A Baptism of Fire and Death

Well, my ode to Star Trek: Voyager is finally complete. I think it was entirely written after midnight on three different nights. Fore some reason it just didn't seem right to write about space exploration and the death of the Sun during daylight hours. In the end, I really don't know what my story has to do with Captain Janeway and her crew, for Janeway is a far better woman than my Captain Anna Rand of the USS Babylon. Anna is, essentially, a scared woman, but after a baptism of fire and death, she discovers the "mere joy of living", which became the title of the exactly-2000-word story. She realizes that living in fear is a terrible waste of what could be a very good life. Now, because my computer is inherently evil, as the Germans say, I cannot format a quote in a terribly special format. So, here goes:

She looked out into the gaping void of universe again, and her mind fell into the familiar rhythm of those late nights and early mornings she had spent staring through the window of her soul. She heard the same question she had heard so many times before--the eternal, constant question that she had never had the nerve to answer. "What in this 'empty' universe is worth living for?" her conscience queried. Before she had toyed with pretty responses like knowledge and science, but now she knew. Finally, because the frail finger of fragility had tapped her shoulder, she could answer. "The mere joy of living," she intoned with resolve. Without another moment of hesitation, she kissed Raymond with the fieriest passion known to the human race--the desire to live, to truly live.

"Yes," she answered, "a good day."

It feels so wonderfully sublime to write of such a tragic event that is so positively uplifting and invigorating without being comic and morbid.