A Grey Future

[DaveJohnson 0]

A Grey Future

A Log by Ensign David Johnson

 

David stood in the brig with a paintbrush in his right hand and paint can in his left. He took the paintbrush, dipped it into the paint can and started painting the third and final brig wall. As part of his punishment he had been ordered to give the brig a new coat of paint. It was what the Admiral called “Rehabilitation.” As he painted the wall with the grey paint he wondered whether his future was too grey. He had been thrown into the brig due to a mistake both on his part and on the part of his direct superior. After reviewing the ships rules and regulations as he was also ordered to do he realized that neither he nor Lt Cmdr Jax should ever have had weapons and that he should never have discharged one even if the CSEC had indeed been an intruder. They should have left it up to the security officers…and that was all there was to it. Even though he would be back to work in a few days he couldn’t help but thinking how this would impact his career. He had hoped to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and become a starship Admiral or perhaps a Captain but if this incident, stupid though it was stayed with him his future would be as grey as the paint he was using. But, as he made the up and down motion with his paintbrush he realized something that he had not considered before. In order to paint the wall effectively he had to go up and down and he realized that he would have to go through ups and downs in his career and his life. That this would probably not be the only time where he would have to face many obstacles and that there would be times where he would be unsure of himself and his decisions and he might have to make a decision which would temporarily impact his career negatively. Just like painting, he would make mistakes, but learning from those mistakes would help him be a better painter and a Starfleet officer. And, just like he would be finished painting his career too would one day be finished. But, so long as he did a good job and had a fine career and finished on a high note, in the end this one incident would matter very little in the grand scheme of things. With that he went back to painting and decided that he was going to do the best darned paint job of anyone that had ever painted the inside of the brig. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right,” he said to himself. David knew now exactly what he had to do. He was going to finish the job he was doing and move on with his career and do his best to learn from what had happened so nothing like it would ever happen again.