Episode 78: Bee Plot, or: Tolstoy’s Lament
It wasn’t that Tolstoy minded moving the Admiral’s bees around. Not at all. What he minded was having to completely undo what he’d just gotten done doing. That really ground his gears, but he wasn’t going to say that directly to him. That would be disrespectful, and if he’d learned one thing over the length of his time with the Fleet, it was the necessity of respect. So he learned, as he went along, to grin and bear it, for the good of not only his career, but of the ship in general. After all, if one person disrespects the leadership, the next one will, and so on.
The ins and outs of Clerk’s conflict with Fleet Command over his bees was well-known. Most of the communiques regarding the subject weren’t top secret, so those who were curious found out, and those who were curious but lazy heard it all secondhand, which is debatably worse. Sure, he had to keep everything on the down-low until he was a Captain, but once he was, all bets were off. Basically, as long as he kept it to a single hive, generally nobody really minded, which was fine. But one can only keep it to one hive for so long…
Moving the bees from the Wildlife Department to Clerk’s quarters was the hard part. Since the transporters were still kinda buggy, Tolstoy had to move them physically, which tore away at his sanity worse than a Voltarian Mind-Scrubber. The physical act of moving the hive was bad enough, but having to do it late at night, without any help, almost made him violate his “no disrespect rule,” but, thankfully, discretion prevailed.
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Normally, the Wildlife Department has its own staff to handle the care and handling of living creatures in their care, but Tolstoy has the rottenest luck, and, predictably, everyone was inexplicably off duty when he needed to do the actual moving. Everything was fine until he had transported all of the bees there, this time via the newly-operational transporter.
Commander Chipotlay, a recent transfer from the nearby Zoo Department, was overseeing the shark tank renovations when Tolstoy arrived. When the young officer asked him to get a couple gullible redshirts to reinstall the hive, the senior officer started talking in a language even Tolstoy didn’t know. It would’ve been a nonissue had he not used up his universal translator privileges for the month. Let it never be said that the universe wasn’t against poor Tolstoy.
Midnight came and went without fanfare, and by 1am, Tolstoy’s new privileges reset, and he was able to parse Chipotlay’s words, which apparently translated to “blow it out your ear.” Par for the course. He then wrapped up the installation, by himself once again. His head hit the pillow at 2am, and he had just entered REM sleep when his communicator rang. He groggily answered the call, only to hear the voice of his beleaguered Admiral.
“Lieutenant,” Clerk began. “I appreciate you taking care of the bee situation so quickly, but I’m afraid you didn’t do a thorough enough job. I’ve got about a dozen bees flying around in here right now.”
“In your quarters?” said Tolstoy. “That’s ridiculous! I counted and recounted every single one of them manually. Every bee should be in the Wildlife Department right now. They must’ve escaped or something.”
“So you mean to tell me that my bees have an internal roadmap back to their previous location?”
“That’s the theory I’m sticking to for the purposes of this call. Perhaps, when I’ve had a bit more sleep, I could —“
“Of course!” the Admiral said enthusiastically. “That explains so much! This means my pet theory wasn’t so bonkers after all! Wow, this changes everything! The entire field of apiary science has been turned on its ear! Thanks so much, Lieutenant! I’ll make sure you have a full month of the Upgraded Meal Plan! Talk to you later!”
“Don’t mention it.”
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Tolstoy arrived at the Security Department’s main office to find a sticky note on his desk. He didn’t have to read it to know what it said. “THIS IS AMAZING! CALL ME IMMEDIATELY!” read the note in the Admiral’s impeccable handwriting. There was no two ways about it. This was going to be a day for the record books.
Tolstoy sighed heavily, then grabbed his communicator. Best to rip off the bandage and get it over with. “Yes, Admiral?” he said in what he hoped passed for an enthusiastic response.
“Ah! Yes!” said Clerk. “I need you to meet me in my quarters, right away! I think I have a solution to our problem. Clerk out.” With that, the call is over, and Tolstoy closed his eyes and briefly went to his happy place. Then he stood up, and walked to his Admiral’s quarters.
As he arrived, he saw Clerk pacing back and forth with a nervous energy that was light years beyond the Admiral’s comfort zone. He took a deep breath and spoke up. “Yes, Admiral?” he said. “What’s the solution you spoke about?”
“I figured something out during the night. Some of the bees were buzzing around me as I went to do our laundry, and what I noticed was that the bees followed me as I went. Through trial and error, I found out that they were zeroing in on this ratty old sweatshirt I’ve kept around way too long. I’m thinking that we should put it in the Wildlife Department with the bees, and, hopefully, they’ll stay there. What do you think?”
“Sounds good,” Tolstoy said. “But why did you call me here, when you could’ve just taken it to the bees yourself?”
Clerk blinked, then turned red. “Wow, like… I dunno why I never thought of that. My bad. Still, “ — he handed the sweatshirt to Tolstoy — “here you go. I’ve got some meeting here in just a few minutes, so you need to put it there. Sorry about the inconvenience.”
“No worries. Sounds more fun than anything else I could be doing at the moment. Consider it done!”