Just Another Work Day for Willow

Posted on Wed Aug 12th, 2026 @ 1:08am by Ensign Willow Oakley

887 words; about a 4 minute read

Willow hummed softly to herself as she walked down the corridor toward the transporter room. She was pleased that her next repair job was there. It was the one place nothing ever went wrong. Not that things always went wrong. They didn't. It was just that occasionally something broke when she was working on an entirely unrelated problem. But the transporter room was special. Things always went well there. Even the repairs. She wasn't sure why—unless it was that she sang to the pads and coils while she was there. It seemed the right thing to do as the transporter hum was a type of music. And the room seemed to appreciate her singing, too. Not like other places.

Waste reclamation really didn't like her singing. But with the job it had to do, she couldn't blame the system for being grumpy. That place worked best when she kept quiet. As far as she was concerned, it worked best when someone else worked on it, but she had to take the jobs she was assigned.

The bridge didn't give her trouble, either. She generally didn't do repairs there. The comms rarely went down and when they did, it was the chief that fixed them. On the rare times she had a shift at the comms station, she pushed buttons and transferred calls. Easy stuff.

But the transporter room. Now that was a joy. Her hair slowly turned bright blue with happiness as she began to hum a cheerful song.

"Hello, friends," she said, doing a little dance as she walked into the transporter room. "I'm glad to see you." She knew she only imagined that the tone of the equipment sounded happier, but she smiled anyway. "Let's see how you're doing today."

She set her toolbox on the floor by the side of the transporter pad and pulled out her calibrator. As she ran several tests, she hummed in harmony to the sounds around her.

"Excellent," she announced when she was finished. "Just a little touch-up and you'll be as good as new," she told the pads.

Continuing to hum to herself, she ran a diagnostic, made a few tweaks, then patted the nearest pad. "Good as new, just like I promised."

She then went over to the transporter controls and began another diagnostic. As she worked, she began to sing, "I'll be working on a starship all the live long day. Boom. Boom. Boom." With each boom she did a hip bump. Then she giggled at her own silliness. There was a soft, low chime as the diagnostic completed. "You've been busy. Just a little face lift and you'll be humming like new."

She pulled out the tools she would need and made quick, cheerful work of the minor adjustments and recalibration. Every time she changed tools, she did a little dance.

When she was finished, she took out a small cube with nine numbers on one side and set it on the center of a transporter pad, taking a moment to make sure it was centered. Then she went to the controls and dematerialized it, holding it in the transporter buffer for several seconds before rematerializing it again.

"Okay, now to see if you pass the test." She took out her tricorder and scanned the cube, then entered a series of numbers on the side of the cube. Multicolored lights flashed behind the numbers, then they went off. She scanned the cube again and nodded. "Excellent. The cube says you're within 0.00257 of optimal. That's well within the allowed range. So, you passed."

She entered the data into her PADD, packed up her tools, and bid the transporter room goodbye before heading off to the next stop on her list.

She only imagined that the hum in the room sounded happier after the adjustments. Even so, she took it as a little thank you for her TLC.

Her next stop was a replicator in the main lounge. Good. It was almost lunch time and she was hungry. If the job didn't take long, she could get lunch before going to her next assignment.

That thought made her chuckle. She could grab some food after the replicator was repaired no matter how long—or short—the job was. Lunch time was lunch time.

The job took longer than she expected because two parts had burned out and needed to be replaced. But she was able to grab a snack while she waited for the parts to be replicated. That gave her the energy she needed to finish the job, run a diagnostic to make sure everything worked as it should, and then fix the menu list because it was half in Klingon and half in Mandarin Chinese. Federation Standard was unavailable.

It took her twenty minutes to find the crossed circuits and burned out fuse that caused the malfunction. But she finally had the lounge checked off her list, a ham and cheese croissant and chocolate milk in her cross pack, and a box of Scottish shortbread packed in her toolbox for later.

Now to find a quiet corner for lunch. One, hopefully, without an electronic device to announce that it needed her help. Not for the next hour, anyway.

A post by

Ensign Willow Oakley
Operations Officer & Transporter Specialist
USS Valkyrie

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