Amanda
Amanda left the holobooth with more than a little irritation as she stepped back into the café. It took her a moment to reorientate to being normal-sized. While she preferred holo calls to less immersive means, it typically involved some oddities when calling someone without a dedicated holo booth. Usually that meant she had to navigate a coffee table, counter, or (in one remarkable experience) a friend’s purse.
After a few long, exaggerated steps, Amanda returned to her table. She was disappointed to see her roommate still typing away at a fold-out PADD as a cup of barely-sipped coffee cooled beside a half-eaten cheese danish. “I’m back,” she said, reaching for the danish. “Any progress, Zaliel?”
“I’ll let you know in a sec. How’s your brother?” Zaliel asked in a distant way, her eyes glued to the screen. Her brow was furrowed, a line visible on her forehead just behind her red bangs. As Amanda’s hand reached the for danish, Zaliel’s typing paused and she eyed the pastry as it was slowly pulled away.
“Fine, he’s being his usual, stubborn self.” She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “You should meet hi—,”
“Damnit!” Zaliel cried, followed by more typing.
“Uh, Z?” Amanda asked, waving a hand in front of Zaliel’s screen.
The programer blinked and looked at Amanda for the first time since she sat down. “Ah, I’m sorry! I’m trying to get this code right for that meta analysis I was talking about and,” she waved a dismissive hand at the screen. “I can’t get it.”
With a smile, Amanda reached across the table and slowly closed the PADD. “I’m sure you’ll get it, Z.” She gestured with the danish, “You always do. That’s why you made Junior Grade while the rest of us are still Ensigns.”
“That was an accident!” she glowered defensively. “I thought I was going to be writing reports for Admirals, not automating the department. This really wasn’t the job I imagined,” she added, tucking the PADD way in her satchel.
“I thought you wanted a planet-side posting? Isn’t that why you chummed up to Admiral what’s-his-face?”
“Roshvok—and you don’t really get chummy with a Tellerite.”
“Didn’t he take you to Paris?” Amanda grinned devilishly, a bit of frosting on the tip of her nose.
“Yes, as part of an attaché observation program,” Zaliel replied flatly, annoyed at what she perceived as insinuation. She also tried to mime politely that Amanda had frosting on her nose, who instead took the gesture as a clandestine acknowledgement and scratched her nose, coincidentally removing the frosting. “Anyways, Z, about my broth—,” but the sound of Zaliel’s watch alarm interrupted her. “Oh! Come on! Lunch just started!” Amanda complained.
Zaliel picked up the coffee mug and downed the remainder in one, long gulp. “And now it’s over. Let’s get back before we’re missed.”
And with that, the women deposited their trash in the recycler and walked briskly to the nearest transporter pad.
Amanda knew it was a lost cause trying to talk to Zaliel while at work. “Roommate Zaliel” and “Work Zaliel” were two very different people. She adored the roommate, but found the coworker could be snippy and impatient; definitely not the type to suggest she see Ben. Over the past four years—since their last year at the Academy, where they met—Zaliel had barely dated but Amanda was sure the two would hit it off, if only she could get them in the same room together. At first, Amanda figured she was just having trouble finding time in the schedule: year four was brutal, especially if you’re not some Wesley Crusher type. God, she hated that guy. Well, not him exactly; rather the expectation his experience and ability placed on her, which was really a tirade about her mother and—
Shit, what was I thinking about? she thought suddenly as she sat down at her desk. She took a look to her left—there was Miga, what a weirdo—and to her right—Jorgant, who Amanda was pretty sure was the one “forgetting” to clean up after himself in the break room, the ass.
Jorgant gave a small wave in greeting. “Good lunch?” he asked.
“Always!” she replied instantly, with a stunning beam. She might think Jorgant a slob, but her mind was too preoccupied with all the things she wanted to say to the Andorian from earlier and didn’t get a chance. But, like so many one-sided, imaginary arguments, it only left her unsatisfied and moody.
The rest of the day was uneventful: Amanda would review some fresh scientific data, write a report on it, fix any number of errors typical of exploratory crews (did none of them understand the importance of proper sample collection or did they just lick everything before putting it under a scanner?), invalidated their conclusions (again, licking?!), and just generally tried to get through the day without falling asleep at her desk.
The truth was—and she hated to admit it, especially to Zaliel—but her planet-side posting wasn’t what she thought it would be, either. She wanted easy hours that gave her time to get out, meet people, and have fun. She was, unknowingly, crossing the threshold from college aged partier to responsible adult. It was awful and clung to her like some skin of evil. She had a self-imposed bedtime now. A BED TIME! It made her angry.
She wasn’t like Zaliel who never partied or hung out in the venues that catered to cadets. “I bet she only knows twenty-two hundred hours exists at an academic level,” she muttered, annoyed with herself for being angry about a bed time.
“What’s that?” Miga asked.
“Nothing!” Amanda beamed in response. Uhg. Weirdo.
The regular morning yell of horror was Amanda waking up and suddenly remembering she had work. She blew through her morning routine at warp speed and crashed into the apartment’s common space like a meteor screaming towards the Siberian tundra. She was halfway out the door when she realized Zaliel’s bag was on the coatrack and her boots were tucked neatly under the antique bench Amanda found on the curb—cracked and worn, she thought it had character and was most certainly not anyone else’s property; why else was it on the curb?
Amanda did what any responsible roommate would in this scenario: she bounded across the room to Zaliel’s door and began pounding on it furiously. “Zaliel! Zaliel! Z!” The last thing either of them needed was another lecture from Donavan about punctuality—and Amanda especially needed to avoid another demerit.
There was no immediate response from her pounding. “Uuuummm what was her door code?” she cried urgently. “Something something twenty-eight? Or was it?” She bounced in place with impatience until arriving at the next logical step: she ripped the door panel off the wall and tried to bypass the controls.
All the best holo-stories about engineers had them bypassing things, so it couldn’t be that hard. Why did locks even exist if you could just bypass them all the time? The panel came away easily, revealing a neatly ordered set of cables and components, none of which looked familiar.
“Shit!” she yelled, placing a finger in her mouth, red from a probing touch of the panel’s inner workings. “Okay this is dumb, I’m being dumb, I should just,” and she tapped her communicator. “Zaliel! It’s Amanda!” and again no response. Her frantic, failing effort was quickly becoming less of a fear of inconvenience and one of desperate concern.
Amanda set her own bag down and considered her options: she could call for Security to override the door, but that seemed extreme and the potential of finding Zaliel naked passed out on the bed would be an embarrassment like no other. She couldn’t engineer the door open, her knowledge of environmental and biological science would be no help, and phasering the door down was almost as bad as calling Security. She took a step back and pulled her hands through her hair. “Think, Amanda, think!” she said, adding a well-timed thunk on her head. It was then that she looked past the living room and at the balcony door. An idea struck her.
The apartment was designed with roommates in mind: a private room and en-suite for each of two occupants with a shared common room between them. The common room opened to a lovely balcony which overlooked San Francisco. Each private room also had its own smaller balcony. A plan started to form in Amanda’s head as she rushed out onto the middle balcony: “I’ll just step over to the, oh fu—,” she recoiled from the gap between the two balconies. It was at least two meters between them and forty stories down.
Amanda pushed the lovely wicker furniture set she was pretty sure she had won in a fair contest of wits—or was it cards?—during one of her pre-graduation benders. This wasn’t the time for reflection though, because Amanda was already running at full speed. She vaulted over the side and crashed stomach-first into the opposite railing. She screamed while her body frantically clamored over the side.
Out of breath, she hugged the balcony’s floor a long moment.
Amanda sat up and moved toward the balcony door, stepping around a tripod telescope a she did so. It occurred to her at that moment to wonder if it could be locked. Did she ever unlock her own? With dread, she tried the door.
Locked.
Cupping her hands around her eyes, she tried to look into the bedroom, but could see nothing. “Stupid privacy glass!” she spat as she pounded on the door, calling for her roommate. Amanda concluded there was no way Zaliel could have missed all of the noise she was making.
Adrenaline pounding in her ears, she looked at the door, set her jaw tight, and swung the telescope into the glass using every ounce of power fifteen years of softball could muster.
Both shattered spectacularly.
Glass crunched loudly under Amanda’s boots as she inched into the room, still holding the tripod like a bat. Her eyes took a moment to adjust. Amanda had rarely entered Zaliel’s room, as was part of their mutual arrangement. Clothes in piles, empty bottles that should be recycled, and Zaliel, naked, face-down on top of the bed, a d*’k tahg* protruding from her back.
Amanda dropped the tripod and rushed over, turned her friend over in her arms, but it was too late, she was cold as ice, laying on the soft, plush, bed.
The soft, plush, dry bed.
“You bitch!” she yelled, dumping Zaliel’s carcass on the floor. She kicked a nearby pile of clothes.
Zaliel appeared, stepping out of the wall, howling with laughter. Amanda immediately seized her by the shoulders and flung her onto the bed, where Zaliel bounced and landed on the floor next to her corpse. This prompted another bout of hysterical laughter which was slowly starting to worm its way into Amanda. She cracked a smile, then shook her head. “You’re demented, you know that? I could have died.”
“How should I know,” she gasped between belly laughs, “That you would come in through the fucking balcony?”
“Purely demented,” Amanda chuckled. Zaliel’s laugh had a way of disarming her; maybe it was the sound, or the earnestness, or how it had a way of lighting her face. Or maybe it was because it was so rare; this was the Zaliel no one else knew: the prankster, the joker, someone who wasn’t always at yellow alert.
“Anyways, we’re already late for wor—why are you still laughing at me?”
“It’s Saturday!” she heaved.
“But, I,” her face flushed red. “You screwed with the clock, didn’t you?”
Zaliel stifled a laugh and nodded somberly.
“You are seriously messed up.” She offered a hand to Zaliel, with the intention if turning it into a wrestling hold she had seen once and was sure she could safely reproduce with no formal training whatsoever.
“Hey,” Zaliel said, accepting the help up. “Thanks for having my back,” she added with a surprise hug. Amanda forgot the hold and returned the embrace. She smiled. Zaliel is nuts, but fun in a weird kinda—wait a second.
“Your…back? A murder pun?!” she tightened her grip. It became a bear hug. “I’m going to throw you off the balcony!”
The two fought a little longer before calling a truce. They set terms for who would clean and who would explain the broken door to the superintendent.
As for revenge, the gears in Amanda’s head were already turning.