A series of vignettes of Spock & Uhura's mornings together, prior to the 2009 movie. Notin the same world as the Schoolgirl stories.
*
7. Scatter Plot
*
It involved complex translations in several languages. She was in a vast room, an auditorium, far flung seats with no horizon. She was being quizzed and timed and the test switched from Andorian to Tutu to German to Romulan to Vulcan, then exploded into a rapid-fire burst of Vulcan terms. She could see dark, angular shapes and squiggles and lines, the words themselves, skittering on the floor and getting away from her.
She had never failed a test.
She woke abruptly but silently. 04:47. The sky outside was dark, and in the dim light of the chronometer she could barely make out her own blankets, creamy white peaks in a rich, dark night. She rose and went to the window, one of her places of prospect and refuge. She could see everything, and not one creature could see her. She watched nothing, while her heart rate decelerated. Nyota searched the campus for any movement, almost, illogically, expecting words to be crawling and ricocheting on the perfect lawn.
In a few hours the sky would be steel and weak sun, a thousand red uniforms scattered in its rays.
Sudden insight compelled her to jump onto her bed, rummaging in the covers for a padd and stylus. She could draw it. On an x-y axis, she could plot the words. Angular ones vs. straight, and perceived difficulty, from mildly unreadable to so utterly alien they were indiscernible from distant breathing. She fervently assigned a two-dimensional point to each word form she could remember, working anxiously to capture them before the dream began to fade. She was still somewhat, perhaps mostly, asleep, and she knew and did not know it was the weirdest thing she'd ever done.
Her thoughts and hands slowed as the escaping things she could gather ran out. When she stopped, and breathed, and looked at what she'd drawn, it was peculiar, pretty, completely nuts. She drew her eyes away from the plot on her small screen, and let her mind soften.
And in the softness, there was Commander Spock. Huh. It was the dream test. Perhaps he was the instructor who broke her. She dropped the stylus as she was drawn back to the window, thinking idly that he might be down there, eternally wading through the nights and dawns and evenings and nights, and that he was so stiff and perfect he wouldn't even trip on the words. She wanted to show him what she'd drawn. She imagined him reacting awkwardly, sorry for her or for himself.
Her roommate shifted in her bed and dragged a sleep mask down off her pretty eyes. "What theā¦.?"
Nyota's voice was soft and her breath bloomed and disappeared on the window glass. "I had a bad dream."
"Hmmmmmm." Gaila turned to face the wall and pulled her blankets up like a shield against Nyota's voice.
"And I drew it in a two-dimensional matrix." She looked down at the padd in her hand and began to realize how really crazy it was.
Gaila pushed her blanket back down, and sat up on her elbows, sleepy, half asleep really. "Nyota, you are the biggest nerd in the universe."
"No, actually," Nyota exhaled. "I'm really not."
*
