Psychotic Academy

It had been a long day, Cadet Hill thought. He had been going through the final stages of his general training aboard Spacedock, shadowing a traffic controller for the last three days. Tomorrow, he was due to switch across to the administration office. Now, however, he could go back and catch up with his sleep. Unfortunately, that meant having to endure a twenty-minute turbolift ride to the base of Spacedock, where the cadet quarters were located. Still, it would give him a chance to start relaxing. When the lift arrived, Hill entered, and was pleased to discover that he was the only occupant. Gratefully, he slumped against the side of the car, and sank to the floor, closing his eyes and grinning.

His grin ended when the car slowed at the next floor. Clambering up, he rapidly dusted down his uniform, just in case it was a senior officer. The doors parted to reveal Cadet Graham. Hill stifled a groan with some difficulty. Although he hadn’t actually seen much of Graham since their experience on the camping trip, he’d heard horror stories from some of the other cadets about Graham and his antics. And now it seemed that they were to spend the next twenty minutes in a confined space together. Hill was about to make for the exit when the doors closed and they were on their way. This time, Hill didn’t bother to even try making conversation, but just leant against the turbolift car and pretended that Graham wasn’t there. He found it hard in the confined space of the turbolift, and found it even harder when Graham began to hum to himself. Hill listened as Graham went through Beethoven’s Fifth at high speed, followed by the main themes to ‘Evita’, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and ‘The Magic Roundabout’. He felt about ready to attack Graham.

They descended through the shaft, with Graham humming away, and Hill watching as the deck numbers dropped away agonisingly slowly, and wondering whether his sanity would hold out long enough for him to escape the turbolift. Blood seeped out of his clenched fists as his nails cut through his skin in an effort to stop himself from assaulting the other cadet. He began to fixate on the bars of light that swished past the view-panel in the side of the turbolift. He became mesmerised by them, watching avidly as, when one disappeared, there was a pause before the next one appeared. Just as he was about to slip into a hypnotic trance, there was a loud bang, the turbolift jerked, and the lights stopped swishing. Hill snapped out of his trance just as Graham deigned to say, “I think the turbolift’s broken.”

Frantically, Hill fished out his communicator, flipped it open, and said, “Cadet Hill to Spacedock Control. Do you read? This is Cadet Hill to Spacedo…” There was a squeal of static, a sudden burst of voices, then a louder voice overrode them to say, “Toilets or turbolift?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, where are you? Toilets or turbolift?”

“We’re trapped in a turbolift. What’s happening up there?”

Hill did not like the sound of things one bit. The answer didn’t make him feel any better.

“We’ve had a massive power outage all over Spacedock. The Nappyrash is jammed between the space-doors, and there are people trapped all over the place in toilets, turbolifts, you name it. We’re trying to get the power back on-line, but, until we do, I’m afraid you’re stuck. Just sit tight and wait for the power to come back on.”

“How long is that likely to be, exactly?”

“Who can say? Couple of hours, perhaps?”

Graham began to hum again. Hill looked at where his communicator was smeared with blood, and decided that he couldn’t hold out for an hour, let alone a couple.

“Um, Control, is there any chance of getting us out of here sooner? It’s kind of important.”

“Sorry, cadet. I’m afraid you’re stuck there. Have a nice day.”

Flipping his communicator shut, Hill looked at Graham. The cadet had stopped his damn keening again. Good, Hill thought. Perhaps we can make it through after all. Then, Graham said, “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“It’s happening again.”

“What’s happening again?”

“Ponn farr.”

“What? I thought that only happened to Vulcans.”

“And me. Every so often I need to either mate with something, or torture it for a few hours.”

“Ah. Ha ha. And, er, what do you, um, feel like doing right now?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find out, won’t we?”

“How soon?”

“About, say, thirty minutes.” Graham began to concentrate on whatever it was that was happening inside his head, while Hill anxiously searched for a way out. Just his luck that they were locked in an old-style turbolift that didn’t have an emergency exit panel in. Obviously it never occurred to the designers that people might possibly have to one day leave through other exits than the door. The turbolift was solidly constructed, so that ruled out the possibility of trying to break open the roof. And where would they go anyway? It would be a long climb to the next floor, and Hill didn’t fancy the idea of trying to pry open jammed doors while simultaneously hanging from a ladder.

That left him seemingly out of options. But he knew he had to find a solution, or something potentially hazardous and certainly unpleasant would happen to him. Graham had closed his eyes, and adopted the lotus position. Hill didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. He glanced desperately around the turbolift. There was no other obvious way out.

Graham began to make an “Ommm” sound.

Hill looked at the control panel, and slapped down on the buttons frantically. Nothing. An old memory came back to Hill, of happy days in his childhood when he had fiddled with the tricorder kit his father had given him. He frowned as he remembered how his half-brother had stamped on and buried the kit in the back garden after a row over who got to watch what on holovision. After that, he hadn’t taken much notice of technology. But the basic knowledge was still there, and he knew he’d been reasonably good at it.

In a flash, Hill knew what he must do. He would have to learn the intricacies of turbolift operation, manipulate them to his advantage, and get himself out of the lift before Graham did whatever it was he was about to do. All in a day’s work for a Starfleet Academy Cadet, he thought ruefully. Then, he stuck his nails into the gap between the panel and the turbolift wall, and pulled. His nails broke. Cursing and sucking his fingers, Hill removed his Starfleet insignia, and stuck that into the gap, and pushed with all his might. The badge began to bend, and Hill was just starting to wonder what else he could use to prise the panel off, when, suddenly, with a loud pop, the panel flew off and bounced off Graham’s head before coming to rest on the floor.

Graham began rocking backwards and forwards.

Hill began to frantically scan the jumble of fibre-optics and cabling that revealed itself. At first, all he could see was a confused mess, but, as he heard Graham’s voice rise in pitch, in a way which reminded Hill ominously of an explosive on a build-up to detonation, he forced himself to remember the many hours he had spent fiddling with his tricorder kit. The memories had remained long-buried, and as he frantically dug through his mind, all the pain and sorrow he had felt as he watched the tricorder disappear beneath the soil surfaced again.

Through all the emotion, though, Hill began to see images in his mind of how the internal circuitry was arranged. He looked again at the wires, and, as if by magic, he could suddenly see patterns in the mass of cabling. Hill reached in, and began to separate wires into bunches. That took him about a minute, during which time the tone of Graham’s voice had risen by at least an octave. Hill was fairly sure that two of the groups he had found were servo circuitry. On a hunch, he pulled the smaller bunch forwards. With any luck, it would be the cabling governing the doors.

He found the light switch, removed it using his now rather battered badge, and, stripping the insulation from the cabling with his teeth, pushed the exposed wires to the connection behind the switch. Nothing. Hill fought back his disappointment. He’d been hoping that there was enough of a residual charge in the switch to get the doors at least partially open. Hill looked around. The only thing with any obvious power available was the red emergency light overhead. Reaching up, Hill realised he wasn’t going to be able to open the panel to fish the small battery out.

Graham was now curled up in a ball on the floor. Taking a massive chance, Hill clambered up onto Graham’s back, bashed the light-panel off in a near-panic, and pulled the battery out. The turbolift was plunged into darkness, and Hill suddenly realised the flaw in his plan. He couldn’t see where he was going, and, more importantly, he couldn’t see Graham any more. The knowledge that at any moment Graham might silently leap for him forced Hill to start sweeping the walls until he found the open panel again.

He felt for the bunch of cables he had yanked out, and found the exposed wiring. He jammed the terminals of the battery against the wiring and hoped that it would work. Across the other side of the turbolift, the panel by the door came on. Once again, Hill had a problem. In order to activate the turbolift controls, he had to move away from the exposed wiring, but the moment he did so, the battery lost contact, and the power to the doors died. Hill reluctantly removed the battery from its place in the wires, and everything went dark once more. Then, he rapidly undid his right boot, and took his sock off. He replaced the battery by feel. Once more, the door panel came on.

Hill walked forwards until his arm was at maximum reach, then, praying he wouldn’t bump into Graham, whose by now very high-pitched squeals were coming from somewhere in front of him, he extended his foot. Reaching up as high as he could go, he placed his foot against the door, and slid it along the door towards the panel. He had to bend over backwards at a highly uncomfortable angle to get his foot up high enough to reach the panel. Silently cursing whichever designer hadn’t thought to make the door-panel operable by foot, he slowly moved his big toe over the correct button, and, feeling his ligaments strain, pushed down on the button. The doors moved open jerkily, until, once halfway, they stopped and the lights on the door panel went out. The battery had given out.

Luckily, there was now a dim light filtering through the doors. Unluckily, it revealed to Hill that they were jammed between floors. A further stroke of inspiration depressed him further. Turbolift doors sat flush to the doors on the outside of the shaft. If he couldn’t pry the doors on the inside open, there was no way he’d be able to pry open those on the outside. Hill knew the only place in Spacedock where there were no doors covering the turbolift shaft were in the turbolift repair centre, at the very bottom of the shaft. Trouble was, he was still quite some distance above that, and simply unlocking the clamps holding the lift in place wouldn’t be a good idea.

Graham abruptly stopped his high-pitched keening; either that, or he had just gone above the point where human ears registered sound.

Hill moved back to his panel. There was nothing inside there that could help him now. All he had were data-connections, the door controls, and lighting. The main power grid was concealed behind a large metal panel and he knew he couldn’t break the seals.

Then, from behind him he heard a low rumbling sound. Hill flinched as he realised what the sound was. Cadet Graham had just hit ponn farr. He saw Graham stand up, and, as the other cadet tensed himself in what was unmistakably the beginnings of a lunge forwards, Hill ducked. Graham flew clean over his head, impacting with the turbolift wall.

Amid a shower of sparks, Graham slumped unconscious to the deck. Hill looked to see what the damage was. Most of the cabling that he had sorted into neat groups was gone, devastated by the might of Graham’s head smashing into it. But, the metal panel was swinging loose! Wrenching it off, Hill whacked Graham round the head with it and examined the power grid behind the panel. The red tracer light by one of the cables was glowing faintly, showing that there was still some power in the system. That was a promising start. He frowned as he tried to decide what he should do next. He didn’t want to try bleeding power into the system, as the somewhat large number of volts involved in Spacedock’s power supply might hurt him if he got it wrong.

Graham began to stir, and, in the midst of his panic, Hill hit upon a final, desperate answer. Next to the power grid were the controls for the clamps that were currently holding the lift in place. Using the limited reserves of power the turbolift’s on-board cells contained, he might be able to release the clamps slightly, so that they slid down the shaft. Hill gingerly released the clamps slightly, the sweat pouring off his face. This manoeuvre was incredibly risky.

Nothing happened.

Hill realised then that turbolift shafts only had gravity on when they were closed for repairs and people had to move around at the bottom. The turbolift wasn’t going to move without some form of outside interference. Reluctantly, Hill turned back to the main power cables. They connected to a receiving panel, which slid along conducting strips on the shaft walls. There had to be something he could do with that. With Graham beginning to rumble away once more in the background, Hill carefully unplugged the power cords from the receiving panel, and pulled the panel itself away from the shaft wall. Then, using the original panel cover to lever off a section of conducting strip (his badge was now bent double), Hill pondered the latest arrangement of cables he was faced with. Once more, he had a combination of fibre-optic data cords and power cables to deal with. Using a bit of logic, Hill deduced that one of the data cords would be carrying information relating to the amount of power to be supplied to the turbolift. If he could just ‘borrow’ a little more power than was currently available, then he could get the lift moving again. The question was, which cord carried the correct data?

He started at the left hand-side, ripping the data cord in two and pulling the severed end out and shoving it into a socket in the ravaged remains of the lift control panel. Then, he pressed the button that controlled the turbolift’s rate of descent, increasing the rate by 30%. Nothing. Obviously not that cable. All over Spacedock, engineers making their way to trouble spots found their progress impeded as blast doors rumbled down and locked off.

The next cable had the same negative result, and Hill, very much aware that Graham was starting to move around again, hurriedly pulled out the third. He could now hear a dim but nonetheless clear noise of what sounded like rushing water (suddenly and inexplicably, food replicators all over the station were gushing chicken soup), but tried to ignore it. Unfortunately, the traditional effect of the sound of running water kicked in, and Hill suddenly felt a pain in his bladder. Great. The urgency of his situation had just increased ten-fold. Attaching the third cord, he punched in the commands… and was thrown into the ceiling as the turbolift plunged downwards.

Pushing off against the ceiling, Hill re-applied the clamps, and the turbolift began to brake, sparks flying and the terrifying noise of metal screeching as the clamps tried to get a grip. He could feel the lift braking, but he didn’t think it was going to stop soon enough. They were going at one hell of a lick. Glancing across at the display, he realised that he had typed in too many zeros. Instead of the lift operating at thirty percent power, it was currently whizzing along at three hundred percent, the power coursing through the whole shaft and conducting through the bare metal as the original connection he had made had been broken the moment their headlong plunge began. As the turbolift’s rate of descent continued to slow, Hill tried to think happy thoughts. He desperately wanted not to be reminded that he was stuck in a falling turbolift with a maniac and a bursting bladder.

The lift finally screeched to a stop, and Hill realised that they had stopped some three feet above the very bottom of the shaft. Three feet short of being pulp. But, on the upside, he could squeeze out of the partially-open doors, and belt across the turbolift repair shop towards the loos. Surprised technicians watched as the mad-faced cadet popped out of the turbolift which had so unexpectedly arrived out of nowhere, and ran into the toilet block. As if that weren’t bizarre enough, the discovery of another cadet lying semi-concussed on the floor of the turbolift only made them further worried.

The final straw came when the first cadet re-emerged, looked around him blankly for a few seconds, then began punching the air in triumph and shouting “YEEEEEEEEHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”