The Letter

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A last goodbye to our convict, who'll be going so soon

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Victor got up from his chair in the sickbay office and walked right past Ensign Stron as if he wasn’t even there. He went to his quarters and on arrival picked up his most potent bottle of scotch and a glass then fell into his comfiest chair. He unscrewed the small metal lid of the large container and poured out a tumbler, he screwed the bottle shut and lifted the tumbler to his lips. Then in a sudden burst of rage he threw it against the wall smashing it into a million pieces of wet glass. Then he stared across the room into his mirror.

 

“It’s all your bloody fault!”, he screamed.  “If you could have just given a better testimony! You’re an idiot! A bloody idiot!”

 

It was just at that point that Victor noticed the familiar flashing light on his computer console. Someone had sent something. He tred to calm himself down. After leveling his breathing he spoke shakily.

 

“Comp…computer, what messages do I have?”

 

The cold tone replied

 

“You have received a message from Mr. Mogg”

 

Victor sadly noticed the absence of a rank.

 

He sighed. Then after several seconds of deliberation, stood up and made his way to the console as slowly as possible, he shuffled his feet and stared at the floor. He was expecting the message to be an angry tirade criticizing him for his poor performance on the stand. A final insult to the man who had lost him his career. Once at the small screen, he leaned against the wall and spoke in a whisper.

 

“Computer, show message”

 

The file opened. Victor started reading without any doubt of what to expect. “Moron.”, “Fool”, “Idiot”. But as he read on, he found none of these. In fact, it was nothing of the sort, it was a thank you note. It commended Victor on his attempts to fight the doomed outcome in any ways possible. It called him a friend and said that they’d meet up for drinks one day, then it simply said “Goodbye”.

 

It all completely confused Victor. He felt he deserved to be treated like a cad and that this was all wrong. Where was the hate? Where was the bitterness? All there was was calm acknowledgement of the situation and proof of friendship. He felt like answering immediately, but then he remembered, Mogg was in restricted access, there would be no seeing him. It made Victor sad, until he read a final sentence written under the “P.S”.

 

“Look after my ball Doc!”

 

Victor looked to the desk, and saw it sitting there. It was part of a human, American fascination called baseball of which he had never really cared for but Mogg seemed to strangely take great enjoyment in. But strangely enough, Victor smiled a big smile. Though in his mind it would never even slightly compare with rugby, Mogg’s kind gesture meant a lot to him (Especially since it was a FREE gift from a Ferengi). And he promised himself to give it a toss around whenever he could.

 

Victor closed down the console, cleaned up the glass on the floor, made himself a new drink (this time of just lemonade) and whilst throwing and catching the ball in his left hand, he made a loud well-spoken toast to his fellow crewman with the other.

 

“Good luck you crazy Ferengi. Good luck, and safe travels.”