Posted March 4, 2021, 2 a.m. by Lieutenant Junior Grade Va'rek (Engineer) (Dave Eads)
The weeks had gone by in fits and starts. A series of dragging days and blurs of activity. Things still weren’t right, though…
Va’rek had done his duty shifts with a polished aloofness. His work was tidy and well done. He was on time, well-groomed, and cordial with his engineering team members. The picture of a high-performance Starfleet Officer.
He still wasn’t sleeping… He’d tried meditation, ritual, and poetry.
He then turned to the theoretical.
The muse finally provided relief…The math was ugly. Ungainly. It disgusted Va’rek somewhere deep in his being. It worked. It was just ugly.
He pushed back from the screen on the desk and pressed his hands into his eyes. This was going to take a lot of polish to refine… But. It should work.
With a sigh, Va’rek punched in the equation one last time. The screen showed a simulation of the integrity field, status, strength, and frequency cycles listed beside it, fluctuating and adjusting as Va’rek altered the parameters again and again. He felt frustrated at the clunkiness of the thing, but the numbers proved his vision was correct.
Va’rek shut the computer down, plunging his quarters into darkness. Slowly, he got up and walked to his bunk, and lay down.
Then he smiled and slept like a dead man.
-Va’rek, engineer
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