(no subject)
Lying on his bed, he scans the ceiling for something to look at, but it is all smooth and white and unchanged from last night’s viewing. In his dorm room at the Starfleet Academy, he had preoccupied himself with the cracks in the plaster above his bed many a night, listening to the older students clinking bottles next door, laughing as he had tried and failed to sleep. His life and theirs, they had existed together but separately, like oil and water, always touching, never mixing. He had been a freshman at thirteen and every year separating him from the others had grown between them, until all he could do was press his nose to the thick glass barrier of his age and inexperience, watching them, and wonder what it would be like to be average and happy instead of a lonely genius.
“Lights,” he whispers into this new room, the one with the spare bunk for the roommate he was never assigned, and all goes dark.
It is early to sleep, but he has nothing else to do. He would gladly work longer hours, longer even than his current ten-hour shift (extended by request), but Mr. Spock has told him that Starfleet Regulations require that he have a certain number of hours off every day, whether or not he wants them. The worst of it is his required day off each week, which he tries to pass with additional training, or time in the gym, or work with Scotty in the engineering room when he thinks Mr. Spock won’t notice, but there are too many hours in a day and he always comes out with extra. He often ends up wandering the corridors, eternally en route to some imaginary destination; the corridors of the Enterprise are filled with strangers with familiar faces, and he doesn’t want anyone to think he has nowhere to be.
No ticking clock counts the silence for him, and no sound from outside can penetrate his soundproofed room. Chekov closes his eyes in the darkness and forces his mind to stop drifting, sets his coordinates to sleep, and his body obeys.
Part Two
“Lights,” he whispers into this new room, the one with the spare bunk for the roommate he was never assigned, and all goes dark.
It is early to sleep, but he has nothing else to do. He would gladly work longer hours, longer even than his current ten-hour shift (extended by request), but Mr. Spock has told him that Starfleet Regulations require that he have a certain number of hours off every day, whether or not he wants them. The worst of it is his required day off each week, which he tries to pass with additional training, or time in the gym, or work with Scotty in the engineering room when he thinks Mr. Spock won’t notice, but there are too many hours in a day and he always comes out with extra. He often ends up wandering the corridors, eternally en route to some imaginary destination; the corridors of the Enterprise are filled with strangers with familiar faces, and he doesn’t want anyone to think he has nowhere to be.
No ticking clock counts the silence for him, and no sound from outside can penetrate his soundproofed room. Chekov closes his eyes in the darkness and forces his mind to stop drifting, sets his coordinates to sleep, and his body obeys.
Part Two