The BLTS Archive - Ashes to Ashes
by FanFicChick (vonnie3358@my-deja.com, vonnie@paradise.net.nz)

---

Legal disclaimer:  The horrible facts: Paramount owns Voyager lock,
stock and barrel.  The concept, the characters, the wok that Neelix
uses to cook with, even Harry Kim's clarinet.  Every darn thing.  I am
using the characters for my own naughty fanfic purposes but I'm not
making any money, so that's okay isn't it?  I solemnly promise to get
them all dry cleaned before returning them to Paramount.

Synopsis:  Tom's journals after his rescue from an alien ship
populated by the Greys.  (I like to think of this as my J.D. Salinger
Meets The X-Files period of fan fiction).

Characters: Focuses on Tom Paris but everyone else gets to say
something too.

Archiving:  ASC may archive this.  All others, I'm afraid not as I
have my own Web site for my fanfic.

Comments: This is my first serious piece of fan fiction for Voyager.
Usually I write comedy fanfic so this is a shift in writing style for
me.  I avoid serious stuff because it usually involves 25 rewrites and
about a year of my time and even then I can't seem to get it right. As
always with my serious stuff, this probably isn't going to be to
everyone's liking.  Mind you, if you do manage to wade your way
through it, feedback is warmly accepted and deeply appreciated.

Thanks:  To my Beta reader, Fiona L who waded through the draft number
six and kept her sanity.  Thanks to my other Beta reader Kelly
Chambliss who read draft number one and pointed out several problems.

Spelling note:  This was written using the Australian English spell
checker in Word.  I'm sorry to say, my American friends, that in my
country "colour" is spelt correctly :-)  Also, I used the spelling and
usage from the startrek.com site, so don't blame me for not
capitilising the word PADD.

---
==
Entry 1.  Stardate Unknown
==

The Doc suggested I write in this thing a while ago and I didn't but
it's come down to either writing in this thing or have the Captain,
Chakotay, Harry and the Doctor on my case and the removal of my
replicator privileges.  So I've cracked (poor choice of words there)
and started this journal.  As suggested by everyone over and over
again.  Apparently it'll help the Doc chart those unknown Paris depths
that he's been so damned interested in lately and they seem to think
that I would want of record of what's been happening so I can look
back over it later and see how far I've come.  I don't quite fathom
the reasoning at the moment.  Reading back over anyone's journal would
be an exercise in masochism and who wants to read about their heady
days as an official basketcase anyway?

Damn, a journal.  I've never kept a journal before.  Not even when I
was a teenager at my most annoying and misunderstood.  I had friends
who kept one.  They'd rush home after a hard day at High School being
spurned by various 24th century cliques and pour out their jilted
hearts to their diary.   What a concept. "Oh I'm so upset, Keil
Sourlen, that cute Bajoran girl I wanted to ask out to the prom is
going out with the Parisses Square champion."  Ugh.  Does anyone feel
sick yet?

So here I am, in my thirties, doing the same thing.  I guess that
means I'm getting to have a second puberty.  Boy, that'll be fun...  I
had a crap puberty the first time around.  Hormones, acne, and an
ingrained tendency to piss off my father at every possible
opportunity.  Mind you I pissed him off in exactly the same way even
before I grew 13 centimetres in a year.  When I was a kid I used to
just go and cry in my room when he yelled at me.  I hit puberty and by
14 I was itching for a fight every day.  I'd still cry and go and hide
in my room but that was coupled with an urge to break things. I put it
down to the sudden influx of hormones.  I was a teenager  - inevitably
we were bound to clash.  My father had staff, he wasn't used to being
questioned and around 14 I started questioning everything.  The advice
to my father from a friend was that, "it's a phase every son goes
through."  My father wasn't thrilled at the thought of having to wait
four years for his son to cease being obnoxious and our relationship
(not that we had one anyway) promptly disintegrated.  I think my
father sort of conveniently forgot that he'd been a kid as well, once
upon a time.

Terrific.  My first journal entry and I talk about my childhood.  God,
the Doctor will be intolerably pleased when he reads this.  Fuck it.
I have a headache and I'm going to bed.

==
Entry 2.  Stardate Unknown
==

Hmmm... Maybe I should repeat myself here and write down a few things
for posterity since the Doc is proposing that he fiddles with my poor
overworked synaptic connections again.  I guess if I wake up with yet
more memory loss at least the journal is a good way to get up to
speed. My recent memory of the past year or so resembles a patchwork
quilt with most of the patches missing.

First things first Thomas Eugene (stupid middle name) Paris.  You
don't actually talk.  Well, you used to about 18 months ago but you
don't any more.  The Doc says your vocal cords are fine now that
they've healed but you're suffering from mutism brought on by
traumatic shock.  Mutism in adults is fairly rare and is usually the
result of being in the middle of a mind blowing event (say, the
trenches in World War I on Earth), so we can all conclude that your
time spent away from Voyager wasn't great.  Well, you know it wasn't
great because every so often you have a feeling of dread and pure
horror that hits you out of nowhere but doesn't seem to be accompanied
by any actual memory.  The Doc is still trying to figure out which
memories have been nuked due to actual damage and which ones you still
retain but your subconscious is choosing to ignore.  On the good side,
considering how badly your poor brain has been abused over the past
few months, in some ways you're glad that you're not talking due to
trauma rather than not talking due to a physically caused aphasia.

You have been back on Voyager for three months.  The Doc has been
working on you through various surgeries to correct the damage for
two. There has been some serious damage to various parts of the body.
For some reason the Doc hasn't been able to figure out, two of your
molars were missing but he's done some restorative dental work and put
in some permanent replacements.

Some very nice and apologetic aliens called the Trelereans actually
went and found Voyager and brought the prodigal son back.  The
Trelereans, nice though they were, had never met a human before so
when they found you wandering around on the outskirts of one of their
long range planetary colonies stark naked, mute and about to chow down
on some small reptile you'd clubbed over the head with a rock, they
spent a lot of time wondering whether this was normal behaviour. For a
while they thought you weren't very bright.  They took care of you as
best they could: fed you persistently despite your inability to keep
most food down, kept you warm, kept you safe and made sure you got
some rest.  They made a few educated guesses about anatomy and figured
that since your right femur was straight, the decidedly ugly curvature
in your left femur was from a badly healed break.  They fixed that up
pretty well.  They got into the swing of things and figured out that
your fingers in your right hand had also suffered a similar fate.
There were other fractures that had healed but they seemed to be
relatively okay, so they didn't bother with those.

About the only thing you did during the day apart from staring at
nothing in particular, was compulsively draw pictures of Voyager.  The
Trelereans eventually figured out that your brain had been lightly
toasted and sprinkled in chopped nuts and they also eventually figured
out it was a *real* starship you had been drawing.  Being the nice
aliens that they were, they felt highly guilty about ignoring your
artistic endeavours and so they despatched you forthwith in a shuttle
and about two weeks later due to some cool technology that you don't
remember much about, actually got you back to Voyager.

They apologised to the Captain, and gave lots of medical records to
the Doc and apologised again, gave you some nice Trelerean souvenirs
and then took off.  The Trelereans had turned guilt into a species art
form.

Everyone was very glad to see you back.  The Doc got cracking on his
plan to Put Tom Back Together Again with a perverse gusto as if you
were the best science project he'd ever had.  You've had a shuttle
load of surgery but on the good side you can move around fine, and you
can now eat normally.

You weren't altogether lucid when you got back.  The Doc had you
pumped full of psych drugs.  Anti-depressives, anti-psychotics - you
name it, you had it circulating in my blood stream.  Even had
anti-epileptics for a while so he told you later on.  Despite being
dosed with all of those drugs it took a while to think a coherent
thought.  For a long time you kept thinking dear old Doc was just
going to hurt you.  He looked decidedly evil nine times out of 10, the
hyposprays looked huge, the tricorders menacing, the biobed... well,
for a while there the biobed was right up there as the most insidious
piece of technology known to humanity.

You just about remember the first time you looked at the Doc and there
weren't any horns sprouting out of his head, and you weren't hearing
voices and sounds.  You managed to mime out that you wanted a glass of
water in a nice, sane, polite mood.  The Doc nearly fell over from the
shock if that's possible for a hologram.

By the way, lots of people feel incredibly sorry for you and
consequently you have never been a more popular guy with many people
dropping by sickbay to see you lying pale and wane on your bed.
Everyone wants to take care of Tom, that poor bastard who got
kidnapped right out of his quarters and now is completely fucked up.
You now live in sickbay due to your fucked-uped-ness.  They built you
your own private room out the back.  Yay.

Oh I forgot to mention that your time with the Trelereans took another
three months.  So that's six months out of 18, which leaves 12 months
unaccounted for.  Well, you don't remember much at all about that time
except for the feeling of anxiety that tells you that whatever
happened it wasn't good.

So Tom, if you wake up from your fifty billionth operation and you
can't remember a damn thing, let's just say that you should be
relieved.

==
Entry 3.  Stardate Unknown
==

Harry came to seem me in the morning, about two hours before the Doc
was going to have another crack at my head.  I was in bed which has
pretty much been my state of existence for the past three months.  The
Doc hauls me out on a daily basis and sticks me on a treadmill and
makes me lift these pathetic 500 gram weights which Naomi could
probably lift with one finger.  He's started muttering that I needed
to get some regular physiotherapy and actually leave sickbay as it
would be good for me.  The great thing about life support in the 24th
century is that the biobeds take care of everything.  Somebody
throwing a blood clot after being prone for a while was always a
concern back in the old days of medicine but you could live on a
biobed for a year and it wouldn't make a difference.  Well, your
muscles would get a little funky and atrophied and standing up for the
first time is a bastard but...

Anyway Harry came to see me, and as usual he was very nervous.  He's
always nervous when he comes to see me and spends his time trying not
to get too close to the biobed.  In fact I notice that there are quite
a few people who get nervous.  Megan Delaney prefers to sit in a chair
about 10 feet away from me.

Harry's very pleasant and I'm always pleased to see him and he always
brings me a few gifts from himself and others but he's decidedly
antsy. He stays for an hour or whatever and then he's gone so fast
there's a warp signature in his wake.  I haven't been able to figure
it out yet. I asked him once and he looked like he was going to faint.
He lied to me and said he was worried that I would have a seizure if I
got too excited.  Harry was never a good liar; it was all over his
face.

He talked about various happenings on the ship and I let him talk for
a while because I just like listening to him even if these days I
don't really care all that much about what the various members of
Voyager are doing with their lives. I always reflect on the irony of
initially being freaked out about being in sickbay and constantly
trying to escape (despite the fact that I could barely stand) and then
once they put me in my very own room, not caring if I never ever left.

The first few days back on Voyager were a little fuzzy but I do
remember being terrified of the place.  It was the biobeds for some
reason.  Like I said - they made me queasy and I used to get a surge
of adrenaline when ever I was on one.  The Doc had to put up a force
field because every time his back was turned I had somehow hauled
myself upright and was wobbling my way across the floor.  On the
occasions I couldn't stand I made a determined effort to crawl out.
With the forcefield up I could try escaping any time I wanted without
any effect.  Undaunted, I still wouldn't lie down but spent my time
sitting in a corner or hiding under the biobed.  The Doc kept putting
me back for an exam, I'd have a screaming hissy fit, he'd sedate me...
Finally he couldn't stand it any more and they hastily turned a
storage room out the back into my very own quarters.  They came up
with a specially designed biobed that is artfully concealed under a
double mattress, and a nice normal quilt and pillows.  The cheesy
Trelerean art was hanging up, the TV was there, and a replicator.  It
was all very nice.  I went to sleep on the main diagnostic biobed and
woke up in a very cheery, cosy place of my own.

It had the effect of relaxing me, and also I think the Doc was keen
because he could lock the doors.

But back to Harry...

"I've been working on a holodeck program for you," said Harry.

I hit the pictogram for 'cool'.  Someone down in Engineering came up
with a nifty device for me.  I have one master padd and then there are
slave padds cross linked to it.  Harry can hold one slave padd and see
my message and type a message back, if he wants.  He usually just
talked because the pictogram system is liberally dosed with my own
arcane symbols and they take a while to get the hang of.  The slave
padds are with Harry, the Doc and I think Chakotay (of all people). I
can send out messages for help or whatever.  It has a little alarm
with it.  The slave padds pings if I send out a new message.  I pinged
them quite a lot in the first few hours of acquiring my new toy.
Mostly the message was, "Hi".  There are only so many times a person
can respond to "hi' before they get sick of it.  The Doc broke the
news that 200 messages of 'hi' to everyone in the first day was not
funny.  I thought it was but then that's humour for you.  Everyone has
a different sense of it.

"You'd really enjoy it Tom.  Why don't you ask the Doc if I can take
you there next week?"

I typed back, "Only if I still remember who you are... <G>"

Harry was unimpressed by my joke.

"Tom, it's about time you got out of here."

I shook my head.  No it wasn't.  I only said Harry's idea was cool in
the hope that he'd leave it at that.

Harry sighed.

"Okay."

I could tell from that one word statement that he was going to tattle
on me to the Doc.  Obviously the Doc had put him up to it in his not-
so-subtle attempts to get me to come out and play with the others like
a good boy.

Oh well, maybe during the operation the Doc will botch it up and I'll
die on the table.  That'd solve all of my problems.

Oh yeah, before I forget - the Doc would like to know why I wrote my
previous journal entry in the third person.  I'm putting it down to
artistic license.  He kept waffling on about my need to remove myself
from an anxiety producing situation.  Would the person who downloaded
the counselling subroutines into the Doc like to delete them please?
Think of it as a favour to me.

==
Entry 4. Stardate Unknown.
==

The Doc has been insufferably smug for two days because he's such a
skilled and gifted surgeon he managed to correct the older and more
long term damage to my memory engrams.  Personally I'm very
disappointed. I was hoping I'd die.  The Doc wasn't completely sure it
would work and it's a rare day when the Doc admits the possibility of
a bad outcome.  So I was very confident he'd get in there and maybe
I'd be lucky enough to flatline on the table.  Didn't happen of
course.  So now I'm getting some dim recall and I'm not liking it at
all.

Since I'm alive anyway and I still remember arriving on Voyager I
didn't need to re-read my journal after all.  I was going to delete
the entry but the Doc had removed the delete functionality.  He didn't
want any self editing or something.  Maybe later on when he's not
looking, I could do some editing on the Doc and delete his opera
subroutines.

==
Entry 5. Stardate Unknown
==

Hey, let's not freak out here okay?  So I wrote that I'd quite like to
have died on the operating table.  Come on, why is everyone acting so
surprised?  The Doc has had a cortical monitor practically glued to
the side of my head ever since I came back and I've had some long
courses of anti-depressants that weren't all that effective.  I get a
little sick of being the most monitored and drugged person on Voyager.
Actually maybe it was more my witty little remark about figuring out a
way to ruin the Doc's holographic life that sent everyone into a
polite panic.  Heh heh.

Anyway, it was worth it just to see the Doc's look when he came
running into my room after reading the journal.  I'd swear to God that
he's the only hologram I've ever met who had a vein standing out on
his forehead.

==
Entry 6. Stardate Unknown
==

I had a very bad dream last night.  I was looking down at my hands
which were cupped together and they were catching some sort of fluid.
I heard myself asking where it was all coming from.  Then I realised
it was coming from me.  Out of my nose.  Then I woke up.

Oh God, maybe I shouldn't have written that down.  The Doc will bring
it up in his session.  Doc, don't talk about this okay?  I don't want
to talk about it.  I made a mistake writing it down.  I got it all
wrong.  Actually I dreamt about my puppy, Sparky, from when I was a
kid.

Okay?


==
Entry 7.  Stardate Unknown
==

No surprises.  I have a twice weekly session with the Doc.  So the
next session involves the dream.  The dream I specifically asked him
not to discuss.

We go into his office.  I sit with my arms folded, as per usual,
scowling at him, as per usual.  He asks how I'm feeling.  He asks how
my anxiety levels are.  I shrug in my usual cooperative manner.

Then I wait for him to say his next line which was, "Why don't we talk
about the dream Tom?"

If I could actually speak, my retort would have been, "Why don't we
not talk about the dream, and why don't you go and power yourself
off?" But I couldn't, so instead, I used the witty symbol on my padd
that represents "fuck off."

He frowned at me.  "Tom," he said.

Did I mention that the Doc really likes to use my first name these
days?  I used to be "Lieutenant Paris" and "Ensign Paris" and then
"Lieutenant Paris" again.  Now I'm Tom.  All the time.  I think it's
part of his new Caring For Tom subroutine.

Anyway, he couldn't force me, I didn't want to and so we just sat
there.  Luckily the Doc can't stand the thought of sitting in one
place for an hour when there's other things he could be doing so he
cracked after 30 minutes and made me help him run some diagnostics on
some cell samples.  Apparently I can at least be made to be
semi-useful if I won't spill my psychological guts all over his
sickbay floor.

==
Entry 8. Stardate Unknown
==

Damn my big mouth! Or should I say damn my unfettered typing. The Doc
hasn't taken kindly to me admitting that I like to mess with him
during our counselling sessions together. I think I'm forcing his
subroutines into some messy loops. On the one hand his medical
programs tell him that I'm a patient and that he has to be nice to me
because I'm not completely in one piece either physically or mentally
and his other subroutines are telling him that he's dealing with Mr.
Paris, that guy who annoys him all of the time. I don't think he's
coping with the opposing concepts very well.

I've been noticing lately that the colour in sickbay is an ugly
military grey. It's a terrible colour. The walls in my room have the
same colour. It's very irritating. I think I'm going to ask if I can
paint them or something.

==
Entry 9. Stardate Unknown
==

Why do I want to paint the walls? Why don't I like the colour grey? I
don't know - because I don't? I guarantee nobody else has their
psychological health questioned on their colour preferences.

==
Entry 10. Stardate Unknown
==

This whole wall thing is getting to me. The Doc is fixated on my hate
for them. I'm fixated on changing them. This is the pits.

On another example of a crappy day, Doc announced that the person
assigned to help me with my physiotherapy is Chakotay. No kidding.
Okay, I'm in the mirror universe right? What's that going to involve?
I stand there in a boxing ring while he repeatedly punches me in the
face?

==
Entry 11. Stardate Unknown
==

That's it. I am never typing another thing in this fucking journal
ever again. The problem is that the Doc reads it and I tend to just
blab on about anything. Okay, so I lie. It's just that I don't really
want to write up The Pool Incident but people are getting those etched
'concerned' frown lines on their faces and I'm still freaked out about
it but - I'll commit it to this journal, not that the idea really
thrills me or anything.

So anyway after my last entry, Journal Of Mine, I get a visit from
Chakotay who said that the Doc said to him that I was worried that he
was going to beat me up.

The Doc clearly doesn't quite get the nuances involved in my writing
style yet. I let Chakotay read the entry and he laughed out loud when
he read it. I could have kissed the guy. At last, someone who *gets*
it. My pathetic brand of humour is about the only thing I've got these
days and it's about the only thing keeping me together.

Also Chakotay doesn't seem to get nervous about being in the same room
with me.

"The doctor recommended swimming as good exercise," said Chakotay.

Hey I liked being around water, I always liked swimming. This could be
kind of fun.

"Okay," I typed back. "It means I have to leave here, doesn't it?"

He smiled and nodded.

"Yes, but think of it this way. You get to enjoy my company for the
afternoon."

Pretty lame but I giggled anyway. Hmmmm - leaving my room could be a
big deal though. I took a deep breath and wondered why my heart rate
was suddenly climbing. I think Chakotay noticed my discomfort and
didn't want to give me too much of a chance to go from mildly unhappy
to screaming Psychoboy because he grabbed my arm and hauled me upright
and hauled me out of bed and conveniently had wetsuits, towels and
robes stashed in the bag he brought with him. Made to get changed.
Well, I wasn't really made to change but the force of events just sort
of propelled me along and I followed Chakotay's lead. Him put on
wetsuit, me put on wetsuit.

"Come on," he said. Then he simply put an arm on my shoulder and
steered me towards the sickbay doors with alacrity. The Doc watched me
go undoubtedly waiting for me to start screaming and trying to kill
Chakotay but before I knew it, there I was, standing in the corridor.
And nothing happened.

The world did not end at that point. I was outside of sickbay which
I'd been keen on in those initial days of arriving back. There wasn't
anyone but us standing in the corridor, so there were no worries about
having to face some fully functioning crew member of Voyager. I was
caught between exhilaration and anxiety. I wasn't as nuts as I thought
I was. I had left sickbay. Nothing had happened. I wasn't a gibbering
wreck. Cool.

The Doc came out about 30 seconds later and congratulated me on my
progress and then we went down to the holodeck for some pool time.
There were a few people in the turbolift and we passed some people in
the corridor and they had weird looks on their faces but they were
friendly enough.

Then we got to the pool. Which is when The Pool Incident occurred. I
have discovered that I don't like water very much any more.

Chakotay got in first, down at the shallow end. I went in after him,
down the steps, into the warm water. I didn't have a problem at that
point. I was actually looking forward to it once I saw the pool.

It was after about 10 minutes, when the wetsuit had warmed up a bit,
that I was disconcerted about the whole experience. The wetsuit was
warm, the water was warm. Around body temperature I think. Chakotay
was standing beside me and I was standing about neck deep by this
time, lured out by the Mystical Warrior's encouragement.

I figured it was about time to find out what exactly we were going to
do in the pool. There was swimming of course, but what kind of
swimming? I presumed the Doc had a big long list of exercises or
something.

"So, what do you want me to do?" By the way, the padds are waterproof.
I had one floating beside me, tied around my wrist.

The Doc was standing on the side of the pool, armed with a tricorder.

"I think you need to concentrate on the major muscles groups in your
legs," he replied.

"I could float on my back and kick my way through a few laps," said
me, trying to be helpful and kind of joking at the same time.

Chakotay and the Doc thought it was a fabulous idea. Hurray for me.

I am a pretty good swimmer. I like the water. I like sailing. I like
stories about the ocean. I like stories about being down there in a
submarine getting attacked by giant squid and stuff. When I was a kid
we spent a summer on Risa. Risa is also known as the theme park of the
Alpha Quadrant. They have a big water ride there. When we arrived I
was so excited, I unpacked simply to find a towel and a pair of
swimming trunks. I ran off down to the pool. I stayed there for most
of the day, and some of the pool staff had to drag me out and take me
back to the hotel because I looked like a sunburnt prune. My mother
had to take me to the doctor.

Therefore it was a total surprise to me to casually lean back, put my
feet up, feel myself floating on top of the water, my head half
submerged in the warmth and at the same time find myself feeling I was
in a dark place, floating in some God awful substance that was like a
thick gel. It was not a good sensation.

In my shock I tried standing up in a really inelegant thrashy way and
my foot slipped on the tiles thus plunging me under water which was
even less thrilling. My rational side was telling me that I was
holding my breath and I'd get up and I wasn't going to drown. My not
rational side was telling me I was going to suffer something far worse
than drowning and it would hurt. A lot.

In my confusion I wasn't doing much except getting disoriented and I
still had my head under the water. Then I felt a pair of arms grab me
and haul me back up into the air.

"Are you okay?"

Chakotay was looking at me. I stared back at him and blinked. I could
feel water running out of my nose. I didn't like it one little bit.

Apparently, at the time, Chakotay could see I was trying to say
something but I couldn't manage anything except some choked off
pathetic whimpering. I pushed him away and began rapidly making my way
back to the side of the pool which wasn't that rapid since it's
impossible to run in a pool but I wasn't going to stay in that
revolting shit for another moment longer.

The Doc was standing by the pool with a towel waiting for me to get to
the side and Chakotay was pursuing me in slow motion and trying to get
me to tell him what was wrong.

All I knew was that I couldn't believe we were still in that stuff
because it stank. I could smell it. A rank evil smell that I had to
get away from.

I grabbed the railing on each side of the steps and hurriedly climbed
up trying to ignore the fact that by this time I was shaking. My legs
were wobbly and they were barely holding me upright. The Doc grabbed
an arm and guided me to the floor. Chakotay was beside me in another
10 seconds and then for some reason the Doc ordered an emergency beam
out. I think it was because by this time my eyes were starting to roll
back into my head.

When I woke up I was back in my quarters safely tucked up in bed. The
Doc came in to see how I was doing but didn't ask me any questions.
Actually I was kind of tired, so I just went back to sleep.

==
Entry 12. Stardate Unknown
==

The Doc is worried because I'm not eating. I'm just not hungry and
everything has that God awful smell these days. Scans revealed nothing
in particular and I haven't damaged any nerves or managed to get yet
more neurological trauma but the Doc surmises that my brain is
recalling some particular sense memory. Quite frankly I don't give a
rat's ass, I just want it to stop. He's fretting about hooking me up
to drip again to try and get some calories into me and well, if that's
what he wants, fine with me. As long as I don't have to smell
anything. He tried explaining to me that the every time I've been on a
drip I've ripped the damn thing off and he'd have to surgically weld
the thing into my veins. Like this is a big deal. Not.

==
Entry 13. Stardate Unknown
==

Okay, I think I should maybe start trying to put a date on these
things. I just couldn't be bothered previously.

I haven't written anything for about three weeks. The Pool Incident
led to the Not Eating Drama which led to the Drip Debacle. Okay, so I
promise never to ignore the Doc ever again. I do. I really promise.
Cross my heart.

As stated in the previous entry the Doc fretted and finally decided he
was going to have to go for the drip solution. The previous day I had
given up drinking as well. Everything I put in my mouth smelt bad and
then tasted like shit. Literally. I couldn't face it because I kept
choking on everything. So at my nightly beddy bye scan, the Doc takes
one look at the reading and says, "Tom you're starting to get
dehydrated." I tried explaining the problem as best I could because I
was starting to get a tad concerned myself. He tried a few hyposprays
designed to block up the taste receptors in my tongue and the smell
receptors in my nose just in case it was actually organic in origin
and that didn't do anything. After a bit of Doctor/patient note
writing it was a quick bit of surgery to open up an incision, stick in
a large bore catheter and then regenerate the skin around it, then
stick some dermabond over it all just to really weld it in there. Then
he shoved in a drip and bonded that in as well. He explained very
carefully that it wasn't coming out until the problem was solved.

Exhausted and a bit strung out I went to sleep which is no easy thing
connected to a drip. You can't really move around much for fear of
jerking it off the wall or it pulls at the skin. It's thoroughly
annoying and uncomfortable.

Unfortunately I had a bad dream that night. Don't ask me about what. I
remember opening my eyes in a state of panic and the first thing I saw
was the drip above my head. I sat up. I dry retched. Then I proceeded
to make a very good attempt at getting rid of the drip. Ripped off the
drip feed, pulled the tubing off and then took to the catheter in my
arm with enthusiasm. The Doc had been activated by that point and ran
into my room and was confronted with the site of the drip feed on the
floor in pieces and my arm covered in blood as I busily tore skin off
my arm.

Okay, Pyschoboy was back with a vengeance. Yeah, sedation seemed a
very practical solution at the time.

Spent the next two weeks in a haze. It's not good medical practise to
sedate a patient to the eyeballs for a fortnight but the Doc didn't
have any choice and it was the lesser of two evils. Every time I woke
up there seemed to be something else attached to my body. An NG tube
was stuffed down my throat via my left nostril for a start. And
another drip piggy backed onto the main one. Whatever it was, it
wasn't standard.

People came to visit me and wandered into my drugged universe. Harry
fretted as usual. Chakotay stopped by and I can't remember what he
said to me at all. The Doc was there most of the time and he looked
very worried and a few times actually sat down and read to me from
Jules Verne so I *knew* things were bad again. I'd have to be pretty
much dying before the Doc would get that gushy on me. Oh yeah, and a
couple of days ago even the Captain came by for a visit.

I was just quietly drifting, half asleep, thinking of things I didn't
like to think about - like Caldik Prime, prison and the Admiral and I
thought I felt a hand on my head. I forced my eyes open. The lights
were down in the room and I couldn't see very clearly. I squinted up,
trying to make out the face and I just about jumped out of my skin
when I saw her. I swear to every deity in the known Universe that my
mother was standing right next to me.

That's when I lost it. I thought she'd come back, I honestly did and I
started crying and grabbed her hand so she couldn't leave me. I wanted
to ask her to stay but of course couldn't say anything at all. An
insistent voice was running through my head. Please let it be her.
Please let it be her. She's forgiven me. She came back. I didn't say
those things to her. Didn't call her weak. Didn't tell her that she
didn't have a backbone, that she stayed married to Dad because of his
prestige.

"It's all right Tom. It's all right."

She didn't sound very much like my mother but I didn't care at the
time. I just remembered the last time I saw her. My first week in
prison. I was still depressed, still in shock and I was humiliated and
I used her to vent my rage. I took out years of hostility on her. I
screamed at her, the most appalling obscenities. I remember that I
told her that Dad must have been a really good fuck in his younger
days because why else would she have married him? Then again maybe
she'd researched the fabulous Paris lineage and figured she was onto a
good thing. As soon as those words came out of my mouth I regretted
saying them. Who wouldn't? I'd just said some really hurtful, hateful
things to my mother for God's sake. There was that moment of silence
when both parties realise irreversible damage has been done. I wish
she'd slapped me across the face because at least I would have felt
she was left with some sort of dignity. Instead she looked like she
was going to cry. She didn't say anything, just got up and walked
away, this infinitely sad expression on her face. I never did hear
from her again. Dad wouldn't let her come anywhere near me after that.

Hey, we hurt the ones we love. Right?

I thought to myself but didn't say, "Please Mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Please forgive me."

The figure who might have been my mother but probably wasn't because I
was beginning to make out a Starfleet uniform just took my hand in
hers and made quiet sounds to me.

"It's okay. You're all right. Everything is going to be fine, you'll
see."

She had a gravelly quality to her voice. My head was beginning to
clear and to my horror I realised I was clutching at the hand of my
commanding officer. Captain Janeway. There were plenty of worse ways
to start the day but right then I couldn't think of any. I wondered
how many times Captain Janeway had been mistaken for one of the crew's
mother?

As soon as I realised it was her, I dropped her hand rather promptly.
Luckily the Captain still had a sense of humour. She smiled at my wide
eyed embarrassment.

"I came by to see how you were doing."

I nodded and smiled and attempted to sit up, which was hard. Sedation
means the entire body feels like it weighs two times normal Earth
gravity. You're quiet when you're sedated because you don't actually
have the energy to move much and you're in this very sleepy state of
existence. Captain Janeway gave me a hand which must have been like
trying to manoeuvre a cargo hold container with no anti-grav support.
I didn't so much sit up as be propped up by the pillows.

"Feel like something to drink? I made hot chocolate. Actually I should
say lukewarm chocolate. The EMH doesn't seem to think it's a good idea
for you to gulp down hot liquids at the moment."

It's not often an officer has his captain make hot chocolate for him
so I couldn't refuse. Besides, I was in a fuzzy, compliant state of
mind still.

She brought a cup over for me and I managed to hold it and took a
mouthful even though I wasn't expecting much of anything except for it
to taste awful. It hadn't occurred to me at that point that I hadn't
been getting that weird smell. All I could smell was chocolate. Then I
realised as I sipped at it that all I could *taste* was chocolate. I
grinned insanely and she smiled back. She clearly knew why I was
smiling so much.

"The doctor was hoping that the problem had resolved itself. I
volunteered to try you out on your first semi-solid bit of food." She
winked at me.

I nodded again and went back to some serious lukewarm chocolate
enjoyment. Believe me, it was great to taste it. I was overjoyed to
just be able to go back to the pleasure of consuming. She'd put
marshmallows in there as well. Bless the woman. Mind you, it had been
around two weeks since my stomach had anything in it so after about
four mouthfuls, she took it off me before I threw up. Damn it.

"Tom, I hope you don't mind, but there are some questions that I'd
like to ask you."

I nodded compliantly, buzzed by the sugar and the twilight effects of
the sedative.

"Tom, do you remember anything of you time away from us?"

She didn't believe in beating around the bush. I frowned and tried to
think but all I had were those creepy sensations from the water and
other vaguely random thoughts involving shadows and cat's eyes.

I shook my head and tried to convey how much I wanted to remember if
it would help her with whatever it was she needed help in.

At that point the Doc wandered in. He just looked at the Captain as if
she'd tracked dirt from some alien planet all over his sickbay floor.
I'd never seen him look at anyone in quite the same way before, not
even me. He looked incredibly serious and he just softly shook his
head.

"Visiting hours are over Captain."

She nodded curtly at him, gave me a forced smile and then turned on
her heel and walked out.

He waved a tricorder over me, pronounced me fine, said I should have
lots of small, regular meals for the next few days and if everything
was still okay then the drip officially came out and I was off the
whole sedation thing. Thank God.

I asked the Doc about why the Captain was asking me questions and he
shushed me up pretty quickly.

"Tom, it's none of your concern. She should not have asked you
questions in the first place. Now please put it out of your mind and
concentrate on getting well so you can cease to clutter up my
sickbay."

*That* was one hell of a speech for the Doc. I vaguely wondered what
was going on between him and the Captain but I was feeling sleepy
again so I started to drift off.

The Doc said one more thing to me.

"By the way, Mr. Kim has asked me to ask you again whether you're
going to be using his holodeck program. You should say yes. Mr. Kim is
starting to mope."

I would have laughed if I hadn't been yawning.

Harry can be very good at moping. He can look truly pathetic. I
solemnly swore - by padd - that I would go with Harry.

"Sure Doc. I promise."

Then I went to sleep again.

==
Entry 14. June 5
==

Writing down the stardate seemed strange so I'm using the old Julian
calender. I mean it's not like the date field can't be converted later
on. Just deal with it Doc and don't make a big thing out of it. I'm
entitled to my many eccentricities.

Sedation over, drip out, eating okay which meant it was time to do
other things. Harry was overjoyed when I asked him about a holodeck
outing. Chakotay has asked to come along as well. Okaaaaayyyyyy. Fine.
I guess.

The Doc's been a bit strange since reading my last journal entry. He
got very solemn on me and said that he was violating his ethics by not
telling me all of my medical history but it was decided that in my
current state of health the full gory details might send me into a
tail spin. Okay, I can buy that I guess. But I do want the full gory
details later on when it's judged that I can handle it. Just for the
sake of morbid curiosity.

Anyway my substitute father figure, otherwise known as the Doctor, has
asked permission for me to change the colour on the walls. Presumably
he wants to reward me for not turning into a fruit and nut cake again.

Now the average starship bulkhead is grey for a reason. That's the
colour they make permiblast plating. There's not a lot of other
colours available. Getting anything to stick to permiblast is nearly
impossible but after some research it turns out that good old early
21st century acrylic paint would actually hold and set. It probably
wouldn't last longer than a year before falling off but I'm happy and
everyone else is happy because I'm happy.

I have been a good patient and I've been doing my daily work-out on
the treadmill and lifting my teeny child's portion weights and getting
the replicator to mix up a couple of litres of cheery pale yellow for
the room which I am going to slap onto those walls just as soon as I
finish this sentence.

==
Entry 15. June 5
==

Dry damn you, dry! Why won't you dry? The paint won't dry. I did it
early this morning and this afternoon it's still wet. This is not
right according to the instructions. I did a tricorder scan, fed the
data to the computer and the computer tells me that the coating they
put on permiblast plating and the colour in the paint are interacting
to prevent it from drying. Aargh!

I'm going to have to find someone to help me out.

==
Entry 16. June 6
==

In desperation I contacted Harry and he and Seven came around about an
hour later to help me with my wall painting problem. Seven scanned the
walls, scanned the paint, tsked tsked and in about two minutes
announced that the paint would dry but required a higher temperature
and just about zero humidity.

"How high?" I typed.

"According to my calculations, between 35 and 40 degree Celsius."

Oh boy. It was going to get very sweaty in my room.

"Can I do anything else?" I scribbled.

"Yes. You could remove the paint from the walls."

I guaranteed removing the paint was going to involve a lot of
scrubbing and mess and opted for the raising of the temperature. I
went to relay to the Doc how I'd been a bad boy. He shook his head in
despair but then said, "Well, I think you should accompany Mr. Kim to
the holodeck and during that time the paint can dry."

Okay, that was the Doc being sensible and compromising and he'd
clearly restrained himself from telling me that I had the brains of a
bowl of pudding. I got changed and left with Harry.

Chakotay met us at the holodeck. Harry asked the computer to start
running the program. Then he got commed and had to leave. Something
about Seven wanting help in Astrometrics. Even after Seven had very
clearly explained to him that he was *not* considered a suitable
candidate for her future mate he keeps hoping and keeps making any
excuse to be in the same room with her. It's kind of sweet really. I
was kind of like that in the beginning with someone I once dated. I
can't remember her name now. Oh well, that's life, or more to the
point, my memory.

Anyway, Harry scampered off eagerly down the corridor vaguely
remembering to tell me, "Bye Tom. Gotta help Seven."

I frantically scribbled in my padd, "Help away Harry, Seven probably
needs a lot of help! Remember not to stay up too late..." Not that I
think he read it, but it was good to give Harry a hard time. Mind you,
I forgot that Chakotay was standing beside me and he had a padd too.
He was laughing which is a pretty rare event. It appears that the
Mystical Warrior has a lighter side.

"Sorry," I typed just in case Chakotay was laughing because he was
thinking of ways to kick my ass.

"No need to apologise Tom." He paused for a moment. "Someone really
needs to have a talk with that boy. Seven was a Borg. That's an awful
lot of species' knowledge about sex. He could get hurt."

This comment caught me completely off guard and before I could comment
Chakotay took that moment to walk into the holodeck.

I think we were both a bit stunned at what Harry's mind had come up
with. Probably because it was mundane and at the same time slightly
weird. We entered the holodeck and found ourselves looking over a sort
of farm. Something nature oriented anyway. There was a log cabin and
paddocks with horses and cows and a barn. Trees. A big black Labrador
waiting on the porch of the cabin that ran up to me wagging its tail
like crazy and barking.

Chakotay just looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders. I scribbled on my
ever present padd while Chakotay waited. The padd is now helpfully
tied to the belt of my pants on a bit of retractable cord. I now own
the 24th Century equivalent of a Magnadoodle.

"Harry must have remembered my stories about the dogs I owned as a kid
and my Uncle's dog and farm."

"Is it accurate?"

"Not in the slightest, but I love it any way. Let's go see what's in
the cabin."

We sauntered over to the cabin and went inside. It was simple, but
functional. Lots of cushions and two big over stuffed sofas. A big
double bed with a quilt. An old pot bellied stove and an ancient coal
range. A bathroom with a bottomless tub. I believe it's called 'rustic
charm' and Harry had outdone himself. He'd incorporated most of the
historical elements from the early 20th Century which wasn't my
absolute favourite part of the 20th Century but it was neat anyway.

Chakotay stress tested the sofa by lying down on it. It was a big sofa
because Chakotay could stretch out and there was room left over. I
followed his lead and sat down on the opposite sofa and the whole
thing was so fluffy and soft, my butt ended up sinking lower than my
knees. I sort of folded in on myself.

"Comfy?" asked Chakotay barely suppressing a laugh.

I nodded but obviously didn't look like it.

"This is much better than my quarters."

Chakotay was looking at the roof when he said this, so it was no
surprise. Let's face it, the roof of anyone's quarters is the floor of
somebody else's. And all the roofs are that nasty boring pastel grey
colour, so any change at all has to better than that.

I uncurled myself from my semi-foetal position and leaned back into
the couch and wound up in a semi-reclining position. Harry had really
let himself loose when it came to creating the couches.

"Nervous?" Chakotay asked.

I pursed my lips together and tried to look nonchalant but instead
must have looked like I was ready to blow a gasket again. (Dear Doc, a
gasket is a part in some machines, like cars. Please look it up.) He
frowned in response and then sat up. He had that deadly serious look
on his face. I hated that look. It always meant I was either in
trouble or he was going to give me one of his earnest talks. I had
been given a few earnest talks in the Maquis - usually right after I
woke up to a self induced hangover. It was almost like having the
Admiral right there with me all over again. I braced myself for what
was coming.

"Tom, the Doctor and I have been discussing your current counselling
sessions."

Oh no. I wasn't going to get told off for annoying the Doc was I?

"The Doctor is concerned that perhaps you aren't really making much
progress with him lately and he asked me if I would help out in that
area."

He stopped to see if I was listening, which I was. I was waiting for
the next bit where he told me that the only way I was going to get
better was to start going on a 20k run with him.

"Although my experience is limited in that field and I know we've got
a lot of history between us, I was wondering whether you would be in
agreement with both the doctor and I counselling you."

Ugh. Two of them? My God, I was going to be trapped by a pair of tag
team therapists. This would be worse than my first few months in
Auckland.

Chakotay hastened to reassure me.

"You won't have any more sessions than you're currently having. I
would take them most of the time with the Doctor occasionally taking
over to monitor progress."

Crap. Was I this obvious that I didn't even have to open my mouth and
Chakotay knew what I was thinking? I used to be so good at hiding my
emotions. Clearly that skill's taken a hike. Damn it.

Chakotay continued on, this time with a tone of amusement. I'm glad he
thought it was funny.

"And besides, the doctor seems to think he can get more work done and
he'll be Tom Paris free for a few hours during the week."

Oh hah hah. I knew the Doc had a hidden agenda. I scribbled on the
padd.

"You guys really want me out of sickbay don't you?"

Chakotay nodded. "We miss you on the bridge. Culhane is good but he
just tends to stare at his console all day. Don't tell him I said
that."

"No bridge banter huh?"

"None at all."

"You won't be getting it anyway if I don't figure out how to talk."

"Well, I'm sure Harry can figure a way to drop a voice subroutine into
that padd of yours."

Okay, I'm not sure, but I think the Mystical Warrior was teasing me.

"How come I can't have one now?" I asked, rising to the bait.

"Because we were enjoying the silence, however temporary."

Touche Chakotay. I laughed. Okay, some people would think that making
fun of a guy who is this fucked up would be kind of cruel but if
Chakotay has learnt one thing about me, it's that I don't need a hell
of a lot of coddling even when I'm half dead. Well, okay, I have my
moments of pure hysteria when I think someone's about to plug into one
of my worst nightmares like getting stuck in stasis, or getting
assimilated by the Borg but on the whole if I'm physically ill, I just
suck it in and I prefer it that way. I would rather people teased me
or told a joke or *I* told a joke rather than this terribly earnest
approach favoured by some counsellors.

The first three months were the absolute pits at Auckland. I got stuck
with some ancient, crusty, completely humourless Betazed counsellor.
Every session it was the same thing. "Tom, I sense that you are using
your humour as a means of coping with your anxiety and as a barrier to
your true feelings. Now, I would like you to stop using humour in this
session so that we can..." And about there I'd zone out which he'd
sense and then he'd tell me off and then I couldn't stop making jokes
anyway because he made me nervous and the more nervous I became,
because I hated therapy, the worse it got. After about a month of this
the guy politely requested that he be taken off my case and that they
find someone else for the job. Talk about feeling unwanted. Even my
assigned counsellor didn't want to deal with me and that was his
chosen career choice.

After that there was a three week lull while the psychological
services department hunted around for some poor sucker to take up the
challenge. They hooked some poor kid straight out of Starfleet,
looking for his first assignment. I think they must have lied to him
and told him that talking to criminals was way more exciting than
being on a starship trying to figure out the motivations of strange
aliens.

So I get the new roster sheet from the block warden. The prison one
that generally reads: get up, have shower, get dressed, leave cell, go
to breakfast, go to duties, go to your preselected life skills course
based on your wonderful career testing so that the nice prison
services department can get you that shitty job after you leave
prison, have lunch, go to counselling, have a nap (for those that
needed one due to their counselling), have dinner, have two hours of
enforced recreational fun that will make you want to bite your own arm
off, go back to your cell, undress, go to bed, lights out, and go to
sleep. Right now. The roster had the times beside it. Just in case we
didn't quite understand it all. It was programmed into the leg alarm
too. If you weren't in the right area at the right time it would issue
an annoying chirp to warn you that in about five minutes quite a few
guards would be arriving to ask you what you thought you were doing.

Whoops, that third person thing snuck out there. Sorry Doc.

Anyway, part of my new roster detailed my new session times with my
new counsellor. I wasn't enthused at all and dragged my sorry butt
into the psych services wing and into the office that I really hated.
Seated on the couch, feet up on the table and casually reading a padd
was the youngest Starfleet graduate I had ever seen. I think he was
maybe 18. If he was lucky. I thought to myself that they must have
been getting very desperate for employees at psych services.

He bounced up, shook my hand and introduced himself. Loril Tyor. I'm
stood there like an idiot and he looked around the office.

"I hate this office," he says. "Wanna go outside or something?" Then
he seemed to have an additional idea. He grabbed a whole lot of vid
chips off the table. "Or maybe watch some movies? I found them in the
cultural database at the Academy and brought them over."

Okay I would have really liked to watch the movies but I was already
feeling a tad manipulated by this time. The child had obviously done
his homework.

"Not really," I said in my best Paris surly tone. The one I used quite
a lot back then. At the time it didn't strike me as ironic that I was
a more immature than Loril and I was about 10 years older.

"Sure. No problem," he replied. He bounced on his toes a bit then
said, "So I guess we'll go outside then?"

I didn't have time to say anything because he was marching out the
door. This threw me because he wasn't waiting, so I trotted after him.
Then he had a guard swipe my ankle alarm and change the security
setting so it would only go off if I got close to the perimeter fence.
Before I had time to formulate a plan for stalling further we were out
on the carefully manicured, exceptionally green lawn with artfully
placed trees, none of which were native to New Zealand. I could have
been anywhere in three systems judging by the garden.

Loril didn't waste any time.

"You drove Seedahl into retirement."

Seedahl, incidentally, was the name of my former grumpy psychologist.

"No I didn't," I said in defence of myself before I had thought to
shut up and because by this time I had been accused of so many things
I didn't want to get the blame for some elderly guy's decision to call
it a day.

"Okay, you didn't. You were just the straw that broke the camel's
back."

A Betazed using obscure Earth metaphors was enough to startle me.

"I'm not *that* bad," said me. Honestly I'm not that bad.

"You should see his report of you. Extreme defence mechanisms.
Inappropriate use of humour. Extreme guarding. Underlying anxiety.
Guilt complex. Unresolved post traumatic stress disorder. Depression.
Self medicating using alcohol. Low self esteem. Problems with
authority figures. Possibly self destructive. He even threw in a
Jungian archetype. Puer aeternus."

"Huh?"

"The eternal boy."

"You certainly believe in getting straight to the point," I shot back.
I was feeling decidedly off balance. "Oh yeah. And he's wrong."

"Why?" Loril asked. Point blank.

"He only saw me for a month."

"He's Betazed Tom. He wrote all that after the first hour."

There wasn't much to say to that piece of news except the following:
"Crap."

Loril found this very amusing. "Okay, well there's some good stuff too
just to balance it all up. Resourceful, caring - when he allows
himself to respond to other people - independent enough to make his
own decisions when he needs to but takes others into account. A good
sense of humour. Yes, it can be an asset as far as I'm concerned.
Tested high on everything but especially high on the visual spatial
tests. Able to concentrate intensely on things that interest him, not
so much on the stuff that bores him. So, a pretty smart guy all round.
Probably even has a command aptitude. Which brings us to your average
to terrible grades at the Academy but that's understandable
considering how boring those courses are."

I didn't want to hear any more. "You know what kid? You're pissing me
off."

"Am I? So everything's going to plan."

It was then that I had the dawning realisation that those bastards as
psych services had assigned me to a guy that was an even bigger smart
ass. Loril, being a Betazed, pretty much knew what I was thinking. He
just smiled at me. I made the tactical decision that watching movies
was a better option because I wouldn't have to speak to him for the
rest of my allotted counselling time.

Oh hell, I've just been waffling on in this journal and now I can't
delete it. Shit.

Back to my holodeck adventure then.

Chakotay and I hauled ourselves off the couch and went outside. The
weather was pleasantly warm. From the porch of the cabin I could see
more paddocks, trees and hills and a driveway leading to a garage. I'd
kiss Harry if he'd programmed in a car and I immediately headed
towards the wooden building to see what he'd come up with. Chakotay
let me take the lead.

The garage was old, spare parts scattered around on the bench. The car
was a shiny red... Subaru. I laughed. I loved Harry for the effort
he'd put in but the Subaru was a slight disappointment. Oh well, it
was there if we wanted to use it. However for this trip around the
farm I decided walking was probably best.

We left the garage and wandered around, checking out a paddock with a
few cows in them. They just stood there and stared at us before
curiosity got the better of them and they sauntered over to the fence
to stare at us in closer detail. Cows, I discovered, can be really
creepy. Chakotay noticed my antsy behaviour around our bovine
companions and we were off again. There were some small hills to hike
over and on the other side was a pond with some ducks and geese. A
paddock beside the pond had horses in it. Suddenly beat by all of the
walking I sat down on the top of the hill to observe the sight and
catch my breath. Chakotay sat down beside me.

"It's pretty good isn't it?" asked Chakotay.

I nodded as I tended to do these days for lack of conversation. I
couldn't be bothered typing anything.

At that point we heard barking. I turned around and saw the black
Labrador barrelling up the hill, tail wagging.

Chakotay smiled. "I forgot about her."

The dog reached us and flung itself on me, licking my face and trying
to sit in my lap. I tried pushing it away but it wasn't having any of
it. Chakotay thought the whole thing was hilarious.

"It seems Harry's out done himself," said Chakotay in between
encouraging the dog to mob me some more.

I would have written a smart ass reply at that stage but I found
myself lying back on the grass pinned down by a dog straddling my
chest and licking my right ear.

Chakotay eventually came to my rescue and grabbed the collar and
hauled the dog off. It looked like it was going to strike again given
half a chance.

I gave it a look that communicated my unhappiness at being covered in
doggy spit and it seemed to understand. The dog promptly sat and
cocked its head to one side waiting for me to say something, which of
course was never going to happen any time soon. Thank God Harry had
programmed in a dog that knew when enough was enough. I sat up,
brushed some grass off my t-shirt and some dog slobber off my face.
Yech. The dog sat patiently by Chakotay.

"We should give it a name," said Chakotay, as he absent mindedly
scratched the dog's ear.

"Lilly," I typed.

"Lilly?"

I blushed. Lilly was a name that had just popped into my head,
seemingly out of nowhere.

"Lilly it is," said Chakotay ignoring the fact that my ears had turned
bright red.

Lilly, as she was now known, barked in agreement then whined and
launched herself at me again. Her tail was wagging so hard and so fast
it hurt when it connected with my legs. Chakotay just watched in
amusement and also with a large amount of respect on his face.

"That's one hell of a piece of programming," he kept saying to
himself. Harry may be in for a promotion at this rate.

We sat on the hill for a while, Lilly sat with us. When I got back to
sickbay, the paint had dried but the frames for one of the pieces of
Trelerean art looked like it had melted. That can't be a good sign.

==
Entry 17. June 7
==

Chakotay asked me about the situation with my journal entries and how
I felt about people reading them. I was tempted to not say a darn
thing but then I thought again and admitted that I didn't really like
what I perceived to be an invasion of my privacy. Yeah I know it's for
my own good but it makes me damn uncomfortable. He said I had a choice
about this. He wasn't comfortable reading them either although he did
think they were a good idea in that I could keep a record of what's
been happening in my life.

Unfortunately the Doc is dead keen on the whole idea so I told
Chakotay if he wants to read them, hell, what's one more person?
Chakotay can snuggle up with bed time stories of Tom's warped state of
mind. I'm sure it's going to be a comedy blast for him and the Doc.

==
Entry 18. June 8
==

Chakotay took my comments seriously. Just when I thought the universe
held some hope. Kahless On An Inflatable Rescue Raft can everyone
please just relax?

==
Entry 19. June 9
==

No. Kahless on an Inflatable Rescue Raft is not a Klingon curse. I
made it up when I was at the Academy and I took a course in Klingon
mythology. Kahless travels to Gre'thor to try and rescue his comrades
who had died for him in battle but didn't live an honourable life.
Only he does it by sailing across the seas in a rickety old sailboat
with a torn sail he keeps having to mend and then eventually he just
paddles. I cracked a joke during class that he would have had a much
better time if he'd had a Starfleet issued inflatable rescue raft.
Many people thought this was funny. My instructor did not.

==
Entry 20. June 12
==

Chakotay has commented on my general level of crankiness. On the one
hand, I am allowed to be irritable and cranky because that's just part
of the lovable package that's known as Tom 'Where Have You Been For 18
Months?' Paris. On the other hand because I am part of Starfleet and
part of the Federation, rudeness is just plain bad manners. We're all
terribly polite now. Even when aliens are kicking our butts. "Yes Mr.
Alien, your energy weapon has just ripped off our port nacelle but if
we could just *talk* about it, wouldn't we all feel better?" The
Klingons would just phaser their alien hinnies into so much space
dust. Not we humans though. Oh no. Let's try and chit-chat, shall we?

So now I'm supposed to talk about my 'moods' during my sessions with
Chakotay. You'd think a guy could have his days where he was in a bad
mood but apparently not. Well, not when it involves throwing things at
the Doc. Okay, so I shouldn't have thrown the padd at his head but
he's a hologram. It's not like he could have been hurt. The Doc was
annoyed and that's the only reason this is now an issue. But please,
think of this from my point of view. He'd been taking samples *all*
day. Samples from me. My body. Blood, muscle, skin, fat, hair, urine -
everything and then some. Do you know how humiliating it is to have
to go and pee in a container for an entire day? Besides, his currently
unhealthy interest in my bits and pieces is creepy. He doesn't go into
specifics of what he's looking for and I know damn well he's looking
for something. I'm don't like the Doc at all these days. Did I ever
tell anyone that he has the beadiest eyes I've ever seen?

Okay, I promise not to throw things at him. Even though I don't like
him.

==
Entry 21, June 16
==

Tom has been a Very Bad Boy. You know, personally I didn't have an
issue with being up there. It was peaceful. I could think. I was fine
incidentally. You might not know this but to commit suicide you
generally have to have some instrument of suicide on hand; like a
hyprospray, a knife, a ledge to fall off, transporting out into space
- that sort of thing. I was in Jeffrey's Tube 21 on level six, three
hatchways from the nearest access panel. The chance of throwing myself
down one of the ladders was remote.

I was just sitting there feeling relief for a change.

I admit that I lied to the Doctor and Chakotay to get out of sickbay.
I couldn't tolerate the Doc another second or any of those tests, so I
basically lied. I told the Doc that I wanted to have a break to go to
a counselling session with Chakotay on the holodeck and then I told
Chakotay that I needed the day off because the Doc had worn me out.
Then I walked out of sickbay. At the time I didn't have much of a plan
formulated, I just wanted out. Then I realised that it wasn't as if I
could actually get away, short of stealing a shuttle. Not really in a
coherent state of mind which is actually normal for me these days, my
heart ready to beat my way of my chest, sweating and feeling sick, the
only place that struck me as safe was the Jeffries Tubes. I ripped off
my combadge and the cortical monitor and crawled on in.

On the good side, it was a whole hour before anyone realised I'd gone
missing.

I was sitting there propped up against a wall, kind of tucked in this
little space, not really thinking of anything except perhaps it was
ironic that I didn't appear to be claustrophobic at this particular
juncture of my life. Actually the thought that I was tucked away in
the bowels of the ship, away from everyone and that no one would find
me for a while was very comforting.

First through the hatch was Chakotay and second was Harry. I see them
together so often now that I'm beginning to worry that they've started
a relationship and haven't told me about it. Hey guys, if you are
indulging in the horizontal shimmy, and its serious, can I be Best Man
at the wedding? Yeah, yeah, weak attempt at humour at the expense of
Harry and Chakotay. I'm a bad boy. You can punish me later. Even
weaker attempt at humour. Don't worry about it, if I can laugh about
it you should too.

Chakotay, who now had his mystical warrior stance down pat due to my
insanity, crawled through the hatch like he was on a mission to rescue
Bajoran refugees.

I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not at the moment.

Anyway he crawls on in and beckons the rest of the mighty rescue squad
back. Harry's there as usual, looking worried. That boy is going to
have a permanent crease in his forehead at this rate. Chakotay
casually props himself up against the wall opposite to me which is no
easy task considering the space of the average Jeffries Tube and Harry
follows suit.

"Are you all right Tom?"

No messing around, just straight to the point.

I nodded because of course, that's about the only thing I do these
days.

He nodded back and smiled at me.

"I just crawled through half of mile of Jeffrey's Tube to get here. I
don't know about you but I need about ten minutes for my knees to
recover."

The Mystical Warrior was probably trying to formulate a strategy at
this point. How to get that pesky Tom Paris out of the Jeffries Tube
without the man having a screaming fit. I beat him to it by whipping
out my handy scribbling padd and hastily scrawling on it, "Not back
sickbay." Well you get the idea...

Chakotay frowned at that.

"The Doctor is very worried about you."

I can't believe he said that so seriously.

"Yeah right. He spent all days poking and prodding me."

"He needed to check a few things out."

"What things?"

"Tom, we've been through this. Try and trust us okay? Yes, there are
things happening that concern you that we shouldn't keep from you. But
none of us think you could cope with the truth at this point in time."

I scowled at him. It was then I noticed that Harry had a tricorder out
and that he was into some serious frowning.

"Commander, it might be a good idea to get back to sickbay."

"I'm not going!" I wrote. I didn't have time to jot down any more
exclamation marks because they beamed me straight back to my room.

It was at that point that I lost my temper and practised my cussing on
my padd, making sure it was broadcast over all of the slave systems.
It wasn't very satisfying. I would have liked to have broken something
but while I was away they'd cleared all of the breakables out of my
room, presumably in anticipation. I did briefly smack my forehead
against the wall but all that gave me was a sore head and some
dizziness and a lecture from the Doctor when I had to ask for an
analgesic. And to top it all off, I couldn't get out of the room
because they'd put a forcefield up over the doorway.

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways...

==
Entry 22. June 27
==

Did I ever say that Chakotay is kind of okay as a counsellor? And no,
I'm not just sucking up because now if I want out of my room, a nice
security guard has to go with me so I don't go on unsupervised
walkies. Mind you Harry felt so sorry for me this week that he
volunteered to take me out for a spin around the deck a few times.
Apparently when I have *earned* everyone's trust I can then be let
out. The Doc spent all of that time psyching me up to get out and
about and then I'm not allowed anyway. Personally I think the Doc is
sending me a very mixed message. Talk about inconsistent substitute
parenting.

Chakotay pays me regular daily visits to my room while we all deal
with my crankiness. He drops by during his lunch break. We meet in my
room, we sit, I don't talk, I don't write, he reads some reports,
catches up on the paperwork, we burn some replicator rations, he
leaves, I stay.

There is one good side to all of this. Chakotay has managed to
convince the Doc to lay off the whole journal thing for a while. This
one isn't being read by anyone and neither are my other entries from
here on in. In fact, he encouraged me to encrypt them so I could write
whatever I wanted. The only deal was that I had to agree to continue
making regular entries. Of course now that I have the chance to stop
doing them and no one would actually know I find out that that act of
pushing a stylus across the padd screen is relaxing in its own bizarre
way. And I incessantly blab on in this thing. In a perverse way I even
enjoy it and if anyone can explain the weird Jungian shit that is
going on that makes me write in this thing on a semi-volunteer basis,
please don't hesitate to send me a note. I have my own theory of
course. I'm a compulsive talker and the fact that I can't actually
speak per se, has left me with the literary habit of scribbling.
Actually I kind of like writing things down. I feel like I'm writing a
novel. The Life of Tom Paris. A sordid tale of bad decisions, bad luck
and a less than winning personality.

The one good thing about Chakotay is that he's not that pushy with
these things. He lets me be and at least with him I don't get the
feeling I'm holding him up and he'd rather be working. If I don't want
to talk (well, write), then I don't.

Anyway, Chakotay came in for his usual lunch time meeting with me. He
had a whole bunch of ship's status reports. I think he'd figured that
he wasn't going to get anything out of me again, so he said I could be
useful and help him work out some of the rosters. Harry is gonna be
pissed - I stuck him on Gamma shift for two months. But he does get to
be Captain so it all balances out. I think he likes Gamma shift
anyway. The few times he and I were both on Gamma, he was Mr. Spit and
Polish. I didn't dare give him a hard time or he probably would have
slapped me in the brig. I think Harry would quite like to have stepped
up the ranks by now. He's definitely keen on command. I couldn't care
less about it.

After lunch and at least a productive counselling session in which
Chakotay got three months worth of shift rosters sorted, Harry dropped
by. He was having a day off and he brought me a present.

He dumped a big load of art supplies on my bed. Charcoal, graphite
pencils, sketch pad, palette of water colours and an easel.

"This should keep you occupied."

I was going to laugh, but he was serious. I didn't realise my general
level of dissatisfaction showed up so plainly on my face.

I wrote, "I draw a very good stick figure."

Harry wasn't buying it because I'd talked about my enforced revival of
my artistic skills in prison and my sketches of Voyager were still
around somewhere.

"Well, it's either start drawing or take up a musical instrument and
the Doctor banned that idea. Something about excessive noise being bad
for his diagnostic subroutines."

One day I will have my revenge on the Doctor. I swear.

I thanked Harry profusely on my padd and when he left after catching
me up on ship's gossip, I poked around the materials a bit. I used to
enjoy drawing as a kid and I kept up with it through my teens but with
one thing and another, such as failing my Academy classes, the drawing
was eventually put to one side. Loril tried to get me back into it in
prison as something to do in that tedious stretch of time known as
'recreation' but I was a tad shy regarding my lack of talent and I
couldn't be convinced to really have a decent attempt at it. I mean, I
did draw, but I tended to keep the work in Loril's office because I
felt shy about it. I wasn't the greatest sketch artist known to
mankind but I guess I could do a reasonable likeness of someone if I
put my mind to it.

Oh well, there's nothing else to do.

==
Entry 23. July 2
==

Fuck Harry and his fucking idea to draw! I hate him. I hate the Doc
too. And Chakotay.

==
Entry 24. July 16
==

Stupid journal. This is a stupid idea. I could have avoided this if I
wanted too, and not write in here but Chakotay says I should write
about how I remembered it but I don't really want to remember how I
remembered. But then again I guess after a few weeks of nursing me
through this whole thing, I guess I owe it to him to at least try.

Harry brought me those art supplies. At first it kept me occupied for
which the Doctor was grateful. I drew a lot. I drew Voyager again and
Harry said it looked more like a schematic Tuvok would draw but he
liked it, so I gave it to him.

Over the next few days I tried drawing people. Harry, the Captain,
Neelix, the Doc, Chakotay. Even tried drawing Seven, which was no easy
feat. The woman is incredibly beautiful but it's damn hard to get that
coldness on her face. Wait, not coldness. More like a self assurance
I'm too familiar with from my days in the Alpha Quadrant. Sort of a
false bravado. She's smart. She was Borg. I think in her more quiet
moments she'd look very different, quite innocent, maybe even
vulnerable. I admit to having a soft spot for Seven. Not in that way
thank-you-very-much Doc (see how paranoid I am. Even though they
promised they weren't reading my journals, I still suspect they are).
No, I mean from the point of view that she's an outsider. Even more
than I was when I first arrived on Voyager. I can understand being on
the outside. Mind you she's Borg (well, she used to be) and I'm not
entirely comfortable with that. I had completely misdrawn her nose. It
was about twice as long as it should have been.

As I tried to deal with Seven's nose problem I remember that I looked
down at my fingers and they were smeared with the charcoal and I
remembered how dirty it was and suddenly it was very important to get
the dirt off. I went to wash my hands in the bathroom and it was hard
getting it off, and the dirty water was pooling down at the bottom of
the basin and I could feel the smooth surface of the basin counter as
I went for more soap and then I had this weird thought. I thought to
myself it was so much like their ship because it was so clean
everywhere but the table was so very dirty.

I don't remember much of what happened after that except that I
couldn't seem to decide which I should do first: cry, faint, throw up
or pee in my pants. None of these options struck me as being manly, or
even close to being a Starfleet professional, so I think I opted for
just standing there staring at the water pouring into the basin and
feeling cold and scared out of my wits. By that time the cortical
monitor had alerted the Doc and he was in the bathroom wondering why
his patient was standing there staring at nothing in particular. I
remember the Doc calling my name to try to snap me back to reality and
by this time I was shaking. My teeth started to chatter and I was
covered in goosebumps. He guided me away from the basin and around
that time I thought it would be a good idea to get out and go hide. Of
course the Doc had put the forcefield up so I wasn't going anywhere.
Besides, he had his holographic grip on me and it wasn't that easy to
get away. I did aim a punch at his head in my panic but it never
dented him because he's just a collection of photons. I ended up
bruising my knuckles.

Around the time I was swinging on the end of the Doc's arm like a wild
kitten being held by the scruff of its neck the Doc realised he had a
problem. One extremely freaked out patient, one forcefield and no way
to get to the hyposprays containing sedatives on the *other* side of
the forcefield. He didn't want to leave me in my current state in case
I attempted to do something strange, even for me. So he reels me in
like a fish (oops, mixed metaphors there. Kittens. Fish. My mind works
in mysterious ways). Eventually he has two arms around me and sort of
waltzes me over to the bed. He sits me down, wraps the blankets around
me and actually tries to talk to me. I think I should have been
honoured but at the time I was thinking that I wished he would just
shut up. Didn't he know we were all in terrible danger? Any moment
they would come through the door and that was that. I was desperate to
tell him and I couldn't.

"Tom, you're perfectly safe. There's nothing to worry about. Do you
understand?"

Of course I understood you bald headed totalitarian twit. He blabbed
on and tried to calm me down and I wasn't taking any notice because I
was seeing tiny movements from the corner of my eye. Twitches of the
air, hints of twig limbs with the colour of sickness. My eyes went
wide because I could sense them there, off to one side. Not right in
front of me but just out of reach and every time I tried to look at
them they would run out of sight.

The Doc must have noticed I was getting more rattled every second. He
made a decision to leave me alone long enough to get a hypospray. Bad
move Doc. That was when one of them ran briefly across one of the
walls. I'm glad I painted the walls a different colour because they
can't blend so easily.

I launched myself at the wall to try and smash its big ugly bald head
in before it could get out even though I knew it would mean more
trouble. The Doc hurried back through the forcefield as I ran face
first into the wall and just about knocked myself unconscious. I tried
standing up, the Doc was wrestling with me, and I could feel the
hypospray against my neck. And that bastard of a thing was still
scuttling around my quarters.

About this time I spoke my very first word in quite some time. I was
lying on the floor trying to get the Doc off of me, and I had squirmed
around to try and follow what the thing and his friends were doing and
in complete and utter frustration I managed to get out, "Fuck." Then I
passed out.

Later the Doc explained to me that he thought I had a visual
hallucination but they weren't about to dismiss anything out of hand
and Tuvok and Harry scanned every millimetre of sickbay.

==
Entry 25. July 23
==

Still as jittery as hell and slightly freaked out by my room in
sickbay. I have adopted the habit of checking the whole place out for
any signs of those aliens before I go to bed and I make the Doc stand
there while I do it. He also scans my room with a tricorder but I
don't trust the readings and I think a visual inspection is just as
effective. For some reason that scares me even more - no one is
telling me that my fears are unfounded. Or that the aliens don't
exist. I know these creatures from somewhere but every time I try to
think about them, my mind turns to a puddle of gel pack goo and I get
sweaty and feel sick. So I don't really contemplate them too much
except to do the routine checks. Chakotay and the Doc said it's about
time I got told the truth and they're sitting me down first thing
tomorrow for the Grown-ups Talk.

I don't know if I really want to know now. But I asked for it, so I
guess I have to go through with it.

On the good side, my one attempt at speech has been met with delight
by all, even if it was a swear word. I have attempted to say a few
things since then but when I try to form some sort of sound that
resembles speech it's like my whole body is straining, my tongue is
glued to the roof of my mouth and my throat is lacking in air. The Doc
told me not to push it. Said something about possible spasmodic
dysphonia and went off to his office to do research while telling me
he was going to get me started on speech therapy. Lucky me.

I wanted to go to the holodeck and go and visit Harry's program again
and the Doc said that was okay and in fact *he'd* go with me since
sickbay had been so quite lately (except of course, for my flights of
lunacy.) I wanted to say no but it was either the Doc or some security
guard and a guard would probably be even more annoying than the Doc
since security guards just stand around trying to look vaguely scary.

So this afternoon, the Doc and I are off on a Father/Son field trip.

==
Entry 26. July 27
==

The hour I spent on the holodeck wasn't too bad. Okay, the Doc was a
veritable pain in the butt but he kind of mellowed about 30 minutes
into the whole thing. Which is unusual for the Doc. I think he invoked
his, "Be Nice to Tom 'Nutso' Paris" subroutine.

I showed him the farmhouse and the paddocks and Lilly came rushing
over to say hello. I threw her some sticks and we wandered around the
place. The Doc was quite taken with the whole thing. I think it was
all that simplistic rustic charm and the fact that it was quiet. Since
it was a holodeck program for me I think he expected a slightly tamer
version of Captain Proton.

I still get tired easily so after about 20 minutes, by which time we
were back at the farmhouse, I sat down on the swing on the porch.
Lilly pathetically pawed my knee until I hauled her up and she draped
herself over my lap. The Doc just stood and admired the whole thing.
It was weird.

At that moment I was busting to actually speak a smart assed remark
but couldn't get my vocal cords to cooperate. Scribbling it on the
padd just wasn't going to hack it. So I had to content myself with
staring at the way the sunlight bounced off the top of his head and
reflect upon my own thinning hairline. I don't exactly have any
prominent features on my face. By the time I hit 50 I am going to look
like a mutant baby.

Lilly spent that time with her right front leg up in the air giving
that doggy body language command that said: scratch my tummy right now
human. So I stared at the Doc's head and scratched Lilly on the chest
and then shifted my attention to Lilly because she had kind of
slumped. That was one relaxed dog. She was just sprawled out with her
eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, her pure white teeth and pink
doggy tongue just visible. I then made the mistake of trying to shift
her weight a little and she instantly snapped to attention, sat up and
cocked her head to one side. Obviously it was time to play again. I
shook my head at her. I didn't have the energy. She seemed to give a
doggy shrug and then hunkered down on the swing so that only her head
was resting on my thigh. Such a considerate piece of holographic
programming. I smiled, and ruffled her head.

The Doc seemed bemused by this interaction. He waved his tricorder at
me.

"Hmmmm... The dog certainly is good for you. Your blood pressure has
dropped."

He turned the tricorder to me so I could view the readings myself.
They were better. I mean it's not like my blood pressure was instant
heart attack material and the diastolic was always pretty good but
before I went wherever it was that I went, it was 120/80, like a nice
normal blood pressure and when I came back it's always been lurking
around 140/95. The Doc puts it down to my unresolved stress and
anxiety that I'm not actually displaying or talking about. So spending
20 minutes with Lilly had dropped it down to around 135/90.

Funnily enough, I just knew what he was going to say next. He's a
hologram. He's a Doctor. It wasn't hard to guess.

"I think I am going to schedule a daily visit to this holoprogram for
you as part of your therapy."

Daily dog patting. Seemed okay to me. Now if I could somehow shoe horn
daily dog patting, lunch with Chakotay and speech therapy with the Doc
into one big session that would make things a whole lot easier. Some
how I don't think this is going to happen and instead I'll be blessed
with a full dance card on the social scene.

We wandered out of the holodeck at our assigned time and I felt pretty
good, even if the guy that accompanied me to the holodeck was the Doc.

I'm writing this up and sitting in the Doc's office waiting for
Chakotay to turn up and they can share that vital information with me.
I don't think it's going to be good somehow because the Doc, in his
not so subtle way has a hypospray, some towels and a emesis container
on his desk. It's nice of him to be prepared. I just hope that I am...

==
Entry 27. July 30
==

I think I've pulled every stomach muscle I own due to throwing up
everything, including my toe nails. The Doc may not have been subtle,
but he was definitely prepared. I threw up in his office. I threw up
out of his office. I threw up while propped up on my bed. I staggered
into the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. Then I just stationed
myself in the bathroom and waited until I'd been reduced to dry
retching. Chakotay wanted to play the nice counsellor and hold my head
while I puked. In between throwing up I made a rude hand gesture which
conveyed my wish for him to leave right-God-damn-now. I don't want
anyone seeing me puke. It's gross.

After the sounds of me trying to eject my stomach by way of my
oesophagus petered out, the Doc and Chakotay both came in and helped
me off the floor. I was exhausted by that stage. Not to mention that I
had tears running down my face and all I could taste was bile.
Chakotay helped me over to the basin and handed me a glass of mouth
rinse. That helped immediately. I got a glimpse of my eyeballs and
they were an unappealing red colour. I think I popped a few
capillaries with the force of my vomiting.

I wanted to say at this point, "I am never eating anything ever
again." Instead all I managed was, "I... "

Both of them just nodded like I had said something profound. I was
promptly thrown into a nice warm sonic shower, towelled off, put into
clean jammies and put to bed immediately for a nice long sleep. The
Doc wanted to plug me with a hypospray but Chakotay, the Wise Mystical
Warrior, said I looked like I wasn't going to need it. I don't know if
I'd been insulted or not.

I slept for about 10 hours and woke up feeling decidedly adrift from
my unsubstantial moorings. The cortical monitor was back on my head
and I suspect from the way I felt so strange that my mood was
benefiting from drug therapy because otherwise I think I would have
just crawled back under my bed and never come out.

I think, to be really honest here - even with all that wonderful
psychiatric medicine it's going to take me a few days to work myself
up to talking/writing about this.

==
Entry 28. August 5
==

Phew. Okay. Deep breath. Here goes. I can do this...

I'm scribbling on my padd and Chakotay is sitting beside me on the
couch in his office. We're in his office for some reason that escapes
me now. Oh wait, yeah. I wanted to get out of sickbay and this time
around they let me. Chakotay came and collected me from my room like I
was some kid being picked up by his care giver. I had managed to get
myself out of bed by then, and I was casually dressed in my jeans, a
t- shirt and one of my huge sweaters that I'd thrown over the top. The
ship isn't exactly cold but I felt more secure buried under three
layers of clothing.

Chakotay has the slave padd and he's reading as I scribble this. And
in retrospect, the Doc will be reading this later. And maybe me.
Chakotay is smiling using his official 'encouraging Tom Paris' smile
as I write this. All my other journal entries are still encrypted but
Chakotay said it would be better to guide me through this one just in
case I run into more trouble like I did when I remembered that one
fleeting memory connected to dirt.

Okay. So here goes.

The Doc and Chakotay sat down with me and pulled up my medical records
on the Doc's terminal. They pre-warned me about what to expect. There
were some photos of me that the Doc had taken for his records from
when I first arrived back on the ship. Even after a few months of care
with the Trelereans I looked like shit. I literally looked like
someone had dug up my corpse and reanimated it with nanoprobes. Stick
thin, and yet I was puffy around my face. I was also a kind of
off-grey colour. My face was blank. There's not a lot of emotion on
it. There was some video of me that showed the Doc trying to interact
with me. Basically I just stared at him, totally uncomprehending. Then
he tried to put the diagnostic shell over me and I got a look of panic
on my face and made a straight line for anywhere off the biobed.
There's no delicate way to put it: I was shocked by that view of
myself. I don't remember much about those earlier times aboard
Voyager. It was weird seeing myself and yet, seeing a completely
different me.

I guess as people we walk around with our own perceptions of who we
are and because we can't see ourselves it's always a shock to find out
what other people think, or to see an image of who we are. That's why
people get so freaked out by their photos at times. It doesn't fit
their self image. What was my self image at the time? I knew something
was wrong; that some how and some way I wasn't quite functioning the
way I used too. But to see how that was presented to the outside world
was disconcerting.

Chakotay is looking at me funny. So I shrug. There's not really much
to be said.

Anyway, we took a break, I seemed reasonably calm so we progressed
onto the rather bigger news. The news that was bigger than the fact
that I was clearly insane when I got back to Voyager. Oh wait,
Chakotay just corrected me. Apparently I was *traumatised*. It looks
pretty much the same as insanity on the video footage if you ask me.

The next bit of news was the one that made me want to get under the
bed. The Doc said that within hours of my arrival on Voyager Harry
picked up a ghost sensor signal that seemed to be tailing us. It
wasn't always there but it would pop up occasionally like a badly
scuffed up audio transmission. Try as he might Harry could never clean
the signal right up and even Seven was stumped. They did figure out
that they were getting random elements of data about what seemed to be
a ship. They put up their shields at that point. Around the same time,
as the Doc started doing his medical work-up on me, he noticed some
peculiarities in the readings on occasions. Nothing drastic and for a
while he thought there was a problem with the scanners in the biobed.
Then he thought it was the tricorder. Engineering came down and ran a
full diagnostic on everything, including the Doc, and there was
nothing there.

The Doc however, has the sum knowledge of over 400 medical experts and
every medical database known to most of the Alpha Quadrant so he
started trying to figure it out. When did the readings occur and why
and was there any pattern? Eventually they got two and two and figured
out that my readings got strange whenever Harry was picking up the
ghost signal. This started everyone worrying. Doc started his series
of surgeries on me and one day when he's in the abdominal cavity
trying to take care of this problem I had with oesophageal varices,
and he'd hunkered down over a scanner designed to detect and show
items as small and as efficient as the precise chemical and electrical
exchange taking place in a nerve, he sees... it. Something sitting in
a vein that he's reducing in size that's not supposed to be there.
Something manufactured. Luckily he's recording his moves for posterity
and so the whatever-it-is shows up on the action reply later on. He
only sees it for a 30th of a second and its gone.

Doc completes the operation then tries finding the thing again and
can't. There's a big crisis meeting. Seven postulates that it's a
nanoprobe of some sort and it's cloaked and moving, which makes it
practically impossible to detect. They're at a loss for what to do.
They have no real data they can use to get rid of this thing and worst
of all they have no idea whether it's helping or harming. Janeway is
worried and wants it out in case it's a tracking item of some sort but
the Doc refuses to just wade in for more surgery in case it
compromises patient safety (the patient being me). At an impasse they
decided to wait and see what happens. Meanwhile the Doc continues
taking readings and they eventually realise that it's probably not
just one thing but a whole bunch of things and there's nothing they
can do. They don't know what they are, they don't know how to get rid
of them. So these creepy little guys just do whatever they're doing.
If it's a tracking device then I can presume that I'm essentially
screwed. I can feel it in my bones.

Chakotay is worried. I can tell. He's got that blank expression on his
face, the one he uses to hide the fact that he's concerned but he
still manages to look concerned anyway.

The news of the mysterious nanoprobes that had set up house in my body
was about as much as I could take and that's where we stopped. The Doc
said he had a lot of photos and footage from my recovery, so I could
review them at a later date if I wanted. He said the effects would
lessen the more I looked at them. I don't think they will. I don't
think I can ever get used to the idea of the nanoprobes, or those
images of myself, or any of this...

I'm tired and I think I'll stop writing now.

==
Entry 29. August 15
==

Things keep happening too fast and I want it to slow down and it
won't. A feeling of dread keeps coming up. It frustrates me. I know
something is going wrong, that something is going to happen and I
can't stop it but I don't know what it is. I've been in this weird
emotionally strained place lately, standing on the edge, looking down
at the pit below me. Yesterday, when Chakotay came to see me for our
regular session, I started crying for no particular reason. And I
don't cry. I mean it. I don't. Not in front of other people anyway,
and very rarely when I'm alone. The Admiral was adamant about crying.
It was a sign of weakness. He did have a point from the command aspect
I guess. It's not good to have the Captain of a starship bursting into
tears at the first sign of trouble. But he applied the same standard
to me and my sisters and when you're five, that's what you do. You get
frustrated, or angry, or hurt and you cry. It started irritating him
and as I grew older it drove him nuts. He didn't want a son who cried
because crying didn't happen in Starfleet, even when someone dies.
It's all about carrying on and being a good little Starfleet officer.

Chakotay and I were having lunch as usual and I had been showing
Chakotay some of my sketches and he was complimenting me on a picture
I had drawn of the Captain and that was that. Next thing I knew I was
crying and I have a disconcerting way of crying, which is I don't
actually make a sound. Well, I might make the odd disgusting snuffling
sound but largely it's a completely silent event. Chakotay moved to
try and make me feel better by rubbing my back but I hate being
touched and I batted his hand away and sat there with tears rolling
down my face probably wearing the expression of a startled Targ.

"Are you all right Tom?"

I think he was asking for the sake of asking.

"Uh-huh," I managed to blub out in my actual voice and then sat there
and cried some more feeling bewildered by the turn of events. I was
crying and I couldn't stop crying and that made me want to cry some
more. Chakotay got up and ordered some tissues from the replicator
because by this point I had the distinct feeling that a good deal of
nasal discharge - as we like to call it in the medical profession -
was rolling down my upper lip.

I blew my nose and wiped at my face and tried to look stoic but just
kept crying. I think it went on too long because for some reason the
Doc came in and started waving a tricorder at me. He looked at the
readings, looked at me, I looked at him and he didn't do a darn thing.
In fact he said it was probably a good thing, as an emotional release
was just what I needed. Therein followed a lengthy lecture from him
about the biochemical advantages of crying, which actually eventually
stopped me crying because it was a) boring and b) annoyed me. I think
Chakotay found it all highly amusing.

After that horrible display of weakness, Chakotay suggested we go and
pay Lilly a visit. I hadn't been that day and I had to admit it would
be nice to play with the dog after my humiliation on the emotional
front.

We went down to the holodeck and we sat on the porch in the sunshine
and Lilly plonked herself in my lap and seemed to sense that I'd been
crying because she wasn't quite as perky as she usually was. It's
funny to reflect that I was crying because of somebody saying
something nice, as opposed to the more normal thing that everyone
does, which is crying when sad.

At some point, dozing in the artificial holodeck generated sunlight, I
went to sleep, the dog splayed out on top of me and didn't wake up
until it was time to leave an hour later.

My strange day was topped off by strange vocal exercises. The Doc was
trying to show me this massage technique for the larynx that he could
do to make my vocal cords loosen up (apparently they slam shut at
attempts to speak which isn't a good thing because it can cause
problems with swallowing and breathing) but it would involve being
touched so I declined. He mixed up a hypospray instead which worked
but the sounds I make are very raspy and whispery and sound odd. Then
he said he'd send me details of the technique and I could try and do
it myself, while he supervised.

==
Entry 30. August 17
==

I can't concentrate. Not that I could concentrate much before. I could
focus enough to sketch something but that's going. I hate this. I feel
like the top of my head is about to blow off. I am becoming
increasingly paranoid. I still extensively check my room in sickbay
but I also make Harry link in his Ops readings to my padd so I could
be alerted should he get the same readings again.

The Doc thinks that some of my paranoia and emotional volatility is
connected to the neurosurgeries I've been having. The more he
reconnects my neural network up in an approximation of how they were
before I left the ship, the more bits and pieces I remember. Little
flashes. Things. People. Events. I can't put faces to names, or names
to faces and it irritates me. Actually it scares the shit out of me
but I'm not telling anyone that small fact. The Doc said that since my
memory network has been fried he can't predict how much memory I'm
going to recover. The human brain isn't like some sort of sequential
recording device. People don't remember things simply because the
memory has gone. If the neural connection is not used on a regular
basis or the information wasn't encoded properly then it's gone. The
brain is efficient - it doesn't have room to store every damn memory
that ever occurred for a start - and if something's not being used
then it can use the space for some other memory. You know, back in the
20th century they used to use the analogy of the brain being like a
computer. Which was clearly wrong. The brain can't process raw data as
well as a computer nor can it store information as well as a computer.
What is does do a lot better than a computer is weave contextual
patterns out of its experiences. To form a personality. To recognise
people and faces, and assign motivation and meaning to relationships.

Crap. I think I just regurgitated one of the text books the Doc used
to make me read. Oh well, he'll be pleased to know that part of my
recovered memory just happen to be medical texts.

Anyway I've been hiding. On the holodeck. I feel safe. Lilly is always
there and we can sit on the porch and she'll put her head on my thigh
and provide her solid doggy support. If I have the energy we go for a
walk and I throw a stick around for her to fetch. The Doc and Chakotay
managed to get me two hours per day on the holodeck and I usually
visit her in the morning and in the evening. Sometimes Chakotay goes
with me but mostly I like being there by myself. It's very peaceful
for whatever reason. If I could spend more time in with her I would.

The only problem with the holodeck is the fact that I can't walk there
without a security guard helpfully escorting me.

==
Entry 31. August 30
==

Oh God, here we go again. I'm free of those pesky nanoprobes although
how and where they went is a mystery that has everyone shit scared.
There's no other way to put it.

Harry started picking up those signals again. I freaked. Then again, I
wasn't the only damn one. Everyone was on edge. Tuvok had security
watching me 24/7. Harry and Seven kept coming down to sickbay to do
scans of the environment. The Doc kept scanning me. I grew more and
more agitated. I begged to go to the holodeck because every cell from
the bottom of my toes to what is left of the hairs on my head were
screaming at me that what I needed to do was hide out in the one place
that I knew was safe.

The Doc okayed it because there wasn't a hell of a lot else they could
do. Voyager had her shields up but it was pretty much show because
everyone knew (but didn't say) that Voyager's shields were probably no
match for alien technology that could just take people whenever it
wanted.

I sort of half trotted down to the holodeck as best I could with the
security guard noting the incredibly empty corridors. Seems no one was
keen on getting caught up in what might, or might not, happen.

Made it to the holodeck with a sigh of relief. The guard came in with
me. Lilly ran up barking in delight and I reached down to pat her.
Only that's when she suddenly started growling, the hackles raised on
the back of her neck. I hurriedly backed up, frightened to death. The
guard reached for his combadge and I felt a very strange tingling
sensation that was kind of like a transporter. I heard the guard
behind me yelling but I couldn't make out a single word. I couldn't
breath, I was terrified and then... And then that was that.

I don't remember any more except that I woke up on the holodeck with
Lilly once more forming a furry blanket on my chest. The security
guard was lying beside me and someone was cutting through the door of
the holodeck with a heavy laser arc welder. Before they got through
the door Lilly got off my chest, gave me a lick on the forehead and
ran off.

Tuvok came through the door with his phaser drawn, clearly expecting
the worst. The Doc came through after that. And Chakotay. And Harry.
And Seven. Wow. Talk about a welcome committee.

The Doc scanned me and the guard. The guard was also starting to wake
up.

"They both seem to be fine. I want to get them back for tests."

They beamed us both out.

Poor Shaun McDougall (the guard) is now trapped in sickbay being
subjected to testing for a few days. At least I have a fellow
sufferer. I'm also getting prodded regularly with all kinds of medical
equipment because apparently the nanoprobes are gone. Nobody has any
answers as to *how* they managed to be gone. This doesn't make me
happy. All they got up on the Bridge was a spike in the signal, and a
massive power surge on the holodeck. Harry tried beaming me out but
didn't have any luck and by the time Tuvok and Company rushed down
there, it was all over.

==
Entry 32. September 2
==

I am voting for a break from the Doc. He has poked, prodded, probed,
pinched, pulled and pureed. I feel like Neelix's cooking. Shaun
McDougall got to go back to work three days ago and I'm stuck here
watching the light shine off the Doc's bald head.

He was trying to get yet another blood sample from me this morning and
asked me to stop fidgeting and I remarked that if he'd been having
blood samples taken every day, he'd be fidgeting too.

Some how from there the conversation took a downward advanced level
ski slope turn into an argument.

I'm not as blind to my own short comings as everyone thinks I am.
Loril made sure of that in prison. Every one of my little insecurities
and psychological oddities is down in my psych file for everyone to
read, including myself. Loril always pointed out to me that I had a
huge problem with people in authority. Maybe not sooner but at some
point, without fail, I was going to have a run in with whomever I
perceived as having some control over my life. Not exactly a great
profile for a Starfleet officer. It's the military and the military
needs people who don't have a great need to be independent. Sure, they
need to be capable of self direction and can make decisions but it's
about being a team player and not wanting to take off on a joy ride on
a shuttle by yourself. I remember when I was going through my Academy
admission tests that the Intake Officer said it was being seriously
considered by the Intake Committee as to whether I was going to get
the green light to get into Starfleet. The only way I was getting in
was if I promised to go and see a counsellor on a regular basis. I
nodded my head solemnly but knew that no matter how many problems I
had with authority I was still going to get into Starfleet because my
father was an Admiral.

So, I am reasonably aware that for whatever reasons the Doc pushes all
of my buttons. I am rude to him, I'm mean to him and I would like
nothing better than not to have to be in sickbay either as a patient
or as his medical assistant.

But it's a two way street. If nothing else than I have a highly
refined internal sensor that tells me when people don't like me
because I've had years of practise. The Doc doesn't like me. He thinks
I'm undisciplined and immature and probably arrogant and smug. Then
again, I don't mean to be arrogant and smug - it's that self
perception thing again. Sometimes I think I'm being helpful and
sometimes I just don't want to do deal with the person or the issue.
I've put my foot in my mouth so often I probably have athlete's
tongue. Despite my best efforts I can't seem to get that small talk
thing right. If there's a gene for diplomacy, I think mine's missing.
Yes, sometimes I'm adolescent - what the hell - I'm childish. I used
to get friendly pep talks about maturity from Loril and he was only
18. Loril, during one of his many pep talks (subtitle: Rehabilitating
Tom and Making Him a Better Person)would tell me that there were two
problems that were going to take a while to work through. Although I
didn't think he meant I'd still be struggling with them well into my
thirties.

Not that Loril thought that my problems were 'problems', it was more
like *other* people (and in some cases, holograms) were going to see
them as problems.

I was slumped on his couch in his office after a depressing couple of
days of having a prison guard decide that he would like to make Tom
Paris his personal redemption project. Unfortunately Captain Janeway
wasn't the first and she probably won't be the last. It would score
him a huge amount of points to make Tom Paris into a good boy. So he
sort of hung around me all of the time, made me do extra duties all of
the time and sat me down for heart-to-heart talks about ethics and
responsibility and how I could prove myself again by rejoining
Starfleet in some support services position (re: maintenance or
cleaning) and show them what a good worker I was. Oh yeah, it was that
type of person that every group gets. There is only one truth. There
is one way of doing things. You can be redeemed by following the
teachings of the church... I wanted to run a mile, but couldn't. Since
I was in prison.

I asked Loril to ask someone else to make him go away. It was like
having an extra cheery and hyper version of my father following me
around. Loril was only too happy to comply and I wasn't bothered
again, but Loril did ask why I found the guard so irritating. Which
led to a discussion about what defined adult behaviour and 'good'
behaviour which led to a discussion about my well-known propensity for
using my holodeck time (when it hadn't been taken off me as
punishment) in prison for really, really dorky things. Like recreating
that early 20th Century icon, Disneyland, right down to the silly
audioanimatronic singing country bears. Loril came with me one day and
couldn't stop laughing. I was insulted and spent my day buying
popcorn, helium filled balloons in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head
and sulking.

So Loril sat down beside me on his expansive therapy couch where I'm
feeling miserable and sorry for myself because I'm in prison and my
life is so fucked up, and everyone wants to make me into their own
image and when I got out I'd be looking forward to a miserable life of
crap jobs.

"Tom, it's perfectly fine to want to cling to your childhood. It's
great that you're able to find time to play."

I wasn't in the mood for placating.

"Liar. You laughed all the way through my time at Disneyland."

"Well, it was pretty funny. You can't honestly tell me that people in
the 20th Century regarded a cartoon mouse as the height of
entertainment."

"You obviously haven't seen my collection of Road Runner cartoons
then."

Loril just shook his head in the negative and with bemusement.

"Look, imagine this. A child gets told almost constantly that he is
destined for greatness. He's a smart kid, he's a gifted kid. His
father wants to make sure that this kid does the family proud, that he
lives up to his gift and follows in his father's footsteps. So that
means going to the best pre-school and learning to do things before
the other kids and going to school and getting good marks, and
studying really hard after school to make sure the marks are always
high, and there's no time for just wasting time or having fun because
that's not being productive. And the kid just does what he's told for
a long time but it gets harder to get the good marks and it's harder
to please his father. There's no time for holidays, there's no time
for just playing. Summer is for private tutors.

"By the time the kid gets to Starfleet he's had about 15 years of the
demand to excel and he's burnt out. So what happens? He tries to slow
down but he can't, so he starts to turn into a trouble maker because
his subconscious is desperately trying anything it can to save him
from crashing and burning."

"So far this lecture isn't providing me with any insights I don't
know. Besides I crashed and burned anyway," said me, being my usual
annoying self.

"Yeah, but the kid wants to do what he never got to do. He wants to
play. Not something chosen for him as looking good on an application
form, but something *he* wants to play at. So he starts building
elaborate fantasy worlds and he starts getting interested in things
that are esoteric, that nobody else is much interested in but seem
like fun to him. Consequently it does two things: it gives him a
refuge and it really, really pisses off the people pressuring him."

I rolled my eyes.

"Great. Are you telling me I'm doomed to a life of terminal
adolescence?"

"No, I'm just saying it'll take a while to make up for 15 years of
buckling to academic pressure. I had a look at your file and in pre-
school your parents hired you a tutor because you had problems cutting
shapes out with scissors. I don't know of too many people who would
hire someone to teach a four year old how to cut shapes out in case it
looked bad on their pre-school transcript."

I smiled at that. I had fuzzy memories of Donna (still do). A very
nice lady who taught me how to make nice conformist kindergarten art
so that nobody would start recommending a child psychiatrist. At the
time I was going through a slight obsession with my imaginary friend
Rufus. This was considered cute until I revealed that Rufus was
Architeuthis - a giant squid. Not that I could actually pronounce
Architeuthis. Giant squid as childhood imaginary friends weren't high
on the list of 'normal' things for children.

My problem was that I had developed an obsession with sea creatures.
My favourite family outing was going to the Monterey Bay aquarium,
which was the oldest aquarium in existence. It had been around since
1984, and had gone through numerous demolishments and rebuilds and the
original building had long since gone - but it was on (roughly) the
same site. Well, apart from the fact that the piece of coastline it
used to be on had dropped into the ocean during the Big One. They had
developed a number of submersible rides for people and an underwater
tunnel so you could walk under the water and observe the fish and any
other sea life. There was a seal colony that had been established
there in the 21st century so you could see the seals swimming around.
Unfortunately for my entire family, my favourite area was the small
exhibition on squid and cuttlefish. I think it was also my favourite
because one of the staff there knew I was a regular and was always on
hand to patiently answer my four year old questions. When you're four
the questions consist of: what does it eat, what colour is it, how
does it move and why can't I have one for a pet? I never got sick of
going there and the questions became more sophisticated every time I
went.

Anyway, so I developed my giant squid friend called Rufus and my
teacher and Donna kept asking me why my friend Rufus was a squid.
(Hey, squid are practical! They have lots of tentacles, which meant
Rufus could hold three imaginary cups of tea and serve at the same
time and he was huge so he could crush anything that annoyed him and
he squirted ink at the first sign of danger.) Rufus eventually faded
from view. My sisters and mother found the concept of Rufus highly
entertaining. My mother actually enjoyed it. She treated Rufus as one
of the family even though, technically as a squid, he shouldn't have
actually been living out of water. My four year old imagination had
merely made Rufus an extra special squid who could survive on land. I
remember that Rufus was probably very short for a real giant squid but
he was taller than my father and that was enough for me. My mother
used to set a place for him at the table and replicate grilled fish
for him to eat. My father didn't say anything at all but would tell
them not to encourage me whenever Rufus was mentioned.

Okay, so Loril told me I'd stop being an overgrown giggling school boy
until I worked it out of my system which meant I could still be
pulling practical jokes on people until I was completely bald. I could
kiss goodbye to any sort of career in Starfleet in that case. Command
positions were out - who was going to want someone whose idea of
resolving interspecies conflict was to bring a set of whoopee cushions
to the meeting?

There was also the other problem of my complete inability to make an
appropriate comment when needed. My enthusiasm for things tended to
run away with me. Witness me opening my big fat mouth when the Moneans
came onto the Bridge. Nothing like making an ass of myself in front of
everyone else. You could see the Captain's eyebrow climbing off her
forehead during that discussion. Loril just shrugged when we
discussing that particular long standing failing. Hey, one of the
problems of having a high I.Q. and being gifted. Those blessed with
gifts don't always fit into the rest of society very well and that's
been documented way back to the 19th century. The price of creativity,
or talent, or a high I.Q. is a complete lack of desire to conform.

Actually Loril wondered why I was even Starfleet at all. He thought
I'd be better off being a test pilot or helping out with independent
research.

If I hadn't been asked on Voyager as an observer I would have had to
go and deal with that particular aspect and figure out what I was
going to do and maybe get over the whole Starfleet mythos thing.
Instead I'm up to my knees in the whole culture again without any
choice.

So. In hindsight, and only admitting this to myself, I guess I'm
really sorry that I yelled at the Doctor, stole his mobile emitter,
ran out of sickbay and hid it in Neelix's cake mixture while he wasn't
looking (at the time Neelix was quietly calling security to come and
get me heh heh...). The Doctor is still fuming about my little stunt
but it's not like they didn't find it later. And Megan Delaney
volunteered to lick the crumbs off it, so I don't know what the Doc's
complaining about.

==
Entry 33. September 20
==

I have been officially booted out of sickbay. Wow. Chakotay, the
Captain and the Doctor discussed the 'situation' and I have been
remanded into Neelix's care. I don't know if Neelix volunteered or not
but he's making the best of it. The general consensus is that the Doc
and I need a break from each other and I'm well enough to go and play
with other people. Besides, I'm free of those nanoprobes so they're
taking the chance that things are okay at this point in time.

I get to take the living area with my fold away bed. Neelix is
apparently the logical choice because a) I can help Neelix out in the
kitchen, thus I am totally supervised and b) he's extremely hard to
annoy. There was apparently some debate about me going to live with
Chakotay but Chakotay didn't think it was 'appropriate' that I live
with the person that happens to be my counsellor. Neither did the Doc.
Poor Neelix - he's the unofficial supervisor of the waifs and strays
of Voyager.

Neelix is so happy to have me as a companion and take care of me that
he fusses over me worse than my mother ever did. He's like an escaped
Butlin's Red Coat. Bit of obscure 20th Century history there. In the
50s and 60s (actually even through the 90s), people living in Britain
somehow got fixated on organised holidays. They'd go off to holiday
camps (Butlins for instance) where staff, wearing red jackets, would
attempt to entertain them by practising excessive cheerfulness. Neelix
is a Butlin's worker reincarnated.

When I arrived in his quarters I was a tad nervous and accompanied by
the Doctor with a list of instructions a kilometre long, and two
hyposprays and specific dietary guidelines and a box containing my
artwork and supplies and my quilt which I refused to give up. Neelix
didn't even blink. He smiled his famous Talaxian smile and took my arm
and guided me into his quarters. At the time I was standing in the
doorway wondering whether it was too late to apologise to the Doctor
since I wasn't too keen on big changes all of a sudden.

"Tom, I'm so glad you could come and stay with me."

I nervously smiled back, said, "Uh," and ended up sitting on his
couch.

The Doc had a prolonged conversation with Neelix about drug use, the
information contained on padds, how to make an emergency call to the
Doc, Tuvok and Chakotay, should I lose my mind again and Neelix was
unable to find it. (I vote for it being under the couch, in the dust
bunnies.)

There was nothing much more to be said about my first night with my
new roomie. My TV arrived later, pushed in by two security guards.
Neelix had made pizza and basically I sat and blanked out in front of
some cartoons and aimlessly stuffed my mouth. I think I scribbled a
thank you note to Neelix for the pizza and then went to bed. Neelix
was still doing whatever he was doing as it wasn't that late, but I
was used to sickbay and the Doc wandering around so I just closed my
eyes and went to sleep.

==
Entry 34. September 21
==

Neelix has designated me his assistant. I don't have a clue why but
apparently at some point in the last two weeks some crazy soul has
decided that I can be trusted with kitchen implements.

I woke up at 04:30 to find Neelix up and about and working on the menu
for the day. He was his usual cheery self. He must have seen me open
my eyes.

Four thirty in the morning. It was obscene.

"Well, good morning Tom!"

"Uh?" I said sleepily instead of, "What time do you call this?!"

Neelix was waving a padd at me with menus on it.

"I know it's a early in the day but there's hungry people to feed and
a lot of cooking to do."

I didn't have to say a thing then. He must have seen my look of
horror.

"Honestly it's not that bad and I thought it would make a change to
sickbay."

Okay at that time of the morning I'm not exactly functioning on all
thrusters but my brain was having its doubts. The messhall would be
full of people and I hadn't been around people very much. There were
all sorts of things that could inadvertently get me into trouble. Like
knives and open flames. Besides which, I think Chakotay and the Doc
had only agreed because they were hedging their bets on whether Neelix
could keep me *out* of trouble.

Neelix seemed to be able to interpret my uneasiness.

"I'm sure nothing will go wrong and if it does, well, we can deal with
it then. Can't we?"

Sure we can. I'm sure you'll deal superbly with me screaming
hysterically or hiding under a table and crying. It'll be a growth
experience for both of us.

I was wide awake by then and I wasn't going back to sleep any time
soon because Neelix was so perky, he was like a force of nature. I got
out of bed and staggered to his bathroom. The guy had a bath in his
bathroom. An honest to God bath that was recessed into the floor. I
couldn't help myself after that. For 400 years it's been incredibly
bad manners and I should have known better - but I have to admit to
poking around in Neelix's bathroom (sorry Neelix). Talk about
fascinating. The guy had an old fashioned hot water shower. He had a
whole lot of different soaps stacked up around the hand basin, and in
the shower, and bubble bath by the gallon beside the bath and what
looked like a giant vat of mud. Mud. Unbelievably. I stuck a finger in
and found that it was warm mud. The container was obviously heated.

Unfortunately, the sight of the mud made me queasy. As I was standing
and peering at the mud and feeling as if something very bad was about
to happen, Neelix came into the bathroom. I think he must have thought
I'd gone into some sort of a daze while answering the call of nature.

"Talaxians have very delicate skin."

I turned around and could feel myself blushing, having been caught in
the act of sticking my fingers into what seemed to be the Talaxian
equivalent of moisturiser and even worse, feeling really ill because
of it. I know if I'd caught someone in my bathroom fiddling with my
skin care products, I might had been a bit miffed. Neelix on the other
hand seemed to find it amusing.

"An essential for good healthy skin on Talax. I usually try to bath in
it at least once a week but it's also good as a face pack."

Okay, I was standing in Neelix's bathroom while he talked about the
skin care benefits of mud. I didn't know what to say to that
particular statement so I opted for nodding in acknowledgment.

"You should try it while you're staying with me. It's *very*
relaxing."

I didn't quite know what to say to an invitation to wallow in mud
either so I nodded again, then realised that answering the call of
nature was the original reason I was in here. Neelix once more used
his weird Talaxian ability to understand me even though I couldn't
speak and left me alone. He was proving to be like my dog on the
holodeck from that point of view.

After I'd managed take a leak, not drown myself in the shower and
managed to get myself dressed, I followed Neelix to the messhall. He
promptly put me to work as his official messhall assistant. I later
found out that this means that I help to clean up. Surprisingly, I
didn't mind being around all of those people. I mostly stayed behind
the benches in the kitchen. People came up and talked to me, nothing
very dramatic, just to say 'hi' or whatever. Harry was beaming at the
sight of me serving this yellowish stuff that Neelix called,
"prutterfish breakfast stew". I just called it the yellowish stuff.

It was weird being in the messhall. I wouldn't have noticed the
patterns before. People came in and came out in hordes, with
occasional stragglers coming down for coffee or snacks. I cycled food
trays through the dishwasher and wiped down a few tables when it got
quiet. Around 11:00 Neelix started cooking lunch and I helped chop up
some nameless pale vegetables.

I think a couple of years ago I probably wouldn't have liked this. I
mean, I would have put up with it, but I don't think I would have been
thrilled with the thought of being stuck down in the messhall spending
my days cleaning dishes and making food. But today it was sort of nice
to be doing something structured.

About 13:00 Chakotay commed me to meet for our usual session. Since I
was with Neelix we arranged to meet in Chakotay's office. Neelix,
being the deranged mother hen that he is, immediately insisted upon
fixing a food tray of lunch for me and for Chakotay and then also
sneaking in a small basket of cookies, putting a cover over all of
them and sending me on my way. Off down the corridors I went feeling
like a concierge at a hotel.

Got to Chakotay's office and somehow managed to hit the door chime
with my elbow and staggered in with Neelix's offerings. Of course,
irony being what it is, my first sight was of Chakotay stuffing his
face with a burrito.

I plunked everything down on the table, took a deep breath and wrote
on my padd, "Neelix is going to kill me if we don't eat this."

"Hello to you to," shot back Chakotay.

I harumphed and settled myself down to poke desultory patterns into
the yellowish stuff. I sampled a mouthful. It tasted okay but the
problem with Neelix's food is that it not only looks bad, but it also
has terrible mouth feel. 'Mouth feel' is the texture of the food.
Humans have a very loaded tendency towards preferring sugary or fatty
foods. Creamy foods are appealing to a lot of people. That's why
people like mashed potatoes, or peanut butter or ice cream. It not
only tastes good but it feels good in the mouth. Neelix's food does
not feel good in the mouth. A lot of the times it has the same texture
as some of the foods nobody particularly likes, like overcooked watery
vegetables. Or the food ends up being gritty. Or excessively chewy. It
doesn't add up to a great experience. So poor Neelix is regularly
confronted with the sight of some people closing their eyes when they
eat.

I tried another mouthful and gave up. Today it was gritty *and* lumpy.
Ugh.

Chakotay replicated another couple of burritos and then recycled the
trays through the replicator so that they were empty. I felt kind of
guilty but resolved to eat the cookies at least. Neelix is a much
better pastry chef than a general cook.

"How's the first day working with Neelix been?"

I was going to write on the padd again but it was getting to be
tiresome lately. Not that I could talk much at all but I was prepared
to give it a bit of a go.

"O-kay," I managed to whisper out and then realised that was about as
far as I was going to be able to go with the whole talking thing since
my throat went into a spasm that immediately brought on a coughing
fit. Chakotay poured me some water.

I picked up the padd again. "Neelix has me swabbing the decks. You and
the Doc planned this didn't you?"

Chakotay smiled at me. He does that a lot. He never used to smile at
me before, so in some ways, its disconcerting.

"The Doctor and I decided it was about time you stopped moping about
in sickbay and start pulling you weight around here."

Boy, it's a good thing I'm on all of those psychiatric drugs because
in days past I might have taken offence at a remark like that. I
didn't say anything, I just shrugged. Chakotay pushed a padd over to
me.

"It's been a long road back for you physically. No one wanted to push
you until we thought you could handle it."

"I haven't been that bad for a while."

"Compared to what?" asked Chakotay.

He probably had a point. My measurement of my own health is against
what I was like when I first arrived and quite frankly, anything is a
step up from there. I looked at the padd he had given me. Scrolled
through the contents. It was a very structured list for my days.
Things had been leading that way anyway, but this was more like the
schedules I had in prison. I was to help Neelix, go for a check-up
with the Doc every second day, see Chakotay every day, go to the
holodeck, have a nap, eat three meals a day, work on my art and get
physically fit.

I must have made a face.

"What's the matter?"

There was no hiding the fact that I wasn't keen. Once more my face
betrayed me. Gotta work on that consistently happy perky look I had
all those years ago, even when I wasn't happy and perky. That's the
problem with drugs. The side effect is that to a relative degree, I'm
not me any more. Actually I haven't been me for a while. I think I'd
mind more but again, the drugs make it impossible. At the moment I'm
just this free floating entity who wanders Voyager and is here, but
not. I'm on Voyager but I've longed ceased being part of the crew or
anyone who even mattered, except as a potential problem. I'm the guy
security has to go looking for, or causes things to go wrong. It
bothers me in a vague way that I'm sure would be worse if I wasn't
coated in a thick blanket of drugs designed to keep me from turning
back into a gibbering wreck.

"This is like prison," I scribbled, since there as no point in not
saying what was wrong.

This startled Chakotay.

"I'm sorry Tom. I didn't realise."

I shrugged. Wrote to him, "It's not that bad. Not that keen on all the
supervised fun though." Not that I should mind at all considering how
much I've been hovered over by the Doc and Chakotay anyway.

"It's with the best of intentions. We just want you to get well and
part of that is getting back into life. You're ready to do this. We
all think you are."

Such a vote of confidence. It didn't make me feel any better though.
Or stronger. Just vaguely depressed by how much the process of making
decisions had been removed from me. Chakotay could see me thinking it
through.

"This schedule isn't set in titanium. We can sit down and alter it,
work with you on what you want to do."

I shrugged again. Suddenly it all seemed too much. I could start my
life over as Neelix's assistant. There didn't seem to be much of a
choice anyway, despite what Chakotay was saying.

I didn't know how I should feel about it ultimately, so I settled for
pretending I didn't feel a thing.

==
Entry 35. September 30
==

I'm getting into the swing of things. I get through the day on
automatic pilot a lot of the time. The course is plotted and I just
point myself in a certain direction at the start of the day and go
from there.

I don't mind working with Neelix. He's indulgent of my many flaws,
quirks and disorders. The rest of the crew try to be Starfleet
tolerant and interested but I've found that Fleeters get a strained
look on their faces from smiling too much in the face of complete
strangeness. They've been told that diversity is everything, that
everyone has value and then they're faced with it in their own midst
and having to confront the mentally less-than-stable every day wasn't
something they were expecting on a starship.

I saw Naomi a few times. She came in with Samantha. Sam kept giving me
strange looks. Naomi said hello to me very politely but then
practically ran back to her mother. But I guess that's to be expected.

Actually, in a big surprise of the last few months, Tuvok came and
talked to me one day in the messhall. Tuvok was just one of the crew
these days, just someone I occasionally saw, or said hello to, but not
someone on my immediate horizon. Tuvok being Tuvok, he got straight to
the point. He walked into the messhall at around 09.30 when we were
salvaging the messhall from the Alpha shift breakfast hordes and it
was empty. I was wiping the crumbs off a table onto the floor. I had a
pattern. Collect the trays, wipe down the tables, then give the floor
a good once over.

I didn't take much notice of Tuvok, I just figured he'd come in for
some food or to talk to Neelix, except he came straight up to me.

"Mr. Paris, I would like to talk to you."

I was so startled I ended up swiping a load of crumbs right at him.
Then I was mortified. Tuvok brushed himself off and didn't say
anything.

"Umm," I said intelligently and then found myself having an attack of
nerves and proceeded to wring the hell out of the innocent cloth in my
hands. Even when I was my old self I found Tuvok to be intimidating
especially since I knew he saw me as incredibly juvenile, which wasn't
hard since I couldn't help but tease him every time I saw him. These
days I didn't know what he thought but figured if the Chief of
Security was paying me a visit, then I had probably goofed up in a
spectacular way, although I couldn't really think of anything. I
looked over at Neelix in a desperate plea for rescue but Neelix just
smiled at me.

"It's okay Tom. Go and talk to Mr. Vulcan."

Okay, so Neelix's mind reading abilities just went out of the airlock.
Tuvok beckoned me over to a clean table. He waited until I was seated
and then he sat down in the opposite chair and I continued to murder
the dish cloth. I briefly saw Tuvok's eyes flick down to my hands to
watch me twisting the material into a bunched up rope.

"Mr. Paris, I have noticed that some of the crew have been having
difficulties interacting with you."

"Uh," I replied, even more intelligently than the last time. If Tuvok
was any more to the point I was probably going to have to flee the
scene in embarrassment.

"If you remember, I too was in a similar situation when I was fired
upon with an alien energy weapon. There was considerable neural
damage."

I did remember that. Tuvok lost his ability to master his emotions.
When he came up to the bridge he could barely walk in a straight line.
I remember feeling very sorry for him, and vaguely embarrassed which
didn't help in making me feel any better about my own predicament.

"You must understand that illness within the Federation is a rare
event. Almost all injuries can be healed, and those who cannot be
healed are usually cared for in some sort of institution. It is
extremely difficult for someone raised in the Federation to be
confronted with long term illnesses. They have almost no experiences
for them to compare to how they should react. In most species with no
comparable experiences and no dictates such as logic to guide them,
they must formulate a response through trial and error. I believe that
the crew is currently undergoing this in response to yourself."

I nodded and noticed my fingers were starting to hurt so I tried
relaxing my grip on the innocent rag.

"I would like to offer to teach you Vulcan meditation techniques. It
would help you master your own emotions and in some cases it has been
helpful in alleviating the symptoms of mental illness."

It was confirmed. Subtlety was an unknown component of Vulcans. I
didn't know what to say so I just decided to do something useful like
stare at the table top. Maybe he'd lose interest and go away.

When I looked up a minute later, he was still there. Did I have a
choice in this matter? I swallowed and took a deep breath and tried to
relax enough to say a few actual words.

"Tha-nksss. May-be. Later?"

My father would have been proud. It was an answer diplomatically
square down the middle, neither a yes or a no.

Tuvok raised his eyebrow, in the extra special way that Vulcans do. It
generally means they are slightly surprised, as opposed to Janeway, in
which it means she is ever so slightly pissed off.

"I am available when you need me," he said. Then he stood up, nodded
to Neelix and left.

Neelix came over to see if I was okay. I just shrugged and went back
to the tables. Weirder things have happened to me but this one was
definitely up there. Who'd have thought I'd have Tuvok coming to me
and expressing. I guess expressing the Vulcan version of 'concern'? I
don't know what to think at all.

I decided that cleaning the tables was a hell of a lot simpler than
trying to figure all of this stuff out.

==
Entry 36. October 15
==

I get up, I tag along with Neelix, I help clean up, I go back to
Neelix's quarter. Routine is everything these days. I have naps like a
good boy. I see the Doctor for my check-ups which Neelix is quite
fussy about, so they can't be avoided. Harry sometimes takes me for a
bit of a stroll around Voyager's corridors and I think he's angling
for me to pay a visit to the Bridge. He is my exercise buddy which
means doing a work-out every other day. Biking. Unbelievably.
Bicycles. Undoubtedly the Doc's perverted idea. Apparently it's not as
strenuous as jogging and a compromise on the swimming. So we peddle
around these very nice wilderness scenarios that Harry has cooked up
on flat, nicely maintained dirt tracks. Blah.

Oh yeah, I continue to visit the holodeck and play with Lilly, who
continues to be my steadfast holographic doggy friend. I also go and
see Chakotay and there's not a lot to report there. Mostly I just show
him my endless supply of artwork which isn't very symbolic (even
though Chakotay tries his best to read something into them) and then
he talks about whatever is happening around the ship and I tell him
about the highlights of a day that involves defrosting the freezing
units. It's pretty boring although it is also routine. Routine,
routine, routine. I don't mind though. I guess. At least I don't have
an ankle alarm on.

Chakotay wants to know if I've thought any more about Tuvok's offer
but to be honest it scares the crap out of me. Tuvok didn't say
anything about a mind meld to me but it's lurking around there. To me
anyway. Chakotay keeps telling me that if Tuvok didn't mention it then
it's unlikely. Tuvok tends to be a guy who's incredibly up front about
those sorts of things and he would have mentioned it if he was even
remotely considering the possibility.

Okay, I can accept that.

I think the only good news in this unending realm of routine is that
the Doctor is positively thrilled with my physical recovery. He keeps
crowing about his surgical abilities. I think he forgets that I'm the
one out there having to bike around crappy forests all day and lift
weights and do all those stupid stretching exercises and wear the
muscles assistance bands.

==
Entry 37. October 30
==

Okay I've been a naughty Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and I haven't been
writing in you at all Journal Of Mine. But I was too excited. I cooked
breakfast. I made scrambled eggs. And coffee. Everyone liked it, or at
least they said they did. I have a feeling my complaints of the
routine must have worked. Presumably Neelix offered to let me cook to
stop me writing him long notes about how bored I was.

All right. I admit I exaggerated. Neelix helped me. Mostly he helped
calm me down. For some reason I started getting stressed about it.
Would there be enough coffee, would there be enough eggs? What if
someone didn't like scrambled eggs, what would I do? Could I make
toast? What about juice?

Neelix put up with me writing notes to him every five minutes. I
fretted while I brewed the coffee and while I scrambled the eggs. I
was a wreck and it was only cooking a meal for God's sake. Neelix took
it all very stoically for a Talaxian. He just kept repeating the same
words, "You're doing just fine."

It's a testimony to his understanding of the human psyche that he kept
me on an even keel through the entire morning's routine.

Captain Janeway came up to me after breakfast to offer her
congratulations and I just grinned inanely at her, feeling like I was
going to burst with pride. I hadn't felt so stupidly good about
anything since I was five and my painting got three gold stars from
the teacher. She added that we should get back into the old routine of
regular cups of coffee in her Ready Room. Just for a talk (well,
writing from me, and talking from her) and to catch up on how I was
doing.

Neelix hovered about like a proud mother hen and once everyone was
gone said I didn't have to stay around to help him clean up. But I
wanted too because I'd completely messed up his kitchen. Also, I have
to admit I like to be occupied whenever possible. However the whole
breakfast had worn me out more than I thought. I was wiping off one of
the tables and my legs started feeling like lead. Suddenly, I was as
tired as hell. I sat down at the table just to rest and the next thing
I knew I woke up and people were sitting down to dinner.

Neelix said he didn't want to wake me to get me to our quarters and
the noise didn't seem to disturb me so everyone just let me be. I
slept through an entire lunch course. Harry actually ate at my table
and I didn't even stir.

I yawned, blushed a bit, rubbed at my stiff neck. I realised I had to
go to the bathroom badly. I excused myself but Neelix make me promise
to come back and have the dessert he baked for me.

Okay, another advantage to being sick. Neelix's cooking is great these
days because Neelix has decided that I need encouragement to eat. He
coddles me by making sure he makes my favourites, if he can, and
sticking to the recipe. I spruced myself up in our quarters, took a
quick shower, brushed my hair down from the demented professor look
I'd acquired in the mess and went back to -- dramatic drum roll please
-- chocolate cake. With ice cream. Real chocolate cake with thick
gooey icing. It was so good. The Captain appreciated it too. In fact
Neelix made enough for the whole crew and I could tell people were
beginning to appreciate the good side of having an insane crewmate.

The Doc isn't so impressed since people are going slightly nutty
themselves over all of the great food we've been having lately and
he's starting to mutter about the mass weight gain. On me it's a good
thing. On everyone else it's a bad thing. Hah. At this rate they'll
all have to go on a diet except for me.

==
Entry 38. November 1
==

Chakotay congratulated me on my continuing efforts in the messhall.
Today eggs and toast, tomorrow a Jarvian mocha cake. Everyone's
pleased with me these days. Neelix likes having me help out and
apparently (much to my surprise as well as everyone else's) I am quite
the gracious house guest. The Doc is still in holographic heaven over
me (finally) healing. The mental state is also apparently getting its
act together and he's started reducing my medication. No great
breakthroughs on the counselling front but Chakotay and I are actually
getting on incredibly well. That's a slightly disconcerting concept as
Chakotay and I have never exactly had a great relationship, even on
Voyager. I mean, we get along fine from the point of view that we
don't kill each other on Away missions but you wouldn't find him and
me having a drink together. I guess because we're in each other's
faces every day we're getting over all that pent up animosity.

Plus I can't help but feel that Chakotay feels sorry for me. So he's
nice to me. Chakotay keeps telling me that my perception of the
situation is wrong. Yes, he admits, I was a gigantic pain in the ass
in the Maquis. I was arrogant and had the ability to verbally skewer
anyone I came in contact with. I spent my free time drinking, or
gambling or having sex (and on more than one occasion, at least two of
those activities at the same time). He was the serious Maquis leader
who dropped out of Starfleet due to his principles. I was the ex-
golden boy who got kicked out and landed on his rear end. We were
bound to clash. I don't think I had any principles left by the time I
got to the Maquis and I sure didn't have anything resembling self
esteem.

Sometimes we sit in his office and we talk about family. Sometimes. I
don't like talking about my family much but I let Chakotay talk about
his and I get reminded that I wasn't the only one experiencing a bit
of a father/son angst. Except my father is still living and Chakotay's
father got killed before they had a chance to reconcile their
differences. Which is a reminder to myself that while I'm still
breathing and my father is still alive there is a chance to some how
put aside all the shit in our pasts and maybe start again. Then again
the little voice inside my head tells me that pigs might also fly. As
they used to say.

I was talking about Dad once to Chakotay - about the time I first flew
a shuttle when I was eight. As usual this involved lots of frantic
scribbling and after a pause Chakotay said, "Why do you always call
him the Admiral?"

I wrote,"?" on my padd.

"You always refer to him as the Admiral. Very rarely you call him your
father but you never call him Dad or Owen."

I frowned, wondering why myself, now that he'd brought it up. I
considered my answer.

"I guess it gives me distance... If I call him Dad it feels like it
hurts too much."

I shrugged again, once more feeling vulnerable at the mere mention of
my father. The man was in the Alpha Quadrant, still years away, and
the only time I've heard from him had been for about 10 seconds when
Barclay made contact with us. He still makes me sweat because I feel
like I'm about eight again whenever I think of him. I so desperately
wanted him to approve of me (still do) and I could only get that
approval when I was doing something that shone the light on the Paris
name. Hey, he had an eight year old that could fly a shuttle. An eight
year old who had an instinctive understanding of the physics required
to keep the thing level and who could also do the required
calculations in his head, read the navigational charts and get a
course plotted. Some kid.

When I was 10 he started to take me into the Academy to let me run the
flight simulations when they weren't being used. I got familiar with
the helm control of some of the flagships of the Fleet. The Enterprise
for one. Prime posting and Dad was eager for me to get there one day.
I was quite the little performer. Dad used to trot me out to meet
various Captains and Admirals so they could ooh and aah over my
abilities. At home he was always yelling at me to do my homework and
telling me that I was never going to get into Starfleet if I didn't do
my school work. I hated homework, I hated school and the teachers had
been shuffling me around classes to try and work with my learning
style - not that they were having any luck. I wass over excitable and
had a tendency to disrupt things when I was bored. I was definitely
not in the traditional mould of the academic child genius who loves to
study. So I was a total handful at school and pretty much a handful at
home. Then we would go into Starfleet Headquarters and Dad would
transform into the proud father and he'd show off his talented progeny
and I'd dutifully fall into the role of cute blond child genius. I
have memories of various adults in uniform patting me on the head and
then telling my father in amused tones, "You have a very talented son
Owen. He's going to be a real asset when he gets into Starfleet. He's
a natural for the helm."

There was only one person who actually asked me what I wanted to be
when I grew up. It was the Vulcan Ambassador. I was 10 and although I
had seen many Vulcans I had never really interacted with them. I was
trying my darn best to charm him which seemed to work on everyone else
but not on this guy. I could sense that the Admiral was getting
annoyed with me but I was so used to the role of precocious but darn
cute and lovable that I wouldn't stop being a pest. The ambassador
stopped his conversation with my father and then he actually bent down
to look me in the eye.

"I have observed Thomas that you are a skilled pilot."

I smiled and nodded thinking I had at last managed to turn this guy
around. I added my patented Fleet charm which I had learned would
reduce most adults I met to paroxysms of cooing delight.

"Thank you for the compliment sir."

"Tell me Thomas, do you intend to join Starfleet and pilot a
starship?"

It was at this point I said something that was very revealing in
hindsight but at the time I didn't think anything of it - until I'd
said it of course.

"Yes sir Ambassador, I would love to go to Starfleet more than
anything else. It's been my father's dream for years."

For some reason this made him look at me strangely, which unnerved me.
I risked a glance at my father. He didn't look happy. I didn't really
have much of a clue as to what was going on.

"Perhaps later when you have matured, you may reconsider your options.
There are many life callings for you apart from joining Starfleet."

It was my turn to be stunned. This hadn't even occurred to me.
Unfortunately, the Ambassador's subtle attempts at helping me helped
fuel my ambition to join the Federation Naval Patrol. I think that at
that point it was the beginning of the end for both of us. My father
wanted, and needed, his child to remain the star, to shine, to add
another cluster of awards to the family trophy chest. If I'd managed
to stay on that path, then that's probably what would have happened.
I'd be his pride and joy, his very own trophy. I'd probably be serving
on the Enterprise. I don't know what I'd be like as a person. Probably
on the verge of a breakdown. But I'd be in Starfleet, the ever
faithful performing seal balancing a ball on his nose just one more
time. Dad would have been thrilled to bits at any rate. He'd have that
super talented son of his doing special things for Starfleet and he
could glory in all the news coverage as the Enterprise once more came
to the rescue.

Writing that doesn't make me feel any better and I've wandered off the
topic a bit.

I hate talking about my childhood anyway. I like hearing Chakotay talk
about his though. Despite the fact that he and his father clashed,
Chakotay seems to have come to terms with it and moved on. He tells me
stories of his tribe, about his childhood in a culture that eschewed
technology and I'm in awe of his abilities.

Hey, did I write that I am scribbling all of these profound thoughts
with my face coated in mud? Neelix convinced me to let him smear some
on my face. He originally wanted me to take a bath in it, but the
thought made me queasy. So I compromised and now it's drying on my
face and I can feel my skin tightening underneath.

Later on if he decides we need to buff our fingernails and pluck our
eyebrows, I'm out of here.

==
Entry 39. November 5
==

Harry had been asking me - actually he's been nagging me - to come up
to the Bridge and visit. I don't know why because I haven't been near
the Bridge in years. Literally. And I have no inclination to go. Harry
never believes me though.

But he's my best friend and he did come up with Lilly for me so I
agreed to go with him. We got in the turbolift and to honest, I was
very nervous. I am well out of that circle now and I knew that Culhane
had been on the Alpha shift ever since I disappeared and there was
something nerve racking about seeing my old position occupied with
another body.

The doors opened and Harry got out and then realised I hadn't bothered
to get out of the turbolift. I was stuck in there, glued to the walls,
wondering what in the hell I was doing. He gestured at me and
reluctantly I stepped onto the Bridge. Chakotay gave me an encouraging
smile from his chair and got up to see me. I think he noticed that I
was nervous. Captain Janeway seemed pleased to see me too.

Harry took me around the Bridge. It was exactly the same as it was
when I left, so no surprises there. We stopped at the helm, and I
noted with vague intellectual curiosity that Culhane's console layout
was on the lame side. It had a few flaws, like he had a couple of his
thruster controls in an odd alignment, so he had to move his hands
around the console a lot. I didn't know whether to say anything for
not, so opted for not and pretended I hadn't seen it. Culhane
plastered a smile on his face and said, "Hi". I nodded back in
acknowledgment.

It was clear that everyone had simply gone on with their lives. Once
upon a time I was the one of the best pilots in the Fleet. Now I was
the guy in the messhall who cleaned up. Most days I didn't give this a
second thought but today it felt awful. I wasn't the redeemed golden
boy at all, not Janeway's redemption project, not my father's failure,
not an ex-con, not the mercenary for hire, I was just... a person. I
wasn't special, or gifted, or one of the senior staff, or piloting
Voyager. For the first time in my life, I wasn't really identified by
what I did, nor by my talent. I still had a label attached to me which
was: crazy-son-of-a-bitch but it wasn't what I did. It wasn't about me
crossing the line, or not living up to someone else's expectations.

I moved away from the helm as quickly as I could without appearing as
if I needed to be immediately beamed to sickbay. I saw Harry glance
over at Chakotay in that way that he does. He took me over to Ops
where I felt slightly more relaxed and helped Harry run a very basic
scan but it didn't interest me much, except to make me feel as if I
was once more in the performing seal category.

Harry must have noticed that my energy levels were dropping and asked
the Captain for permission to leave. She nodded.

"What are you going to do this afternoon Tom?" She asked me that
question in the same tone I often heard from Admirals when they talked
to somebody on their crew that they'd never met before. Polite small
talk I believe it's called. Only it required an answer, so I had to
scribble on my padd. Chakotay handed her his slave padd to read.

"Just down to the holodeck Captain," I replied, putting on my best
manners. Acutely aware of the total silence on the Bridge as I played
pictogram short cuts for my reply.

"Any particular program?"

"No. Just Harry's farm program."

I saw Harry smile with pride. He was very pleased with himself that
he'd helped me on that front.

"Chakotay has told me all about it. I hear Lilly is a brilliant piece
of programming."

I blushed and nodded. Then Harry said, "Who's Lilly?"

I gave him a frown and wrote, "the dog."

"What dog?"

A more profound silence descended as we looked at each other in
confusion.

"The dog that's part of the program. A big black Labrador, " said
Chakotay helpfully.

Harry was looking worried.

"I didn't program any dog. The only animals in there are traditional
farm animals such as cows and horses."

Oh boy. Ever had that shiver that moves down your back when you
realise that there is something very wrong and you're about to find
out why?

"This has better not be a joke Ensign." It was Chakotay again, in a
very serious tone of voice.

"Commander, I would never kid about this. Are you telling me that
there is a dog in that program?"

Chakotay nodded and Harry rapidly called the whole program up on his
Ops console and quickly tried to locate any tampered subroutines or
strange anomalies.

"The program hasn't been altered."

Everyone started looking confused.

"There's a dog in there. I called her Lilly," I wrote.

Chakotay nodded in agreement. "I've seen it. I think the Doctor's seen
it too."

"And Shaun McDougall," I wrote.

Captain Janeway didn't waste any time.

"Tuvok, get a security team to meet at Holodeck 2. Chakotay, Harry
you're with me. Tom, do you feel up to coming along?"

I made like a good little trooper and nodded.

We got down there in double quick time and Chakotay activated Harry's
program. We strode in and there was the farm, the farmhouse, the
paddocks, the cows and... no dog. Lilly was absent which was strange
because Lilly turned up from the second I walked into the program.
She'd been there every time I turned it on. Even though I knew she
wasn't supposed to be there, it was disappointing and at the same time
scary because if she wasn't part of the holoprogram, what in the hell
was she? We waited for five minutes and then we all left.

Seven and Harry did some research and couldn't find a damn thing and
in the end, the Captain made the decision to have the program
destroyed and so Lilly was no more, whatever she happened to have
been.

I was heart broken but didn't want to tell anyone. Lilly had been
there through everything. I saw her most days. When I wasn't feeling
so great, she'd just come and snuggle up against me. If I had some
energy she'd bounce around and fetch sticks and act like a lunatic.
She'd definitely been part of the reason I'd been getting better and
even though she was probably nothing more than a programming glitch, I
was going to miss her.

A few days later Harry asked if I would like him to program another
scenario with a dog in it but I don't think it would be the same. I
told him I'd think about it, like I told Tuvok I would think about
meditating.

==
Entry 40. November 10
==

I had been moping around the last few days because Lilly was gone.
Neelix has been trying to chivvy me towards good humour by keeping me
busy in the messhall. He lets me cook more often and indulges me in my
quest for the perfect pizza cheese. I've been trying to figure out how
to make the stuff but don't know if my nose is ever going to get past
the smell of milk curdling so we can get curds and whey. For once,
Neelix doesn't look thrilled either. I think it's going to have to be
replicated if we can swing it.

Chakotay asked me if I was interested in getting into a few piloting
simulations on the holodeck. I told him I wasn't.

The Doctor is getting frustrated with my vocal problems and so am I.
Speech therapy is silly and seems to involve making weird noises. To
bridge the gap I have been learning sign language on the side because
it's easier than writing everything down. Neelix has been helping. We
called up some information in the databases on American Sign Language
and we practise at night. We're getting pretty good at it. Mind you, I
can't expect everyone on the ship to learn sign language just to
accommodate me, so Harry and Seven helped me with my idea to modify
the slave padds. We have put a tiny sensor on the front, making them
like a modified tricorder. I can sign, and as long as the sensor is
pointing towards me it will automatically translate what I sign into
words on the padd. Neat huh?

I helped Neelix plan a holodeck party this week. Seems morale is down
and the crew need to be cheered up. Again. Personally I didn't realise
just how much time Neelix spends in trying to make the crew happy.
Quite frankly they're beginning to strike me as decidedly whiny.
Anyway, after we got back to our quarters at about 23:00, we spent an
hour talking over ideas. The sign language makes it a much faster
process. I have convinced Neelix to have a movie marathon. We are
going to make it just like the cinema in the 20th Century. People can
come in and buy tickets and sit down and watch some really terrible
old movies. There will be popcorn and if I can figure out how to
replicate it, a drink called Coca Cola. I've been scouring my personal
collection for the tackiest of the tacky. Movies so awful, they were
awful when they were new. 'Plan Nine from Outer Space' is a given. But
there's also lots of other really crappy stuff like 'Battle Beyond the
Stars'. I can hardly wait.

==
Entry 41. November 27
==

Just when I thought my troubles were finally starting to be over, more
weird stuff happens. I am just grateful that no one can read my
journal because upon reflection, I don't want anyone to know about
this. I know Captain Janeway wouldn't react to this news very well and
she'd probably try and put a stop to it.

Lilly turned up. In the bathroom. When I had my feet sitting in ankle
deep water in the bath. I don't like wallowing in water any more, but
my feet tend to ache after a long day in the messhall. Neelix has the
same problem and recommended soaking my feet in hot water with a few
Talaxian herbs. It does the trick and I seem to be able to tolerate
ankle deep water fairly well.

Anyway, I'm in the bathroom, my legs dangling over the side of the
tub, deeply immersed in a novel call 'Women Warriors at the River of
Blood'. I had vague recollections of having read this book before and
even though it's a Klingon romance, of all things, I'm very fond of
it. Anyway, as our heroine is about to take out the still beating
heart of her almost boyfriend because he's useless at fighting, I
think I hear something.

I look up, straight into the big dopey eyes of Lilly.

For about two seconds I was very pleased to see her, but then it
struck me that a programming glitch in the holodeck shouldn't be
sharing my bathroom. So I opted for staring at her. She gave me a look
and then sauntered on over and gave me a big wet doggy lick on the
cheek and nuzzled my ear.

It was probably lucky that I was still pretty much mute because I
would have called out for help. Big time. And the padd wasn't beside
me. It was in the other room because when I was in our quarters I
could just sign to Neelix, so it wasn't needed so much. This gave
Lilly enough time to stare me straight in the eye and then say to me,
"Hello Tom. Don't be frightened."

Whoa.

Actually she didn't 'say' it to me so much as project it into my head.

At this point I was trying to work up to getting out a scream but
Lilly looked me straight in my very wide eyes and did something else.
I just felt a quiet shifting of the air and it was like my brain had
changed down to first gear on a Ford Mustang and I was slowly cruising
along. Revs turned down completely. It made me feel pretty good.

"Tom, you are probably wondering why I'm here."

No kidding. I think she must have been picking up on my drifting
thoughts because I wasn't saying a darn thing but she was definitely
responding. Vulcans always say humans have very uncontrolled minds but
Lilly must have been sorting all of that out.

"I am your guardian. The Trelereans placed me on board to protect you
from the Grey Ones."

My mind must have gone into burbling over drive at that point. Grey
Ones. What in the hell were they? Those big head guys I'd hallucinated
in my room in sickbay? Again, Lilly answered my questions - sort of.

"There are many things you don't remember from your time away. When
you arrived on our planet we took an imprint of your neural pathways
during one of our surgical procedures and then had our computer
reconstruct these back into working engrams based on your experiences.
Older pathways that had downgraded naturally we did not bother to
restore but we saw many recent memory engrams had been obliterated. We
concluded this was not caused by accident or the simple process of
aging. Once we had reconstructed them in our computer, we stored them
for later use."

I nodded as wisely as I could.

"The Doctor has done well in healing you but your memories have not
completely returned. One of my duties is to offer to you a chance to
remember what has happened to you."

I regarded her warily. I didn't think it was that good a deal.
Something about getting all of my memories back frightened me.

"You are correct Tom. Both arguments, for having the memories
returned, or for having me destroy those memories are equally valid."

I thought, "Couldn't you just use your computer to look at the
memories and then I wouldn't have to have them?"

I was thinking that if they had a computer that could map memory
engrams presumably it could also some how play the memories back
without actually having to stick them in my brain.

"It is not possible Tom. We can only store the engrams as compressed
mathematical models. Besides, although we can store the data, we
cannot interpret it. It is unique to humanoid minds. Ours do not work
in the same way."

My brain had the fuzzy clue that the Trelereans weren't all they
appeared to be. Lilly didn't comment on that thought. Then I wondered
how the Doc was going to download them into my brain should I decide
to remember.

"I would guide him through the process and we would rebuild fresh
neural pathways that matched the map produced by our computer. Then we
would encode the memories back to you. It's a long procedure in
itself."

I mentally laughed at the image of the Doctor being giving
neurosurgery instructions by a dog. Lilly smiled a doggy smile as I
thought it. Then I shrugged, not really wanting to hear anything else.
I was worried that she'd leave.

"My mission is to be with you for the duration Tom Paris. I am here. I
will not leave. The Grey Ones can not touch you while I am here."

I wondered if I should tell anyone that Lilly was apparently an alien
and was hanging out in my bathroom.

"At this point Tom, I think it would be unwise to tell anyone else.
They may not take the information very well."

I thought she had an excellent point. Considering the Captain had the
whole holoprogram shut down and deleted at the mere hint of strange
stuff, keeping Lilly a secret would be good for now.

So I sat with my feet in the bath water and contented myself with
patting the top of her head like I did when I used to think she was a
holoprogram dog and she didn't protest but just lay down and yawned.

Luckily Neelix was puttering around in the other room working on the
upcoming week's menus.

When I was ready to go to bed, having read some more with Lilly
snuggled up to me, I made a move. She woke up promptly, nodded and
then just sort of... faded out of sight.

Oh boy. I sure hope she's not a hallucination or something because I'm
in big enough trouble as it is. When I shuffled my way out of the
bathroom dressed in my t-shirt and shorts, ready for bed, Neelix asked
me casually why I had taken so long. I told him I was engrossed in
reading 'Women Warriors at the River of Blood'.

For some reason when I said that he looked incredibly sad. I asked him
about it, but he just said it was about time I got some sleep.

==
Entry 42. December 1
==

I have been trying to sneak away to see Lilly whenever I can, although
it's hard since I'm still being supervised. However since I am being
such a good little basketcase, they have been letting me have time to
myself here and there, which is great. Earning my privileges like a
good boy blah blah blah. It's like being back home and although my
father and I clashed constantly, I wasn't above manipulating the
system when I had to. Smile nicely, ask in a humbled tone if I go out
with my friends, promise faithfully to do my homework before I left
and help Mom with the dinner. Then I'd go out of the house and play
Parisses Squares or something else that my mother would have a fit
about if she knew, and my father would disapprove of due to its lack
of academic merit.

Good thing they never found out about the night my friends and I got
drunk and spent the next morning throwing up in Kevin's bathroom. Good
thing we all lied and said we were having an all night study session
at Kevin's place and that his Mom and Dad were home. I was quite the
consummate liar during my teenage years. Remember how they feed you
all those lines at school about how you need to communicate with your
parents and honesty was essential? I had learnt very early on that
honesty largely depended on the situation. If my honesty was going to
get me into trouble then it was best to keep my mouth shut.

Later on of course, the lessons learned in my family turned out to
have terrible consequences because in Starfleet telling the truth at
your own convenience was definitely frowned upon. If I'd told the
truth from the start, right after the accident, I would have been
fine. An official reprimand would have been entered into my record and
maybe, just maybe they might have demoted me. If I'd shut up and not
said another thing I would have also been fine. The problem was that I
lied because even though I was a Lieutenant J.G. and 25 years old, I
was also still scared to death of my father and then in an attack of
guilt, and bad dreams, and because of all of those fine Starfleet
ethics that had been rammed down my throat, I confessed. Starfleet
hates finding out its been duped. Dad was livid with anger at me, and
highly embarrassed in front of his peers and staff. I think cashiering
me out was their solution to save his career more than mine. The
Admiral's respect and work would have been compromised with the
continued service of a son who had been caught so dishonourably.
Especially with the Klingons. Besides, who was more important to
Starfleet - a man with a lifetime's service to the Federation and
Starfleet, who had given everything to fight the Cardassians and
actually been tortured for information, who had trained many of
Starfleet's finest, who tutored at the Academy and was known for
producing fine young graduates - or his still wet behind the ears son
who buckled at the first sign of any serious pressure? Clearly, the
Admiral had to come first and my reputation as one of the best pilots
alive was expendable because every year some kid coming out of the
flight training program at the Academy had the makings of being the
best pilot alive. I was replaceable and the Admiral was not. It was
that simple.

It pissed me off. It still does. I could see the logic in the move but
it ruined me. Loril said that in the end I would see it as the moment
I was freed to live my own life but I still say it is the moment that
destroyed what was left of my youth.

Anyway, I found out that Cargo Bay 3 is usually empty, or one of the
storage rooms, or even hydroponics if I time it right. So I sit down
there, Lilly shimmers into view and I spend my spare 15 minutes doting
on her. I've started sneaking her food too. Not that she seems to need
it but she wolfs it down anyway. She's especially fond of Leola Root
stew so there's no accounting for alien tastes. I tell Neelix that I'm
taking it with me as a snack. I just don't tell him it's a snack for
the dog.

It's hard to explain the peace and sanity I feel with her but there it
is. I sit and she lies there and an air of stillness descends on both
of us. We're wrapped in it and for the short time I'm with her,
everything is for once perfectly fine and okay.

==
Entry 43. December 7
==

Captain Janeway has been taking every opportunity to see me lately.
She comes down to the messhall a lot. She happens to bump into me in
the corridors a lot. She reminded me that the invitation was still
open for me to come up to her Ready Room for a cup of coffee. We used
to do regular coffee meetings before I got my butt busted down to
Ensign. That particular ritual stopped abruptly after I disappointed
her. I guess her reclamation project didn't exactly go to plan.

She's angling for something. She manages to work into every
conversation a question about how much I remember about my time with
the Trelereans. I reply to her as honestly as I can, which isn't much.
Do I remember the ship that got me to Voyager? Do I remember what
happened to me before that?

Chakotay usually mysteriously turns up at the same time, or just
after. The Captain seems to think I'm well enough to be interrogated.

She seems irritated with me. Probably because I'm not coughing up the
answers as expected. She's worried about the ship, about the crew of
Voyager and she has been since I got back. I think once more I'm
proving to be a liability to the ship. I don't exactly do anything
useful and they still have to feed and water me and the Doc hasn't
exactly spared resources in trying to knit me back together.
Presumably the one useful thing I can do is remember what the hell
happened but it's the one thing I don't think I can offer up.

==
Entry 44. December 15
==

Lilly is the only thing keeping me sane I think. I'm under a lot of
pressure from the Captain. Strangely though Chakotay and the Doc are
in my corner fighting for me. Chakotay can't do much since in the end,
he's the First Officer but the Doc has really been down and dirty for
me. Chakotay has been keeping me up to date during our lunch time
sessions over the custody battle for Tom Paris that is currently being
waged amongst senior staff. He wasn't going to tell me but then the
Captain was making a point of visiting me nearly every day in any way
she could. The Doctor banned her from Neelix's quarters and sickbay
which she didn't take very well. She wanted the Doctor to try and do
more surgery, something, anything to get all of my memories back.

I don't blame her for being concerned. She wants to protect the people
on her ship and I'm about the only one that may have any answers.
She's become increasingly spooked since the incident of Lilly turning
up in the holodeck uninvited.

I visit Lilly in cargo bay 3 as much as I can during the day. Cargo
bay 2 is where they store Seven. Cargo bay 3 has all the strange stuff
in it so it's empty a lot of the time. Nobody has much need of a
desalination unit nine times out of 10, so it's in here gathering
dust.

Lilly sits down opposite me and knows what's on my mind. It's the
great debate of whether I should do my Starfleet duty and get my
memories back. Part of me, the guilty part, the part that still has a
small inkling of Starfleet loyalty wants to because it might just end
up saving some people. The part of me that has been missing for nearly
two years is more interested in self protection. Nobility is the first
thing to go out the door when a person's in physical or mental pain.
There's nothing noble about pain or suffering or going hungry. It's a
condition you go through at the time and accept because you have no
way out but you don't feel ennobled, or wind up a better person for
it. The only thing that can said for terrible experiences is that one
day you realise you've cleared the last hurdle, that things haven't
been so bad for quite a while and you can relax just a tiny bit. Part
of you knows you can survive terrible things. Another part of you
swears that you'll kill yourself if you have to face it again.

Then again, I don't have to tell Lilly this. She knows it all. She
merely crawls up next to me, sits down hard against my side and I
throw my arm around her and we just stay like that in silence. It's
comforting. She always says the same thing anyway.

"It is your own decision Tom. Whatever decision you make, it is the
right one."

Lilly is very Zen for a dog.

==
Entry 45. December 20
==

I was sitting at a table in the messhall, doodling as usual. I cook, I
clean, I visit Lilly and I draw. Except I wasn't as careful as I
should have been. I was roughly sketching out Lilly. Neelix came over
to see what I was doing but didn't think anything of it. I had drawn
quite a few things from my patchy memory so he just presumed that's
what I was doing with Lilly. He said it looked very life like.

Captain Janeway wasn't so sure. She came in to get some coffee and
came over to see what the resident artist of Voyager was doing. The
fact that I was drawing a rogue holographic dog seemed to grab her
attention. I signed that I was drawing her from memory, the padd
helpfully translated for me. She smiled at me the same way through the
entire conversation which made me suspicious because she rarely
smiles. I guessed it was something of a front to make me feel relaxed.
I decided to ignore her and go back to drawing and maybe she'd go
away. Okay it was rude, but what's she going to do? She sure as hell
can't demote me and the Doctor would throw a complete fit if she put
me in the brig. Which is ironic considering how much he enjoyed seeing
me in the brig the last time.

Alliances and friendships seem to have shifted for some reason. I
couldn't have imagined Chakotay and the Doctor fighting so hard for me
and I couldn't have imagined the Captain so completely prepared to
ignore them. I'm used to being an outsider to a certain extent. Always
was, always will be. Despite my early promise, despite my gift for
piloting I always felt largely ignored. Conversations swirled over my
head, adults were always talking about me, but never to me. Why do
people do that? Talk over the heads of kids as if the kids can't even
hear? That's a little like it is at the moment with Captain Janeway
and the rest. Talking about me, the conversation going on over my head
but not a lot of talking to my face.

I wish I knew what the right answer was.

==
Entry 46. December 28
==

Those weird subspace signatures are back again. Everyone is quietly
freaked out. Lilly is as edgy as hell. She is not as relaxed as she
used to be. She snuggles up to me and does her best to set me at ease
but even she seems to sense that things are not as they should be.
Then again, she doesn't exactly hide the truth from me.

"The Grey Ones are trying to take you again."

I shivered at the news. Stroked her head to try and calm myself down.

"You won't let them will you?" I was getting good at projecting
thoughts right back at her, so it was sort of like having a
conversation. Sort of.

"No. I destroyed the nanoprobes they were using to track you but they
are determined for some reason. I have sent for help. This can not
continue."

I was suddenly worried for the rest of the crew. For others that might
not be so lucky as to have an alien dog creature to protect them.

"The Grey Ones won't... They wouldn't take someone else would they?"

Lilly shook her head slowly.

"I can not be certain and I can not protect everyone. I can not give
you an answer to this Tom. I am sorry."

This unnerved me. It wasn't the news I wanted to hear. At the same
time guilt started building in me again and the answer kept coming
back to letting Lilly restore my memories. There was a chance that if
I remembered what happened, I might also remember something that could
help Janeway figure out a way to defeat them, or at least stop them
from taking anyone else.

She read my mind as usual and looked at me with a slightly startled
expression.

"It is your decision but consider all options Tom."

I nodded, told her I would make sure I had thought long and hard. But
she knew that I had made up my mind. I didn't want other people to get
abducted. I mean, what if it was Harry or Neelix or Chakotay? It
wasn't fair that they could suffer. Even worse, they might not ever
come back. I think I only made it back to Voyager out of sheer, blind,
good fortune. Whoever was taken off this ship the next time would
disappear. Never to be seen again.

I paused. Actually there wasn't anything to decide. I had made up my
mind.

"I'm going to see Chakotay. You need to be there. Chakotay will know
what to do."

Lilly nodded and then for a change didn't disappear. The time for
secrets had passed. I sent an urgent message through to Chakotay from
my padd and he agreed to meet with me in his quarters immediately. I
also sent a note to Neelix to say I had to see Chakotay and I wouldn't
be back for a few hours. Perversely despite the seriousness of the
situation, I felt bad for lumping Neelix with all of the work. I
walked out of the cargo bay and Lilly trotted after me and we walked
off down the corridors much to the total shock of any crew who
encountered us. I swear they didn't know what to do.

When I walked into Chakotay's quarters with Lilly behind me, the
Mystical Warrior had much the same reaction. He was alarmed to say the
least.

"Jesus," he muttered.

"I didn't know you were a Christian," I signed to him, trying to get
him to lighten up. Funnily enough, he wasn't in the mood to be funny
and my joke didn't go over so well. Then again, considering the
history of the native American population on Earth maybe the joke was
never going to be funny.

He scowled at me and then gestured towards Lilly.

"You've got some explaining to do."

Lilly stepped forward and did something like an almost little bow
where she hunkered down on her front legs and then she opened her
mouth, for lack of a better term, and started talking to Chakotay.

He looked like was going to faint. I was worried enough to guide him
to his chair so he could sit down and I got him a cup of tea just to
be on the safe side.

Lilly apologised for catching him off guard but then he seemed to
recover and asked Lilly to tell him her story.

It was funny hearing both Chakotay and Lilly in my head, as thoughts.
Lilly was letting me in on the conversation. She didn't say much more
to Chakotay. Basically there were the Grey Ones. They had been
tracking the ship, waiting to make a move. Voyager's shields were
holding them back to a certain extent but they were due to make a
move. Apparently they were a patient lot. I had been taken once and
they were probably keen to get me back. No one really understood their
motives except that thousands of alien races had experienced random
abduction events and sometimes, just sometimes, the abductees were
returned with vague memories of unpleasant experiments. The Trelereans
had records of disappearances that went back for five centuries. They
had only pieced together the puzzle when their own technology had
advanced enough to pick up the subspace anomalies and they realised
that the abductee phenomenon wasn't some weird cultural hysteria but
an actual event.

Okay, so I didn't know the bit about the experiments. Lilly didn't
bother to elaborate any further.

She went into the bit about restoring my memories. Chakotay looked
slightly aghast at the suggestion but he took it seriously.

"Is this what you want Tom?"

I nodded.

"If you feel an obligation to the Captain..."

I shook my head emphatically. Okay, so I was ambivalent and quite
frankly, more than a little terrified by the concept but I was getting
more sure with every passing minute that I was the only hope for the
crew.

Chakotay regarded me quietly for a few moments then got to his feet.
That's what I like about him. A man of action when he's got a goal in
front of him.

"Okay, how do we do this?"

"The Captain is going to be mad," I signed.

"Why do you think she'll be mad?"

"I lied to her about Lilly."

"Can't be helped. I think the best thing would be if she came down
here."

Chakotay tapped his combadge and politely asked if she would come to
his quarters. They needed to discuss something. The Captain's voice
was its usual neutral self. Neither disinterested or interested. Just
neutral.

The Captain came down straight away. She took one look at Lilly and
went for her combadge so she could call Tuvok and get an entire
security team armed with big phaser rifles to come down and roast
Lilly's butt. Chakotay hurriedly explained everything.

She wasn't impressed. She did that eyebrow thing that she does when
she's annoyed and she had both hands on her hips. She wanted to know
how long I had known about Lilly's continued existence. For once I was
grateful not to be able to talk because I would have stuttered anyway.
I did have the good grace to blush and signed a rather contrite
message that I had known about Lilly for a while. Then I made the
mistake of mentioning you, dear diary, my highly encrypted, extremely
personal journal and her eyes narrowed to tiny slits and I thought she
was going to have me marched off to the brig. I'm not entirely sure
why she was pissed off at the whole concept of me having a private
journal but it certainly displeased Her Highness.

Hell, I hope she doesn't figure out a way to break the encryption on
this thing.

Luckily around this time I started having an anxiety attack because I
was beginning to mix up the Captain with my father and I had been
having trouble bouncing between feelings of loyalty to the crew and
wanting to help her and a certain skin crawling loathing that made me
think she was some Starfleet Admiral in his late sixties.

Oh God, I am so fucked up.

Her attention was diverted as Chakotay got me to sit down and try to
take long, deep, slow breaths and Lilly came over and helped try to
calm me down.

I get the feeling that Lilly is none too impressed with the Captain.
Chakotay had been given a cute doggy bow and a telepathic
conversation. The Captain got growled at when she tried to join the
happy trio of Counsellor, Alien Dog and Demented Ex-Pilot. The Captain
had always considered herself a dog person so I think that added to
the general feeling of unhappiness permeating the room.

Once it looked like I wasn't about to keel over, Lilly took the time
to explain to the Captain. The Captain demanded that Lilly appear in
her natural form as a courtesy but Lilly just said that if she did
that, the Captain's eyeballs would be leaking out of her sockets
within 20 seconds. Well, something like that. Lilly couldn't quite
convey the image but I believe looking upon Lilly in her natural alien
state featured a combination of total insanity and throwing up.
Surprisingly apparently all Trelereans are actually like that. They
turned up in humanoid form for me on their planet and as a dog so I
wouldn't be alarmed. Lilly could supervise me and no one would have a
nervous breakdown when they looked at her. Except for me of course.
I've already had one of those, so maybe I'm safe.

By this time I was getting tired of it all but we had to go traipsing
off to sickbay to break the news to Doc. Doc took it all in his
stride, which surprised us all, and actually became quite excited when
Lilly started explaining the technique to him. Don't ask me how that
worked because the Doc is a hologram but somehow Lilly sort of
downloaded her thoughts to him and seemed to interpret his matrix and
subroutine responses to form a level of consciousness and thought from
the Doc. Too weird.

The only thing the Doc wasn't keen on was taking surgical advice from
a dog. He said he wouldn't be affected by Lilly in her normal state
but she said it really wouldn't be much help since their natural state
wasn't conducive to interacting with any type of humanoid life form
anyway, including holograms. I'm beginning to suspect she's something
really freaky like a big whirling energy vortex or something.

After much conversation, everyone seemed to be happy. Well happier
anyway. The Captain was pleased I was going to try and help figure out
what happened, the Doc was pleased to be able to learn a new surgical
technique, Lilly was pleased that no one tried anything stupid and
Chakotay was pleased that everyone else was pleased. I didn't feel
much of anything, except pre-surgery jitters and no one had even
scheduled it yet.

Of course, it only took around 30 minutes for the Doc to start drawing
up a list of all the things he needed to do and of course, it involved
lots of tests to make sure I can have the surgery.

I'm beginning to regret it now.

==
Entry 47. January 1
==

I spent all day in sickbay. All day! I'm exhausted. Lilly was quite
sympathetic but told me that they needed to do a full work-up on me as
a safeguard. Even got my current engrams mapped for God's sake. I hate
that shit. It makes me tired.

Neelix has been fussing over me since I left sickbay. I'm tucked up in
bed with a cup of hot chocolate, a padd to read and Neelix constantly
asking me if I'd like another peanut butter and jelly sandwich - in
between plumping my pillows, straightening the comforter, plying me
with the analgesics the Doc left behind and asking if I want a back
massage.

If I wasn't so tired already, Neelix would have tired me out.

I'm trying very hard to disguise my nervousness and my feelings of
dread. My decision to err on the side of being a helpful member of the
Voyager crew may have been unwise, or at least ill judged. Then again,
that's what I'm best at. Going for a solution that seems to be
honourable and does nothing but get me into very deep crap. I wish for
once I'd make a decision that didn't wind up with me being jailed,
hurt and/or humiliated.

Of course I can't back down now. Too many people make it a point to
come and tell me how brave I am, how they admire what I'm doing.
Captain Janeway seems to have reclaimed me as her personal pet. She
invited me to her Ready Room for coffee yesterday before I had to go
into sickbay for the day. I was going to decline but in the end went
for some reason I didn't fathom until later. Yeah, just like dear old
Dad I was desperate for her approval and it's probably why I made the
decision more than anything. Anyway, we sat in her Ready Room and we
had coffee and she talked the Starfleet party line and thanked me
profusely for my courage in deciding to help her protect the ship. I
had the good grace to blush at her praise but mostly I opted for
silence - as in not signing and not writing. Actually I accidentally
discovered in her Ready Room that it's a great way to have a little
strategic power of my own. I just let it sit there and didn't make a
move to pick it up. I let her talk at me. I don't think she noticed
that I was ignoring her. Or maybe she did and chose to ignore me
ignoring her.

Neelix has turned on my TV for me. He won't admit it, bless him, but
he's been ferreting out the soap operas from the database. When we
went back to 1996, he got addicted to watching them and I guess in
their own way they remind him of better times with Kes. I'm not into
them but Neelix is such a nice guy I'm happy to put up with them.
Mostly the acting style seems to involve looking blankly into thin air
and then speaking very, very slowly. I read it was because they only
got one or two 'takes' to deliver and the actors had to try and
remember their lines. It's amusing to watch. Neelix takes it very
seriously.

I don't think I want to go through with this now but I don't know what
to say. I don't even know if I should tell Neelix. He'll tell the
Doctor or Chakotay and they're bound to take it all seriously and call
it off. I couldn't face the Captain after that, and I couldn't live
with myself. I don't think I'll be able to live with myself afterwards
though, anyway.

Hell, I've always been in indecisive bastard.

==
Entry 48. January 5
==

I've discovered that growing neural connections is no fun. I went back
into sickbay a couple of days later, after the tests. Apparently the
game plan was to regrow and reactivate the neural connections first.
They couldn't download the actual memories until later. The Doc and
Lilly are still debating whether they should just download the whole
lot in one 'hit' or feed me a few memories at a time. Lilly has
suggested the whole lot as a few at a time might be too fragmented for
me - even though she admits I might find the whole process none too
pleasant. Hey, I don't find it very nice *now*.

No one has asked much about where all of the information on my
memories is going to come from but I am getting the feeling that when
Lilly keeps mentioning the computer where the engrams are stored, she
sort of means herself in some way.

Lilly has taken to crawling up on to the biobed with me and snuggling
up with me under the covers. I suspect the Doc doesn't approve because
even though he knows Lilly is some amazingly superior alien race, all
he's seeing is a big sloppy Labrador spreading fleas around the place.
Well, if she had any fleas.

Regrowing neural networks has made me prone to migraines and they
aren't exactly controllable. For those who had never had the joy of a
migraine, let me share. First off, there's actually two kinds. There's
the classic migraine and the common migraine. The classic is the one
where there's the visual side effects but I don't get those. I get all
the other junk but none of the funky neurological disturbances. Anyway
I get common migraines (migraines without auras) and basically I guess
they're both crap to experience because it comes down to having one
side of your head try and explode. I get mine on the left side of the
head and for those who haven't had one, it's way past a headache. It's
a steady, pounding rhythmic throbbing that feels as if there is one
artery that is quite prepared to try and beat its way out of the my
scalp. Moving just makes it worse. Light makes it worse. Sound makes
it worse. I got my first one helping Neelix in the messhall. Lilly and
the Doctor didn't see anything wrong with me doing light duties
because up until that point I hadn't had any symptoms - and working
would keep me occupied.

At first I thought it was just a headache but it went beyond that
pretty fast. Hanging around Neelix's food wasn't exactly helping
either. Try feeling like there's a hammer around your eye area, that
the sounds are a little bit too loud, the light is a little too bright
and feeling sick at the same time. I excused myself, managed to drag
myself back to our quarters because I was also feeling really tired,
just to top it all off. From there it was instinct. I took a couple of
analgesics, turned off the lights and went to bed where upon I
immediately zoned out and went straight to sleep. Neelix came looking
for me later and I woke up enough to find out I'd been asleep for
about two hours. I didn't really care. He'd turned the lights on which
didn't thrill me. I struggled up enough to grab a cold pack for my
head which was still throbbing despite the analgesics and just went
back to bed, grumpily turning off the lights again, even though Neelix
was still standing there. He commed the Doc who made a house call
since by that time I was in one hell of a bad mood. Migraine was
diagnosed due to some problems with the available 5-HT2 (serotonin)
pool and a dose of vasoconstrictor later to stop the blood vessel
dilation, something to unclump the blood platelets and some stronger
pain meds and I was feeling okay again. Mind you, this meant a trip
back to sickbay for yet more tests.

So now on top of it all I get migraines without any warning. The best
the Doc can currently do is give me a hypospray to carry around and as
soon as I feel the start of one, I'm supposed to use it. It works but
we can't seem to beat the fatigue problem. I still have to go to bed
and I usually just sleep for around four or five hours. I usually go
to sickbay and sleep it off there so that Lilly and the Doc can run
some more tests while I'm out of it. I guess it's better than feeling
like the left side of my head is going to fall off. The sleep helps
because the synapses stop firing when I'm asleep and it terminates the
migraine almost as well as the drugs.

Unfortunately, the Doc and Lilly also can't predict whether the
migraines will go away once they complete the procedures which is just
one more annoying piece of shit on top of my already shitty life. Even
if I did go back to piloting I doubt I'd get certified for the helm if
I get migraines occurring on a random basis.

Chakotay came to sickbay to try to cheer me up and suggested we go
down to the holodeck and start up the resort program, hang out in the
fake tropical sun and relax. I think I told him to stuff the resort
program up his ass. The Doc made 'play nice' sounds at me and then
apologised for my behaviour to Chakotay and told him I would be a much
nicer person once I'd had some sleep.

Only a week more of this and apparently I'll be the beneficiary of
some sparkly new engrams, all prepared to house some slightly dusty
memories.

Oh boy, I can hardly wait.

==
Entry 49. January 10
==

In 30 minutes I go in for surgery and the Doc and Lilly will download
the memories. I'm very nervous. Afraid. Scared shitless. Chakotay and
Neelix are hanging out with me in Chakotay's quarters in an effort to
provide support but it could also be because I probably look as if I'm
about to bolt any second.

I tried distracting myself by drawing but that didn't work very well.
Mostly I nervously sign questions to them both while feeling sick to
my stomach and wondering whether my heart can actually beat any
faster.

After my 500th nervous question which involved the same general theme
(what if I go nuts permanently guys? Will you still be my friends?),
Neelix resorted to sitting me down on the couch, telling me he would
always be my friend and giving me a rib crushing hug and I was so
rattled that instead of pushing him away, I burst into tears and
blubbed like the big baby that I am. Still, crying uncontrollably
passed the time pretty quickly.

Now I have to go.

==
Entry 50. March 15
==

I remember everything. I just don't talk about.

I don't know where to begin with this whole thing. Everything is a
mess. You know, before, I couldn't speak due to trauma and now I can
speak, I don't. I guess I can't be bothered.

It's my own perfect version of hell that consists of nothing more than
memories. My memories are the only thing left of events, the only
record of those months away from Voyager.

People come and go into sickbay and I see them smiling and it's like
they're in another world. A different one where the darkness is not so
easy to see.

==
Entry 51. April 22
==

I realised a long time ago that the average human being is neither
angel nor devil but a mixture of both. We all have our mixtures of
light and dark swirled together inside of us. For those that strive to
be angels, a little bit of dark will always drag them down. For those
that strive to be devils, sometimes a little bit of light pops out
when no one is looking.

People disappoint, betray and hurt - even the good ones. It's the way
we are.

I saw Tuvok this afternoon. He attempts to help in his own way by
trying to teach me how to meditate. I go through the motions but I
can't concentrate and rather than just stopping I sit there, staring
at nothing in particular. Tuvok doesn't say anything, just watches me
with that unperturbed expression on his face.

He suggested a mind meld back in the early days after surgery and I
almost agreed. But then I thought, well I had chosen to get my
memories back and they were my own peculiar form of punishment to
bear. In the end they were all I had, even if those memories seemed to
be killing me all over again. They were there, fresh and alive and
leaking from my skin like tainted sweat.

I said one word to Tuvok. No. I wasn't going to have a mind meld to
help block out all of that emotional anxiety. I'd just spent all those
days getting my brand new engrams in place and now he wanted to take
them away.

I think that's when he figured I was even crazier than before.

==
Entry 52. April 25
==

Harry came to see me. He tries cheering me up. You know, Harry shines.
He's like a beacon he's so bright and I hate him for it. I can hardly
look at him with his smile and his jokes. There are no mistakes to mar
him, no terrible things to show up on his skin in frowns and worry
lines. He's not naive, he's grown up and gained experience but Harry
has always been mostly an angel. He's spent his whole life standing in
the light of warm childhood days and he can't turn that light off, any
more than I can turn it on. It pours out of him.

Looking at Harry reminds me that I'm not part of the world any more.

He brings his Kaltoh game with him. He tries to interest me but I
merely aimlessly stack things without much thought into the process. I
can't concentrate any way. Two moves later the game usually falls
apart. But Harry, as always, merely smiles and talks and tries to act
as if there's nothing wrong.

He tries to get me to talk but what can I say? If I open my mouth or
write it down then I dilute it. The memories becomes words on a page,
inadequately expressed, unable to convey the other senses. There is
smell, taste, hearing, seeing. There are emotions: fear, anger,
resignation. How do I write any of it down and not make it just
another report on Captain Janeway's desk? Not make it a short story to
be read in someone's quarters before they go to sleep - so they can
shake their head and mutter, "poor things" before turning out the
light?

I am not a writer and I never will be and to write about it means to
relive it again. I don't think I could stand that. To have to reach
into myself and lay it out across a page.

==
Entry 53. May 15
==

I was stuck in Chakotay's office again for my daily routine of staring
at nothing in particular. I've concentrated on regaining my bad
attitude, arrogance and smugness. It's always worked before and it's
familiar and friendly. It doesn't make me want to get out of bed any
more than quietly lying there and starting at the walls did but it
makes me feel like I have an anchor. Being like the old Tom Paris
means life is the same as it always was and all of those things didn't
happen.

I've tried getting Chakotay to lose his patience but he currently
remains unflappable. My patented smirking at everything he says fails
to drive him as nuts as it used to. Probably further proof that I am
losing my touch.

But I do try in a desperate attempt to make it like it was in the old
days.

Chakotay gives me small lists for the day of things I need to do.
Mostly it tells me to get out of bed and have a shower. That's
considered a pretty big accomplishment for me. Some times I do,
sometimes I don't. Mostly I go back to bed in sickbay and curl up and
wait for someone to arrive so I can hate them.

Chakotay said, "I found something of B'Elanna's that I wanted you to
see."

That sudden out-of-the-blue announcement startled me.

He put a holographic cube on the table and started it. There stood a
tiny holographic image of me and B'Elanna hugging each other. I was
dressed in shorts and that stupid Hawaiian shirt I used to think was
so damn hot and B'Elanna was dressed in a bathing suit with a big
shirt thrown over the top. I seemed to remember that it was taken
during one of Neelix's party in his resort program. I couldn't
remember what the celebration was for. The holographic me bent down
and kissed B'Elanna's forehead, holographic B'Elanna playfully slapped
at holographic Tom.

I looked at Chakotay silently pleading with him to turn it off but he
wouldn't. He just matched my own stare and looked at me, looking at
the picture of me. The holographic me thinking the universe was a
beautiful place and that I was happy for once. I couldn't stand it. I
couldn't bear to look at it. I watched those two people standing
there, looking happy, looking as if they had something to live for and
I felt this terrible rage inside of me. Something that threatened to
split my skin and emerge as a monster of its own.

I think I must have screamed in anger at that point and I took the
holocube and threw it against a wall. Unfortunately the engineering
was far too good and it wouldn't shut up so I finished the job with my
chair.

Strangely, as I was battering the innocent holocube to death, Chakotay
didn't do a thing. I was completely out of control and didn't stop
until the holocube gave up playing that picture from a time long ago.

Then I just stared stupidly at the shattered pieces all over the floor
and started crying because underneath all of the anger, a part of me
regretted it. I got down on my knees to gather the pieces back up and
wondered if I could fix it. Put everything back together again. Maybe
if I could fix the holocube, then I could fix my life. Just a little.

"Tom, it's okay. Everything is going to be okay."

Chakotay was kneeling beside me.

I decided to speak that day. I was miserable. I was angry. I hated
everything and underneath that I felt empty. That somehow, decades
ago, I had traded my soul and I was only just beginning to realise how
high the price had been. I wasn't anything. I wasn't even a person.

"I hate her. I hate her for everything she's done," I sobbed.

Chakotay put his arm around me and for once I didn't try to get away
from human contact.

"You used to love her," he said quietly.

"No, I never loved her."

==
Entry 54. July 20
==

Doc has given up nagging me I think. He tried various concoctions,
various anti-depressants but none of them seem to work as well as he'd
hoped. I'm still prone to migraines and the attacks are unpredictable.
He used to try and cheer me up in his own unique holographic way.

"Don't you want to get better?" he'd say to me. I don't know why he
thought I cared.

The hardened Paris persona didn't last long. It was too hard to
maintain. Mostly I sleep and I'm fine with that. Eating I don't really
care about and if I do eat it's food that's bad for me. Lots of fatty
foods. Peanut butter sandwiches, ice cream, french fries. I'm sure
it's ruining my arteries. Then again, the Doc probably plugs me with
some artery scrubber in one of the many hyposprays. Or knowing the
Doc, he's going to let me have a cardiac incident just to teach me a
lesson.

Lilly left months ago. Did I ever mention that? No, I guess not. After
I got my memories back and I turned into a basketcase all over again,
Lilly tried explaining to me why she had to leave. I didn't really
understand her, still don't. I guess that they'd managed to get enough
out of me to defeat the Greys. They'd been able to locate the actual
ship, get past its cloaking device and slam it with a few photon
torpedoes. Threat over. It was something B'Elanna told me about the
ship because that one piece of knowledge would help Voyager later. I
can't remember how she found out. They'd taken her away, she'd been
gone for days. Maybe one of the Greys told her just for the sake of
having some fun with her, or taken her to a different place for
testing and she'd managed to get a look at some more of the ship.
Anyway, she told me it looked as if the whole thing was a mixture of
living tissue and some other manufactured material. The living tissue
was bound to give off some sort of signature - an electrical impulse
associated with nerve endings or something. I don't know. I just
babbled on about what B'Elanna had told me and that was what they
needed.

With the Grey ship gone, Lilly's job was done. Turned out she'd been
programmed by the Trelereans to gather information. Sure, her job was
to protect me but she also had a job to return whatever she could find
back to the Trelereans. They'd been fighting the Greys for a long
time. Many of their people had been taken. They were sworn to protect
others from the Greys as best they could, but they also needed to
protect themselves. Once I'd garbled out the essential information
that they hadn't been able to get themselves (since the few that
returned rarely ever recovered their sanity enough to provide any
decent information) Lilly had to leave. I don't think I was
manipulated into agreeing to let my memory be resurrected from a place
it should have been left but that's on good days. On other days I'm
not so sure if I was betrayed or not. It feels like it did when my
father abandoned me at my trial back on Earth.

So I guess maybe it was betrayal.

Chakotay and Neelix try their best to help me, to make me feel as if
there is something to live for but I don't think there *is* anything.
I never counted myself as something to live for - the things that kept
me going were experiences outside of myself. I lived for flying, I
lived to give my life to Voyager if I had to, later I lived for
B'Elanna. I was always a fool for taking the wrong risks at the wrong
time.

I've been deemed too sick to leave sickbay unguarded so mostly I just
lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Or maybe work up enough energy
to type something in this journal. The Doc doesn't say anything but I
notice that he perks up when he sees me scribble something.

Actually, it sort of reminds me of my days between Starfleet and the
Maquis. I drifted from system to system. Sometimes I came back to
Earth and hung out at Sandrine's for a while. She always let me sleep
out back because by that time I never really had any credits to my
name. I'd lie out back and stare up at her ceilings and wonder what
the hell I was doing and then wonder why the hell I couldn't make a
decision to either get on with my life or just cut my loses and end it
all. I was too big a coward to really live and I was too big a coward
to die. And I guess that's always been my main problem.

I've been thinking about B'Elanna off and on, not that I want to. I
don't think I can ever forgive her for putting me in this position.

==
Entry 55. July 26
==

Captain Janeway came down to thank me for defeating the Greys. It had
been a long time in coming - they'd fixed that problem months ago.
Maybe her own guilt was getting to her. She obviously didn't want to
come down and have to talk to me because she would probably be
reminded that her once not-so-fucked-up ex-helmsman was now about two
steps away from drooling out of the corner of his mouth.

The Doc said something to her when she came in. I couldn't hear them.
Very tense exchange with a lot of whispering. I saw her glance over at
me. She's no longer in favour with the Doc. Actually I think he
despises her, if there is such an emotion in a hologram.

The politics have become complicated. She did what she had to do, what
any command officer would have done but the cost has been a little
higher than anyone really wanted to pay.

Especially me.

Anyway, she came over to stand beside my biobed. I was sitting up
trying to eat something and was managing to choke my way through a
peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk that had been liberally
dosed with supplements by the doctor. I hadn't eaten anything but
peanut butter sandwiches for two weeks but the Doc was just going with
the flow. He was just pleased I was eating.

She tried for a sympathetic look. Her Mama Janeway look as someone
down in lower decks once called it. It didn't work on me. I was never
falling for her little deceptions ever again.

"Tom, I just wanted to come down and express my gratitude to you. You
gave us and the Trelereans something to fight the Greys with. You've
saved not only our crew but probably the Trelerean race. I'm going to
enter a commendation in your record."

She smiled at me.

I picked up the glass of milk and threw the milk in her face.

It took her completely by surprise. She just stood there with milk
dripping down her face, her hair wet, caught off guard. She didn't say
anything.

Once I started laughing, I couldn't really stop.

==
Entry 56. August 12
==

The captain had her subtle revenge on me by gradually moving Chakotay
back into heavier duties as a First Officer. He finds it hard to be
with me now, she makes sure he has too much to do. I don't care.
Chakotay is upset but he doesn't have much of a choice. All he can do
is make a record of what's been happening. Something about violating
my rights to humane treatment.

He still tries to see me when he can.

Tuvok is persistent and continues to try and get my level of
concentration up. I do as I'm told.

Neelix sticks by me. Harry does too. But I do my best to drive them
away with my sarcasm and my cynicism and my barbed comments. I started
calling Neelix "Warthog". By his expression, he looked like he didn't
quite know what it meant, but he could tell he'd been insulted. It was
a joke that grew old really fast.

I sit in sickbay. I watch people come and go. I watch the Doc do
whatever he does. Sometimes he does his paperwork in the office.
Updates patient records. He asked me to help once. I told him I didn't
want too.

So here I am. I am truly alone. There is no one. The people I loved
have long gone, the people who remain have changed and left too. No, I
guess that's wrong. *I've* changed. I'm standing still on a street
corner, hiding in shadows and darkness. People stream by me but I just
stand there because I have nowhere to go. I've become a ghost on
Voyager.

The months drag by and they go on with their lives. Neelix continues
to cook and be kind to people. Harry is dating one of the Delaney
sisters at long last. I forget which one.

There is nothing left.

==
Entry 57. September 1
==

These days I can't sleep. I have insomnia. I'm locked in the brig
anyway. I got too hard to manage in sickbay. Turns out the Trelerean's
cure screwed up the neurotransmitters. They're not being deactivated
as they should be. The reuptake function in the synapses are screwed,
the glial cell astrocytes aren't removing them from the synaptic cleft
and enzymatic degradation isn't happening as efficiently as it should.
Apparently that's why I used to sleep all of the time. For a change I
had too much serotonin floating around in my body. That's been cured
though. Now too much acetylcholine has left me with constant muscle
spasms and tremors. The Doc worries about me going into respiratory
arrest which is why I'm back having a monitor glued to the side of my
neck. I tried pulling it off but it's kind of hard to have an act of
rebellion in the brig. The guard just comes back in with a guard
friend and glues it back on. The norepinephrine increase isn't helping
either. Vasoconstriction and increased heart rate. I'll probably blow
a gel pack before too long.

I had a go at punching the Doc's lights out by it didn't work. I also
had a go at taking to my wrists with a laser scalpel while his back
was turned. They stuck me in the brig for my own protection. I'm under
guard 24/7 and no unsupervised toys apart from my padd. I guess they
figured I'd have to be really imaginative to kill myself with a padd.

Chakotay managed to sneak down to see me the other day. Very
surprisingly he was also with Tuvok, which should have set off my
alarms. Tuvok just sort of stood there and Chakotay couldn't help but
mention B'Elanna. He always mentions her at least once during any
conversation that we have.

I'm sick of thinking about her, I'm sick of hearing her name.

"Just leave me the fuck alone," I snarled at him.

"You have to come to terms with this at some point," he replied in
that deceptively calm voice he always uses.

I got up and paced.

"No! No, I don't have to come to terms with any of this! I'm fucked
up. I'm useless. I'm confined to the brig until further notice. I
don't want to deal with it, I want it to be over!"

"Do you want to be dead?"

Oh, good one Chakotay - obviously trying the direct confrontation
approach. I wasn't in the mood for playing nice anyway so I let him
have his answer.

"Yes. If you mean I wish I was dead now, that I hadn't even made it
back from that place, then yeah. I want to be dead."

"You need to stop blaming yourself. You couldn't have saved her."

Not the best comment he could have made. In a rage I threw myself at
the forcefield and bounced back off it.

"You shut up about her! Don't say anything about it. Not one word! You
weren't there, you don't know what happened, you don't know..."

"I know I see someone who survived something that Lilly said almost no
one lives through and now after all of that effort to make it back,
you're sitting there slowly dying through some twisted sense of
guilt."

"Shut up!"

"I am not going to shut up. For once I am going to do what I should
have done with you years ago. When you were in the Maquis. When you
were practising being a royal pain the ass I should have realised you
have an almost perverse need to punish yourself for everything. I
should have found out a way to knock some sense into your God damn
thick head..."

By this time I was past being rational. I stuck my hands over my ears
and went and stood in a corner with my back to him. I'd ignore him.
Then he'd go away.

Unfortunately not. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Someone had let down
the forcefield. I whirled around ready to punch him but Chakotay,
being a reasonably intelligent sort of guy, had figured out I was
probably going to try and land my fist somewhere on his body.

I forgot that Chakotay knows how to box and he knows how to defend
himself. He caught my fist easily, then before I knew it my left arm
was up behind my back and he was wrestling me over to the bed. I was
screaming in rage like I was about to be murdered.

We landed in a heap on the bed, me face down, Chakotay on top of me
and then he more or less sat on me while I had what could only be
described as a temper tantrum. While I was screaming I was vaguely
aware that Tuvok had joined in.

The security guard must have freaked out because between screaming and
trying to throw Chakotay and Tuvok off there were a few more people in
the cell.

"Commanders, what are you doing?!" I think the Doc was there and he
wasn't impressed.

"Trying for once in my life to make something right. Now can someone
help me hold him down?"

"Commander, I really must protest..."

"Doc, please just give me a chance here."

"I think he needs a sedative."

Another couple of guards were grabbing at my limbs and with Chakotay
managed to roll me over. I managed to spit at one of them which was
about as low as you can go with fighting but luckily I missed.

"Doc, I'd like you to give me a chance. Look at him. He's stuck in the
brig, he's probably never going to get out. He volunteered to help us.
We owe him a chance at a normal life."

I didn't hear the Doc after that. He must have left.

I struggled on for a while but it's hard fighting three guys and the
bad diet and lack of sleep hadn't helped. Eventually I didn't have a
choice but to lie there feeling like an idiot. Nobody let go of me
however. Tuvok stepped back from the fray.

Chakotay bent over me.

"Okay, let's talk."

"Let's not."

"We're not going anywhere until we have a sensible conversation."

"Forget it. I'm insane remember? It's going to be hard to get a
sensible conversation out of me."

Tuvok added his two credits to the conversation.

"Mr. Paris, this is not resolving the situation. I have concluded,
along with Commander Chakotay that this cannot be allowed to
continue."

"I see - I don't really get a say do I? I'm just going to have to get
better whether I like it or not."

Tuvok didn't reply. He beckoned the guards out. Actually he made them
leave the room. I didn't like what was happening. It was suspicious.

Chakotay gripped my arms and Tuvok placed his hands on my head.

"I hope you understand later Tom, but this is for your own good."

I tried to struggle but Tuvok was already initiating the link. His
hands on both sides of my head, the words droning at me. "My mind to
your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts."

"You can't do this to me!" I'm not sure if I said it or thought it.

I wasn't exactly new to the experience of a meld before. I'd had Tuvok
wandering around when he'd been trying to clear me of murder. But at
the time he'd been strictly to the point, only going for the memory
that had been artificially implanted by the Benari. He was polite
about staying away from the rest of the swamp that contains what
passes for my personality. This time he didn't have the luxury.

A mind meld is a bizarre experience. There's an awareness of your own
consciousness but there's also somebody *else* sharing it. A whole
other person who instantly knows everything about you, about who you
are. Actually the person probably knows even more than you do because
they can view it as an unbiased outsider and make sense of it.

The first time Tuvok and I melded it was very straight forward. He got
in and got out. I wasn't as aware of his presence then. This time he
was well and truly there.

You know when you're aware that your dreaming but you can't control
the dream? It's like that.

Anyway, my subconscious interpreted what was happening in its own
peculiar way. I found myself looking up at a very tall Tuvok. Or I was
shorter. Or something. Then I was aware that although I was in
Starfleet uniform, it didn't fit. In fact the sleeves came past my
hands. Except, of course in dream logic, even though I appeared to be
around nine years old, it made perfect sense. And we were standing in
my bedroom. Actually Tuvok was standing on the parts of my
construction set. The one I'd been using to build a replica of the
Enterprise and consequently had spread out all of the floor.

"Tuvok?" I said. Or maybe I thought it.

Tuvok nodded in acknowledgment that it was definitely him.

"You're standing on the port nacelle of the Enterprise."

Tuvok looked down at his feet and politely stepped to one side. The
port nacelle was never going to be the same though. He'd squished it.
I'd have to replicate a replacement.

Still, there were plenty of things to do in my room. It was my
sanctuary from the world and I was pretty good at entertaining myself.

"Hey Tuvok, you wanna help me finish the model? I just had to snap
some pieces together so it won't take very long."

"Thank you Mr. Paris but I think we have other concerns."

I snorted at that in amusement. He called me Mr. Paris. Nobody called
me that except some of Dad's friends at his work but then they also
thought it was hilarious to call me Cadet Paris.

"Aw come on Tuvok, Dad won't be home for ages yet and Mom's out
helping with some charity event. Come on, it'll be fun."

Tuvok shook his head.

"Well if you don't wanna help with the model we can do something that
you wanna do. I've got loads of other stuff you can play with."

"No, we must go. There are other situations to deal with."

It hardly seemed fair that I was in my own bedroom at home and all
Tuvok wanted to do was go somewhere else. I hurried over to the
computer terminal and called up some of the games that I'd downloaded
and that Dad had brought me back from his trips. Games were a
phenomenon that could be found over most of the Alpha Quadrant
although there were some that I was banned from downloading. My mother
had a fit when she caught me playing some Klingon game where the
winner was the person who beheaded the most enemies.

"I have some really cool games. I've even got some Vulcan logic
games."

I was starting to feel a little desperate by this stage. Tuvok didn't
seem to be swayed by my dazzling toy collection. Most kids I knew
couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest game I'd managed to
acquire. I was the games king in my school at nine.

Tuvok held out his hand. "It is time to go."

I frowned but took his hand anyway and walked out the door with him,
through the empty, but always very tidy house. Went though the kitchen
and waved at out live-in help, Molly, but I don't think she saw me.

We left the house, through the front door. Mom and Dad were walking
down the street to our place. There was a public transporter system
down the block and Dad was always into putting in a good appearance
for the general populace and insisted on taking the public system
whenever he could.

They were taller than Tuvok even. They both looked about the same as
they always did. I waved at them, pulled out of Tuvok's grasp and ran
towards them to say hello. They were talking to each other and they
didn't seem to see me. I called out as I went, running full tilt.

"Mom! Dad!"

They kept on talking to each other, oblivious to my presence. I tugged
at Dad's sleeve as they walked past me. That got their attention. They
stopped. Dad looked down at me and said, "Tom, we've very busy people.
You're supposed to be doing your homework. Now can you leave us
alone?"

Then they kept walking down the street.

Tuvok was beside me again. I still wanted to run after my parents but
Tuvok was insistent and I knew that no matter what else, I trusted
him, probably more than I trusted my parents. Still, I was reluctant
to go with him because I knew that it was all down hill from there.

He took my hand again, which seemed a perfectly normal thing for him
to do and led me down the street. As we walked it got darker, the
street seemed to change. Things floated on by, others bits of my life.
Bizarre didn't begin to cover it. Somehow we seemed to be walking for
ages and I was getting tired and then we took a wrong turn and wound
up in my cell back in the New Zealand penal colony.

That crappy, pokey, horrible cell with the broken air recycling system
that no one ever fixed correctly so that I sweated in summer and froze
my butt off in winter. Actually, I was kind of fond of the place
sometimes. Not very often but some days it wasn't that bad. Ah, the
modern 24th century jail cell. I had my bed in one corner, a set of
shelves, a desk with a computer terminal on it, a chair, a teeny tiny
bathroom out the back which gave me some privacy and a replicator that
got activated when we were locked up for any length of time. It was
all very clean and neat. Not all together cosy since one cell was like
the other. We were allowed various pieces of artwork on the walls or
house plants and photos but I couldn't face doing any decorating
because I'd have to admit to myself that I was in there for a while.

Tuvok looked around the cell with the Vulcan version of curiosity. I
hadn't managed to get any taller.

I slumped down on my bed since I didn't think we'd be going anywhere
soon considering there was a forcefield between us and the corridor.

"Mr. Paris, although this is an interesting diversion I think it is
time we moved on."

Yech. The guy was stuck on a one note speech.

I gestured to the crackling forcefield. Yeah, like we were going
anywhere. Besides, according to my duty roster that had somehow
conveniently displayed on my computer terminal, I was due for my usual
daily routine of fixing routine junk for the Federation.

"We must go."

"Tuvok, don't you have anything else to say?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"No."

I was getting annoyed. I crossed my arms over my chest.

"Well, *I* might not want to move on. So there."

I think he might have sighed at that point. I always did manage to
annoy Tuvok more than anyone else.

He sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. I think he had
temporarily run out of ideas.

"I do not want to use force."

Oh, that was comforting. He didn't want to use force. Statements like
that confirmed my theory that underneath it all Vulcans were no better
than anyone else. They were just as prepared to play power politics as
the rest of the galaxy, they just didn't want to admit it.

Before I had a chance to protest, he grabbed my hand, tightened his
grip and literally started pulling me up and out of my cell. The image
wavered and darkened and darkened some more. As far as I was concerned
he was about to throw me to the wolves. I could feel a headache
starting. However, as much as I struggled and tugged against him, the
stronger Tuvok seemed to get. I was dragged across a million
landscapes. Memories from here, memories from there. My childhood
vacations in which we'd all try to play happy families, Risa, my first
posting on the Exeter, uncles, aunts, cousins, sisters, friends,
teachers, crewmates, captains, commanding officers... All blurring
together, flashing together and popping off like fireworks.

Then we were there. On the edge with B'Elanna staring up at me,
getting ready to die.

I tried going back the way I'd come but Tuvok had somehow turned into
a rock. His feet were glued to the ground. I didn't want to see any of
it. It's not like the memories were repressed, or they were something
I didn't remember. I remembered it all very well. Every damn second.
When I woke up after surgery and I started remembering compliments of
my new engrams, there wasn't one portion of this experience that was
remotely fuzzy. I remembered it all in one hit in sickbay, told
Janeway what she needed to hear, and slowly lost my mind for the
second time in two years.

"I don't want to be here," I said.

Tuvok relented a little at that point. He bent down to stare me in the
eye.

"I am here with you. We have formed a telepathic bond. My strength is
here to protect you."

Well, Vulcans almost never lied so I believed him. So I stepped
forward and found myself right in the middle of it all.

You know what's ironic about the whole kidnapping by the Greys? The
bastards got a two for one deal because B'Elanna and I got transported
out of my quarters when we were in that blissfully fuzzy post-coital
state right after sex. If they'd waited another 30 minutes, B'Elanna
would have left for her duty assignment in Engineering.

I like the phase after sex the best. Did I mention that? I mean sex is
really, really good but the part afterwards is better in my opinion.
The endorphins have kicked in, both parties are relaxed, feeling
pleased with themselves and in that drowsy, sweaty state. At that
point it's as if there are only two people in the entire universe and
the universe consists of a double bed.

I was spooned up against her, lazily kissing the back of her neck. She
was quietly laughing to herself and teasing me about getting up and
eating some food so I could get my strength back for another quickie
session. That's the great thing about Klingon women. They regard sex
as just another contact sport.

It was at that point that things got weird. The lighting in our room
started flicking erratically. B'Elanna started cursing the engineering
team and was getting up when we both felt the pull of a transporter.
But not standard Federation issue. It was nothing we'd ever felt
before.

I watched the room disassemble itself and then the next thing I knew
both of us were standing in a puddle of goo on some squishy surface.
The lighting was dim and there was a smell. It was the smell of
rotting meat and it was the smell of death.

It was rank and we couldn't get away from it.

It took a moment to recover out senses. Tried not to gag at the smell.
Of course, being Starfleet officers we tried to figure out where we
were and how we could get out. But it seemed we were stuck on this
small space. I tried exploring the outer limits of whatever we were
stranded on and it seemed to be about as big as our bed back on
Voyager. There was an edge but I wasn't keen on stepping over it. I
had put my arm out over the edge but couldn't feel anything. Then we
had the bright idea that I could hang onto B'Elanna while she tried to
drop over the side. The goo didn't exactly provide any traction but
with some effort I took her weight and she slipped over the edge to
try and find some sort of step or something. No luck and in the dim
light there was no telling whether we faced a six foot drop or a sixty
foot drop. Worse, occasionally we thought we'd hear other sounds.
Cries. Moans. Screams. It spooked both of us.

Everything was the colour of grey.

But yes, we were Starfleet officers and there was no giving up yet. We
wondered if we were being watched by someone. We tried talking to our
captors, if they were out there, but we didn't have our combadges so
there was no universal translator.

After several unproductive hours the only thing we had left to do was
sit down and try and think of what to do next.

The gel we were standing in was disgusting by the way. It was slimy
and a disconcerting match to our body temperatures. We sat there in
silence for a while, eventually realised we weren't shivering from the
cold. The air temperature was tropical and we hadn't really paid much
attention while we concentrated on our dilemma and used our training
to hold off a good bout of hysteria.

I made some lame joke about how our captors had at least made it comfy
for naked people but B'Elanna gave me a look that said she wasn't
impressed.

B'Elanna's never been fond of having to wait and in this case, that
seemed to about the only option we had. No obvious means of escape and
we didn't even have a very good idea of where we were.

We compared notes on the transporter effect and knew that if we'd been
transported onto this ship, then if we could locate the transporter
again we'd have a way back to Voyager. We hoped.

So we sat and waited and B'Elanna started getting frustrated and more
frantic to find a way out. I think days must have passed. We tried
sleeping but it meant lying down in the goo. I tried it once and gave
up. We tried sleeping sitting up but that was next to useless. We
didn't seem to have any food or water.

The lack of water was starting to have its effects too. We'd been
getting headaches due to the dehydration. The skin on my lips was
starting to crack.

The first half of the third day (I think it was the third day, it was
hard to tell), was the day they came for both of us.

It's hard to explain. The Greys came down - these weedy spindly little
creatures that barely came up to my waist. They were so pathetic
looking that days of tension caught up on us and B'Elanna actually
laughed. No doubt she was probably thinking she was going to snap
their bodies in two. They floated on down, just past the edge of the
holding area, delicately dropped down to stand before us. Two pairs of
big almond shape black eyes stared at us, two big bald heads looked us
up and down.

Later on, I really dreaded those balletic moments from our guests.
Their cat like grace became incredibly threatening. At the time
however, I was also fighting back an urge to laugh. I guess we were
both a little hysterical from three days of being in a small space
without food or water and not knowing what in the hell was going on.
I'm sure if Chakotay was there he would have given us both a stern
lecture on maintaining Starfleet protocol and not laughing at your
alien captors.

Gathering my senses I approached one of them to make First Contact
like any good Starfleet officer. That's when one of the little guys
waved some wand device at me and I found I was paralysed. Then I was
flipped on my back like so much cargo and then I was floating up
towards some sort of light at the top of the roof (if it was a roof).
I heard B'Elanna calling out my name as I floated but I couldn't
respond.

So we got to the light and I was unceremoniously grabbed by some more
Grey people and hauled off down the corridor (still floating)by my
hair.

I got hauled down the corridor, my heart rate rising, scared to death
as I saw Greys floating by me, over my head, or I was aware of them
floating beside me. I saw other species float by over my head like
they were in an airspace stack. Some seemed to be alive. Others I
wasn't so sure. I realised that I was in a kind of giant cargo
transport system. Bodies were rushed backwards and forwards to
different rooms and places.

I was eventually put into a room. I was slightly relieved to have
stopped my journey. Then they dumped me on that table and about a
minute later I realised that I was in serious trouble. The table was
covered in various monitors and as they strapped me down, I glimpsed
instruments and needles and things I didn't want anywhere near me
while I was conscious. I was scared to death. More scared than I'd
ever been. I freaked out at that point and started screaming, then
felt a Grey's finger in my mouth, trying to force some sort of brace
in there. I bit down, which didn't go down well and I had a brief
moment of triumph as the Grey had a turn at screaming in pain. I
decided to just keep clamping down on that long, slender, disgusting
set of fingers. Another Grey attacked my mouth with some sort of metal
stake or something. They managed to get it slipped under the gap where
the current Grey's fingers were trapped and used forced to lever my
mouth open. That's when they cracked two teeth and with my mouth open
they shoved in a clamp to keep it that way. Later on, they pulled the
teeth out with some pliers.

One of them was trying to thread something down my nose and when they
started on me in earnest, I started screaming again and didn't stop.

"I am with you."

Oh, Tuvok. I forgot about him. I felt his hand tighten around mine.

"I want to go home," I sniffed. "I don't like it here."

He seemed to agree with me at that point. He nodded and everything
melted away.

==
Entry 58. September 2
==

Tuvok opted for terminating the meld at that point, having deemed it
unwise to proceed until I had a chance to recover slightly. He slowly
backed away from my mind and as he did I thought I could see a band of
glowing silver that followed him as his presence faded. I knew
instinctively that he'd left the telepathic link in place. Just enough
to remind me that he was there to back me up when the going got tough.
That had to be unusual in itself. It takes a lot for Vulcans to
maintain a link with someone they're not bonded with in the
traditional sense and I didn't know why he wanted to bother in the
first place.

The link reminded me that it was only logical that he try to help me.
Vulcans did make a habit of valuing life, God bless 'em.

When I opened my eyes, I just stared at him desperately trying to
ground myself and stop the shaking. I knew it was unusual for a Vulcan
to terminate a meld at mid-point.

"When you are stronger," he said simply. He looked slightly shaken
himself, so the scene had managed to get to him as well.

In those next few minutes there was nothing but silence. I stared at
Tuvok. Tuvok merely stood there returning my stare. Chakotay sat
beside me. We didn't speak. I don't think any of us knew what to say.

Part of me wanted to beat Chakotay into oblivion for forcing me into
this and there was another part, a new part, that was a combination of
Tuvok and me. That part said that beating him up wouldn't accomplish
anything and he was only trying to help me.

The new part was a different feeling. It was solid and grounded and,
well, logical...

What in the hell were we getting into?

I decided that actually talking would be a good idea. I cleared my
throat and tried for a coherent thought and turned to face Chakotay.

"You know, I remember it all so I don't know what you and Tuvok hope
to accomplish."

Chakotay shrugged. "We thought you might have some issues to deal
with."

I glanced up at Tuvok. He wasn't volunteering any information at this
point. Chakotay stood up to leave.

"I'm going to get you something to eat. Any preferences?"

I couldn't think of anything. I shook my head.

He crossed over to the replicator and I heard him order tomato soup. I
hadn't ordered it in a long time because in my entire time aboard
Voyager the damn computer and the replicator had never managed to get
tomato soup right. So imagine my surprise when he brought back a bowl
that actually contained hot, plain tomato soup and the replicator had
also thoughtfully scrounged up fresh buttered bread.

I couldn't believe it.

"Neelix went on a quest to find the perfect tomato soup recipe and
then Tuvok and I wrestled it into the computer."

"Aw, gee guys and it's not even my birthday," I quipped in an effort
to hide the misty eyed feelings I was getting.

Chakotay smiled at that and sat back down on my bunk. Nobody seemed to
be inclined to go anywhere. For some reason observing Tom Paris in
captivity had become the afternoon's entertainment.

Just when I was about to get fractious about the lack of privacy, the
link mellowed me out again. So instead of snapping out some unkind
comments I took a mouthful of soup.

It was wonderful. It was just right. It tasted the way my fantasy of
superior tomato soup tasted - the fantasy I'd had since coming aboard
Voyager. It was a tomato soup made by the top chefs on Risa using
tomatoes hand grown by a tiny old lady in Tuscany.

That seemed to start of a chain reaction of extreme piggery not seen
since the Klingon homeworld's mass celebratory banquet of 2355. I
scoffed down the soup, made moaning sounds of pure ecstasy and nearly
had an orgasm from the bread, if that's actually possible. My God, I
was never eating anything else ever again. I was going to live on the
stuff.

Tuvok appeared to be smirking to himself but I think I was probably
imagining that because smirking isn't on the top 10 list for traits
Vulcans most admire. Then again maybe some of my own winning
personality traits had temporarily rubbed off on him. I also wondered
whether my renewed interest in food wasn't a result of some help by
Tuvok and the link. However, that thought was promptly run down by the
desire to get a second bowl of the soup made by the Food Gods now
resident on Voyager.

I stood up and wobbled my way over to the replicator and ordered some
of my own. With the same result. Yay! It wasn't a fluke. I scarfed
down another half a bowl and a few more bites of bread before my much
shrunk stomach reminded me it was due to explode.

If I had a belt around my pants I would have had to loosen it.

I went and sprawled out on the bunk (Chakotay helpfully moved
himself), aimlessly rubbing my stomach and feeling sated and my
memories of the Place were temporarily distracted and although not
gone they were somewhere else for a while. Nothing like distracting a
person with food.

At some point I dozed off and when I woke up, someone had put a
blanket over me and I was by myself again.

Although not alone any more. That feeling was still there, the one of
being grounded, and under it all was the slightest hint of Tuvok.

==
Entry 59. September 3
==

I had a nightmare that night. I think it was worse because now instead
of vague images, I knew what everything meant, what everything
symbolised.

I woke up, covered in sweat, breathing rapidly and wanting desperately
to just walk off the adrenaline pumping around my body. But I couldn't
because, of course, I was still stuck in the brig. So I got up and
just paced around the floor instead. The guard on duty asked me if I
was okay and I nodded at him but didn't say anything.

Tuvok commed the brig around that time. Unfortunately my nightmare had
managed to wake him up too. Poor guy. The guard let down the
forcefield so I could go and talk to him on the security console.

"Do you require assistance Mr. Paris?"

"No. I'm okay. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"There is no need to apologise Mr. Paris."

I didn't know what to say and as usual, the words backed up in my
throat. Silence temporarily made its presence known and I felt
uncomfortable, not knowing what else I should say.

"I'm really sorry Tuvok," I said again. "You should go back to sleep.
'Night."

"Good night Mr. Paris."

I glanced at the chronometer on the console. It was four in the
morning. The comm link was broken and I went back to my little cell.
That's the good thing about Tuvok. He wasn't going to try to get me to
talk. Anyway, he didn't need too - there was that whole mind meld
scenario. Why force someone to talk in a counselling environment when
you can plug into their mind?

Okay, that was unfair. Tuvok was trying to help me and he was under no
obligation to initiate a mind meld with me. He'd almost gone
permanently insane after melding with Lon Suder, and I don't think the
Doctor would have been too keen on him doing it all again by linking
with me. It really was above and beyond the call of duty.

The problem was, despite Tuvok's obvious sacrifice to help me, I still
felt as if I was being pushed into something. That I had no choice. Or
maybe it was the fear talking. I was scared to death. I was doing my
level best not to think about the Place, about anything to do with it,
about B'Elanna. I wanted to forget it all, find a way to squeeze it
out of my brain, to make it go away. You see, if I stopped thinking
about B'Elanna, if I forgot about anything to do with her, then all of
this pain would stop.

She did this to me. I hated her for it.

==
Entry 60. September 4
==

A few people came down to visit me later that day. Harry paid his
usual visit and seemed to be pleased that I was calmer and able to
hold a conversation with him. His previous visits had been an exercise
in masochism for him. He'd come down to say hello and it would start
me off on a 20 minute screaming rant about nothing in particular.

He played a piece on the clarinet he'd been learning for a recital and
gave me a long winded exposition about his new found love life with
Megan Delaney. That boy has got it bad. He practically glows. What am
I saying - he's done the glowing thing with that alien woman he had
the affair with. Heh. Anyway at the moment he's very happy. He's
decided that he's found true love and his life is now perfect. He is
also over his Seven infatuation so he's acting like he just kicked a
major drug habit. I just bit my tongue and tried not to say anything
sarcastic and made a polite apology for my previous behaviour.

He looked a little embarrassed and said that there was no need for me
to apologise because he knew I didn't really mean it and then the boy
bounced out of the brig. Something about having to go and get some
star charts from Megan. I think this is the only time I've ever seen a
person thrilled to have to go through the forward navigational charts.
I always regarded as a necessary evil for the job.

Neelix popped down and I apologised profusely for my inappropriate use
of the word "warthog" in relation to Neelix's appearance. Neelix
laughed it off and said he didn't even knew what it meant when I'd
said it. He'd had to go and ask the computer afterwards. Then he said
that although he didn't have tusks he could see *some* resemblance and
he also added that since warthogs seemed to feisty, tough little
creatures he thought it was bordering on a compliment. That's Neelix
summed up. I don't know many other people who could make a joke about
being insulted.

He'd also brought a care package with him. He'd baked me some cookies
and brought some extra padds loaded up with some novels and games. My
own padd was blank in that area. Naomi had drawn me a Get Well card.
Naomi had been out of my realm of existence for some time now but
Neelix had vaguely mentioned one night how tough it had been on her.
She couldn't quite grasp just why Tom Paris had seemed to have changed
part of his personality several times over. Neelix said she missed me.
She wanted to go on another shuttle mission and kept asking when I
could fly again.

I didn't know what to say since I thought flying might be on a
permanent hold for a while. I compromised and said we'd probably do a
flight simulator on the holodeck one day. Neelix said he'd pass that
message on and that one day she'd like to pay me a visit.

My mind put two and two together and finally realised that they'd
probably been keeping Naomi out of my way for a good deal of the time.
Had I seen her in the messhall when I'd been down there? I couldn't
quite remember.

Anyway, Neelix stayed for an hour. The forcefield was down for most of
the time although I could see the guard poised to turn it back on in a
moment's notice if I started getting my insane look back on my face.

After Neelix left I tried making small talk with the security guard
for something to do but we both seemed to mutually and silently agree
that we weren't very good at small talk and I played some of the games
on the padd Neelix left me, did some reading, wrote in this journal.
Then I started to get a bored and I had the bright idea that the
computer could download some of my music to the brig. As I wasn't
exactly being punished for anything, and I guess the guard had been
told to indulge me, I got my wish. He played it through the security
console and I have no idea what he thinks of Van Halen but several
times I think he looked like he wanted to flee in terror. Half way
through the track 'Jump' he remarked that Klingon Opera was better
musically but after an hour of constant exposure I think he came
around...

Actually the time passed pretty quickly that day.

The only down side to the entire day was the arrival of the Doc who
was unimpressed by Van Halen the moment he walked in. But he didn't
make me turn it off. He'd only come down to run a routine scan and
take another blood sample so he was gone in under 15 minutes.

The guard's name, by the way, turned out to be Kevin. I hadn't met him
before but then I didn't exactly hang around with anyone from security
for fun. He seemed a tolerant kind of guy and he'd have to be since
after Van Halen I called up Placebo and Nirvana. The later stuff from
the last years of the 20th Century gets a lot grimmer in tone and
sometimes, you just gotta listen to something that doesn't pretend to
be happy. After that Kevin was converted to my way of thinking and he
started reviewing my music entries and going through the selection.

Chakotay walked into the brig to the sight of Kevin and me grooving
down to the magnificent sounds of Frank Sinatra. Kevin seems to be
obsessed with the song 'New York, New York'. I think I'm going to have
to develop a holoprogram for Kevin featuring Las Vegas in the 1960s
and let him go nuts. Underneath it all Kevin's got a Rat Pack thing
going.

The Commander just stood in the entrance of the brig and stared, open
mouthed, as Kevin let loose with his inner lounge singer. It's not
often that someone from security is seen miming to Frank Sinatra and
trying to tap dance. He'd watched some video footage of movies from
the 40s and 50s and by this time he'd put two and two together and
figured everyone tapped danced as well.

I was trying very hard not to laugh. Chakotay was probably wondering
who'd slipped in the drugs. Kevin, totally immersed in the song, 'I
Get a Kick Out of You' didn't actually seem to have realised a
commanding officer was observing his unsecurity like behaviour.

To his credit, Chakotay just turned around and walked out. I guess he
figured that having to baby sit me was enough to drive any sane person
totally insane and Kevin was entitled to have his moment of blow out.

Besides which, watching Kevin pretend to be Frank Sinatra was a great
distraction.

==
Entry 61. September 5
==

It was inevitable that everything was going to get very serious again.
I'd improved a lot after Tuvok's first attempt at a meld. Enough to
begin eating regularly and calm down a fraction. I began to get more
talkative over the next few days and Kevin the Security Guard and I
got very chatty. The brig forcefield came down for extended periods. I
got overly active as I tried to think of ways to not think about the
things I didn't want to think about...

I didn't try to kid myself. Most of my 'cure' was due to Tuvok's
subtle influence coming through the telepathic link but I couldn't
complain.

After five days, Tuvok and Chakotay came down for another visit.

At which point I distinguished myself by becoming slightly hysterical
and begging Kevin to activate the forcefield so that Tuvok and
Chakotay couldn't come and get me. To his credit Kevin looked sorry
for me but didn't take any notice of my pathetic attempts to avoid the
inevitable. He did leave though, so that Tuvok and Chakotay and I
could share our quality time in privacy.

Tuvok could sense my ever increasing panic. Part of me knew it was
okay, part of me felt the same base emotions I had felt on one
occasion in Auckland when I'd pissed off the wrong people. I wanted to
get out at any cost.

Tuvok closed his eyes, concentrated, and I suddenly felt calmer. And a
tad manipulated.

"There's no escaping this, is there?" I asked knowing the answer. It
was a lame attempt at humour but even with Tuvok's help it was the
only thing keeping me together.

Tuvok sat down beside me, gently put his hands on my head in the
traditional mind meld position.

"My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts..."

I was back again.

Back in a blank spot in my brain, standing beside Tuvok and finding
out that my subconscious had made me short again. Damn it. I didn't
enjoy being a kid the first time around and for the second time into a
meld my subconscious had reduced me to a nine year old. Even my
subconscious hated me.

I looked around the boring and off-white surroundings of my mind. It
was quiet. Very, very quiet.

"We must talk," said Tuvok.

"Okay," I said and before he'd even started I wondered when he'd stop
so I could go and play with the rather nifty toy model of The
Endeavour (Captain Cook's ship) materialising off to one side.

"You need to stop distracting yourself."

"Uh huh," I said and wandered over to another appealing item. A well
stocked aquarium with a collection of fresh water tropical fish
swimming around.

Wow, the blank, boring bit in my mind was turning into a playground
before my very eyes. Cool. I was beginning to love the way my
subconscious worked.

Even better, a plate of some very bad fried food was making its
presence felt. I heard Tuvok sigh behind me.

"I just don't want to go," I said to him while stuffing my face with a
jelly filled donut. "I remember everything. I don't need to remember
it again. I just want to forget about it. Just forget every damn
thing."

He nodded wisely. "I understand. But you can not hate her forever."

"Yes I can," I said and ran off to play with my best friends from
school.

Tuvok valiantly walked after me as I ran around my distractions, from
one to the other, doing my best to stay away from him.

Unfortunately at that point my own subconscious tripped me up and I
found myself face to face with a Klingon girl who looked to be about
seven or eight. She had a stance that said she'd hit me as soon as I
put a foot wrong but I thought I could be friends with her anyway if I
persisted.

"Hi, my name's Tom. What's yours?"

She didn't reply but concentrated on sizing me up, judging whether I
could be trusted or not.

"B'Elanna," she replied and didn't elaborate any further. She still
looked like she was going to hit me.

"I've got a lot of really good games and stuff," I said as an opening
bid into the conversation.

"So?"

"You could play with them, if you liked."

She frowned at me and I showed her over to a game of Ping Pong. I gave
her a paddle and initially she was confused by it and missed the first
few shots. Then she got frustrated and threw the paddle at my head.

"Hey!"

"You think it's funny I can't hit the ball!"

I shook my head at her. "No I don't. It just takes practise that's
all."

She seemed to reconsider my intentions and went and retrieved the
paddle that had skittered past me and we went back to playing. She got
better after that and then she was really good. I liked helping
B'Elanna and showing her how to deal with her Klingon temper. In a way
it was a purely selfish act. By helping her, I felt like I was helping
myself - doing a good deed for someone. She was just as dysfunctional
as I was and she was another person that had just as many flaws as I
did. I felt like I'd found a kindred spirit and it was someone who
needed help even more than I did. For once in a relationship, I kind
of felt like the grown-up.

Tuvok stood beside us and watched the ball being smacked around.

"It is time to move onto other things."

Like hell. I ignored him and continued batting the ball across the
table to B'Elanna. Unexpectedly Tuvok simply walked forward, grabbed
the ball and threw it away. Then he firmly grasped my shoulders and
propelled me away from the B'Elanna and the table.

"Stop it!"

He didn't say anything and B'Elanna faded behind me. Tuvok just kept
walking me forward. Somehow as we walked I ended up with a large
uncapped bottle of whisky in my hands. A distraction that had worked
many times before but I hadn't really had the chance to indulge in it
due to my almost constant supervision in the real world. Tuvok kept
nudging me forward and I took the opportunity to take a mouthful from
the bottle.

Ah, my old friend. A friend that had stayed by me through many long
days and lonely nights. Through lack of money and lack of ambition and
a screwed up lifestyle, my friend alcohol had stuck with me for a long
time. I always knew I could climb back in if I really needed too.
Loril had nursed me through my phase as a recovering alcoholic and I'd
learnt to avoid the stuff but part of me had managed the process by
promising if things ever go too tough, I could always go back. Some
how I'd always managed to convince myself that things weren't *that*
tough and besides I had my piloting duties to consider. But this
seemed like a good time to welcome back a bad habit.

I took another mouthful, felt the liquid warm my throat and my
stomach. Actually felt deeply grateful for that feeling.

We stopped walking. Tuvok raised an eyebrow. He had a nine year old
clutching a bottle of whisky. He firmly removed it from my grasp and
threw it away.

"That does nothing to help the situation," he told me rather sternly.

"You're not my father!" I shouted back at him and made an attempt to
get away again.

"No, I am not."

I was getting mad at him now. I was sick of adults always telling me
what I could and couldn't do and feeling increasingly angry I kicked
him in the shins.

"Let me go! Let me go!"

"Mr. Paris, please calm yourself."

I'd give him some calm all right. I'd give him calm that would rattle
his Vulcan demeanour enough to get both eyebrows climbing off his
forehead.

I threw myself down on the ground, somehow feeling even more
vulnerable and even smaller that I had a few moments ago and had a
fully fledged two year old temper tantrum. I screamed, I cried, I
kicked, I wailed, I held my breath.

It was pathetic, it was primal, it was a last ditch attempt and I
eventually ran out of steam. When I opened my eyes, Tuvok was sitting
down on the ground, waiting patiently for me to get a grip on myself.

"I do not believe that was very productive," stated Tuvok. He stood up
and I knew I didn't have any options left. I had to go with him.

It happened in a blink. We were back there. I guess my subconscious
had admitted defeat and Tuvok had finally nudged me into remembering
again.

Looking around at the Place, at that little space that B'Elanna and I
shared, at the ooze around our feet, I felt sick. I was in pain. It
was like someone was taking a knife to me and cutting my skin open.

Instead of forcing me forward, Tuvok was now, once more, propping me
up.

I didn't want to be here, I didn't like it. Why the hell was he making
me go through this? Was he some sort of sadist?

I couldn't make my legs work any more. I just stood and stared at the
scene, knowing what would play out.

"I will carry you, if you require it."

I wasn't sure how Tuvok was going to carry a fully grown adult in his
thirties but then remembered that I was just a kid at the moment. I
nodded and he simply picked me up as if I weighed nothing. I put my
arms around his neck, concentrated on the shape of his Vulcan ears and
somehow it seemed to make me feel better.

Not a lot. Just a little.

He stepped forward and I was flat on my back in the goo. I don't know
how long we'd been there by that time. Weeks, maybe months had gone by
- I wasn't certain about that but it didn't matter as every day was
all the same anyhow. They'd use us, test us, hurt us and put us back
in the holding bins for a while. B'Elanna and I had unfortunately
discovered that the gel we were forced to lie in also doubled as food
and water and a sanitation system. You could take a mouthful of the
stuff and it'd keep you alive. It somehow renewed itself and carried
away waste. It tasted foul. We wouldn't touch it until we were
desperate.

Of course, through all of this time we'd been holding our impending
sense of doom at bay by telling ourselves that Voyager would rescue
us, or we'd find a way off the ship. Sometimes neither of us had any
energy to talk, or even to move. Every so often though, they'd leave
us alone long enough that we could compare notes. B'Elanna talked
about energy signatures and living ships and made me remember whatever
she said in case I found a way to use it when she wasn't around. She
was sure she'd seen the room where they kept their transporter system.
I thought I'd seen the same room. They used it to move large numbers
of 'cargo' around the ship. I had vague memories of being transported
to some other part of the ship for testing and B'Elanna was pretty
sure she remembered where it was in relation to the upper level
corridor we were always floated into. If we could figure out a way to
avoid having the grey guys paralyse us, we might just be able to
escape.

Then again, we were kidding ourselves and we knew it. Neither of us
had the energy to sit up for long periods of time, let along over
power anything, even a stick figure alien. But hey, we kept telling
ourself one lie after another, vigorously denying reality because in
Starfleet survival courses they always told you that if it was a
choice between reality and fantasy, the fantasy would probably keep
you going a lot longer.

We plotted and talked when we could but I think each of us knew we
were fighting a losing battle against desperation and depression. Once
we resigned ourselves to our fate, we were as good as dead. Then
again, I was beginning to feel as if death would be a very welcome
change of pace.

The Greys took us again and spent their time figuring out, with my
help, just how much pressure it took for human bone to snap. My left
leg was a mess. Every bone in my hand had been broken. Some ribs had
been cracked. They dumped me back with B'Elanna and I could only lie
there, sobbing in pain. B'Elanna wasn't in such great shape herself
but she tried to make me feel better even if all she could do was talk
to me.

She talked to me about escaping. I told her to shut the fuck up. We
were never going to get out of here. We were going to die. She told me
that it was the pain talking. I ignored her.

As I drifted in and out of consciousness, wondering when I would get
to die and it would all be over with, I realised they were continuing
to take B'Elanna. They took her three times while I just lay there, my
bones starting to heal, unable to get away from the pain in anyway
even when I managed to sleep. They'd made sure the breaks hadn't
caused a compound fracture so the risk of infection was reduced and
that the break was clean but that was about it.

The third time she came back she didn't move and she didn't answer
when I called her name. I managed to shift myself a little, turn over
a bit.

When I looked at B'Elanna I knew that I was right. We were going to
die here. There was no rescue. No Voyager. No last minute saves.

Her hair was gone. There was a scar running down the back of her head.
Her right eyelid had been sealed shut and to my horror, I realised the
eye was gone.

We had felt panic when we were kidnapped and we felt panic every time
a Grey came to collect us. But we never really lost it completely.
Every time they came down to us, we tried to maintain our dignity. We
tried to do that brave Starfleet thing and contain our need to beg for
mercy. But now... Now I was feeling something beyond panic. I felt
inadequate as a person and just plain stupid. I was supposed to be
doing something, to be thinking up a rescue plan! That's what Tom
Paris did. I may have made some terrible choices in my life but I
redeemed myself with my actions. Dangerous mission? I volunteered. Had
to fly out of a tough situation? That's what I did. I'd done it before
- pulled a last minute save out of the hat. I'd do it again. I *had*
too. Because that's what Dad would have done. His crew was everything
to him and he would have figured out a way to rescue his crew. He'd
have looked at the situation and found some way, any way to get them
out. He'd have sacrificed himself if he had to. And I would have to.
If I had to die for her to be saved I would die. But Dad had always
been tougher, braver and smarter than I could be in a command
situation and here I was, once more failing to live up to his
standards. And B'Elanna was more than my crewmate, she was my lover,
the woman I wanted to spend my life with.

Only I hadn't planned on our lives being so short.

She woke up a few minutes later. She started crying. I had never seen
B'Elanna cry. I tried to hold her but it was hopeless. She cried for a
long time and they were tears of anguish. She knew it too then. That
it was almost over.

I started to babble on to try and calm my own fears.

"I'm going to get us out of here," I said to her, trying to sound
determined and strong but my voice was wrecked by the things they'd
done to me and it came out as a whisper.

She seemed to find my statement amusing.

"Only one of us is getting out of here."

"That's not true! We're going to make it. I've just got to get to the
transporter room. I'll get help."

I swear to God she snorted at me in disgust.

"I'm dying and you know it."

"I'm not leaving you," I replied, trying to sound determined.

That got her mad.

"I'm damned if both of us are dying in this hell hole you p'taq."

"B'Elanna, please, I..."

"Look, you're in better shape than I am. I think they're leaving you
alone until your bones knit back together. You might not get another
chance and this is going to be the strongest you'll ever be. One of
them comes down here, you grab that wand and you get out."

"Stop saying that. We are *both* getting out."

She gathered her strength enough to snarl at me.

"Stop running away Tom! I'm dying anyway and one of us has to get out
of here. You damn well promise me that you're going to survive and
you're going to make sure Voyager knows what happened to us. If I have
to die in this place then I want to go knowing that you're going to
live through this. You've spent your whole life messing everything up
and this time you are going to grow a fucking spine and you're going
to damn well live."

I didn't have anything to say to that. I guess she figured she'd say
whatever it would take to get me motivated, even if it meant getting
me angry.

Her eye closed at that point. I could hardly move but I managed to
bend forward to kiss her on her forehead. She didn't stir. There were
no choices at that point in time. I couldn't move very well, B'Elanna
was unconscious. I would have to wait until they came for me.

I wiggled some more through the goo, managed to draw up beside her,
nudge her head so she wasn't face down in the stuff. Rested my
forehead against hers and drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up she was dead.

So there it was. No wonderful goodbye scenes. No last minute terms of
endearment. No pledges of undying love. Just a tense conversation,
some silence and the quiet exhalation of her last breath while her
boyfriend slept beside her.

I hated her for dying. I hated her for making me be the one to live.

I was vaguely aware of Tuvok's presence again. He was kneeling beside
me in the same goo watching B'Elanna's lifeless form with me. He
placed a hand on her head, brushed the hair back in an almost tender
fashion.

"Goodbye B'Elanna Torres. Your life is remembered and we honour your
life. Your courage and skill served Voyager. Your warmth and
dedication is not forgotten by Tom Paris. Your death was not without
cause."

I stared at Tuvok. I stared at B'Elanna. I felt sort of numb. Is that
what Tuvok and Chakotay had been raving on about all this time? They
wanted me to have a chance to say goodbye to her?

I took a deep breath and let it out. I felt shaky but again, I felt
Tuvok's quiet presence shoring me up. What did I say? What could I say
that wouldn't sound inadequate? Something told me to go with the flow.
All of those things I'd been keeping locked inside of me decided they
needed a chance to come out.

"I wish you weren't dead. I wish I'd found a way to save you. I could
have, if you'd let me. I could have found a way out and the Trelereans
would have rescued you. They would have."

I was starting to cry. I wasn't sure if I was crying from anger or
sadness. It seemed the same to me. I was miserable all over again. I
some how found the courage to put a hand on her face and stroke the
ridges on her forehead. She was still warm. I couldn't believe the
universe was this unfair.

"I want to say good bye to you but if I say good bye, that's it isn't
it? You're dead and you won't ever come back. I hate you for it. I
hate you because you left me here, all alone..."

I gathered her body up into my arms and hugged her and cried.

And at some point, Tuvok very gently terminated the meld and let me
be.

==
Entry 62. November 3
==

It took me a long time to forgive her. A long time. For days after
Tuvok terminated the meld, I just lay on my bed and concentrated on
hating her. But it was hard to keep the hate going. I sort of
understood why I hated her now. Didn't make it any better but I
understood it. Every time I had this over whelming urge to subsume
myself to hating B'Elanna something would remind me that hating her
wasn't very productive. I think it was Tuvok's influence still. Hate
wasn't a very logical response to death.

I think she realised that given a choice I would have preferred to go
out with a heroic last act and let her have been saved. I could have
died knowing I'd been the hero and at the same time I wouldn't have
had to be the one to survive. Only she wasn't going to let me, and
fate picked her to be the one to die first anyway.

So I managed to escape. At the time I wanted people to know what
happened. But it was the only vaguely rational thought I had by that
stage. They'd managed to get me a few times after B'Elanna had died
and that's when they started messing with my brain. The only memory I
had left of B'Elanna that was coherent was her order to get out if I
could. The Greys dropped by the planet to steal some more Trelereans
for whatever sick reason, and I bailed by catching a Grey off guard
that had come down to collect me and kicking him hard in the head.
That's all it took to kill him. I grabbed his magical paralysing wand
and got myself out of there half on instinct and half remembering
B'Elanna's direction to the nearest transporter.

Chakotay and Tuvok got into trouble with the Captain. They went behind
her back and she was furious. Still, Tuvok is her oldest friend and he
was wiped from the meld so she restrained herself from kicking his
butt. Chakotay wasn't so lucky and he was removed from duty for three
weeks. I think he was glad. He came down and sat with me in the early
days when I was calmer but still quiet.

The hate went away gradually. I calmed down enough to be let out of
the brig, my neurotransmitter levels corrected themselves. Tuvok
offered to help me meditate again and I went back to studying
techniques with him. I could concentrate for longer and it did seem to
help. I thanked him for his help. I thanked him a lot actually and he
was amused and annoyed that every time I saw him I expressed my
eternal loyalty and undying devotion. He said it would be thanks
enough if I recovered my health.

I still remember him walking me through B'Elanna's death - the memory
of her death - and propping me up enough to let me deal with it. The
first few seconds after we came back to the real world I was so shaken
that I grabbed his hand and held it as I had in the dream state we
were in. He let me, which can't have been easy for a touch telepath.
Tuvok kept explaining in his Vulcan way that he would have done the
same for anyone in the same circumstances as it was logical. The only
thing I could think of to do for him is to learn how to cook Vulcan
food. I think I've got Plomeek soup under control. I think Tuvok likes
it. Neelix however isn't so sure. He finds Vulcan food to be an
affront to his taste buds.

A few months later after that day in the brig, I mourned B'Elanna's
death all over again. That was hard. Chakotay thought a memorial
service for the crew would be a good idea - one that had me in
attendance. I managed to get up and say a few words but it just about
bounced me back to square one again. The Doc gave me some sedatives
for a few days after that.

So here I am. A different person from who I was a couple of years ago.
A different life. Whatever was driving me before - my desperation to
prove myself, my insecurities, and my self loathing appear to have
gone simply because there's no need for them any more. I've stopped
running away from myself and it's taking time to learn what it's like
to be just Tom Paris. Tom Paris without a label. Tom Paris the
Ex-Convict is gone. Tom Paris the Pilot is gone. Tom Paris the Rogue
is gone. Tom Paris, lover of B'Elanna Torres is gone. There's almost
nothing left and it feels strange to be an adult and not know who I am
any more. The only thing I know is that who I was before didn't make
any sense.

I officially requested to resign from Starfleet, which Captain Janeway
granted. I thought I might be asked to leave Voyager but that issue
was never raised. As I wasn't an officer any more, or a member of the
Bridge crew I had to give up my quarters but Neelix said he didn't
mind my company so I room with him on a permanent basis. I kept
working with the Doc. I find it more difficult to learn some of the
medical texts I have to read but ironically now that I'm not
distracted by piloting, I concentrate on them better. I also continue
to help Neelix out with cooking and planning morale boosters and I'm
pretty good at it and I enjoy it.

Ironically, Harry was the person who was most upset at my resignation
from the Fleet. Not to mention the fact that I quit piloting. I don't
think he could quite understand why I'd done it. He kept trying to
talk me out of it. I guess Harry has always wanted a Starfleet command
career more than anything so he can't quite understand someone
reaching a decision to walk away from it. After a few weeks of my
refusal to change my mind, he stopped talking about it, but I don't
think he accepted it.

I have a few mementos that I kept from B'Elanna's quarters.
Occasionally I get them out and look at them and Neelix sometimes
reminisces with me. The pain is still there but it's fading and Neelix
and I will be remembering some incident in the messhall between me and
B'Elanna and instead of it hurting to remember, it feels good to
remember.

Perversely I became best friends with Chakotay. Harry thinks it was
late in happening. He thinks if we'd been more mature we could have
been friends back in the Maquis. I have a new friend in Kevin, who now
shares my love of 20th Century music. It's nice to have more friends
because I'll probably need them. Harry is getting serious with Megan
Delaney and I think they might actually get married so he's a bit more
girlfriend focused at the moment, rather than guy stuff focused.
Chakotay thinks it's funny, especially when we caught Harry saving his
replicator rations for three metres of pink tulle. He's trying to whip
up some amazing dress for Megan and the project he thinks is
incredibly secret is known by the entire ship (except for Megan of
course).

I'm quiet these days. I talk but I don't have a lot to say and I'm not
that inclined to sarcastic comments any more. Maybe that's why
Chakotay and I get along so well now.

I don't see much of Captain Janeway. Sure, I see her down in the
messhall sometimes and I get her a cup of coffee and we exchange small
pleasantries. But I see it in her eyes. I am just not in her sphere of
attention any more. I'm Neelix's assistant. Her personal reclamation
project ceased to be of interest the day he was no longer capable of
offering Starfleet anything worthwhile.

Sometimes I wonder what Dad's reaction will be when he finds out I'm
not in Starfleet any more but these days it doesn't seem to so
important. I don't care much for what he does, or doesn't think of me.

Loril was right. I did find my own way in the end, even if it was cut
through the pits of hell.

I'm writing this sitting at a table in the messhall before the lunch
crowds start. The Doc came in to tell me I'd passed an exam just
before. He smiles at me now. It's a little scary.

Neelix is calling me to come and help him defrost something.

Gotta go.

---

The End