Disclaimer apply.

Author's Note: Third Season. First-person. Introspective.

Written around 2000. Edited once 2006 and then again 2008. Obviously written long before I ever grasped the concept of "show, don't tell." Also the math/logic behind the reasoning in this story isn't really... genius-level, so to speak. Points to little!me for trying to write in-character though :)

When You Can't Sleep,
written by Whipper

Light is Dark and One.

That's what Darwin had told us once when faced with his own death.

When trying to interpret the meaning of those words Doctor Landsdowne and the Captain claimed that Light was knowledge, Darkness the lack of it and that One stood for loneliness. And with that much I had agreed with them.

But when they translated it into that Darwin didn't want to die alone I couldn't help but to privately disagree. The math didn't work out for me, you see.

If Y equaled Light (knowledge), X Dark (the lack of knowledge) and Z One (loneliness) then Y equaled X plus Z. Knowledge equals lack of knowledge and loneliness.

No, if you ask me – although no one did, of course – Darwin's message wasn't about dying at all. To me it seemed that his words would be best interprented as knowledge being the product of a lack thereof coupled with loneliness.

Take me for example.

The Z factor fits me only too well. Alone was the perfect word to describe my life before seaQuest. As sad as it sounds, I didn't really have any friends. I knew a lot of people over the different nets, I had my fellow students and my teachers; but they weren't real friends.

They only ever knew what I wanted them to know and only ever saw the parts of me I wanted to show. I know now that real friendship doesn't work that way.

Then I ended up at the seaQuest and I was just this kid on board a military submarine. Yeah, yeah, I know. The seaQuest wasn't a military submarine back then; it was a submarine on a quest for knowledge. Well, if I recall correctly that didn't stop people from trying to kill us every other day.

Truth to be told, the first few weeks on board were hell. People were staring at me as soon as I left my little room in Mammal Engineering and conversations would end as soon as I walked into a room. As a result I locked the hatch to my haven and spent most of my time with my computer, leaving only to forage for food and play around in the science department.

Then one day I mouthed off a Captain and found a friend. Believe me, if I had known that being a spoiled brat was what it took to find friends I would have done it a hell of a lot sooner.

After the Captain it became easier. It was as if I had crossed some invisible line. Ben, Tim, Miguel, Katie... even the Commander and Crocker. I was proud to count them all as friends.

No, I'm not forgetting the Doctor. Doctor Kristin Westphalen; scientist, doctor and mother hen. She wasn't my friend as much as she was my surrogate mother. Or at least she tried to be. I'm afraid I didn't always like the attention she insisted on giving me. I never could allow myself to be fussed over. Not that my attitude seemed to stop her. Didn't seem to stop anyone, as a matter of fact.

How I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to enjoy those moments of fussing and friendly bantering... Of all the mistakes I've made in my life, not appreciating that first year on the seaQuest must be the worst.

One would think that I, never having experienced true friendship before, would have enjoyed every second of it. But I didn't. You see, I didn't understand that it was temporary. I thought it was just the beginning. 'The very first day of my new life', to use an old cliché.

And when the end came I was too busy to notice.

So, here I am. Alone again. Not as alone as I was when I was younger. I still have a handful of friends. Commander Ford has yet to abandon me, Tim is still here and so are Tony and Dagwood. And Darwin of course. But it's not the same. It never will be.

And I'm smart enough to realize that, but too stupid to accept it. I want things to be as they used to. I want to be able to feel comfortable, to laugh and joke without worrying about saying or doing the wrong thing.

You don't have to tell me... I know that I'm being a fool. And a selfish fool, no less. And God knows that I'm not the only one who's alone. The world is filled with lonely people. It's just that...I don't want to be one of them. Not again.

And that's the Z factor.

Now to X; the lack of knowledge. Something I've always hated. Always feared.

I was born a genius and delivered straight into the age of information. Ever since I was a child I've been fed information; numbers, statistics and facts. Numbers were never a problem for me, computers where my childhood friends and I was pretty much raised by the science community.

Yet X has always been a large part of me.

There are so many areas – and I seem to discover new ones every day -- where all my knowledge is of no help. I was never told the formula for love nor given any blueprints over friendship. I wasn't taught how to be with people or how to deal with disappointment or failure.

You see, in order to successfully learn about all those things, you need to have people around you. People who love you and care for you even as you mess things up. Because you will – sooner or later – mess things up.

I guess most people learn thas as children. I guess that's why we have families and homes. So that we can learn how to be human beings.

My family though... it was a bit of a joke. An as usual the laugh is on me.

Dad wasn't so bad to be honest. In a way I even felt sorry for him. Nothing ever seemed to work out quite the way he wanted it to. It would start off good, but in the end...

He wanted a beautiful and charming wife. He got her. He wanted a child. He got a son. He wanted the perfect job which would give him the chance of joining Einstein in the history books. He got it. He got it all.

Then he then goes ahead and loses it all. First his wife, then his son and finally his job. But he got his place in the history books. As the man who almost destroyed the world. What an epithat.

As for mom... Being the only daughter of a very rich man she grew up to be a spoiled little brat. A spoiled little brat who then grew up to be a spoiled little beauty. And that beauty married a man with a great reputation.

But things didn't quite work out for her either. Her husband, all too quickly, became more interested in his microchips than in her. She got a child; but it wasn't that cute little baby which she had been expecting. It was a little freak of nature – her words, not mine -- who solved advanced math when he was three and a half.

Given enough disappointments, she divorced her husband and left her child behind. Five months later she re-married. He was ten years younger and went by the name Jim. It lasted for two and a half year. After Jim came Bob, and after Bob came... who knows, but she's with Sam these days.

Actually I think it was after Bob but before whoever came before Sam that the seaQuest disappeared. I've only spoken to her once since then. She looked well, but I don't know... As I told Wendy once, she's the queen of denial. She could be in the middle of a new divorce for all I know.

And here I am, following in my parent's dysfunctional foot-steps.

Nothing ever seems to work out for me either. I'm the child genius who became a scientist who became a soldier who became... what? With my luck I'll probably end up dead. Well, at least they can re-use the eulogy from when the seaQuest disappeared.

So that's my Z factor. A total lack of understanding of the world around me.

Anyway, according to Darwin this – me being a pathetic loner with no understanding of the world around me -- should all end up equaling knowledge. And, well, maybe he was right.

Or maybe it's my knowledge which has made me a pathetic loner with no understanding of the world around me.

X plus Z equals Y. Y equals X plus Z.

That's the beauty of math though. It doesn't really matter.