The Drabble Files
5) Ordinary
It took Catherine Manning all of twenty-four hours onboard the Enterprise to realise that she was the only halfway-to-normal individual on the Quartermaster's Team. She had never lost either a parent, a spouse or a close friend to violent circumstances (as she quickly learnt that two thirds of the team had) and, unlike Billy, was at least capable of carrying something from one end of the bay to another without dropping it on her own feet. By contrast she was positively boring; her parents were both still alive and well, she had no emotional hang-ups or skeletons in her cupboard (things she was sure the pale and silent Annan possessed in spades), and did not, unlike her fellow crewmen, conduct her personal affairs with the aplomb and drama of the twentieth-century soap operas her mother loved so much.
After two weeks onboard and having heard through the grapevine of everything from Ensign Sato's claustrophobia to Commander Tucker's love of bright shirts and ancient horror movies, Catherine came to the conclusion that she was, in fact, the only ordinary person onboard the entire ship.