Night of the Living Trekkies

Night Of The Living Trekies

PROLOGUE:
Space Seed

“Space, the final frontier . . . ”
“Shut up.”
“These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise...”
“I said, shut up.”
“Its five-year mission: to explore strange worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations . . . ”
“You’re pissing me off.”
“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
“Quit rubbing it in, okay?”
First Lieutenant Mallory Kaplan, U.S.Air Force Medical Service flight nurse, finished her recital and smiled triumphantly.
“Actually, that last bit doesn’t quite capture the current situation,” she said. “Plenty of men—and women—have already gone where I’m going. But I’ll be the first person currently in this room to make the trip.”
The room of which she spoke was an underground bunker. She and her senior watch officer, U.S.Air Force Captain Les Marple, spent four eight hour shifts inside it each week, studying images and readouts on computer monitors. During the long, boring stretches when nothing inside the almost completely automated facility required their attention, they passed the time by harassing each other.
“You’re being unprofessional,” Marple said. “I’m your superior officer. Show some respect.”
“Can’t help it,” Kaplan said. “I’m so excited about my uniform.”
“You’re dressing up?”
“Of course. That’s half the fun of attending a Star Trek convention. I’m portraying one of the greatest captains ever to command the Enterprise.”
“You mean Kirk?”
“Kirk’s a man.”
“I know, but I think you could pull it off.”
Kaplan smacked him lightly on the head with her clipboard.
“I’m going as Captain Rachel Garrett,” she said.
Marple shot Kaplan a puzzled look.
“Who the hell is that?” he said.
“The captain of the Enterprise-C, which served a couple of decades before the Enterprise-D from StarTrek: The Next Generation. A temporal rift brought it forward in time, changing future history. In order to repair the damage, it had to go back to its own era, even though...”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Marple said. “Seen it, bought the Blu-ray. What’s the point of going as someone so obscure? No one will recognize you.”
Kaplan’s sly smile let him know that he’d walked into a trap.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said with mock concern. “You’ve never been to GulfCon. You don’t know that the convention attendees like to go as incredibly obscure Trek characters. It’s a joke that started at the first one, five years ago. If you make it through the entire weekend without anyone guessing your identity, you win a hundred bucks.”
“Screw that,” Marple said. “I’d go as Picard. He’s what inspired me to join the Air Force. I kept thinking that one day I’d be exploring space and commanding my own ship.”

Copyright © 2010 by Kevin David Anderson