What Thoughts at Heart - [New Enterprise]
Oct. 23rd, 2009 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allmhadadhThe street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
And out we troop to see:
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.
My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more;
What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
-A.E. Housman
Down the hall, on Deck 9, their quarters sat apart and empty, and containing what was left behind. In the first were glasses, laying on a nightstand as though the owner would dash back in because he forgot them before going on shift. Harold's glasses. And beside them sat his PADD, still pulling in his work, and a mug with some long-cold coffee left in it. A matching mug lay empty in the middle of the floor, and the rumpled blanket on the bed had a coffee stain.
There was a purple bag, and uniforms hanging neatly in the closet. And Harold's clothes remained; only one casual set had vanished and that was the set he was wearing. Everything else was as though he had never left, and would be back. There wasn't much, really; no lifetime worth of pictures or souvenirs from other worlds. No neat personal knick-knacks to pack away, not much of a living presence left behind. A tricorder sweep would show a lingering trace of something not unlike a transporter signature, though not of any transporter known to man, and a particular radiation that had yet been unclassified and undiscovered.
These were really the only clues left behind in the disappearance of Yeoman Harold Lee, of the USS Enterprise. He had not reported for his shift come the morning after. He was just gone.
Down the hall, not far, were more empty quarters. Meticulously neat, they barely looked lived in. Mostly because their owner had spent much of his time on the ship after Risa sleeping in the back of a Buick Riviera, where he had dreamed of the road, and the car, and some kind of escape. But there can be no doubt he hadn't quite anticipated an escape like the one he got.
If he had, Scotty might have said good-bye.
As it stood, though, the quarters weren't utterly empty. In the desk was an unregistered PADD of older design that had been bought on Risa. There was a toolkit neatly set beside the desk. Crisply kept clothes hung in the closet, and a second pair of polished black boots sat under them. There wasn't much. But he wasn't very old, and wasn't here long enough to gather a lot. His work PADD was missing, and showed nowhere on the ship's network. Ever faithful when it came to duty, but he hadn't reported to the galley in the morning, or Engineering in the afternoon.
As quiet and bare as the quarters were, there was some sign of him left. Carefully stacked and folded were the schematics for the USS Enterprise, Jim Kirk's Enterprise, the 1701 launched in 2245. They were on the desk, and obviously had been handled very gently since received.
Then there was a stack of yellowing paper. On several pages sketches of concepts, ideas, equations, theories. A rough-sketched breakdown of a Buick's chassis. A formula for her gasoline, so she could always have it replicated and never run out. Several day-dreaming sketches of starships, all from his original universe. And a drawing of a beach; not brilliant, but not bad, titled 'Tennessee Beach'.
And finally, there was something else. More yellowed sheets, kept apart and bound in blue ribbon; Perera's Theory and the Aberdeen Solution.
At the bottom of Perera's Theory was Scotty's defiance to a whole universe, dug into the paper like he could impress it into the fabric of life itself: It matters.
And at the bottom of the Aberdeen Solution, a note that had been written when he realized that he couldn't stay here, even though he had not planned to vanish like this. It was addressed very firmly to one man, and one man only. A sort of a parting gift. These papers belonged now to him. A reference to a conversation, that seemed to take place longer ago than it actually had:
My brother,
This was my greatest.
-Scotty
And out we troop to see:
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.
My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more;
What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
-A.E. Housman
Down the hall, on Deck 9, their quarters sat apart and empty, and containing what was left behind. In the first were glasses, laying on a nightstand as though the owner would dash back in because he forgot them before going on shift. Harold's glasses. And beside them sat his PADD, still pulling in his work, and a mug with some long-cold coffee left in it. A matching mug lay empty in the middle of the floor, and the rumpled blanket on the bed had a coffee stain.
There was a purple bag, and uniforms hanging neatly in the closet. And Harold's clothes remained; only one casual set had vanished and that was the set he was wearing. Everything else was as though he had never left, and would be back. There wasn't much, really; no lifetime worth of pictures or souvenirs from other worlds. No neat personal knick-knacks to pack away, not much of a living presence left behind. A tricorder sweep would show a lingering trace of something not unlike a transporter signature, though not of any transporter known to man, and a particular radiation that had yet been unclassified and undiscovered.
These were really the only clues left behind in the disappearance of Yeoman Harold Lee, of the USS Enterprise. He had not reported for his shift come the morning after. He was just gone.
Down the hall, not far, were more empty quarters. Meticulously neat, they barely looked lived in. Mostly because their owner had spent much of his time on the ship after Risa sleeping in the back of a Buick Riviera, where he had dreamed of the road, and the car, and some kind of escape. But there can be no doubt he hadn't quite anticipated an escape like the one he got.
If he had, Scotty might have said good-bye.
As it stood, though, the quarters weren't utterly empty. In the desk was an unregistered PADD of older design that had been bought on Risa. There was a toolkit neatly set beside the desk. Crisply kept clothes hung in the closet, and a second pair of polished black boots sat under them. There wasn't much. But he wasn't very old, and wasn't here long enough to gather a lot. His work PADD was missing, and showed nowhere on the ship's network. Ever faithful when it came to duty, but he hadn't reported to the galley in the morning, or Engineering in the afternoon.
As quiet and bare as the quarters were, there was some sign of him left. Carefully stacked and folded were the schematics for the USS Enterprise, Jim Kirk's Enterprise, the 1701 launched in 2245. They were on the desk, and obviously had been handled very gently since received.
Then there was a stack of yellowing paper. On several pages sketches of concepts, ideas, equations, theories. A rough-sketched breakdown of a Buick's chassis. A formula for her gasoline, so she could always have it replicated and never run out. Several day-dreaming sketches of starships, all from his original universe. And a drawing of a beach; not brilliant, but not bad, titled 'Tennessee Beach'.
And finally, there was something else. More yellowed sheets, kept apart and bound in blue ribbon; Perera's Theory and the Aberdeen Solution.
At the bottom of Perera's Theory was Scotty's defiance to a whole universe, dug into the paper like he could impress it into the fabric of life itself: It matters.
And at the bottom of the Aberdeen Solution, a note that had been written when he realized that he couldn't stay here, even though he had not planned to vanish like this. It was addressed very firmly to one man, and one man only. A sort of a parting gift. These papers belonged now to him. A reference to a conversation, that seemed to take place longer ago than it actually had:
My brother,
This was my greatest.
-Scotty
