*Horrible*
A spate of Old High Vulcan curses chattered through Spock’s mind as he splashed water into his eyes. The beard repressor gel dispenser had malfunctioned and splattered everywhere, including his eyes. Spock continued until most of the sting was gone. Peering through green-rimmed eyes, Spock saw that some of his eyelashes were gone from his left eye, and his right eyebrow was a bit thin. His vision was still blurry, and Spock wondered if he should stop by Sickbay.
“All hands, turbulence ahead,” sounded throughout the Enterprise moments before the ship gave a mighty heave. Spock lost his grip on the lavatory door (due to his wet hands) and went sliding into his sleep chamber. He made a grab for the heavy drapery, which disturbed his weapons collection. The cudgel of his lirpa swung like a pendulum right into his Shrine of the Ancestors firepot. Ashes and embers rained down onto the carpet, which started to smoke. Spock pounded out the small flames with his hands.
*Father Surak!* he thought, *What is happening?!* Spock rose and was brushing the sooty dirt off of his clothing and hands when the intercom sounded.
*Terrible*
“Mr. Spock, report to the Bridge.” Spock went to the desk and found that he had to squint to find the respond button.
“Spock here.” There was silence on the other end at first.
“Spock, I ordered you to the Bridge,” Kirk said over the speaker. “Now get your Vulcan posterior up here.” Spock sighed.
“I have had a small accident and need to stop by Sickbay, Captain,” he explained sheepishly.
“Well, be quick about it. Kirk out.”
*No-Good*
Spock stepped to his replicator to order up a breakfast bar, but instead the machine spat goo at him. Spock quickly yanked off his soiled uniform shirt, threw it into the chute, reached into his closet and found just one shirt left. Laundry had failed to return his uniforms again. He pulled the clean shirt over his head and walked quickly to the closest turbo lift, planning to call Laundry to complain about his missing clothes. He was distracted by the lift door closing on his foot. Instead, Spock called Maintenance about the repairing the turbo lift.
In Sickbay, Spock had to endure McCoy’s teasing remarks about the missing hair on his face.
“Hey, Chris!” the doctor called. “Loan Spock your eyebrow pencil, willya? He’s going to need it for a few days!” The nurse glowered at a chuckling McCoy as she put drops into Spock’s eyes. She gave him a tissue to wipe the excess.
“Don’t mind him,” she whispered to Spock.
“I usually don’t,” he replied.
*Very Bad Day*
The mission to Gamma Trianguli VI tested what was left of Spock’s endurance. First came the explosion from the rock he tossed aside. He was certain that his hearing was affected by the sizeable blast.
Next came the poisoned thorns Spock took in the chest as he attempted to get Kirk out of harm’s way. Spock didn’t know which was worse, the poison in his system, or the antidote threatening to empty his stomach of its contents.
The walk into the forcefield hurt Spock’s pride more than anything else. It had knocked him on his ass, and rightfully so. Spock was so intent on the readout of Vaal that he failed to notice the tricorder’s warning.
The lightning strike both frightened and perturbed him. One of the red-shirted security guards had been vaporized by the vicious and highly accurate lightning bolts. Spock wondered how he had been spared. It had rendered him unconscious, and he only came to when McCoy opened up Spock’s shirt to examine the burns on his back.
Spock found the hand-to-hand battle with the natives difficult as he dealt with the cumulative effects of all the injuries he sustained that day. When the mission was completed and they were all safely back aboard the Enterprise, Spock had to admit that he never felt so relieved to leave a planet before!
*Austrailia*
Much later that night, Spock dragged himself back to his quarters. He sagged against the doors as soon as they had closed.
He regarded his desk. No, he was too exhausted to work or to even record his personal log. He looked to the bed. He was too keyed up to sleep just yet. His eyes went to the firepot from its new place on the floor. He was too unsettled to meditate. The burn on his back from the lightning strike precluded him from taking a hot shower.
It was his stomach that finally decided for him. At its loud rumblings, Spock realized that he was hungry. The bizarre events of the morning had prevented him from having any breakfast before going on duty. The anti-toxin that McCoy had given him down on the planet had nauseated him, so he was not able to participate in the impromptu luau the natives had held for them. After the mission was over, McCoy held Spock in Sickbay for a few hours as the doctor tended the First Officer’s burn, the many small puncture wounds from the flower’s thorny projectiles (which “itched like the dickens,” as his mother would say), and the various abrasions and contusions the Vulcan had acquired that day.
Spock was VERY hungry. The replicator in his cabin was still not repaired (There had been no time to file a repair requisition before going on the away mission), but he was unwilling to leave his cabin to go to the Mess Hall.
His eyes then settled on the storage area behind his desk. Brewing a large mug of tea, Spock opened the cabinet and brought out a worn box and a shiny tin. Opening his box, Spock rifled through its contents and pulled out a slim, worn, hardbound, purple-covered, ancient paper book. Spock didn’t bother with the desk or the chair. He just sat cross-legged on the floor, the book in his lap, sipping tea, munching on one of Amanda’s homemade multi-grain cookies (the ones with the bits of his favorite dried fruits), and began reading.
“Babydoll,
When you are having a very bad day, come to me and you and I can plan a trip to Australia.
Love,
Mom”
Spock reverently ran a finger over the inscription. Some other mother wrote it long ago to some other child, but it always seemed like what Amanda might have written to him. This same book had seen him through many “terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days” in his childhood. It, along with the rest of the contents of his box, was the only personal item Spock took with himself on that fateful day eighteen years prior, the day he left for Starfleet Academy.
Spock turned past the title page, the dedication page and right to page one.
“I went to bed with gum in my mouth
and now there is gum in my hair . . . ”
Spock finished the last of the tea, and brushed the cookie crumbs from his chin as he closed the book with a small sigh. He stayed on the floor, lost in thought for a few minutes.
“Computer.”
WORKING
“List suitable recreational sites in Australia, planet Earth.”