=/\=
Icheb was working alone in Cargo Bay Two on a diagnostic of the antimatter injectors, snacking on his favorite chips, when Lieutenant Torres came to see him.
"What's that stuff you're eating?"
"Nutritional supplements replicated to meet my metabolic requirements," he answered.
"Wouldn't you be more comfortable doing that sitting down in the mess hall?"
"I prefer to work while I eat. It's a more efficient use of my time."
Lieutenant Torres was very familiar with the concept of Borg efficiency, Icheb knew, but what she said was, "You did a great job today. We're ahead of schedule, thanks to you." Handing him a PADD with the work planned for the morning, she turned to leave. Before she went out the door, however, she paused, turned back to face him, and asked, "Icheb, what do you do for fun?"
When his response was a puzzled look and a questioning, "Fun?"
"Recreation. How do you spend your time when you're off duty?"
"Between my work and my studies I don't have much time for recreation."
"I've learned that you've got to take a break once in a while," she noted. "I've been doing a lot of rock climbing on the Holodeck. Maybe when we're finished tightening all the nuts and bolts, you'd like to join me."
"I do have an interest in geology."
"It's not about the rocks, Icheb. It's about the climbing."
After she left, Icheb thought about it. Climbing rocks might be an interesting way to spend time. It would also be a good way to augment his scientific examinations of the differences between sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rock. That could be . . . fun.
=/\=
Events occurred during the next couple of days which made Icheb unsure how much fun climbing rocks with Lieutenant Torres would prove to be. Several times, while working in close quarters in the Jefferies tubes, Icheb and the chief engineer made physical contact. This didn't appear to bother Lieutenant Torres at all. She kept on talking about how she looked forward to their rock climbing excursion, since Lieutenant Paris, her husband, apparently had little interest engaging in this activity with her. Icheb felt somewhat uncomfortable when he learned this. In fact, the physical contact also aroused unexpected sensations in his body. He would have liked to have spoken with Seven about what he was feeling, but she'd left with Ensign Kim on a second away mission almost as soon as they came back from the first one. Seven wasn't available to explain things to him.
Icheb thought the Doctor might be an appropriate source of information about this, since he was one of the few members of the crew who were not spending all of their work time making repairs to the ship. The Doctor's information about romantic attraction caused Icheb to be even more apprehensive about continuing his relationship with Lieutenant Torres. The Doctor spoke of heightened vital sign readings, which seemed to confirm Icheb's impression that Lieutenant Torres's interest in Icheb was not that of a mentor guiding an apprentice - at least, not in relation to engineering principles.
From his studies of Klingon literature, Icheb had learned how competitive Klingons could be, especially when it came to romantic relationships. Thus, when he ran into Lieutenant Paris in the corridor leading to Engineering, it was unnerving to hear the helmsman say, "You've been seeing a lot of my wife lately. Should I be worried?"
When Icheb nervously replied, "Um, the repairs are extensive. It's a lot of work," Tom's response made him feel even more agitated.
"You can't fool me," Tom said seriously. "I heard you two were planning on scaling some cliffs together."
"It was her idea!" Icheb answered.
"Hey, relax!" Tom clasped a friendly hand on Icheb's shoulder. "Spending time on the Holodeck is good for you. But if you really want to have fun, forget climbing. Try my race car program. You get to chase me around the track in an old Earth ground vehicle, at 300 kph. It'll really get your blood pumping!"
In disbelief, Icheb asked the lieutenant, "Are you challenging me to a competition?"
"You think you can take me?" Tom said, the acceptance of a challenge ringing in his voice. "Tomorrow, Holodeck Two, 1900 hours."
Icheb didn't have good control over his emotions whenever he reacted strongly to something. Since he no longer had an emotion inhibitor chip, Icheb was still learning ways of dealing with this sort of thing through biological means. He wondered what his own blood pressure and temperature readings might be, but he resisted the impulse to scan himself. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. From his Klingon readings, Icheb had learned that their competitions of choice generally ran to fighting hand-to-hand with bat'leths, or the occasional fight with one of the many types of knives in the Klingon arsenal of weapons. Tom was human. Perhaps car racing was the way humans did it?
But did humans drive their cars until someone died, the way so many of the clashes with bat'leths seemed to end? Icheb knew he wasn't ready for that.
=/\=
As soon as he entered Engineering, Icheb saw where Lieutenant was working. He approached her and said, "There is something we need to discuss."
"Sure, as soon as you help me finish this diagnostic," the chief engineer said, concentrating more on her diagnostic equipment than on Icheb.
When Icheb told her he wasn't talking about diagnostics, but that the lieutenant's interest in him was "inappropriate," he received her full attention.
"I don't think I understand," she said.
"It's obvious you desire a romantic involvement," Icheb responded.
"Excuse me?"
Icheb explained, "You've made all the customary overtures - finding reasons to spend time with me, complimenting me, inviting me to engage in . . . recreational activities. Your husband even challenged me to a ritual contest."
"What are you talking about?"
"According to my research it's a traditional Klingon practice."
Icheb was not to learn until much later of Lieutenant Torres's general aversion to most Klingon practices, but she kindly said, with a smile, "Look, I'm sorry, but you've got the wrong idea. You seemed a little lonely. I was just trying to be friendly."
"I scanned you."
She reacted to that with a dangerous growl. "You scanned me?"
"In the Jefferies tube. Your blood pressure and neurotransmitter readings indicated a state of arousal."
Lieutenant Torres's reaction was swift. Icheb was sad she was clearly in such denial of her true feelings when she exclaimed, "It was hot! And I've been under a lot of pressure! But I certainly wasn't . . . aroused!" After a pause, she said, more reasonably, "Look, Icheb, I like you. But, aside from the fact that I am a much older woman, I'm married!"
"That's why we have to do the honorable thing. We should stop seeing each other."
Instead of blowing up at him, as he'd seen her do in the past when one of her engineers failed to perform their duties accurately, the lieutenant stopped to think a moment, then smiled slightly and calmly stated, "You're right. As much as it hurts, I'll just have to face the truth."
Icheb, greatly relieved, agreed. "It's for the best." Gently touching her on the arm in farewell, he walked out of the door of Engineering.
An hour later, the captain asked him to perform a new duty. He was assigned to the plasma injector scrubbing team. It wasn't the pleasantest of tasks, but it had to be done. At least this job did not require him to interact with the chief engineer. She could adjust to her disappointment about how things had not worked out between them without the constant reminder of his presence in Engineering.
=/\=
While Icheb was in the mess hall at lunchtime, a group of engineers was laughing in the corner, sneaking a peak at him every few minutes. He heard Ensign Freddie Bristow say, "He thought Lieutenant Torres was coming on to him . . ." and a burst of laughter came right afterwards. He knew they were talking about him. Everyone on the ship was talking about it.
Time to go to Cargo Bay Two with a plate of his nutritional supplement chips and a Nutritional Supplement Number Five shake, with chocolate sprinkles - no whipped cream, though. That was Seven's favorite shake, and Mezoti's. He had to get out of here. Virtually the entire crew has been in and out of Engineering because of all the repair work. If they were laughing, so was everyone else on the ship.
Just then, Lieutenant Paris entered the mess hall and went along the line to choose his meal. When he accepted his plate from Neelix, Icheb saw Tom lean in to exchange words about something with the Talaxian chef. Icheb waited to hear them laughing at his expense, but they must not have been speaking about the mortified former Borg teenager. After nodding his head to Neelix, Tom walked over to Icheb's table. Not desirous of a confrontation with the helmsman, Icheb stood up, preparing to leave the table to Lieutenant Paris, but Tom said, "Please stay, Icheb. I've been wanting to speak with you."
"I should get back to my work . . . "
"Icheb, please. We need to talk over what happened with B'Elanna. I promise, no bat'leth's or other instruments of mutual destruction will be involved. Just talk."
Icheb sat down again. In response to several prompts from Tom, the whole story tumbled out. "She wasn't happy I'd taken scans of her blood pressure, body temperature, and beta endorphin levels. From the elevated levels, I deduced she was romantically attracted to me. When I said we needed to break it off because it was inappropriate, at first it seemed like she was telling me she wasn't attracted to me, but then she agreed we shouldn't see each other anymore. I thought that was that, but from the way all the engineers are laughing at me, I think I must have been mistaken about Lieutenant Torres's intentions."
"B'Elanna admires you, Icheb, and thinks you have amazing potential. She said you were catching on to engineering procedures faster than anyone else she's had the chance to train. From the way you're picking up piloting, I'm not surprised. You're a quick study, Icheb. Everything you take up, you do it so amazingly well. I'm not sure how you do it, frankly. I guess you still have the ability to 'assimilate' learning, even though you're not Borg anymore. B'Elanna may not be romantically inclined towards you, but that might be because I got there first! She praised you because you did good work. She praises all her staff whenever they deserve it, too; and she gets on their backs when they fail to meet her expectations. Ensign Bristow's name isn't on her preferred engineer list right now. I can't go into the details, but maybe young Mr. Bristow has his own reasons for pointing a finger at you. He might want his co-workers to talk about something other than why our chief engineer chewed him out for his less than stellar performance this past week."
"Lieutenant. . . "
"Call me Tom, Icheb. We aren't on duty now. It's lunchtime."
"Tom, how do you know if someone really is interested in you in a romantic way?"
Tom chewed his mouthful of food for a few seconds before swallowing and answering Icheb. "Well, I don't want to lead you astray after what just happened, so understand that you need to be careful not to jump to conclusions if you observe a person doing things like this around you. I've found that if someone is interested in you, they tend to start conversations with you. They may tease you a little, or giggle a lot. They glance over in your direction often. Sometimes they even bat their eyelashes in your direction. But even then, it may not really mean anything. It can be hard to tell. Some people are just natural flirts."
Tom paused again to chew and swallow another mouthful of his casserole before continuing, "You know, when I think back to just before B'Elanna and I started dating, I was the one making excuses to have conversations with her. I can't count how many times she turned me down flat when I asked her to have dinner with me. Then something happened to us on one away mission that she doesn't like to talk about much. After that, we spoke honestly about how we really were attracted to each other, but we still took it very slowly for quite a while. We met for meals and went to the holodeck together every now and then, often with a group of friends. Back then, I don't know if I would have received a good reception from her if I told her I'd taken scans of her neurotransmitter readings - and although Kes was still the Doc's primary back up at the time, I was a field medic. I had more reason than you did to do a scan on her!" Tom leaned back in his chair and smiled reminiscently. "B'Elanna was a challenge, but I did manage to find guidance from an impeccable source."
"A source?"
Tom leaned in towards Icheb and said, "There was this Klingon novel she was reading, called 'Women Warriors at the River of Blood.' I caught her at it, and I joked with her about how she usually only read technical manuals. Then I hooked the PADD it was on and read it. I decided it could fit the definition of a technical manual - if what you needed technical assistance on was the art of Klingon love! We still laugh over that sometimes. What gave you the idea to scan B'Elanna's vital signs anyway?"
"I went to Doc."
Tom replied, "Of course. Doc. You went to Doc for advice? No wonder you got the wrong idea. If you've got a medical problem you need help with, Doc is your man. When it comes to romance, however, he's the last person you should consult with. When he was 'guiding' Seven in interpersonal relationships and dating, he had her taking detailed notes about how many times B'Elanna and I . . . how often we were . . well, Seven got carried away with her data collection, let's leave it at that. Doc loves to push his photonic nose into everybody's business. Half the time, he gets it wrong, and the other half, he exaggerates things beyond all recognition."
"Seven says he can be too inquisitive."
"She's got that right."
"So, elevated blood pressure, temperature, and beta-endorphin levels aren't associated with sexual arousal?"
"They can be, Icheb. There's something called context, though. If you're taking readings like that when the person you're interested in is sitting in the holographic movie theater; it's a dull movie; but you've got your arm around her and you're about to kiss her, those readings probably do mean what Doc told you they meant. However, if you're sitting in a toasty-hot Jeffries tube, wrestling with spare parts and hydrospanners to fix the ship, you'll probably get the same body temperature and blood pressure readings from exertion. And if you're also feeling good about getting the repairs done because someone competent is helping you do the work, so it's going even better than you expected, those beta-endorphin levels would rise too, you see?"
"I do see now. It's still embarrassing. Ensign Bristow has been telling everyone about it."
"It'll blow over. It always does. Maybe the gossips are a little jealous about how knowledgeable you are and want to take you down a peg. Don't worry about Bristow. He once had a serious crush on B'Elanna, before we started dating, and she shot him down. I'm sure he's jealous how well you were doing! Seriously, if you'd like to go rock climbing or car racing or something else with us, just say so. B'Elanna and I will both go. Maybe we can invite Naomi along, too. She could use some fun, poor kid."
"Yes, she misses Mezoti almost as much as I do."
"When Seven and Harry get back, we'll program a new holodeck adventure for all of us to take part in. You tell me what sort of thing you'd like to do, and we'll set it up."
"I would like that, Tom."
"Hey, I have an idea. Why don't we both look over at Ensign Bristow at the same time and then snicker behind our hands, like we're laughing at him. He deserves it. Payback, as they say, can be a bitch."
So that's what they did.
=/\=