The End of the Beginning

Posted on 28 Sep 2014 @ 4:38pm by Commander Andreus Kohl

639 words; about a 3 minute read

Timeline: Early Morning, MD 10



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Andreus Kohl's Personal Log, supplemental entry.

It's starting.

...Or ...No. Maybe it's already happened? Or it's happening now? I suppose it must have started at the beginning. That's where things traditionally start. Feeling like I was failing, like I was lesser than, was how the starting started. Only now, the starting is behind me. The happening is now.

There was a time, I thought I would give any sacrifice to feel this feeling. I thought I would gladly give up my legs, again, to feel competent in my career again. I wanted it so badly, I never thought about what I would want next. I suppose, I didn't totally believe I would ever feel this way. But I do. I do almost feel like I almost know what I'm doing. Bizarre, right?

Allyndra was right. Of course, Allyndra was right. Many of my skills were directly transferrable to the sciences. Starfleet sensors are Starfleet sensors, regardless of if you're pointing them at torn flesh or haunted caves. I know how to manipulate the sensors and interpret the visual and auditory display of information. When I don't understand the underlying meaning, I know what questions to ask until the Computer translates the sensor data into something I can digest.

I designed a routine for myself. Bridge time, lab time, away team time, one-on-one time with the scientists. I use the same principles as my rehabilitation and conditioning program to create a science routine for myself. Repetition breeds familiarity, and the multi-purpose labs sure are starting to feel like home. ...Or home of a kind.

Of course, the people are the job. Stace sets the vision, sets the course for the department. She has been very, very good at giving me precise direction, and it is certainly in my nature to follow precise direction. Well. I suppose it's in my nature to follow direction when I decide it suits my own purposes. Whatever the case may be, I have been spurring the science staff into action and co-ordinating the flow of data into meaningful information back to Stace and the senior staff. I never worried too much about that. That was the part of the job I knew I could do.

I still rely heavily on the specialists. The Petty Officers and the civilians. I probably always will. When I'm actually in the labs, studying something or other for myself, I have to ask a question before each and every step I take. It's exhausting, and it's slow, but scientific discovery was never going to be like triage medicine. I'm a kinetic learner, though. I studied facts and figures at the Academy, and it never added up to much in my brain, but once I do a thing, then I know a thing. I know how to do a thing again.

I haven't invented any brilliant solution to our tribble infestation, nor did I make any discoveries about the mines of Lyshan Three. If I close my eyes and think about it hard, I still can't say for sure, but I probably was the one who cut the wrong wire in that mining control room the other day. I cut the wrong wire an doomed us all to a fiery death at the bottom of a mine.

But I'm serving my duty. I'm one cog in the great machine of Galileo. I spin on my spoke. I don't have to invent a wow or solve a thing. I have to show up every day, and be an assistant department chief. If I'm serving my duty well, the other cogs around me don't have to worry about me. That leaves them free to invent a wow or solve a thing.

It's a start.

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