Escapism

Posted on Fri Apr 3rd, 2015 @ 11:40am by Commander Rylie Cattmor

1,913 words; about a 10 minute read

There were a few places on board where Cattmor could get at least some relief from the incessant noise of all the wandering thoughts around her, though none of them were really accessible for any length of time--the captain's ready room, the intelligence offices, T'mpest's quarters--so she opted for the next best thing to try to put a little distance and perspective on things, the holodeck. Approaching the control panel to the side, she still wasn't sure on the type of program to run, she just wanted to make use of the in-built shielding of the room. "Computer, load in program Cattmor Alpha One-Four, please."

"Program complete, enter when ready." the computer replied in its wonderfully monotonous tone which said it couldn't care less even if it wanted to.

The doors parted revealing a high cliff face looking out to sea, a gentle breeze swaying the unkempt grass, and a large, orange sunset streaking the sky with a rainbow of colour, interacting with the sparse wispy clouds. It was one of Rylie's favourite programs, one of the ones she came to in order to relax. She walked through the doors and immediately felt the calming breeze on her face and through her hair as she tucked a strand behind her ear just as the doors closed behind her. She closed her crystalline green eyes for a few seconds, and revelled in the modicum of silence the holodeck offered her.

"Hello." An old but familiar voice said awkwardly, dragging her attention to the now.

Her eyes snapped open, and looked across at the man standing just off to her left, a man she recognised instantly, a tear forming in her eye. "Daddy?"

Lucius Cattmor just stood, silent, his own emotions seemingly running high, until he nodded without saying a word. Rylie started to approach to embrace him in a long overdue hug when he suddenly raised his voice for her to stop, "Ry, wait! You can't, if you touch me, you'll lose me forever."

"What are you talking..." she said before trailing off, her emotions and thoughts and memories had been getting the better of her, over all the crew for the most part of two days. Then there was the report from Lieutenant Foster over the strange engram readings, something which T'kaarch and Edwards had been confirming were linked somehow to the gas cloud outside. "This isn't real... you are not real." Lucius Cattmor was about to say something else before Rylie got there first, "Computer, end program."

The holographic environment fizzled out to non-existence, replaced by the lattice work of the holodeck grid. But her father did not go the way of the environment. "I can't leave Ry, I'm not part of the computer; I'm in here." he said pointing to his temple. "I could never leave you."

"You already did."

"Not by choice. I was ripped from your life, and what happened then is something neither one of us could change. In some small way, not that I would want to." Rylie's face screwed up with confusion about why her father would say such a thing. "If it were, your life would not be as it is now. Though I would have thought you'd have ended up serving our own people, as opposed to wearing something like that." he said motioning to Cattmor's Starfleet uniform.

Rylie sighed sadly. "I did for a time, in a lot of ways." Now it was her father's turn to look a little confused. "That day," she started and paused abruptly, silently confirming they both knew which day she was referring to, "I wound up in the underbelly of the slums, down by Parkville. I spent some time being forced to use my abilities to enforce some unsavoury ideals of another person, before being found by the government and sent to the Psionic Academy to be trained as one of their agents."

"Somewhere you should have gone to a long time before." Lucius said almost regretfully. "Maybe if we had, it would have kept you safer, kept you from going through everything with Fragir and Ral."

Rylie's brow furrowed slightly, "But then like you said, if that hadn't have happened, I might not be who I am now. I'm happy now, I have a good life with Starfleet, which is something that the Institute could never offer me. Hell, they abandoned me as well." Rylie calmed a little from reliving part of that thought, and tried to remind herself that she was essentially talking to herself. "Dad, why didn't you just send me?"

"Because I knew the program, as did your mother; her own sister was found out and sent there, only to come back again on some form of drug. She was never the same again. You were showing signs when you were no more than four, five; I couldn't do that to my little girl. Belonging to the ruling class has it's privileges... and its flaws. By the time you were eight, you'd already mastered the art of reading other people's emotions and state of mind, and more often than not how to go around them. And seeing it just made us all the more protective over you." He paused a second before stepping forward a couple of paces and continuing, "And then that day came, which set into motion you ending up there regardless. I'm sorry."

"For what? Know it or not, you gave me the tools with which to get through it and survive." Rylie said wiping away a tear. "Sure it was difficult, painful, even tortuous at times, and there were moments when I just wished that I could have ended it all, but that Cattmor determination, and stubbornness, and will of character kept haunting me, telling me to carry on, and to fight, because giving in was just never my style, or yours."

For the next few seconds, neither one of them said a word, before Lucius broke the silence, "You seem to have done well with it."

Cattmor looked round and sniffed slightly. "You want to go someplace a bit more hospitable than the ship's blank holodeck grid?"

"Love to." Lucius smiled in response, as they both headed to the door, and continued the conversation outside, "So, what happened to Edwin and the others? I presume they never got far."

"They didn't even get to leave the room," Rylie admitted, part in sorrow, part in pride. "But then the tower was almost destroyed from the aftermath... I'd just arrived to see both you and Mum in a heap on the floor, and Jeb be the recipient of another bullet in the back of his head. Edwin finally saw me but I didn't let him do anything. When it was over, the entire top level was shattered, along with damage to the underlying seventeen floors, and some of the neightbouring area. Everyone not already dead on that floor, died a very horrible way." Rylie ended, much more in the melancholy camp now.

The rest of the time it took to arrive at Cattmor's quarters, they walked in silence, in part to avoid unnecessary looks from the various crew members they met along the way. Rylie knew the vision of her father was just that, a vision, a figment of her imagination; she was just enjoying the extra time with him immensely, and didn't want to admit the truth to herself that it wasn't real.

When they entered her quarters, she was startled to find something else she wished she could rid the truth of, Lindell, her Psionic Academy instructor standing in the bedroom doorway. "Attention on deck, kitty cat!"

"Oh no." Rylie breathed. "You're not here either, none of us are."

"Yes we are," Lindell responded sardonically, "You're here, so we're here, we have to be." Lindell looked to Lucius Cattmor and approached him, "Ah, the infamous Mister Cattmor, I've heard so much about you."

"All good I hope."

"Oh absolutely. They were short conversations. The rest, well you can guess. I had several acquaintances under your employ; the stories coming from the trenches so to speak, said a great deal about what it was like to work as part of one of your many, many companies. The long hours. The crippling pay. The conditions were more like labour camps than a reputable business."

"Get to the point, Lindell." Rylie interjected before any more could be said.

Lindell smirked and backed away. "You were pressed into your first assignment early as I recall Miss Cattmor, you had a tentative tick from the board, and while I contested the decision to send you out in the field, I was ultimately overruled and well, I guess in the end I was proven to be wrong. But there's still that matter of the final exam, for which you didn't have the experience of going through."

"I passed my training."

"Yes, but the exam is the final grade to becoming a full agent of the Institute."

"That life is behind me. I can't, I will never go back there."

"Then let's just call it personal curiosity, to find out what would have happened if you had have gone through it at the proper time." Suddenly, Lindell stepped forward and grabbed Lucius by the arm, dragging him to the center of the room. Then taking out his pistol, he pointed it straight at Lucius' head. "Kill him, kitty cat, before I do."

Rylie just looked into her father's eyes and pleaded. Realistically, she knew that both men were hallucinations, she felt, sensed nothing from them but her own thoughts cooking up the images. She'd heard stories of the final exam of the program and her imagination was obviously filling in the blanks and putting her in one of her worst fears of the situation if it were to present itself.

"I'm already gone, Ry."

"Dad, I can't."

"Do it!" Lindell shouted. "You've got ten seconds before I pull this trigger." he added as he cocked the hammer.

Cattmor was fighting back tears; she could go through this a second time, "What if..."

"Oh don't bother, I've been doing this a long time sweetheart; you can't get through to my mind to shred it. In any case, you'd just be shredding a piece of you."

"So why the hell should I co-operate?" Rylie pleaded.

Meanwhile, Lucius turned around to face Lindell directly. "If you're going to do it, just do it. Why make someone else suffer, someone else do the dirty work that you don't wish to do."

"Shut the flick up, old man. I neither like this, nor enjoy it, or fear doing it. I'm just doing a job, hell, with you it would probably be considered a public service."

"Then pull the trigger, maggot. Go on, do it. Blow a hole in my head in front of my daughter. If you knew us half as well as you think you do, she'll never forgive you, and I would die a hundred, a thousand times over if it meant protecting her." He finished pulling the barrel closer to his own skull.

"Two seconds, Cattmor; are you going to do it?"

"Stop it, both of you, just flicking stop it." she pleaded with a scream.

"Time's up." Lindell said with tense finality, and pulled the trigger. The sound, admittedly only inside her own head, sent Rylie crouching to ground before something tripped in her brain, making her world go black as she collapsed to the floor.

RSS Feed