“Life is too short to do the things you don’t love doing.”
-Bruce Dickinson

“Crewman Flynn, I fail to understand what referring to your latest intercourse partner as a gardening implement has to do with the condition you presently find yourself in.” Dr. T’Lan was saying as she raised one brow ever so slightly, regarding him as though she were attempting to calculate the velocity of his insanity.  One slender hand gripped a hypospray, and as she brought it up to her patient’s neck and firmly pressed, it sounded off a soft little sigh as though it too would experience the relief it was meant to dispense.

Conrad Flynn found his fingers drifting to the injection site unbidden.  He traced along the outline of the hypo’s kiss like it was some cursed mark until its cold sting finally faded from sensation.  He rolled his eyes.  Vulcans.  It was like their whole species ran on firmware that never got the sarcasm patch installed.

Silence lingered in the air for a moment like smoke with no breeze to send it anywhere else.  When it was readily apparent that the non-commissioned security officer had no forthcoming response to offer her, the Vulcan doctor simply continued on as though apathy were a second language.  “The itching sensations in your lower extremities will subside within the hour.  You may return here daily for hypo treatments, or you may elect to simply infuse one meal a day with medical supplement number nine-hundred twenty-two.  I will ensure that the replicators grant you access to make such a request.”

“I’ll do that.  Maybe try it with the food first.  You don’t think it’d make my meal taste funny, do you?” Conrad asked earnestly.  Then there was a flicker in his gaze that was damn near audible – pure antimatter-grade dread igniting in his retinas.  “Wait, what’s the plan here, Doc?  A week of this stuff?  A month?  This isn’t a permanent thing, right?”

“Your emotional distress is unwarranted.” she responded coolly, not bothering to look up from her PADD as she tapped away to grant the aforementioned authorizations.  “The regiment will conclude when the symptoms have abated.” the doctor continued, intoning her voice as though she were patiently explaining gravimetric flux to a toddler.  “Treatment will only be as temporary as your rashes, at which point your present affliction will be entirely eliminated.”

The young NCO exhaled like a man freshly pardoned.  “Oh, thank god.”

Now the doctor did finally lift her Vulcan gaze, with all the grace of a dropping guillotine and twice as frosty.  “In the meantime, Crewman, might I make a suggestion?  With the next shore leave you undertake, perhaps you might consider a more rigorous screening process to your mating endeavors than you did with your last regrettable instance.”

Conrad looked down and avoided the Vulcan’s eyes as though they were set to burn through the bulkhead.  His cheeks colored just enough to betray him.  “Yes, ma’am.” he said, sounding much like a schoolboy confessing to some infraction transgressed.

Then in a blink, the whole damn ship lost its mind.  The sickbay viewport to Conrad’s left had been showing the stars streaking by no problem as they plummeted along their course to Starbase 72 at warp six.  Until they weren’t.  At some point the stars had suddenly twisted into a tunnel of some sick, glowing haze bathed in amber and orange.  The subsequent jolt that rattled the hull and deck plating felt like the Fresno had run into the bloody soul of the galaxy its self.  The ship’s klaxons erupted with the violent howl of a red alert.

“Hull breach on deck eight.”  The computer’s voice, cool and indifferent, dropped this line like it was reporting the weather; partly cloudy with a chance of explosive decompression.  Unlike the rest of the ship, the sickbay retained its bright, clinical lighting during such conditions of a red alert.  This was meant to preserve a well-lit environment during potential surgical matters.  But even here, the crimson bathed glow of a red alert crept in to cast its hellish glow in a stubborn stripe along the middle of each wall.

In the midst of this surprise insanity, Conrad’s embarrassment of his situation turned into a fleeting thing as it seemed the universe was hellbent on providing him with a new one.  When that first jarring impact had hit, they found themselves clasping one another like old sailors riding out a storm.  Not graceful, but also not entirely ineffective at keeping themselves standing.  The young crewman found himself staring out the viewport with a look that suggested his replicator had just spat a live snake out at him, infused of course with medical supplement 922.  Where clean warp trails should have been was now a churning storm that swirled like a drunken deity’s lava lamp.

“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice cracking like a weak comm broadcast through an ion storm.  “We’re not at warp.”

“That is an answer I do not possess, crewman Flynn.  But seeing as how your condition has rendered you neither injured nor incapacitated, I must insist that you report to your station.  The protocol of Red Alert dictates that I must prepare mine for the possibility of casualties.”  T’Lan moved past him briskly, already picking up instruments that had found themselves violently flung to the floor.  The implication hung heavy – he was in the damned way.

Crewman Flynn didn’t argue.  He gave a nod that barely qualified as conscious thought, and stumbled out of sickbay.  The Fresno shuddered under another barrage that sent him skidding against the bulkhead.  The darkened corridor beyond was pure bedlam – flashing LEDs, a listing deck that had seemingly lost all cohesion with inertial dampeners yet somehow had gained the ability to twist his guts, and more bone-deep jolts that had him grasping at the walls like a lifeline.  He wondered what could possibly have gone down to make the day violently veer towards this direction of tits-up.  His brain offered nothing useful.  Only a cavalcade of doomsday possibilities as he considered how life had brought him to this moment.

Conrad Flynn was born and raised in a quaint little Irish village back on Earth.  Dunnara, Jesus.  If the world had an armpit full of fairy tales and horse shit, that’d be the place.  He’d been raised on boiled cabbage, superstition, and drunken aunties whose shrieking laughter was oft mistaken for banshees wailing at sundown.

But the place had it’s charm as a crooked slice of God’s own green lunacy.  The sea-salted air and winding paths would be forever chiseled into his skull.  He would run shirtless and barefoot through muddy puddles, sent on errands for jam and tea.  Dunnara was a place where you learned real fast to respect the sea, the hills, and damned loose-lipped old women whose sharp eyes would somehow manage to witness every sin you’d ever commit.

By eighteen, he’d become a permanent fixture at the local pub.  He’d sit on the stool that was closest to the woodstove, nursing pints and arguing with old-timers about Federation conspiracies.  He’s been a kid with a head full of dreams, and a liver that was on borrowed time.  The locals all figured he’d be destined for either priesthood or prison.  Damn, weren’t they shocked when it turned out to be neither one?

When he wasn’t crawling on all fours at the pub, he was helping out on the family farm.  It was an experience he rather loathed.  He still had a scar on his forearm where one of their goats, Shirley Temple, had bitten him.  The hairy little assholes would put their mouths around anything, including crunching into a PADD Conrad had once carelessly left on a stool in the barn.  Nope, livestock was definitely something that he’d resolved to swear off.

But there’d been something after all to wallowing knee-deep in goat shit and staring up at the stars that helped him clarify things.  He wanted out.  He wanted to go up there and live!  To sin gloriously and frequently, in places where no one knew his name or cared about what his mammy would say.  He wanted to wake up in strange new places, not knowing the name of the woman (or being?) beside him, to boldly strangle his liver where no liver had been strangled before!

The solution came to him in the form of Starfleet, and never one to linger and earn his way through hardship once his mind was made up, he decided to avoid Starfleet Academy entirely.  The NCO route wasn’t just a shortcut, it was a catapult.  And honestly?  He couldn’t be arsed to care whether he’d end up on an explorer or a garbage scow.  He just wanted out.

Security was an odd path to choose.  Conrad Flynn’s boldness could take him swaggering through dive bars with a devilish grin to leave with someone’s sister.  But when trouble brewed, he made Houdini look like an amateur.  One week into basic training and they had already taken to calling him ‘Flynnch’.  But while he might be completely useless when it came to close quarters and fists, if you armed him with a phaser and at least twenty paces then he was a goddamned artist!

And so it came to be written in his file that the half-formed Crewman Flyyn, sharpshooter supreme and cowardly brawler, would be slapped onto a utility cruiser meant for gearheads and crate-hauling.  He couldn’t ask for a less hazardous posting.  It wasn’t supposed to catch fire, let alone hell.  But hell had certainly caught up today.

His reflections were rudely interrupted.  “Your incursion has provoked the ire of the Vaadwaur Imperium.”   Without warning, a voice erupted through the corridor’s emitters like it had been waiting to drop from the ceiling with a knife in its teeth to shank him with the auditory assault.  “Your presence will not be tolerated.  This space is claimed as our own.  Your worlds will burn.  The Imperium is strong once more!” 

Some twisted optimist on the bridge must’ve figured letting the message play would answer some questions, as opposed to simply multiplying them like rats in a burning barn.  It utterly failed to answer questions like what the hell was all that swirling orange outside just a few moments ago?  And why are the stars back now?  Conrad found it all about as helpful as handing out flyers to victims fleeing a burning building.  ‘Here’s what’s trying to kill you, kids!’  Yeah, thanks.  And no shit, Sherlock!

He didn’t have the luxury of ruminating on the matter.  The corridor screamed again – vibrations hitting the soles of his boots, the walls shuddering like some great titan was slamming its fists against the hull.  Gut-punch after gut-punch of force rocked the ship, sending tremors through the bulkheads like the Fresno was being dragged through hell.  An EPS conduit blew out a ceiling panel above him, and Conrad staggered along and resigned himself to gripping the wall like a drunk in a wind tunnel.

He just wanted all the noise and chaos to pipe down long enough for him to stumble like some crazed beast to the turbolift.  But the final lesson of the day would come in the form of being careful what you wish for.  One moment he was spinning in a blender of madness.  Eyes wild.  Stomach in revolt.  The ship had been screaming.  He’d been screaming.  Something outside in the void was definitely screaming.  A deafening force erupted next to him, God’s own flatulence and three times as foul.  And then, a cold snap.  Dead air.  The kind of sudden quiet that feels like it’s merely waiting for when you’d settle down and least expect it to slap you again even harder.

But the universe was done beating around poor Conrad ‘Flynnch’.  He’d finally flinched his last.  Indeed, he was too busy trying to reconcile the ugly, dizzying drift.  That oh-so-special flavor of terror where every molecule in your body realizes you’re no longer safe.  He remembered the horrifying descriptions from his training, but that couldn’t possibly ever prepare you for feeling it.  Crewman Flynn had been nowhere near an airlock, so fate had decided to conjure one up for him.  He’d barely even registered feeling the instant evacuation of pressure, or the sight of the bulkhead racing towards him before impossibly passing through him (or more accurately, him passing through it!)

The boiling began from the tongue outward – that’s how it starts.  Not fire, but effervescence.  Just a tickling, bubbling sensation while he felt the mistress of the void straight up grab him by the unmentionables and kiss him – gently, cruelly, and lingering until every nerve ending slowly gave up.  The moisture abdicated first, then the warmth.  Cold crept in with surgical precision.  It stole all feeling.

There was a moment just before blackout where he felt everything leaving.  As his vision clouded over and the fight left him, the last fading image he would see would be that of the Fresno, her impulse drives silently shrieking as she fled towards the questionable safety of a cloud of tumbling rocks.  But the dying mind is a fickle, wandering creature.  He gave his final vision little regard, his attention whimsically focused instead on the final thought that he would never know whether or not the taste of medical supplement 922 would taint the flavor of his next meal.  Then, the dark swallowed him whole.  No pain.  Just release.