new SGU fic: Five things that go wrong on an average day on the Destiny
Title: Five things that go wrong on an average day on the Destiny
Author: Shenandoah Risu
Rating: PG-13
Content Flags: daily disasters
Characters: Chloe Armstrong, Airman Dunning, Darren Becker, Jungle Squids, Dale Volker, Adam Brody, Everett Young
Word Count: 889
Summary: The real showstoppers are those kinds of things that nobody on Earth would give more than an eye-roll.
Author's Notes: Written for prompt set #155 at sg1_five_things.
Disclaimer: I don't own SGU. I wouldn't know what to do with it. Now, Young... Young I'd know what to do with. ;-)
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Five things that go wrong on an average day on the Destiny
Dear Diary,
Another ordinary day on the Destiny, billions of light years from home. Isn’t it amazing how blasé we’ve all become about the fact that our very existence here is the most absurd thing you could ever dream of? Stranded in space, hotly pursued by a mechanical strike force (thankfully they don’t seem to have followed us into this new galaxy), time travel, ghosts - we get it all. Nobody bats an eye anymore. The real showstoppers are those kinds of things that nobody on Earth would give more than an eye-roll. Somehow out here they become monumental events, and what’s worse, we get them just about every day.
oOo
The toilets stop working for a multitude of reasons. Destiny does a shutdown before we refuel inside a star, so we try to plan around that, but honestly, a million-year old plumbing system that still works MOST of the time is pretty impressive. So when the toilets don’t flush or are clogged we get crabby and tempers flare, because we can’t just go outside, dig a hole and squat. Poor Darcy Dunning - he gets to fix the darn things pretty much every day. I bet in his wildest dreams he never imagined he’d be an intergalactic plumber one day. And all of it because his daddy owns a plumbing business, and Dunning learned the trade on the job since he was a toddler. Actually, I’m sure he was a cute tyke, playing with wrenches and pipes when other kids were kicking their Fisher Price gadgets around...
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Something in the galley burns pretty much every day. While Hydroponics is a huge success and produces bumper crops of purple sweet potatoes year-round Darren Becker is under pressure to come up with new recipes all the time. By now he can do something with just about every part of the plant - there is very little compost. Today he made potato skins for chips. It’s a delicate process, as I understand it, because you can’t peel off too much skin or the chips fall apart, and too little makes them flash into ashes. I guess that’s what happened today. We always stash extra water containers in the kitchen - nobody’s eager to find out whether Destiny’s fire suppression system still works, and how lethal it might be to us!
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One of the jungle squids gets out pretty much every time I’m on cage-cleaning duty. It’s the same one, too - the one with the scar on its back that likes to have its tummy rubbed. I call it “Fluffy”, even though it’s scaly and a little gross and still gives me the creeps. But Fluffy has never attacked anyone - I really think it wants to make friends, but it also likes to get out of the tank and slither around in the room or wriggle down a hallway until we catch it again. Somehow I can’t blame it. It’s hard enough for us to be stuck here, but Fluffy is obviously intelligent, and I’m sure it’s just bored. Maybe I should make some toys for it! That will keep me occupied tomorrow, and who knows, maybe one day we’ll be friends.
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Volker or Brody get lost. A lot. Today it was both of them. I really don’t get it - they’re both such smart men when it comes to their fields of expertise, but Volker is a veritable klutz in daily life and Brody - as heftily endowed with common sense as he is - has no sense of direction whatsoever, and sending those two out on a job together pretty much guarantees a search and rescue mission later. This afternoon they were replacing “These Things” and “Things That Make It Go” in the area where Eli and I were during that awful invasion, and thankfully I remembered exactly how to get there, so I got to lead the team and get the two guys out. I actually felt really good about that, and Brody gave me an extra cup of hooch as a little thanks. Yay!
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Colonel Young’s socks unravel a lot. Either that, or he’s just a stickler when it comes to socks. Before I turned in this evening, there he was again on the observation deck, darning a sock. I never knew that he actually has really cute feet. Big feet, yes, but cute. I told him as much and he looked at me like I was totally off my rocker, but then he smiled and thanked me and told me I had just made his day. It’s funny, he’s slowly becoming a little bit of a substitute dad for me. We’ve been through a lot, and I understand he is still haunted by my father’s death. I know he would have sacrificed himself had my father not beat him to it. Anyway, it just occurred to me that he might be darning other people’s socks as well... he’s gotten awfully good at it, too. We’re all learning so many real-world skills here, it’s quite amazing.
Anyway, as much of a disaster those little breakdowns are overall, they are predictable and thus manageable. We’re all pitching in to deal with them, one day at a time. And that’s as good a plan as any, don’t you think?
Yours truly,
Chloe
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Thanks for reading! A comment or feedback would be awesome.
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