human, astronut, natural born loser

Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End of the Beginning of the Beginning of the End of the End of the Beginning

On a clear day, he could see for miles out of his sky scraper corner office with the glass facade. Paul Ambrose Ock was a successful man, one of those who were too busy being good at what they did to even brag about it. He had once taken great comfort in the fact that he had come by his position fairly, rather than through nepotism. He had liked to look back on his life, admiring the greying man in the nice suit he saw in the mirror and comparing him to the poor child he had once been.

Except, that nice suit wasn't looking so nice anymore now. His accomplishments didn't have the same kick to them as they used to, it was not their fault---nothing brought Ock much comfort anymore. And his office, one of the best in terms of position and view, didn't seem quite so nice from the outside as it did from the inside. Or if it did, it only seemed impressive from the ground. Not to one who, say, was falling off the building and viewing it from just outside the window as he was going down.

Paul Ock had not dreamed of flying since he had been a little boy, but he chose the few seconds he had left to reflect back on what he had thought it would feel like. Little Paul hadn't imagined it would be quite so scary. It's wasn't that he didn't want to be here, falling off the building and all, but there was something about falling from a great height that was just unnatural, even to one who had knowingly and wantingly made the jump in the first place. Had he had the time, he would have frowned then, maybe stroked his chin even, but there were but a few seconds left to his impact with the pavement, so he imagined himself doing these things instead.

Then he imagined what may be left of him once this whole business had concluded. He would not a be very pleasant sight, he mused. But then, he had probably peaked in high-school, looks wise, and not been a very attractive man for some years now. Average, maybe.

Ock remembered what he had heard and seen a thousand times on television, about people's life's flashing in front of their eyes before they died, and wondered what could be wrong with him that all he could think of was the sunlight reflecting off the, what he was slowing deciding was an ugly, ugly glass sky scraper---or how long it would take city personnel to clean up the mess he was about to make.

Perhaps, he thought, I have thought too much about what brought me here already; about how my life has progressed and everything. Probably there's nothing left to consider that I haven't obsessively reviewed already.

He nodded internally. That was an okay answer, he decided. He managed to close his eyes, despite the pressure on them from the constant airflow. He'd seen enough. Ock had once received many compliments for his capacity for patience. He would patiently wait for the end now.

A second went by, so did the air. Another second. Another. Ock frowned. What was the holdup?

After 5 more seconds passed he opened his eyes. He was a patient man but this was getting a bit silly now. Besides, either he had gone numb or there really was no more air rushing all around him. Suddenly all the pressure on his ears had gone and it was almost quiet now, apart from a consisted low humming noise.

Once he had opened his eyes he noticed that he was sitting on the floor, but not an asphalt road, rather a sort of brown-ish, maybe even wood-colored laminated floor. And he felt disappointingly alive. There was a man standing over him, with a helpful hand stretched out. His hair was chaotically curly and he wore a combination of the worst overall and the worst scarf Ock had ever seen, in addition to a red coat that was sort of okay.

"How do you do?", he said cheerfully, "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor?", Paul Ock wondered, out loud, "So I survived?"

He looked around. This was certainly no hospital room. With its almost entirely wooden interior it looked more like someone's grandma's living room, if you ignored the strange hexagonal table at the center of it, surrounded by railings and lifted from the ground slightly on a round platform. Well, maybe that depended on how bananas your grandma was.

"No," he said clearly, "No, that can't be. I must be dead then." He nodded, proud of his assessment.

"Must you?", asked the man with amusement in his voice, "What would that mean for me then, am I dead as well? Oh I would terribly hate being dead, I still have that book I wanted to finish."

Paul Ock tilted his head as he looked up at the man. Was this what death looked like? Was this the afterlife, then: an awfully furnished wooden prison? Or had he been knocked out by the fall and was making all this up in the last second of his life? The man did seem strangely familiar.

Ock took the mans hand and let himself be helped onto his feet.

"Where am I?"

"You're on my ship, and what a lucky man you are as well. I picked you up, floating without any protecting through open space. Now, what would a man like you be doing in a place like that?", asked the Doctor.

Whatever he was a Doctor of, Paul could not say. Perhaps he was some sort of escaped mental patient who had convinced himself that he was one of the Doctors of the place and just walked straight out at the end of the day. Part of Ock was worried about what implications this would have about the amount of danger he was in at the moment, but the rest of him either didn't care or thought that being killed by a looney was a more exciting way to die than the drab old "throwing yourself off a building" way.

Besides, none of this could be real anyway. Due to that same "throwing himself off a building" part that had occurred a moment ago. So if anyone was having delusions, surely it was Ock himself?

"That is a good question," he remarked out loud with his forehead folded to a frown.

The Doctor smiled. "Thank you."

There was a lot of patronizing humour in his voice, but Ock suspected some honest worry and fascination in it as well.

"Now, listen here you... strange man--"

Ock was interrupted by a calm voice entering the room with a friendly: "Hello."

He looked up and saw a grown woman in her 20s wearing the clothes of a little girl.

"You must be the man the Doctor talked about. The one who took a little business trip to the depths of space and forgot his car? Hi! I'm Sarah-Jane Smith," she said, stretching her hand out for a greeting.

Ock reached for the woman's hand, but was knocked off-course by a sudden earth-quake that shook the room and transported his hand (with the rest of his body) back into a sort of horizontal position on the laminated floor.

The Doctor (of some kind) and his little friend held onto the hexagonal table in the center of the room, as if this sort of thing happened to them on a regular basis and they had protocols in place that kept them from taking a nap on the hard ground.

Their eyes were fixed upon a flat-screen TV that was definitely hanging too high for comfortable viewing. Upon it, Ock thought he saw about 5 to 10 flying saucers. Actual flying saucers. Not a creative Enterprise sort of space ship, just a flat disk with lights coming out of it.

I have never been praised for my creativity, thought Ock, who had come to accept the "my dying mind is making all of this up" theory as his best one.

The picture of space was suddenly replaced by the image of a collection of sort of bumpy novelty salt shakers with toilet plungers and kitchen utensils strapped to them. The sticks someone had attached to the top of them were pointing a little light straight at the screen.

Suddenly, Ock remembered where he had seen them before.

"R2D2!" he cried triumphantly.

A shattering mechanical voice disagreed with him over the speakers: "Doctor, you are an enemy of the Da-aleks. You will be Exte-erminated."

The screen cut back to the view of space and the flying saucers appeared to charging for a large energy beam type weapon to fire at the wooden living room Paul was in.

"Doctor!" cried the woman with a shriek in her voice.

The man turned towards Ock pleasantly and looked at him with almost undivided attention and a smile on his face as he said:

"I'm dreadfully sorry, I have been rude to you, haven't I?"

Paul Ock gave him a confused stare for a response.

"Why, I haven't even asked your name, man. What is your name?"

Ock blinked five times. This was getting way too silly for him. This was not how he had planned his day to go. He wondered how much longer his last second alive was intending to take.

"Ock," he answered plainly.

The Doctor nodded sagely. "Welcome to the TARDIS, Mr. Ock. I am afraid we are about to die terribly."

Finally, thought Ock.

5 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

The heads of the bridge crew were lowered silently, as they pondered the words of the Captain and the sacrifice of his son. However, a minute of silence would not be granted to them—their thoughts were quickly interrupted by a beep from the ship's computer:

"Warning: Self destruct sequence has been initiated. Warp core overload in 5 minutes."

Everyone's heads shot up and looked around the bridge in alarm.

Despite his melancholy disposition, the Captain reacted immediately. He jumped from his chair:

"Computer, terminate auto-destruct sequence. Authorization: Calhoun-Gamma-1-8-Zeta."

A disagreeable beep sounded from the computer. "Authorization not accepted. Time to overload: 4 minutes 39 seconds."

As second in command, Elizabeth Shelby hoped that her authorization might do the trick somehow but this was fruitless.

Calhoun tapped his communication's badge:

"Calhoun to Engineering. Burgoyne, what the hell is going on?"

Chief Engineer Burgoyne's fingers were racing over the controls as the sweat slowly started to build up on hir forehead.

"Captain", s/he said over the open link, "this is impossible. I'm locked out of everything. It's hopeless."

The agitation in hir voice was clear, but then no one on the ship would be surprised by that.

"I wouldn't think you lose hope that quickly. What's causing this?", the voice of the Captain asked from the speaker of hir badge. His voice, despite everything was calm and forceful. The only one who could have suspected even a hint of terror and exhaustion in it was Shelby, back on the bridge.

4 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

Burgoyne scanned the readouts on hir console with top-speed, until s/he eventually stopped dead and looked upward. For a few miliseconds s/he pondered the consisted glowing and humming of the warp core and said: "Double Helix."

"How is that possible? We got rid of the Double Helix virus", said Shelby's voice.

"Apparently not", said Burgoyne.

"Why didn't you pick this up earlier?"

"It seems to have . . . hidden itself from our scans. Created a null-field around itself to revert all scans back on thems—"

"Can you shut it out and regain control?", asked Calhoun. Every second was precious now and he could review the facts once the crew made it out of this disaster.

There was a second's hesitation. "No", said Burgoyne 172 earnestly.

Calhoun resisted the urge to press his temples. "Prepare the ejection of the saucer section"

An opposing beep could be heard in Engineering. "I'm sorry Captain—"

He understood. He tapped his comm badge.

"Calhoun to all personnel of the Excalibur. Evacuate immediately."

No repetitions, no explanations. There was no time for such things and he knew his crew would do as they were told.

He looked around the bridge. "That goes for all of you as well. Go!"

Behind him the voice of science officer Soleta chimed calmly.

"Captain—"

"I hope you're not about to say something about staying on the bridge to the last minute to find a way out of this", interrupted the captain.

Soleta raised an eyebrow, in that irritating way Vulcans tended to do such things.

"From what we know of our options, that would be most illogical, Captain. I simply wished to inform you that my scans determined the auto-eject sequence of the lifepods to be equally impaired."

Calhoun sighed ever so slightly. "Understood, thank you Soleta."

She nodded and turned to leave the bridge.

3 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

As the engineering staff headed out the door and to the escape pods, Burgoyne kept trying anything in hir power to counteract the virus that had infected hir ship. S/he felt personally responsible for letting the Double Helix virus ingrain itself so deeply into the Excalibur's systems and putting everyone aboard in mortal peril.

But on top of this, s/he also felt like s/he had failed the ship itself. Like a parent taking their eyes off their child and letting it catch a deadly fever from playing outside in the cold with no shoes on.

Yes, absurdly, the ship felt like a child to hir, but then Chief Engineers tended to be peculiar like that about their ships.

And if s/he failed hir child so terribly, what would that mean for hir and Selar's newborn baby? What sort of parent would s/he be if s/he let something like this happen on hir watch? On some level Burgoyne knew this was illogical, but s/he couldn't help it. Someone was saying something.

S/he turned around. It was Ensign Janos standing in the door.

"Are you coming, sir", he repeated.

Burgoyne snapped out of it. "Selar," s/he said simply and stormed out of the door toward sickbay.

In sickbay, the evacuation was swift and practical. Luckily it was largely devoid of patients at the time, and those who were there presented very minor sicknesses and could thus be evacuated with ease. The only patient who needed support was Lieutenant Wright, who had sprained his ankle on the holodeck while reenacting some Earth battle or other.

Were Dr. Selar an emotional sort of person, she might have cursed him for presenting an obstacle to a clean evacuation by injuring himself from engaging in such a frivolous activity, but she wasn't so she didn't. Damning one's patients was highly illogical as well as a terrible work ethic, anyway.

As soon as everyone else had left in a calm and orderly fashion, Selar exited sickbay with Xyon in her arms—and narrowly avoided walking into Burgoyne.

"There you two are," s/he cried, "Let's get you to the escape pods."

"I was heading there already", said Selar calmly despite everything.

2 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

Si Cwan was holding Kalinda's hand as they rushed to the escape pods. What luck. He had finally gotten his sister back, finally known she was safe, only to bring her to a ship that was about to explode. A practically regular display of the never-ending luck of a ruler of a beaten Empire with a destroyed homeworld.

"It's going to be okay, Kally", he called.

Kalinda knew better than to let her brother know that she was no little child who needed these sort of false affirmations—not at a time like this. She knew that he needed her to be his image of the little sister he knew right now, not someone who argued a futile point of independence. She nodded.

Robin walked up to Si Cwan.

"Now it's your turn, Ambassador," she told him.

He watched his sisters pod gliding gently away from the ship to safety. Without taking his eyes off of her, he nodded.

After ejecting Cwan's pod, Robin felt someone pull at her. It was her mother, who was now pushing her toward one of the empty pods.

"'Now it's your turn', dear."

"But mother, there are still people who—"

"Nonsense, Robin, there are plenty people on this ship, I'm sure they can manage without you."

"Then let me at least eject your pod first, mother."

Morgan smiled warmly. She didn't seem all too bothered by the whole situation, thought Robin.

Well, that may be an unfair way to put it, but she did seem significantly less scared. Robin wondered, whether her immortal mother was even in danger on an exploding ship. Would it even faze her? Would Morgan just be able to walk off something like a giant explosion? She didn't really understand how her mother's immortality worked—Morgan Primus didn't like to talk about it.

Was there indeed anything that could kill her mother?

"2 minutes to warp core overload"

The voice of the computer interrupted Lefler's thoughts. Not for the first time she noticed the jarring similarity between the voice of the ship's computer and the voice of her own mother.

"Fine," she said simply, and got into one of the escape pods.

Mark McHenry's thoughts were a 6-lane highway, as was to be expected.

How big was the ship, how many people were aboard and how long would it take them to evacuate? Exactly how fast would he Double Helix virus have had to develop, for it to take control of the ship in this way? Were there signs for its presence that McHenry had somehow failed to spot in time? Could he have spotted them if he had been less preoccupied? Presuming that the multiverse was real, was there a parallel universe out there where mullets actually looked good? How long would it take him to reach the escape pods at his current speed?

As all of these questions were being answered in his head, he raced through the ship with most of the bridge crew. The Captain and first officer were still on the bridge, to secure the data from the virus in some way, so that the incident could be thoroughly analyzed once they made it out.

McHenry knew that if the auto-ejection was non-functional, one person would have to stay on the ship as it went up in flames. He thought most people probably knew what this meant, even if many didn't realize it yet, as they were too focused on surviving at the moment.

But since McHenry had a very large capacity for considering multiple things at once, he perhaps got a head-start on mourning Captain Mackenzie Calhoun.

As he assisted the large security chief of the Excalibur in somehow fitting into the impractically human-sized escape pod, he wondered how Kebron might react to the Captain's passing. He concluded that he would be one of the people who would manage the best. Stable as rock. Or some rock-themed pun like that.

He walked over to Burgoyne and wordlessly helped hir follow Xyon and his mother into open space.

As he climbed into his own pod, he surveyed Soleta curiously, as she readied herself to eject his pod.

Her face was calm as ever. He knew the Vulcan would not cry over the death of her Captain. No, if he had her figured out right, Soleta would try to analyze the situation and make a scientific study of it. In a way, it would probably be her way of dealing with grief. Vulcans were subtle like that, they didn't have much outlet for strong emotions. If she did show herself to care at all, it would be under the guise of accumulating scientific knowledge.

1 MINUTE 11 SECONDS

As they entered the room with the two remaining lifepods, Shelby stopped dead in her tracks. She spun around and looked at Calhoun. What she was about to say would be useless.

"I'm not leaving."

Calhoun shook his head. "Now, Eppy. That's an order."

She was grasping at straws: "The Captain is too valuable a commodity to lose. Starfleet has too much invested in you."

She knew it was useless, but she would've given anything to die in his place. It was selfish, in a way.

"The captain goes down with his ship," he said.

Shelby laughed humorlessly. "There is no up or down in space."

11 SECONDS

He watched as Shelby's pod floated to a safe distance from the doomed ship and sighed.

Calhoun thought about what he had said just a few minutes ago and smiled with gallows humor.

10 SECONDS

9 SECONDS

8 SECONDS

then turned his attention to the open space again.

"Computer," he said, "mute all voice warnings."

Space was beautiful in a way he didn't take the time to appreciate enough. As a young boy, who knew only the violence and terror on his own home planet, he never thought about how vast space was and how beautiful it might look from a closer view.

The lifepods of his crew floated gently between the stars of an endless universe.

And so, as the computer silently counted its last second, Mackenzie Calhoun remembered all the mistakes he had made in his life.

"Grozit," he said.