Time crawled on...
Many apologies it took so long to get anything up here. Rewriting and updating is taking longer than I planned. I'm just going to stick a couple of segments up to give you a feel of what the story is about.
IAN
C. R. Salway
CADET IAN TROI-HARMON. THE NAME ON the list of second year students caught the attention of the tall, older woman on the moving walkway immediately. The list was posted on an ever-changing vidboard near the covered walkway leading out of the lobby of the administrative office building. Through the doors beyond were the paths leading to the student dorms. By coincidence she happened to be passing when that particular name began to scroll up the screen. One name among hundreds.
She watched it blink out of sight at the top of the screen, and stepped off the walkway to stand in front of the board and wait for it to scroll up again.
She read the simple list of items before touching the name again. A boy named Ian Troi, never mind Harmon, who was born in the Rordan Sector of space? Not a planet or space station? Curious. She tapped the name.
Next to the list an image of the young man appeared. He was dressed in a cadet's uniform and standing ramrod straight, one arm crooked to hold his cap, as he looked into the vid with a serious, bland expression on his face.
"YOU'RE KIDDING ME, RIGHT? MEDICAL has already given me a physical this term. An invasion of privacy is more the name for it!"
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The vidboard was an older model, and showed it's age with numerous signs of long usage. It had been painted more than once, the message crawl at the top was flickering and unclear, and the small shelf below the screen was scuffed and scratched. It bore the marks of countless bags, piles of books and other things cadets of past years had laid upon it while they waited for their names to scroll across the screen.
When the name reappeared and was halfway up the screen, the woman reached out a finger and touched it. The scrolling stopped and the name moved off to the upper right while the rest of the list winked out.
Residence: Knight Hall
Fields of Study: Engineering, Astrophysics, OTC hopeful
Sports: hockey, soccer, archery
Birthplace: the Rordan Sector
Heritage: Betazoid, Human (Earth)
The woman closed her eyes and opened them again. Drawing herself up straight, she wasn't sure if she was disappointed or relieved to see a pair of green eyes looking out of an otherwise very familiar looking face with such an equally familiar sounding name.
He had wavy, curly black hair cut snugly at the temples, sides and back, deep lidded eyes above an aquiline nose and full mouth and strong jaw. Green eyes.
Of course, he couldn't the same boy she'd known fourteen years ago, but the resemblance was remarkable. Black, curly hair; the same nose, jawline, cheekbones, even the shape of the eyes. So familiar, but so green!
He was too young – if it was possible to say such a thing. Ian Troi, the boy she had known, had aged at a remarkable rate, eight years in just a few days. He would have lived out his life from birth to death at old age within a month if he'd been allowed to.
That Ian Troi hadn't been a true humanoid child, after all. He'd been a creation to help an energy life form experience and understand what it was to be human. When he realized his human form combined with his life presence was a threat to the shipload of humans he was studying, he had chosen to leave, the end his experiment, and take away the danger.
He left behind a heartbroken woman, a mother, who had loved him as a son, a first born child.
This young man -- Betazoid, Human (Earth) – was a mystery, an intriguing puzzle to be solved as soon as possible.
She touched the screen a third time and the image blinked away and the list of names began to scroll toward the top of the vidboard again. She turned away and stepped back onto the walkway, taking a datapad from her pocket as she did so. Within seconds she'd decided on a course of action and searched the pad for what she needed to know to proceed.
The little screen filled with information.
Dr. Donald Mack was the director of the Academy medical staff. A few years younger than she, and based on his mediocre record, already at, if not past, the height of his career with Starfleet, he would probably be astonished to think she was interested in his research on sports injuries and preventative measures.
Tucking the datapad into her coat pocket, Dr. Katherine Pulaski began a purposeful stride along the moving walkway and decided to postpone lunch for a little while. She wasn't really hungry, anyway, and besides, this small mystery was calling to her. Ever since her year of service aboard the Enterprise-D under the command of Jean Luc Picard, Pulaski had developed a taste for mysteries. And finding the reasons behind this young cadet's intriguing name and appearance was as close to qualifying as solving a genuine, non-holodeck mystery as she'd ever encountered.
The speaker, Cadet Adam Riday refused to look at the vidboard for visual confirmation, but kept his eyes on his roommate and hoped it was all a joke.
Ian Troi-Harmon shrugged and waved a hand in the general direction of the board. "It's for soccer team members. A couple of exhibition games have been scheduled for Bajor in a month and we need to be inoculated against all the diseases listed here and tested for these listed here. You can refuse, I suppose, but that will probably mean sitting out the trip in our room. I've never been to Bajor. Not many people have since the war ended."
"Your father has."
"He took a load of medical supplies as far as DS Nine. He never got to the planet."
Riday slumped against the wall next to the board. "I hate the academy hospital. They let the medical students practice on you. Ever have a third year draw blood? You'd think they'd know something by then, wouldn't you?"
Ian hitched his bag across his shoulder and touched his name. "I'm scheduled for eleven o'clock Thursday morning and ... " He found Adam's name on the list and tapped it. " ... so are you. Tell you what. I'll meet you by the fountain in front of the physics lab and we'll go together."
Adam pushed himself away from the wall. "Sure. But why are we going to Bajor? Aren't they religious zealots? Soccer didn't have anything to do with religion last time I really thought about it deeply!"
Troi-Harmon laughed. "They're exhibition games, pal. Maybe they want to learn to have some fun."
"Learning to play soccer? Are you kidding me?" He fell into step as Ian began to walk away.
"Well, that's what exhibitions are, I guess," Ian said. "Showing someone what a sport is like and seeing if they like it. Maybe they'll hate it and we'll get to visit the planet or Deep Space Nine. I mean, this might be the very thing that convinces them to join the Federation! My ability to move the ball down the field and your head butting the ball might be just the thing that visually interprets an obscure part of their religious scrolls."
Riday snorted. "Right! Soccer Players Mend Relations with Bajoran People," he said in a deep voice. "Prophets Declare Soccer Sport of Kais!"
"'We play to enlighten,' said Cadet Riday modestly.'" Ian added.
They continued on to class, making up more news headlines as they went.
