Lieutenant Soren Liara had finished several rounds of experiments and needed some time away from the lab to let her mind rest. Thanks to the issue in her lab being solved, odd though the cause had been, she and her lab assistant had managed to get a working sample constructed using the technique that Liara has been attempting to replicate. While the results were far better than the tests with the rodent interference, they were still not the beautiful sculptures that she’d seen during her digs.

The arboretum presented the perfect environment for the Bajoran to take a breather, as it combined copious amounts of natural scenery in an elegant but defined way. She considered it the perfect analogy to her desire to let her mind drift, but in a curated fashion. As she strolled through the space, she happened upon a familiar face, even if said familiarity had only been created very recently.

“Lieutenant Zel,” Liara said with a friendly nod, “I didn’t expect to run into you so quickly after you helped us to relocate our little visitor. It truly is a small station… or perhaps the Prophets have guided us together again. Either way, it is nice to see you.”

Zel’s head popped up from her journal and a smile spread across her face. “Lieutenant Soren! Small station indeed! Though you wouldn’t guess so, sitting here.”

She laid her pen in the center of the notebook and took in the sight of the greenery again, reaching out to touch a fern whose fronds brushed the side of her bench. “You can have a seat if you like, tell me how your experiment is going. Oh! Our little friend is back home! One of the cadets in the zoology department offered to take it planetside with him when he went back to Mellstoxx III. He sent me some photos of it being released into a nearby park.”

The Bajoran let out a small chuckle of amusement at the news of the fate of their furry stowaway, “I’m glad he made it back home. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going to happen with him, since I don’t know many of the zoologists on the station. I think people assume anyone in the science department knows everyone else, because I swear I’ve had to direct more than one cadet to a different part of the labs when they come asking about gravimetric wave form calculations or some other mess.”

Liara eased herself down onto the bench, “Now that our guest has been evicted, though, the experiment is starting to run a bit smoother, even if we still aren’t at the point of turning out masterworks of art at breakneck speed. But we’ve successfully made it beyond the ‘looks like a cancer cell’ stage. Maybe with another month or two of tweaks to the program we’re using, we’ll have ourselves some replicas that won’t bring shame to the originals. Where you working on something yourself? I didn’t disturb you, I hope.”

“You didn’t disturb me at all!” said Zel. “I was just journaling. It’s something I started doing once I knew I wanted to be joined one day; I wanted to have a written record of my thoughts before and after, see if there were any noticeable differences.”

She removed her pen and closed the journal properly so that she could show off the fine binding to Soren.

Suddenly, as if sensing the presence of vulnerable ink and paper, a pipe burst overhead.

After finishing his 4th ‘maintenance tasking’ off of the list on his duty padd, Traan noticed an alert come in about an urgent repair being needed in the Arboretum, and apparently Traan was currently the closest maintenance tech, and as he had just finished the repair he was working on, he marked the alert as ‘technician en route’, grabbed his toolkit and made his way to the Arboretum.

The alert had simply mentioned a malfunctioning water supply system, so Traan was hoping it was something minor or routine. Considering he hadn’t touched, worked on, or even heard anything about water supply systems in well over a decade, he quickly called up the technical specs and blueprints for the malfunctioning system on his padd as he was walking. As he entered the large flora filled room he quickly saw what had prompted the urgent alert.

About 30 feet to his front left he saw a stream of water gushing from one of the secondary water supply ducts that supplied the automated sprinklers used to feed and water the vast array of plants. It was not a small stream either, it was a 1 inch diameter pressurized jet gushing down appearing to blast a small canyon in the soil of the plant bed, the water was splattering dirt matter up and out in a large 20 foot wide fan of muck laden slurry.

Traan noted 2 female officers who were nearby chatting looking at and around the blown pipe. “I assume this rainfall was was not in the forecast now was it ladies?” He exclaimed to them as he walked over to the nearby control panel. Within a minute or so, he had accessed the water system controls and isolated the affected pipe and had the stations main computer divert the water contained on both sides of the damaged duct and close the nearest valves as well.

‘I hope its just a hydro-coupling or uni-valve assembly that blew…those are easy enough for a most any mechanically inclined 3rd grader to fix…’ Traan thought to himself as he secured the control panel and walked over to where the two Lts were. “I hope neither of you were forced to have a non sonic shower because of all this” he said with a unenthusiastic nervous chuckle. He gazed up at the pipe and was relieved to see the threaded portion of a uni-valve was still attached to the pipe, and noting the valve section itself dangling back and forth from the smaller hose that was only attached to the sprinkler now. ‘Just a blown valve coupling, phew’ he thought to himself.

Zel blinked some of the water from her eyes and shook her head, droplets flying as she did. Her arms were wrapped around her torso, one of them gripping the journal that she had hurriedly shoved under the light jacket she wore as part of her civilian attire. Slowly, fearing what she might find, she pulled her journal out from under her jacket, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was mostly dry.

“I’d say I’m none the worse for wear,” she said. She turned to Soren. “What about you?”

“Wasn’t expecting it, but I’m not too bad off either… though I should probably end my walk and get changed soon if I want to stay that way,” the Bajoran said with a short chuckle, “Since I ran into you down here, I’m sure the Prophets will find another way to bring us together. Until then.”

Lieutenant Soren turned to the Andorian and gave him an appreciative nod, “Thank you for your timely intervention. I hope you have a pleasant rest of your shift.”

“My pleasure ma’am. I hope your book wasn’t ruined by the impromptu rain squall. May the Prophets go with you.” Traan said, adding the Bajoran colloquialism as a sign of respect.

After about 10 minutes, the chief has fixed the broken univalve and restored the water system to fill operation. He grabbed on of the straight bottomed barn shovels from the arboretum storage she’d and shovelled the majority of the muck off of the walkway, nodded to himself in satisfaction, marked the issue as ‘resolved’ on his duty padd, and moved on to his next task.