I'm Going To Run 'Til I Feel Like Myself Again

Posted on Wed Sep 14th, 2011 @ 3:58am by Lieutenant JG Andreus Kohl
Edited on on Thu Sep 15th, 2011 @ 3:01pm

Mission: Tomorrow's Arizona
Location: Deck 11 Environmental Support, USS Arizona
Timeline: Current

Black boots descended the bulkhead-ladder at a steady pace, clacking in tandem on each rung. The report from her boot-heels echoed down into the lanky, oblong chamber. Although it looked to be a glorified jefferies tube intersection, it served as environmental support for C-vessel. Like the rest of the Arizona, the open-concept space was brightly coloured in beige and pink, with all of the life support pipelines and isolinear interfaces set well into the bulkheads. The chamber's most striking feature at the moment was the oppressive heat. The air was palpably thick with humidity to the point that Crewman Annikafiore Szerda thought her vision might be blurred by heat haze, or at least sweat.

"It's hotter now," Annikafiore said wryly, "than when I left." Her voice was accented in a Scandinavian way. Climbing down to the deck-plates sent her red hair bouncing, all big volume and curls.

On his knees beside an access panel, Andreus Kohl tilted his head back to regard Annikafiore with his sapphire eyes. A sheen of perspiration coated his angular face, despite his having stripped down to undershirt and uniform trousers. His fair-brown hair was matted against his forehead with sweat; the disheveled state illustrating how the length was slightly longer than regulation.

"...Yes. Hm. Yes, it is," said Kohl, as if unexpectedly just noticing how warm he felt. The Assistant Chief of Operations spoke dispassionately, and squinted one eye in remembrance: "Thirty-nine degrees Celsius with a relative humidity of ninety-two percent."

"Sir, we were assigned to lower the temperature, and the relative humidity," Annikafiore said with some mockery akin to condescension. She stepped close enough to peek at the slim tricorder in Kohl's hands.

Lieutenant (JG) Kohl turned away from Annikafiore, showing her the back of his head rather than his expression. He raised his tricorder to the array of isolinear chips crawling with Borg technology, and applied the tricorder to initiate another subroutine. "Yes," he said, "I sat in on the same briefing."

"Were you now?" asked Annikafiore.

"I was," Kohl replied.

"Hunh..."

"Yeah..."

"I only point it out, you see," said Annikafiore, "because it's getting hotter. Hotter instead of cooler. It doesn't feel right. Doesn't feel like home. Sir, I think it might be warmer here than anywhere else aboard ship."

"Yes," said Kohl impassively. "Yes, I noticed that too."

Annikafiore cleared her throat, and the sound was thick with meaning. Her green eyes scanned the ceiling plates, as if they would give her courage, but then she put her resolute face on. She planted her hands on her hips, and she asked as lightly as she could, "Soooo, what was that about the other day?"

"Hmm?"

"What happened in Sickbay?" Annikafiore said. She sounded annoyed at needing to clarify further. "You know, the other day? When the drones were still here? You were monitoring the database upgrades? You know? Tell me you know."

Speaking slowly, so slowly, Kohl remarked, "Is there a question you want to ask me?"

"You and that drone. You were frustrated, sure, you lost your temper, but what's that about?" asked Annikafiore in incredulity. "You got in that drone's face. You screamed: go on then, do it. Assimilate me." She scoffed in derision. "What's that about?"


=Environmental Support, USS Thunderchild=
=Battle for Sector 001, 2373=

His fists clutched at the rungs of the ladder, in the desperate hope they would support his flailing body weight. There had been a sharp fluctuation of the inertial dampers. Cadet Kohl's boots slipped off the ladder with a pathetic squeal, and his body swung like a pendulum. The Thunderchild itself rocked with far greater violence as is barreled through evasive maneuvers to avoid the cutting beam of a Borg cube-ship.

When the familiar feeling of artificial gravity reasserted itself, Kohl clattered the rest of the way down the ladder and shrugged the massively heavy backpack off his shoulders. He was hyperventilating from the near-fall, and was struggling to focus his thoughts, struggling to even focus his eyes. Kohl slid one hand into the backpack and retrieved the widescreen PADD. The Chief Engineer's sweat was still smeared on the edge. Kohl's entire class had been recruited to bolster the undermanned Thunderchild in a hurry. Since Kohl hardly knew anything about anything, the Chief had given him the gruntiest of grunt-work.

Listed on the PADD were the locations of bio-neural gel packs that had burned out or bled out. Critical systems would go down if many more surrounding gel packs were lost, and so Kohl was sent down the ladder to replace one of the packs that would keep life support going. Kohl was reaching for the pack in his bag, when his gaze wandered to the open access panel in the cor--

Kohl's entire body shook as he vomited his lunch onto the corpse on the deck. There was a body on the deck. A man. He was Bajoran, or maybe Human. An EPS conduit had blown, or the engineer had hit his head, or maybe he hadn't held onto the ladder as tightly as Kohl had done. Kohl couldn't know what killed the engineer, and so he went running back to the ladder.


=Another time, another place=

He lost his footing on the pavement. Ducking behind the crumbling brickwork provided the only cover from the disruptor blasts sizzling overhead. Lieutenant (JG) Kohl reached out a steadying hand, but when his foot slipped, it only took another moment for him to smack face first into the pavement. He didn't lay there long. He scrambled onto his knees and grasped out for his phaser. He inspected the hand-phaser with a practiced ease, and he saw the emitter crystal was cracked. A hairline fracture. Cracked, but not shattered. He aimed the phaser over the broken brickworks, and he squeezed the trigger again.


=Deck 11 Environmental Support, USS Arizona=
=Current=

"You got in that drone's face," said Annikafiore, her voice reeling with incredulity. "You screamed: go on then, do it. Assimilate me." She scoffed. It was pointed and derisive. "What's that about?"

Kneeling on the deck-plating, Andreus Kohl looked up to stare at Annikafiore. He stared right at her, with a slight squint and a frown. He stared at her for a long time, his facial expression frozen like a holodeck character on pause. He was motionless until there was lightning behind his eyes. A smile blossomed on his lips, as if he was suddenly getting a joke.

Andreus Kohl impishly shrugged, and he said, "Who doesn't want to live forever?"