Title: Dreams of a Lost Boy
Author: Jazz (andrews_j2002@yahoo.com.au)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A day in the life of Trip Tucker.
Disclaimer: Characters, themes and all the biscuit dough
belong to Paramount; some of the choc chips thrown in are mine – including the
burnt ones.
Author's note: This was written to fight a depressingly
sticky case of writer's block currently attacking another WIP like so many
ants. I felt it had substance enough to stand up on its own.
Dreams of a Lost Boy
By Jazz
When Charles Tucker was a young boy his father gave him a
model spaceship. Eight year-old Charlie had been disappointed; he'd had heart
set on one of those antegrav baseballs which all his friends had and which was,
he assured his parents vigorously, the coolest toy around. Only nerds
played with spaceships, and this one didn't even do anything; it didn't even
have retro-burners – how boring was that? So the spaceship was relegated to the
back of his dresser, where it sat collecting dust and was soon forgotten.
Charlie
didn't know it back then, but that spaceship would one day ignite something
inside him, which would take him up past the stars and into another world,
another life. He didn't know that one day he would be running the engine room
of the fastest and most advanced Federation ship into waters uncharted by human
beings, into strange worlds which were both inspiring and terrifying. Into
space, where life was still and silent, where time and distance was measured in
a different scale, and the human race learnt to live in an eternal night just
so they could play amongst the stars. He didn't know that, because how could a
young boy possibly know? Instead Charlie played ball through the hot summer
days and at night gazed through an opened window, and wondered if you could hit
a home run on Mars.
How
could a boy know such wonders existed?
Charles Tucker did not. He would discover, like all
children did.
---
"Care to purchase a fine length of I'kyaa, sir?
It's hand woven."
Commander Trip Tucker glanced down at the gaudy orange fabric
and immediately wished he hadn't. It was crawling with hundreds of bugs. Fleas,
he thought, feeling nauseous. Probably riddled with the things. Why he
had agreed to come with Captain Archer to this market in search of some special
dog blanket Jon had heard about from their Tythian guide was beyond him. The
rest of the crew were back on Enterprise, enjoying some sort of movie marathon
Lieutenant Reed had prepared, as a celebration marking the end of their
four-day visit to the Tythia System. Trip brushed the eager stallholder's wares
away with a hand and tried to see where Jon had got to. God, but he was hot. He
looked around at the rose-skinned Tythians wandering about and thought
wistfully of the coolness of the ship's dark cinema.
He finally spotted the captain standing with Eekiv, their
guide, at a stall laid out with squares of fabric. Great, more rugs,
Trip thought, and ran to catch up with them. Eekiv was chatting
enthusiastically in his strange, singsong voice with the stallholder, and Trip
pulled at Archer's sleeve, indicating he wanted to speak aside.
Archer gestured at the downy material excitedly. "Porthos
will love one of these, don't you think?"
"Captain…" Trip tried to hide his grimace. "You'll give
him fleas, bringin' one of those things aboard."
"You think so?" Archer frowned slightly. "They look clean
enough to me."
Trip sighed. He had to be delicate when it came to Jon and
Porthos; never come between a man and his dog. "I know so," he said. "Believe
you me, we'll wind up sittin' in decon waiting for Phlox to douse us with flea
powder. Besides, don't you think Porthos has enough blankets and toys as it is?
Hell, that dog's got more rugs than I've got spanners. And I'm the
engineer!"
This put a smile on Archer's face. "Okay," he patted Trip
on the shoulder, "you've made your point. We'll finish up here with Eekiv and
get back to Enterprise." And then he added, "If we hurry you might be able to
catch the end of the marathon."
Finally
it was Trip's turn to laugh, and after beginning to feel like he was suffering
from alien market overload, it sure felt good. That's the good thing about
Jon, he thought, he knows me almost as well as I know myself.
---
In the end Trip saved Archer from making any purchases,
and they sailed through decon in a flash. Though he knew he'd be late, but for
the sake of seeing some familiar faces after days in the alien wilderness, when
the doctor cleared him Trip dropped by the cinema. The end credits of some old
war film were rolling when he arrived to see tired-looking faces and dragging
limbs emerge. He spotted Ensign Mayweather first, and was rewarded with a
friendly but exhausted grin from the young pilot.
"Hey, Commander, you're back."
"Jeez, you guys look beat. What was it?" Trip poked him on
the shoulder; the poor guy looked ready to fall asleep right there in the
corridor.
"Anthony Quinn marathon." Travis shook his head and
blinked in an effort to stay awake. "We've just finished The Guns of
Navarone. And don't ask me if I enjoyed it because all I can think about is
hitting the sack. I wish I'd done like Hoshi and left after Lawrence of
Arabia."
As if on cue, Malcolm Reed came out behind the young
ensign, looking annoyingly awake. He said, rather haughtily, "I, for one,
thoroughly enjoyed it."
That made Trip grin. "Hello Malcolm. Should've known you'd
organise something like this. Glad I was away and had an excuse to miss it."
"If my grandfather had heard you he'd be turning over in his
grave. He was a devoted fan." Malcolm stared at him for a moment. "Anyway,
Commander, what are you doing back so soon? I thought Captain Archer had a
special errand to run."
Stepping aside to let other crewmembers past, Trip
coughed, hiding a smile. "Let's just say I talked him outa buying something
he'd later regret."
The three of them began walking down the corridor, towards
the mess, mainly on the urgent request of Travis' part for some coffee. "Well,"
said Malcolm breezily, "No doubt you're itching to tell us of your
adventures, if indeed you had any. Or may I presume from your tired expression
that it was nice and diplomatic and dull?"
"Nice and diplomatic and dull," Trip repeated, and
pretended to give this serious thought. "Yup. You've got it in one." He caught
the teasing glint in the lieutenant's eye and laughed out loud. The others
looked at him strangely, but said nothing, assuming Trip was as travel weary as
they were film weary, and the three men continued down the corridor in amiable,
if exhausted, silence.
---
Back in the days when
Trip was a green ensign on his first posting out of the academy, he had to rely
quite heavily on his alarm to startle him (always startle – why was he such a
heavy sleeper?) into getting up in time for his shift. Even so, he was still
reliant on cold showers and tankards of coffee to sufficiently get his sluggish
brain cells pulsing in the early hours; a regime which became somewhat
embarrassing as Trip duly spent the mornings in engineering alternating between
a jittery state of caffeine-induced over-activity, and the urgent need to take
discreet breaks to the bathroom. This went on for some weeks, until his
supervising officer noted sternly at Trip's quarterly review that if his
'attitude' didn't sharpen up, he'd be relegated to gamma shift for the
remainder of his posting. Trip remembered Lieutenant Commander Zoehrer being,
in his words, 'disappointed'. "You are an extremely talented individual, Mr
Tucker," Zoehrer had said; "and you deserve to be on alpha shift with your star
peers. So please take this as an unofficial warning, and improve your approach
before it is improved for you." Trip, who hadn't liked Zoehrer back then – the
self-important, beady-eyed Vulcan wannabe was only a few years older that Trip
himself – remembered in later times with bitter fondness that positive comments
the Lieutenant Commander had bestowed upon him in three and a half years,
including this one, he could count on one hand.
Anyway, that story,
interesting though it was on its own right, stood to illustrate the fact that
Trip had since mastered the ability to wake exactly four minutes before his
alarm went off, every day, without fail. He surprised himself with this
impressive display of professionalism, albeit witnessed by him alone (but
that's another story). Even so, Trip counted the fact that he only used his
alarm as a token gesture to his youth, and to the memory of Zoehrer who, deep
down, Trip still envied for being so good at such a young age. Though he still
counted coffee as a necessary luxury, professionalism be damned. He was
Chief Engineer, after all.
After hot drinks turned
into an impromptu breakfast, even though it was past midday, Trip bade farewell
to Travis and Malcolm. This was partly because he was dog-tired, and partly
because Malcolm was attempting to introduce Travis to the English delicacy
known as black pudding. Trip, reminded slightly of the wriggling rugs
back in the Tythian market, was forced with a sleepy bout of nausea from the
table, and retired to his room to sleep it off. And for the first time in as
long as he could remember, Trip Tucker missed his four-minute internal wake up
call and slept through his alarm.
So it turns out I'm
not only Chief Engineer but human as well, Trip thought, throwing items of clothing across his room as he
frantically searched for his spare uniform. I can live with that…Goddamn
it! Where was his other boot? Spotting a boot-like shape in the furthest corner
under his bunk, he grimaced. Thanks a lot, Malcolm. Trip coughed at the
dust and wriggled his torso beneath the metal slats, sighing as his stomach
gurgled unhappily. I'm never again eating a greasy breakfast in the middle
of the day. Never. He emerged with the boot, bumping his forehead painfully
on the way, and broke a lace-tying record before giving himself a cursory
glance in the bathroom mirror, dabbing at the bump that was now bleeding
delicately and finally grabbing a pile of padds from his desk, and exiting with
speed into the corridor.
Please, he thought, jogging the catch an opened
turbolift, don't let this be a precursor to my day. Trip numbly watched
the turbolift doors close and stood in the empty corridor, his head resting
against the wall until pain from the bump, which, he noted with displeasure,
was taking on a fetching purple colour, forced him to stand upright, and
wondered if it was too late to crawl back into bed.
---
The Situation Room was
located just off the bridge, and it was here where the senior staff held their
weekly meetings. Like all large military organizations that considered
themselves extremely weighty in the world scale, Starfleet stuck to the
conservative side of things, and this included a fondness for decking out
starship interiors in neutral, safe colours, flowing along straight, safe
lines. No racy, bold décor for this ship of the line.
Not surprisingly, Enterprise's
Situation Room was no exception. It had a long table; dark walls with little
adornments on their faces; the usual assortment of communications consoles,
monitors and data panels, all discretely dimmed so their beeps and whirrs were
of little disruption to whatever was going on at the table; and nothing else.
Apart from the single window framing a swirling landscape of stars, it was
little more than a sanctuary for meetings, meetings, and more meetings.
Situations barely came into it.
Trip, sitting at the
far end of the table, felt himself fortunate to have secured the least
conspicuous seat in the room. No-one was on either side of him, so he had a
clear, unobstructed view of the stars, shining like pale pink sugar streaming
into honeycombed spirals, and in the distance, sitting like a bright blue
marble, the Tythian homeworld. It made him feel tired for some reason, which he
shouldn't have, because God knows he'd had enough sleep in the last ten or so
hours. After racing down to Engineering Trip had dumped the pile of padds on
his desk, and had just started his daily inspection when he'd remembered it was
Monday morning and everyone was waiting for him to show in the Situation Room
for the weekly meeting. Of course, being the sort of day it was, Trip missed
the first turbolift he came to, and coming out of the second he bumped into
Chef and upset a box of vegetables. Being the gentleman he was, Trip stayed to
pick up potatoes and chase a stray turnip, and thus he arrived, breathless, in
the Situation Room, only to find Captain Archer was running behind schedule
anyway, and Trip was in fact the first to arrive. Hence his refuge in the
darkest corner of the room, away, he hoped, from frowning eyes. Especially
beady little Vulcan ones.
Don't you even dare,
T'Pol, Trip thought, perhaps
unkindly. But tiredness was heavy upon him, and even he was allowed the odd
crabby morning. He looked at the stars again, and felt his eyes droop. I'll
just close my eyes for a moment. Trip propped one elbow on the table and
rested his chin in his hand. Just a moment.
Some time later, Trip
was happily in a semi-daydream state, his eyes on the Tythian orb, thinking of
nothing in particular, when he became uncomfortably aware that talk had stopped
and all eyes, Vulcan included, were in fact upon him. He blinked
rapidly; meeting Jon's raised eyebrows with what he hoped was a suitably alert
and vigilant expression.
Archer's face was
blank, but his eyes glinted. He repeated what had apparently been directed in
Trip's direction.
"T'Pol wishes to know
your opinion." The glint deepened. "Commander."
Bastard, Trip thought, smiling despite himself. Jon knew he
was caught, but wasn't going to let him go without letting his old friend
squirm. Trip shifted in his seat and tilted his chin forward. Better sit on
the fence, he decided. "I think the Sub-Commander's on the money on this
one, Captain." He smiled neutrally, folded his arms, and stared at Archer until
the Captain nodded and signalled he'd let Trip off the hook by moving onto the
next item on the agenda. Keen to avoid any more embarrassment, Trip dipped his
head down and pretended to study his padd.
Actually he was pretty
angry with himself. That was a bit of a shoddy act; almost falling asleep in
the middle of an important meeting, albeit one that was routine and therefore
dull. But still, there was no excuse. Everyone had bad days; the trick was to
beat it with an ass-kicking work ethic. Look at Malcolm, Trip thought,
glowering slightly, I bet he never sleeps in. But then he
remembered that his own track record, up until today, had actually been pretty
damn special. Four minutes, remember, Trip.
That cheered him, until
he saw Archer eyeing him mid-speech, and realised he was drifting again. With a
sigh heard only by himself and the stars, he kicked his legs out, knocking
against Hoshi's. But he ignored her curious glance, and with that gesture Trip
resigned himself to the bad day blues, until whatever god played the double
bass signalled his shift finished and he might start again.
---
In hindsight, it was
perhaps erring on the self-indulgent for Trip to have deemed one bad day
as being the be all and end all of his life; in fact, he'd had worst days
before this one, and was certain to have even worse ones down the line. And he
had a lot to be thankful for, as his grandma would say. Actually, when Trip
really thought about it, it was only his sleeping in which had triggered one
unfortunate event after another. No, better than that, blame it on Malcolm's
full English breakfast.
But if you were to tell
this to Trip when he finally got to the end of his shift, exhausted out of his
mind, not to mention having been constantly jibed by his senior colleagues
throughout the day about his memorable non-performance at the meeting that
morning, you would certainly not receive such eloquent philosophy, but
something more along the lines of a dark comment alluding to the fact that Trip
had 'had enough of the day and was going to sweat if away in the gym, if you'll
excuse [him].'
Which was where Trip
found himself heading to, gym bag in tow, after his shift ended. Thank god
that's over, he thought, letting a pent-up sigh escape as he stood alone in
the turbolift. He rubbed his aching eyes, and smiled suddenly as his fingers
touched the tender skin at his temple, less painful but still slightly swollen,
courtesy of his bunk that morning. God, I'd almost forgotten. It seems like
ages ago, not ten hours. He shouldered his bag as the doors opened, and
walked down the corridor towards the gym, where, god willing, he might finally
get some peace. Knowing my luck, though, he thought, T'Pol'll be in
there practicing karate or something depressingly agile and disciplined. As
much as he liked the Vulcan (though he'd never admit it), her innate lack of
humour was no soother and tonic to the sort of bad day Trip had just endured.
He stood for a moment
outside the gym's doors, listening for signs of activity. Hearing none, he was
appropriately taken back to find Hoshi Sato on a mat twisted into all sorts of
contortions. He didn't dare ask what she was about, tying herself up in knots
like it was the most normal thing to be doing at twenty five past six in the
evening, so he waited until she was bent over far enough to spot him through
her legs, and said, "Hey, Hoshi," quite innocuously, and turned towards the
change rooms.
"Hi, Trip." Hoshi
uncurled herself, and gave him a little wave. Trip waited until he was out of
her line of sight before he spoke further.
"So, uh, care to
explain why I walk in here to find our chief linguist attemptin' to turn
herself into a reef knot?"
Hoshi laughed. "Nice
try. I'm not falling for that one."
"No, seriously." Trip
emerged in his joggers and sweat pants and headed towards the treadmills. He
pondered what speed to set for perhaps a nanosecond before switching onto high.
He ran out his cooped-up energy for a couple of minutes before giving into his
screaming muscles and turning down to a medium jog. Wiping a line of sweat out
of his eyes, he nodded again in Hoshi's direction. "What is it? I'm curious."
"It's pilates."
"Right." Trip nodded. Okay,
we're heading into dangerous territory here, he thought, watching Hoshi
over the bars of the treadmill as she bent herself in two. Next we'll be
discussing yoga. Better stick to what you know, Trip.
So he said, "I'm more
of a weights and sit-up kind of guy, myself." He saw Hoshi smile but she said
nothing in reply, so he left her to her exercises, and concentrated instead on
his breathing, the pull in his thigh muscles, calves and lower back, until he
felt the bad vibes ease themselves away under the smooth, practiced thud his
feet produced as they pounded in a steady rhythm on the machine. It felt good
just to run, to think of nothing and to watch the stars, much in the manner as
he had done that meeting. Except this time I'm not running late, he
thought, his eyes absently connecting the stars together in spidery patterns. Here,
I'm master of my own domain.
"Bad day?"
Trip looked up. Hoshi
had finished, and was sitting on one of the long benches that wrapped around
the gym's perimeter. She raised her eyebrows in his direction.
He sighed, and hopped
off the treadmill. Grabbing a towel, he blotted his face and wandered over to
the bench. "Is it that obvious?" he asked wryly.
Shrugging, Hoshi
shifted on the bench so that her toes were aimed in Trip's direction. "I
wouldn't burn yourself out worrying about it," she said, sympathetically.
"Plenty of things happened to me today that I wish hadn't. The way I see
it, they're going to happen no matter what I do; I've just got to treat them
just like any bad situation. Deal with it, learn from it–"
"Laugh at it," finished
Trip. In spite of himself, he did just that. "Four minutes…boy, did that
screw me."
He watched Hoshi screw
her nose up, confused, which made him laugh more. "Four minutes?" she repeated.
"Up until today,
Ensign," Trip said laconically, "that was precisely my level self-discipline
each morning." He grinned at her and quickly dodged a sharp prod from Hoshi's
foot aimed at his upper thigh. "Hey! That's no way to treat a commanding
officer."
Hoshi groaned and got
off the bench. She took her towel and proceeded towards the change rooms. "I'll
see you later, okay?"
Trip leant his head
against the wall, basking in the post-exercise glow. "Yeah. Later," he said,
letting his eyes close. He didn't see Hoshi smile wickedly, but heard her say,
"Don't fall asleep again, now…"
With a grin, Trip let
an expletive go, and in a single movement picked up a hand towel off the floor
and, with his eyes still closed, threw it in the vague direction of Hoshi's
voice. Her laughter echoed in the cubicles, and Trip, leaning back more
comfortably, smiled to himself, and thought, I think that just put things
into perspective.
Not a bad end,
actually, for a bad day.
---
C Deck was home to the senior
crew's quarters, and hierarchy being as it was; that is, firmly in place,
though not in any way lauded upon, the rooms were generously proportioned and,
as deep space lodgings went, quite accommodating. Even so, Trip had still
managed to fill his room with a quite astonishing amount of odds and ends. His
taste in furnishings lent itself to the more practical side; so that instead
of, say, a neat two piece sofa, he settled for a utilitarian work desk where he
could house reports, work plans and all sorts of engineering paraphernalia to
his heart's content. It was still cluttered, of course, but in this way he
could function. It was a system that worked. And that's all that
mattered.
Nevertheless, amongst
the clutter Trip had kept a few relics from his childhood. A worn baseball; his
harmonica; precious family holoimages. These things served to keep Trip's feet
planted firmly on terra firma. He resolved on first joining Starfleet never to
loose sight of that fact.
He finished up at the
gym not long after Hoshi had left. There were a few groups chatting away in the
mess, but Trip decided to forego conversation and opted instead to grab a
sandwich and head back to his quarters. The liquid crystal digits on Trip's
bedside clock melted from 19:59 into 20:00 as Trip entered his room. He watched
the second divider blink on and off for a moment, then sat down slowly on the
edge of his bed. His mind raced between ideas of nothing and everything; he
thought of what Hoshi had said earlier; of what he had been thinking that
morning; of his self-accusations. Perhaps it wasn't in his power to worry about
he had or hadn't done; what he should and shouldn't do. Was he the only one who
thought about things like this? Boy, a shrink would have a field day on this
ship, he thought, and laughed out loud.
Suddenly Trip got up.
He walked to the aforementioned work desk, and rummaged around in the back of a
draw.
"Gotcha…" he murmured,
his hand emerging clasped around a small wooden object. He uncurled his
fingers, and held it up to the light.
It was part of what had
once been a model spaceship - the nose and cockpit. Its metallic paint was
chipped, and the decals had rubbed away, but Trip touched it with warm fingers,
grinning as a clutch of boyish memories pounded with sudden urgency in a corner
of his brain. This is what it's all about, he thought. This means
more good than all the bad days in the world. He cleared away a pouch of
space beside his harmonica, and placed the broken model carefully down, then
ate his supper and changed out of his clothes. He felt lightheaded; happy.
And so he slept,
unhurried and with purpose. At some point his dreams melted away, and with them
a picture of a starship, streaking like a bullet through space in the hands of
a young boy who had loved it once, long ago.
END