Martin had had this job for as long as the pilot was concerned. Not that he was complaining, no! He would never dream of complaining, but it did get tedious sometimes. Sometimes, such as now.
He studied the sheets of data scattered before him, and breathed a soft sigh, before pulling them towards him and shuffling them back into the correct order, filing them back in with the older information, and sat down to fill in the test pilot's data on paper, as well as comparing the information with what was in the unit. Technically, it was a job shared between the test pilot and the flight test engineer, but there was no point in trying to force Douglas to stay when he clearly deemed paperwork beneath him. The man never did or completed any of the paperwork, preferring to keep most of the information on the unit, and left the rest of the work to Martin. While it was true that everything was computed and filed electronically now, having a completely up-to-date hard copy was fairly important as well. System failures were rare to unheard of, but Martin liked to err on the safe side. He also loved to bring the computed and compiled data back into the little room that he stayed in to pore over when he wasn't busy flying or working - just something to fill the gaps of nothing and boredom in between until the next test flight. After all, it wasn't every day that a prototype is ready for her test-flight, and he certainly wasn't the only pilot around on the team.
Printing out the reports for the debrief, he clipped the different sections with his paperclips - a different colour for a different section - and assembled them into their various stacks for each one on the team. Sighing yet again, he set them in neat piles before him. There was still one hour, thirty-four minutes and twenty-nine seconds to the debrief, and that was a long time to wait on his own. No doubt Douglas would be having lunch with the team right now, and he could imagine them gathered around a table, exchanging casual conversation over trays of food or whatever the cafeteria staff thought of to cook up and serve. Ever since the one time when he had joined them for lunch, he never did again, staying back with the units and the data and the screens that he felt most comfortable with. He pulled over a sheet of paper from the recycled tray, scanning the blacked out information, and then smoothened it out carefully over the surface of the desk. Socializing was never his forte, and he seldom mingled with his colleagues outside of work time, keeping to himself. It wasn't that they weren't nice people. They were, and they made a great working team together, but outside of work, he was often left feeling like the odd one out, the strange bit that never sat right along with the others. It certainly didn't help his case when all he wanted to talk about was the prototype that was currently in testing. They had smiled at him, rather politely whenever he brought the topic up, and only shared his enthusiasm when they were working, and sometimes not even then. Douglas never said a single thing, but Martin did not miss the long sideways look and that smirk each time conversation fell short, and eventually he turned to writing in the thin journal that he kept, made out of bits of blank paper that he could secrete away and kept together with binder clips. When the cafeteria staff continued to be reluctant in serving him lunch upon scanning his cards, he eventually kept to eating alone from food that he would get from the auto-vend machines. They didn't have much to offer, but it was something, and that was enough for him.
He carefully folded the paper, making sure that the corner was precisely a right angle, before smoothing a finger along the crease to make a perfect fold.
His work partnership with Douglas was by far the longest, and perhaps the most civil. The man was brilliant, and he knew it, irritatingly so. Martin had been dubious in the beginning when they were paired together, the man often slipping by, leaving his work half completed, but when it came to the real business, he was anything but inefficient, although Martin did not always agree with the way that he did his job. There was nothing that he could not solve, or a problem that he could not fix. People often said that Douglas Richardson made planes fly simply by talking to them in his rich, deep voice, and Martin might have agreed if such a notion wasn't completely ridiculous and silly. The man was simply good at what he did, and could have been a much better one if he would simply fulfill all of his duties responsibly as was expected of him, and not swanning off the moment he was able to, shrugging off the work onto Martin. Work time was work time, break time was break time, and he had no desire to have the two bleed into each other, and so left Martin alone to work overtime.
Beneath his hands, a paper aeroplane took shape, precise and neat, and he turned it over, spreading its wings beneath his fingers.
Aircrafts and planes fascinated him to no end, and he considered it an honour to be able to take them on their first test flight, never mind the dangers that came with the job. It hadn't been very long until he began to take an interest in what the flight test engineers did, them being the people that he worked closely in tandem with regularly. He understood a little, apart from his own knowledge, but never as in-depth or accurately, and it did not satisfy him. He tried his best learning on his own, picking up what little he could glean from his previous partnered engineers. Douglas picked up on his interest, but did not dissuade him like the rest, but would patiently explain to him in detail things that he did not yet know of. Martin had then asked for textbooks from the others, books that were old and were no longer needed, and they had been kind enough to pass it on to him, albeit with a puzzled look.
Oh, they would all say when they knew of his intentions. Figuring it out is our job. You don't have to trouble yourself with that. Leave it to the engineers. Test flying is yours, isn't it? You're good at that. He didn't particularly understand their polite smiles, but they had let him have the books, and he was happy.
After that, he spent his free time studying them on his own, trying to make sense of them, of the calculations, the numbers and the data shown, and tried to see how it correlated to real life circumstances. He had tried his hand at it, with Douglas next to him, and had received a scathing comment for his efforts.
It would seem that Sir now wishes to take over my job. How ambitious of Sir, indeed.
Sometimes Douglas was patient, and sometimes he wasn't as kind, and he made it loudly, rather painfully known on Martin's part. He knew that it wasn't part of job, but it was related to it and he simply couldn't help but to be interested, as well. Everything that made a plane, the almost magical numbers and calculations of energy and power and weight that could lift tonnes of heavy metal into the sky. Everything was orchestrated and calculated and nothing was coincidence and it was fascinating.
He moved the paper plane through the air, watching it, imagining the lift, the sense of pressure, the feeling of the wind beneath the wings of the plane. Soon, soon they would test her limits, and he would be the one to fly it, and Martin had to admit to the excitement tugging at his middle, a small smile lighting his features. He would write it down in his journal, of course, when he retired for rest, kept carefully next to all the files on the test planes that he flown before, with each little detail carefully written down in neat handwriting and blue ink. He thought of his small room, of its naked grey walls and its bleak white lighting, and a steel bed with a thin, worn mattress cushioning it, and the haphazard pictures and drawn images taped to the walls, his files and journals shelved next to his bed, a little plane model that Douglas had let him have when they were done with it sitting on the small cabinet, and hoped that it wouldn't take too long for them to move testing on.
A soft hiss sounded behind him as the door slid open, and Martin hurriedly set the paper plane down, snatching up the pen and leaning over the papers again, although he knew that he was done with them. It would not do to look unprofessional, after all. The door hissed again, sliding close, and he heard shifting, and the rustle of a paper bag.
He didn't look up when the paper bag was set near his elbow, the faint scent of food teasing him. Sixty minutes and thirty five seconds to the debriefing with a paper aeroplane on the desk and a neat pile of reports for everyone.
"Lunch," Douglas said simply, sitting down into his own chair, stretching out luxuriously. "Unless Sir deems himself to be above canteen food, of course. I would not dissuade Sir from living on auto-vend cardboard, but who am I to- "
"Alright, Douglas!" Martin cut in furiously, face flushed, reaching out for the paper bag. "I'll eat it!" A short silence stretched between them, interrupted by the quiet rustling of brown paper. "T-thank you."
Douglas reached over to take the reports from his desk, instead, running a thumb through the copies and over the paper clips, and the one that Martin had put into his file for taking back with him. Martin watched him, while pulling out a greasy sandwich with a generous filling of corned beef and egg, and a paper cup of warm coffee, uncertain if Douglas would reprimand him for bringing data home. They all did, but others usually had their own personal unit where they stayed, and thus had their information password locked, while Martin simply had a hardcopy to hand to deal with. Douglas merely thumbed where there were two blue paper clips together, and raised an eyebrow at Martin.
"Filing mistake?"
"Hardly. I- I ran out of green paperclips."
A sandwich, half a cup of coffee, and a new box of colored paper clips on the desk, there was still ten minutes and eight seconds to the debriefing.
Nothing was said throughout, but it was enough.