Chapter Text
Technician: Samathain Rutherford, Systems Engineer
Malfunctioning Unit: Samathain Rutherford, Systems Engineer
Malfunction: Loss of system memory, a period of approximately 6 months
Full Description:
Following the non-standard extraction of my implant by the late Lt. Shax during a combat situation, I have lost virtually all memory of the time since my implant was first activated and it’s extraction.
Technician recommends using more traditional, lower tech recordings as secondary backups and not rerouting my natural forming memories into an exterior artificial system.
Hence this journal.
Truth be told I don’t feel like I’ve really lost a lot with the memories, while 6 months is not a short amount of time, I still have my family, my friends, my colleagues around me I did not suffer an un-reparable loss.
What bothers me the most is what I might have gained or would have gained, my first memory waking up was being hugged by my incredibly beautiful nurse.
Said nurse who I quickly learned is named Tendi, claimed that we were close friends despite me not having any recollection of her.
By the time I could summon up the mental awareness to notice that my heart beat noticeably faster simply by looking at her, that her perfume was both exhilarating and familiar and that the relatively short amount of time she hugged me was enough to trigger a full body increase in temperature, Tendi had diagnosed my loss of memory.
Other medical personnel confirmed her findings, further formalizing my condition.
Mariner and Boimler on the other hand confirmed not Tendi’s medical findings but the fact that we were indeed friends, Tendi with her arrival on the Cerritos shortly after I had gotten my implant not only joined our little group but galvanized it from 3 people who spoke quite often after work into what Tendi describes as true friends always together always ready to back each other up.
Boimler’s subsequent departure and Mariner’s surprisingly vigorous stalking of him have lead me to believe that Tendi’s stories of balanced platonic friendship being the only bonds in our group is shall we say looking at the situation with rose tinted glasses.
Since a chronicle of Boimler and Mariner’s entanglements would take up whole tomes I will re-focus on Tendi.
If she can’t see or chooses not to see the unresolved tension between our command friends how does she see my own feelings about her ?
My personal quest to retrieve as much information as possible about the lost months has taken me through work logs, ship logs, social network postings, reviews of calls with my family (my mother and grandmother considering that me and Tendi would make a cute couple is neither here or there they think so about nearly every woman my age) all end up showing a constant Tendi presence in my life.
A constant presence which I seemed to encourage with my full efforts and yet one that never materialized in a relationship.
Had the Packled ambush not occurred given the statistics I was able to compile (the percentage of adult sites I was visiting in my private browsing was shaping up to be 70+% Orion based) I was approaching desperation and potentially disastrous actions i.e. expressing my feelings by writing poetry.
Final thoughts: memory is recoverable, main defect seems to be a heart which previously bounced back from rejection getting stuck on one woman, no possibility of replacement.
Medic: D’vana Tendi, Nurse
Patient: D’vana Tendi, Nurse
Diagnosis: Pathological need for positive reinforcement from social peers
Full Description:
Hey journal, happy to see you again.
I’ll have you know that the self therapy aka writing you in the first place so that I can have a place to unload my negative thoughts without being afraid that everyone will hate me (and thus bottling it all up inside and after a noticeable pause replying with anything positive) is going very well.
Today when at the bar and ensign Barnes made an off-hand comment that I should try wearing lipstick instead of my usual lip gloss sometimes, I thanked her for the suggestion but I did NOT immediately run out and get a lipstick from the replicator, nor will I unless I really really like to.
Another positive example of my growth came later that evening when after a lengthy conversation with lieutenant Levy I did NOT agree with him that Spock had a secret human sister which he banished to the future because she was evil.
In fact my rebuke of him was so comprehensive that Barnes swears she saw him leave the bar later with tears in his eyes, but whatever those two are not important or what I wanted to talk to you about.
Rutherford has always been ... difficult ... in my quest to be both positive but not a pathological people pleaser.
In short I really, really, really want him to like me.
And not just me, also the me that doesn’t bottles up up things inside, for example the me that wanted to tell him right when we first met that he was an idiot for not paying more attention to Barnes instead of the diagnostic.
The fact that during our ill-fated holo lesson he confessed to me that he also sought out my approval just made me want him more.
I can’t remember ever wanting to let out my negativity more than when I understood he lost his memory and thus our entire thing didn’t exist for him anymore.
Now don’t get me wrong I stand by what I said that I will become his best friend anew for the second time.
But it scared me that I could not just admit my fear and my negative emotions in front of him, during the battle I screamed his name out of fear so I really do think he is the person I will eventually overcome my bottling up problem with.
It scared me that I couldn’t cry and mourn the loss of our 6 months together because I was afraid he would judge me, even as I am rationally aware that he as a person would not judge me harshly.
Anyway progress on project BFF version 2.0 is really good.
We moved on from him thinking I was his nurse to accepting we knew each other.
We moved on from that to him accepting we are friends.
I am pretty sure we are back to being sort of best friends.
So why, WHY do I want even more ???