Isolation Station

Posted on 29 Dec 2015 @ 5:40pm by Commander Andreus Kohl
Edited on 29 Dec 2015 @ 5:42pm

907 words; about a 5 minute read

Circa Episode 9 “Empires”: MD 07


[ON]

Andreus Kohl’s Personal Log, supplemental entry:

It’s been… twelve hours. Huh. Twelve hours since I was escorted to my quarters at phaser-point and locked in my rooms.

I don’t-- I can’t remember the last time I spent twelve hours alone (other than for sleeping). Galileo is a little ship — a tough little ship — and it’s awfully hard to find privacy outside one’s own quarters. The mess and the holodeck are always popular, and everyone thinks they know their very own quiet corners of the ship. A lonely stretch of passageway, or the sweet spot, or that auxiliary deflector room. But every one of those compartments is where someone works, where someone eats. I hear about those quiet corners so much, I have a sneaking suspicion that every one of those quiet corners is someone else’s quiet corner too, you know?

I don’t… I don’t know what to do with myself at this point. (Well, there’s always… No, no, I’m not in the mood). Ever since we surrendered to the natives of this parallel universe —calling themselves the Terran Empire — I was separated from the others and locked in my quarters. They took my phaser, took my tricorder and my combadge. Worse, my escort shot up the companels in my quarters before she locked me in alone. I spent my first hour in solitude trying to repair one of the companels but… honestly, I honestly don’t really know how those work. I spent my second hour in solitude digging up PADDs I’d left scattered around my quarters — in my desk, between sofa cushions, in my bed — but I couldn’t manage to access the communications network, nor the main computer. Either we did too good a job of encrypting the computer or the intruders know their way around our computers systems too well.

I spent the next couple of hours reviewing every document I’d left active on my PADDs before the main computer had been locked down. My first duty is to escape, but my second duty is… well, my duty. I read reports submitted by the science department; I wrote executive summaries; I revised the duty roster. ….But I can’t remember anything I read. …The reports I wrote are nigh-incomprehensible now that I read them back to myself. I couldn’t concentrate on administration. I couldn’t stop thinking about that mirror of Lamar brandishing a phaser on the bridge.

I spent the next couple of hours prying panels off of bulkheads. If I couldn’t get into the main computer, and I couldn’t get into the passageway, I was determined to get into the jefferies tube system. I thought I could reach it through the life support ductwork, but even after I exposed two of the ducts, I couldn’t fit my shoulders in. After working through the night, and seeing what a mess I’d made of my quarters, I tried to sleep for the next couple of hours. I started on the sofa, because I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was going to sleep. Every time I heard a sound, or thought I heard a sound, it would jolt me awake. When that proved non-conducive to sleeping, I moved to the bed, but my worries followed me there. I spent the next couple of hours re-living everything we had been through. Picking and nitpicking at everything I had done wrong — everything I had probably done wrong— that had lead to Galileo traveling to this miserable parallel reality, and falling under the controlling force of this Terran Empire. I didn’t do anything about their intrudulation. I just… I surrendered. No… I suppose the Captain surrendered, and I was just following his orders? I heard-- I heard some of the crew fought back. Is it a court martial offense to fight back when the Captain has surrendered? Or is it a court martial offense to simply give in?

When those thoughts started to scare me, to lead me into darkness, I went back to my PADDs. I tried immersing my thoughts into the Trill novel I had been reading. In the first chapters, I thought it was a murder mystery about an unjoined detective and his handsome joined side-kick, but it was turning into a bit of an unexpected bodice ripper. …Normally, I might enjoy that genre, but I couldn't visualize what I was reading. I couldn't make sense of the artistic intent. I still couldn’t concentrate on any one thing. It’s like there were gears spinning in my subconscious. I was only dimly aware of what those gears were made from, and what they were trying to turn, but the mental effort of all that spinning was taking it’s toll on me. I wish I knew what I was thinking beneath the crystal surface of my conscious thoughts.

That’s… about when I started talking to myself. As you can hear, I’m literally talking to myself now. …So, I might as well talk to a PADD, right? (Hello, little PADD. Maybe you’ll start talking back. Hello? Are you there? Talk back!) I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know what to say.

Except… there’s always…

End log.


[OFF]

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