By Any Other Name
aka "I found a place for the silly parrot joke"
(Poor Ninestein is getting overruled by Mary (and the resident fleet of little chaos gremlins) again. Funny how something as simple as giving someone an emergency nickname can cause so much drama. Those students have a lot to answer for...)
Mary Falconer had been enjoying catching up with the latest issue of Stellarnautics scientific journal over her breakfast, when a polycarbonate wafer tablet landed on top of it with a subtly scolding slap. It missed her toast by half a millimetre and made her half-consumed mug of tea slop alarmingly.
"Good morning to you too, Tiger," she said, sliding the tablet delicately to one side without looking up.
"Have you seen this?" Doctor Ninestein plopped down in the chair opposite and gestured with an open palm at the wafer.
Of course Mary had seen it, and from his tone of voice, she knew he knew that she had – after all, on the screen was an inbox full of authorised requisitions, and she was usually the one who handled that side of things.
She also instantly recognised the reason that it had dropped into her breakfast. "Do you mean before or after you threw it at me?" she wondered, glancing briefly up at him, intentionally playing ignorant.
His eyes narrowed subtly, annoyed. "I'll let you spot the problem."
She took a deliberate bite of toast and made a show of analysing the inbox anyway. Nothing exciting – just a lot of very dull supply requisitions, tools and fuel and equipment parts for Hawknest, and of course all the groceries for their orbital station.
The 'requisitioned by' column was populated by a handful of numbers, which she'd countersigned, and a single name, which she hadn't. The numbers were obviously a variety of zeroid designations.
Everything else had apparently been signed off by a Space Sgt Polly Owun.
Mary swallowed so hard in her effort not to crack a smile that she strained something and winced. "I don't see an issue."
"I thought we said that we were going to tell him to stop with the whole 'Polly' nonsense?" Ninestein grumbled. "Instead I find out that you're not only indulging him, you let him add a made-up surname as well?!"
Mary let the smile come to the surface. "Technically, that is just his normal designation. We just replaced the first 'One' with 'Polly'."
He frowned, confused, mulled it over for an instant, then covered his face with both hands. " Polly Oh-One. That's terrible."
"According to Hiro, it's 101's favourite joke, at the moment."
"Why does that fail to shock me. Never let it be said that our zeroids learned to also have a decent grasp of comedy alongside their emotions."
Mary snorted into her teacup. "I thought it was rather cute, coming from a robot. Anyway, I don't remember ever agreeing with you. If he wants to be called Polly, let him. It works in my favour that people don't think he's just a typo, any more."
"It's undignified! He's a zeroid, not a… flaming… parrot."
"And that's today's excuse, is it?"
"What?"
"Because last week it was, and I quote, if we don't nip it in the bud now, everyone else will want to join in," she ticked each point off on her fingers, "and I can't even understand all their accents, how the hell will I remember all the absurd names they'll decide to give themselves? End quote."
" That was an entirely reasonable complaint, as well! There's over a hundred of those little idiots rolling around!" Ninestein protested, throwing his hands up.
"Tiger." Mary leaned forwards onto her elbows and smiled the world's widest smile. "If it keeps all the paperwork 101 is more than capable of doing for himself off my desk, and means I no longer have to countersign every last request for a paperclip, he can call himself precisely what he likes, as far as I'm concerned!"
(Cue lots of: WHY DOES HE GET SPECIAL FAVOURS AND WHY DON'T I HAVE A NAME-NAME etc.
Poor Dix-Huit tries to be the voice of reason by comparing it to his own designation and only manages to make things worse.
101 is all "ha ha oopsie? O_o I will be over here if anyone needs me. Inaccessible. In orbit."
Lois wants to know why they gave him a girl's name and hopes it's not because they think only girls can be secretaries in which case she is waiting here with a rolled-up newspaper to hit people with.
Zero thinks there is infinite wind-up potential in "Space Sgt Pretty Polly" but for once is instantly foiled because 101 doesn't care because it's his name and he was given it by his friends and he likes his name so screw off anyway, Zee-ro.)