0045 Hours

It was so perfect I had wanted it to be real. I stood at the bottom of the thirteen stairs in the entryway staring up to the second floor. Sunlight poured from the window overhead resting on my black and brown dog. He barked excitedly, and ran around in circles looking at me from the top of the steps. “Chico!” I yelled as he ran down to meet me, his silky black ears bouncing this way and that as if in slow motion. Right as I crouched down to hug and never let him go, I felt someone shaking me awake. “Gemmer…Gemmer come on…” a voice whispered.

Suddenly as fast as I had arrived, I was pulled away from yet another dream of home… the stale inhuman air of the barracks catching my nose as a stark reminder that I was anywhere but. I groggily rolled over in the rough green wool blanket, the watch around my wrist reading 1245pm. I groaned, grasping for anything in the dark, pulling on my tennis shoes, cover, and the one salvation that was helping me escape the reality of my altered existence.

All too soon, I stumbled down the recently mopped linoleum floor where the 10pm watchman who had awoken me, was waiting to be relived, her eyes peering out in the moonlight. I grabbed the clipboard with the watch log from her tired hands and took my post watching her drag her young feet back her rack where she could gain a few hours sleep until the vipers woke us yet again.

0100 Hours

I sat down, sliding my back down the cool wall, the awaiting three hours’ giving me just long enough for me to feel whole again.

I clicked my black ball point pen against my yellow legal pad, gazing out at the morbidly calming setting in front of me. This scene had become commonplace by this point, the rows and rows of racks on either side of the long room casting whispers of moonlit shadows along the floor. Everyone in them busy with their innocent dreams… the only time we were permitted to break the binds of conformity… and it was my job now to protect them.

As I settled in, I reflected backwards through the day feeling nothing but internal numbness from memorizing cadences, regulations and ranks. From sun up to sundown the vipers in their scaled camouflage skin and gold patches stared us down in the scorching heat with their intimidating steely eyes, daring us to make a mistake in their presence. They preached the very thing they could never give; honor, courage or commitment to the kids they felt entitled to break down. Even if we thought we were alone, they were always there breathing down our necks in relentless repetition. In the night after the lights had dimmed, they hibernated, slithering back into the holes they came out from…afraid of the dark. Despite the silence, a residue remained, the screams of the vipers hard and shrill radiating through the stone walls… the ghosts of them haunting me.

(They’re coming!) I thought getting up from the floor, the breath in my chest quickening and short, but no one came, the silence quiet and reassuring. It was only in this space I could convince myself I would make it, that I was still an individual and I could regain the soul I felt I was losing.

The night was finally mine.

0200 Hours

The first hour disappeared too quickly slipping into 2am, my brain whipping back from my stream of consciousness to the job at hand.

Now it was time to make my rounds.

I got up from the floor in my own blue, green and grey camo and walked up and down the bleach filled halls we had reluctantly mopped that day, writing down observations or anything that looked out of place. I was everyone’s protector they said. I was the watchman. But in that moment returning to my original location, I looked out at my peers blissfully unaware knowing no one was there to protect us except our dreams. We were the children who had volunteered this life. We had volunteered to be wrapped up in barbed wire in the central valley learning to conform and follow orders away from everyone we knew, from our homes, from our parents. Before coming here, some of us had heard sea stories from the older ones who had made it. Quaking in our dulled boots and wrinkled uniforms they told us with a smirk horror stories of Camp San Luis Obispo where the ones in gold came to break us down and hopefully build us up. You were theirs and no one else’s. The stories had nothing on actually being here. We had survived eight days with the vipers…but had a lingering six more. I shuddered to even think what the adult Army recruits who stayed here for months at a time went through.

(Did they think of home too?) (Kira would make it out of here) I thought, scribbling on my pad. My favorite character was a Bajoran rebel with a cause in the Alpha Quadrant far…far away from here. (she would have fought them) smirking at imagining her kicking some viper ass with her phaser. (If she could make it… maybe I could too…now where was I?) Soon with the start of my pen, the darkened barracks faded from view as I drifted; the vipers, coffins, bleach and suffocated desert slipping into hints of stars, aliens and a space station from Star Trek.

0245 Hours

“Kira Nerys wound the corner of the station, phaser in hand. There was no telling where anyone else was, if the commander was dead or captured…all she knew was she needed to find the leader of the Vipers…and destroy them. Suddenly, a blast erupted, missing her by half an inch. Kira whipped around, her dark brown eyes widening to see a tall man all in black, his white faced distorted and wrinkly like a lizard smiling out at her. “Ahh Major Kira…we meet again… the pleasure is all mine.” He answered, tilting his head.

“Don’t be stupid…you know you won’t be able to take Deep Space Nine over again…we worked too hard to get rid of vipers like you.” She sneered not putting down her weapon. “Ohhh” he said coming closer. “You and all the other Bajoran’s were so naïve when we came in fifty years ago…seemingly needing a little structure and discipline… someone to look after you…like children who lost their way…“

Suddenly, and all too soon the scene faded away like leaves swirling in the wind. I checked my watch then. the blue light pulling me painfully back into San Luis Obispo Army base, Company C. 2:45am July 8th…2011…Cadet Recruit Lena Gemmer…8th grade…

I clicked off my pen and gathered up my mind. Hearing movement I glanced into the fading darkness to see my relief stumbling towards me in a similar sleepy fashion to myself. I saluted, giving her the watch log and walked back to my bunk, the moonlight still in the sky.

(Why did morning have to come so soon? I just got to the good part where Kira beats the bad guys) I sighed, pulling up the sheets I would have to make five times over tomorrow. Major Kira Nerys and the space station would have to wait… but somehow I knew she would prevail another day… much like me.