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Star Trek: The Crouton Generation
Season 5, Pack #10
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From: euge@netcom.com (Eugene Yee)
Subject: ST:TCG Promo "My Soul to Keep"
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 1994 15:50:05 -0800 (PST)
Next time on
STAR TREK: THE CROUTON GENERATION
"My Soul to Keep"
Prologue
A MISSION ENDED IN TERROR...
The _Chivalier_ sickbay doors hissed open, and Captain Chi An Chow and
Commander Tim Larkin entered briskly.
ONE CAME BACK...
[Euge] slowly circled the [bio]bed, staring [at a body].
ONE DIDN'T...
"What happened to Muirden?" Chi said.
Dead with the rest of the individuals of KU-315.
ram still lay there... his skin bare and colorless.
A NIGHTMARE TO BE UNRAVELED...
"I'm not going back to sleep!" [Euge said.]
[Euge] pulled out [his] phaser and [fires].
ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF STAR TREK: THE CROUTON GENERATION.
------------------------------------------------------------
From: euge@netcom.com (Eugene Yee)
Subject: ST:TCG Episode "My Soul to Keep"
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 1994 16:07:15 -0800 (PST)
STAR TREK: THE CROUTON GENERATION
"My Soul to Keep"
Prologue
Written by Eugene "Euge" Yee
Music by Wojciech Kilar
Directed by Keir McFarlane
Captain Richard A. Muirden is gone. Dead with the rest of the
individuals of KU-315. Still I yelled and shooked "ram" to stay with me. But
armed with little else, sleep overcame.
I'm scared. Everything went gray in transport, until my eyes refocused
and saw Nurse Bev Collins, ushering me over to a biobed. I laid his body on
it and watched them swallow him from view. After which, I could only discern
Bev, barking echoes at the medtechs in their scramble to revive him.
The _Chivalier_ sickbay doors hissed open, and Captain Chi An Chow and
Commander Tim Larkin entered briskly. They slowed to a stop upon seeing the
formidable sight.
"My God," whispered Chi.
They had seen death's handiwork before, but it never failed to be
horrifying to the eyes. There, at the center of the madness, was once the
flirtatious fellow commanding officer of the _Melbourne_. Now he lay there,
looking lifeless, gouged and razed.
"You ok?" Chi asked after a time.
I nodded and mustered up a response. "Yeah."
"Man, you look like how I feel in the mornings," Tim said. "But much
worse."
"Hold a sec," I said. "My brain can't catch up with your lips. Been
running on eight days without sleep."
"Too bad. Another few days and you would have beaten Chris Crouton's
record."
"What happened to Muirden?" Chi said firmly, giving Tim the "not here,
not now" look.
I said nothing, merely looking back at ram and reliving the private
horror of the past week; the unyielding and inhuman invasion of the mind, the
body, the soul, the personality; how they destroy and create in their image; a
paranoid and unthinkable hell that rivals the Borg. Then, the echoes
stopped. "They had took him."
"Who did?"
The medtechs dispersed, leaving Bev to detach the stimulators from its
forehead. She blew out a breath which always lifted up her long, dark bangs.
A personal trademark of hers. "I'm sorry," she said.
The others stood respectfully silent. But I slowly circled the bed,
staring into its face; waiting for some sign of anything, some flicker of...
it.
"Euge, are you ok?" asked Chi. "Euge?"
Suddenly, I felt myself being tucked away.
"Something's wrong." Bev pulled out a tricorder from her medkit and
scanned me. "Vitals are fluctuating," she said.
It came.
"No!" I howled, striking the tricorder from her hand.
Chi and Tim darted forth and held me immobile.
"Get him over to that biobed," Bev ordered.
Chi looked at Tim, who glanced at Bev and then looked at Chi. "What's
going on here?" Chi demanded.
It's me.
"His vital signs are over the place," said Bev, and then warning tones
began to sound from the life scanners. She started to prepare a hypo, and as
she did so, Chi looked at her with concern.
"Come on, Bev, what's happening?" Chi yelled.
I grabbed his arm. "Please," I pleaded. "Kill me."
Chi looked down at me, feeling helpless and useless. He was reaching out
as much as he could, but he simply refused to take my life.
"Pulse is still dropping," said Bev.
"Kill ME."
"Heart rate is dropping."
"We're losing him!" Tim cried.
No sense of awareness.
"Body temperature decreasing," said Bev. Then her voice went up in alarm
as my flesh decomposed; the brown in my eyes disappeared into the white; my
scream became their hollow, bloodcurdling scream.
No sense of self.
"NO!" I sat up, clutching my heart, gasping and disoriented; my body
covered in sweat.
Soon running footsteps came. It was Bev. "Bad dream? You want
something to help you sleep?" she asked.
"No," I said defiantly in between breaths. "I've slept enough."
My heart was still pounding, my pulse still racing. I fought to obtain
some degree of equilibrium and, after a few minutes, did so. My breathing
returned to normal. My thoughts, my own. I looked around, not realzing at
first where I was and what brought me here. Then there was someone on a bed
across the room. ram still lay there, stripped of the red and black command
uniform; his skin bare and colorless.
I looked up at Bev. "Has he regained consciousness at all since?"
"Not a sign," said Bev. "I tried everything, even a kiss, but nothing's
taking. I've never seen anything like it. It's as if his will to live was
just plucked out from him."
I started to get out of bed.
"I wouldn't advise that," Bev said quickly.
I looked at her with sudden distrust. "Is there a medical reason I can't
leave?"
"No," admitted Bev. "No, not really. I just want you to feel rested.
You had collapsed from severe fatigue."
"I've already got some shut-eye."
"But not enough."
"No."
"Please." She grabbed my arm as I went by her. "You can't go on any
longer with just five hours and seven minutes of sleep."
I forcefully disengaged the grasp from my forearm. "Look, I said 'no',
and I mean it! I'm not going back to sleep and it... it wouldn't be of any
help to me if I did! Now, please, I'd like to leave!"
"All right," Bev said, once she saw the tears swelling up in my eyes.
"But I want you to stay in constant contact with me. If there's any problem
whatsoever, let me know immediately. Got it?"
"Got it."
I drummed my fingers momentarily on the cabin replicator. "Jolt, ice
cold in a bottle."
I walked around to the couch and drank hard. As I set the bottle down on
my lap, I tried to imagine how Aedoni could drink this Jolt. It tasted like
piss. I was going to pour the rest out into a flower pot when I saw and
stared at the Boston ivy. For a brief moment, the terror came washing into my
mind again until I quickly pulled out my phaser and disintegrated the plant.
"I won't let them do it to me."
After I checked every inch of the cabin; the closet; underneath the bed,
I got down on my knees.
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to god my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray to god my soul to take."
TO BE CONTINUED...
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From: "Christopher Paul Cline"
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