All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [23]
The other man looked impressed. “Really, sir? I didn’t think anyone studied those things so closely.”
“Really,” said the captain, relieved that O’Brien seemed to believe him. He would have to be more careful about such things if he was to accomplish anything in this time periodú “Now, about that power grid…”
O’Brien smiled. Apparently, he felt a bit more equal to the task, now that his ego had been massaged. “Yes, sir, I’ll get right on it.”
Taking the padd, he headed across the engineering section. Picard watched as the chief recruited several of the other crewmen on duty, taking them away from less important work.
“Fletcher,” called O’Brien. “Tell Munoz and Lee to get up here right away. We have to realign the entire power grid. We’re all going to be burning the midnight oil on this one.”
“That would be inadvisable,” came a reply from a part of engineering that the captain couldn’t see. Getting up from what would be Geordi La Forge’s desk in due time—though it would belong to several others before himmhe walked over to the office door and peered around it.
“Ah,” he said softly, understanding the remark now that he knew who had made it.
As he looked on, Commander Data approached O’Brien. From the looks of it, they were meeting for the first time. “Excuse me?” replied the chief.
“If you attempt to ignite a petroleum product on this ship at zero-hundred hours,” the android warned him, “it will activate the fire-suppression system, which will seal off this entire compartment.”
Picard had forgotten how naive Data had been when he first arrived on the Enterprise… how innocent and literal. It was amazing how far he had come in the years since.
In the meantime, O’Brien seemed to be at a loss. “Sir,” he ventured, “that was just an expression.” The android looked at him. “An expression of what?” The redhead groped for a response. “Er… a figure of speech, you know? I was trying to tell Mr. Fletcher here that… we were going to be working late.”
Data tilted his head to the side as he absorbed the information. “I see,” he replied at last. “Then to ‘burn the midnight oil’ implies late work?”
O’Brien smiled a little tentatively. “That’s right.”
“I am curious,” said the android. “What is the etymol-ogy of that idiom? How did it come to be used in contemporary language?”
The chief recoiled a bit at that one. “I don’t believe I know, sir. If you like, I suppose I could…”
Finally, the captain came to O’Brien’s rescue. “Commander Data,” he enthused, “welcome aboard. It’s good to see you.”
And it was. Picard smiled at him warmly, genuinely glad to have someone here he could completely rely on.
The android turned and acknowledged the captain’s presence. No doubt, thought Picard, he didn’t comprehend why this man he had just met was being so friendly to him. But, like a lot of things, he seemed to take it in stride.
“It is… reasonably good to see you, too, sir,” Data replied.
The captain indicated a wall panel near the warp core with a tilt of his head. “I could use your assistance with the infusor array. There are a few adjustments I’d like to make.”
Data’s head moved ever so slightly. “Certainly,” he said.
Together, they moved to the wall panel and pried it open. Picard pointed to a conduit. “As you can see, we’re having a bit of difficulty here. Something seems not to be working very well, though we’ve been unable to determine what it is…”
The android scrutinized the mechanism behind the panel. “This will require a completely new field induc-tion subprocessor,” he concluded. He turned to the captain. “It appears that we will be required to… ignite the midnight petroleum, sir.”
Picard smiled. Data learned quickly, didn’t he? Focusing his attention on the mechanism, the captain…
… found himself staring at a darkened monitor. Looking around, he saw that he was in Beverly’s office, back in what he had come to think of as the “present.” And as if to emphasize his lack of control over his existence, he was still in his bathrobe. “Jean-Luc… what’s going on?”
He turned to see Beverly