Chapter 16: Practice
[USS Enterprise-D — Cargo Bay 4, Deck 37 — 2364, Day 52]
The first burn taught Cole that thought-energy projection was nothing like turning on a flashlight.
He stood in the center of Cargo Bay 4—reserved under his name for "personal fitness training," a booking nobody questioned because the bay was unused and the ship's recreation schedule had gaps during shore leave rotation. The bay was empty except for standard cargo containers pushed against the bulkheads, giving him a ten-by-twelve meter open floor. The lighting was dim. The door was locked.
Cole extended his right hand, palm out. Focused on the Traveler's teaching—the compressed understanding that had been integrating for three weeks, unfolding in layers like a mathematical proof that revealed new implications every time he revisited its premises. Thought becomes energy. Energy becomes thought. They are not separate. They exist on a spectrum.
He pushed.
Energy gathered in his palm—he could feel it pooling, drawing from his own bio-electric reserves, concentrating at a point just beneath the skin. The sensation was heat and pressure and a particular buzzing vibration that lived somewhere between physical and mental. His energy perception tracked the buildup: raw potential, unfocused, wanting to discharge the way a static charge wanted to find ground.
He pushed harder. Thought into focus. Focus into energy. Energy into—
The discharge went sideways. Instead of projecting outward, the energy arced from his palm to his wrist, burning a hot line across the tendons. Cole jerked his hand back, hissing through his teeth. A red welt bloomed on the inside of his wrist—first-degree burn, shallow but immediate, the skin blistering before his enhanced healing kicked in.
Okay. That's not how it works.
He shook his hand, waited for the burn to fade to a manageable sting, and tried again.
The second attempt was worse. The energy built higher—he was getting better at concentrating it—but the release was catastrophic. A burst of unfocused light and heat erupted from his fingers, scorched a black mark across the deck plating two meters away, and left his entire hand numb for forty seconds. The scorch mark smoked faintly.
Cole stared at the mark. Stared at his hand. Flexed his fingers until sensation returned.
Two tries. Two failures. Different failures, though—the first was a containment issue, the second was a targeting issue. Progress through elimination.
He sat on a cargo container and ate a protein bar. The enhanced metabolism was already demanding compensation for the energy expenditure—his stomach growled with the urgency of a body that had just burned through reserves it couldn't afford to lose. The bar tasted like cardboard and necessity.
Three more days of this. Three days of locked doors and scorch marks and burns that healed fast enough to try again within the hour. Cole documented everything in his encrypted notes, the "recipe collection" growing into a genuine training manual disguised as culinary experimentation.
Day two produced consistent failure—six attempts, six discharges, none controlled. But the pattern was becoming clear. Projection wasn't about forcing energy outward. It was about directing thought and letting the energy follow. The Traveler hadn't pushed the warp field—he'd thought the warp field into a new configuration, and reality had rearranged itself to match. Scale was different, but the principle was identical.
Day three, Cole stopped trying to project energy. Instead, he projected thought.
He stood in the center of the bay, hand extended, and thought about light. Not energy-becoming-light. Not the physics of photon emission. Just light—the concept, the experience, the warm golden pool on a kitchen floor on a Sunday afternoon in a house that existed in another universe. The memory of light as it had been in the life before. The idea of light, stripped of mechanics, reduced to pure intention.
His palm glowed.
Faint. Barely visible. A soft amber luminescence that existed for eight seconds before his concentration fractured and the glow vanished. His hand tingled. His head ached—the familiar throb of neural strain, manageable, present.
Eight seconds. The beginning of everything.
Day four. The breakthrough.
Cole stood in the bay at 0200—deep into the ship's night cycle, when the corridors were empty and the cargo deck was silent. He extended both hands. Closed his eyes. And thought about light the way the Traveler had thought about warp fields—not as a physical phenomenon to be created, but as a state of reality to be chosen.
Light bloomed between his palms. Warm. Steady. A sphere of soft golden illumination approximately five centimeters in diameter, hovering in the space between his hands like a small star. The energy perception tracked it in real-time—bio-electric reserves converting to photonic output through a pathway that wasn't electromagnetic and wasn't quantum but was somehow both at once.
Thirty seconds. He held it for thirty seconds, and when it faded, it faded because he chose to let it fade, not because his control broke.
He laughed. The sound bounced off the cargo bay's walls—sharp, startled, the particular joy of a man who'd been hammering at a locked door for four days and finally heard the click.
I can do this. It works. The Traveler was right—thought and reality, two ends of the same string.
The cost was immediate and significant. His hands shook. His vision blurred at the edges. His stomach screamed for calories he didn't have—the protein bars were gone, eaten across four days of training. The burns on his hands from earlier attempts were healing but tender, pink new skin that protested when he flexed his fingers.
He leaned against a cargo container and breathed. The bay was dark again. The scorch marks from his failed attempts decorated the deck—black streaks and discolored plating, evidence of an unauthorized energy experiment in a room that was supposed to be empty.
His PADD chirped.
A message from Data: I have detected intermittent energy fluctuations originating from Cargo Bay 4. The pattern does not match any known equipment malfunction. Are you in need of assistance?
Cole's blood went cold.
He tracked the energy readings. Of course he tracked them—he's an android with access to ship-wide sensors and no concept of minding his own business.
He typed back: Everything's fine. Personal project. Can we talk in person?
I will be there in four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
Data arrived in exactly four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. The cargo bay door opened and the android stepped through, yellow eyes sweeping the space with the comprehensive efficiency of a positronic brain cataloguing every detail: the scorch marks on the deck, the faint ozone tang in the air, Cole's singed uniform sleeves, the burn welts on his hands.
"You have been conducting unauthorized energy experiments," Data observed. Not accusatory—simply factual, the way he might note that the humidity was point-two percent above ambient.
"Something like that." Cole's throat was dry. This was the moment—the decision that had been building since their first conversation in the library, since the prune juice and the philosophy and the weekly discussions about consciousness and identity. Trust an android, or keep hiding. "Can you keep a secret, Data?"
Data's head tilted—the processing gesture. "I am capable of discretion. However, I should note that if the information constitutes a threat to the safety of the Enterprise or its crew, I would be obligated to inform the captain."
"Fair enough." Cole extended his right hand, palm up. Focused. Thought about light—not the dramatic sphere of his breakthrough, but something smaller, more controlled. A candle flame between his fingers.
The light appeared. Steady. Golden. Approximately two centimeters in diameter, burning without heat, hovering above his palm like a firefly that had chosen to stay.
Data stared. His eyes tracked the light with a precision that no biological being could match—spectral analysis, thermal analysis, electromagnetic analysis, all conducted simultaneously through visual processing alone.
"Fascinating." The word carried more weight from Data than from anyone else on the ship. He'd borrowed it from Spock, but he'd made it his own. "Your mitochondrial output appears significantly elevated. The photonic emission does not match any known biological phenomenon in my database. The energy conversion pathway is—" He paused. "Unknown."
Cole let the light fade. The headache pulsed behind his eyes. "I don't understand it either. It started after I woke up one day... different. My senses sharpened. My reflexes changed. And this—" he gestured at his hand "—started happening."
"How long have you possessed this capability?"
"Weeks. Months. It's been developing gradually. I've been training in private, trying to understand it."
Data was silent for 3.7 seconds—an eternity for a positronic brain. "There are precedents in Federation records for humanoid energy manipulation. The Traveler demonstrated a related capability. Certain Vulcan disciplines channel bio-electric energy for healing. The Q, of course, operate on an entirely different—"
"I'm not Q." The interruption came out sharper than intended. The memory of Q's presence—that first day, the overwhelming force of an omnipotent being's attention—still made his pulse climb. "I'm not the Traveler, either. I'm something else. Something I'm trying to figure out."
"Would you allow me to conduct periodic observations? My sensors could provide data that would assist in understanding the phenomenon."
Cole considered. Data was the most trustworthy being on the Enterprise—literally incapable of intentional deception, bound by ethical subroutines that prioritized crew safety above personal loyalty but also valued privacy as a fundamental right. If anyone could keep this secret while helping him understand it, it was the android who'd spent his entire existence trying to understand what it meant to be something unique.
"Observations, yes. Records, encrypted. No reports to anyone unless you determine it's a genuine safety risk."
"Acceptable." Data's head tilted again. "I find this... interesting. You are the second individual aboard this ship who has demonstrated capabilities beyond established humanoid norms. The first was the Traveler. You are different, however. The Traveler's abilities appeared fully developed. Yours are nascent."
"Yeah." Cole rubbed his burned hand. "I noticed."
"I will assist you in your development, if you wish. The subject intersects with several areas of personal inquiry regarding the nature of consciousness and potential." Data paused. "Also, I believe this is what friends do. Assist each other with difficult problems."
Something tight in Cole's chest loosened. The isolation of the past seven weeks—the endless hiding, the constant performance, the weight of secrets carried alone—shifted by the smallest increment. Not gone. But shared.
"Thanks, Data. That means more than you know."
"I will analyze the scorch marks on the deck plating and determine whether they are likely to be noticed by maintenance crews. If so, I will fabricate a plausible explanation involving a cargo container malfunction."
"You'd lie for me?"
"I would present an alternative explanation that, while not literally accurate, would be internally consistent with available evidence." A pause. "The distinction is one I find philosophically interesting."
Cole grinned despite the headache, despite the burns, despite everything. The grin stayed on his face all the way back to his quarters, where he ate three replicated meals in succession and slept for nine hours with the door locked and the lights off and, for the first time in seven weeks, the knowledge that someone on this ship understood even a fraction of what he was.
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