Lieutenant Jukka-Pekka Äänekoski stood in the rear observation deck of the U.S.S. Roddenberry, gazed at the small, blue globe of the vanishing Earth and was suffering from a bad case of lovesickness. While on embarkation leave at home, in Kemi, he had sat at the kitchen table for hours, drinking tea, staring at the logistics board and feeling generally ashamed, until his mother had sent him away to collect lakka berries or do some other chore; compared to that it was almost a relief to go off to his new post and get something really useful to do.
His old Roddenberry had been a small, somewhat shabby ship named after a hardly important US Airforce hero from the 20th century; and the new edition continued worthily in that tradition. In addition, the poor Great Bird, as she was called for her slightly unhappy shape, had been forced to carry far more passengers than she really could. Luckily, he would have to stay on board only until they reached Starbase 245, from where he, like most of the passengers, would take another ship to his destination in that part of Federation space; but it was a real pain in the neck that he had to share quarters with two female Deltan astrocartographers who refused to believe that he was exclusively homosexual, their oath of celibacy notwithstanding. There wasn't even a replicator in that pitiable little corner; if he wanted anything to eat or even just a cup of tea, he had to queue at the replicators in the chronically overfilled crew mess.
Of course the Great Bird was by no means a passenger ship; she had merely had the bad luck of being scheduled to leave from Earth at exactly the date when the graduates from the Academy were sent to their posts after embarkation leave. And some desk jockey had filled the poor little ship to the last bulkhead instead of assigning some of the passenger to the Enterprise leaving at the same time for the same destination; of course one couldn't ask the great Picard to carry a shipload of fledgling officers.
So now he was marooned on this pitiful bucket of bolts, trying to hide from those tiresome Deltan chicks. The only holodeck was reserved for the crew, of course; if he didn't want to get unspeakably bored, he could only try to find a terminal on the recreation deck where he could play 3D-chess or read Suvuk's publications. The last activity seemed somewhat silly to him; but the man had indeed fascinating ideas that were well worth reading. At least JP knew by now what Suvuk had meant with his monologue on whales and shells. It seemed obvious that the whales would use a technology based on telepathic waves, not on matter and anti-matter, in their ZA drive; and obviously they had did possess such technology. Äänekoski turned away, bored by the moons of Jupiter, to find a terminal where he could read Suvuk's most recent paper, apparently written in Oxford, which he got as a data cube from Starfleet headquarters before embarkation; it was so recent that the sadly lacking computers of the Roddenberry hadn't even downloaded it yet. The title hinted at the possibility that Suvuk had in fact elaborated on the idea he'd had in the conversation with Äänekoski.
But when he'd finally located a vacant terminal that was working and capable of reading data cubes, Jukka-Pekka had to take his leave from there very soon afterwards in order to have a good cry in the relative privacy of an evil-smelling privy. In the curt acknowledgements of the paper he had found his own name mentioned; despite all theoretical fascination for the ideas of the elusive Vulcan he was still sorely love-sick on his behalf. And thus he was forced to sit blubbering in this stinking place while the man he loved exercised his Vulcan logic in the most elite ivory towers of human tradition. Life as such seemed very humiliating to Äänekoski at that moment.
After three days aboard the U.S.S. Roddenberry even Suvuk had to admit he was hungry. He almost wished he had stayed in Oxford with its old-fashioned dining halls, but his research demanded an extended stay in the field at this stage, of course. However, it was much less than fathomable to his Vulcan logic why Terran bureaucracy had been unable to distribute the embarking staff equally between the Roddenberry and the Enterprise. And the ship's quartermaster must have had an especially obnoxious streak of his human sense of humour to put him in a cabin with three returning Klingon exchange students, who had brought enormous numbers of bottles aboard in some extraordinary large paper bags to carouse on, accompanied by unending raucous laughter. The three days he had spent at a computer terminal the science section had let him have, as he had served in exactly that department of the ship's predecessor. Their replicators, however, unceasingly produced various versions of a serum against a disease raging among the main food crops of a planet in the vicinity of Starbase 245. As a result, Suvuk couldn't even get a cup of tea from them and was thus forced to eat in the overfilled crew mess; as the officers had their own replicators there wasn't even an officers' mess. In any case Suvuk thought it inappropriate to insist on his privileges as an officer in view of the catastrophic conditions aboard the ship.
He queued for the best part of thirty minutes until it was his turn to use the replicator; he ordered a salad, plomeek soup and a pot of tea when he finally reached it. The salad, however, looked very suspicious, so he returned it to the machine. Behind him one of the omnipresent drunken Klingons was getting impatient, so Suvuk vacated the replicator without ordering a replacement.
He stood at the end of the great hall full of eating, drinking and discussing inhabitants of half the known galaxy, somewhat forlornly looking for an empty table. Not able to locate one, he wandered through the aisles for a while, looking for an acceptable dining companion. A small group of Vulcans ostentatiously turned their heads when he passed and went into some kind of huddle. The logic of his compatriots was by no means beyond criticism; although he was proclaimed officially non-existent, every Vulcan space cadet recognised him immediately in order to avoid him.
Here was a table with a solitary blond human reading a bundle of flimsies while ingesting some sandwiches. Without any comment or polite phrase Suvuk sat and started on his plomeek soup. He obviously must have caused some noise with his spoon, for the next thing he heard was a somewhat strangled sound from the person opposite, as if the sandwiches had suddenly turned out to consist of straw. Suvuk lifted his eyes from his plomeek soup and found himself looking into the slightly reddened face of Lieutenant Äänekoski. The feeling that came over him in that moment was worse than any of his experiences in this area so far.
As Äänekoski was only human, he sometimes couldn't resist the temptation of overlooking the adamant laws of every universe governing probability and chance in order to interpret the happenings around him as fate, predestination or boding portents. Finding himself sitting opposite the man he had thought so far away, and had been yearning for so much, seemed like a miracle to him in the first moment. There was Suvuk, having sat down without comment at his table in this revolting crew mess. He was somewhat green in the face.
"Don't let yourself be disturbed by me", he said, redundantly; there was nothing Äänekoski preferred to being disturbed unexpectedly by Suvuk. "Unfortunately, there was no vacant table".
Äänekoski forced himself to recover his composure and remarked as neutrally as possible, "I don't mind; rather you than those drunken Klingons. At least, you won't make me drink anything worse than tea".
For a moment, Suvuk seemed unable to comprehend his meaning; then he pointedly misinterpreted the remark and filled up Äänekoski's empty cup from his own pot.
Such a stubborn Vulcan. "Thank you; I didn't mean it that way, though".
"Exactly that way. You mustn't forget that by now I am quite used to the vagueness of human conversation".
"Yes, but I'm from Finland; we're much more direct than most humans".
Suvuk pulled down the corners of his mouth as if suppressing a smile. "En ollut unohdanut sitä. Any other interpretation of your remark, however, makes no sense to me".
"Well", Äänekoski said. Suddenly, he felt relaxed and relieved in a dangerous way. "With all Finnish directness: I was referring to the last conversation we had at the Academy and was merely expressing the hope of discussing other topics with you during the voyage, as the company aboard the Great Bird leaves much to be desired, apart from you".
Apparently, Suvuk was determined not to notice the hidden overtures for which JP was cursing himself already. "I believe you are referring to the Klingons".
"Well, my particular problem consists of two Deltan chicks quartered in my cabin. For the last three days, I have practically continuously been sitting at a terminal on the rec. deck".
"I can understand your situation; the quarters assigned to me is occupied by a changing number of Klingons who drink at all hours from various bottle they take from large brown paper bags. I have stored my luggage in a locker and mostly stay in the science section".
Äänekoski laughed despite himself. "I don't envy you; but my Deltans aren't exactly peaceful either, if you know what I mean".
Suvuk lifted an eyebrow. "Better than you think. As a Vulcan among humans, I am well versed with the problem of unwanted attention".
Jukka-Pekka felt himself blush dramatically. Had he really been that obvious to deserve such a direct rebuff from Suvuk? He slowly lifted his eyes out of his teacup and realised that the Vulcan's face had turned somewhat green. He decided not to act offended; Suvuk was right, his love was really more than inappropriate. "I merely meant to say that I saw a possibility for some civilised conversation in you. I certainly don't plan to get on your nerves with some human bla ja huu, or make you do anything worse than drink tea".
Shit, that was already too much again.
Suvuk was slightly astonished about the fact that his remark had obviously hurt and embarrassed the human. He suppressed a feeling of satisfaction at the realisation that Äänekoski obviously reacted to him in an emotional way and decided to be placatable. "If you intend to make me drink tea, as you phrase it, you can begin by taking the empty pot and queue at the replicator for a refill".
The human happily and astonishedly grinned at him, poured the last drop into Suvuk's cup and went away with the pot.
Of course there were logical reasons to accept the company of the intelligent Finn. Despite the fact that he was increasedly attractive to Suvuk there was no incalculable risk of losing too much of his Vulcan composure during the short time they had until their ways must inevitably part at Starbase 245.
It came as a pleasant surprise when the human started asking well-informed questions about his scientific projects after returning with the teapot. Their discussion remained on a purely factual level, and Suvuk more and more retracted from his former almost inimical position. When the third pot of tea they drank together suffered an accident due to the influence of a drunken Klingon female, ruining Äänekoski's flimsies in the process, Suvuk suggested moving the discussion to the science section. There, they began to substantiate their discussions about the technical repercussions of the appearance of that historical whale probe with material they called up from the ship's data base; and finally they decided saving the data and their comments to a new file. When they could see that their pastime was reaching a much more serious level than they had originally intended, Äänekoski went away to get another, larger pot of tea from the crew mess.
After the Finn had gone, Suvuk noticed his own exhaustion which had been kept at bay by the invigorating scientific work. Additionally, his reserve against the human's company asserted itself once more. He simply enjoyed it too much. The present collaboration was extremely acceptable from a logical point of view, and of course there was no reason against sharing the authorship of an article with someone else, especially as it was someone whose original thinking deserved the increased attention of the scientific community. However, he was less than certain that he would be able to distance himself from the human after this shared diversion, and a terrible suspicion arose in him, suggesting that he would miss Äänekoski on an emotional level after parting from him. He leaned his head on his hands and closed his eyes for a moment to meditate on the situation he'd let himself become embroiled in.
When he opened his eyes again, he noticed that his head was lying on the table while some circuit diagram danced on the screen. A teapot stood near the edge of the table over a Bunsen burner, and between him and it someone sat, working intensely at the computer.
"Hello, Suvuk", Äänekoski said with pleasant innocence. "Here, have some tea, and then look at what I thought up while you slept".
This greeting seemed too personal by far. Suvuk took the proffered teacup and, without any sleepiness, asked for the meaning of the green circuit in the upper left corner of the diagram.
Translation! En ollut unohdanut sitä = I hadn't forgotten that.
His old Roddenberry had been a small, somewhat shabby ship named after a hardly important US Airforce hero from the 20th century; and the new edition continued worthily in that tradition. In addition, the poor Great Bird, as she was called for her slightly unhappy shape, had been forced to carry far more passengers than she really could. Luckily, he would have to stay on board only until they reached Starbase 245, from where he, like most of the passengers, would take another ship to his destination in that part of Federation space; but it was a real pain in the neck that he had to share quarters with two female Deltan astrocartographers who refused to believe that he was exclusively homosexual, their oath of celibacy notwithstanding. There wasn't even a replicator in that pitiable little corner; if he wanted anything to eat or even just a cup of tea, he had to queue at the replicators in the chronically overfilled crew mess.
Of course the Great Bird was by no means a passenger ship; she had merely had the bad luck of being scheduled to leave from Earth at exactly the date when the graduates from the Academy were sent to their posts after embarkation leave. And some desk jockey had filled the poor little ship to the last bulkhead instead of assigning some of the passenger to the Enterprise leaving at the same time for the same destination; of course one couldn't ask the great Picard to carry a shipload of fledgling officers.
So now he was marooned on this pitiful bucket of bolts, trying to hide from those tiresome Deltan chicks. The only holodeck was reserved for the crew, of course; if he didn't want to get unspeakably bored, he could only try to find a terminal on the recreation deck where he could play 3D-chess or read Suvuk's publications. The last activity seemed somewhat silly to him; but the man had indeed fascinating ideas that were well worth reading. At least JP knew by now what Suvuk had meant with his monologue on whales and shells. It seemed obvious that the whales would use a technology based on telepathic waves, not on matter and anti-matter, in their ZA drive; and obviously they had did possess such technology. Äänekoski turned away, bored by the moons of Jupiter, to find a terminal where he could read Suvuk's most recent paper, apparently written in Oxford, which he got as a data cube from Starfleet headquarters before embarkation; it was so recent that the sadly lacking computers of the Roddenberry hadn't even downloaded it yet. The title hinted at the possibility that Suvuk had in fact elaborated on the idea he'd had in the conversation with Äänekoski.
But when he'd finally located a vacant terminal that was working and capable of reading data cubes, Jukka-Pekka had to take his leave from there very soon afterwards in order to have a good cry in the relative privacy of an evil-smelling privy. In the curt acknowledgements of the paper he had found his own name mentioned; despite all theoretical fascination for the ideas of the elusive Vulcan he was still sorely love-sick on his behalf. And thus he was forced to sit blubbering in this stinking place while the man he loved exercised his Vulcan logic in the most elite ivory towers of human tradition. Life as such seemed very humiliating to Äänekoski at that moment.
After three days aboard the U.S.S. Roddenberry even Suvuk had to admit he was hungry. He almost wished he had stayed in Oxford with its old-fashioned dining halls, but his research demanded an extended stay in the field at this stage, of course. However, it was much less than fathomable to his Vulcan logic why Terran bureaucracy had been unable to distribute the embarking staff equally between the Roddenberry and the Enterprise. And the ship's quartermaster must have had an especially obnoxious streak of his human sense of humour to put him in a cabin with three returning Klingon exchange students, who had brought enormous numbers of bottles aboard in some extraordinary large paper bags to carouse on, accompanied by unending raucous laughter. The three days he had spent at a computer terminal the science section had let him have, as he had served in exactly that department of the ship's predecessor. Their replicators, however, unceasingly produced various versions of a serum against a disease raging among the main food crops of a planet in the vicinity of Starbase 245. As a result, Suvuk couldn't even get a cup of tea from them and was thus forced to eat in the overfilled crew mess; as the officers had their own replicators there wasn't even an officers' mess. In any case Suvuk thought it inappropriate to insist on his privileges as an officer in view of the catastrophic conditions aboard the ship.
He queued for the best part of thirty minutes until it was his turn to use the replicator; he ordered a salad, plomeek soup and a pot of tea when he finally reached it. The salad, however, looked very suspicious, so he returned it to the machine. Behind him one of the omnipresent drunken Klingons was getting impatient, so Suvuk vacated the replicator without ordering a replacement.
He stood at the end of the great hall full of eating, drinking and discussing inhabitants of half the known galaxy, somewhat forlornly looking for an empty table. Not able to locate one, he wandered through the aisles for a while, looking for an acceptable dining companion. A small group of Vulcans ostentatiously turned their heads when he passed and went into some kind of huddle. The logic of his compatriots was by no means beyond criticism; although he was proclaimed officially non-existent, every Vulcan space cadet recognised him immediately in order to avoid him.
Here was a table with a solitary blond human reading a bundle of flimsies while ingesting some sandwiches. Without any comment or polite phrase Suvuk sat and started on his plomeek soup. He obviously must have caused some noise with his spoon, for the next thing he heard was a somewhat strangled sound from the person opposite, as if the sandwiches had suddenly turned out to consist of straw. Suvuk lifted his eyes from his plomeek soup and found himself looking into the slightly reddened face of Lieutenant Äänekoski. The feeling that came over him in that moment was worse than any of his experiences in this area so far.
As Äänekoski was only human, he sometimes couldn't resist the temptation of overlooking the adamant laws of every universe governing probability and chance in order to interpret the happenings around him as fate, predestination or boding portents. Finding himself sitting opposite the man he had thought so far away, and had been yearning for so much, seemed like a miracle to him in the first moment. There was Suvuk, having sat down without comment at his table in this revolting crew mess. He was somewhat green in the face.
"Don't let yourself be disturbed by me", he said, redundantly; there was nothing Äänekoski preferred to being disturbed unexpectedly by Suvuk. "Unfortunately, there was no vacant table".
Äänekoski forced himself to recover his composure and remarked as neutrally as possible, "I don't mind; rather you than those drunken Klingons. At least, you won't make me drink anything worse than tea".
For a moment, Suvuk seemed unable to comprehend his meaning; then he pointedly misinterpreted the remark and filled up Äänekoski's empty cup from his own pot.
Such a stubborn Vulcan. "Thank you; I didn't mean it that way, though".
"Exactly that way. You mustn't forget that by now I am quite used to the vagueness of human conversation".
"Yes, but I'm from Finland; we're much more direct than most humans".
Suvuk pulled down the corners of his mouth as if suppressing a smile. "En ollut unohdanut sitä. Any other interpretation of your remark, however, makes no sense to me".
"Well", Äänekoski said. Suddenly, he felt relaxed and relieved in a dangerous way. "With all Finnish directness: I was referring to the last conversation we had at the Academy and was merely expressing the hope of discussing other topics with you during the voyage, as the company aboard the Great Bird leaves much to be desired, apart from you".
Apparently, Suvuk was determined not to notice the hidden overtures for which JP was cursing himself already. "I believe you are referring to the Klingons".
"Well, my particular problem consists of two Deltan chicks quartered in my cabin. For the last three days, I have practically continuously been sitting at a terminal on the rec. deck".
"I can understand your situation; the quarters assigned to me is occupied by a changing number of Klingons who drink at all hours from various bottle they take from large brown paper bags. I have stored my luggage in a locker and mostly stay in the science section".
Äänekoski laughed despite himself. "I don't envy you; but my Deltans aren't exactly peaceful either, if you know what I mean".
Suvuk lifted an eyebrow. "Better than you think. As a Vulcan among humans, I am well versed with the problem of unwanted attention".
Jukka-Pekka felt himself blush dramatically. Had he really been that obvious to deserve such a direct rebuff from Suvuk? He slowly lifted his eyes out of his teacup and realised that the Vulcan's face had turned somewhat green. He decided not to act offended; Suvuk was right, his love was really more than inappropriate. "I merely meant to say that I saw a possibility for some civilised conversation in you. I certainly don't plan to get on your nerves with some human bla ja huu, or make you do anything worse than drink tea".
Shit, that was already too much again.
Suvuk was slightly astonished about the fact that his remark had obviously hurt and embarrassed the human. He suppressed a feeling of satisfaction at the realisation that Äänekoski obviously reacted to him in an emotional way and decided to be placatable. "If you intend to make me drink tea, as you phrase it, you can begin by taking the empty pot and queue at the replicator for a refill".
The human happily and astonishedly grinned at him, poured the last drop into Suvuk's cup and went away with the pot.
Of course there were logical reasons to accept the company of the intelligent Finn. Despite the fact that he was increasedly attractive to Suvuk there was no incalculable risk of losing too much of his Vulcan composure during the short time they had until their ways must inevitably part at Starbase 245.
It came as a pleasant surprise when the human started asking well-informed questions about his scientific projects after returning with the teapot. Their discussion remained on a purely factual level, and Suvuk more and more retracted from his former almost inimical position. When the third pot of tea they drank together suffered an accident due to the influence of a drunken Klingon female, ruining Äänekoski's flimsies in the process, Suvuk suggested moving the discussion to the science section. There, they began to substantiate their discussions about the technical repercussions of the appearance of that historical whale probe with material they called up from the ship's data base; and finally they decided saving the data and their comments to a new file. When they could see that their pastime was reaching a much more serious level than they had originally intended, Äänekoski went away to get another, larger pot of tea from the crew mess.
After the Finn had gone, Suvuk noticed his own exhaustion which had been kept at bay by the invigorating scientific work. Additionally, his reserve against the human's company asserted itself once more. He simply enjoyed it too much. The present collaboration was extremely acceptable from a logical point of view, and of course there was no reason against sharing the authorship of an article with someone else, especially as it was someone whose original thinking deserved the increased attention of the scientific community. However, he was less than certain that he would be able to distance himself from the human after this shared diversion, and a terrible suspicion arose in him, suggesting that he would miss Äänekoski on an emotional level after parting from him. He leaned his head on his hands and closed his eyes for a moment to meditate on the situation he'd let himself become embroiled in.
When he opened his eyes again, he noticed that his head was lying on the table while some circuit diagram danced on the screen. A teapot stood near the edge of the table over a Bunsen burner, and between him and it someone sat, working intensely at the computer.
"Hello, Suvuk", Äänekoski said with pleasant innocence. "Here, have some tea, and then look at what I thought up while you slept".
This greeting seemed too personal by far. Suvuk took the proffered teacup and, without any sleepiness, asked for the meaning of the green circuit in the upper left corner of the diagram.
Translation! En ollut unohdanut sitä = I hadn't forgotten that.