Subject: Grail: "Unexplored Spaces"; "Monotony"

<<Stardate: 47307.18 - Midnight>>

<<Sickbay>>

Kait felt a multi-faceted collage of emotions passing through her. Anything from fear to frustration to doubt. It all passed through her, and though she experienced the emotions to a small degree, there was little thought given to their origins; until eventually this medley of emotions came to a crescendo, and Kait could no longer ignore its presence.

Kait sat up with a start. She looked around the room, but saw nothing. Sickbay was dimmed to imitate night time and all the people she could see were not moving. They were in such a deep sleep-like state that if they were no longer living, she would have no way of knowing it. Yet the emotions that were being sent had a very distinct feel to it; one that she well recognised.

Kait swung her legs to the side of the bed, and lowered herself to the ground. She walked towards the area from which she felt the emotions originating. As she moved closer, Kestra's youthful face became visible.

Her sleep looked so natural and so undisturbed. It seemed impossible that she could be in such great turmoil. Perhaps Kait was not as perceptive as she liked to believe. Just because it seemed to her that the emotions were coming from this direction, it could very well be from acrost the room.

No, it wasn't that the emotions seemed to be coming from this direction. It was that she could distinguish between the individuality of each person's sentience. There was no denying that Kestra was the source of this colorful and cascading passion.

Kait smiled. Who knew the girl had it in her?

The source of these mental outbursts were probably from dreams. And considering the fact that most of them were what Kait would deem negative, it was likely nightmares. Kait wanted to put an end to Kestra's suffering from any more of these unpleasantries.

Gently shaking Kestra's left arm, Kait whispered, "Kestra? Wake up." Kestra remained in her untouched state. Kait tried being a little more forceful, but soon gave up hope.

Poor Kestra. Kaitlyn hated to leave her in such a state, but there was nothing she could do... and Kestra didn't seem to be suffering. Just as dreams came, hopefully they would go away. Rarely did one dream last for a long time, and rarely were they even remembered. So it was, after all, harmless to leave Kestra as she was.

Kait took one last look around before walking towards the entrance/exit to Sickbay. There was no sign of any doctor on duty waiting to leap out of the shadows and halt her egression. Instead, the doors swished open a little too loudly and Kait walked out uninhibited. The sense of paranoia did not dissipate until she reached the turbolift doors down the corridor and they opened to reveal emptiness. She stepped inside and said barely above a whisper, "Deck 10, junior officers' quarters."

The turbolift hummed in accord as it worked steadfastly in its ascension. Kait was reminded of when she first came on board the Grail, when most of the officers had not reported in yet, and the ship was deathly quiet. The dimmed lights gave it a slightly different feel. It did not feel like the ship was abandoned as it had earlier, but rather it seemed to be a sleeping giant. The Grail was a much more powerful ship than she had previously regarded it.

It did not offer the comforts of a home and it did not have a welcoming quality to it. Perhaps that was all the appeal of it to Kait. She wasn't looking for a home, she wasn't looking for comfort. All those things led to idleness, and she was too easily distracted by less important things. The only means of advancement was to be in the most dangerous place, and to be as least comfortable in your position as possible. As soon as things become easy, as soon as you're happy where you are, that's where you stay. Kait was on the fast track to being someone, and yet she could not fight the fear of death as well as she had hoped to be able to. It was much easier to disregard death when never faced with it.

At the opening of the turbolift doors, the paranoid thoughts, which had haunted her before, returned with an ever-growing intensity. If one of the doctors should find her missing, wouldn't her quarters be the first place they would look for her? She could very well be ordered to stay in Sickbay until they felt she was safe to be mingling among everyone else. It was ridiculous to think that it would matter where she was, since all anyone had to do was use the computer to trace her. But then again, that would only work if she was wearing her comm badge.

Kait walked up to her quarters, and entered it, but only doing so for a moment. She removed the comm badge on her uniform, placed it on a nearby sitting chair, and immediately walked right out again. 'I must be daft, going through all this trouble!' she thought to herself. She was well aware that her actions could be unreasonable and the people in Sickbay could really care less if she left or not. But if it was unreasonable, who would be there to find out?

Returning to the turbolift, she decided to spend some time working on a holo-novel of her own creation. There were still some bugs in the program to fix, and undoubtedly would occupy her for quite some time.

<<Three hours later>>

After running into yet another stalemated part of the program, where she could do nothing to make the story end as it should, she felt as if she wanted to work this story no longer. The plot was no longer interesting, and from the countless times of running the program, it was well over-done for her.

'Just add it to the collection,' she thought. And it was becoming quite a collection, too. There were countless programs that she had begun, but lost the inspiration to ever finish. They were all stories without any true endings, and as they were, utterly useless. Yet she kept them in the computer's memory in hopes that one day she would feel inspired enough to actually finish at least one of them.

Kait walked out of the holosuite with an air of resignation. She had worked that program till it had brought her to near-exhaustion. That did not mean, however, that she was ready to go to sleep again. It was early, yes, but after sleeping for such a long time, she doubted that she would need to sleep for a couple days, even. It would've been a nice time to be awake, if she were on Earth. She would have time to catch the sun rise, as the colloquial term went. Then again, she could always create it in the holodeck. But, ah, she could tolerate that closed-in vault of a holosuite no longer!

All the time she spent in there had isolated her from everyone else, and she soon began to wonder if she should walk through the entire ship and find no one there. How eerie that would be! Making a trip to Ten-Forward just *might* dispose of that notion. But then again, not many people would be up and about this early. It was her best bet.

Another thought was to go to the arboretum. It was less likely that anyone would be there, but the chance still existed. Also, she would have the chance to get the taste of nature that she now craved.

Deciding on the latter, and considering various things to do, Kait was not prepared for the confrontation which she had been overly-prepared for earlier. A man in a blue uniform, younger than the doctor she had seen yesterday, said to her, "I've been looking all over for you. You're supposed to tell me when you leave."

Kait feigned ignorance. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know. I felt better, and I didn't see anyone around..."

"Still, you should've waited until I returned. And why did you remove your comm badge?"

"I didn't want anyone to interrupt me," she lied.

He replied unexpectedly, "I'm glad you're feeling better. Next time make sure you check out. And you should come back later today for a check-up."

"Right," Kait said, paying very little attention. She nodded, and ran her fingers through her hair. It was badly tussled, and she seriously hoped that she didn't look as bad as she thought she did.

When the doctor said, "take care," Kait took that as a leave-taking, and proceeded on her way.

It seemed to be a little bit too easy to her, but at least there was no need to worry about that matter any longer, at least she hoped.

<<To Be Continued>>

"What ye sends forth Comes Back to ye

So Evermind the Rule of Three

Follow this with Mind and Heart

Merry ye Meet and Merry ye Part...."

--From The Wiccan Rede