Review – Gainful
Gainful comes from a prompt about first jobs.
Background
I wanted to show someone who wasn’t so young entering the workforce for the same time.
Before Days
I particularly wanted to pay tribute to my maternal grandmother. She had only worked outside of the home for a few years, and that was all during the Second World War, as a part of the war effort.
Yes, my grandmother was a kind of Rosie the Riveter type (she worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard).
Enter Mary Reed.
Plot
We Can Do It poster for Westinghouse, closely associated with Rosie the Riveter, although not a depiction of the cultural icon itself. Pictured Geraldine Doyle (1924-2010), at age 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I figured Mary would be as driven to help out during the Earth-Romulan War as my own grandmother had been during World War II.
But Mary seemed to not be as strong as my part-Polish grandmother, so it would be more of an intellectual pursuit. Furthermore, this is the future of Star Trek, and so brute force or assembly lines would not be in the cards.
I recalled a character I had created while writing two pieces for Dispatches from the Romulan War – pop singer Kurt Fong. I hit upon the idea of Fong needing a new person to help open his mail and respond to it, and so I was able to attach Mary and her diplomatic skills to this project. It would be a fun job for her, but also a challenge. She would be reminded, as others wrote to Fong, that Malcolm could be injured or killed at any time, too. Her boss, Ehigha Ejiogu, would be a Nigerian man young enough to be her son. Her coworker, the Tellarite Cympia Triff, would have an impressive beard.
Sharp-eyed readers will recall that Ejiogu and Fong are, in the Mirror Universe, two of Doug‘s kills.
Story Postings
- Gainful on Fanfiction.net
- Gainful on Fictionpad
- In addition, Gainful on Wattpad
- Gainful on Wattpad (second posting)
- Gainful on the G & T Show forums
Rating
The story is Rated K.
Upshot
I really like how this one turned out, and was pleased to write a sequel, The Tribe. As for whether I’ll revisit Mary at work, the question remains up in the air.
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