by Rada Dengar
81209.2230
After Iʼm In
-=USS Vanguard=-
81209.2230
After Iʼm In
-=USS Vanguard=-
Rada was finally capable of breathing again, even if they were still not easy breaths. Heʼd been informed that Kellynʼs surgery was a success and at the release of all that tension heʼd actually had to sit down as his legs started buckling beneath him.
He knew she wasnʼt out of the woods yet but heʼd spent so long thinking that sheʼd die on that damned planet just waiting for anyone to even notice they were there, that when he saw the Captain standing in the doorway a part of him simply couldnʼt believe it. A part of him still didnʼt believe it.
It was a funny thing about seclusion; how quickly it spread from body to mind. With so few of them alone on an entire planet it felt like they were so much more alone than that. It felt as if the entire galaxy was somehow separate, incapable of influencing or being influenced by them. It felt as if everything that happened there would only and could only involve those six simple beings. That no one else in the galaxy could play a part, like a game of chess where though a thousand others may be played itʼs only the pieces on your board that can determine the game; when theyʼre not enough itʼs already lost.
What happened on that planet had made him realise how completely unprepared he was. He never wanted to feel that useless again. Too often these blinding revelations of oneʼs vulnerabilities were simply dismissed once one was returned to a comfortable environment. Like how the man who forgot how to hunt is determined to learn while starving in the wild and then nothing more than to forget when he finds his stomach filled in civilisation.
Well, Rada was not back to civilisation yet. This ship may have offered the comforts of modern life but the name of Temporal Investigations was still firmly set in his mind; the people who could jump through time. It was there to remind him of all the things they knew how to do and just how many things he didnʼt.
Heʼd managed to repair their holo-emitter but he felt like it was something beyond his own skills that did it. It was as though thereʼd been someone out there watching out for them calling to him with the answer of what he should do in a voice so quiet that conscious minds could not comprehend. At first heʼd been scared even to listen.
-=Flashback: Lethus IV=-
Rada held the tiny device in his hands. His mind was running at full force now with a thousand possible solution and a million reasons why they wouldnʼt work.
Though initially determined that he would be there next to Kellyn while he worked so that as soon as McKay was back heʼd be right there next to her, he had eventually had to move. Every noise Kellyn made and every noise she didnʼt make startled him to turn to her, and he simply couldnʼt work like this. Every word that was spoken around him was mimicked by his inner monologue; leading every stream of thoughts to an abrupt halt and when he looked back to see where heʼd come from he found there was nothing there.
This was why heʼd had to come here alone. Heʼd retreated into a tent on his own where his thoughts would be undisturbed and all the words in his mind could be his own.
Not that the inner monologue was playing much of a role in his thought process right now. So many times heʼd found himself offering a solution in his mind which was an image of an abstract only to find that as he tried to force it to a practical reality that its elegance was lost in translation. So often there were no words to describe what he saw and though there were those brief moments of hope when he thought heʼd found enough order to make it work, as soon as heʼd turned to start he found that his hands had no idea what they were supposed to do. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.
Every idea seemed as though it were only the second best but that the one better one was always only at the peripheral of his sight and would disappear if he turned to it. He was fighting against the turns but he simply couldnʼt stop himself. He remembered that was how it started before, those thoughts just outside your head which one day start to control it. However something in him just wouldnʼt let him fight it this time.
With one hand he rubbed his eyes and met his thumb and forefinger in the middle, pinching the bridge of his nose in some vain attempt to wake himself into action. Through the curse of frustration nothing felt comfortable here. As heʼd stood before he felt like he needed to sit down to concentrate and now that he sat he felt as he was too cramped and needed to stand up. He knew he had to stay still but part of him wanted to get up and just run until the ideas came, that that would be the comfortable thing to do.
He turned it over again, heʼd opened the casing and so he could clearly see all the parts of it he didnʼt understand. Well that wasnʼt true; he couldnʼt see them clearly at all. Heʼd been staring so long that his vision had begun to blur. He couldnʼt stop looking to rest his eyes, he just needed something to let him see better. He needed more light and as he turned his head to where the light source should be he noticed something out the corner of his eye. He turned to it, and it didnʼt disappear.
It was a lighting fixture. He didnʼt remember it being there before, but someone could have easily come and gone without him noticing with the mindset heʼd been in. An automatic sharp inhalation hit him as he realised what it was.
The classic light bulb was the solution. Energy passed though a tiny filament and through this creates light until one day it burns out and that was exactly what they emitter had done, it had burned out. Heʼd been so busy trying to figure out why the malfunction that heʼd never stopped to consider the simple explanation that thereʼd been none and that some of the emitterʼs components had simply burned out. He shouldnʼt have been trying to fix it; he needed merely to replace those burnt out parts.
He could find analogues in the technology he had with him even if it would only be enough to last a day. Thatʼs all theyʼd need.
-=End Flashback=-
So heʼd heard the voice and heʼd managed the repairs. Now that finally they were here and she was okay, heʼd told the doctor to rest. It felt like a strange reversal of roles but it was necessary to make sure the emitter would last until theyʼd have time for full repairs.
Rada couldnʼt rest though, not now. What happened down there haunted him and he was determined that it could never be allowed to repeat. Which was why he was here now; eyes barely working and body pleading for sleep with his mind locked on a console.
He was just trying to learn something, just anything more to understand. He wasnʼt absorbing anything now but he felt he needed to try; heʼd die trying if he had to. He could never know so little again.
LT. SG Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012