The First Glimmer of Hope is Doubt

[Tachyon 0]

“The First Glimmer of Hope is Doubt”

December 1, 2155

Lieutenant Dave Grey

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Grey chewed thoughtfully on the meal prepared by the chef that day, but if an Andorian commando had suddenly barged into the mess hall and asked him at gunpoint what the food was, Grey would not have been able to answer. If a Vulcan philosopher had descended from the heavens and politely inquired as to the day, again, Grey would not have been able to answer. Nor would he have answered an Alpha Centaurian poet’s query concerning his current assignment, nor the Bolian’s missive about his favourite colour, not even the shy human child’s simple question of his name.

 

Dave Grey was light-years away. His mind was stranded in that hospital room where his sister’s life could, at any moment, slip through his fingers and join the ranks of those beyond the reach of technology. There were some frontiers that remained final, even to this day, and Grey wondered if that would always be so. At this thought, he blinked for a moment and shivers ran down his spine. Such thoughts were definitely unethical.

 

Or were they? Were they as unethical as the treatment proposed by Doctor McCellan? It was long shot, she had said as they conversed in his quarters, a very long shot. So far out as to be particularly negligible, but still far more promising than any other proposal. In Grey’s time of darkness and depression, it stood out as a promise of hope and recovery, even though Jas had urged him to remain calm and open-minded—open to the possibility that the treatment would fail.

 

But then Harriet would die. Grey just could not accept that.

 

His mind seemed to be stuck in a lamentation of guilt and pity. Why had he accepted this assignment to Challenger at all?! Now he was light-years away from the only person who had ever truly mattered, a person with whom he has shared a womb, then a room, and one with whom he’d always thought they would be connected by mutual doom. Alas, such a fate could not resume until he dispelled this gloom.

 

Grey thought back to . . . well, to what he guessed was more than a year ago now. To when he had first heard about the Challenger project. His cousin had been contracted to work on the computer systems. Grey remembered a conversation they had had while he was still at Jupiter Station.

 

Anomalies. Quantum physics. Astrophysics. Particle physics. All the shiny and good stuff that Grey had thought he would be able to chase in a Warp 5 starship. What he had neglected to confess to himself was that he could also outrun so many problems in a Warp 5 starship: relationships, academia, prestige, conferences . . . and family, to a certain extent. Grey had never really been a social person, but now he craved the warmth of a familiar touch. He felt so isolated, and he felt like he had abandoned his sister.

 

There was a PADD below him. A blank one. It could easily contain a number of data in a moment. Medical information, an entertaining novel, star charts, news reports, art . . . but there was only one thing that interested Grey. He wondered if it was really the best option.

 

No, he decided. Not yet. It was coming close, but not yet. The doubt had begun to percolate in an insidious fashion, pooling in the deepest recesses of his harangued mind, but he still maintained this sliver of hope that things could be resolved without drastic measures.

 

Instead, he wrote something else. Something that, in some eyes, could be viewed as equally drastic. In Grey’s opinion, it was simple a Fibonacci progression of dangerous determination.