Having not written anything for some time now (and nothing in englisch AT ALL - so please be gentle!), I was inspired and supported by Count Zero to do some trek fan fiction.
So without further ado, here is my first little story (revised also by Count Zero - so blame her for any mistakes
)
Vastness
She was even bigger than he had imagined. Through the small window of the shuttle he could only see part of the hull, but there she was right in front of him: The USS Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation. Of course everybody knew her, everybody at the academy studied her. He knew all the schematics by heart - floor by floor. But he had never thought about how impressive she would look like in reality.
If he wanted to, he could have seen her earlier, but during flight he only had eyes for the stars. He was fascinated by them, fascinated by space itself. It was not his first trip into space but he wanted to treasure every moment of it. He thought this moment to be kind of poetic. On one side the Enterprise, waiting for him in deep space. And then him: studying, learning for years, longing for this one moment, when he would finally set foot on her. For him it was like two long distant lovers, meeting for the first time, knowing each other only via subspace communication and then going out for a long, endless dance.
Yes, the Enterprise knew him. In a way. All the personnel files and psychological evalutations of the academy's cadets were stored in her memory banks. Perhaps she knew him even better than he did.
Under normal circumstances he never would have seen the ship from the outside, but the transporter systems had malfunctioned and so he and two other cadets were flewn in by shuttle.
Transporter Chief O'Brien promised that all systems would be operational in a day or two. But by then the Enterprise was already scheduled to be lightyears away.
The damage wasn't that severe, nothing that a skilled technician like O'Brien couldn't handle. Luckily no one had died or been hurt. Only some plants got destroyed while they were beamed up during an expedition to Milura VII. The safety protocols in Starfleet were very strict and very effective. After all, beaming still was the safest way of travelling.
O'Brien was a name the cadet memorised first of all when he read the duty roster of the Enterprise. With him he had to make friends.
Only a few more minutes. Then he would be an official member of the crew. But not for a long time. Of course he was aware of that. He only was a cadet on training assignment aboard the Enterprise. Every cadet in his class was chosen to serve on a starship for two weeks. The choice was based on personality, skill, knowledge and the grades of each cadet. And he was chosen to be on the Enterprise. That was what he had wanted from the beginning. All his efforts in the academy were pointed to this. During all his studies he had thought about nothing else. He had also worked on possible problems with his personality. Faking to appear like a motivated and a career-minded student wasn't difficult for him. He thought of himself as quite a good actor, although he was thrown out of a school play once. But playing on stage in theatre and playing to real people on the stage of life are very different things.
He thought about his father, who hadn't believed in him. All of his life he got lectured about how useless he was, how there was no way in the universe he would make something of himself. Ha! He had shown him! Was his father proud of him, now that he had proven that he could achieve everything he set his mind to? He wouldn't know, he broke off contact years ago, left home, travelled around until he decided to enter the academy. He had always loved the view of the stars at night, the sheer endlessness of space. He had felt that space was calling out to him. He could never understand how it could be so unbelievably big and beautiful. And that was when he decided to go out there and find out. He hoped space would be kind enough to take him in.
His grades in school weren't bad, but just good enough to get accepted at the academy. When he was asked what could be expected of him, he said, "I will make sure that, in only a few years from now, you will remember my name". And he had meant it. He had a whole plan layed out to achieve just that.
Finally the shuttle landed with the distinct sound of metal banging on metal. The sound went through the hull of the small shuttle and everyone on board felt a slight vibration. Then the hatch opened.
They grabbed their bags and he went out first in line. Curiously the three cadets entered the shuttle bay. He had no interest in the other two - a boy and a girl. He hadn't talked to them and didn't knew their names. They weren't essential to his plans. He didn't need them. When the officer on the other side, one William Riker, greeted all three of them by name, he forgot theirs instantly after a few seconds.
They stood in a perfect line before the Commander and put their bags beside them, eyes front. So they had learned at the academy and if they had made something wrong Riker would have noticed and said something, perhaps even punished them with a boring chore.
The Commander introduced himself as their liaison officer for the next two weeks. Whenever they needed something or had questions they should come to him. The cadet was reminded of his former girlfriend. She also once said the he could come to her whenever he had a problem. But when he was about to decide whether to leave home because of his issues with his father, she wouldn't even answer his calls. Eventually he got her to talk to him after he waited outside her house for two hours and all she said was, "I just don't love you anymore". She shrugged, turned around and went back inside. That was everything she had to say, that was her summary of nearly two years!
She had been his first girlfriend. He had loved her. Now he wasn't sure of that anymore. Perhaps he had wanted to love her and hoped that this feeling would come to him one day. Nonetheless, he had been crushed. He couldn't cope with loss. He had cried for a week and barely ate anything. After that he had packed his things and left home.
The Commander held up three computer padds he had held in his hand the whole time and waved them in front of them. "Here I have your first assignments. Each one of you will start on a different post on the ship. After every four days you switch places and the last two days will be bridge duty, where each of you will take a shift. I want you three to work together on the duty plan for the whole bridge personnel for these two days. I expect it to be finished at the end of the day." Working together? The cadet had better things to do. If necessary, he would work out the plan all by himself and hand it in in the name of all three of them. He knew that he could do it better and faster than they would and he counted on them being thankful for someone taking over the whole task.
Again the Commander waved the three padds. "Now, let's have a look at your posts. In a moment I will assign you to: engineering, transporter room and stellar cartography. Although it may not be in your field of interest or speciality, you should learn as much as you can about other..."
The cadet was bored by his talking. He had heard enough. Excited, he said, "Oh! Transporter room. That's me!". He didn't think. This small outbreak could have ruined everything. But it didn't. Although Commander Riker wasn't apparently pleased he said, smiling, "Ah, eager to get to your post, aren't you? I like that. Reminds me of myself when I was your age. Here you go." and he handed him the padd with the transporter room assignment. "But don't interrupt me again!" he added and stopped smiling.
He also handed out the remaining padds to the other two cadets. They weren't as excited about their job for the next four days. Or perhaps they frowned upon his exaggerated enthusiasm.
They had to find their quarters by themselves as the Commander was needed somewhere else. That was no problem for the cadet. He knew every corner of the ship as if he had designed it himself. He saw the other two heading for the nearest computer panel, no doubt asking for a way. He didn't want to wait and went straight ahead to the turbo lift. "Deck 17," he said. For just about a second he could see the puzzled faces of the other two he left behind. Then the doors of the lift closed.
He knew that he shared a room with the boy, with the girl in the room next to them. Standard quarters for two cadets. The girl would have her quarter all to herself.
The two would find their way. He was sure of it. The computer system of the Enterprise was the most modern and the most intuitive in the whole of Starfleet. And only three minutes after he had arrived and unpacked his clothes into a small locker, they also came through the door. They ignored him. Everybody always did. He was only popular with his professors. They were the ones he had to impress.
"Our first shift starts in about 45 minutes. Wanna grab something to eat?" the girl asked. She was turning to the other boy, the cadet obviously was not invited. "Yeah, sure." the boy said and they left. He heard the door to the room to the left open and the girl apparently threw her bag on one of the bunks. Then they continued their way to the mess hall. "Manipulative little beast," he thought, "showing him her quarters like that. I give it a day or two and they will be sharing her bed". Although he despised the mating rituals of young people, he didn't really care.
The cadet took a padd out of his bag and began typing in some short notes. It was his own padd. He always had it with him. It was his diary and his notepad where he wrote down everything he thought to be noteworthy.
O'Brien was one of the persons he wanted to make a good impression on, so he put back the padd and went off to the transporter room to start his shift early.
Chief O'Brien introduced himself as "Miles Edward O'Brien". "But only my wife calls me by that full name." he said. "And only if she's angry with me." he added smiling. "You just call me Chief O'Brien". The cadet didn't like many people in the world but O'Brien was someone he liked immediately. He pitied the universe for not having more people like him around.
"Today we can't do much around here, as the computer is still running a diagnosis of the phase transition coil due to the problems on our last mission. Surely you heard of it. That's why you were brought aboard by shuttle." O'Brien seemd frustrated that he hadn't found the reason for the malfunction yet. "It is a very peculiar problem, as beaming off the ship works. But the patterns of incoming objects are being distorted. Any guesses?"
As the cadet was eager to learn about the Enterprise's transporter as fast as he could, he was glad that it worked in one direction. He had an idea or two about the malfunction, but O'Brien had already checked that. And so they waited for the computer to finish the diagnosis. Meanwhile O'Brien showed him every control, computer system and safety feature.
***
A few hours later Lieutenant Commander Data reported back to Commander Riker. He was assigned to investigate a strange accident which had happend in transporter room 2. As Commander Data specialised in solving mysteries, he was the perfect choice over ship security to find out more about the circumstances. With his positronic brain he was sure to store and process every little detail he could find.
"So, it was an accident, Mr. Data?" Riker asked. "No, Sir. I have come to the conclusion that it was suicide." Data replied. Riker lifted his eyebrows. "He waited exactly until Mr. O'Brien left the room to get something to eat. Then he turned off the security circuits and beamed himself directly into space, as far away from the Enterprise as possible. 39987 kilometres, to be exact. Security logs confirm that. Mr. O'Brien is now with counselor Troi if you want to talk to him." - "Not at the moment, Mr. Data." - "I looked through the boy's belongings and I found his diary. I downloaded it into the ship's computer, so that you can read it yourself." Commander Riker opened the diary file on his computer and read a few passages. "He was apparently a very sad boy. He had no friends and lived an ordinary life until he entered Starfleet." he said. Data replied, "Yes, sir. From that moment on, he suddenly became this extraordinary young cadet who rushed through the academy with ease. It seems that he misled everybody. Nobody noticed that there was something wrong with him and everybody talks very highly of him.
Taking all this into account, I have furthermore come to the conclusion that the boy planned his suicide years ago. Some of his entries in his diary point in that direction: He wanted to beam out into space and he wanted to do this on the Enterprise. I don't understand it, Sir."
Riker's mouth stood open. He also couldn't believe that someone would go through all this trouble just to kill himself. Data showed no surprise or any other emotion. He said, "It looks like he wanted to end his life in a highly spectacular way. No other explanation is possible. From what I read in the diary this could have been his intention all along.
Samantha Higgins and Peter Harford, his two collegues who came onboard with the boy this morning, have found and read the diary, too, before I got to search the room. I talked to them. As they knew him from the academy they came to the same conclusion as I did. This story will spread among the crew in very short time.“
Riker nodded. He agreed with Datas theory. "He was an ordinary boy no one knew. Now no one will forget him." For him the case was closed. He dismissed Data. As the Lieutenant Commander turned to leave the room he paused for a moment and said, "Sir, there is something else I don't understand" - "What is it, Mr. Data?" - "There is one short note in the diary, one last entry". Data went to Commander Riker's computer screen on the wall and typed in some commands. The diary appeared again and scrolled towards the end. A short sentence could be seen in the centre of the screen: "Love doesn't exist".
So without further ado, here is my first little story (revised also by Count Zero - so blame her for any mistakes
)Vastness
She was even bigger than he had imagined. Through the small window of the shuttle he could only see part of the hull, but there she was right in front of him: The USS Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation. Of course everybody knew her, everybody at the academy studied her. He knew all the schematics by heart - floor by floor. But he had never thought about how impressive she would look like in reality.
If he wanted to, he could have seen her earlier, but during flight he only had eyes for the stars. He was fascinated by them, fascinated by space itself. It was not his first trip into space but he wanted to treasure every moment of it. He thought this moment to be kind of poetic. On one side the Enterprise, waiting for him in deep space. And then him: studying, learning for years, longing for this one moment, when he would finally set foot on her. For him it was like two long distant lovers, meeting for the first time, knowing each other only via subspace communication and then going out for a long, endless dance.
Yes, the Enterprise knew him. In a way. All the personnel files and psychological evalutations of the academy's cadets were stored in her memory banks. Perhaps she knew him even better than he did.
Under normal circumstances he never would have seen the ship from the outside, but the transporter systems had malfunctioned and so he and two other cadets were flewn in by shuttle.
Transporter Chief O'Brien promised that all systems would be operational in a day or two. But by then the Enterprise was already scheduled to be lightyears away.
The damage wasn't that severe, nothing that a skilled technician like O'Brien couldn't handle. Luckily no one had died or been hurt. Only some plants got destroyed while they were beamed up during an expedition to Milura VII. The safety protocols in Starfleet were very strict and very effective. After all, beaming still was the safest way of travelling.
O'Brien was a name the cadet memorised first of all when he read the duty roster of the Enterprise. With him he had to make friends.
Only a few more minutes. Then he would be an official member of the crew. But not for a long time. Of course he was aware of that. He only was a cadet on training assignment aboard the Enterprise. Every cadet in his class was chosen to serve on a starship for two weeks. The choice was based on personality, skill, knowledge and the grades of each cadet. And he was chosen to be on the Enterprise. That was what he had wanted from the beginning. All his efforts in the academy were pointed to this. During all his studies he had thought about nothing else. He had also worked on possible problems with his personality. Faking to appear like a motivated and a career-minded student wasn't difficult for him. He thought of himself as quite a good actor, although he was thrown out of a school play once. But playing on stage in theatre and playing to real people on the stage of life are very different things.
He thought about his father, who hadn't believed in him. All of his life he got lectured about how useless he was, how there was no way in the universe he would make something of himself. Ha! He had shown him! Was his father proud of him, now that he had proven that he could achieve everything he set his mind to? He wouldn't know, he broke off contact years ago, left home, travelled around until he decided to enter the academy. He had always loved the view of the stars at night, the sheer endlessness of space. He had felt that space was calling out to him. He could never understand how it could be so unbelievably big and beautiful. And that was when he decided to go out there and find out. He hoped space would be kind enough to take him in.
His grades in school weren't bad, but just good enough to get accepted at the academy. When he was asked what could be expected of him, he said, "I will make sure that, in only a few years from now, you will remember my name". And he had meant it. He had a whole plan layed out to achieve just that.
Finally the shuttle landed with the distinct sound of metal banging on metal. The sound went through the hull of the small shuttle and everyone on board felt a slight vibration. Then the hatch opened.
They grabbed their bags and he went out first in line. Curiously the three cadets entered the shuttle bay. He had no interest in the other two - a boy and a girl. He hadn't talked to them and didn't knew their names. They weren't essential to his plans. He didn't need them. When the officer on the other side, one William Riker, greeted all three of them by name, he forgot theirs instantly after a few seconds.
They stood in a perfect line before the Commander and put their bags beside them, eyes front. So they had learned at the academy and if they had made something wrong Riker would have noticed and said something, perhaps even punished them with a boring chore.
The Commander introduced himself as their liaison officer for the next two weeks. Whenever they needed something or had questions they should come to him. The cadet was reminded of his former girlfriend. She also once said the he could come to her whenever he had a problem. But when he was about to decide whether to leave home because of his issues with his father, she wouldn't even answer his calls. Eventually he got her to talk to him after he waited outside her house for two hours and all she said was, "I just don't love you anymore". She shrugged, turned around and went back inside. That was everything she had to say, that was her summary of nearly two years!
She had been his first girlfriend. He had loved her. Now he wasn't sure of that anymore. Perhaps he had wanted to love her and hoped that this feeling would come to him one day. Nonetheless, he had been crushed. He couldn't cope with loss. He had cried for a week and barely ate anything. After that he had packed his things and left home.
The Commander held up three computer padds he had held in his hand the whole time and waved them in front of them. "Here I have your first assignments. Each one of you will start on a different post on the ship. After every four days you switch places and the last two days will be bridge duty, where each of you will take a shift. I want you three to work together on the duty plan for the whole bridge personnel for these two days. I expect it to be finished at the end of the day." Working together? The cadet had better things to do. If necessary, he would work out the plan all by himself and hand it in in the name of all three of them. He knew that he could do it better and faster than they would and he counted on them being thankful for someone taking over the whole task.
Again the Commander waved the three padds. "Now, let's have a look at your posts. In a moment I will assign you to: engineering, transporter room and stellar cartography. Although it may not be in your field of interest or speciality, you should learn as much as you can about other..."
The cadet was bored by his talking. He had heard enough. Excited, he said, "Oh! Transporter room. That's me!". He didn't think. This small outbreak could have ruined everything. But it didn't. Although Commander Riker wasn't apparently pleased he said, smiling, "Ah, eager to get to your post, aren't you? I like that. Reminds me of myself when I was your age. Here you go." and he handed him the padd with the transporter room assignment. "But don't interrupt me again!" he added and stopped smiling.
He also handed out the remaining padds to the other two cadets. They weren't as excited about their job for the next four days. Or perhaps they frowned upon his exaggerated enthusiasm.
They had to find their quarters by themselves as the Commander was needed somewhere else. That was no problem for the cadet. He knew every corner of the ship as if he had designed it himself. He saw the other two heading for the nearest computer panel, no doubt asking for a way. He didn't want to wait and went straight ahead to the turbo lift. "Deck 17," he said. For just about a second he could see the puzzled faces of the other two he left behind. Then the doors of the lift closed.
He knew that he shared a room with the boy, with the girl in the room next to them. Standard quarters for two cadets. The girl would have her quarter all to herself.
The two would find their way. He was sure of it. The computer system of the Enterprise was the most modern and the most intuitive in the whole of Starfleet. And only three minutes after he had arrived and unpacked his clothes into a small locker, they also came through the door. They ignored him. Everybody always did. He was only popular with his professors. They were the ones he had to impress.
"Our first shift starts in about 45 minutes. Wanna grab something to eat?" the girl asked. She was turning to the other boy, the cadet obviously was not invited. "Yeah, sure." the boy said and they left. He heard the door to the room to the left open and the girl apparently threw her bag on one of the bunks. Then they continued their way to the mess hall. "Manipulative little beast," he thought, "showing him her quarters like that. I give it a day or two and they will be sharing her bed". Although he despised the mating rituals of young people, he didn't really care.
The cadet took a padd out of his bag and began typing in some short notes. It was his own padd. He always had it with him. It was his diary and his notepad where he wrote down everything he thought to be noteworthy.
O'Brien was one of the persons he wanted to make a good impression on, so he put back the padd and went off to the transporter room to start his shift early.
Chief O'Brien introduced himself as "Miles Edward O'Brien". "But only my wife calls me by that full name." he said. "And only if she's angry with me." he added smiling. "You just call me Chief O'Brien". The cadet didn't like many people in the world but O'Brien was someone he liked immediately. He pitied the universe for not having more people like him around.
"Today we can't do much around here, as the computer is still running a diagnosis of the phase transition coil due to the problems on our last mission. Surely you heard of it. That's why you were brought aboard by shuttle." O'Brien seemd frustrated that he hadn't found the reason for the malfunction yet. "It is a very peculiar problem, as beaming off the ship works. But the patterns of incoming objects are being distorted. Any guesses?"
As the cadet was eager to learn about the Enterprise's transporter as fast as he could, he was glad that it worked in one direction. He had an idea or two about the malfunction, but O'Brien had already checked that. And so they waited for the computer to finish the diagnosis. Meanwhile O'Brien showed him every control, computer system and safety feature.
***
A few hours later Lieutenant Commander Data reported back to Commander Riker. He was assigned to investigate a strange accident which had happend in transporter room 2. As Commander Data specialised in solving mysteries, he was the perfect choice over ship security to find out more about the circumstances. With his positronic brain he was sure to store and process every little detail he could find.
"So, it was an accident, Mr. Data?" Riker asked. "No, Sir. I have come to the conclusion that it was suicide." Data replied. Riker lifted his eyebrows. "He waited exactly until Mr. O'Brien left the room to get something to eat. Then he turned off the security circuits and beamed himself directly into space, as far away from the Enterprise as possible. 39987 kilometres, to be exact. Security logs confirm that. Mr. O'Brien is now with counselor Troi if you want to talk to him." - "Not at the moment, Mr. Data." - "I looked through the boy's belongings and I found his diary. I downloaded it into the ship's computer, so that you can read it yourself." Commander Riker opened the diary file on his computer and read a few passages. "He was apparently a very sad boy. He had no friends and lived an ordinary life until he entered Starfleet." he said. Data replied, "Yes, sir. From that moment on, he suddenly became this extraordinary young cadet who rushed through the academy with ease. It seems that he misled everybody. Nobody noticed that there was something wrong with him and everybody talks very highly of him.
Taking all this into account, I have furthermore come to the conclusion that the boy planned his suicide years ago. Some of his entries in his diary point in that direction: He wanted to beam out into space and he wanted to do this on the Enterprise. I don't understand it, Sir."
Riker's mouth stood open. He also couldn't believe that someone would go through all this trouble just to kill himself. Data showed no surprise or any other emotion. He said, "It looks like he wanted to end his life in a highly spectacular way. No other explanation is possible. From what I read in the diary this could have been his intention all along.
Samantha Higgins and Peter Harford, his two collegues who came onboard with the boy this morning, have found and read the diary, too, before I got to search the room. I talked to them. As they knew him from the academy they came to the same conclusion as I did. This story will spread among the crew in very short time.“
Riker nodded. He agreed with Datas theory. "He was an ordinary boy no one knew. Now no one will forget him." For him the case was closed. He dismissed Data. As the Lieutenant Commander turned to leave the room he paused for a moment and said, "Sir, there is something else I don't understand" - "What is it, Mr. Data?" - "There is one short note in the diary, one last entry". Data went to Commander Riker's computer screen on the wall and typed in some commands. The diary appeared again and scrolled towards the end. A short sentence could be seen in the centre of the screen: "Love doesn't exist".
