The post of the month award of January 2004 goes to:
Adrien Rodd, playing NPC Couns Fwp'p'tztp
Date of the post: 07-01-2004
NPC Couns Fwp'p'tztp
(Shuttle Persephone - 2391.03.18, 0238)
They were somewhere in the Gamma Quadrant. The blips, lights and lines on the screens of the Federation computers were still, to Fwp'p'tztp's mind, a fairly poor representation of the complexities and beauties of space. He had come to appreciate those increasingly over the years, more so, he suspected, than most star-travellers, who rapidly seemed to take them for granted.
~ When I go home, ~ he thought, not for the first time, ~ I'll tell them all to look at the stars more often. . . ~
The shuttle's pilot, a young Centaurian crewman, informed him they were closing in on the Atlantis, and Fwp'p'tztp thanked him, drifting over to the communications console. His first view of the ship that he would perhaps be spending a significant number of years on was a computer schematic. He took it in briefly, then opened a channel.
"Shuttle Persephone to USS Atlantis. Bringing in one new personnel; requesting permission to dock."
The Starfleet vocabulary and phrases had always seemed a little odd, but he had accepted them as cultural difference. The concept of speech in itself was odd, after all, at least in the way humanoids emitted it. As he understood it, their thought patterns were not understandable sounds, and had to be changed into such via muscles which expelled audible words through that large orifice in the top part of their bodies. Mouths, he reminded himself. Heads.
On the other end of the line, someone would be receiving his transmission, its frequency pitch and language adjusted to something a humanoid could perceive and understand. He had been told the universal translators could even convey tone and emotion. Remarkable.
(reply Atlantis Bridge)
"Acknowledged," he said simply.
The pilot decelerated and adjusted course to glide smoothly into the open bay, aided by a tractor beam, touching down with barely a bump.
"We're here, sir," he said, somewhat unnecessarily, then tapped his combadge. "Crewman Tyoze to Captain Essar. Ensign Fuz. . . Fuww. . . Fwup. . . Uh, the new ensign is on board, sir. Should he report to you, or to your First Officer?"
(Reply Bridge, Essar, Any)
(Posted by Adrian Rodd)
