Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

spectacularly beautiful, as if nature had a proclamation to make. Each time Janeway went outside on such a day, she found herself charged with justification. This,
this,
was why she had driven so hard to come home, this spectacle of Earth, a blue diamond in a sea of stones. Earth was the jewel, the prize, the one planet against which all others constantly paled. Planets all over the cosmos dreamed of being Earth someday. She had been to the Delta Quadrant, farther away than any human had traveled, and she knew how rare such a place was in the greater galactic scheme.
    She inhaled the sunlight, the velvety green lawn, and even the magnificent elongated building that seemed to float upon the verdant sea. Well, she was here . . . might as well go inside.
    Anticipating the contrast, she steeled herself. These visits were never easy, mostly because they were just visits. There was never progress.
    Inside, the hospital made a charming attempt to be as cheerful and uplifting as a long-term medical facility could be, taking every chance to appear less of a hospital. There were potted plants, both real and not, children's paintings, and even a resident collie. The rooms were as homelike as such an arrangement could provide, given that cleanliness was a factor and simplicity helped in that respect. There was personalization without clutter, and the nurses and doctors generally wore street clothes rather than lab jackets. Somehow the effort at
not
appearing to be a hospital tended to ram home the reality of the place. People came here who had nowhere else to go, who needed so much minute-to-minute monitoring that even the most loving of relatives couldn't provide enough attention.
    Janeway easily cleared into the place through the residential security. She was a regular.
    Without escort she saw herself through the pleasantly curved corridors, through the garden area and into the north wing. Without even thinking she went to the third door on the left and before she knew it she was there. She pressed the coded locking mechanism with her thumb. The mechanism took her fingerprint, bleeped happily, and opened the door panel. She stepped into the near-darkness.
    In the room a single candle softly glowed, casting a very faint coloration on the floor, which was patterned with discarded pieces of paper. Hundreds of them. Each piece of paper was crammed with handwriting, numbers, indecipherable encryptions, and carefully executed shapes. There were papers on top of other papers, weeks' worth of frustrated calculations. The candleglow caught the edges of the papers, some curled, some crumpled.
    In the middle of the carpet a man's form crouched on both knees, back arched, elbows to the carpet. The furious scratch of a pencil on paper was the only sound in the room.
    They'd tried music, but he hadn't liked it. Videos, movies, ship logs, travelogues . . . he'd rejected every attempt to ease his obsessions. All he wanted was the candle, the paper, and a pencil. Not a pen. A pencil.
    Janeway stood at the doorway, daylight from the hall windows flooding the entryway.
    “Hello, Tuvok.”
    It was hard to sound normal, casual, not patronizing.
    “The light.”
    “Sorry . . .” She stepped away from the door. The panel closed behind her, locking out the sun, the hope, and any hint of change.
    Only now did he look up at her. His Vulcan features were aged, but not so much with time as stress. Unlike the stoic logician he had once been, settled and steady, secure in his identity and purpose aboard
Voyager,
he was easily confused and anxious, his eyes lost, his mouth bracketed with tension.
    “I know you . . .” he spoke, disturbing himself with his own voice.
    “That's right,” Janeway said. “I'm your friend. Kathryn Janeway. Remember?”
    His gaze hardened with skepticism. “You're an impostor.”
    Janeway's stomach knotted up. She'd come here on a final kind of whim, to get the strength to fulfill her plans. It was working.
    “No, Tuvok,” she insisted. “It's me.”
    “Admiral Janeway visits on Sunday. Today is Thursday. Logic dictates you are not who you claim to be.”
    Pleased with his conclusion, Tuvok turned again to whatever he was scrawling on his piece of paper. Well, he had her with that one. This wasn't her usual day, and like a religious tribute she had kept scrupulously to her Sunday visits. Almost everyone else did too, including Tuvok's own family. They had all worked out a specific schedule of visitation and no