TITLE: The Many Problems of Montgomery Scott
AUTHOR: Doqz
FANDOM: Star Trek
ARCHIVE: Please ask.
DISCLAIMER: Main characters mentioned belong to JJ Abrams . No profit is being made.
The problem is that Dr. Montgomery Scott never planned on being the engineer of the Federation's ship of the line.
No, that's not the problem.
Scotty is a mathematician and he knows all about probabilities and uncertainty. Plans mutate, entropy reigns, change is the only constant.
When the opportunity knocks he doesn't hesitate a second, abandoning the offer of a tenure track position at MIT. Starfleet Academy lets him play with military grants, classified tech, a ridiculous amount of explosives, and a research lab the size of a small country.
Plans change, but he plans for change. He is perfecting the formula that is sure to get him a bump into the flag rank and autonomy in research.
The problem is that Dr. Montgomery Scott is too arrogant.
No, that's not the problem.
He's young, and he's bloody clever, and he is certain - down to his very marrow - that the formula will work. He is not the failing kind and he hasn't ever met a problem he can't eventually solve. Self-confidence is essential for a scientist, doubly so for the mathematician - the second you begin to doubt yourself, you find yourself teaching remedial calculus at Linlithgow's community college.
So when the testing time comes it seems a harmless lark to use Archer's puppy for the demo.
The problem is that Dr. Montgomery Scott is unused to setbacks.
No, that's not the problem.
He has clawed his way from the coal miners' country into three PhDs, he's beaten the genetics that send three-quarters of his male relatives into an early alcohol-fueled grave, he's made his way to the top of the most cut-throat academic field in the Federation, chewing through the barb-wire barricades of Vulcan supercilious disdain for any Terran that tries to match wits with them.
No.
The real problem is that somewhere between losing his spot at the Academy and being sent off to the icy hell of Delta Vega, Montgomery Scott still finds himself ramming his head into the formula and coming away bloody and empty-handed.
He knows how to play the game, and he knows the politics, and he knows the value of his mind. A decent interval is all that's needed, some time to let the news die down a bit. Then publish an article or two and begin working his way back up the ladder.
But the formula keeps escaping him. Until one day he finds himself celebrating his 38th birthday in the maintenance shack of a 'research outpost' with a goblin, a half-frozen cadet, and a geriatric Vulcan for company.
When the Vulcan gives him the formula there's a audible 'click' somewhere behind his eyes and he stares at the screen for a long second, admiring the elegance of it. It's very pretty math. He used to write math like that.
Throughout the hectic days that follow as the world is doomed and saved in rapid succession, Montgomery Scott's mind continues to work through the problem.
It is his math. Why didn't he see it by himself? Would he have eventually? What if? What then? Why?
He assumes the slot of Enterprise's Chief Wrench almost as an after-thought.
Why hadn't he crack the formula?
The answers come slowly because they are obvious enough. He was too arrogant, he was too unused to failures, he was too dependent on the Plan.
The problem is that Scotty can never quite shake off the memory of Liz's pixiesh grin as she asked him to transport her along with the beagle.
Flip of a coin, 50/50 chance. He said no, but he could have said yes. In a universe somewhere a Dr. Montgomery Scott does say yes and kills her. In another he says yes and succeeds.
The problem is that Dr. Montgomery Scott finds himself content.
He is not hungry anymore.
Scotty has been content ever since he arrived at Delta Vega and realized that the sum total of his responsibility for the foreseeable future would be keeping the goblin away from the pickle supplies.
He begins to take responsibility for people's lives again when Kirk blows in with the wind and carries him along into the engineering bowels of a very pretty ship.
Enterprise is a very young boat and Scotty likes the feel of her well enough. But he is no longer used to people, no longer taken by the bustle and the tempo that suffuses this crew.
He declines the role of the cantankerous uncle with the heart of gold, leaving it to the kid in the Sickbay. He also eschews the niche of an amiable drunk - the engines do not tolerate fools and his father's shaking hands and slurred curses loom strongly.
He retreats below the decks and takes care of the bird, and tries his best to protect her from the crew, the captain and the eventualities of fate.
They don't leave him alone, for whatever reason. The girl is the first and, even after she makes up with Spock, she continues visiting him. Sneaking pickles to the goblin in the bargain, but there is shit all he can do about any of it.
He likes her, she reminds him of Liz.
Sulu runs into him outside of a busted docking clamp mechanism and they end up playing fractal chess and talking about the ship every Thursday. The black sheep of the family that came to California during the Gold Rush, Hikaru spends much of his time relating anecdotes about his hippie-relatives who are busy squandering the fortune built up by his great-great grandfather.
Scotty understands the impulses that drive people to run away into the military all too well. Moreover, Sulu is the only person on board who gets his bird, really gets her, and flies her the way she is meant to be flown.
Scotty sees him sometimes wandering the decks, grinning at some private joke, tracing the contours of the ship.
So they play chess on Thursdays and he lets Sulu win at least one in five.
The only man who can really beat him is the Captain.
Scotty is forced out to the bridge after a memo chases him down and demands that he stop his vandalism. Kirk comes back to Engineering with him and glances at the equations winding down the bulkheads, taking in the neat, compact rows of symbols that gleam under the dim lights of the engineering level, giving Scotty's domain a somewhat macabre look.
He also takes in the sight of the goblin standing between the cleaning crew and Scotty's handwriting with a power-wrench grasped in both hands.
Kirk decides on a compromise and Scotty promises not to expand his calligraphy into the rest of the ship when he runs out of space on his level.
He'd rather it all ended there, but the Captain wants to talk about the numbers. He surprises Scotty, and that doesn't happen often anymore.
It's a dirty little secret that amuses the few people who are cognizant of it. Scotty isn't sure how many of the crew actually realize that Kirk is smarter than the Vulcan. He knows that the girl is aware, and he is pretty sure Spock knows.
Scotty never lets a personal dislike interfere with his ability to fairly assess a mind, and the truth is that the Vulcan is supremely well-trained in applying his intellect.
But the Captain is a natural. Some people think that the scatterbrained, free-flowing non-sequitors and randomness are a purposeful facade, others accept it as the reality of a gung-ho cowboy.
The truth is that behind the charisma and the morals of a dockside street whore, there lurks a keen mind, able to process vast amounts of data and deduce the correct conclusions within a fraction of the time it takes either Dr. Montgomery Scott or Mr. Spock. His brain is always in motion, always working, outpacing his mouth, producing the stuttering effect that is dismissed as intuition or seized upon as blessed luck; because the answer often pops out before the question is even formulated either by the others or by Kirk's own conscious mind.
Once he begins to frequent Engineering there is no stopping the rest, and soon Scotty finds his cabin turned into the equivalent of the ship's kitchen. It is periodically filled to an overflow with people who have an entire starship to play with but find a strange attraction in stuffing themselves into a cubbyhole of Scotty's room.
This boat is young. But she has potential, Scotty thinks. Room to grow.
And perhaps so does he.
Somewhere deep inside there's a crack. Somewhere deep inside there's a disconnect between Dr. Montgomery Scott and Scotty, between the man who didn't fail and the man who did.
He doesn't play a tragic, brooding hero. His sense of the ridiculous is too finely attuned for that. But he knows that the flaw is there, waiting to be tested and when the day comes for him to stand up and be counted there will be lives on the line.
Not of strangers but of a punk-captain, of a Vulcan with impulse control issues, of a kid who was born too late to be a samurai, of a girl that always wanted to talk to dragons, of the Russian with a rap collection, of their surrogate father who still looks at the picture of his ex-wife where he thinks no one will notice.
Of friends.