Episode 86
Prologue
Erin Keller was ready for a
break. After working seventeen consecutive days,
her nerves were beginning to fray, her muscles ache, and her mind wander. Long ago, the days had become an endless
chain of monotony, punctuated by blissfully uneventful evenings that seemed to
last no longer than the blink of an eye.
But gradually, even the sacrosanct line between day and night blurred…
…and as Erin’s heavy eyelids began to fall
uncontrollably, she knew it was time to call it a night. Or day.
Or whatever it was.
For seventeen days, Erin had been going over
the mountain of data collected during the Starlight’s brief, but chaotic
visit to the Yaraka Sector. They still
knew very little about Illidan or the ancient Iconian artifact he allegedly
sought, and the longer she stared at the data, the less she seemed to
glean from it. She wasn’t getting
anywhere, and based upon Kendall’s analysis, neither was he—or anyone else in
the science lab, for that matter. For
the time being, Illidan’s secrets would remain his own.
More than ready to proclaim defeat, Erin set
aside her padd and melted into her chair—gradually sinking downward until she
was in danger of falling to the floor.
She held herself there for a long moment and contently stared into
oblivion. It was definitely relaxing,
but… certainly not the most comfortable position to assume. When the muscles in her neck began to ache,
Erin slowly pulled herself to an upright position. She regarded her padd for a brief moment before catching a
glimpse of motion across the table.
“Give up?” asked Alan Christopher, his
pleasant voice the diametric opposite of Erin’s mood. He stood at the opposite side of the sleek circular table in
their quarters, hands resting on the back of a grayish chair.
Erin shook her head. Giving up was never an option. “I’m just taking a much-deserved break,” she
playfully corrected. “Unlike some
people, I actually do work around here!”
That was more than enough to get Alan
riled. “I do plenty of work
aboard this fine starship!” he protested.
“I am the pillar of Starfleet, as a matter of fact. Without me, the entire organization would
collapse and galaxy’s descent into chaos would only hasten.”
Erin giggled. “Alan,” she said lightly, “if you were any more dense, light
would bend around you.”
He arched a curious brow. “You think I’m delusional?”
“The thought has crossed my mind on
occasion,” admitted Erin, though she neglected to mention the frequency of
those occasions.
“Hmpf.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Alan wandered over to the replicator,
presumably to grab some sort of evening snack.
“Hot chocolate,” he said. “Two
mugs.”
Moments later, Alan returned to the table
with two steaming mugs. Erin happily
accepted one of them and then suggested they retreat to a more comfortable
setting. The living room was the
obvious choice, and within moments, the two sat beside each other on the sofa
nursing their respective mugs.
“I had a weird dream last night,” said Alan
into his mug.
“Oh?” asked Erin. Given Alan’s overactive imagination, she braced herself for some
incredibly outlandish tale.
Alan nodded agreeably. “Yeah,” he said evenly. “I dreamed that I was going to defrag the Starlight’s
computer core.”
She waited a moment for the story to
continue, but when it didn’t, Erin found herself sorely disappointed. “That’s it?” she asked.
He nodded.
“That’s it.” He took a sip of
his hot chocolate. “Do you think it’s
prophetic? Maybe that temporal stuff
had some lasting effects?”
“It’s no prophecy,” Erin quickly assured
him. The last thing Alan needed was to
think he was clairvoyant. “The computer
automatically rearranges files so that fragmentation is virtually a
nonentity. The few files that are fragmented…”
A pathetic mew
suddenly echoed from the bedroom.
Cleo’s dainty call nearly brought a smile to Erin’s face, but the
subsequent groans and growls associated with the dreaded hairball neutralized
any smile that Erin might have mustered.
In the darkness of the bedroom, the little cat horked and growled a few
moments longer before finally growing silent.
Too silent.
Feeling a pang of
concern in her heart, Erin carefully set her mug of hot chocolate on the coffee
table and made her way to the bedroom.
“Computer,” she quietly called from the threshold, “lights.”
Warm, ambient
light slowly washed away the ghastly dark, revealing everything Erin expected
to see in the confines of her bedroom—but with two major exceptions: the bloody
hairball, and the tiny, trembling cat curled up on the floor beside it…