Blue Stripe: The Life and Times of a Holodeck Janitor

This article is part of the The Blue Stripe Logs series.

Space... The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, apparently, to reenact old detective novels with your pants off. To seek out new ways to make my life hell. To boldly assume that the janitors can just beam your jizz off the inside of an image reductor grid.

The mark nine holodeck, also known as An old buddy of mine by the name of Pascal had a joke he made back at the academy. It went: "what do you call an officer candidate who gets D-grades during social adjustment classes?" Then he'd grin and maybe itch at that weird alien bump thing above his nose and say "sir."

I've been aboard the USS Enterprise, pride of the Federation, for nearly a year. I write home periodically to tell my wife and parents about our adventures on the limitless frontiers of space, but I have to admit, I do a lot of embellishing. It's not that the Enterprise doesn't get into all sorts of adventures, it's that about 90% of the time the big diplomatic dealings and space battles involve me with a hot mop locked inside holodeck five trying to figure out what came out of that goddamn android and how to get it off of the tactile projector tiles.

You'll notice I said 90%. That's because about 10% of the adventures and goings on aboard the Enterprise actually do involve me to some degree. Those I keep to myself, because they're almost always shameful.

I'm not sure who is going to read this worklog. Maybe it's my replacement or maybe it's a new supervisor who actually takes interest in his subordinates instead of using his rank and role to get triple and quadruple allotments of holodeck time. Whatever the case, whoever you are, you have just happened on the ultimate storehouse of blackmail material. I'm too big of a pussy to actually put this info to good use, but by god, you go ahead and use it. These perverted morons deserve every favor and bar of gold-pressed latinum that you can squeeze out of them.

These logs are presented in standard blue stripe notation. They might befuddle an old dark circle or ensign in a stripy turtleneck, but if you actually work for a living you should be able to understand the format.

At least he didn't bring his annoying little Moghspawn on this outing. Stardate 42133
Calltime/Location: 01:06 - Holodeck 3
Call Reason: Debris Sensor Triggered

Report: About two hours into my shift I get an automated message that something has fouled up the image projectors in Holodeck 3. It's pretty much the most common red flag we can get from the computer and it's usually just some sweaty idiot who bumped into one of the tiles and left a big smudge of body soil over the projection plate. This call turned out to be anything but routine. I walk in there and it looks like someone filled a sack with pea soup and then swung it around the room just slow enough so that the crap would fly out in all directions. It's splattered all over all of the walls, it's hanging from the ceiling and then right in the middle of the holodeck there is this big pool of chunky red liquid and more of the pea soup. It smells like someone tried to make lemonade out of a dead raccoon. I start trying to mop the stuff up, but everything I do just seems to be spreading it around even worse on the tiles.

I decide to pull the isos, which if you're new to the holodeck job is shorthand for "isolated video log". It sounds boring but it's actually the funniest crap ever. It's a video record of what was going on inside the holodeck minus the actual holodeck projection. It is hilarious, as you would imagine.

The guy has some sort of fixation on Data. So I lean my mop up against the wall and start cycling through the last session in the holodeck. Lieutenant Worf is there. Cowboy costume and a banjo. Nothing too unusual. He's swinging his arms around like he's throwing punches. Then he's taking off his clothes. Worf starts humping away at god knows what (I'm not pulling the buffer to find out) and all of the sudden he goes stiff and starts yelling in Klingon. His weird lumpy boner starts whipping around like a firehose and spraying green crap all over the holodeck. It keeps going and going.

Just when I think it's going to stop he thrusts his hips again and it flies back up into the air and starts whirling around again like a crazy snake. After like a minute of this (and still going strong) Worf doubles over and screams and then POW he just starts puking everywhere. It's incredible. Puke is just blasting out of his mouth, covering his Klingon beard, all over his cowboy hat and while he's puking there are these globs of green jizz flying straight through the stream of vomit. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

Anyway, I take my information about the nature of the substance and look up some cleaning options on the computer. Long story short on that one, it's five hours of hard labor with a scrubbing phaser and the inability to ever look Lt. Worf in the eye again. I mean good lord how did he ever have a kid with a human woman? Ugh.

Status:Resolved.

Oh, sure, your holodeck fantasy can involve Riker and your mom double teaming you, but if some lowlife from engineering wants to touch your top shelf then he's going to be facing a court martial. Stardate 42190
Calltime/Location: 11:13 - Holodeck 2
Call Reason: Saving the Ship

So the bridge crew, as a whole, are pretty much the biggest bunch of hypocritical douchebags to ever wear a Star Fleet uniform. There was big drama today centered around the holodeck and because the maintenance technician is on vacation they kept asking me to help them with their drama. Basically, as far as I can tell, this guy named Barclay from engineering has been using the holodeck a lot and he likes to play out fantasies involving the bridge crew. It's pretty much the biggest non-issue ever because the guy's fantasies are like him getting a back rub from counselor Troi or him beating up Riker. So the guy is playing out these fantasies and then he fucks up, and they of course blame the holodeck because holy crap you couldn't just ban him from it or something.

Anyway, they call me down and make me pull his buffers and when they see his fantasy scenarios they totally bust a huge shit over this. I keep quiet, but holy shit what a bunch of motherfuckers. These are the same people who wallow in their own filth and perversion every time they come on the holodeck and they're lecturing this poor Barclay dude over some grabass? Commander Riker once used Captain Picard's mouth as a toilet during one of his bathroom visits to the holodeck!

These people are all commissioned officers. Remember this image. Anyway, this stupid drama escalates and meanwhile there's like an asteroid or something that's going to hit the ship. Whatever, they never clue me in, I just know we're all in mortal peril. So I call Barclay to the holodeck and I fire up one of Riker's filthiest simulations and let him see it. I tell him "fix that shield flux whatometer and I'll get revenge." Barclay agrees and takes care of saving our bacon and I rig the holodeck up for revenge. After the bridge crew is done with their high fives over the day being saved they head down to Holodeck 2 for some R and R.

As usual they pick just about the gayest thing ever which is the Robinhood simulation. I mean seriously, that shit is written for little kids. It's like having a business meeting at a playground, but these morons can't get enough of it. About halfway through the simulation they're all drinking flagons and talking about the evil sheriff of Nottingham, when suddenly Riker's Greatest Teabaggings starts up. One minute they're sitting around the campfire singing and BOOM there's a giant version of Commander Riker trying to smother them all with his stadium-sized scrotum. I made sure to fake a door lockout too, so they were trapped in there for hours looking at Riker's taint and trying to breathe around his ball bag.

Status:Resolved.

This is about as well-kempt as he can possibly look. Stardate 42207
Calltime/Location: 05:06 - Holodeck 4
Call Reason: Occupant Unconscious

If I had to pick one person to consider my arch enemy aboard the Enterprise it is, undoubtedly, Commander William Riker. No one abuses the holodeck more often or more creatively than Commander Riker. His rank grants him seven hours a week and Riker somehow manages to squeeze almost 20 visits out of that.

Commander Riker uses the holodeck for everything, from his darkest fantasies to the most ridiculously mundane task. One day he'll be oil wrestling with kangaroos on top of a giant mattress or making love to a duplicate of himself with huge breasts. The next day he'll show up in his bathrobe and use the holodeck to shower and shave himself. What makes me hate him is that Riker pays no attention to the rules about bodily fluids. He will use the holodeck just to go to the bathroom. He'll have a floating toilet made out of clouds and he'll lay the biggest and smelliest deuce I've seen this side of the neutral zone. Then he'll just walk right out like he's allowed to do that.

When I got this particular call Riker had been at the tail end of one of his binge periods. His weight had skyrocketed up around 300 and he was trying to use the holodeck as a weight loss routine. Basically, he'd come in and gorge himself on everything he could think of. The man ate like a goat. He'd start with pies and cakes, work his way through a half dozen pizzas and tens of bottles of beer, then he'd finish by chewing up old belts and piles of weeds. When he was distended to the point of bursting he'd waddle out and the food would just *poof* disappear from his stomach. This time things didn't go so well.

I get there and Riker is rolling around groaning, foaming at the mouth, with a belly that looks like someone jammed a boulder inside. Turns out he'd been having mini-strokes all week during his binges and this one was a bit bigger than the others. He'd soiled himself, of course. He was naked, of course. And, of course, I had to start cleaning him up while a team from sickbay hurried down to the holodeck.

Once I had most of the crap off of him I dragged him out into the corridor. His swelling went down immediately and by the time the sickbay team arrived he was sitting up and swearing like a sailor. Riker uses language salty enough to cure pork and that particular day he repeatedly threatened to "choke the eyes out of my sockets" if I didn't get him a "triple milkshake." Luckily the sick team got there before he could make good on his threat and got him sedated and hauled in for surgery. I finished the cleanup in about half an hour.

Status:Resolved.

The most advanced android in the galaxy is basically a robot that learned how to be lazy and waste time. Stardate 42222
Calltime/Location: 03:51 - Holodeck 3
Call Reason: Debris Sensor Triggered

One of the saddest things a holodeck janitor can ever be asked to do is clean up blood on the holodeck. I don't know of anyone who has ever actually died on the holodeck, but the number of times these people have turned the safety locks off and then been injured is unbelievable. The biggest culprit is that goddamn android and his bumbling blind pal. Why does that fucking robot insist on bringing the only blind crewman on all of his little moronic holodeck adventures? It's like inviting a deaf person to the symphony or a dolphin to the top of Mount Everest.

These two and Picard love to play Sherlock Holmes. It's another of the super-lame pre-sets that comes with every holodeck, aimed at white bread grownups whose idea of adventure is translating a letter written in Greek or finding a hat pin in a radiator. I would guess that pretty much every other ship in the fleet has deleted this shit from its catalog of simulations, but for some reason Data, LaForge and Picard all eat it up. What's even more pathetic is that they've all nearly been killed by the lamest and most boring simulation in the whole catalog. I mean it might be slightly lamer if they were using the Baby Cochrane simulations for toddlers and somehow died, but only just.

Anyway, I get down there and Moriarty is dangerous, again, and he's somehow chopped off LaForge's arm and trapped Data in a glass case. He starts coming after me with an umbrella and riddles or something and I just drop my collapsible baton out of my sleeve and warp it around his holographic skull a couple times. Data is all "but he is self aware you have to make sure he is okay" and I just say "that's it, I'm deleting this fucking character." Data is all "boohoo, you might as well delete me" and I just say "don't tempt me." Of course Picard shows up and pulls rank and tells me to just clean up LaForge's blood. No "thanks for saving everyone", just a dash to the ready room to discuss whatever staggering fuck up involving the holodeck they have planned for next week. Maybe they can simulate a giant world-spanning fire, turn off the safety locks and then see if the fire will spread to the ship.

Status:Resolved.

We live in a society where we aren't forced to work. I could quit Star Fleet today, head back to earth, and just live out my days in a nice roomy apartment in Brooklyn. I could forget all of this nonsense and never look at a holodeck again. But, I know I won't, because these guys would be dead without me around to keep saving their bacon. My advice to you, assuming you just started aboard Enterprise, is to get out before you enter their vicious cycle. Before you know it you're going to be scraping Riker's hot plops off the surface of a holodeck tile and cursing the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Just get out while you can!

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)