<USS Avalon> log-Preventative Hindsight PT3
- From: Dodge Thomas <dodgethomas2000@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: avalon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:31:04 -0700 (PDT)
Preventative Hindsight
PT3: Find and Fulfill Your Destiny
A background log by Ensign Leila Criswell
England: 1127 AD
The great King of England, one Arthur, raised his mighty sword above his head,
roared loudly and directed his troops to charge down the hill. The crusades had
been harsh on him, many a brave man having succumbed to the moors and their
infinite evil. Damn the moors.
Indeed, the war had been harsh not only on him, but on his family. He had lost
several sons to the people of dark skin, but there seemed to be no end them. He
shifted uneasily on the seat of his saddle, absently tightening his grip on the
legendary sword Excalibur. Taken from his father so many years before, no man
who was wounded by the blade lived more than a week. His father had found this
out the hard way, much to Arthur's great pleasure.
The gauntlets that protected him were hot, indicating that he had held his
sword too long. The warmth had served to comfort and assure him in the past,
but now it was simply an inconvenience. He sheathed the sword and guided his
steed away from the carnage that was beginning to unfold in the valley below.
"How goes the battle?" He asked one of his knights, a tall man who's sword was
stained to the hilt with sticky red blood.
"Tis well, my lord. The moors are fighting with less of their vileness than is
usual. Some of the men have gained heart again."
"This is good news."
In recent battles, the moors had little better than slaughtered entire legions
of his men. It had been enough to cause his entire army's moral to drop
drastically.
"Victory should be ours within minutes, I should say."
An arrow whizzed past the two conversing gentlemen.
"I really hope so, my man." Arthur answered with in a tone of moderate
disbelief. "I really do."
The knight stared, an odd look of surprise on his face.
"Sir Eldred? Are you feeling fine?"
Sir Eldred gurgled, turned and fell off his horse, a two foot arrow sticking
out of his throat.
"God save me!" Arthur took off on his horse, mud flying up behind him as arrows
whizzed past him.
But apparently, God had other plans. One such arrow, flying straight and true,
struck King Arthur in the back between two seems in his armor. He slumped
forward, his horse continuing down the hill towards a large lake at the bottom.
When the horse finally stopped to take a drink, Arthur slid off, gasping for
air and clutching for his sword. There would be no great rule for him now, he
knew, as his blood stained the sand upon which he now lay. With one last ragged
breath, he screamed out "God, take this sword as an offering! Carry my soul to
better places." And he threw the blade Excalibur into the lake, dying as it
left his hands.
With dauntless persistence time flowed on, turning the future into the present,
then finally into yesterday.
___________________________________________________________________________
2363-Federation Archive Center-Memory Alpha
"Cadet Criswell."
"Yes sir."
"Your assignment will be block nine-thousand four-hundred and eighty two. Talk
to the transporter operations manager for coordinates."
"Yes sir."
Leila tossed her long blond hair with one arm and walked out of the central
distribution hub. Working at Memory Alpha, the Federation's primary library and
center for the LCARS database computer network, was certainly not as exciting
as darting about the universe in some flea-bitten starship, but it was safe,
and it was useful. Leila figured within a year, she'd be an ensign. But until
then, she had the privilege of what was lovingly called 'clean up duty'.
In short, she was assigned a library block and she essentially 'cleaned' it
out. Cleaning involved compilation, separate memory device integration,
obsolete deletion, updating and of course, the ever needed dusting. The good
life, for Leila at least. Most of the Cadets assigned to Memory Alpha were
Starfleet's 'B' students, those who couldn't seem to master warp theory or
starship control, but Leila was a different case. She had requested to be
assigned to the distant rock.
Memory Alpha was the perfect place for a library. It was dull, dry, and utterly
quiet. The planet itself was an oddity, being the only planet in the solar
system. It had four moons which gravity or god deemed not to move from their
synchronous orbit around the planet. To be precise, any given moon when viewed
from a certain location on the planet would always be viewed from that location
on that planet, never moving a centimeter to either side. This made physical
links from the planet to the moon, or from moon to moon possible.
Nearly three hundred years of Federation influence had changed the barren
planet and it's orbiting children into a barren planet with large metal
structures several stories high. When viewed from orbit, it was said that the
planet resembled one owned by the Borg, with metallic causeways spanning it's
surface from hub to hub. The lack of any atmosphere made this all the more
evident.
Little more than five hundred thousand people lived and worked on the planet or
it's moons, and Leila Criswell was probably the happiest.
"Coordinates set, Cadet." The unstimulated looking young man behind the
controls said dryly. Though a network of transportation vehicles were readily
available, Leila had chosen to avoid the devices. They reminded her too much of
large turbolifts, and she really didn't like turbolifts. She didn't know why,
nor did she care or even think about it. Transporters were faster, more
efficient, and to be completely honest, they were a helluva lot more fun. She
especially liked the tickly, tingly feeling one got before being disassembled
for the first part of the procedure.
"Beam me up, Scotty."
The bored youth stared at her. "My names not Scotty. It's Dave."
"Yea, but it's historical. Don't you know? James T. Kirk? Come on, Beam me up
Scotty?"
He shook his head slowly.
"But you work on a god damn history book! Don't you ever get out? Get with the
prog--"
The young man sighed and watched the annoying woman disappear into a swirl or
particles.
___________________________________________________________________________
Block nine-thousand four-hundred and eighty two looked very much like block
nine-thousand four hundred and eighty one, which looked very much like block
nine-thousand four-hundred and eighty which no doubt looked very much like
block ten. It was dark, dusty, cluttered and smelled like moldy shoes. Leila
looked around the vast chamber with no less awe than she had the previous dozen
she had visited in the year she had spent working with the LCARS database
distribution and storage network. LCARS or Library Computer Access and
Retrieval System had laid claim to the tiny circlet of planetoids early on in
Federation history, building gigantic structures, many of which were now in one
state or another of falling apart.
Leila sighed, wondering as she had with each new library storage block where
and how to start. She selected a clean (as in no paperwork, and yes, they did
use paperwork in the earlier days of the Federation) corner and sat on a crate,
pulling out her official LCARS Data distribution PADD.
Someone, she noted, with a rather morbid sense of humor had scratched tally
marks in the wall, probably marking how many days they had spent inside the
sarcophagus-like room. Leila laughed mutedly, remembering the stories she had
overheard about the young information specialist who had become hopelessly lost
without a communicator, only to be found several years later buried beneath
several boxes of PADDs and mummified by time.
Of course, they were only rumors, but one had to be safe all the same. She
kicked at the half inch or so of dust that seemed to have accumulated
everywhere and on everything. For being a giant dust ball in the middle of
nowhere, there certainly was a large amount of dust. Leila smiled at her failed
attempt of humor, then began working.
___________________________________________________________________________
Four days later and Leila was still sitting in her corner. The room, however,
was remarkably cleaner. The reclamation device that had been installed the
second day of her vigil glowed happily in one corner, having been fed several
thousand sheets of paper (after the relevant information was logged of course),
quite a few old-style Starfleet data storage devices (an ancient unit that
served as a tricorder and a PADD at the same time, accomplishing neither with
very much accuracy), and several dozen portable memory cores, isolinear chips,
and (who knew?) rodent carcasses.
She had also dusted and organized the remaining papers, storage devices,
isolinear chips and the like into a dozen neat, cleanly stacked piles
consisting of boxes and individual units. When she was finished, all the
information would be stored in primary computer core, easily accessible from
any of the terminals in any of the nearly fifty-thousand storage blocks,
housing centers, recreational facilities and bathrooms across the surfaces of
Memory Alpha and any of it's moons. Blocks five through ten thousand were used
solely for engineering information and device storage, and Leila had seen her
share of experimental warp cores, ancient plasma conduits, ship schematics and
models, and even a warp nacelle (it was in two pieces, but remarkable none the
less).
Needless to say, Leila was developing quite a large knowledge base of Starfleet
and Federation (not to mention a variety of alien race's) engineering design
and utilization. She had even (or so she thought) caught a glimpse of a
Federation cloaking device circa 2190. Block nine-thousand four hundred and
eighty two was also filled with various engineering paraphernalia, and most of
the information she had logged into the primary computer dealt with engineering
items (although she had run across some information dealing with an awkward
first contact situation where the leader of the race and in fact the entire
capitol city had been crushed by an overzealous and apparently oversized ensign
who stepped where he should not have. They just don't build miniature
civilizations like they used to, do they?), so the little black storage box
that she was about to activate and purge into her PADD was no different from
the thousands she had already picked clean.
She plugged it into her data storage device (DSD) and activated both units. The
DSD?s data display screen activated, first showing thousands of images at high
speed, then stopping. Leila stared at the device, which now portrayed a wire
frame image of the storage block she currently inhabited. What was more, a
flashing indicator light showed her exact position in the room. Dotted lines
flowed from her feet, possibly directing her where to go. She followed them to
a stack of papers, reached down and picked one up.
Minutes before, the papers had all read engineering schematics, with a large
amount of usually useless information scrawled upon them. However, the paper
she held in her hand (and indeed every single one lying upon the floor) read
the same.
THE PATH HAD BEEN SET. ONLY YOU CAN TAKE THE FIRST STEP. FIND AND FULFILL YOUR
DESTINY.
Leila perked an eyebrow. Destiny? The cadet librarian?
What the hell.
With that, Leila Criswell, who had never aspired to be anything more than the
cadet librarian, took the first steps to meet her destiny.
---------------------------------
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