The Adventures Of Fred Smith / Fred Joins the Dark Side
Second in command... It did make a certain amount of sense, I guess. Strangely enough, Fred was probably one of the most qualified beings in Starfleet to see to the operations of a garbage scow. You see, when he was in Starfleet Academy, Fred gravitated toward the lesser attended classes. These classes included such things as Garbology 101, Anatomy of Compost 328, The Stinky Stuff, which was taught in two parts, Number One and Number Two, and Garbage Scow Operations For Fun and Profit, 10,000,000. (It was taught by an exchange professor from the University of Ferenginar. Cha Ching!)
Anyway, Fred had a lot of time to get used to the idea as he recoverd from the burns. It happened Fred's first day working in the holds. Every day the garbage needed to be sorted, the stinky garbage from the smelly garbage, the drippy garbage from the runny garbage, the rotten garbage from the decaying trash.
And when they weren't sorting the stuff, they were moving it around. The gooey garbage had to be moved to storage bay 4. But the leaky garbage, which was in storage bay 4 first, needed to be moved to the mess hall. The mess hall garbage would then be moved to storage bay 7. Then the gooey garbage had to be moved back to storage bay 12, where it started, to make room for Lieutenant Commander McFeely's collection of Barbara Streisand albums.
It was all hands on deck, or in the holds, as the case may be, all except for Lieutenant Commander McFeely. Today Fred was working with the chief navigation officer, Lieutenant Du'ann Bonet. Fred introduced himself, "Hi, I'm Fred Smith."
"Now, what?"
"I'm Fred Smith." Fred said enunciating slowly.
"Let me see if I have this straight." Du'ann said, thinking deeply on Fred's words. "You're saying that I'm ... Fred Smith?"
"No, no." Fred pointed to himself. "I'm Lieutenant Fred Smith." He then pointed to Du'ann. "You're Du'ann Bonet."
"I thought I was Du'ann Bonet."
"Yes, you are." Fred said, feeling like he might be making some headway. Then he blew it. "...And I'm Fred Smith."
"The Federation Starship Fred Smith?" Du'ann questioned. "I thought we were on the Fastidious?"
Fred was distracted for a moment at the idea of a starship named after himself. "Cool." He was about to try it again when Jerry walked in and handed Du'ann a post it note.
After reading the note very carefully, Du'ann said, "So you're Fred, it's nice to meet you. I'm Du'ann Bonet."
Jerry cut in to explain, "You see, whenever you talk to Du'ann he just doesn't get what you're saying. Yeah, its bad. But if you write it down, he gets it right away. It's better that way. Yeah. He's a great pilot though, so, yeah, we deal with it."
Fred took a post it note and wrote, "So, how are you today?" He added a smiley face just for fun.
"I don't know." Du'ann said, screwing his face up in thought. "Let me check my palm pilot." With that Du'ann pulled out a rather elaborate clicky pen that wrote in dozens of fun colors and began inspecting the finely printed script that covered his left hand, up his arm and onto his shoulder, for the pertinent information. Fred saw that this may take a while, so he got to work.
As Fred worked he was amazed at what some people threw out. Within a few minutes, some rare old coins, a coil of bare copper wire and a really cool old set of keys had made their way into Fred's pocket. And then his big find, a couple of old power cells. Nine volt! They were in great shape. He was sure that he could get a charge back into them. Into his pocket they went. To make a long story short, those 9 volt power cells weren't as empty as Fred had thought. there was just enough juice in those power cells to ground against the coins, the wire and the keys. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and there was plenty of smoke.
When Fred was released from sick bay the following week, he was greeted by Jerry and Du'ann with bad news. It seemed that Lieutenant Commander McFeely, in making more room for his extensive array of bad toupee's had not only ordered that their quarters be filled with garbage, but Fred's as well. Of course, McFeely hadn't even helped, but gave a long winded speech about how after his years of service, he deserved this.
Fred generally liked people and had come to be fond of Jerry and Du'ann. But McFeely had gone too far. A grin grew across Fred's face, a dark mischievous grin.
Fred turned to Jerry. "Your old quarters are one deck below Lieutenant Commander McFeely's, aren't they?"
"Yeah." Jerry gave a nasally sigh. "Right below his in fact. He played his Barbara Streisand albums all night. It was bad. That was until he had my quarters filled with garbage." He sighed again. "Yeah. I wish he would have let me get my stuff out first. Now I bunk with Du'ann. It's not all bad though, he shares his hair care products with me. Yeah."
There had been something odd about the two that Fred hadn't been able to put his finger on, at least until now. They had matching hair. It was a feathered, highly lacquered bubble on their heads. It looked like a hair helmet.
Du'ann piped up. "Our hair is rated to keep our heads safe in a collision of Gross Factor 2 or less, and I'm fine, thank you for asking."
"Gentlemen," Fred said, his evil grin widening. "what do you say we send McFeely into Jerry's quarters to get his stuff?" The two men stared at each other, then at Fred, both times in disbelief. "I suppose I could order you, but it would be so much more fun if you wanted to."
"Oh, we want to!" The two agreed after the plan was laid out on a series of color coordinated post it notes. "We want to, yeah."
An hour later, everything ws set. Fred, Du'ann and McFeely were on the bridge, and Jerry was nowhere to be found. An alarm sounded, a truly unusual thing to happen on the bridge of a garbage scow.
"Well, what on earth is that?" McFeely said, chin in chest, lips puckered, speaking as if he were a android being slowly powered up.
"It's an alarm, Sir." Ferd said, trying hard to keep a straight face.
McFeely threw his arms around Fred, giving him a big hug that lasted just a bit too long for comfort. The ship picked up half a Gross Factor. "Thank you for that astute obeservation, Fred." McFeely said, still not quite letting go of Fred. "But why is it going off?"
Fred asked Du'ann in the usual manner, a post it note. Du'ann recited his lines perfectly. "Structural integrity is failing on deck 2, section 7. A hull breach is imminent."
"Deck 2, section 7?" McFeely asked himself. "Deck 2... section 7..."
That would be your quarters, Sir." Fred said.
McFeely was too focused to listen. "Deck 2, section 7." He cursed himself for never learning where things were.
"Sir, that is your quarters." Fred said with a bit more emphasis.
"Deck ... 2 ... section ... 7 ..." He said with frustration. Why didn't he know this? He couldn't know everything about the ship, he consoled himself. He had only been in charge of the Fastidious for 57 years.
"Your quarters!" Fred yelled. "It's your quarters!" Fred slumped in his seat in his own frustration.
"Oh, I know!" McFeely grumbled more enthusiastically. "I'll look at a map." One look at the map sent McFeely staggering to his feet. "My quarters!"
McFeely grabbed Fred's hand, intertwining his bony old liver spotted fingers with Fred's. The ship jumped forward. "Come on, Fred, we've got to save Barbara Streisand!" With that Fred was jerked out of his chair, drug across the floor and slammed into the back wall of the turbo lift.
No sooner had Fred regained enough sense to attempt to stand, when the turbo lift door opened on deck 2. Fred was yanked out and down the hall. "Yentl! I'm coming! Yentl!" Mcfeely shouted in anguished horror, well as much anguished horror as he could anyway. Fred had a new thought. "What if McFeely drug him all the way into his quarters?" He had to stay out in the corridor, or he would suffer the same fate. Fortunately, McFeely dropped Fred to unlock his door and ran inside alone.
"Jerry, now!" Fred said with a tap to his comm badge.
Just as McFeely got to the center of the room, the floor disappeared. "Now Fred," McFeely yelled, buried up to his neck in rotten garbage, "I seem to be trapped."
"Sure enough." Fred said, the two others joining him.
"I really need you to get me out of here, Fred."
As if on cue, or maybe it was on cue, the red alert sounded. "It seems we're under attack ... so we're going to take care of it quick. But don't worry, we'll be back as soon as it's over." The three walked away closing the door to McFeely's protests. No sooner did they get to the bridge, than the floor shook them off their feet. "What was that?!"
"We're under attack!"
Fred Smith will return in Fred Saves The Day
