Nothing Else Matters

[Archie Phoenix 0]

For the first time in his life, Archie was standing on the surface of a planet other than Renazia or Earth. This was just the sort of thing he’d dreamed about when he left his homeworld to join Starfleet. And this was no routine planetary visit. Archie was actually standing in the middle of a giant depression in the ground, from which were jutting the highest spires of a possibly millennia-old spacefaring civilization. Starfleet brochures could not have done this possibility the ample justice that Archie‘s teenage imagination had achieved years before!

 

As Archie weaved through the slender shafts of steel, scanning the ground for energy signatures and alloy concentrations, he glanced up at the midday sky. It was not very different from an Earth or Renazia sky, save for a slightly darker shade of blue. Not quite as exotic as the neon green or blood red skies that Archie had seen in some of the brochures, but it was a sky Archie had never seen before, so it was fascinating nonetheless.

 

The sky, of course, was nothing compared to what was beneath Archie (assuming Doctor Jones were correct). A central outpost of an interstellar empire that had reigned in this region thousands of years ago? For a trained engineer like Archie, what possibilities were buried in the very ground he was standing on? His imagination (not entirely diminished since his teenage years) painted a picture of a sprawling metropolis with massive domes of steel and glass connected by walkways and turbocar shafts and power conduits glowing with rainbows of colors, one dome half retracted to reveal a shuttle landing bay still housing one or two crafts and the now-lifeless robots that had once maintained them, another dome still pulsating with the light given off by the city’s still-operational central power core.

 

Archie lowered his tricorder and placed his hand on one of the steel posts jutting from the ground. He tried to guess, with what limited data he’d collected so far, what purpose they may have served. The nodes of a communications network connecting the city, perhaps? Rods erected to collect energy from lightning storms? The delivery mechanisms for a defensive weapons array? They’d have to dig down to the bases of the posts and whatever machinery to which they were connected to be sure. What kind of technology would they discover? Something more advanced than Starfleet standards, perhaps?

 

Archie was practically giddy with excitement; he was quite glad for the distraction, given how rough the last week aboard Arcadia had been. His exposure to the chewana root had caused an acute case of sleep deprivation that lead to his humiliating exchange with Jordan and Sam in Engineering. He recalled a lot more of the exchange than he later admitted to them, partly to avoid conversation in which he had no desire to engage. Though he apologized for his rude behavior, and Jordan and Sam were quite forgiving, they both received insight into Archie’s feelings that made him uncomfortable. Based on the advice they both gave him, neither Jordan nor Sam seemed very keen on crediting the drug for everything that Archie had said; he certainly did not believe that the things Sam said to him while under the drug’s influence were not based at least somewhat on his actual feelings about Archie.

 

Sam seemed to think that Archie was not trusting enough; if anything, Archie just did not trust himself. The chewana incident reminded Archie that his efforts to mix in with the crew on a personal level were not doing so well. He again needed to take a step back from the rest of the crew, perhaps for good, and he’d even told Jordan as much. He got the definite sense that he was perceived as a nuisance whenever he tried to interact with his peers, not at all perplexing considering his lack of experience. So he would push his efforts to socialize to the side and focus on his duties, on exciting new experiences like the discoveries of ancient cities. In the final analysis, nothing else mattered.

 

Archie sighed and smiled sheepishly as he removed his hand from the steel post and used it to close his tricorder. At that moment, a movement behind the post drew Archie’s attention. His eyes focused on a figure standing next to another post no more than fifteen yards ahead. Finding himself curiously intrigued, he placed his hands on either side of his post and leaned his head around it for a better look.

 

For a few seconds, he was short of breath.

 

She was wearing a Starfleet uniform, whoever she was -- one of the other team members, obviously. The blue trim on the uniform said either science or medical; Archie could make a safe guess considering what she was doing. Tricorder in hand, she was surveying the post as closely as Archie was surveying her. She was turned to the side, so she did not notice the engineer observing her from afar, but half of her face was clearly visible to Archie.

 

She was beautiful. So beautiful that a man could forget about exotic skies and thousand year old cities and regretted words and anything else captivating or troubling with just a glance at that face. Her face looked as young as his, no different from a Renazian’s save for a few small ridges on her nose -- Bajoran, Archie could not doubt it. As his eyes swept over her, he noticed that she had an attractive figure as well. This woman, whoever she was, probably had half the men on the ship competing for her affections … assuming that her affections had not already been won.

 

But there was something else. The look on her face, the sparkle in her eyes, the eagerness of her smile, even the way that she pushed the tricorder controls … nervously almost. She was excited! As excited about this dig site as Archie was. Something about the enthusiasm and energy this woman was giving off … Archie could sense it, and it was lifting his own spirits as high as it was lifting hers. Moments that seemed like minutes passed, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. It was as if he were stuck in a daydream, but he could be content inside of it forever.

 

“Alright?” The voice pulled -- no, dragged -- Archie back to reality. His gaze turned sharply, reluctantly, to Jordan, who was standing beside him. She nodded to the steel post that Archie‘s hands were still wrapped around. “What do you think?”

 

“Huh? … oh!” Archie pulled his hands away and realized that his palms were sweating. “Well, I … can’t figure out what these things are just yet. We’ll need to bring a laser drill down to cut into the ground.” None of his earlier enthusiasm with the dig was present.

 

“… right.” Jordan nodded, looking at him as if he had three heads. With the dreamy expression that was still visible on his face, she easily could have assumed that he was back under the influence of the chewana root. “I’ll tell the Captain.”

 

As Jordan stepped away, Archie quickly returned his gaze to the mystery woman … but she was gone. Had it been a daydream? Had she been a figment of his imagination? -Was- he back under the influence of the chewana root, and she was just an hallucination that had carried over from his sleep-deprived state? Archie looked around for her, hoping that this was not the case, but he could not find her.

 

He shook his head. He had to remind himself that there was work to be done here, and it would do no good to be distracted. That’s what he’d told Jordan on the ship -- focus on the work. But at this moment, he was finding that particularly difficult to do, with the image of a Bajoran science officer the only thing his mind could focus on.

 

In the final analysis, nothing else mattered.