Bad Dreams, Ensign?

[shut_up_wesley]

Who: Wesley Crusher
What: Uneasy nights were to be expected...within reason. This, very much, is not.
When: Last Week,
Where: His house by the hospital
Status: Closed / complete

Comments

[1eyeopened]

As Wesley jogged through the eerily silent Enterprise, he met no one. The red emergency light continued to throb, but there were no klaxons, no shouting, not a soul in the corridors, not a sound in any of the rooms he passed. The Enterprise was a ghost ship, cold and uninhabited.

And then he reached the bridge.

Geordi was not there. No one was. Only a single, solitary figure, seating in the Captain's chair with his gaze fixed straight ahead.

Without moving, Lieutenant Commander Data said calmly, "You should not be here."

[shut_up_wesley]

Surprisingly, the lack of any and all life didn't bother Wesley at first. There were any number of reasons the saucer section would be completely unihabilited, especially situations that called for a silent red alert.

Unfortunately, one of them was that the self-destruct system had been activated, in which case he wouldn't have to worry about much for long.

But why was he here, all of a sudden? Was it another temporal shift? Was Q interfering with things again? Or some other alien being?

Taking a deep breath to steady shivering hands, Wes found the nearest turbolift to the bridge. As the doors hissed open and the same isolation greeted him Wesley thought perhaps he had been right about the self-destruct.

"Data?" Why wouldn't the android look at him? "Commander, what's going on, where is everyone?"

[1eyeopened]

"By 'everyone', I presume you are referring to the former crew complement of this starship. They are no longer on board."

It was a simple statement of fact. As he spoke, Data keyed a few commands into the console embedded in the arm of the captain's chair, all without shifting his gaze from the forward viewscreen. The red light continued to strobe, and the engines still sounded peculiar, but Data seemed uncaring.

"It was inefficient to waste the resources required to support a crew of one thousand and twelve individuals when their presence was not necessary. I am capable of maintaining all ship systems without human aid."

[shut_up_wesley]

Wes swallowed. This wasn't Data. He wouldn't speak to him--or anyone--like that. Wasn't it always, the Captain or Commander Riker? He took a few steps down the bridge towards his usual station, moving slowly, trying not to alarm Data. If his fail-safes had activated, he was dangerous.

"Did they need to be evacuated?" he asked, heart pounding. A pink tongue glossed over dry lips. The few times he'd been around to see Data go on complete survival mode, they'd almost lost the ship. "What happened?" He asked again, this time a little more gently.