Saturday 23 February 2008

Dead Man Trekking

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I’m just going to ignore it and it might just go away, I have had these messages before. They sit there like a spitting cobra waiting to strike and I am not stupid enough to open it.

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

“Assigned to landing party...Contact the bridge immediately.” It says, I mean how dumb is that? It should have said something like “Free holidays” or “You have won the lottery” then someone dumb idiot on the cargo decks might have opened it but “Assigned to landing party” it’s a death sentence.

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I have worked on the USS Enterprise for three years and in all that time I have never seen an Ensign who went down on a Landing Party come back, sometimes they don’t even make it out of the Transporter before some alien brain sucking mutant gets them. Captain Kirk, Mr Spock even that dumb chief engineer Mr Scott comes back but the rest of us are burnt up on re-entry, blasted in the subatomic particles or eaten alive by a predatory space mammal. I tell you its murder and no one seems to care.

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I am just going to ignore it. I know the Space Core directives tell you that you have to do these things but it’s the modern equivalent of going over the top in the First World War, in fact it’s worse than that because at least some of those guys came back.

Mind you, there is something worse than being “volunteered for a landing party”

Beep... Beep.. You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I am just really glad that Captain Kirk isn’t gay because if he was I for one wouldn’t make any sort of eye contact with him. If you are a woman and he gets the hots for you then its curtains, not only is your career over but you have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. It’s the talk of the canteen, some little hotty from computing with a heaving chest and a sassy arse walks past him and gives him the eye, then its Goodnight Vienna.

Beep... Beep.. You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

We take bets on how long they will last and even when you warn them about what is going to happen they tell you “This time it will be different”. Bollocks, this time it will be the same as the last time. At some point he will have to choose between his sex life and his ship and he can get another woman anytime but there is only one USS Enterprise and he isn’t going to get another one of them. He could of course just dump them but it never seems to work out like that.

Beep... Beep.. You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

They have to go off and marry some three headed, six legged bug creature from another dimension in order that we can get new Dilithium crystals for the warp drives or so the Federation can bring about a new alliance with the Romulans. Either way you never hear or see them again, they’re just another notch on the Captain’s tricorder.

A door glides open and a security officer enters.

“Ensign Smith the Bridge has been trying to contact you for the last hour, report to the Transporter now and prepare to beam down with the Landing Party.”

Fuck...

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