Never tell the truth when a lie will do.

[Markovnikov]

The engineering bay of the Aristophanes was a jungle of thick cables between large boxes, criss crossing haphazardly over what used to be walkways and crawlspaces, paper notes taped seemingly at random to surfaces, and a colorful decopauge of every kind of Synthcrunch ™ Meal bars stuck on what used to be a tidy floor.

Monday tread warily with the knowledge that an errant step could as easily end with unplugging a critical system resulting in a regrettably premature death by radiation exposure from destabilized containment fields, as having a half-eaten Synthbar stuck to the treads of his boots - to be tracked about the ship should he be unaware. The byzantine layout of equipment and systems clearly not designed with a small civilian gunboat chassis in mind simultaneously amazed and troubled him. One errant burst could potentially trigger some explosive chain reaction, or worse, kill the one person in the entire universe that could put the ship back together.

"Constance, are you in here?" Monday yelled, trying to be heard over the deafening grey noise of a symphony of coil whine, steam venting, and hydraulics whirring.
"Mimi's Diner gave us some additional equipment that needs fitting - and the rest of us refuse to loosen even a single screw until you've had a look"

A crawlspace behind what looked like the main bandpass filter array for the ship scanner transciever rattled - a bag of tools floated out of the manifold, drifting slowly until the magnetic feet locked on to an access panel of the main reactor subcontrol. Constance followed through, her face covered in some sort of carbonized soot, and a half-eaten Synthcrunch bar in hand. Her small figure made the claustrophobic crawlspace look almost spacious - as she floated gracefully out.

"Ingrid also requested that I tell you to be more careful with your wrappers - enough of them are sticky enough that they don't come off during our daily airblast cleaning, and one detached during a coolant test and got stuck in a processor heat sink." Trying not to come across as nagging, Monday could see Constance deliberately going for another bite.
"I know we've had to eat way more paste than we would like - but junkfood is a privilege that I will have to rethink if this becomes a problem."

Constance's eyes widened. She popped the rest of the bar into her mouth and stuck the wrapper into her pocket - nodding reasurringly as if to say that her newfound addiction would not in fact become a problem. She swallowed for a moment, and bowed her head apologetically.
"I will be more considerate in the future."

Monday was taken aback by Constance's uncharacteristic verbosity - he expected a insincere perfunctory apology of maybe one to three words.
"The matter is resolved then - let's install the new equipment." He handed her a pad containing a manifest of gear.

Constance shook her head repeatedly as she looked it over - it didn't seem promising.
"I can't."

"Why not? Is it a question of power capacity? Cargo space? Control CPU utilization?"

She mulled it over for a few long minutes before settling on an answer.
"Floor space. I'd have to remanage the cables."

Monday blinked. The job would be a huge hassle, though possible. The stick rarely worked on Constance, which left only the carrot.
"If you can have this done before we reach Dublin, I will personally take you and the rest of the crew on shore leave in New London, and you can pick a weeks supply of snacks for yourself."

Constance perked up.
"Deal."