The New Engineer

Okay, it's short, and it's sorta silly.

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"Helm! Get us out of here, now!"

"I'm doing my best, Captain." Mr. Sulu explained. "The engines are only giving me warp 3!"

"Damn!" With five Klingon battle cruisers in their tail, and the phaser controls down, their only hope was speed. Captain Jim Kirk stabbed a button on the chair console. "Engineering! Scotty, get me more power, now!!"

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"Are, sir." The engineer replied in his clipped Scottish accent. "I'm right on... Hey! Who the divil are ye?!"

The first man removed his jacket, handing it to his partner. "I am Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor, and you know my assistant, Al 'Everything at Warp Speed' Borland."

"Nae, I dinna ken either of you. What are ye doin' in here?"

"Your captain wants more power." Taylor started making weird grunting noises. "I'm an expert on power." He began poking around at the console. "Aha! What we need to do, is clean all this gunk out of this tubey thing here."

"That's a warp nacelle." Scotty said. "And the antimatter is what makes it operate."

"Uh-huh? Well, this thing just needs a little tweaking, here..."

"Uh, Tim, do we really want to fool around with this?" Al asked, nervously.

"May I remind you that I did build my hot rod from the ground up?"

"Yeah, but this is a starship." Al pointed out. "It's a bit more complicated than a car."

"Oh, pish-tosh, Al. An engine's an engine." Tim,once again vanished into the console. "Here, Al. Hold this antimatter for me."

"I don't think so, Tim. You should use a Binford 3000 antimatter containment unit for this job."

"Right you are, Al. Heidi, My antimatter container, please."

A leggy blonde girl walked in from the hall, pushing a dolly. She wore a pair of extreme cut-off jeans, and a man's checked shirt, tied instead of buttoned, with a pair of chunky work boots. On the dolly was what appeared to be a giant mayonnaise jar, emblazoned with the Binford logo above the word 'Antimatter' and a hazmat symbol."Here you go, Tim"

"Thank you, Heidi."

"You're welcome, Tim." She replied, rolling her eyes.

"Don't worry about it, Heidi." Lieutenant Uhura appeared from somewhere. "In the first season, all I got to say was 'Hailing frequencies open'."

"Could we...?" Tim asked, annoyed.

"Sorr-reee!" The Communications Officer said, stalking away.

"Okay, that's out of the way." Tim went back to the nacelle. "Now, what

we need to do, is transfer the antimatter, very carefully into the containment unit." He managed to complete this operation without incident. He might actually pull this off. Next. I need to open up the console, and..." Reaching in, he was surprised with an enormous electric shock. "But, first, I need to disconnect the power source." He yanked on a plug, and the area went dark. Now, using a crescent wrench, I just tighten these doohickeys, and put it back together." In a few minuted, he stood up. "Okay, we're ready to put the antimatter back in." He began connecting the transfer hoses.

"Uh, Tim..." Al started.

"Just a minute, Al. Handling antimatter is a very delicate operation."

"But, shouldn't you check the nacelle for debris, first?" Al asked, just as Tim started the transfer.

"This puppy's really gonna fly." Tim said, as the antimatter began flowing back into the tube. "Now, you were saying, Al? Something about debr...?"

At that moment, the antimatter made contact with the wrench that Tim had accidentally left in the nacelle. In nanoseconds, the chain reaction reached the warp core. There was no time to act, as the ship blew out in a million directions.

The last thing Tim heard was the voice of his wife, Jill. "What did you do?"