Shower Thoughts

Posted on Mon Mar 23rd, 2026 @ 7:55pm by Lieutenant Rala

Mission: Lower Decks
Location: Deck 3, Personal Quarters
Timeline: The day after "Showered with Responsibility"

Rala set the toolkit on the small desk in her quarters and stripped out of her uniform. She was going to be working on water systems, and maybe others, entirely within her own quarters; there was no sense in risking getting her uniform soaked or dirty if she didn’t need to.

She grabbed the toolkit and stepped into her quarters’ small bathroom. Structurally, its primary space was exactly three square meters, but between the components of the sonic shower and the cosmetic paneling on top of those, it was closer to two, and some of that was taken up by the toilet and sink. But she wasn’t here for any of those.

Off to one side was an even more cramped space, one meter wide by one meter deep with a slightly lower ceiling, with holes of various sizes on both sides and above, separated from the rest of the cramped space by a short lip all the way around.

Popping open the toolkit and retrieving a tricorder, she flipped it open and started scanning the bulkhead panels around the outside of the smaller space. When she found the one she wanted, she pried it open and looked inside. She quickly spotted the first problem.

Well, the first problem beyond a deliberately disconnected control panel hidden behind the plain wall panel, which had been made to sit just enough farther out from where it should to conceal said panel. That one was too deliberate to count.

The first actual problem was a loose bundle of optronic cabling hanging from a junction box, clearly having been ripped away from...something. That would need to be traced back to wherever it was supposed to go and replaced. She sighed and raised the tricorder again, tapping a few buttons on it before waving it slowly around the space some more.

Thirty minutes later, she had another half-dozen wall panels removed and was standing on her toilet, shoulders-deep in the space within the wall near the ceiling, an annoyed grimace on her face as she tried to plug in a nigh-inaccessible connector she couldn’t see.

She felt more than heard the click when it finally snapped into place and a faint hum filled the small space. Withdrawing her arms from the wall, she carefully stepped down off the toilet, then retrieved her tricorder and waved it at the lip separating the main space of the bathroom from the smaller space. “Whose bright idea was this?” she grumbled.

Within the lip was a forcefield emitter, similar to the atmospheric forcefields that kept shuttlebays pressurized while the doors were open, except this one was designed to let air through while stopping water. Of course, with most Federation species’ bodies being comprised mostly of water, it also tended to prevent people from passing through it, rendering it into merely a fancy shower curtain or door: entering or leaving while the water was running risked water getting where it wasn’t wanted...and apparently at least one person had decided that was a problem.

Someone in the ship’s past life had tried to adjust the forcefield so it would stop free water while letting ‘solid’ matter pass through and, these emitters not being even remotely up to the task, had made a mess of it in the attempt. Now it was flickering between not stopping anything of note and trying to stop things it shouldn’t.

Rala cautiously reached out a hand, one clawed finger extended toward the forcefield. Upon contact, a tiny portion plane of scintillating energy became visible under the miniscule amount of pressure at the claw’s tip, the field’s color shifting ever so slightly. She held her finger there for a few seconds, then the color dipped toward red and she felt the resistance under her finger disappear. The change lasted only an instant, and she immediately yanked her hand back, only to hear something tiny and hard fall to the floor.

She frowned and examined her hand. The forcefield had neatly severed a millimeter or two from the tip of her claw. Nope, she thought, not having that. She frustratedly snatched at the control panel, now operational but hanging from its cables, and turned off the forcefield. She was tempted to rip it free, but that would hardly get her any closer to the hot shower she wanted—and, at this point, after practically crawling through the walls for half an hour, needed.

“I just hope whatever vanta-brained idiot mucked this up didn’t get to the rest of them,” she mumbled with a sigh. “Back to basics, then.” She poked at the control panel, permanently disabling the forcefield control and removing it from the display. Picking up a nearby PADD, she added a note that she’d need to figure out a shower curtain or door, then set the PADD aside and turned back to her work, picking up the tricorder again. “Now to test the water systems...”