"The Uniform"

[FredM 0]

"A person in a uniform is merely an extension of another person's will." - Philip Slater

 

The pressure in his head was killing him. The sensations, the feeling of utter disgust and inability to concentrate on anything else, were enough to drive anyone insane. What's worse, despite his best efforts, things were not getting better...but instead worse! How was such a thing possible? How could one still loose their voice due to such a thing? Why hadn't someone invented a cure for the cold by the year 2383? Bloody hell, this wasn't the stone age!

 

As he glanced up at the cockpit of the runabout, he coughed again and rubbed his temples. Injections of dexbrompheniramine and pseudoephedrine, both antihistamines, had failed to offer any type of serious relief. While he perhaps wasn't coughing as much, his voice was as reliable as a Ferengi at a charity auction. The stress is likely what had allowed him to catch the virus in the first place, something he would never admit in public but anyone who really knew him could tell.

 

In the last eighty-nine days, Fred Michaels had found himself in very distracting surroundings. The Reaent's repairs at Utopia Planetia had given the man an opportunity to actually vacation on Earth, something he honestly hadn't done in almost a decade. In addition, the close proximity to Pluto had given him a chance to catch up with some old friends he hadn't seen in ages. There honestly was nothing better than three old friends sitting around talking about people who none of them had laid eyes on in years. For all the positives, an added bonus had taken place. Fred Michaels had been able to relax.

 

Unlike previous situations in the past, he had not felt a desire to sit in orbit of Mars overseeing the refit of his once crippled ship. There was no honest desire to update himself on the latest technical journals or to get into the finer details of how refits time had been reduced due to the war. Instead, Fred had been content to be a tourist on his own home world...to see things and experience activities that oddly enough now brought joy to his life. It had allowed the man to actually move on in life, letting go of several different crisis that had occurred in recent times....the two biggest being his health and his ship.

 

Yet as the saying went, nothing can last forever. He had to force himself to repack his luggage the night before the shuttle left, carefully setting in place all the knickknacks that he had acquired. If not for the orbital skyjump three days earlier, after which the mysterious cough had appeared, maybe he wouldn't be in the mood he was now. Fact was, Fred Michaels was not at all sure about this return trip. For the first time in memory, the Starfleet uniform was starting to wear...the will it forced him to impose was in question. There was a deistic possibility, at least in his mind, that this might indeed be his final departure from Utopia Planetia.

 

Forcing himself to hold back yet another cough, he glanced down at the padd in his lap and started to try to re-educate himself on the ship was about to board. Oh the joys of paperwork....