That Sinking Feeling...
Posted on 30 Jun 2018 @ 4:26pm by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant
1,096 words; about a 5 minute read
Previously on A Far Sun: Road Trip & Discoveries...
The doctor walked along and it did not take too long before they came to a sort of plaza with a big pyramidal structure in the middle with several surrounding smaller buildings. He lead them across and there was a line of people that where slowly moving into the building and he got in line with the rest. As they entered, people made a complex sort of movement with their hands as did he.
Lake was flanking Marisa as she entered, his eyes cutting to her as she performed the genuflection with her hands. He mimicked her arm movements boldly, and tried not to think about it. He followed Marisa into an antechamber of the pyramid.
The line moved slowly but one woman just behind moved toward one of the guards. She whispered something and he in turn nodded to others.
The doctor and the woman he was with where ignored but they had their attention on the rest of the party. "Please step out of line," one said that seemed to have some sort of insignia that was rank of some sort.
Snapping his head towards the authoritative man, who wearing the insignia, Lake replied with a booming, "Pardon me?" He gambled to act as if he belonged there, as if he bloody well owned the pyramid. Authority figures respected other authority figures, Lake wagered. He blustered with a condescending, "May I help you with something?"
The other three of the party the guards hustled out of line amid talk and murmurs from the crowd started up. Finally one shouted, "Subversives! Lock them up!"
"Wait--" Lake said, recoiling his arm from the grasp of the guards. "This--" he said, but he was sputtering, "Wait-- wait--" The guard just grabbed him with a tighter grip and dragged him more forcefully. Lake's mind was spinning; he couldn't comprehend how little control he had over his own body right now. Starfleet officers ventured on away missions all the time. Lake had read about it. Lake had studied it. His patients, his hundreds of patients over his career on the starbase had gone on hundreds of away missions all the time. But his one-- on this one his handle over what was happening to him in this environment was careering dangerously out of control.
When she said, "Energizing," pillars of sparkling light rained down from the overhead. Each glittering abomination against the laws of nature coalesced into members of the away team, rescued from the planet below. "...Oh," Thero said, sounding surprised, "You made it?"
Given the vacant expression in his eyes, and the lumbering manner of his footsteps, Lake ir-Llantrisant attempted to follow the away team off the transporter platform on the humanoid equivalent of auto-pilot. He wasn't consciously aware of who did it, but someone turned him back, and guided him to the central pad on the transporter platform. Lake heard a murmur of discussion and then the melody of the transporter effect, as he was beamed directly to Sickbay.
And now the continuation...
[ON]
Lake ir-Llantrisant's Personal Log, Stardate...
Uh.
Uh.
Uh, Stardate... I don't...
Computer, I have that sinking feeling again. It's like a cloud of dread descending on me. Or maybe it's... it's a weight in my stomach again. Like it's weighing me down, like I'm falling.
Computer... Computer, can you raise the lights to full? ...Now, see? That bulkhead, that puny viewport. I'm on Schofield. I need to remember I'm on Schofield. I need to remember it, and more than that, I need to feel it.
I was-- I was about to take a shower. I was undressing, and I had the sonics on, and then... and then... I remembered. I remembered what it felt like, deep underground, deep under the earth of... It punched me in the stomach like a beginner's boxing class at the Academy. The feeling dropped me to my knees; I was laid out on the deck of the shower.
I had the dream again.
No, not that dream. Ofred has been nowhere to be seen, thank nouhha. It wasn't about Ofred; I wasn't being hunted. I was here, actually. I was in bed aboard Schofield, and there was a terrible wrenching-tearing-crashing noise. The overhead was collapsing down upon me. The sheets of duranium were crunching into scrap and it was all happening in slow motion. I leapt out of bed and I turned to the viewport. My view was blocked. Instead of a field of stars, I saw the gunmetal hull of another starship. There was another starship pressing against the skin of Schofield.
That's when I felt it. That's when I felt that weight in the pit of my stomach like nothing I had ever felt before. Except, no, except I had felt it exactly one time before. I had felt it on Pleione when the security agents dragged me from my away team. I felt it when I was interrogated and I felt it when those dirty aliens bound me in a straightjacket.
I felt the conviction of knowing that I was about to die. That I would die alone, and horribly, and slowly. And that there was nothing I could do about it, but wait for it. Wait for death. My final moments of life fretting about nothing but death.
I bolted out of my bedroom, ran across the living compartment, and out into the corridor. I was halfway to the nearest escape pod by the time I realized the overhead wasn't collapsing. By the time I realized I was awake now, and I had been dreaming before. Even then, I couldn't be sure until I crept back into my quarters, and saw they were completely undamaged.
In my official reports, I told them that I had spoken nonsense to my interrogator to avoid violating the prime directive. If I spoke of witches and goblins and pocket dimensions, it meant I wasn't talking about alien species and warp drive. As much as that was all essentially true, it wasn't intentional. I spoke nonsense to my interrogator, because I wasn't capable of sense. I was gripped in existential terror and incapable of nothing but screaming in fear.
I shouldn't... I shouldn't feel like that anymore. Not now. Not home...ish. I shouldn't feel like that aboard Schofield, should I?
Should I?
Computer, end log
[OFF]
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