Charlestossed and turned in his bed. He moaned and changed his sleeping position a million times. Finally, he gave up and lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, watching the lights and shadows dance and mingle. He blew air through his lips and sighed.
"Sir, can you not sleep?"
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, anxiety and confusion suddenly overwhelming him. "Who's there?" He blinked in the poor light.
"Charles, are you feeling well?" Data asked, a crease in his brow.
Charles rubbed his neck and sighed. "Oh, sorry. It's just, well, you know... I forgot that you were here. You know, at home, I had a room to myself so it's just weird to know that I have to share with someone now."
Data nodded slowly. "I see. I understand. I hope you can get back to sleep now."
Charles groaned and got back into position, yawned and closed his eyes. "Yeah, night, Data."
Four hours later, it was daylight and Charles had had the best sleep that could be expected.
"Did you sleep well?" Data asked him.
Charles nodded waveringly. "Pretty well." He stretched and yawned. "It's rather early, though."
"Yes," Data conceded. "But regulations do state that all cadets have to be up and ready by oh-seven-hundred in the morning for training."
Charles moaned and slapped his head. "Seven?" He frowned. "I had better have a shower."
He took a towel and his uniform and went to the cubicle, emerging ten minutes later.
Data was sat at the simple desk in the corner of the room. He turned to Charles. "It is oh-six-forty-five," he told him.
"Thanks, Data," Charles said gratefully, studying his appearance in the mirror, trying to keep an unruly strand of hair in place. "Hey, you won't tell anyone about me waking up in the night, will you?"
Confusion crossed Data's face. "I was under the impression that that sort of behaviour is to be expected when one sleeps in an unknown location for the first time."
"It is," Charles said bluntly. "But not with grown men, especially not those hoping to get into Starfleet. I'd be awful in battle." He smiled grimly. "You ready?"
Data stood up and nodded. "I have been ready for quite a while."
Charles nodded slowly. "Of course you have," he said with a wry smile.
They left their quarters then and went to their first lesson, after having had another quick introductory assembly. Charles tried to wipe the continual mentions of honour and confidence and servitude from his mind but he could not.
"I guess you're wanting to be a science officer too?" Charles asked Data as they made their way through the corridors.
"Indeed," Data replied. "Science has always fascinated me."
"But what about Command or Security?" Charles asked.
Data gave it consideration. "Regarding Command, I am not sure that organic officers will be able to cope with taking orders from a synthetic organism, such as myself. Regarding Security, I am many times stronger than a human. For that reason I would not want to put detainees at risk. It is unlikely that this would happen as my sub-routines and protocols clearly forbid the allowance of a living creature to come to harm." Data paused.
"You have Asimov blocks?" Charles enquired of him, peering closer, as if he would be able to see for himself.
Data nodded. "Yes. All three. They are a vital part of my operations."
"That's reassuring," Charles said with a smirk.
"And you yourself," Data began. "What made you choose Science?"
Charles shrugged. "My mother is a doctor, my father an engineer. I suppose it runs in the family. My sister has Science in mind too."
"Well, I believe this is the correct facility," Data observed, pointing to a room to their left.
He let Charles go first, remembering etiquette.
The room was large and glossy, the air was fresh and the walls were white.
It looked rather like a lecture theatre.
Charles chose two adjoining seats. He sat down and Data sat beside him. As they did so, three cadets in the row in front of them turned around.
"What do we have here?" the center one chided.
Charles rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming.
"Come on then, pale face," he said with a smirk. "You ever seen the sun? You look ill." His voice was filled with a Texan twang.
"I am an android," Data said bluntly.
"An android?" another of them scoffed.
Data nodded. "Yes."
One of the cadets leant over to who was, for all intents and purposes, the ringleader. "Don't you remember, we all had that debriefing about equality and all that crap?"
The centre one elbowed his friend, hissing.
"Tell me, android," the third one said. "What do you think you're doing here? We're here to learn."
"As am I."
"No." He shook his head. "Androids don't learn. You're a machine. Machines do not learn." He laughed and exchanged mischievous looks with his friends. "This is a farce. Jeez, a computer wanting to learn."
"Quiet over there," the woman at the front of the room called, whom Charles assumed to be the teacher. "Name?"
The ringleader turned around reluctantly. "Hendricks," he muttered.
"Hendricks?" She pursed her lips and typed something into a tablet. "I do not want to have to remember your name. What is the problem?"
"Ma'am," Hendricks said. "What is an android doing here?"
"Trying to learn like the rest of the class, I expect," she replied. "Now be quiet and we can get on with this."
The cadet murmured and settled back in his seat.
Charles looked over at Data. "Wow," he muttered. "I had no idea that Starfleet Academy was going to be exactly like high school."
"Now, for your first lesson as members of the Starfleet community," the teacher began. "Some preliminary work on the maintenance of fusion reactors."
She picked up her tablet and showed it to the class. "All of the material you need should be on these. You each have one. They are expensive and the best of their kind. If you break or lose them you have to fix them with your allowance."
Murmurs of worry came over the room.
"I'll leave you to get to know the devices for a few minutes, then, you have an hour to become acquainted with the nuclear reactions inside a cold fusion reactor." She watched the class for a while and then set about other work.
Charles buried his head in reports and schematics and diagrams on the subject. After a while, he looked up. "Data, what are you doing?"
"I am researching fusion reactors," Data replied simply.
"How? Where's your tablet?" Charles asked, confused.
"Like he needs a tablet," he heard cadet Hendricks murmur.
"Be quiet, Hendricks," Charles quipped.
"Did I say that you could talk to me?" Hendricks hissed.
Charles thought about saying something else, but he knew that he would disturb the class, probably get put on report and have to deal with Hendricks and his cronies for the rest of his life. So he stayed quiet.
"Now," the teacher began solemnly. "Who can summaries the main workings of a fusion reactor?" She cast her gaze over the room.
"Bennil, isn't it?" She looked at a young Betazoid in the front row.
The boy gathered his thoughts. "Well, a fusion reactor uses a series of controlled nuclear reactions. The process is simple: A radioactive element is bombarded with millions of subatomic particles called neutrons. When the neutron and the element combine, the element splits into a daughter element. This is radioactive. The-"
He was cut off by the teacher. "I'll stop you there. That was fission. I wanted fusion."
Bennil went bright red and frowned. Then he tried to read about what he had been asked.
"Anyone else?" she asked. She nodded to Data.
"Of course, Ma'am," he said politely. "Nuclear fusion is the joining of to atomic nuclei. It is massively more powerful than fission and as such had only been utilised as an energy source after fission. It is extremely energetic and even a microgram of mass can produced megatons of power. In Earth's mid-twentieth-century, during the Second World War, many testing with fusion bombs were carried out."
Charles leant over to him. "I think she just wanted you to explain how they work."
"Ah," Data said. "For example, an atom of Hydrogen and a Hydrogen isotope can join to form a new form of Hydrogen."
"Relevant example," the teacher said. "Now, next is nuclear fission, but Bennil can explain that to us."
Having recovered from his humiliation, the Betazoid youth cleared his throat and repeated his previous speech.
Another hour passed and their lecture was finished.
"What do you have next?" Charles asked Data as they filed out.
Data checked his timetable. "Further computing."
"Do you really need to go to that?" Charles mocked.
"I suppose, sir, it would be similar to a human having to go to biology classes," Data proposed.
Charles shrugged. "I guess you're right. Anyway, I've got self defence." He gave Data a mock karate chop to the shoulder, though the humour was obviously lost on him.
They parted ways and Data found his computing room, a small compound with minimal light, so as to allow the screens to be more contrasted.
Data found himself looking at a board on one of the walls. It was a timeline. It started with the abacus in the Ancient Middle East of Earth, climbing to the emergence of astronomy by the Greeks and Egyptians in the third and fourth centuries before Christ. During the Renaissance and the Regency Period, he noted the advances, with the printing press, the increased industrialisation of manufacturing methods, then he came to a section on John Napier and Charles Babbage. He read it then went on to the nineteen-hundreds, coming across Alan Turing. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there were parts about the invention of humanoid robots and the almost universal use of robots in the factories of the world.
Then the door slid open and Data found a seat. The room was not particularly full; further computing was a course that only a few cadets had gotten onto.
The professor was one of Earth's foremost minds on computing, who had held the Lucasian chair at Cambridge University as Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking had.
Charles was trying not to wince as he lined up outside the door for his self defence classes. He tried not to groan as the door opened and they were let in.
He tapped his feet and looked around the padded room. He wished he could just try out the holosuites.
The process was done alphabetically, so he was near the beginning. He wondered why his parents had chosen to make his forename the same as his surname. The Vulcans were mainly at the back.
As those with surnames beginning with A and B were called up to be pitted against the instructor, Charles moved closer and closer to the front.
Finally, it was his turn. He swallowed and wrung his hands. "Right then," he muttered, stepping forward.
"I want you to stay calm, hold your legs a shoulder width apart. Keep your eyes on me and make your body solid," the instructor said.
Charles did his best. He managed to take a small amount of relief from the fact that the instructor was not a Klingon.
"I want you to pretend that I am a hostile intruder on your ship. I am showing no signs of cooperating. I have a phaser and you need to neutralise the threat," the instructor continued.
He gulped at the sight of the phaser, but reassured himself that it was uncharged. Probably. He held his stance as he had been taught. He and his opponent circled each other. He did not take his eye off the weapon. When he was close enough, he dove for the phaser, concentrating hard.
Him and the instructor were floundering about on the floor. He struggled to get a hold of the weapon. He finally got it within his grasp when his opponent had pinned him down.
When he had been let go, he caught his breath back.
"You are the first to take the phaser," the instructor said.
Charles tried to dig out the praise in his speech but found none.
"However you would most likely be dead had this been real," he continued. "Your moves were calculated but not understood."
"What was the proper way?" Charles asked.
"There is no proper way," was his answer.
He bowed and thanked the instructor, knowing that he would have to return tomorrow.