Juno O’Sullivan
Ops
She looked down at her watch, still early morning and not sure if the rest of the crew was awaking soon. Juno spared few minutes to making a breakfast smoothie that contained coffee, oats, and maple blended to make a brown, thick mixture. If Imani saw her drinking this now, she’d likely chide her for not having a proper breakfast. She knew how the Cook was adamant about eating healthy and not in short, quick bites. Juno grown accustomed to the Caribbean woman’s remarks on her choice of drinking smoothies when she didn’t feel like sitting down and eating with the rest of the crew. However, whenever she did sit down and find herself eating with the others, she found the atmosphere to her liking despite the humor she’d never be able to get.
Nothing needed to improve, everything’s going well with the station. Juno just wanted to triple-check again. The monitors in Ops were all green-lit meaning nothing was breaking down, nothing was out of working order. And despite Navarro’s expressed order to leave everything be, she couldn’t help herself. The crew she’s come to know and get along well with undersea, expressed their own opinions of the thirty-three-year-old taking things way
too seriously. Not that she needed their opinions to know how serious she was. Juno let her own opinions be known about them as well. She could only hope fresh faces wouldn’t take her words as being offended.
The only person she seems to not get along with was Andy. It’s like they have a mini-rivalry going, but for whatever reason than her choice of words. The Oceanographer, who grew up away from the Mainland, was always teasing her for using words like, “Pop” or “Ope”—instead of what he used. It horrified her when he mentioned he never tried Puppy Chow, a staple food of where she came from. Andy might as well be from another planet if he didn’t know what puppy chow was. Other than that, she could admit that she got along with him.
Juno sipped from the steel straw in her cup, the brown smoothie giving her a kick in the ‘wake up’ department. The “Mechanic” sat in one of the chairs in Ops, she figured she may as well stick around here, in case of an emergency. If anyone needed her, they could just ping for her, though unlikely to happen since she was just a simple Engineer to make sure the station wasn’t bleeding or dying, in a metaphorical sense. While she drank her breakfast, she kept looking at the old Vulcain cricket watch around her right wrist, the ticking second hand moving around the clock. If there was one material object that meant a lot to her, it was this old vintage alarm watch. Engraved on the backside was a phrase in Gaelic,
Tá mo chroí istigh ionat, signed by the letter O. The watch belonged to her mother’s parents who were both long gone now. Juno was likely the most boring person compared to the rest of the crew; her room was bland, everything was the same as the same day she moved in - aside from the books. The Irish-American always lived frugal, she found it better than to contribute to the 30% waste coming from the very country she was raised in.
Juno wasn’t used to
not doing anything now that the sea trials were up. Sitting in silence and ticks of the station working, she opted to read while she could. Figured she could enjoy the calm before the storm came rolling in, along with the Director, who would likely bring back some seasick researchers. Until then, she would remain sitting in Ops, biding her time and check her watch towards countdown.