Aren’t You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare
Chapter 7
Rand sat in her cell. She was exhausted, her body heavy and deflated of any kind of energy. As rough as this program had been, she had made it this far. But as she sat on her cot she really wasn’t sure if she was going to successfully complete the program. Rand felt dejected and worried for the first time since this whole thing began-how long was it now? As she pondered her future and the real probability of disappointing herself ran through her head, her cell door opened, with one of the female guards standing ran outside the hall, looking at her. Rand groaned, wondering just what the hell could possibly be next, and if she’d be able to make it this time.
“Get up, the program’s over. You’re made it.”
Rand took a beat. “What?!” She wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. She stared up at the guard, not believing. The female guard stood by the door, waiting. All of the sarcasm, impatience, and outright sneering was absent from her tone.
“I’m here to take you to get washed up and dressed,” said the guard.
“Is this a joke?” asked Rand warily.
“No, Cadet. The program is over. If you would just follow me to the locker rooms you will be able to wash up and get your uniform back…”
Rand was so elated and stunned that she was almost floating. The very thought of getting out of this crappy little cell and finally being able to wash away all of the sweat and grime that had built up on every crevice of her body since her participation in the program was beyond blissful. She got up from her cot and strutted past the guard as she existed her cell for the very last time.
Rand walked single file along with the other cadets, the guards walking on either side of them. They walked a few yards before reaching the locker rooms-the women’s on the right and men’s on the left. There they all stood. The cadets waited for what seemed like an eternity. They looked at one another, and then the guards.
“What the hell are they doing?” thought Rand irritably.
“Ok, everyone. To the locker room,” said the female guard after the longest minute of Rand’s life had passed.
The cadets rushed to the locker rooms like children entering an amusement park, the tenseness of earlier times having dissipated as they talked away about being able to take a shower again, and using real toothpaste instead of baking soda, and getting a hold of some mouthwash, shampoo, soap and dental floss. Rand removed her dirty, sweaty prison frock and threw it into a large, black bin. After the women cadets stripped themselves bare, they skipped into the shower rooms.
Rand entered the shower room, the weeks of bodily funk and grime coated in every nook and cranny of her. When she stepped into the brightly lit, white tiled shower stall installed with a recessed shelf containing a liquid soap dispenser and twin bottles of shampoo and conditioner, Rand thought that she had died and gone to heaven. She turned to her left where a body length mirror served as a fourth wall and she examined herself. She couldn’t see any dirt smudged on her person, but she could certainly feel it. The only places with filth that were visible were her hair, which was slack with oil, and her gums surrounding the teeth, which were engorged with plaque.
Moving towards the showerhead she waved her hand over the control mechanism and turned on the shower, the warm soothing water cascading over her body. Taking a deep breath, Rand reached over and pumped soap out of the dispenser and lathered herself. When she covered every inch of her body she reached over for the shampoo and lathered her hair. Now Rand fully understood the saying ‘cleanliness is next to godliness-as she was in full bliss as all of weeks of dirt, grime, dead skin and stench were washed away.
When Rand was finished showing, she stepped out, wrapped herself in the supplied white towels over her body and hair, and then walked over to the row white sinks where a white toothbrush, white tube of paste, and a white container of white-ribbon-floss awaited her. She reached for the dental floss, pulling off the tape-shield and popped open the top. Rand slowly pulled out the floss with one hand, savoring the feel of the flat thread twirl against her fingers as she finally cut the floss with the small blade supplied on the box and placed it on the small counter.
With both hands Rand pulled the floss until it was taunt and raised it to her mouth. Sliding it between her two front teeth, she began to floss the sides of her teeth and up her swollen gums. The blood that gushed from between her teeth dripped and snaked its way down filling her mouth with the salty, metallic taste. It was sheer heaven for her, as she worked her way through her teeth and gums, not putting any mind to the blood that had dripped onto her fingers.
When Rand was finished flossing, she turned on the water and reached for the cup supplied for her, filled it up with ice cold water and sipped it, swishing around her mouth and spitting out the bloody water. She continued this way until her mouth was the cleanest it’s been since she entered the program. Afterwards, she reached for the small bottle of mouthwash, opened the top, guzzled its contents, gargled, spit it into the sink drain, took a deep satisfied breath and was ready to go.
Rand stood in front of the full-length mirror posted on the locker room door. She was tired, exhausted, but relieved.
It was over.
The whole, goddamn ordeal was over. Rand made it through the dreaded Crossing The Rubicon program. Soon, she was to accept her certification of completion and afterwards would party herself stupid with her fellow compatriots during that hellish program. Rand looked at herself in the mirror-clean, hair in place, uniform newly pressed-and smiled.
“I wear my pride pretty well, don’t I?” she thought as she felt a hand place itself on her shoulder. Rand turned to see Jill, a tall athletic brunette and a Bernard graduate who greeted Rand with a bright, open smile. Rand smiled back as the two women joined the joyous, wooping female cadets. They existed the locker room for the final time, merging with the equally joyous, wooping male cadets out into the hall. They talked incessantly, gesturing wildly in the rush of the moment in the realization that they were finished, finished with the most grueling program in the entire Starfleet Academy curriculum that was infamous for breaking a lot of cadets and had them packing. And as they reached the large double doors they all grew silent.
Rand held her breath. “Jesus,” she thought. “Open the damn doors so we can be done with this thing!”
Then, as if hearing her exasperated command, the huge doors slid open.
“Congratulations!” exclaimed a woman with a huge smile on her face.
Rand could see she was not a guard, but probably an administrator judging from the uniform.
“You are an elite few who have made it through the most difficult program in the Academy!”
This was followed by cheers from the cadets. The administrator laughed as she gestured to the group to calm down.
“I need for you to take a seat in the waiting room while your departure papers and certificates of completion are being processed. If you please,” she said motioning them to the waiting room behind her.
The area looked the same exact way that it did when Rand had first entered it at the very beginning of the program. She recalled the trap, those plunging, snaring nets, and wondered if these administrators had something else up their sleeves. Rand smirked as she sat down and reached for one of those deadly boring Federation published magazines but noticed there weren’t any on the table next to the couch she was sitting on. She looked around the waiting room and found that there were no magazines on any of the tables.
“Oh, shit!” she thought.
No magazines anywhere, for whatever reason. Was this going to be a long wait? She dreaded the thought as she tugged at her uniform collar, for it was a tad warm in the place-all of a sudden. Rand looked around again and noticed that the other cadets were showing discomfort; the crossing of legs, the tugging of collars, the fanning of hands over faces. “What the fuck,” thought Rand as the temperature in the room began to rise. The cadets exchanged looks of confusion and horror as the heat in the room grew to the point of suffocation.
It was then that Rand and the other cadets had a realization; this program, this Crossing The Rubicon was not over.
“Those bastards! I can’t believe this shit!”
There was a cacophony of angry expletives from the other cadets. Rand could hear a strange echo that coated the voices of the other cadets as well as her own, almost as if they were encased in some kind of chamber.
Rand was beginning to lose it…
Really lose it.
The other cadets started to jump off of their seats and dart around the waiting room, some were running back and fourth even as far as banging on the walls which grew hotter with each touch. Rand noticed the frantic energy and the room and collected herself.
“What the hell are we doing?!” she thought angrily, raising her hands and waving them around to get the attention of the other cadets.
“Can we stop this, please?!”
The other cadets turned in a collective panic, the looks on their faces ranging from fear, rage and downright confusion.
“They got us again, obviously! Let’s just focus on getting the hell out of this trap! Can we do that?!”
The cadets conversed with one another in rushed conversations, their voices rising in crescendo of yelling with Rand having to redirect them yet again.
“Can we just try to find the way out of here?! This is a trap! I’ve said this before! This is a final test! If we don’t pass this final test, we’ll all be packing our bags and explaining to our families on why we fucked up! You want that?! Let’s just calm down and do this-I am so done with this fucking program!”
The other cadets calmed down and agreed to work together, and as they began looking at various areas for routes to escape, the room grew hotter-near scolding.
Rand was desperate, though she tried not to show it. She cased the room, looking behind empty shelves, under tables, all of them clearly serving as props. Then, she noticed a small refrigerator in the corner right by what was supposed to be the receptionist’s area against the wall. Rand smiled in spite of the situation at hand.
“No fucking way,” she said aloud.
She ran over to this small refrigerator and noticed just by waving her hand over it that it was relatively cool compared to the rest of the room. She touched the latch, and then pulled on it. Inside, she saw the standard shelves one would see in any refrigerator. Rand reached inside and grabbed out the middle rack and pulled.
Bingo!
The interior gave way and revealed a passageway big enough for even the biggest cadet to squeeze through. Rand laughed in relief. What do you know. Hidden in plain sight.
“Everyone, over here!” she exclaimed.
Cadets scampered towards Rand and the refrigerator as she showed them what she found.
“In plain sight, just like I thought,”
The cadets, in a panic, started pushing and shoving as they tried to make their way to the opening.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!”
Rand reached over to pull a cadet who was sticking his foot through the door and pushed him away.
“We can’t do this! We have to calm down! What’s the matter with you?! I know it’s getting hotter! But, maybe if I stay here and make sure there’s a more orderly escape, we won’t step all over each other and fuck up our chances! Let’s prove to these bastards that our training paid off!”
And with that, the cadets collected themselves and lined up and one by one, stepped into the passageway opening until Rand was the last cadet to enter.
The passageway itself was small enough that she had to go on her hands and knees. The floor itself was growing pretty warm, and she cursed as she dealt with this discomfort. She continued to move forward as she saw all of the other cadets ahead of her.
“Can anyone, anyone please tell me if they see something ahead! Anything opening, anything!”
“Yeah, there’s an opening! To where, I have no idea…!”
There were exclamations from the other cadets, exclamations of hope and relief.
“Let’s just plow on through!” yelled Rand. “It’s getting too fucking hot in here as well!”
Mercifully, it wasn’t much longer when the cadets who were the furthest up front yelled that there was an opening. Exclamations were heard as Rand and the others got closer to the end of the tunnel. Rand could feel the air become cooler as she saw cadets in front of her being pulled out of the tunnel.
“Come on, I wanna get outta here,” she yelled as she reached closer and closer to finishing this test. And then, she was surrounded by bright lights as two guards took her by her arms on either side and pulled her out.
She had finished the test.
Finally.
Rand had crossed The rubicon. As soon as she was pulled up she was greeted by a toothy blonde sporting a fish-bowl haircut who was reaching out to shake her hand.
“Look at you! You should be proud of yourself! You completed the program for real! We got you on that last stretch though, didn’t we? How do you feel?”
Rand looked at this administrator, thoroughly peeved.
“How do I feel?”
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got as the administrator grabbed her hand and shook it with both of her own hands in a way that truly irritated her. Rand could feel her face growing hot, even though she was safe out of that booby trap the program had sprung on her and the other cadets.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Rand lunged at the official, and she found herself being restrained by the two guards who had helped her out of the tunnel.
“You’ve all lost your fucking minds! Did you think this was cute?! Huh?! The other shit wasn’t enough, the goddamn shitty fucking crap that passed for food?! The physical labor?! Making us stand in cramped spaces?! You all must of thought we were just a bunch of snot nosed-punks!!! Springing us at the last possible moment with this trapped in a furnace garbage?!?!”
Rand was by no means the only one who had lost it. The other cadets were arguing with the guards, the administrators, even with one another. In an attempt to control the crowd the guards began pushing and shoving the cadets out of the room. Rand herself tried to pull herself away from her two guards until she found herself being literally dragged out of the room. As Rand was being pulled away, she was able to see the area that she and the other cadets had escaped from, which was a humungous, protruding wall with a door, its color as grey as the place that the cadets had spent the whole duration of the program.
The cadets were all seated in the front row of a small, carpeted, more intimate auditorium. Rand had looked around and figured that the area was small because so many cadets ended up quitting during the trials or being eliminated from the trials.
Rand slumped in her chair, truly exhausted as she watched all of the instructors seating themselves behind a small podium. She turned to the other cadets and scanned the faces, spotting the same fatigue. The fatigue was so oppressive for herself that it would probably be awhile before it really hit her that she had actually made it through this Crossing The Rubicon- therefore graduating from the Academy the following month-something that her family wasn’t sure she’d be able to do.
A small group of administrators gathered around the podium, one of them pushing a cart containing what looked like plaques. A tall, gangly man reached over for some of these plaques and collected them, placing them in front of him on the podium. He smiled readily as he scanned the small group of cadets who were seated sleepily in front of him.
“Greetings, and Welcome,” he said enthusiastically.
“Is he fucking kidding me,” Rand thought irritably.
The administrator continued. “It is patently obvious to assume that you are all sitting in this room today because you made it through the hardest, the most difficult of all of the programs in the whole history of the Academy! You’ve crossed the rubicon! You’ve made it through where others haven’t. No doubt you all can remember just how many cadets have disappeared as the program progressed. Be proud! Be very proud!”
The officers stood up and gave the cadets a standing ovation.
“And now, without any further adieu, as they say.”
There was laughter among the officers on the stage. Rand wondered what the hell was so funny.
“We shall present the certificates of completion. Please rise.”
The cadets rose, passing nervous glances at each other, like they couldn’t believe that they had made it, that it was all truly over. One by one, the cadets were handed their certificates as they walked onto the stage and shook hands with the officials who stood to greet them. Rand looked at these officials and, while she didn’t recognize some of them, she was able to recognize others-particularly Mr. Glok, the tall Vulcan who had interrogated her. It’s funny how looking at Mr. Glok didn’t inspire any feelings of anger towards him, though she felt that it would have been justified.
Rand was the last of the cadets to be called, and she went through the motions like everyone else. While she was proud that she had made it and would be a Starfleet Academy graduate, her exhaustion kept her from really appreciating just what she had accomplished. So, like a mind-numbed robot she got up in her nicely pressed cadet uniform and walked through the small aisle and up the stairs to the stage. She was handed her certificate of completion of the program by a smiling woman whose face she barely registered, shook her hand, walked to the Master of Ceremonies and shook his hand and then shook hands with a whole line of officers and administrators until she was face to face with Mr. Glok, who turned out to be the actual coordinator of the program. They looked eye to eye for a bit before Rand slowly reached out her hand for the Vulcan to shake it, which he did so firmly.
The waiting room-the real waiting room, was filled with cadets talking among themselves. They were tired, relieved, happy and excited of the realization that completing this Crossing The Rubicon program meant that they would be at the big graduation with all of the pomp and glory, their family in the audience cheering them on, their future as Starfleet explorers complete. Rand was, however, still fairly distant from the whole thing as she wondered around the room counting the minutes when she’d be back in her dorm taking a much needed and well-deserved rest. While she knew that there was a reason why the cadets were sent to the waiting room, she didn’t really know why-she just wanted whatever the reason was to be over and done with. Rand turned as heard the sliding door open. A young black man with a bright smile was pushing a cart of what looked like frames.
“Hey, everyone! Congratulations again, by the way! I have your pictures right here that I’m going to hand over to you, and then you’ll be free to go. So, now I will call your name and you can simply come up to get your picture. Easy? Okay, let’s get started-and I wish you all the best of luck! Here we go!”
The young man began calling out the names of each cadet as they went up to accept what turned out to be snapshots of themselves getting their certificates of completion. When the young called Rand’s name she walked up to accept the framed picture. The young man glanced at her picture and laughed before handing it over.
“Wow, aren’t you all aglow in your thousand yard stare,” he chuckled.
Rand took the picture and looked at it. The photograph showed her walking towards the camera holding her certificate, Mr.Glok right in back of her. Her eyes are staring straight into the camera. They are wide and dead like a person with shell shock.
“Yeah,” thought Rand. “Thousand yard stare, all right.”
Rand muttered a Thank You to the young administrator before she headed out the door for the last time, the double doors sliding open as she was greeted and ultimately engulfed by the radiance if the sun’s rays, heading towards her future.
The End.
ZERO DRAFT: 11/1/14-6/14/19
FIRST DRAFT: 3/7/15-10/20/2020
FINAL DRAFT: 4/6/2015-10/13/2020
NOTE: This story was written piecemeal. That is, I wrote the story and published it on my blog as I went along, which is different from how I had handled the other stories in the past where they were published after the final draft was completely finished.
