POLUS

III - The Vent

Harvey
Chapter Three
Ship 1

"Uh, what are you doing here?"
"GAH-!"

I jump back, almost knocking some things over. Jesus, that scared the hell out of me.

"Give me a heart attack why don't you-"
I turn around to see a tall, brunette woman. Like the others, her spacesuit has coloured accents, hers being a deep shade of purple. She doesn't look too happy. Honestly, she looks mad. It's kind of terrifying.

"Are you supposed to be here?"

It takes me a second to catch my breath before awkwardly stuttering out a response.

"I uh, not really- I just heard a... noise. Coming from here. Thought maybe I should check it out."

The girl rolls her eyes. "That's what the medic crewmates are here for. Which as it seems, you are not. But thank you for your concern." Her tone isn't exactly mad, but more or less annoyed. "Do you have tasks in here?" She looks at me with her eyebrow raised, waiting for a response. And I just don't really know how to answer. I feel like I'm back in eighth grade being scolded by my teacher for not paying attention or something. Usually in those situations, I just stutter until I say something dumb for a response. Speaking of responses, I really should give an answer to what she just asked.

"Ah, no. Sorry, I was just- checking- in case something happened."

She looks at me for a few seconds before looking to the side and shaking her head. She looks back at me. "Name?"
"Uh, Harvey Wilson."
"Hm."

She takes out her Mira Tablet and does a few things on it. I kinda just stood there for a while.  She looks back up at me.

"Don't worry, I'm just taking note of your work stats."

Work stats? Like my years of experience? Huh, not sure why she would need that. Unless she's looking to use it as some sort of reassurance that I'm not doing something stupid, which I think she can obviously tell I'm only here to look around, not entirely sure why it's necessary she needs to know my work stats.

She must be the medic crewmate, so she has access to all the medical equipment and such, I think? And people's work stats. There's probably more but that's all I know of that kind of job. I never found the work stats part fair, but eh, I guess that's just how it goes.

Oh, and she's leaving.

"Let the professionals handle this next time." She says.

Once she's out the door, I let out the breath I feel like I had been holding in the entire conversation. She's scary. Reminds me of every high school teacher I hated.

Professionals? Did she not just look at my work stats? And see I'm on my fourth year? Sure, I'm not exactly a professional, but I've been here long enough to at least have the right to check out what the hell that sound was. It's not like I was planning on playing around with the equipment or some crap!
But really, she is right for the most part. I'm not a medic crewmate. I'll just leave that stuff to them then! Less work for me I guess.

I take one last glance at the vent before making my way out of medbay and back to where I was filling up gas. I'm kinda tired now, but I really haven't done many tasks yet so I can't really take a nap or anything right now.

So I take out my iPad and have a look at my group info. It must have been updated to the right group by now, I think.
And it has! It looks the same as any normal mission although the description is about the Polus mission instead of my usual Mira HQ visit. Another thing is that some of the info is marked N/A or as locked info it's sort of weird, because some of the locked info are things crewmates at my level would normally be allowed to read, and some of the things marked N/A seem important.
But I really shouldn't be overthinking this. This is a completely different mission. Surely this is normal, that the stats have changed, right? I'm just out of my comfort zone. Well, not exactly comfort zone- this is just... a new experience for me!
I'm just overthinking!
Like I do about literally everything! Like, ever!
I hate myself.

I slug myself over to navigation to rewire a few things. The info bar says it'll be about three and a half days until we reach Polus. Its a good thing technology has advanced this much that it doesn't take years to travel these distances. I mean, It's going to take a while, but better than the old days, right? Still a long time, though...
there isn't really any catch to this one. I'm just impatient.

While rewiring, the same group of three I saw earlier walk past me. Two of them are laughing, while one of them is hanging out behind the others, tapping away on their iPad. Honestly, I wonder what's going through their minds. Eric, the one I had spoke to earlier about being in the wrong group, was smiling and laughing now.
I guess he's already gotten over any worries he had about that.

Wish I could say the same.