Midnight Solutions

Midnight Solution

By The Watch Stander

Rating: [G], General
Humor
Summary: After Midnight, strange things happen to overworked Chief Engineers! I got this idea from an email I received about Quantas Airlines and decided to make an Enterprise story from it.
Disclaimer: Paramount owns the whole Star Trek Universe Inc Enterprise & Crew. There is no profit from writing this story, but it was a lot of fun!

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Trip walked over to his desk in engineering and literally fell into his chair, every bone in his body ached. Two weeks of double shifts and living on coffee with little sleep, would do that to a man.

It was nearly midnight and all the day bridge crew were asleep in their quarters. He wiped his face with his hand and then realized it was covered with grease. A frown crossed his face as he looked at his reflection on the computer monitor. There were now two more dirty streaks added to his unshaven face. Shaking his head, he decided he could care less what he looked like. His whole uniform was filthy. Jon had been giving the ship a thorough shakedown the past two weeks to try and get all the kinks fixed ship wide.

Thank you Jonathan Archer!, Trip thought, just what I needed. No sleep and stress for two weeks.

The captain even had the nerve to ask him today why he hadn’t been to the Captain’s Mess recently!

Ha, easy for Jon to say, “Just make it happen, Trip, Oh and we’ll expect you for dinner!”

Trip took a deep breath. He was so exhausted he was beginning to see double. Too much coffee was causing his stomach to burn as well. Sighing, he picked up the padd from his desk that had the list of all the minor things that needed fixing throughout the ship on a daily basis. He smirked as he read it.

Everyone must have seen how tired he was, but that didn’t prevent them from stopping him in the halls, in the mess, when he went for coffee, and even calling down to engineering to tell him about their minor problems. He had told them to log the problem on the gripe sheet and he’d get to it as soon as he could.

Now when he saw all the problems listed, he decided he’d had enough! With great glee he started to fill out the information on the padd. After each problem listed, he added the engineering department’s action/solution taken to remedy the problem.

Archer’s problem was first: Something loose in the command console on my chair.
Trip filled in his solution: Something tightened in the command console on your chair.

An evil grin crossed the engineers face as he really got into it.

Hoshi’s was next: Communication console volume unbelievably loud.
Trip’s answer: Communication console volume set to a more believable level.

It seemed that everyone had a problem today and he really wished he could see their faces when they read his report.

Travis was always complaining and his was: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick
Trip’s : That’s what they’re there for.

Even Malcolm was included : Targeting scanner hums.
Trip loved this one! : Reprogrammed target scanners with lyrics.

The engineer suddenly felt giddy, the exhaustion was taking its toll, he just couldn’t stop himself and continued filling in the padd. laughing to himself as he did.

Phlox was even included on the list: Suspected crack in glass door of sickbay.
Trip chuckled as he wrote: Suspect you’re right!

Chef even had a complaint : Dead bugs in kitchen.
Trip was merciless: Live bugs on back order.

T’Pol wasn’t even allowed to go scott free: Right forward scanner inoperative.
Trip was inspired: Forward scanner always inoperative in OFF mode.

Travis again: Ship handles funny.
Trip giggled: Ship warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

Archer once more: Mouse like squeak still in my quarters.
Trip got him again: Cat installed.

Even one of his engineers wrote something: Number 2 nacelle missing.
Trip had to get even for that one: Nacelle found on right side of ship after brief search.

Travis again: Evidence of a leak on right main landing gear of shuttle pod.
Trip was really hot: Evidence removed.

He finally came to the last one and how he wished he could see Malcolm’s face when he read Trip’s solution.

Malcolm’s problem: Noise coming from under tactical instrument panel on bridge. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.

Trip joyfully filled in: Took hammer away from Midget!

With that he uploaded the report to the bridge and getting up, headed for some long overdue sleep, chuckling to himself all the way.

End :)

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A whole mess of folks have made comments

LOL! Love it!

What about a sequeL?

This was wonderful. I'll be giggling for hours over it.

I hope you're happy... The people at the library are about this close to kicking me out for laughing too loud...

Oooooh, I've got the giggles,that was soooooo funny. It will be your fault if I wake the kids up from laughing so loud. I'm gonna go read it again,this time with a sock in my mouth.
I wanna know what the crew's reactions would be.

This DEFINITELY is screaming for a sequel, just to let us in on the crew's reactions to their creative Chief Engineer. Hilariously funny, thank you.

LOL!! Just loved it - very funny. and I could see Trip saying these things too - at least I could pre-Expanse.

Nice. There's one way to stop people from complaining. For a while, anyway.

Loved it. Been there, seen that type of naff problem report. Glad Trip got his own back.

teehee... That was great!! lol!

This is so funny, but then again I laughed when I
read the email that was floating around with that
same format. The actual responses are original I'll
admit, but the idea is so plagerized.

Laughed all the way through. Love it!