Tribble Fan Fiction #5: Love in the Time of Tribbles
Tribble Fan Fiction #5
I. The Gift
The tribble was a birthday present.
Marcus Chen had been dating Lieutenant Priya Adeyemi for exactly one year when he decided that what their relationship needed was a small, round, impossibly soft ball of fur that purred when you held it. He bought it from a trader on Starbase 12 — a Rigellian woman who swore up and down that it was a “low-reproduction model” that had been genetically modified to breed at a fraction of the normal rate.
“How much is a fraction?” Marcus asked.
“Significantly less,” said the Rigellian, which is the kind of answer that should make a person walk away but somehow never does.
He named it Biscuit, because it was golden-brown and round and warm, and because Marcus had the naming instincts of a man who had once called his shuttle “Shuttle.” Priya loved Biscuit immediately. She held it against her cheek and made a sound that Marcus had never heard her make before — a kind of delighted hum that suggested Biscuit had, in thirty seconds, achieved an emotional connection that Marcus had been working toward for twelve months.
“It purrs!” Priya said.
“I purr,” Marcus muttered.
“You do not purr.”
“I could learn.”
II. Multiplication
The Rigellian’s definition of “significantly less” turned out to be creative. By the end of the first week, Biscuit had become Biscuit, Muffin, Scone, and a fourth tribble that Priya named Croissant over Marcus’s objection that they were running out of baked-goods names and should consider a naming convention with more runway.
“We could use Greek letters,” he suggested.
“We are not calling our tribbles Alpha through Omega, Marcus.”
“It would be more sustainable.”
“They’re tribbles, not a military operation.”
By week two, there were eleven tribbles. Marcus built a containment area in their quarters from spare cargo panels. Priya called it “the nursery.” Marcus called it “the holding pen.” They did not discuss the implications of this linguistic divide.
By week three, there were thirty-seven tribbles, the containment area had been breached twice, and Marcus had found one in his boot, one in the food synthesizer, and one — inexplicably — inside a sealed storage locker that he was absolutely certain he had closed.
“How?” he said, holding the tribble at arm’s length.
The tribble purred. It did not explain.
“The tribble is a test of any relationship. If you can survive exponential reproduction in a confined space, you can survive anything.” — Ship’s Counselor T’Laan, who had clearly never owned a tribble
III. The Fight
The fight happened on a Tuesday. Most fights happen on a Tuesday. The universe is cruel and it schedules accordingly.
Marcus came home from a double shift in Engineering to find that the tribble population had reached sixty-four, they had eaten through the containment wall, and three of them were inside the environmental control panel making the temperature in their quarters fluctuate between “sauna” and “Andorian winter.”
“We need to talk about the tribbles,” Marcus said.
“Their names are—”
“Priya. There are sixty-four of them. You cannot have named sixty-four tribbles.”
“I have named fifty-eight. The other six arrived while I was on duty and haven’t been processed yet.”
“Processed? You have a processing system?”
Priya held up a PADD. It contained a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet had columns for Name, Color, Size, Personality Notes, and Dietary Preferences. It was color-coded. Marcus stared at it with the hollow expression of a man who has realized that his girlfriend is better organized about tribble husbandry than he is about his engineering career.
“We need to get rid of some of them,” he said.
Priya looked at him the way Captain Kirk might look at someone who suggested surrendering to a Klingon.
“Which ones?” she asked, very quietly.
Marcus looked at the tribbles. The tribbles looked at Marcus. Sixty-four pairs of small dark eyes, sixty-four balls of soft fur, sixty-four gentle purrs filling the room like the world’s most comforting white noise machine.
“I hate this,” he said.
“I know,” Priya said. “Let’s keep them all.”
IV. The Captain Intervenes
Captain Zhao was a patient woman. She had commanded the USS Meridian through a Borg incursion, two temporal anomalies, and a first-contact situation with a species that communicated exclusively through interpretive dance. But when she received the report that Deck 4, Section 7 contained “an estimated three hundred tribbles in a space designed for two humanoids,” her patience developed hairline fractures.
“Three hundred,” she said.
“Three hundred and twelve as of 0800,” her first officer confirmed. “Lieutenant Adeyemi has named all of them.”
“All of them?”
“She has a spreadsheet.”
Captain Zhao rubbed her temples. “Get them to my ready room. Both of them. Not the tribbles.”
Marcus and Priya stood before the captain like cadets who’d been caught reprogramming the replicator to make nothing but chocolate cake. Priya held Biscuit — the original, identifiable only by a tiny spot of darker fur on her left side. Marcus held nothing, having refused to carry a tribble in front of the captain on grounds that it would undermine any credibility he had left.
“I’m not going to order you to get rid of them,” Captain Zhao said. “But I am going to observe that your quarters are a biohazard, your neighbors have filed nine complaints about purring noise levels, and Ensign Park reports that a tribble made its way into the warp core housing last Tuesday and Engineering had to shut down for forty minutes to extract it.”
“That was Houdini,” Priya said. “He’s an escape artist.”
“She named it Houdini,” Captain Zhao said, not as a question.
“Captain’s log, supplemental: I have been outmaneuvered by a lieutenant, an engineer, and three hundred tribbles. I am beginning to understand how Captain Kirk felt.” — Captain Zhao
V. The Compromise
The solution was Priya’s idea, because Priya’s ideas were always better than everyone else’s and Marcus had accepted this the way one accepts gravity.
They converted Cargo Bay 3 into a tribble habitat. Not a cage — a habitat. Priya designed it herself: temperature-controlled zones, feeding stations on timed dispensers, soft bedding areas, and an observation window where crew members could visit. She implemented a population management program — a combination of controlled feeding and veterinary intervention that Dr. Koh developed after three weeks of research and one very long conversation with the Daystrom Institute about tribble reproductive biology.
The crew loved it. Off-duty personnel started visiting the tribble habitat the way people on Earth visit aquariums — for the calm, for the softness, for the simple animal pleasure of watching something small and round be completely, unreservedly happy. Crew morale scores went up fourteen percent. Stress-related sick bay visits dropped by a third. The ship’s counselor started prescribing “tribble time” as therapy.
Marcus and Priya kept Biscuit in their quarters. Just Biscuit. The original. The one that started it all. She sat on their bed, golden-brown and warm, purring like a small engine of contentment.
“I’m sorry I said we should get rid of them,” Marcus said one evening, lying in bed with Biscuit between them.
“I’m sorry I named three hundred tribbles before telling you about the spreadsheet,” Priya said.
“The spreadsheet was actually impressive.”
“I know.”
Biscuit purred. Outside the window, stars drifted past in the slow, silent way they always do when you’re traveling at warp — like the universe is gently scrolling by, waiting for you to notice how beautiful it is.
“I love you,” Marcus said.
“I love you too.”
“The tribble isn’t going to come between us?”
“Marcus, the tribble is the best thing you ever gave me. Including yourself.”
“That’s… fair, actually.”
Biscuit purred.
Marcus and Priya were married the following year in Cargo Bay 3, surrounded by four hundred and seventeen tribbles, all of whom purred through the ceremony. The officiant, Captain Zhao, later described it as “the warmest wedding I’ve ever attended, in every sense of the word.” Biscuit was the ring bearer. She ate the ribbon.
