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It was Curly's job, synthesizing food for them. Curly's job because they were going stir-crazy, after all these months, eating the same bland "nutritionally complete" meals day after day, and one weary night Daisuke had commented that he couldn't tell one week apart from the last and that had snapped something in all of them. So he used his captain's codes to get them into the sweetener, the dripping fats, the mocktails, the grease.
"Hungry?" he called out to Anya, who was passing by. She startled, gave him a thin smile, stuck to her path. "Hey, wait a moment," he said. "I'm out of ideas."
"Oh, well, I'm sure whatever you make will be good," she answered.
"I appreciate it, but I really just--really just want something to get started. Just to get started." He returned her smile with one of his own.
With that, tentatively, Anya made her way over to the kitchen. "Um, okay, what are we working with here?"
"Well, y'see, it's all coming from the synthesizer, so, I can make anything. All the same stuff we've always had." Curly swallowed to level out the pressure out of his ears. A strange thing to happen, being in space, but the cabin's atmospheric adjustments went out of sync with what was in his head, sometimes, and made him feel a little woozy, a little too loud...
Anya blinked slowly, her shoulders dropping. "Right. Of course. Silly of me to forget."
"It's why I can't think of anything," Curly said. "Because it's--it's the same things every day. And I don't want you guys getting sick of--See, if you get sick of this stuff, what I'm making, then we really don't have anything else."
"All right, Captain, let's take a look." Anya pulled open the cabinets and took stock of their food packet supply. "Here's some that we rarely use...I think I can come up with something edible. Try these with the powdered eggs."
"Thanks, Anya," Curly said. He took the offered packets and got to work arranging them.
"So, if you've got it, then..."
"Yes. Thanks."
Anya shuffled sideways out from behind the counter and headed for the door. Curly swallowed again. His head ached from the sudden release. He just couldn't get it right.
It was a long day, as usual, charting their course dealing with an ever-worsening astarboard skew--writing delicately-worded reports to assure the Company that they were making good time regardless, and their mechanic was keeping pace with the repairs, and their food supply was good as ever, and they didn't need to concern themselves with all the automatic pay docks he suffered in liberating the good ingredients--signing off on Swansea's work, checking tools out and back in and back out again--correcting Jimmy's shift reports for him and doing his psych evals, each one a higher sardonic wall than the last--and Anya, well, she stayed to herself, mostly, but she'd offered him medication again yesterday, and kept asking him these questions, like--
"Are you doing any better on sleep?"
Curly jumped. He hadn't realized she was still there. "Sleep?" he repeated. "Yes. Yeah, I'm doing fine."
"I'm asking since you have a heavy workload," she went on as if he hadn't answered. "I want to make sure you aren't taking on too much without getting rest."
"No, no, I'm fine. Look, I'm just making dinner. It's a nice thing to be doing." He smiled at her, with teeth.
Anya abandoned the door, coming back in. "Yes, it is...nice," she said cautiously. "But maybe we can take turns with it. We would all be happy to give you a night off."
"There's no nights off." Curly looked back and forth between Anya and the growing pile of powder spilling across the counter from the packet he'd ripped open and overturned. It was supposed to go into a dish, or the synthesizer, or something like that. He laughed loudly. "Anya. That's not how it works."
Anya was silent.
"You're a perfectly good nurse," he assured her, "but what the hell can you do about my workload? No, it's okay."
"You know, this is how it was in nursing school, too," Anya said. "Everyone was confident about the fact that life is miserable, the job's miserable, and you can't do anything to change it."
"Hey, okay, listen." Curly poured vinegar into a glass. If he drank the whole thing, maybe something would happen. "You haven't been working here as long as me, so you wouldn't know. When I started, there were ten to a crew. One-zero. When they cut to eight, we could pick up the slack..." He was still talking, hearing himself as echoes through the bare metal, breathing hard, trying to make his gasps come out as laughter. "Did you know there used to be three guys on maintenance? And there was a crew member just for janitorial services? It was pretty lively. Then it went to eight, and seven...We used to say six was a skeleton crew. But they figured out how to make it four. Oh, we're just so lucky..."
"Curly--"
"Why do I have this fucking code scanner?" He ripped open another packet, gelatin, took great pleasure in spilling it directly into the sink. "Can't you guys do anything on your own? When I come back next year, is it just gonna be me? Huh? Am I the only one they want to do anything here? 'Cause I know everything about this ship? What the hell does everyone want from me? I'm so fucking sick of it."
It seemed like he'd shut down whatever she was going to say next. The resentment in his voice shocked him. What did he have to be upset about, when he'd been promoted, and he was compensated fairly, and he had the privilege of working with such a good crew, one that would help him however they could, even though more and more these days he hated to see them because he knew that meant they were going to ask him for something, and he'd have another task piled on, not that there were too many, but little by little it was becoming unbearable--somehow?--None of them made his life easier. No one was there to make it easier. Nothing made it easier. He thought when he got back home maybe he'd break both his legs bad enough that he'd be bedridden for months. Do nothing but stare at the ceiling. Relax. A nice change of pace.
He swallowed. The pressure snapped back into place, and his head cleared.
Oh, shit, the things he'd said. He had to fix it now. "Hey, I'm sorry. I'm a little stressed out. Sorry. Don't take it like--I really care about all of you. I value you. You do good work and I'm glad you're here."
"R...right." Anya nodded.
"I'm really sorry. Listen, why don't you take a break? I think Jimmy said he wanted another board game night."
"Uh, Curly...speaking of Jimmy...I-I need a little help."
"Ah, yes." Curly grinned, with so many more teeth. "He can be hard to deal with, right? The kind of guy who gives you a whole lot more work to do. Right?"
"That's not really..." Anya looked away. "It's just some of the things he's said. When you and Swansea aren't listening."
"Oh. I'm sorry. He can be like that. He doesn't think about what he's saying."
"I'm worried that he's not joking."
"I'll tell him to cut down on the dark humor. It's not appropriate."
"I-I don't think it's dark humor."
"I'll get him to stop." Desperation mounted deep in his chest. This was something easy to fix. It wouldn't take long. It wouldn't be difficult. "No, he--he'll stop if I talk to him. It won't be a big deal. He'll stop."
"Okay..." Anya did not smile. "Thanks, Captain."