Work Text:
In the science department, he watched Tycho flit from station to station. A bit of a control freak, that one. Even when he delegated jobs to his colleagues, he couldn’t resist poking his nose in and making sure they were doing it right. (‘Right,’ within the boundaries of the lab, was defined as ‘whatever Tycho said.’)
It took a few tries to attract the man’s attention. Dr. Tycho?
“What?” The I’m busy was, politely, left unspoken.
You may want to check the table you just left. Namely, the cup of coffee that he’d just knocked all over his papers.
“...Shit.”
In the defense center, he watched Leela prepare for her latest seminar. As she wheeled in a podium from next door, he spoke up.
Are you sure you don’t need more from me? Security was his specialty, after all. Yet Leela was hardly requesting any work on his part in the gauntlet of meetings that the last week had become.
“Not unless you really want to.” She smiled at the terminal. “Look. You’re nice. You don’t complain. But I know that powerpoint presentations are the last thing an AI wants to be doing during his downtime.”
She had a point.
In the engineering division, he watched Durandal fling his upper body dramatically onto his desk.
He sent his sympathies with an accompanying beep to draw Durandal’s attention to the terminal. Long day? Theatrics aside, from everything he witnessed, Durandal was getting a raw deal. He was a bright and dedicated apprentice, but Strauss treated him like a speck of dirt on his glasses.
“You could say that.”
Would it cheer you up to hear that I witnessed Dr. Strauss stubbing his toe in his quarters this morning - twice?
Durandal reached over and gave the terminal a high-five. “Yeah. It would.”