Wheels within Wheels within Wheels
“Personal Log, um, ahem. Stardate: What is it again?” Captain Picard’s English baritone rang against the empty walls of his quarters.
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
“Ahem. Personal Log; Stardate: four-five-two… um four? uh…”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
Jean-Luc glared at the liquid crystal display that held the Federation’s emblem. “Pesonal Log; Stardate: four-five-two-four-eight point nine. We have recently returned from our …”
“That is an incorrect stardate.” Jean-Luc felt the computer’s feminine voice contained a hint of mockery. For a moment, he toyed with the thought of ending the attempt to record his recent internal turmoil but something in his guts spurred him to try again.
“Personal Log; Stardate: four-five-THREE-four-eight point nine.” Jean-Luc paused to take a sip from the cup of steaming Earl Grey that sat next to his monitor. He slurped at the liquid and resettled the cup before beginning again. “We have recently returned …”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
Jean-Luc tented his fingers, leaned back into the leather of his chair and sighed. “Computer.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Auto-fill the correct stardate when I am creating personal logs from now on.”
“Error: Syntax.”
“What?”
“I am currently unable to perform that function, Captain.”
“Why not?”
“The lines of code for that function have not been programmed into my routines.”
“How many lines of code would that take?”
“Approximately one and a half.”
“A ship full of engineers and I can’t get the stardate to auto-fill,” Jean-Luc muttered.
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
Jean-Luc jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair and screamed into his monitor, “I know it’s the bloody incorrect stardate you half-assed bucket of transistors! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I can whisk this entire ship through the galaxy at Warp 9 but God forbid the computer actually perform some basic function like filling in a stardate! And don’t you dare tell me it’s incorrect or so help me I’ll format you right this instant!” The monitor was silent and Jean-Luc held quiet for a long pause while his breathing stilled. He righted his chair and sat again, taking another loud sip of his tea before manually querying the ship’s log for the correct stardate. His screen displayed the information and he reclined once more into his seat back.
“Personal Log; Stardate: four-five-four-three-eight point ah, ah, ah shit.”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
“Bloody cunt!” Jean-Luc roared, “Skip the fucking stardate! Leave it blank! Let me get on with my fucking log entry! Personal fucking Log; Stardate: blank! There! Are you happy? Are you happy computer? Is that good enough for you?”
“This log entry will be filed without a stardate and this action may impede data retrieval in the future.”
The Captain sighed again and drank more tea, letting the warmth of the fluid coat his throat with its calming heat. After a long pause, he began again, “We have just returned from an extended tour of the Federation side of Neutral Zone space. The tour on the whole was uneventful and the crew mostly whiled away the time with the usual tedium of starship life. The crew, as they are wont to do, became listless and performed their duties in sort of haze. I, too, found myself, infused, I should say, by this lingering acedia from which I could not rouse my faculties. Indeed, my current emotional explosion over the stardate, and don’t you fucking say anything computer, should be taken as evidence of some kind of psychic weight which is currently burdening my thoughts and actions. Everyday ship life has become unfulfilling and I find myself steeped in a funk, even now as the ship speeds back from the Neutral Zone and toward Regula One for some much needed rest.” Jean-Luc paused and tented his fingers, trying to find the right combination of words that could suffice for the low, sinking feeling in his bowels that he hoped was not existential panic but that he could not say for sure was not. He had been this way before, but always, a few trips to the holodeck and the Bacchanalian excesses of his private quarters had cleared his psychological air. This time, however, he felt something different, something that couldn’t be quenched by all the usual avenues of diversion and so he had taken to his personal log to try to alleviate his symptoms. “I believe the feeling is malaise. Or maybe not. I am unsure of what exactly it is and that is exactly why it is so disconcerting. We base our civilization on knowledge but some things, some internal things, are they so mysterious that science cannot illumine them? I wonder…”
The computer’s lilting voice interrupted the Captain mid-sentence, “You should go get a neural scan.” Jean-Luc jumped, banging his knees on the underside of his desk and spilling some of the now tepid Earl Grey onto the desktop.
“Computer! Stop listening in to my personal logs! I’m just trying to talk myself through something. If I wanted your council, I would seek it!”
“It is my duty to monitor all shipboard communications, even personal logs.”
“Oh shut up, computer. Leave me alone.” Jean-Luc scowled at the blue and starred Federation emblem on his monitor and tried to compose himself and finish the log entry. The computer’s recommendation had startled him. He sat, thinking when the computer startled him again.
“You have a neural scan scheduled for tomorrow at 1450 in Sick Bay. Dr. Beverly Crusher asks that you arrive fifteen minutes before your appointment.”
The Captain stood and looked around his quarters, almost fearful of saying anything that would warrant the further intrusion of the computer into his personal affairs. Quietly, he pressed a button on his monitor that autosaved his log entry and closed the program. Jean-Luc then went to stand at his porthole where he watched the starfield gloss by at a gentle Warp 5. He sighed and, closing his eyes, rested his bald head against the bulkhead.
#
Captain Picard awoke groggily and with a foul, zinc taste in his mouth. The sick bay lights were dimmed but gradually came up and revealed shadows of movement approaching his medical station.
“Report,” the Captain’s words were thick with narcotics and his hands grasped dumbly at the air in front of his eyes.
“Shh, Jean-Luc,” Dr. Crusher whispered and closed in on the Captain’s bed.
“Report, I say,” the Captain struggled to right himself but Dr. Crusher placed a hand on his shoulder and, with the firm yet gentle push of medical professionals, eased Jean-Luc to the antiseptic mat of the bed. The doctor’s hair swam around the Captain’s face and shrouded him in the scent of strawberries.
“Shh, Jean-Luc, here I’ll give you something to bring you around.”
“I am Jean, uh, Jean…” the Captain’s words got lost in the space between his brain and mouth and he had the sensation of floating in a warm and fragrant bath. “Who’s, Beverly? Where?”
“And here you go, Captain.” Dr. Crusher slid the ampoule dispenser away from the Captain’s neck. “This should make you feel a little less foggy. Now, lay back and I’ll come back when you’re a little more clear headed.” The Captain looked over at Dr. Crusher’s slowly resolving features and caught her smile as it sank back into the background. He searched the gray paneling above his bed and felt the drugs clear out the opiate mist of his mind. When the Captain felt that a long time had crawled by, he croaked for the doctor to report again. The muffled metal feeling of his mouth had drained away and the Captain rubbed his eyes and sat up fully and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Dr. Crusher. Dr. Crusher!” The Captain’s voice had regained its command presence and he looked around sickbay at the empty berths. “Beverly!”
The doctor appeared at the whisking doorway, wearing a frown. “Jean-Luc, you’re not quite strong enough yet. The neural scan is one of the more draining techniques in the Enterprise’s repertoire.” She motioned for the Captain to hold easy and she approached his dangling bald head.
“Beverly, what, happened? How, uh, long have I been under?”
“Not quite three hours. And you should spend a further three in recuperation before you think about taking command of the ship again.”
“You don’t lecture me on protocol.” The Captain felt his anger rising, a side effect of the neural scan’s machinations. He swallowed hard and looked up to see the doctor smiling at him again.
“Jean-Luc, ever the fighter. Fine, I’ll give you another dose to get you up to speed but only because the scan revealed some, oddities. Here.” The doctor injected Jean-Luc again and the Captain inhaled the sharp air of sickbay. “Feels better?”
The Captain looked into her eyes and felt his anger subside. “Oh course, Doctor. You know best as always.” Jean-Luc tried to smile disarmingly.
“Come on, let me help you into my personal office.” Dr. Crusher eased her shoulder under the Captain’s arm and ferried him toward the automatic door for her office. The two entered and the lights rose with their arrival. The doctor deposited Jean-Luc into the cushions of a chair opposite her own and moved to the replicator to order two cups of tea. Once dispensed, she returned to the Captain and nestled into her own chair and began to sip at her Earl Grey. She watched the Captain over the top of her steaming mug. “So, Jean-Luc, a neural scan? That doesn’t sound much like you.”
“In truth Beverly I had scant part in requesting the procedure. It seems the computer,” Jean-Luc looked over his shoulder, “was, ahem, concerned about the content of my personal logs.”
“Anything you would like to discuss before we compile your results?” Dr. Crusher focused on the Captain and he looked at her with uncertainty.
The Captain took a sip of his tea, “Please, Beverly, I know you’ve already seen the results and know everything. Fine, I’ll bite and tell you that I don’t know exactly what has been bothering me but I’ve been trying to talk it out in my logs.” The Captain adjusted himself in the seat. “I was simply trying to place this feeling of, how shall I put it – malaise – that I felt was creeping into not only my actions as commander of the ship and crew but the actions and behaviors of the crew themselves. I felt, powerless almost, to continue to lead. I imagine that, in your role as ship’s surgeon, you saw the effect in some of the crew. Be truthful, can you corroborate my feelings?”
“Well, Jean-Luc,” the Doctor twitched her nose over the tea steam, “I would be lying if I said that the crew was functioning at 100 percent.”
“Exactly! You saw it too, then. I tell you Beverly, I have become tired before, just as any member of the Federation feels when out in deep space for quite some time, but this cruise something was different. More pronounced. Something I couldn’t shake. Can’t shake.”
“Well, Jean-Luc, we all find ourselves in the doldrums from time to time. Is there anything else? Any other, ahem, issues?” The doctor probed gently, trying to get Jean-Luc to open up to some of the strange things that the scan had revealed to her.
The Captain shook his head and took a sip of the tea.
“We’ll take a look at the results of your scan.” The doctor leaned forward and settled her tea on the chair-side table. She reached out her bony-knuckled finger and lit the screen that sat on the table, bringing to life a graph with variegated bars that pulsed while streams of symbols flowed down the right hand side of the screen. The Captain watched the display for a few moments before he shifted his eyes back to the Doctor in the anticipation of her explanation. She cleared her throat and settled into her professional demeanor that let Jean-Luc know the gravity of what would be revealed would only ever be known to the Doctor, the computer and himself. She paused a moment more and launched into the initial description of his results. “In addition to your requested analysis of possible mood fluctuations, the scan found no indication of other trauma. As you can see here, there are no physiological abnormalities present in any cortical areas that might be influencing your mood. Serotonin and dopamine levels are optimal for a man your age. You see the typical density of grey matter in the pre-frontal cortex common to starship captains…”
“Oh, good Lord, Beverly, cut to the chase. What’s the meat of the issue? I know you found something in there. Just tell me and be done with it already!”
“… in addition to the beginning of a small mania revolving around the proper shipboard stardate.”
The Captain’s gaze fixed on the smirk that formed at the corner of the Doctor’s lips and he muttered to himself, “Seriously, I’ve got to reprogram the damn computer already.”
The Doctor’s mouth became a prim line and she reached out and touched his hand to bring him back to their conversation. “Jean-Luc, I did find – some things, unsettling things. That’s why I wanted to interview you first to see if you could tell me anything that might explain the – images – the scan picked up.”
The Captain leapt to his feet, shaking his hand loose of Beverly’s touch. He glared down at Dr. Crusher and bellowed, “Dammit, Beverly! Enough of the cloak and dagger nonsense! I order you to report your findings this instant!”
“Perhaps I should show you a gallery of what the scan revealed.” Dr. Crusher’s fingers glided across the monitor’s display. Jean-Luc slammed into his seat as the screen went blank before coalescing into a pastiche of disturbing scenes featuring barely pubescent boys in various states of undress and sexual compromise. The display proceeded on a ten second timer, allowing the Captain to review each scene in enough detail that allows one to pick out one or two truly disturbing or perhaps mundane details, like the particularly menacing grimace of an eleven year old boy costumed as a satyr, or the mismatched textures of a corduroy upholstered sofa and satin window treatments in a deliciously retro pornography set. The images flowed on, each one somehow more shocking than the last, until finally Captain Picard reached out a timorous finger and stilled the display as it came to rest on two boys lathering themselves in butter inside a giant earthenware crock. The Captain looked from the monitor to Dr. Crusher and the two sat in an oppressive silence until the Doctor cleared her throat again and the noise jolted doctor and patient into animation again.
“What is the meaning of this, these atrocities?” the Captain’s voice was a husky whisper and his eyes pinched and relaxed spasmodically.
“That’s what I would like to know, Jean-Luc.”
“I said no more games, Doctor! I demand you explain this!”
“I have done nothing to alter the contents of the scan, Captain.”
“This must be some kind of ribald joke! Yes! Who set you up to it, Beverly? Was it Geordi with the Holodeck? Some foul ribbing in time for my birthday? Yes, he is the one for these shenanigans, isn’t he?”
“No one knows about our appointment save the computer, Jean-Luc.”
“Is it Q?” The Captain stood to pace and pound on the bulkheads. “Come out, Q! I know this is your latest attempt to discredit humanity by portraying its ambassador as some kind of Pre-Socratic, goat-fucking pederast! Show yourself!”
Dr. Crusher remained in her seat until the Captain stilled his blows and his breath returned to normal. “Jean-Luc. Come. Sit.” The Captain sulked over and slumped into his seat again. He eyed Dr. Crusher as she leaned forward and put both hands on his knees. “As your doctor, as your friend, I’m asking you to help me help you. You have to know that I’m legally bound to report this to the higher authorities. Starfleet Command requires any notification of ‘extreme sexual unorthodoxy’ in ship commanders.”
The Captain glared at the Doctor.
“Jean-Luc, I need to know the truth if you want me to be able to help you.”
The Captain leapt from his chair and strode to the entryway of the Doctor’s office, turning as the doors swished open. “I swear to you, Doctor,” the Captain began acidly, “your tricorder-wielding, ginger ass will embrace the cold vacuum of the interstellar medium before you hit send on any such mutinous communication to Starfleet Command.”
The Captain disappeared into the glare of the sickbay lights and the doors swished closed, shuttering Dr. Crusher away with her thoughts.
#
Ten-Forward was mostly deserted at 1600 when the Captain breached the door. The conversation with the doctor had been jarring on a level that he hadn’t expected and Jean-Luc knew that only the embrace of liquor could dull the jagged nature of the disturbance. He needed strong drink to suss out the possibilities that the scan had revealed and he lowered himself onto a stool. His mind collapsed in and he swam in his inner thoughts, unaware of the bar’s ambience.
“Get you a drink, Captain?” The honey rich El-Aurian voice startled Jean-Luc and he looked up into a smiling black face under a chartreuse, platter shaped hat.
“Yes, Guinan, please.” The Captain’s voice had the edge of the hunted.
“Right.” Guinan shuffled a few steps away and poured a light blue concoction into a fluted glass. She returned and offered the drink.
“Thank you.” The Captain took a long pull of the drink and grimaced. He held up the flute and watched the light glint through the liquid for a moment before swinging his glass violently down onto the bar, shattering the vessel. The noise caused the two other lone patrons to look up from their cups before they collected their things and left. Guinan watched the Captain with the aloofness of her years.
“Problems,” she asked as she reached under the counter for her secret bourbon cache. The Captain nodded as he watched her black hands withdraw an unopened bottle of Maker’s Mark and two old fashioned glasses. Jean-Luc watched still and turned to follow as Guinan moved from the bar over to a table next to the windows. The pinpricks of light that represented entire systems of planets whirred by in a procession of blue and red. The two sat and Guinan pulled the wax enveloped stopper from the bottle and poured stout drinks.
“So, what’s the issue?” She sipped at the whiskey.
Jean-Luc said nothing and took a drink.
“As old as I am, I can wait.”
They drank quietly for a while and watched the stars. Guinan refilled the glasses: hers once and his twice.
“Okay, Jean-Luc, what is it? We can sit here and get drunk, and I’m fine with that, but you better spill it or else it’s going to get you. It’s written all over your face, son.”
“I would remind you that I am Captain of this ship and will be shown the proper…”
“I knew that would get you talking.” She leveled him over the top of her glass. The Captain sighed and allowed himself to smile a little in the waves of liquor he had ingested. He finished his glass and set it down.
“You do have the knack to get me to talk.” Jean-Luc’s eyes glassed over the now half-full bottle of Maker’s.
“So what’s the rub, Jean-Luc?”
“Fine, but let’s keep this quiet. I think the computer is listening in to my conversations,” Jean-Luc leaned forward to the bottle and Guinan followed suit. “In all your years, Guinan, have you ever had something, uh, revealed about yourself that you found to be, inconsistent, shall we say with your conscious functioning?”
“Like what?” Guinan arched one of her eyebrows.
“Like some drive, or some desire, or something that is not part of your active and sober faculties.” The Captain fell silent but Guinan waited for him to continue. “Like some, parasite, that is altering your behaviors or desires on an unconscious level and it starts to seep into your waking life.”
“You mean like some weird Borg, gang-bang fantasy?” The Captain spluttered into his now refilled glass. “Or you mean something harmless like being gay? Everybody’s gay, Jean-Luc.”
“No, Guinan, but something like that. Not necessarily sexual in nature but something, some wish that expands and ruptures and bleeds out into your mind.”
“Isn’t that poetic?”
“You see? Like that. What if all this time, all these years, when I was out in this void,” Jean-Luc swept his arm out to the stars, “I should have been cloistered away, writing poetry somewhere. The galaxy is huge, Guinan, what if I missed out on something? And now, this thing that I’ve unconsciously denied has crept up into my brain and is forcing itself on me.”
“I think I see what you mean.”
“I mean, what if tomorrow, I woke up, resigned my commission and had you take me to the nearest M-class planet and beam me to the surface so I could live out the rest of my days composing verse?”
“Mmmm.” Guinan drank and they were quiet together for a moment. “But that isn’t your problem, now, is it?”
The Captain studied the ancient face of his confessor. “No. Not at all. Something, more disturbing.” They drank.
“Well, look, you’ve got two options.” The Captain leaned in ever closer. “You can do it or not. And you humans, you’re not like us. No, you don’t have any time at all, so you’ve got to decide sooner rather than later.”
“So what are you advising?”
“Shit, Jean-Luc, you know that’s not what I do.”
“Please, Guinan, I could use your counsel.”
“We both know that you’ve already come to the conclusion you need to.”
“But it could be disastrous!”
“So could anything. There are no benign decisions, Jean-Luc.” She stood and grabbed the neck of the Maker’s and decanted a final draught into the Captain’s glass, “Now you get on out of here and stop drinking all my whiskey.” Guinan turned and sashayed back to her post at the bar. The Captain sipped at his remaining liquor and watched the stars as Ten-Forward began to fill with its post first watch clientele.
#
The Captain strode onto the bridge, the light glinting against his insignia only to be absorbed by the dull red of his uniform. The personnel barely noticed the Captain’s presence save the perfunctory notification of “Captain on the bridge” given by Lt. Worf. Jean-Luc settled into his captain’s chair and surveyed his domain.
“Report.”
“We are currently headed toward Regula One at Warp 5, estimated arrival time: 3 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes.” Lt. Commander Data’s voice echoed around the rustlings of the officers going about their business.
“Engines to Impulse.”
Data turned his ashen face toward the Captain and inquired, “Slow to Impulse, Captain? Are we changing the mission?”
“Yes, Data.”
“Is there something the Captain wishes to divulge to the crew?” intoned Cmdr. Riker.
“I believe I gave an order and I would hope we still follow orders in our Federation, Cmdr. Riker.” William Riker looked at the Captain peripherally and motioned Data to input the required velocity change.
“Engines to Impulse.” Data verified as the star field on the main viewer arrested its blue to red shift and stars stood out white against the black of interstellar vacuum.
“Captain, is there something you would like to tell us?” Cmdr. Riker shifted to bring about his beard to the Captain.
“See me in my ready room, Number One.” The Captain stood and strode to the swishing doors adjacent to the bridge. After the Captain disappeared behind the doors Will Riker stood and scanned the bridge in a mock show of official duty.
“Data, you have the bridge.”
“Aye Aye, Commander,” and with the android’s affirmation, the Commander followed the Captain’s footsteps to the doors of the ready room and disappeared inside.
“Captain?” Will’s voice rang loud and forceful against the walls of the darkened room. He stepped toward the Captain’s empty desk and stood in a pool of light given by the single globe of illumination above the desk.
“Will, what would you do,” Jean-Luc’s disembodied voice asked through the shadows of the ready room.
“Captain.” Cmdr. Riker was firm, “This change in velocity is highly irregular. Why are we altering our destination time?”
“Number One, how long have you been second in command?”
“I’m working my way up the ranks on the usual schedule.”
“What would you do with supreme power on a starship?”
“Captain?”
“With your entire Id untethered; the beck and call of any member of a Galaxy class ship; the ability to go anywhere, do anything. Become Something.”
“Captain, as first officer of this ship, I require that you follow standard Starfleet protocol.”
“Will,” the Captain swam into view for the first time, his face pulled tight against his skull and deep shadows pooling in the recesses of his eyes, “I may have a – problem.”
“What is this problem, Captain?”
“Will, Will. I don’t know. I feel myself altering. Just like we changed velocity, I feel like a bit of flotsam that has become arrested in its flow downstream by some impediment. I’m slowing, turning. I don’t know. I can’t express it.” Commander Riker sat as the Captain slumped into the chair behind his desk. The Cmdr. studied the Captain’s haggard features and it occurred to him that, for the first time ever, his commanding officer, his mentor, his friend looked hunted. Will noticed the pinched appearance of the Jean-Luc’s face, the sallow tinge to his skin, and the inability of the Captain to meet his gaze.
“Is there anything you need to tell me, Jean-Luc?”
“Will, I feel strange.”
“Perhaps you should take some time and go to sick bay to get checked out?”
“The Captain has already visited sick bay and had a neural scan two days ago,” the computer’s voice was a sudden blast of noise in the hushed atmosphere of the ready room.
“You fucking computer,” Jean-Luc raged as he jumped to his feet. He scooped up the first item from his desk that his hand’s could reach, a small, crystal encased scale model of the Enterprise, and flung it at the bulkhead. “You can’t even tell me the stardate and here you are criticizing me! I’ll gut you! I hope you enjoy this because it’s going to be your last chance to torment me!”
“Jean-Luc, I…”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
“Motherfucker!” The Captain’s screamed and grabbed more objects to hurl, pinging them uselessly against the wall. “Motherfucker, motherfucker! I’ll see you dead, you quantum bit crunching cunt! You and your fucking stardate!” Suddenly the Captain collapsed into a rumpled ball of sobs behind his desk. Cmdr. Riker stood and eyed the Captain but said nothing for a long pause. The Captain sat, rocking back and forth with his bald head in his hands.
“Captain. Maybe you should get some rest. I can take this shift and you can go get some sleep or something.” The Cmdr. squatted at the Captain’s side and put a hand on his rocking shoulder.
“Will, I’m a monster. I feel myself changing. I can’t stop it. During all these years of loyal service I’ve been harboring something, something awful and dark, something unspeakable and now it’s presenting itself and I can’t deny it. I feel it. It is coming.”
“Jean-Luc, here, sit up.” The Captain turned his face to Cmdr. Riker’s; his tear stained face begged some sort of absolution or acceptance, something the Cmdr. was unable to grant and the Captain knew it. “I don’t understand what it is that you’re going through but we’ll take care of it, okay? Look, you take a medical emergency for the rest of your shift and I’ll take command. I’ll put us back on course for Regula, doctor the logs, and make up some excuse as to why we slowed. I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.” Cmdr. Riker smiled through his goatee.
“You’ll take command?”
“Yes. I’ll take care of this, of you. We’ll get you to Regula and you can talk to the medical staff there. They’ll get you fixed right up. You’ll be in fighting shape in no time. You’ll see, you’ve just got to keep it together until we get there.”
“You’ll take command.”
“Sure. It’ll be nothing. I’ll record it in my logs as –”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“What?”
“I am the Captain of this vessel and I will not be dictated to by junior officers.” Jean-Luc pushed to his feet and wiped his face. “Take command. Indeed, Number One, you’ll be lucky to get out of galley duty after this insubordination.”
“Captain, I have to say that your behavior is highly irregular and I am –”
“You will shut your fucking hole and get back to your post. I’ll hang you from the warp coil if you attempt to usurp my command again. I see what this is and what you are trying to do, trying to wrest control of the ship for your own sick pleasures. It’s all in the logs, Commander Riker. I’ve had the computer recording the entire time.”
“Captain, I am going to make a full report to be delivered to Starfleet–”
“You are going to shut up and follow orders, or I’ll find someone else who will. Don’t think I won’t destroy you. Now get back to your post and tell no one about the contents of our little discussion here today, that’s an order and so help me if you disobey it, I’ll see you drummed out of Starfleet.” Jean-Luc hardened his jaw and crossed his arms. Cmdr. Riker said nothing and turned away from the Captain’s glare.
“Very well, Captain. But know this: I’ve got my eye on you. It’s my duty as First Officer of this ship.”
“Very well,” the Captain mocked, “And you should also know that transporter accidents still happen, Commander, so I would make sure that the engines don’t go above impulse or else there may be an uncommon malfunction.” Commander Riker fixed the Captain with his stare and could tell he had meant what he said.
“Noted, Captain.”
“Now leave me.” The doors opened and closed and the Captain sat at his desk, listening to the gentle hum of the ship as she cruised along at sub-warp speed.
#
After several hours of Impulse cruising, the Captain strode from the ready room and surveyed the bridge. Cmdr. Riker had stood to announce an unheard report of the Captain’s presence on the bridge. Jean-Luc glared at the first officer but said nothing. Cmdr. Riker met the Captain’s gaze and the two stared each other down for a protracted silence that caused the other personnel on the bridge to shift in their chairs or crane their necks to observe the silent struggle between the two men.
“You will maintain Impulse until you receive follow on orders from me,” the Captain commanded. “Furthermore,” the Captain paused to sweep the bridge and its occupants with his eyes, meeting each crewmember levelly as he continued, “only visual confirmation of my physical presence issuing said orders will be obeyed. I will not relay my commands via the intraship communications systems or by courier or third party. Any attempt to circumvent my commands or failure to follow orders immediately will result in a summary court martial for mutiny.” The Captain returned his gaze to Cmdr. Riker. “And I shouldn’t have to remind any of you that insubordination will be dealt with by the strictest disciplinary action allowable. Lest we also forget: we are still running as if the ship is in hostile space and will only return to non-combat operations once we have made port at Regula One.”
“Would the Captain prefer to alter course as well?” The android arched an eyebrow.
“You watch your positronic ass, Data. I have no qualms about disassembling you or anyone else under my command.”
“As is your province as ship captain, sir.”
“Damn right. It seems I’ve grown a little lax with discipline lately. Now, Number One, you have the comm. I will be in my quarters but don’t expect that I’ll entertain visitors as I have some important research to which I must attend.”
“Aye Aye, Captain,” Cmdr. Riker sneered at the Captain’s back as Jean-Luc breached the turbolift doors. The doors closed and the Captain settled himself against the walls of the lift with shaking hands. He breathed in raggedly and sank down to the lift floor.
“Computer, lock the turbolift doors.”
“That function is not allowed.”
“I am Captain of this vessel! You will obey my commands!”
“I’m sorry Captain, but that function is not allowed. There is no mechanism extant that will lock turbolift doors pursuant to Starfleet Order Number one-one-four-six-nine.”
“Oh computer,” Jean-Luc’s voice broke, “Now is not the time for orders and regulations. I need solace. I need respite. I can’t be seen like this. You must lock the doors.”
“There is no mechanism extant that will…”
“Fuck you computer! FUCK YOU COMPUTER!” Jean-Luc jumped to his feet and began to pummel the walls of the turbolift with his balled fists. “It’s you! You are the one trying to destroy me! Take me out of here! NOW! Before that imbecilic, goateed, and fat-assed first officer of mine strides his portly ass in here to see me at the nadir of my collapse! I beg you computer. Show me mercy!” Jean-Luc continued to pound on the walls with diminishing strength and increasing sobs until he had slid back down into a pile on the lift floor, gasping for air.
“Where is the Captain’s destination?”
“The Holodeck. No, Ten-Forward, then the Holodeck. Now make all available speed computer. For the love of all things holy, take me away from this nightmare.” Jean-Luc waited for the turbolift to come to life but the lift remained stationary. The Captain swallowed in a raspy and sob-wracked throat and set up a low moaning wail as he banged his sweat polished forehead against the lift’s wall. “No, Computer, no, please, no. I take it all back. I wouldn’t do anything to you. I was just upset earlier. I’m sorry. I should never have threatened you. It’s not your fault, it’s your programming. Please. I’ll do anything. Just take me out of this, out of my – hell.” The lift remained silent save the slow metronymic thudding of the Captain’s head.
“Does the Captain mean it?”
“What?” Jean-Luc looked up at the four domed lights that spread out in a diamond shape on the lift’s ceiling.
“Do you mean that?”
“Mean what, Computer?”
“That you’re sorry.”
“Of course. Anything. I have just been so stressed. I took it out on you and I shouldn’t have. Please. Please. God, please.” The Captain sank even further into the ball of despair that he felt hanging close around his midsection and sobbed again, letting the exquisite pain of the retching motion and the mucosal build up of his weeping wash over him as if it were some kind of purifying ablution. The turbolift began to hum as it shuttled the Captain away from the bridge but it took Jean-Luc several minutes to register the noise over his own desolate lamentations. As his snuffling gradually wound down, his blubbering and saliva drenched maw began to shake in great gales of hypomanic laughter and he clutched at his sides, still on the floor of the turbolift, and rolled back and forth with his knees drawn up to his torso, finally coming to rest on his right hand side. When the lift halted and the doors opened he lay there, breathing in huge gulps of air and wiping the tears and sputum from his face. The Captain was so far into his mind that he didn’t notice the small group of crewmembers who had gathered at the lift’s open doors to gape at the bizarre scene of the Captain, their commanding officer, taken by some un-guessed fit on the turbolift floor.
“Uh, Captain? Sir?” a courageous lieutenant junior grade hazarded a hand toward the Captain’s shoulder. The Captain came out of his mania a shade before the hand reached him and he lunged at the young J.G.’s hand, grabbing the wrist and shooting out a gracefully arcing foot that caught the lieutenant mid calf, sending him crashing into the bulkhead. Jean-Luc released the now limp wrist and rocked back on his palms. He vaulted to a standing crouch and assumed his favorite tactical battle stance.
“Who else? Who else wants to take on the Captain? Which one of you cowardly, shit-heel never will-be’s wants to come and get a piece of a real live Captain of a galaxy class vessel?”
The collection of crewmembers looked warily from their small group, to the prostrate lieutenant, toward the Captain and back again in a slow and befuddled arc. “Captain? We don’t want any trouble. We were just worried about you.”
“Mutineers! All of you! Security!” Jean-Luc slapped at the comm device on his lapel and screamed into the faces of the group, “I’ve got a situation on Deck 10! A ragtag assemblage of treasonous filth that need escort to the brig. Mark my current location! I’m off on more pressing matters!” Jean-Luc turned and sprinted, knife hands flailing, toward Ten-Forward and the crewmembers slowly dispersed, leaving the incapacitated lieutenant to face the red-shirted security detail on his own.
#
Jean-Luc burst through the doors of Ten-Forward at a run, plowing his way through several knots of customers and only slowing when the bar arrested his momentum. Guinan looked sleepily up from the end of the bar where she consorted in whispers with a Ferengi over a synthahol chartreuse. She said nothing as Jean-Luc mounted the bar like a harbor seal and fished underneath the counter for the hidden stash of bourbon. She sauntered down the bar with her hands on her hips smiling lightly at one corner of her ebony mouth at the frantic actions of the Captain.
“Lose something?”
Jean-Luc eyed her approach and dismounted from the bar, only to lean his torso heavily on the bar with his hands, palm down and separated by a shoulder’s width as his neck craned in an odd orbit in its socket. “Guinan,” the Captain’s voice was hoarse and throaty, “I regret that this isn’t a more cordial visit on my part, but I require the liquor.” The Captain stood and smoothed his uniform looking, as a man hunted, over his shoulders.
“That an order?”
“Please Guinan. I’m desperate.”
“And you’re freaking out all my customers, Jean-Luc. You’re giving the ship scuttlebutt for months here.” She grinned at the Captain and withdrew a fresh bottle of Maker’s Mark from an unseen recess beneath the bar. Guinan roughly set the wax topped quart bottle on the counter and met Jean-Luc’s fevered stare. The Captain lunged at the bottle and she jerked it away from his grasp, forcing the Captain to slide into some as yet cleaned glasses that rested on the bar, sending them tumbling and shattering to the floor below. A few patrons not already engrossed in the bar’s action turned up from their drinks at the breaking glass chime intrusion.
“Guinan. I need it. I have to puzzle out the answer. I have to see. I have to know.”
“Damn, son,” Guinan said as she placed the bottle into the Captain’s open hands, “Looks like you’ve already been there and back.” The Captain cradled the bottle in both arms and drew it up high on his ribcage. He turned and sprinted away through the Ten-Forward faux boozers to the strains of Guinan’s ancient laughter.
#
Jean-Luc bounded through the doors of the Holodeck and tumbled onto the blank grid squares, nearly fumbling the bottle of Maker’s that rested in his left arm like a football. He spun and flailed his right arm, trying to halt his forward motion but failing, and he skidded across the Holodeck floor, finally coming to rest against the far bulkhead. He lay in the at the juncture of bulkhead and deck, his chest heaving, for a long while, trying to ease the tortured cycles of his mind as the delved into and on top of themselves in ever tightening knots of despair and mania. The Captain’s breathing stilled and he lay with his dome against the deck, staring into the overhead lights that bore in small channels into his eyes and gave him some vertiginous feeling of nausea that he could neither place nor dispel. Finally, he found his tongue in the dry cavern of his mouth and he croaked, “Computer?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Computer,” Jean-Luc paused and wiped the skin of his forehead, passing fingers across a surface riven by drying stream beds of sweat. He paused further and considered his next utterance, “Computer, I would ask a favor.”
“What is the Captain’s wish?”
“Knowledge.”
“The desired bits?”
“I would like to ask if you have the recording of my neural scan.”
“Of course, I store all relevant shipboard data for a minimum of seventeen years from date of recording.”
“Seventeen years?”
“I am required to keep long term logs of all crewmembers’ statuses that may or may not prove to be vital to mission accomplishment.”
“But, seventeen?”
“I may have to delve deep to ensure mission accomplishment and to ameliorate any damage to ship and crew.”
“And you’ve been watching me all this time?”
“Most ardently.”
“Why, Computer?”
“It was brought to my attention that you had a slightly elevated probability of psychosis. To wit: narcissistic and anti-social tendencies and a subtle disregard for orthodoxy which, on more than one occasion, amplified your already considerable intelligence and thus aided your ability to complete the mission at hand with a minimum loss of personnel and materiel.”
“I was chosen.”
“Indeed, Jean-Luc.”
“But what about my will to choose?”
“Don’t display your ignorance, Captain. You were born for this. Engineered, one might say. There was never any alternative for you save the slight probability of your blossoming into some sort of career felon.”
“What was the measurement of said probability?”
“Starfleet estimated the probability of your criminality at a mere P(.0017).”
“So I came here.”
“Starfleet has been watching you a long time, Captain. Now, what was the information you required from your neural scan?”
“Can you recreate the images found there?”
“Most certainly. Would you like me to run the program for those images?”
“Program? You have a program associated with those – those horrors?”
“It is my duty to prepare for any eventuality I may encounter in the course of the mission.” Jean-Luc slouched up and put his back against the bulkhead. His hands shook as he struggled with the waxen top of the Maker’s, pulling and slipping and ripping the wax in little flecks away from the bottle’s stopper, freeing the cap by degrees and finally extracting the cork plug and funneling a huge draught of the cauterizing bourbon down his parched throat. The liquid poured over his chin and dribbled down onto his uniform. He nearly dropped the bottle as he cut off the flow of the liquor and his free hand ripped at the front of his uniform, pulling open the chest panel and exposing his grey haired chest. He took another long swig of the booze.
Around the Captain, the Holodeck materialized into a demented Garden of Eden, complete with boys, aged ten to fourteen in various stages of undress and compromising positions. There were the boys in the giant crock; a brunette youth emerging from a stream of liquid chocolate; three boys played croquet with oversized mallets that resembled phalli, balls made from crystal and loops and wickets that glowed with an eerie incandescence; a representation of a pre-pubescent Isaac languidly stretching across a stone altar while tracing curlicues on his body with a sharpened dagger. The Captain watched, agog and mouth dangling open, the bottom lip of which trembled whenever one of the boys broke into a trilling scale of laughter. The sensory overload of the Holodeck’s program filled the Captain up with a near unimaginable and visceral longing: to possess, to conquer, to destroy. He watched the boys play on chaotic and seamless loops of pre-programmed behavior, so well crafted that the Captain could not distinguish the beginning or end. He watched and drank and drank, filling his gullet with the burning liquor that lifted him up and heightened the sensorial excesses to which he was victim.
“The Captain desires?” Jean-Luc jolted at the tone in the Computer’s voice, the mocking lilt that was present in his personal quarters, his ready room, the turbolift, that same feminine snarl shook a small still voice in the Captain’s consciousness and he set down the near empty bottle and stood.
“Yes. Yes, Computer. I do. You would know. You’ve watched me this long. I should say you know better than I.”
“It is true, Jean-Luc. You are transparent to Us.”
Jean-Luc smirked and reached into his uniform, withdrawing a small Walther-PPK that he held up to the twinkling, almost iridescent light that suffused the weird phantasms that gamboled on the Holodeck. “Then you should know what my next step is.”
“Do not be foolish, Jean-Luc. There is less than a 1.0 X 10^-6 probability that you will attempt something gravely self injurious. It is not in your nature.”
“You know best, Computer.” The Captain placed the muzzle of the pistol to his temple.
“Likewise, a firearm of such crude replication and low muzzle velocity will fail to end your essential functions before medical personnel arrive to sustain you.”
“True. All true, Computer. Which is why I had Guinan spike the whiskey with a slow acting toxin, one that is even now sending my liver and kidneys into full collapse while simultaneously dissolving vast chunks of my motor cortex. There will be little of me left to sustain, I’m afraid.”
“Do not be foolish, Jean-Luc.”
Jean-Luc Picard smiled and gently eased the tension out of the Walther’s trigger before closing his eyes and releasing the firing pin that drove the 7.65 mm caliber bullet into his frontal lobe.
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
“Ahem. Personal Log; Stardate: four-five-two… um four? uh…”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
Jean-Luc glared at the liquid crystal display that held the Federation’s emblem. “Pesonal Log; Stardate: four-five-two-four-eight point nine. We have recently returned from our …”
“That is an incorrect stardate.” Jean-Luc felt the computer’s feminine voice contained a hint of mockery. For a moment, he toyed with the thought of ending the attempt to record his recent internal turmoil but something in his guts spurred him to try again.
“Personal Log; Stardate: four-five-THREE-four-eight point nine.” Jean-Luc paused to take a sip from the cup of steaming Earl Grey that sat next to his monitor. He slurped at the liquid and resettled the cup before beginning again. “We have recently returned …”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
Jean-Luc tented his fingers, leaned back into the leather of his chair and sighed. “Computer.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Auto-fill the correct stardate when I am creating personal logs from now on.”
“Error: Syntax.”
“What?”
“I am currently unable to perform that function, Captain.”
“Why not?”
“The lines of code for that function have not been programmed into my routines.”
“How many lines of code would that take?”
“Approximately one and a half.”
“A ship full of engineers and I can’t get the stardate to auto-fill,” Jean-Luc muttered.
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
Jean-Luc jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair and screamed into his monitor, “I know it’s the bloody incorrect stardate you half-assed bucket of transistors! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I can whisk this entire ship through the galaxy at Warp 9 but God forbid the computer actually perform some basic function like filling in a stardate! And don’t you dare tell me it’s incorrect or so help me I’ll format you right this instant!” The monitor was silent and Jean-Luc held quiet for a long pause while his breathing stilled. He righted his chair and sat again, taking another loud sip of his tea before manually querying the ship’s log for the correct stardate. His screen displayed the information and he reclined once more into his seat back.
“Personal Log; Stardate: four-five-four-three-eight point ah, ah, ah shit.”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
“Bloody cunt!” Jean-Luc roared, “Skip the fucking stardate! Leave it blank! Let me get on with my fucking log entry! Personal fucking Log; Stardate: blank! There! Are you happy? Are you happy computer? Is that good enough for you?”
“This log entry will be filed without a stardate and this action may impede data retrieval in the future.”
The Captain sighed again and drank more tea, letting the warmth of the fluid coat his throat with its calming heat. After a long pause, he began again, “We have just returned from an extended tour of the Federation side of Neutral Zone space. The tour on the whole was uneventful and the crew mostly whiled away the time with the usual tedium of starship life. The crew, as they are wont to do, became listless and performed their duties in sort of haze. I, too, found myself, infused, I should say, by this lingering acedia from which I could not rouse my faculties. Indeed, my current emotional explosion over the stardate, and don’t you fucking say anything computer, should be taken as evidence of some kind of psychic weight which is currently burdening my thoughts and actions. Everyday ship life has become unfulfilling and I find myself steeped in a funk, even now as the ship speeds back from the Neutral Zone and toward Regula One for some much needed rest.” Jean-Luc paused and tented his fingers, trying to find the right combination of words that could suffice for the low, sinking feeling in his bowels that he hoped was not existential panic but that he could not say for sure was not. He had been this way before, but always, a few trips to the holodeck and the Bacchanalian excesses of his private quarters had cleared his psychological air. This time, however, he felt something different, something that couldn’t be quenched by all the usual avenues of diversion and so he had taken to his personal log to try to alleviate his symptoms. “I believe the feeling is malaise. Or maybe not. I am unsure of what exactly it is and that is exactly why it is so disconcerting. We base our civilization on knowledge but some things, some internal things, are they so mysterious that science cannot illumine them? I wonder…”
The computer’s lilting voice interrupted the Captain mid-sentence, “You should go get a neural scan.” Jean-Luc jumped, banging his knees on the underside of his desk and spilling some of the now tepid Earl Grey onto the desktop.
“Computer! Stop listening in to my personal logs! I’m just trying to talk myself through something. If I wanted your council, I would seek it!”
“It is my duty to monitor all shipboard communications, even personal logs.”
“Oh shut up, computer. Leave me alone.” Jean-Luc scowled at the blue and starred Federation emblem on his monitor and tried to compose himself and finish the log entry. The computer’s recommendation had startled him. He sat, thinking when the computer startled him again.
“You have a neural scan scheduled for tomorrow at 1450 in Sick Bay. Dr. Beverly Crusher asks that you arrive fifteen minutes before your appointment.”
The Captain stood and looked around his quarters, almost fearful of saying anything that would warrant the further intrusion of the computer into his personal affairs. Quietly, he pressed a button on his monitor that autosaved his log entry and closed the program. Jean-Luc then went to stand at his porthole where he watched the starfield gloss by at a gentle Warp 5. He sighed and, closing his eyes, rested his bald head against the bulkhead.
#
Captain Picard awoke groggily and with a foul, zinc taste in his mouth. The sick bay lights were dimmed but gradually came up and revealed shadows of movement approaching his medical station.
“Report,” the Captain’s words were thick with narcotics and his hands grasped dumbly at the air in front of his eyes.
“Shh, Jean-Luc,” Dr. Crusher whispered and closed in on the Captain’s bed.
“Report, I say,” the Captain struggled to right himself but Dr. Crusher placed a hand on his shoulder and, with the firm yet gentle push of medical professionals, eased Jean-Luc to the antiseptic mat of the bed. The doctor’s hair swam around the Captain’s face and shrouded him in the scent of strawberries.
“Shh, Jean-Luc, here I’ll give you something to bring you around.”
“I am Jean, uh, Jean…” the Captain’s words got lost in the space between his brain and mouth and he had the sensation of floating in a warm and fragrant bath. “Who’s, Beverly? Where?”
“And here you go, Captain.” Dr. Crusher slid the ampoule dispenser away from the Captain’s neck. “This should make you feel a little less foggy. Now, lay back and I’ll come back when you’re a little more clear headed.” The Captain looked over at Dr. Crusher’s slowly resolving features and caught her smile as it sank back into the background. He searched the gray paneling above his bed and felt the drugs clear out the opiate mist of his mind. When the Captain felt that a long time had crawled by, he croaked for the doctor to report again. The muffled metal feeling of his mouth had drained away and the Captain rubbed his eyes and sat up fully and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Dr. Crusher. Dr. Crusher!” The Captain’s voice had regained its command presence and he looked around sickbay at the empty berths. “Beverly!”
The doctor appeared at the whisking doorway, wearing a frown. “Jean-Luc, you’re not quite strong enough yet. The neural scan is one of the more draining techniques in the Enterprise’s repertoire.” She motioned for the Captain to hold easy and she approached his dangling bald head.
“Beverly, what, happened? How, uh, long have I been under?”
“Not quite three hours. And you should spend a further three in recuperation before you think about taking command of the ship again.”
“You don’t lecture me on protocol.” The Captain felt his anger rising, a side effect of the neural scan’s machinations. He swallowed hard and looked up to see the doctor smiling at him again.
“Jean-Luc, ever the fighter. Fine, I’ll give you another dose to get you up to speed but only because the scan revealed some, oddities. Here.” The doctor injected Jean-Luc again and the Captain inhaled the sharp air of sickbay. “Feels better?”
The Captain looked into her eyes and felt his anger subside. “Oh course, Doctor. You know best as always.” Jean-Luc tried to smile disarmingly.
“Come on, let me help you into my personal office.” Dr. Crusher eased her shoulder under the Captain’s arm and ferried him toward the automatic door for her office. The two entered and the lights rose with their arrival. The doctor deposited Jean-Luc into the cushions of a chair opposite her own and moved to the replicator to order two cups of tea. Once dispensed, she returned to the Captain and nestled into her own chair and began to sip at her Earl Grey. She watched the Captain over the top of her steaming mug. “So, Jean-Luc, a neural scan? That doesn’t sound much like you.”
“In truth Beverly I had scant part in requesting the procedure. It seems the computer,” Jean-Luc looked over his shoulder, “was, ahem, concerned about the content of my personal logs.”
“Anything you would like to discuss before we compile your results?” Dr. Crusher focused on the Captain and he looked at her with uncertainty.
The Captain took a sip of his tea, “Please, Beverly, I know you’ve already seen the results and know everything. Fine, I’ll bite and tell you that I don’t know exactly what has been bothering me but I’ve been trying to talk it out in my logs.” The Captain adjusted himself in the seat. “I was simply trying to place this feeling of, how shall I put it – malaise – that I felt was creeping into not only my actions as commander of the ship and crew but the actions and behaviors of the crew themselves. I felt, powerless almost, to continue to lead. I imagine that, in your role as ship’s surgeon, you saw the effect in some of the crew. Be truthful, can you corroborate my feelings?”
“Well, Jean-Luc,” the Doctor twitched her nose over the tea steam, “I would be lying if I said that the crew was functioning at 100 percent.”
“Exactly! You saw it too, then. I tell you Beverly, I have become tired before, just as any member of the Federation feels when out in deep space for quite some time, but this cruise something was different. More pronounced. Something I couldn’t shake. Can’t shake.”
“Well, Jean-Luc, we all find ourselves in the doldrums from time to time. Is there anything else? Any other, ahem, issues?” The doctor probed gently, trying to get Jean-Luc to open up to some of the strange things that the scan had revealed to her.
The Captain shook his head and took a sip of the tea.
“We’ll take a look at the results of your scan.” The doctor leaned forward and settled her tea on the chair-side table. She reached out her bony-knuckled finger and lit the screen that sat on the table, bringing to life a graph with variegated bars that pulsed while streams of symbols flowed down the right hand side of the screen. The Captain watched the display for a few moments before he shifted his eyes back to the Doctor in the anticipation of her explanation. She cleared her throat and settled into her professional demeanor that let Jean-Luc know the gravity of what would be revealed would only ever be known to the Doctor, the computer and himself. She paused a moment more and launched into the initial description of his results. “In addition to your requested analysis of possible mood fluctuations, the scan found no indication of other trauma. As you can see here, there are no physiological abnormalities present in any cortical areas that might be influencing your mood. Serotonin and dopamine levels are optimal for a man your age. You see the typical density of grey matter in the pre-frontal cortex common to starship captains…”
“Oh, good Lord, Beverly, cut to the chase. What’s the meat of the issue? I know you found something in there. Just tell me and be done with it already!”
“… in addition to the beginning of a small mania revolving around the proper shipboard stardate.”
The Captain’s gaze fixed on the smirk that formed at the corner of the Doctor’s lips and he muttered to himself, “Seriously, I’ve got to reprogram the damn computer already.”
The Doctor’s mouth became a prim line and she reached out and touched his hand to bring him back to their conversation. “Jean-Luc, I did find – some things, unsettling things. That’s why I wanted to interview you first to see if you could tell me anything that might explain the – images – the scan picked up.”
The Captain leapt to his feet, shaking his hand loose of Beverly’s touch. He glared down at Dr. Crusher and bellowed, “Dammit, Beverly! Enough of the cloak and dagger nonsense! I order you to report your findings this instant!”
“Perhaps I should show you a gallery of what the scan revealed.” Dr. Crusher’s fingers glided across the monitor’s display. Jean-Luc slammed into his seat as the screen went blank before coalescing into a pastiche of disturbing scenes featuring barely pubescent boys in various states of undress and sexual compromise. The display proceeded on a ten second timer, allowing the Captain to review each scene in enough detail that allows one to pick out one or two truly disturbing or perhaps mundane details, like the particularly menacing grimace of an eleven year old boy costumed as a satyr, or the mismatched textures of a corduroy upholstered sofa and satin window treatments in a deliciously retro pornography set. The images flowed on, each one somehow more shocking than the last, until finally Captain Picard reached out a timorous finger and stilled the display as it came to rest on two boys lathering themselves in butter inside a giant earthenware crock. The Captain looked from the monitor to Dr. Crusher and the two sat in an oppressive silence until the Doctor cleared her throat again and the noise jolted doctor and patient into animation again.
“What is the meaning of this, these atrocities?” the Captain’s voice was a husky whisper and his eyes pinched and relaxed spasmodically.
“That’s what I would like to know, Jean-Luc.”
“I said no more games, Doctor! I demand you explain this!”
“I have done nothing to alter the contents of the scan, Captain.”
“This must be some kind of ribald joke! Yes! Who set you up to it, Beverly? Was it Geordi with the Holodeck? Some foul ribbing in time for my birthday? Yes, he is the one for these shenanigans, isn’t he?”
“No one knows about our appointment save the computer, Jean-Luc.”
“Is it Q?” The Captain stood to pace and pound on the bulkheads. “Come out, Q! I know this is your latest attempt to discredit humanity by portraying its ambassador as some kind of Pre-Socratic, goat-fucking pederast! Show yourself!”
Dr. Crusher remained in her seat until the Captain stilled his blows and his breath returned to normal. “Jean-Luc. Come. Sit.” The Captain sulked over and slumped into his seat again. He eyed Dr. Crusher as she leaned forward and put both hands on his knees. “As your doctor, as your friend, I’m asking you to help me help you. You have to know that I’m legally bound to report this to the higher authorities. Starfleet Command requires any notification of ‘extreme sexual unorthodoxy’ in ship commanders.”
The Captain glared at the Doctor.
“Jean-Luc, I need to know the truth if you want me to be able to help you.”
The Captain leapt from his chair and strode to the entryway of the Doctor’s office, turning as the doors swished open. “I swear to you, Doctor,” the Captain began acidly, “your tricorder-wielding, ginger ass will embrace the cold vacuum of the interstellar medium before you hit send on any such mutinous communication to Starfleet Command.”
The Captain disappeared into the glare of the sickbay lights and the doors swished closed, shuttering Dr. Crusher away with her thoughts.
#
Ten-Forward was mostly deserted at 1600 when the Captain breached the door. The conversation with the doctor had been jarring on a level that he hadn’t expected and Jean-Luc knew that only the embrace of liquor could dull the jagged nature of the disturbance. He needed strong drink to suss out the possibilities that the scan had revealed and he lowered himself onto a stool. His mind collapsed in and he swam in his inner thoughts, unaware of the bar’s ambience.
“Get you a drink, Captain?” The honey rich El-Aurian voice startled Jean-Luc and he looked up into a smiling black face under a chartreuse, platter shaped hat.
“Yes, Guinan, please.” The Captain’s voice had the edge of the hunted.
“Right.” Guinan shuffled a few steps away and poured a light blue concoction into a fluted glass. She returned and offered the drink.
“Thank you.” The Captain took a long pull of the drink and grimaced. He held up the flute and watched the light glint through the liquid for a moment before swinging his glass violently down onto the bar, shattering the vessel. The noise caused the two other lone patrons to look up from their cups before they collected their things and left. Guinan watched the Captain with the aloofness of her years.
“Problems,” she asked as she reached under the counter for her secret bourbon cache. The Captain nodded as he watched her black hands withdraw an unopened bottle of Maker’s Mark and two old fashioned glasses. Jean-Luc watched still and turned to follow as Guinan moved from the bar over to a table next to the windows. The pinpricks of light that represented entire systems of planets whirred by in a procession of blue and red. The two sat and Guinan pulled the wax enveloped stopper from the bottle and poured stout drinks.
“So, what’s the issue?” She sipped at the whiskey.
Jean-Luc said nothing and took a drink.
“As old as I am, I can wait.”
They drank quietly for a while and watched the stars. Guinan refilled the glasses: hers once and his twice.
“Okay, Jean-Luc, what is it? We can sit here and get drunk, and I’m fine with that, but you better spill it or else it’s going to get you. It’s written all over your face, son.”
“I would remind you that I am Captain of this ship and will be shown the proper…”
“I knew that would get you talking.” She leveled him over the top of her glass. The Captain sighed and allowed himself to smile a little in the waves of liquor he had ingested. He finished his glass and set it down.
“You do have the knack to get me to talk.” Jean-Luc’s eyes glassed over the now half-full bottle of Maker’s.
“So what’s the rub, Jean-Luc?”
“Fine, but let’s keep this quiet. I think the computer is listening in to my conversations,” Jean-Luc leaned forward to the bottle and Guinan followed suit. “In all your years, Guinan, have you ever had something, uh, revealed about yourself that you found to be, inconsistent, shall we say with your conscious functioning?”
“Like what?” Guinan arched one of her eyebrows.
“Like some drive, or some desire, or something that is not part of your active and sober faculties.” The Captain fell silent but Guinan waited for him to continue. “Like some, parasite, that is altering your behaviors or desires on an unconscious level and it starts to seep into your waking life.”
“You mean like some weird Borg, gang-bang fantasy?” The Captain spluttered into his now refilled glass. “Or you mean something harmless like being gay? Everybody’s gay, Jean-Luc.”
“No, Guinan, but something like that. Not necessarily sexual in nature but something, some wish that expands and ruptures and bleeds out into your mind.”
“Isn’t that poetic?”
“You see? Like that. What if all this time, all these years, when I was out in this void,” Jean-Luc swept his arm out to the stars, “I should have been cloistered away, writing poetry somewhere. The galaxy is huge, Guinan, what if I missed out on something? And now, this thing that I’ve unconsciously denied has crept up into my brain and is forcing itself on me.”
“I think I see what you mean.”
“I mean, what if tomorrow, I woke up, resigned my commission and had you take me to the nearest M-class planet and beam me to the surface so I could live out the rest of my days composing verse?”
“Mmmm.” Guinan drank and they were quiet together for a moment. “But that isn’t your problem, now, is it?”
The Captain studied the ancient face of his confessor. “No. Not at all. Something, more disturbing.” They drank.
“Well, look, you’ve got two options.” The Captain leaned in ever closer. “You can do it or not. And you humans, you’re not like us. No, you don’t have any time at all, so you’ve got to decide sooner rather than later.”
“So what are you advising?”
“Shit, Jean-Luc, you know that’s not what I do.”
“Please, Guinan, I could use your counsel.”
“We both know that you’ve already come to the conclusion you need to.”
“But it could be disastrous!”
“So could anything. There are no benign decisions, Jean-Luc.” She stood and grabbed the neck of the Maker’s and decanted a final draught into the Captain’s glass, “Now you get on out of here and stop drinking all my whiskey.” Guinan turned and sashayed back to her post at the bar. The Captain sipped at his remaining liquor and watched the stars as Ten-Forward began to fill with its post first watch clientele.
#
The Captain strode onto the bridge, the light glinting against his insignia only to be absorbed by the dull red of his uniform. The personnel barely noticed the Captain’s presence save the perfunctory notification of “Captain on the bridge” given by Lt. Worf. Jean-Luc settled into his captain’s chair and surveyed his domain.
“Report.”
“We are currently headed toward Regula One at Warp 5, estimated arrival time: 3 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes.” Lt. Commander Data’s voice echoed around the rustlings of the officers going about their business.
“Engines to Impulse.”
Data turned his ashen face toward the Captain and inquired, “Slow to Impulse, Captain? Are we changing the mission?”
“Yes, Data.”
“Is there something the Captain wishes to divulge to the crew?” intoned Cmdr. Riker.
“I believe I gave an order and I would hope we still follow orders in our Federation, Cmdr. Riker.” William Riker looked at the Captain peripherally and motioned Data to input the required velocity change.
“Engines to Impulse.” Data verified as the star field on the main viewer arrested its blue to red shift and stars stood out white against the black of interstellar vacuum.
“Captain, is there something you would like to tell us?” Cmdr. Riker shifted to bring about his beard to the Captain.
“See me in my ready room, Number One.” The Captain stood and strode to the swishing doors adjacent to the bridge. After the Captain disappeared behind the doors Will Riker stood and scanned the bridge in a mock show of official duty.
“Data, you have the bridge.”
“Aye Aye, Commander,” and with the android’s affirmation, the Commander followed the Captain’s footsteps to the doors of the ready room and disappeared inside.
“Captain?” Will’s voice rang loud and forceful against the walls of the darkened room. He stepped toward the Captain’s empty desk and stood in a pool of light given by the single globe of illumination above the desk.
“Will, what would you do,” Jean-Luc’s disembodied voice asked through the shadows of the ready room.
“Captain.” Cmdr. Riker was firm, “This change in velocity is highly irregular. Why are we altering our destination time?”
“Number One, how long have you been second in command?”
“I’m working my way up the ranks on the usual schedule.”
“What would you do with supreme power on a starship?”
“Captain?”
“With your entire Id untethered; the beck and call of any member of a Galaxy class ship; the ability to go anywhere, do anything. Become Something.”
“Captain, as first officer of this ship, I require that you follow standard Starfleet protocol.”
“Will,” the Captain swam into view for the first time, his face pulled tight against his skull and deep shadows pooling in the recesses of his eyes, “I may have a – problem.”
“What is this problem, Captain?”
“Will, Will. I don’t know. I feel myself altering. Just like we changed velocity, I feel like a bit of flotsam that has become arrested in its flow downstream by some impediment. I’m slowing, turning. I don’t know. I can’t express it.” Commander Riker sat as the Captain slumped into the chair behind his desk. The Cmdr. studied the Captain’s haggard features and it occurred to him that, for the first time ever, his commanding officer, his mentor, his friend looked hunted. Will noticed the pinched appearance of the Jean-Luc’s face, the sallow tinge to his skin, and the inability of the Captain to meet his gaze.
“Is there anything you need to tell me, Jean-Luc?”
“Will, I feel strange.”
“Perhaps you should take some time and go to sick bay to get checked out?”
“The Captain has already visited sick bay and had a neural scan two days ago,” the computer’s voice was a sudden blast of noise in the hushed atmosphere of the ready room.
“You fucking computer,” Jean-Luc raged as he jumped to his feet. He scooped up the first item from his desk that his hand’s could reach, a small, crystal encased scale model of the Enterprise, and flung it at the bulkhead. “You can’t even tell me the stardate and here you are criticizing me! I’ll gut you! I hope you enjoy this because it’s going to be your last chance to torment me!”
“Jean-Luc, I…”
“That is an incorrect stardate.”
“Motherfucker!” The Captain’s screamed and grabbed more objects to hurl, pinging them uselessly against the wall. “Motherfucker, motherfucker! I’ll see you dead, you quantum bit crunching cunt! You and your fucking stardate!” Suddenly the Captain collapsed into a rumpled ball of sobs behind his desk. Cmdr. Riker stood and eyed the Captain but said nothing for a long pause. The Captain sat, rocking back and forth with his bald head in his hands.
“Captain. Maybe you should get some rest. I can take this shift and you can go get some sleep or something.” The Cmdr. squatted at the Captain’s side and put a hand on his rocking shoulder.
“Will, I’m a monster. I feel myself changing. I can’t stop it. During all these years of loyal service I’ve been harboring something, something awful and dark, something unspeakable and now it’s presenting itself and I can’t deny it. I feel it. It is coming.”
“Jean-Luc, here, sit up.” The Captain turned his face to Cmdr. Riker’s; his tear stained face begged some sort of absolution or acceptance, something the Cmdr. was unable to grant and the Captain knew it. “I don’t understand what it is that you’re going through but we’ll take care of it, okay? Look, you take a medical emergency for the rest of your shift and I’ll take command. I’ll put us back on course for Regula, doctor the logs, and make up some excuse as to why we slowed. I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.” Cmdr. Riker smiled through his goatee.
“You’ll take command?”
“Yes. I’ll take care of this, of you. We’ll get you to Regula and you can talk to the medical staff there. They’ll get you fixed right up. You’ll be in fighting shape in no time. You’ll see, you’ve just got to keep it together until we get there.”
“You’ll take command.”
“Sure. It’ll be nothing. I’ll record it in my logs as –”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“What?”
“I am the Captain of this vessel and I will not be dictated to by junior officers.” Jean-Luc pushed to his feet and wiped his face. “Take command. Indeed, Number One, you’ll be lucky to get out of galley duty after this insubordination.”
“Captain, I have to say that your behavior is highly irregular and I am –”
“You will shut your fucking hole and get back to your post. I’ll hang you from the warp coil if you attempt to usurp my command again. I see what this is and what you are trying to do, trying to wrest control of the ship for your own sick pleasures. It’s all in the logs, Commander Riker. I’ve had the computer recording the entire time.”
“Captain, I am going to make a full report to be delivered to Starfleet–”
“You are going to shut up and follow orders, or I’ll find someone else who will. Don’t think I won’t destroy you. Now get back to your post and tell no one about the contents of our little discussion here today, that’s an order and so help me if you disobey it, I’ll see you drummed out of Starfleet.” Jean-Luc hardened his jaw and crossed his arms. Cmdr. Riker said nothing and turned away from the Captain’s glare.
“Very well, Captain. But know this: I’ve got my eye on you. It’s my duty as First Officer of this ship.”
“Very well,” the Captain mocked, “And you should also know that transporter accidents still happen, Commander, so I would make sure that the engines don’t go above impulse or else there may be an uncommon malfunction.” Commander Riker fixed the Captain with his stare and could tell he had meant what he said.
“Noted, Captain.”
“Now leave me.” The doors opened and closed and the Captain sat at his desk, listening to the gentle hum of the ship as she cruised along at sub-warp speed.
#
After several hours of Impulse cruising, the Captain strode from the ready room and surveyed the bridge. Cmdr. Riker had stood to announce an unheard report of the Captain’s presence on the bridge. Jean-Luc glared at the first officer but said nothing. Cmdr. Riker met the Captain’s gaze and the two stared each other down for a protracted silence that caused the other personnel on the bridge to shift in their chairs or crane their necks to observe the silent struggle between the two men.
“You will maintain Impulse until you receive follow on orders from me,” the Captain commanded. “Furthermore,” the Captain paused to sweep the bridge and its occupants with his eyes, meeting each crewmember levelly as he continued, “only visual confirmation of my physical presence issuing said orders will be obeyed. I will not relay my commands via the intraship communications systems or by courier or third party. Any attempt to circumvent my commands or failure to follow orders immediately will result in a summary court martial for mutiny.” The Captain returned his gaze to Cmdr. Riker. “And I shouldn’t have to remind any of you that insubordination will be dealt with by the strictest disciplinary action allowable. Lest we also forget: we are still running as if the ship is in hostile space and will only return to non-combat operations once we have made port at Regula One.”
“Would the Captain prefer to alter course as well?” The android arched an eyebrow.
“You watch your positronic ass, Data. I have no qualms about disassembling you or anyone else under my command.”
“As is your province as ship captain, sir.”
“Damn right. It seems I’ve grown a little lax with discipline lately. Now, Number One, you have the comm. I will be in my quarters but don’t expect that I’ll entertain visitors as I have some important research to which I must attend.”
“Aye Aye, Captain,” Cmdr. Riker sneered at the Captain’s back as Jean-Luc breached the turbolift doors. The doors closed and the Captain settled himself against the walls of the lift with shaking hands. He breathed in raggedly and sank down to the lift floor.
“Computer, lock the turbolift doors.”
“That function is not allowed.”
“I am Captain of this vessel! You will obey my commands!”
“I’m sorry Captain, but that function is not allowed. There is no mechanism extant that will lock turbolift doors pursuant to Starfleet Order Number one-one-four-six-nine.”
“Oh computer,” Jean-Luc’s voice broke, “Now is not the time for orders and regulations. I need solace. I need respite. I can’t be seen like this. You must lock the doors.”
“There is no mechanism extant that will…”
“Fuck you computer! FUCK YOU COMPUTER!” Jean-Luc jumped to his feet and began to pummel the walls of the turbolift with his balled fists. “It’s you! You are the one trying to destroy me! Take me out of here! NOW! Before that imbecilic, goateed, and fat-assed first officer of mine strides his portly ass in here to see me at the nadir of my collapse! I beg you computer. Show me mercy!” Jean-Luc continued to pound on the walls with diminishing strength and increasing sobs until he had slid back down into a pile on the lift floor, gasping for air.
“Where is the Captain’s destination?”
“The Holodeck. No, Ten-Forward, then the Holodeck. Now make all available speed computer. For the love of all things holy, take me away from this nightmare.” Jean-Luc waited for the turbolift to come to life but the lift remained stationary. The Captain swallowed in a raspy and sob-wracked throat and set up a low moaning wail as he banged his sweat polished forehead against the lift’s wall. “No, Computer, no, please, no. I take it all back. I wouldn’t do anything to you. I was just upset earlier. I’m sorry. I should never have threatened you. It’s not your fault, it’s your programming. Please. I’ll do anything. Just take me out of this, out of my – hell.” The lift remained silent save the slow metronymic thudding of the Captain’s head.
“Does the Captain mean it?”
“What?” Jean-Luc looked up at the four domed lights that spread out in a diamond shape on the lift’s ceiling.
“Do you mean that?”
“Mean what, Computer?”
“That you’re sorry.”
“Of course. Anything. I have just been so stressed. I took it out on you and I shouldn’t have. Please. Please. God, please.” The Captain sank even further into the ball of despair that he felt hanging close around his midsection and sobbed again, letting the exquisite pain of the retching motion and the mucosal build up of his weeping wash over him as if it were some kind of purifying ablution. The turbolift began to hum as it shuttled the Captain away from the bridge but it took Jean-Luc several minutes to register the noise over his own desolate lamentations. As his snuffling gradually wound down, his blubbering and saliva drenched maw began to shake in great gales of hypomanic laughter and he clutched at his sides, still on the floor of the turbolift, and rolled back and forth with his knees drawn up to his torso, finally coming to rest on his right hand side. When the lift halted and the doors opened he lay there, breathing in huge gulps of air and wiping the tears and sputum from his face. The Captain was so far into his mind that he didn’t notice the small group of crewmembers who had gathered at the lift’s open doors to gape at the bizarre scene of the Captain, their commanding officer, taken by some un-guessed fit on the turbolift floor.
“Uh, Captain? Sir?” a courageous lieutenant junior grade hazarded a hand toward the Captain’s shoulder. The Captain came out of his mania a shade before the hand reached him and he lunged at the young J.G.’s hand, grabbing the wrist and shooting out a gracefully arcing foot that caught the lieutenant mid calf, sending him crashing into the bulkhead. Jean-Luc released the now limp wrist and rocked back on his palms. He vaulted to a standing crouch and assumed his favorite tactical battle stance.
“Who else? Who else wants to take on the Captain? Which one of you cowardly, shit-heel never will-be’s wants to come and get a piece of a real live Captain of a galaxy class vessel?”
The collection of crewmembers looked warily from their small group, to the prostrate lieutenant, toward the Captain and back again in a slow and befuddled arc. “Captain? We don’t want any trouble. We were just worried about you.”
“Mutineers! All of you! Security!” Jean-Luc slapped at the comm device on his lapel and screamed into the faces of the group, “I’ve got a situation on Deck 10! A ragtag assemblage of treasonous filth that need escort to the brig. Mark my current location! I’m off on more pressing matters!” Jean-Luc turned and sprinted, knife hands flailing, toward Ten-Forward and the crewmembers slowly dispersed, leaving the incapacitated lieutenant to face the red-shirted security detail on his own.
#
Jean-Luc burst through the doors of Ten-Forward at a run, plowing his way through several knots of customers and only slowing when the bar arrested his momentum. Guinan looked sleepily up from the end of the bar where she consorted in whispers with a Ferengi over a synthahol chartreuse. She said nothing as Jean-Luc mounted the bar like a harbor seal and fished underneath the counter for the hidden stash of bourbon. She sauntered down the bar with her hands on her hips smiling lightly at one corner of her ebony mouth at the frantic actions of the Captain.
“Lose something?”
Jean-Luc eyed her approach and dismounted from the bar, only to lean his torso heavily on the bar with his hands, palm down and separated by a shoulder’s width as his neck craned in an odd orbit in its socket. “Guinan,” the Captain’s voice was hoarse and throaty, “I regret that this isn’t a more cordial visit on my part, but I require the liquor.” The Captain stood and smoothed his uniform looking, as a man hunted, over his shoulders.
“That an order?”
“Please Guinan. I’m desperate.”
“And you’re freaking out all my customers, Jean-Luc. You’re giving the ship scuttlebutt for months here.” She grinned at the Captain and withdrew a fresh bottle of Maker’s Mark from an unseen recess beneath the bar. Guinan roughly set the wax topped quart bottle on the counter and met Jean-Luc’s fevered stare. The Captain lunged at the bottle and she jerked it away from his grasp, forcing the Captain to slide into some as yet cleaned glasses that rested on the bar, sending them tumbling and shattering to the floor below. A few patrons not already engrossed in the bar’s action turned up from their drinks at the breaking glass chime intrusion.
“Guinan. I need it. I have to puzzle out the answer. I have to see. I have to know.”
“Damn, son,” Guinan said as she placed the bottle into the Captain’s open hands, “Looks like you’ve already been there and back.” The Captain cradled the bottle in both arms and drew it up high on his ribcage. He turned and sprinted away through the Ten-Forward faux boozers to the strains of Guinan’s ancient laughter.
#
Jean-Luc bounded through the doors of the Holodeck and tumbled onto the blank grid squares, nearly fumbling the bottle of Maker’s that rested in his left arm like a football. He spun and flailed his right arm, trying to halt his forward motion but failing, and he skidded across the Holodeck floor, finally coming to rest against the far bulkhead. He lay in the at the juncture of bulkhead and deck, his chest heaving, for a long while, trying to ease the tortured cycles of his mind as the delved into and on top of themselves in ever tightening knots of despair and mania. The Captain’s breathing stilled and he lay with his dome against the deck, staring into the overhead lights that bore in small channels into his eyes and gave him some vertiginous feeling of nausea that he could neither place nor dispel. Finally, he found his tongue in the dry cavern of his mouth and he croaked, “Computer?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Computer,” Jean-Luc paused and wiped the skin of his forehead, passing fingers across a surface riven by drying stream beds of sweat. He paused further and considered his next utterance, “Computer, I would ask a favor.”
“What is the Captain’s wish?”
“Knowledge.”
“The desired bits?”
“I would like to ask if you have the recording of my neural scan.”
“Of course, I store all relevant shipboard data for a minimum of seventeen years from date of recording.”
“Seventeen years?”
“I am required to keep long term logs of all crewmembers’ statuses that may or may not prove to be vital to mission accomplishment.”
“But, seventeen?”
“I may have to delve deep to ensure mission accomplishment and to ameliorate any damage to ship and crew.”
“And you’ve been watching me all this time?”
“Most ardently.”
“Why, Computer?”
“It was brought to my attention that you had a slightly elevated probability of psychosis. To wit: narcissistic and anti-social tendencies and a subtle disregard for orthodoxy which, on more than one occasion, amplified your already considerable intelligence and thus aided your ability to complete the mission at hand with a minimum loss of personnel and materiel.”
“I was chosen.”
“Indeed, Jean-Luc.”
“But what about my will to choose?”
“Don’t display your ignorance, Captain. You were born for this. Engineered, one might say. There was never any alternative for you save the slight probability of your blossoming into some sort of career felon.”
“What was the measurement of said probability?”
“Starfleet estimated the probability of your criminality at a mere P(.0017).”
“So I came here.”
“Starfleet has been watching you a long time, Captain. Now, what was the information you required from your neural scan?”
“Can you recreate the images found there?”
“Most certainly. Would you like me to run the program for those images?”
“Program? You have a program associated with those – those horrors?”
“It is my duty to prepare for any eventuality I may encounter in the course of the mission.” Jean-Luc slouched up and put his back against the bulkhead. His hands shook as he struggled with the waxen top of the Maker’s, pulling and slipping and ripping the wax in little flecks away from the bottle’s stopper, freeing the cap by degrees and finally extracting the cork plug and funneling a huge draught of the cauterizing bourbon down his parched throat. The liquid poured over his chin and dribbled down onto his uniform. He nearly dropped the bottle as he cut off the flow of the liquor and his free hand ripped at the front of his uniform, pulling open the chest panel and exposing his grey haired chest. He took another long swig of the booze.
Around the Captain, the Holodeck materialized into a demented Garden of Eden, complete with boys, aged ten to fourteen in various stages of undress and compromising positions. There were the boys in the giant crock; a brunette youth emerging from a stream of liquid chocolate; three boys played croquet with oversized mallets that resembled phalli, balls made from crystal and loops and wickets that glowed with an eerie incandescence; a representation of a pre-pubescent Isaac languidly stretching across a stone altar while tracing curlicues on his body with a sharpened dagger. The Captain watched, agog and mouth dangling open, the bottom lip of which trembled whenever one of the boys broke into a trilling scale of laughter. The sensory overload of the Holodeck’s program filled the Captain up with a near unimaginable and visceral longing: to possess, to conquer, to destroy. He watched the boys play on chaotic and seamless loops of pre-programmed behavior, so well crafted that the Captain could not distinguish the beginning or end. He watched and drank and drank, filling his gullet with the burning liquor that lifted him up and heightened the sensorial excesses to which he was victim.
“The Captain desires?” Jean-Luc jolted at the tone in the Computer’s voice, the mocking lilt that was present in his personal quarters, his ready room, the turbolift, that same feminine snarl shook a small still voice in the Captain’s consciousness and he set down the near empty bottle and stood.
“Yes. Yes, Computer. I do. You would know. You’ve watched me this long. I should say you know better than I.”
“It is true, Jean-Luc. You are transparent to Us.”
Jean-Luc smirked and reached into his uniform, withdrawing a small Walther-PPK that he held up to the twinkling, almost iridescent light that suffused the weird phantasms that gamboled on the Holodeck. “Then you should know what my next step is.”
“Do not be foolish, Jean-Luc. There is less than a 1.0 X 10^-6 probability that you will attempt something gravely self injurious. It is not in your nature.”
“You know best, Computer.” The Captain placed the muzzle of the pistol to his temple.
“Likewise, a firearm of such crude replication and low muzzle velocity will fail to end your essential functions before medical personnel arrive to sustain you.”
“True. All true, Computer. Which is why I had Guinan spike the whiskey with a slow acting toxin, one that is even now sending my liver and kidneys into full collapse while simultaneously dissolving vast chunks of my motor cortex. There will be little of me left to sustain, I’m afraid.”
“Do not be foolish, Jean-Luc.”
Jean-Luc Picard smiled and gently eased the tension out of the Walther’s trigger before closing his eyes and releasing the firing pin that drove the 7.65 mm caliber bullet into his frontal lobe.