Disclaimer: Star Trek: The Original Series belongs to CBS, not me.


Captain's Log, Stardate 5618.3: We have received the final assignment of our five-year mission—the transport of construction materials from Starbase 13 to the colony at Delta Kappa Six. After that, the Enterprise will return to Earth and undergo an extensive refit. Mr. Scott informs me that he has completed work on prototypes for several new pieces of equipment that need to be tested before we return home. A vastly improved tactile viewscreen is among the most critical pieces slated for testing.

In actual fact, it is unclear whether or not I will be allowed to retain command of the Enterprise—or any other ship—beyond the end of the current mission. I was allowed to retain command after the loss of my vision only with the oversight of a handler, Commodore Ethan Tucker. Commodore Tucker has now submitted a thorough performance report to the Personnel Oversight Committee, on which sit six of Starfleet Command's highest-ranking flag officers. They will decide whether I am allowed to retain command or whether I should be reassigned to a staff position. My understanding is that a move to staff officer would most likely be accompanied by a promotion to admiral—an option that I do not relish.

"Commander Scott entering." Instead of heading toward the engineering station, Scotty heads for the port steps and stops alongside the command chair. He holds something out in front of me. "Captain? At your leisure, sir."

My signal transmitters are off at the moment, so I click my tongue and listen to the signal slide around the thing's contours. I reach for the nearest edge and recognize it as the new tactile viewscreen prototype. Whereas the old model was housed in a standard PADD that Scotty modified for braille output, the new one boasts a new design altogether. It has a larger display surrounded by a thinner, rounded-edge polymer border with a magnetic stylus port in one corner. It's still a PADD, but I like its aesthetics much better. "You built this from scratch. How did you get it done so fast?"

"There's no choice, sir. We want it integrated into the armrests of the new command chair, so it has to be tested and approved before we get back to Earth."

"We don't even know that the chair is going to be mine after the refit."

"Aye, sir, it'll be yours. Starfleet will make the right decision, and I want to show the Committee that this time we're fully prepared for you."

"I appreciate your optimism, Mr. Scott."

The old tactile viewer used electronic pulse technology to translate images from the main viewscreen into line drawings, using stronger and weaker pulses to indicate depth. The images were nothing more than animated low-resolution sketches. The new viewer features an amorphous solid display that raises high-resolution three-dimensional images sturdy enough to withstand my touch, which should make them more like moving sculptures. And for the first time I'll be able to adjust the magnification level independent of the main viewscreen.

Only one feature has been carried over from the original tactile viewer to the new model: the sensory substitution program, which allows me to smell colors instead of seeing them. And even that has been expanded. The original program was limited to ten basic colors: white, black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink. The new program can render shades and a more specific range of hues: gold instead of yellow, peach instead orange, cream instead of white. I never paid attention to those distinctions when I could see, but I've definitely noticed their absence.

"I guess I'd better start testing, then."

"Aye, sir. There's no time like the present."

I push the stylus in until it clicks, then palm the right side of the screen to activate the viewscreen connection. Individual points of white light appear underneath my fingertips and turn into lines rushing toward the edges of the screen, only to disappear and be replaced by new points and more streaks. The sight of it sucks my breath away. My old screen didn't have the resolution or the processing speed to show the moving star-field to any great effect.

"Captain, we're receiving a secure subspace communication from someone on board the USS Carolina, but I'm not receiving any identifying information."

Needing another few seconds to clear my head, I nod and motion toward the main viewscreen, meaning for Uhura to put the call through.

"Go ahead, Captain."

Underneath my fingertips, a man's head and upper torso replace the moving starfield. "This is Captain Kirk. To whom am I speaking?"

"Good morning, Captain. It's Commodore Tucker."

Although Tucker and I have talked often enough and I've seen him on the old viewer, I don't recognize his face. The overall shape is the same—oval face, broad forehead, square jaw—but my recognition of those features hangs on his voice. Faces felt bear little resemblance to faces seen, even with the addition of more details: light brown hair swept back from a high forehead; small eyes disproportionate to the nose; high cheeks and a few light wrinkles around the eyes, nose, and mouth. "Good morning, Commodore." In certain situations, though, there could be some practical benefit to having access to this level of facial detail. I drop my pinky finger down to check for the gold of his command uniform, then spread my fingers to watch a few key areas: overall head position, eyes, mouth. "You're not calling from your office. Is that significant?"

Tucker's head tilts to one side, and in the instant before he opens his mouth I realize he isn't going to answer. "You sound distracted. Are you all right, Captain?"

The detail now underneath my fingertips gives me my first clear picture of what he looks like. His face is stocky and rounded but not fat, his eyebrows thin and arched. It's still just a collection of details, largely unimportant and not something I would recognize again if I saw it without the cue of his voice, but on an instinctive level I like it. "My apologies. We just started testing the new tactile viewer with the amorphous solid display a minute or two ago."

His eyebrows jump, displacing some of the skin on his forehead and adding wrinkles to the crease that was there before. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Captain. Based on your reaction, I'm guessing the new display must be an improvement?"

Lately I've found myself struggling to remember that other people can see my facial expressions. Having access to their facial expressions via the tactile viewer might make it easier for me to remember that. "Better than I could ever have expected."

"And just to be clear—This is the same device mentioned in your meeting report from last week, the one whose design you were just finalizing?"

"That's right."

"I've never seen a crew that works as fast as yours, Captain."

"That's part of what makes them the best in the Fleet." The ability to anticipate other people's responses by their body language is also something I'd nearly forgotten. It's like stretching a long-unused limb—the joints creak, achy muscles pull taut, but all the parts still essentially remember what to do. "With all due respect, Commodore, you didn't answer my question. Should I read something into the fact that you're calling from a starship?"

He laughs. "Aside from the fact that Starfleet finally let me out of my cage? Yes, you should. I'll be meeting you at Starbase 13 in about 10 hours."

"In that case, I'm glad you called. We're slightly ahead of schedule—we'll be arriving in closer to 7 hours now—but we'll wait for you."

"Thank you. I'll ask Captain Carmichael if she can get the Carolina there any sooner than 10 hours, but I can't make any promises. We're already pushing faster than she wanted to go."

"It's all right if we have to wait a few hours. It'll take a while to get the cargo loaded, and the timeline for the actual delivery is flexible within half a day or so after we receive it. I'm sure the crew wouldn't mind a few extra hours of shore leave. It's certainly not worth you crossing Samantha Carmichael."

"You know her?"

"We were in the same class at the Academy. Certainly not a woman whose bad side I'd want to be on."

"Then you'll understand if I don't push too hard."

"You're a wise man, Commodore. To what do we owe this visit?"

"When we first started working together, you'll remember that I promised to always be honest with you, on the condition that you returned the favor?"

"Of course, and we have been."

"I know you have, and now it's my turn to uphold my end of the bargain."

"I'm listening."

"The Committee has my report, but the vote is still split. They need more information to break the stalemate, so they've hand-selected your final assignment and asked me to do an in-person evaluation."

"What are they looking for?"

"They want a detailed account of how you manage an assignment from start to finish, including any excerpts from the ship's log that I feel to be relevant or illustrative of my point. That said, I'll need you to wait until I arrive to take possession of the cargo."

Having Starfleet brass on board never seems to go well, so I hope I don't look—or sound—as dismayed as I feel. "Sulu, slow to warp 2."

"Slowing to warp 2. New ETA to Starbase 13: 10 hours, 13 minutes."

"Uhura, update Starbase 13 with our new ETA. Let them know that we'll pick up our cargo as soon as possible after we arrive, and apologize for the delay."

"Yes, sir."

Tucker sighs. "I'm sorry, Captain. I assure you, the report I submitted to the Committee was positive. I see absolutely no reason that you shouldn't be left in command; frankly, you're the kind of officer that should be on the front lines. I guess we just have to fight a little harder."

"News that I'm facing an uphill battle is no news, Commodore. We both know that, and you certainly don't need to apologize for it. We'll meet you at the station."

"As a courtesy, Captain—since this is wasn't originally lined out as part of your performance evaluation—I asked if I could send you the list of items that the Committee specifically wants evaluated, but they refused."

"It makes no difference, Commodore. I always operate at my best—I can't afford to do any less—so seeing the list wouldn't have changed anything."

"If you would, Captain, have your communications officer save the last 30 seconds of this conversation to a data card for me."

"Lieutenant, you heard him."

"Yes, sir, Commodore. I'll set that aside for you."

"Thank you. You're a good man, Captain, and you have a good crew. I'll be in touch when we get closer to Starbase 13."

"Understood. Kirk out."

Tucker's face disappears, replaced with more stars streaking by at a now slightly slower speed. Leaving my fingers on the moving star field just because I'll never get tired of seeing that view, I shift my attention to the atmosphere right here on the bridge. "Somebody say it."

Looming directly behind my left shoulder like bad karma, Bones doesn't waste any time. "What do you suppose the Committee's looking for? They assigned the man to do a job, and he did it."

"Maybe they think we're glossing over the imperfections in our reports, exaggerating the good parts. They could just be double-checking that I am as fit as our reports say I am. I have nothing to hide."

"No, I know. But what if they're not just double-checking? What if there's nothing in any report that can convince them?"

"Anybody ever tell you that you can't win the what-if game, Bones?" I shake my head at him. "Better not to play."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. It just makes me nervous."

"It shouldn't. As long as we haven't lost our objectivity—as long as I really am as capable as we all claim—justice will come. The day I stop trusting that Starfleet is run by essentially good people is the day I willingly walk away from this chair and what it stands for."

Bones snorts. "What makes you think any of us are capable of being objective after five years cooped up together in this tin can?"

"The fact that as a Vulcan, Spock is completely devoted to unemotional logic. I'm trusting that if we'd lost our objectivity, he would have said something by now."

Spock finally steps down from his station to stand beside the command chair, so close that I can actually feel his presence in the air beside me. "You are correct, Captain. I would have failed in my duty to Starfleet, as well as to you and to this ship, if I neglected to address any apparent lack of competence on your part."

I know for a fact that he would have questioned my abilities because he did it frequently in the early days, weeks, and months following my vision loss. Unlike the other 429 people on board this ship, Spock was not a natural believer in my ability to remain an effective starship captain. I may have been able to bluff everyone else—or else they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, which is more likely the case—but not Spock. He questioned everything, argued, doubted. Everyone else on this ship might have let me slide by, but Spock made me prove myself.

"And now that we've reached the end, how did I stack up?"

"There has been a 23.18% loss of efficiency in ship's operation since the onset of your blindness. However, 8.94% of that loss was incurred in the first three months following the incident, during which you were learning and adjusting."

"And if we don't include those three months?"

"If one does not include your rehabilitation period, the statistic rises to only a 14.24% loss of efficiency. From the second to the fifth year removed from the incident, each year sees an additional rise in efficiency, averaging 1.93% per year, although the trend appears to have begun stabilizing within the past year."

"I see. And what are we currently operating at?"

"We are currently operating at 6.52% loss of efficiency, as compared with your efficiency rating during the brief period between assuming command of the Enterprise and the loss of your vision."

"Not too bad, I'd say."

"Indeed not. Also, these numbers do not take into account any improvements in efficiency provided by the new equipment which is slated for trial during the course of our upcoming mission. And as has already been demonstrated by your current trial, those gains may prove to be substantial."

"Aye, and I'll have the new object recognition and reading programs ready for trial by the time we reach Starbase 13, if not a wee bit sooner. Those should provide as much improvement in efficiency as the tactile viewscreen and PADD."

"Perfect. Thank you, Scotty. You've outdone yourself."

"Ach, 'tis my pleasure, Captain."

"If that proves to be the case, it is my estimation that we will be operating within 5% of your efficiency rating pre-blindness."

"If you haven't already, Spock, would you document all this? Committees always respond well to numbers, and I want to build a case of my own, just in case it becomes needed."

"Certainly, Captain. Should also include statistics on safety or—"

"No, just the efficiency bit. I'll provide the safety bit myself; I know those numbers by heart."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Bones asks.

"Safety is a captain's number one priority. Keeping tabs on my own safety rating is the way I measure whether or not I still have a right to sit in this chair."

"And?"

"And there have been 0 deaths and 0 serious injuries directly related to my vision loss, and only 2 minor injuries directly related, both within the first three months. There have been a total of 54 crew deaths over the course of our five-year mission. Most of those who died were security guards participating in landing parties, a duty that is widely held to be the most dangerous in Starfleet. Those numbers are commensurate with the number of crew deaths under both previous captains of the Enterprise and also commensurate with the safety ratings on other Constitution-class starships. We have higher numbers than some but considerably lower numbers than others, leaving us squarely in the center and holding steady."

"Holding steady. It hasn't improved the way your efficiency rating has?"

"No. Nor would I expect it to, because my safety rating has nothing to do with my vision loss. It has to do with my command style, and that's stayed the same."

McCoy answers by clapping my shoulder, then backs away from the command chair to watch from the bridge's upper level, a few feet away.

I slide my hand sideways across the PADD's screen, switching from the viewscreen to the document viewer to see if I have any messages relating to Tucker's arrival. Instead, all I find are a half-dozen section reports that need my signature.

"Got anything?" McCoy asks.

"Just more paperwork for Tucker to review." Copies of all the reports that we generate here on the ship are sent to Tucker for his perusal. How he wades through all of it is beyond me. "I guess now's as good a time as any to test the new document reader. If it's even half as good as the viewer, I should be able to finish long before we reach Starbase 13."

Uhura turns away from her console to watch me. "Captain, the new PADD has already raised your efficiency rating. You didn't have to wait for me to upload your reports to it."

The new PADD communicates with the computer automatically, so for the first time in five years I'll be able to manage the ship's paperwork without burdening Uhura with it. "I want you to know, Lieutenant, that I do appreciate how much extra work you've had to do up to this point."

Uhura had just transferred on board with McCoy and a handful of others when I first lost my vision. She had no special loyalty to me at the time. When keeping me in the command chair made her job more complicated than it should have been, she could have complained to Starfleet or requested a transfer. But she didn't.

"Well, it's a small price to pay for getting to keep you in that chair, sir. I'll do it for the rest of my career, if they'll let me."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate that. But hopefully now you'll get to have one without the other."

The new PADD's design has one other improvement. Meant to be held horizontally rather than vertically, it allows documents to be formatted in braille the same way they're formatted in print. That wasn't possible on the standard vertically-oriented PADD because braille takes up more space than print. The new design almost doubles the amount of available space.

"Captain," Chekov says, "there is also another efficiency improvement."

"Oh? What's that, Ensign?"

"No one has had to stop what they were doing to chase down your stylus."

As much as I hate admitting it, he's right. That may be the biggest improvement of all in terms of the ship's overall efficiency rating. How a triangular stylus can roll so easily is something I'll never understand. That's why Scotty built a port into the new design.

"Yes. Thank you, Ensign. Spock, you'll be sure to include that in your computations?"

"I have already done so, Captain, and I project that to be one of the greatest efficiency gains of the new design."

"Scotty, I think your design is a hit."

"Aye, sir, I thought that part might be."

I'm a few lines into the cartography section's report when Bones grunts. Leaving my fingers on the text so I don't lose my place, I raise my eyebrows at him. "What?"

"I just realized how fast you read now. I'm not sure if that says more about how much faster you've gotten or how long it's been since I paid attention."

Scotty huffs. "You should give him the credit, Doctor. He reads about as fast as most print readers I know—myself included."

"Same here. And just for reference, Jim, that's no easy feat."

"No?"

"Your average braille reader reads considerably slower than your average print reader, and it's been that way pretty much since braille was invented." McCoy's knowledge of blindness comes from having a blind mother who studied the development of multisensory perception. I couldn't have asked for a better teacher if I'd hand-picked him expressly for that purpose.

"My friend Baldie reads maybe a wee bit faster—" Scotty's voice rises a little, then drops abruptly, the vocal equivalent of a shrug. "—but everybody always said that's because he was born with one hand on a book."

I laugh because Gary Mitchell once referred to me as a stack of books with legs. I've always been an avid reader, although not an especially fast one. Starships run on paperwork, so I get plenty of practice every day, but I spend a lot of personal time with my fingers on books too. There's something satisfying about drawing words off of a page, resurrecting the thoughts of someone who may have lived hundreds or thousands of years ago on another world.

"Gentlemen, I would point out that the captain is not currently reading at his fastest speed. I have observed him reading as much as 28% faster on more than one occasion."

I'm ordinarily good at multitasking, but that figure jerks my thoughts away from the cartography report. "Twenty-eight percent, Spock?"

"Affirmative, Captain."

"I don't like reading that fast—I prefer to take my time and think about what I'm reading—but I know I can. I didn't realize it was that much, though." I gesture from Scotty to Bones, both of whom jointly took on the task of teaching me braille. "If I've learned better than most people, it's because I had two excellent teachers."

"I'd say thanks, but a teacher's only as effective as his student. You're the one who logged all the practice hours."

"Aye, you did all the hard work, sir; we had the easier job by far. But I suppose you're welcome anyhow."

Spock has already read and signed off on reports by the time they come to me, so I know they're accurate. Accordingly, I skim the general content of the report and focus primarily on finding the signature fields at the bottom. Spock's is just above mine, the first and last letters of his signature recognizable by touch despite the small size of the field. "Been a while since I saw your signature, Spock. It's been so long I don't even recognize your handwriting."

"That is to be expected, given how many years have passed."

Coming to the place where my signature is needed, I pull the stylus free of its port, leaving my left index finger to mark where I stopped reading and to double-tap the screen. That momentarily masks all of the document's text except for the one word directly underneath my finger: signature. Without any other text on the screen, I can sign anywhere and any size and the PADD will do the work of resizing and moving it to fit into the space. Once I'm through signing, I double-tap again and the rest of the document reappears; I dock the stylus again before it gets away from me.

"That was certainly an improvement," Scotty says. On the old PADD, I had to fit my signature within the limits of a field, and it almost always took several tries.

The stardate field also requires input, but this time I don't have to print. When I double-tap the field label, the bottom of the screen raises to form a ten-key braille keyboard. It only takes me a few seconds to type in the current stardate and a few more to skim back over the text to double-check what I wrote. Then I double-tap again, eliminating the keyboard, and send the whole thing directly to Uhura's station.

"Jim, you're done already? Even with us talking at you?"

"I don't know how long it took, but it felt a lot faster and it was certainly easier."

"A significant improvement indeed. You completed that report with a time savings of 3.28 minutes. Compounded across multiple reports, that should provide a significant relief to your work load."

"The best part was not having to hand-write the stardate. I know that saved at least a minute or more." It's been so long now since I saw print that I have trouble remembering how the letters and numbers need to be oriented for the text recognition program to work.

"Aye, we should have done this a few years ago, when you first started struggling. That's what complacency buys you, I suppose."

"Well, we've had a few other problems on our plates. It's all right. Now's the perfect time for innovating."

"Better late than never, aye."

Scotty may have physically constructed the PADD, but he and McCoy both collaborated on its exact function and design. "This is an incredible design—a huge improvement, both in time-savings and in eliminating frustration. Good work and thank you, both of you."

I owe them both an equal debt of gratitude, and not just for their work on this new PADD. I owe the two of them my career. No amount of hard work on my part could ever have gotten me to this particular place without their input. McCoy understood how to reshape perception, and Scotty brought to the table an intimate familiarity with the mechanics of blindness, gained by a childhood spent with a best friend who was born blind. Starfleet couldn't have assigned me a better pair of teachers. I may have had the determination to put all the pieces together quickly, but without them to provide those pieces, that determination would only have left me frustrated.

In the routine quiet that settles over the bridge while I skim and sign reports, Spock retreats to his station. I owe him a different debt, the depth of which I'm not sure he appreciates. While the other two have kept me fueled—with information, with aids, with possibilities—Spock has thrown water on the fire. It hasn't always been pleasant. But more than once he's single-handedly kept the fire from burning out of control, and for that I owe him my eternal gratitude—and probably also my career.

Unfortunately, Spock is as blind to that particular gratitude as I am to light, and I don't know that his type is curable either.