The Ensign

The Ensign awoke with a start, slapping around the tiny metal box that passed for a bed to stop the bleeping alarm clock that had mysteriously disappeared into the folds of his sleeping bag. Hadn’t he just had his hand on it? Or had he fallen asleep for longer than he’d thought? Crap! Was he going to be late again?

Hell had no passive aggressiveness like an officer who wasn’t relieved from watch on time.

Who’s conning now? he wondered vaguely, still feeling around for the bleeping phone. If he didn’t hurry up, he was going to wake up the other seven officers in this closet-that-passed-for-quarters. Or maybe not. Maybe they were too dead-tired from their own watch rotations to hear anything at all. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t ever remember hearing an alarm clock that wasn’t his…

There you are! The dumb phone had slipped between the crack near the top of his rack and the wall. How? He’d never know.

0124, it read.

He was going to be late. He’d slept in his coveralls like he did every night to save himself time in getting dressed—a common tactic for late night watches—but he still had to get onto the ground, find his boots in the dark amidst the pairs of seven other officers, go down to engineering, get briefed; go to the Combat Information Center (CIC), get briefed; then go to the bridge. By then it’d be well past 0130, and some of his most hated compatriots firmly believed that an officer ought to be relieved ten minutes earlier than that. They believed that, even though the tradition of relieving on the half hour came from the idea that a person was supposed to have thirty minutes for turnover, and therefore, should really be relieved at the top of the next hour.

It was amazingly obtuse. As was everything on these damned ships.

You don’t have time for this, he reminded himself.

He squirmed to the edge of his rack and dangled his feet out as much as he could, bracing himself with his arms. He had yet to find a way out of his middle rack that didn’t, essentially, just involve throwing himself onto the steel floor: the bunk above him made it so that he couldn’t even sit up halfway to get out.

He tripped and tumbled, but eventually found his footing, even as the ship lurched to one side.

He felt drunk. Hell, he probably was as good as drunk with the amount of sleep he’d lost over the past three weeks. If there was any real action, or if his job was actually important—which to be fair, he was not at all convinced it was—they’d all be dead thanks to his sleep-dumb response time and muddled brain. And if he didn’t mess up, the next guy certainly would, because they were quite literally, all in the same boat.

There was a better way to do this. A not-stupid way, but—

Just shut up, he told himself, tying off his second boot. It was a miracle, but he’d found them, and was very-nearly certain both were his.

He departed the closet-quarters: the place they called, “khaki overflow”, or alternatively “the Junior Officer Jungle”—“JO Jungle” for short. It was a dumb name. It wasn’t big enough to be a jungle. It was literally a—

He just couldn’t stop complaining, which was weird considering how naturally optimistic people often told him he was. “You’re always smiling!” they said. He wondered what people who were pessimistic thought of this place…

Was he an outcast, or did everyone hate it here? But if everyone hated it here, why didn’t anything change?

0135, said his cellphone.

Crap! Time was weird when a person was this tired. It should not have taken him ten-ish minutes to find his boots and leave, but it had…somehow. Maybe there was something wrong with him.

There were floaters in his eyes, and his contacts burned because he hadn’t washed his hands when he popped them in. But he hadn’t had time to go to the sink. It was just another part of sleeplessness: his anxiety was out of control—he felt like he needed to be on the bridge right now. His heart was thumping like his life was at stake, even though he wasn’t going to be less than ten minutes late. He knew no reasonably good person would even mention it, given it didn’t happen that often, but it still bugged him.

He threw open the hatch that led upstairs, toward CIC. He was skipping engineering—they never told him anything useful anyway. If they had something going on, they would call up to the bridge, and let the officer of the deck know.

He rounded another tiny hallway and nearly pegged a Sailor headed in the opposite direction. He’d come out of the shadows and into the red light so fast!

“Sorry.” “Sorry.” They both continued on their way, uncertain and uncaring of who the other person was.

The Ensign threw open the door to CIC. The room glowed a dim blue, which produced a weird white flash in his eyes that made him feel dizzy. He tried to focus on the white-flash-face of the Tactical Action Officer—a Lieutenant Commander—sitting in the chair. There were other Sailors looking at him, judging him. At least his peripheral still worked...

“About time,” the Lieutenant Commander grunted. “They were about to send someone to wake you up.”

A way-too-powerful wave of anxiety, followed swiftly by an equally strong feeling of exaggerated rage rushed over the Ensign.

You’re tired, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going crazy, right? Was he a bad person?

He ended up not saying anything at all, and just stuffing his feelings. His wife could read his expressions no matter what, but nobody else ever seemed to notice or care. So they either didn’t give a damn about him, or she was overly perceptive. Either way, this douche wasn’t going to notice.

Off topic, he growled to himself.

“We doing anything important tonight?” the Ensign asked.

“Just sitting in a box,” the TAO grunted.

The TAO meant an imaginary box in the middle of the Arabian Gulf waiting until morning for…? No one knew. Or at least no one cared. Or at least the Ensign didn’t care, and by extension, couldn’t imagine that anyone else did either.

“Cool.” The Ensign left for the bridge.

He had expected nothing more from the turnover. All these people knew his job was every bit as unimportant as he felt it was.

He huffed up the last ladderwell that led to the bridge and threw the door open. It was incredibly dark up here—to the point where he could barely make out one shadow from another. The RADARs were dimmed down and the redlights were so low, they looked like fires that had been snuffed out some time ago.

A blur moved toward him. “You’re my relief!”

Oh thank God. It was Thompson. She was one of the sane ones.

“Yes!” the Ensign responded, equally jubilant. “And I want you to get the hell outta here. I’m sorry I’m late.”

Thompson shrugged—still a black shroud. “It’s cool.” She leaned in. “Just uh, pretend to turn over with me some, ‘cause you know, Nav’s on watch.”

The navigator was in the corner, leaned over the chart table with the quartermaster. She was a shadow too, and somehow she still looked pissed. She wouldn’t say anything until later, probably…hopefully. Maybe never. Maybe she’d just give the captain some more ammo to keep him from becoming a qualified watch officer, and ruin his career. And maybe that’d be okay?

No, you need the money, he reminded himself. You have dreams that go way beyond this place. It’s almost over. Almost—

“Come on, I’ll show you what we’ve got.” Thompson led him through the darkness to the bridgewing.

It was cloudy, humid, starless, hot…disgusting. This was the Earth’s armpit. Ninety-plus degrees at night.

The Ensign’s eyes were starting to adapt, albeit slowly. “Thanks, Thompson.”

He liked her, but he still couldn’t remember her first name, or what she did here—not right now anyway. Maybe it’d come to him in the morning. There were only thirty or so officers onboard a ship like this, but you had to remember their job title, first name, and last name, since people would used them interchangeably or differently depending on the situation. For someone like him, with ADHD, that was incredibly overwhelming. Then you added in sleeplessness, hundreds of enlisted personnel, and a firehose of information you needed to remember to get your warfare pin, and it became impossible.

It was just another thing that made him feel out of place—like he was some kind of imposter, and in no way living up to the heroic image he’d imagined when he once thought of a naval officer. The image he’d had before he ever met one, anyway…

“So, uh, there’s that ship over there,” she pointed to a very, very dim dot of light on the horizon. “And…that one.” Another virtually non-existent blob. Did he even see it, really? He nodded like he did.

“Got it.”

“Oh, and the comms don’t work,” Thompson said. “Uh like…bridge-to-bridge, I mean. It’s all quiet.”

“Quiet?” the Ensign said.

That was weird. The Gulf was oddly chatty. Without someone like the US Coast Guard around to shut everyone the hell up and keep channel 16 quiet, it was a crapshoot. Meows, porno, random yelling—you name it, it was being transmitted over the primary international channel here.

“CIC didn’t tell you about the comms?” she asked.

“No,” said the Ensign.

He thought he saw Thompson roll her eyes. “Not surprised. Anyway, yeah, at least it’ll be a quiet night for you. Just go to one end of the box, turn around, and go to the other. We just turned around a few minutes ago, so you’ve got about an hour before the next one.”

“Easy enough,” the Ensign chuckled. “I’m ready to relieve you.”

“I’m ready to be relieved!” beamed Thompson.

“I relieve you,” the Ensigned continued the redundant script.

“I stand relieved!” Thompson laughed. “Okay, well, I’m going to get permission to turn over. See ya!”

The Ensign nodded, then leaned up against the railing, waiting. He didn’t want to go back on the bridge with Nav, and they had an hour to turn the ship around. No one would bother him, or so he hoped.

He stared through the haze as Thompson announced their turnover in the pilothouse. The Ensign casually grabbed the internal comm unit outside to acknowledge. “I have the conn.”