Breaking Stone to Sand

Posted on 24 Nov 2022 @ 6:00pm by Ensign Avery Macario

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Science Lab 42
Timeline: MD 6: 2200
657 words - 1.3 OF Standard Post Measure

The tick of the actual clock on the wall drowned out the other noises and made it possible for Avery to function. White noise seemed to calm her, in ways that defied explanation for the young woman. She'd always struggled with her reactions to sudden sounds and stimuli, and the machine that played the sounds that soothed her lived in h er proximity always. It was small, round and she could set whatever she needed at any one given time. It also glowed with a faint blue light which was soothing to her as well.

Avery hadn't realized she was staring at the blue bauble until her eyes were aching and she closed her eyes against the grit of dry eye. "Ouch" she muttered, rubbing them free of debris and digging around in her drawer for a bottle of eye drops. One drop in each eye and she closed her eyes against the sharp burn, then the cool relief.

Licking her lips she jerked up and looked at the movement in the shadows of her office. The movement darkened the shadow in the corner and something seemed to ooze from the lighter shadow into the darker one. Icy fear trickled down her spine and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. There was the sound of footfalls on the decking but they weren't the right pattern, and they didn't have anyone in the Science department with three legs.

"Who is there?" she called, knowing deep in her soul that no one was going to answer her query. As expected, there was no answer and she growled under her breath in pure frustration before she turned her eyes back to the PADD she was trying to read.

She'd read a whole line, before her eyes raised again to the wall. Something glittered there in the darkness, it grew to a pair of greenish eyes, then disappeared into motes of light. "What...?"

A hiss came from the left side of her and when she jerked that way, she could see nothing this time that was out of place. Again the hiss came to her ears. It sounded, like the whisper of conversation just far enough away that a person couldn't make out the words but you knew someone was talking. Someone was talking. Whispering in the darkness just out of earshot.

Walking towards the sound until she was hands and forehead against the bulkhead, and it didn't change she snarled something impolite regarding genitalia. The pacing became ever decreasing circles around the desk.

"Computer, is there any other living creature in the room with myself?"

"Negative."

"Are there people in any of the adjacent labs that are talking that i could possibly hear?"

"Negative"

"Is someone trying to play jokes on me?"

"Insufficient information to formulate a response."

Her fists impacted her forehead lightly in a gesture of pure frustration. Those fists were so tightly clenched that the fingernails cut crescents into her palms. She thumped her forehead over and over again, with her eyes tightly shut. She couldn't see them, and she knew they weren't there. The computer wouldn't lie to her. It couldn't lie to her. Her mind though, it could. What in the nine hells was WRONG with her?

"Stop it stop it stop it stop it." Avery snarled, her frustration boiling over into tears that streaked down her cheeks in lines of black from her mascara.

"Please specify running experiment to stop?"

The gentle alto of the computer broke her out of the spiral and a mad little giggle escaped her. Blinking a few times she processed the words and began again to laugh. The laughter was more hysterical than comic but it was just what she needed. Laughing until she ached between her ribs Avery took a hitching breath then heaved a huge sigh.

Something has to give girl....let's hope it's not your grip on your sanity.