From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Wed May 30 2007 - 19:14:07 PDT
"Slouching Toward Bethlehem"
(continues from Rahul's "Darker")
Location: GS-2
Stardate: 2.70529.1657
Scene: Counseling Center
"Nick? Are you all right?" Gene stood quickly, dropping the earring he'd been toying with onto the smooth, wood-veined surface of his desk. The earring glittered there, and Cannon's eyes went immediately to it.
"I need to talk," the fighter pilot, mumbled, his eyes bleary with fatigue ... and something Gene couldn't even begin to guess at. "I've been ... I've been seeing things."
"Of course," Gene gestured to a comfortable chair. "Come in and tell me about it."
While Nick slumped into the seat, the Bajoran/Scot CNS tapped the deskcom that connected him to the reception area.
[["Reception,]] said a voice on the other end.
"Hold my calls, and see if we can't reschedule that meeting with the Bajoran Ambassador."
[[You want me to call Ambassador Tyall?]] the woman asked.
"Yes. Is there a problem?" Gene asked.
[[He always compliments my ... cleavage,]] his receptionist replied.
"He does that to every woman he's ever met," Gene explained. [[My wife included. Okay, just call Xana, and get her to rearrange the schedule. Maybe this afternoon, all right?"
Gene sighed and sat down in another overstuffed chair, the twin of the one Nick Cannon had chosen.
"Can I get you anything?" he asked as a means to getting the conversation started, but it was as if the young man didn't hear him. Or as if he were listening to something else.
Cannon's eyes drooped half-closed, his entire body limp in the chair, his head lolling. The man's uniform looked as if he'd slept in it, and he'd missed shaving this morning as well. This was most unusual, Gene knew. Pilots, particularly fighter pilots, tended to push the envelope a little when it came to fashion and body decor, but to a person they tended to be clean freaks. Nick Cannon looked like he'd been at the stick of his fighter for days.
"Nick?" he asked, leaning forward. The man's condition looked a little like a shallow hypnotic state. It wasn't unusual. One could observe similar behavior in a darkened film theater, a sleep-walker ... almost everyone experienced them at one time or another. But Cannon had slipped into it by just sitting down.
"Can you hear me, Nick?" he said again.
Nick didn't respond.
"Where are you, Nick?" Gene asked.
"Ffflllyyyyinggggg," the young man managed to mouth the word. "Light," he said, and then he lapsed into silence.
Gene took a med scanner from atop his desk and ran a cursory bio-scan of the young pilot as he slumped in the chair opposite him. He'd been right. The alpha waves in Cannon's brain indicated a condition closely approaching sleep. But his eyes were moving back and forth beneath their half-closed lids, as if he were much more deeply asleep. REM sleep.
He knew that Cannon had tractored the Orb of Judgement back to the GATE. And he had a suspicion what that "light" had been.
"What did the orb show you, Nick?" Gene asked, his voice soft with reverence. It was not every day that one had an orb experience.
Nick's eyes opened wide, and it was clear that what he was seeing had nothing to do with what was in this room.
"Blood," he muttered.
-------------------- =/\=
NRPG: Steve, hope this works okay for you. I think I left you enough room to maneuver with Nick. Let me know, K?
-------------------- =/\=
Kenneth Field
envision_at_fidalgo.net
aka Commander Gene McInnis
CNS/GS-2
aka Lt. JG Mowree Nurunyon
aCNS/GS-2
aka Tomas' Alexei Vukovic
Former Chief of Staff to Ambassador Xana Bonviva
currently with the BORG
aka Maury R. Tee
Professor of English (Retired)
Proprietor of "Impulse Drives,"
a little shop of horrors
GS-2, Promenade
"To gently lie and prove the lie true ... everything is finally a promise ... what
seems a lie is ramshackle need, wishing to be born." -- Ray Bradbury
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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