had been until this morning. But there was still a nagging voice in the back of her head that told her that this was only the beginning. They were still so far away from Proxima B, and they were already experiencing problems. It didn’t bode well for them, but she didn’t exactly want to say that to anyone. So, she kept her hands tangled in the wires behind the comms panel, hoping everything would work out for the best.

“Everything looking good on your end?” she asked after a few moments of silence, figuring that she should at least check on her fellow crewmate. She didn’t want to drag the other down, especially so early in the morning. Any number of things could still go wrong, but they had to keep focused on what they could do to fix the damage. It did them no good to panic about the future, though Carina couldn’t help but wonder if this signified what was to come.

     “Thankfully, yeah,” she said, glancing over in surprise as Carina spoke -- she’d looked to focused on her work, Serra hadn’t expected her to engage with more than a courtesy. Not that what she’d said just now was much more than a courtesy, but it was more than some of the others on the ship were willing to give, with things already feeling as if they were stretched unnecessarily thin after only a few glitches.

She couldn’t imagine the stress Carina was under, at the moment; she didn’t want to say anything that might risk making it worse, but at the same time, she didn’t feel like she could just say nothing. She thought about offering to help but it seemed... hollow. She hardly knew anything about the communications system, and it was more than likely if she tried to interfere she’d only make things worse.

     “How are they, er.... communications systems holding up? Did they get knocked out completely, or was it just a temporary problem?”

[horationarvaez-blog]

15:00, mission day 1434, the mess hall {open}

To any outsider, the ability Horatio had to sustain a consistent and high amount of worry since the vote was impressive. It was getting exhausting, though, and yet there was no sign of it cooling down, especially with the new added bonus of the strange partial systems failure happening somewhat regularly. That fell into his realm, of fucking course, and from what he had been able to tell so far there was no explanation for it, and it always seemed to go right back to normal afterward. Which wasn’t particularly comforting.

Not only were they now hurling towards apparent danger, but they were already experiencing it. He was more than convinced that it had something to do with the warning message they had received and he wouldn’t hear otherwise. The mantra that kept him from freaking out entirely was a quiet I told you so in his head, which he would’ve been glad to say to anyone who would listen if he wasn’t so damn worried for his life. 

Sitting in the mess hall, pretty much waiting for the next fluctuation, he did what he did often lately, wax poetic to himself about everything that could and would go wrong. “I wonder how long it’ll take before everything stops working completely,” he wondered out loud, forever the pessimist.

[serramurray-blog]

To say she’d panicked when, before her very eyes, the navigational system shut down before her eyes and rebooted itself, short the last day’s worth of course adjustments she’d spent the entire morning making, would have been an understatement. Panic would have been reasonable. 

She’d shut down. For nearly an hour. Hadn’t been able to get to work fixing it all for longer than she should’ve. She needed to get back on track, she knew it, but the paralysis -- the same feeling as when she’d seen the message, and hadn’t known what to do -- was too much. 

A nice hot cup of tea. That’s what she needed, and then she’d be right as rain, and be able to get back to fixing everything the fluctuation had mucked up.

    “Not very long,” she answered, sitting down across from him as she waited for the water to heat -- it never got hot enough, on the ship, but it was better than room temperature at least. “At least, if we keep thinking like that.”

[carinabell]

mission day: 1434 time: 9:15 location: control room status: open

With all the power fluctuations, Carina felt as if she was working overtime. It didn’t surprise her that the communications system was hit the hardest, but she wished that she could catch a break. First the telemetry system, then all the computers in the control room. Now, as she slept the night before, the communications between the control room and the rest of the ship had been knocked out. It wasn’t exactly a simple repair, and she expected to be in the control room until at least lunch. At least the repairs gave her something to do.

She couldn’t help but think of the fluctuations as an omen. They couldn’t listen to the message to stay away, so they were getting another warning. There were too many happening too frequently for this to be a coincidence. Even now, she didn’t feel comfortable bringing this up to the rest of the crew. Even if it was another a sign, another reason to stay far away from the planet they had travelled so long to reach, she wasn’t sure they would turn around. Half of her crew members had a death wish, and she knew that she just had to live with that fact.

Of course, it was asking for too much to have an hour alone in the control room. With everything that had gone wrong in the past day, it made sense that someone else had to come in. Whether it was to check on another system or to start repairs, she shouldn’t have been surprised. “Morning,” she mumbled, not even looking back at who entered. It was nothing against her crew, but she wanted to finish this repair before something else inevitably went wrong.

[serramurray-blog]

Ship malfunctions were just about the worst thing that could be happening right now.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the engineers on the ship to fix anything that happened to go wrong; she did, and implicitly, just as she trusted everyone else on the ship to do their job and do it well. No, it was the timing of it: just when they had made their irreversible decision to continue the mission despite the warning they’d received, things were starting to go wrong. Even if it wasn’t a sign -- and she didn’t think it was -- other people were bound to take it that way.

Especially people like Carina, people who hadn’t wanted to keep going in the first place. People who had wanted to take the message at face value, accept the warning for what it was. And if you took all of this as a sign that the crew had made the wrong choice, well... people were going to start getting worried, and worry was going to start making them sloppy.

She wasn’t excused from that. She knew it.

     “Morning,” she answered, moving to take her seat at her own station, feeling some of Carina’s dejection and annoyance starting to rub off onto her.

[nfsemenova]

mission day: 1430 time: 14:48 location: mess hall availability: closed to @serramurray

Lab assistance was one of Feriel’s favourite things to do. Since they had joined the army, they didn’t have much time to do anything related to biology and chemistry and they found themself missing it at times. Spending time around the lab meant they could learn about what was happening in there, and sometimes even lend an extra pair of eyes to whoever was using the installations. 

Some time had happened for everyone to come to terms with the results of the vote, and to say they had been pretty smug about it was an understatement. Honestly, they hadn’t believed the option to continue as planned was even going to be on the table by the looks of everyone, but apparently some people on the ship had more nerve than they had initially thought. Serra was one of them. Feriel was convinced that she was set and ready to take them home, but even though she wasn’t fully convinced to continue exactly as planned, at least she wanted to keep going. That was a positive mark in their books. 

“So, curly-”, they said, entering the mess hall and sitting cross legged on the table. “Taking a break or still on duty?”

[serramurray-blog]

She wasn’t surprised it looked like the was working -- head bent studiously over her tablet, it might look like she was pouring over equations like she essentially always was. But she’d gotten bored of counting potatoes in the pantry to update their food inventory and had given herself a half an hour to read the book she was working on, a Samuel Delany novel she’d been working through for the past dozen or so cycles.

     ‘Taking a break,” she answered, resisting the urge to get up and move away from where they had sat up on the table. Something seemed different about the way they were talking to her, and even that slight different felt like the closest thing she might get to an olive branch, for the time being.

If that meant she dealt with one conversation with Semenova to avoid a future confrontation, she could probably handle it.

     “And you? Taking a break from the lab?”

[serramurray-blog]

majorbarbie:

Barbie was fairly grateful that she’d only been assigned to general assist this cycle. It meant that she had more time than usual to brush up on things she wanted to do herself, like finally finish watching Grey Gardens, or looking through letters from home. Most of all, it allowed her to get up in the morning without feeling like a limp sack of potatoes or something, and as she walked up to the control room, she felt ready to go pilot the whole ship.

Breakfast had definitely been okay, even if she still longed for some grits or a big bowl of pasta eventually. Until then, she guessed she’d just have to trust in her fellow crewmembers, in her ship, and in her own abilities to get them back to Earth safely. She knew she needed to hold onto that, and so she held onto that thought as she started getting into her duties, before noticing Murray shooting her a quick hello.

“Good morning to you as well, Murray,” she said with a small smile. Damn. She definitely needed to be more aware next time. At least there was someone to shoot the breeze in while they were here, although it didn’t seem as if Murray had had the best night ever or something. “How’re things going on your end?”

Perhaps it was best to take things easy after all. Murray had definitely needed to go through a lot of work in the past days, and she didn’t really want to add anymore to that. Additional stress wasn’t good for anyone.

     “Not bad. A little tired, this morning, but I’m still waiting for my tea to kick in.”

Work -- her day time work, her real work, the routine kind of work she’d been hired to do because she was capable at it -- was a soothing balm in the storm of her mind; as tired as she was, she was looking forward to it, to letting her mind clear to make room for the minuscule, detailed calculations that kept them on track. 

     “Couple of trajectory adjustments this morning,” she said, pulling up her work on the touch screen in front of her. Not having to slow the ship down or turn the entire thing around may have made her job for the next few cycles easier in terms of the calculations she had to do, but it hadn’t made it obsolete: they still needed to ensure that the ship was on course, as even a centimeter of drift in any direction at the speed they were going could mean they missed the Proxima system entirely.

She swiped between the real-time map on which their course was being tracked and the projected trajectory they needed to aim for to hit their target, and then paired them side-by-side, zooming in on the next couple million kilometers to start her calculations.

[serramurray-blog]

fathermarcelo:

“This can’t be right.” He thinks aloud, shaking his head as he looks over the rest of the communications. It was almost impossible to imagine that a message like this could be sent to them without any kind of follow-up information. If anything just to give them some kind of idea how to take the strange communication. “Do you think maybe we didn’t get everything sent to us? Or…” He trails off thinking for a moment before saying the thought out loud. 

“Or, maybe someone sneaked this particular message in without any one else’s notice? It would explain why no one else seems to acknowledge its existence in the rest of the messages. Perhaps none of them even knew about it to begin with?” The idea seemed logical, but still left many questions. Such as why no one else knew about it, and whether the message itself truly came form Proxima Centauri or not. Both notions held darker truths no matter how he looked at it. 

“Well regardless of how we perceive this message we should tell the commander.” He looks back at her finally. “I don’t know what she’ll want to do about it- I’m not sure if we even can turn back around at this point, but she needs to know.”  

Objectively, that should have occurred to her as a next course of action. But she had been so caught up in the shock and confusion -- in exactly the kind of speculation that Marcelo was making his way through right now -- that she hadn’t been able to force herself to think straight. She’d never been good at multi-tasking; her mind liked to focus on one thing at a time, and it was usually a good thing, her laser-point focus, but when a part of her was catastrophizing, it meant all of her was.

     “Of course,” she said, with a nod, as if it had been just as obvious to her that that’s what they needed to do. She needed to stop speculating and start doing, start thinking practically instead of worrying, shift her focus over to something productive.

She took a moment, to force her breathing to steady, to close her eyes and close out the message on the screen and let herself absorb Marcelo’s calming presence, his measured, reasonable reaction, the steadiness she always felt around him. Thought through his words with the steady reverence of prayer.

     “I’ll-- I should go tell her, then. I should go wake her up and let her know...”

[serramurray-blog]

dr-garciahaas:

Andrea had been sorting through everyone’s files when she heard the knock. The messages’ arrival had added another variable into her research. While she had been studying the effects that space and the unknown would have on the crew now she had to add a factor of danger. The results had been nothing like she had originally expected, well for most other than Horatio. So seeing Serra Murray at her door completely surprised Andrea. 

She quickly got up and walked to the door to open it. 

“Come in Serra, is everything alright?” she stepped aside to let Serra in and then closed the door. The usually collected navigator looked more on edge than Andrea had ever seen her before. It was almost alarming and she hoped that there wasn’t another message. She wasn’t sure but they might have been at the point of no return. 

     “Yes,” she said, sort of instinctively, despite the fact that her seeking out Dr. Garcia-Haas was unusual enough that it was a pretty clear sign everything wasn’t alright. 

She moved into the room and looked around for a moment, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do, before taking a seat across from the doctor. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been in the office before; she’d been here plenty of times, but it was always so routine, so clinical, an obligation rather than something she wanted to be doing. Not that she wanted to be here now, but that was neither here nor there.

     “I mean, no, obviously, I--” she pressed her lips together, for a moment. “I was wondering if we could talk?”

[rosalesernesto-deactivated20180]

the argonauts + text posts // part four

[serramurray-blog]

lcvesque:

Stress and tension had blanketed the past two days on the ship, and even Joseph, always steadfast, ever unshakeable, had started to feel the effects creeping up on him. Thankfully, the previous day’s hull repairs meant some respite, an offer of escape: he had something to work on. While he was always tinkering away, a physical, mechanical puzzle to piece out was preferable to all else. While most knew to stay away from Joseph while he worked, sitting in silence most times (the faint sound of classic Canadiana humming in the background in rare moments he felt music was appropriate), he didn’t mind Serra joining him.

Though he didn’t like it, since he was hesitant to open himself up too much to anyone on ship, she reminded him of Emily in a way that made the corners of his mouth turn up and his stomach twist in reminiscence. She understood the groove in which he worked, and was rarely a disturbance to his rhythm, and when they did speak, it was surprisingly easy. When she climbed down the ladder, he was in an uncharacteristically good mood anyways, from being able to do the work he most enjoyed, so her company was more than welcome. He nodded at her in greeting, mouth quirking into something in the neighbourhood of a smile. “Doin’ alright?”

      “Alright, yeah,” she responded, unable to help half-smiling in return. It was nice to see someone in something resembling a good mood, even if it was Joseph, for whom mood was a strong word even on the best of days. 

His work was always so interesting to her -- she’d never been much for working with her hands, no matter how hard her dad had tried to instill any kind of mechanical skills in her. She worked better with abstracts, preferring to conceptualize rather than actualize, maps and not blueprints. But she was handy with tools, when she needed to be, even if putting things together wasn’t the same kind of puzzle as following a mathematical question out to its logical and orderly conclusion.

His work was a puzzle, too, of a different kind, a physical puzzle of putting pieces together and keeping them in working order, just a different kind of following things to their logical conclusions, and watching him at work was calming.

     “Thought I’d see if you needed a hand.”