Space…the final frontier.

Breathtaking. Magnificent. Infinite.

And incredibly boring after you've been staring at it through a viewscreen for six days.

Kirk sighed and glanced about the bridge. Everyone looked hard at work – well, as hard at work as anyone can look while sitting nearly motionless, staring blankly into little screens on the desk/console in front of them, occasionally twitching a finger to push a button or flip a switch.

Up front and below, Sulu muttered something to Chekov, who giggled and said something inaudible in reply. Kirk idly wondered what they were talking about, studying his finger. He had gotten a papercut earlier, and it still stung a little. He put his finger in his mouth.

Somebody giggled.

He whipped his finger out of his mouth and glanced around, but it was just Chekov again. He turned to Uhura, who was staring fixedly at a point on the ceiling. Kirk looked up. There was nothing there. He had half-expected to see a spider, even though he knew that the Enterprise had been completely disinfected before setting off, and logic dictates that spiders couldn't just begin existing for no reason.

Speaking of logic…

He turned his gaze to Spock, who was leaning over the console as if frozen in place, looking for all the world like the blue light he was staring into had sucked out his soul and that it was just his body that remained, his katra stuck somewhere in the matrix.

"Captain..."

Uhura held her hand to the side of her head, listening. Kirk turned to her expectantly, but then she shook her head. "Sorry, Captain. Never mind."

He suppressed a rude word and closed his eyes. A song played in the back of his head, some Orion dance tune. He hummed it to himself, lightly drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair.

Chekov laughed.

Kirk's eyes flew open, and he immediately thought of spaghetti. Why he didn't know, but once created the idea grew wings, and he began to intensely crave a bowl of spaghetti. He toyed with the idea of getting it himself, and then decided he would just get the next ensign who wandered into the bridge to get it for him. Normally, eating wasn't allowed on the bridge, but what the hell. He was the captain, and besides, was Starfleet really going to relieve him of his duties for eating spaghetti? He'd be careful. He wouldn't spill it.

His stomach growled. He looked over at Spock again, wondering if he could persuade him to do it.

The Vulcan somehow sensed his gaze, and looked up from the blue light to stare at him. Kirk stared back. He waited for Spock to look away, but he didn't, and after a few minutes, it was just awkward, so Kirk turned back around. Chekov was slumped over his console, shoulders shaking with laughter.

Kirk couldn't take it anymore. "Gentlemen," he said, sounding stern. Sulu immediately went back to his work, nudging Chekov, who looked at him, then at the captain, and tried to suppress his mirth.

"Mr. Chekov."

"Y-yes, Keptin Kirk?" the Russian asked, his voice wavering a bit.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, sir." He gave Kirk a charming grin, and then turned back to his console.

And giggled.

Kirk sighed again.

It was just one of those days.

…~…

"Bones, I have a problem."

McCoy glanced up from the saltshaker he was inspecting to see Kirk standing in the middle of sickbay. He looked him over. "You look O.K. to me."

"I'm suffering from an advanced case of boredom."

"Ah." McCoy turned the saltshaker upside down and peered into it. "Well, Jim, it is a Monday…back on Earth, anyhow. You know how Mondays are."

"Yes, only too well." Kirk sat down on one of the cots. "It just feels worse today. I'm… restless. It's been a while since anything even remotely interesting happened. Two whole weeks, actually."

"Hmm…"

Kirk watched McCoy shake the object, then hold it to his ear, listening. "What are you doing?"

"I think it's broken." He tossed it into a nearby wastebasket. "I'll have to get a new one the next time we stop at a starbase. Good thing I don't use that one very often." He ambled over, plopping down on the cot opposite Kirk. "What's on your mind?"

"Spaghetti." Kirk's stomach growled. "Do you have any idea what's going on with Chekov and Sulu?"

"No. Why should I? They're on your bridge, Jim." He raised an eyebrow. "Why, is something wrong?"

"No, not really. Chekov just seems to have the giggles, that's all."

"Ah."

They sat there for a few minutes in silence, but it was a comfortable silence, one that lets your mind lazily wander off and frolic among metaphorical fields of pretty metaphorical flowers, dancing with large metaphorical flocks of happy metaphorical butterflies, then suddenly stunning them with metaphorical phasers and watching them float gently to the metaphorical ground.

"Wanna play cards?" Kirk asked suddenly.

McCoy pulled out a pack of cards from a compartment under the operating table, and for about fifteen minutes they played an extremely intense game of 'Go Fish'. Then Kirk's communicator chirped.

"Kirk here," he said, flipping it open.

"Captain, we are approaching a spatio-temporal anomaly," Spock's voice informed him.

"How do you know it's a temporal anomaly?" Kirk asked.

"The sensors indicate it, Captain…as well as the rather large sign near it that reads 'This is a spatio-temporal anomaly' in large black letters, with an arrow pointed to the anomaly in question."

"All right, I'll buy that." He turned to McCoy. "Finish up later?"

"Look forward to it."

The captain walked out of sickbay, and stopped a pretty young woman passing by.

"Do me a favor and get me some spaghetti, ensign."

"Yes, Captain."

He headed off to the bridge.

…~…

The doors to the bridge whooshed open. "Status report, Mr. Chekov."

"It's right there, sir," the Russian replied, pointing to the screen.

"Thank you, Mr. Chekov."

It was an amorphous, deep blue mass, shifting and fluctuating near the large sign. Kirk thought that to be a little strange, but shook it off. "So…what are we doing about it?"

"We are currently scanning to ascertain whether or not it poses a threat to us," Spock replied, staring into the blue sensor light.

"Does it?"

"It does not appear that way, Captain. It seems to be merely a matter of maneuvering around it."

"Well, then. Commence maneuvering, Mr. Sulu."

"Yes, sir."

The anomaly slowly moved to the left of the viewscreen as the ship changed course, until finally disappearing from sight. Kirk sighed. The only interesting thing they had seen in weeks, and they were moving away from it. Go back and check it out, a little voice in his head whispered. Come on, you know you want to, go check it out.

"Mr. Sulu –"

Before the words had left his mouth, the blue mass quickly moved back on screen. "What's going on?"

"It's in our way again, sir."

Good, Kirk thought.

"Should we attempt to go around it again, sir?"

"No, no, let's, um, let's take some readings, check it out, see what's going on." Kirk leaned back in his chair.

Sulu shrugged. "Aye-aye, sir." He flipped a switch.

The blue thing suddenly began to grow at an astonishing rate. "Captain, it's moving towards us!"

Chekov giggled, then quickly composed himself.

"Red alert! Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu!"

"Alerting red and maneuvering evasively, Captain!" Sulu shouted, pushing random buttons. The mass filled the screen.

"Mr. Sulu!"

At that moment, the doors to the bridge whooshed open, and the pretty ensign Kirk had met in the hallway walked in, holding a plate of spaghetti. "Captain, I brought your –"

The rest of her sentence was cut off as she tripped over an imaginary speck of dust and fell forward, the platter of spaghetti leaping from her hands to hit Chekov squarely on the back of his head.

Sulu reached for Chekov, Kirk jumped out of his chair, Spock's soul was jerked back into his body as he turned from the blue sensor light to see what the hell was going on, a security guard in the back leapt forward, yelling, "Noooooo!", and the blue mass consumed the ship.

And with the sound of ten thousand people saying 'whop', they disappeared from the bridge.