The Circle

Thad sat at his desk reflecting. He was thinking of the student concert of earlier this evening. The cherished son of Gehrig Cane, one of his men, a young freshman named Michael Cane had been performing with his fellow students, their first concert of this school year.

They had performed two pieces very familiar to Thad.  From his days as a lad, in a high school band. Hearing the uncertain players trying their best with music they had been working on together only three months, a few hours a week at best, their efforts brought tears to his eyes. Their efforts and their mistakes. His heart went out to them, god bless them, for persevering through their adversity. While they were not uniformly in tune, and while every piece played had more than one squeak and unintended shrill whistle, they kept on playing, and as sour as some of the notes got, they kept the tempo and finished together; and it reminded him of his own efforts on the violin, so long ago abandoned, so long ago given up and lost somewhere along the years… both gone by and light.

Thad chewed on his lower lip as he picked up his mug of tea and brought it closer to his mouth.

The civilian security services commissioner sipped his tea and tried to brush aside the thoughts of his younger days in a different century.  He couldn’t help but smile that a part of him remembered so keenly the daunting apprehension of an uncharted future so full of promise - an apprehension that a younger man’s performance tonight dredged up in a man who had not remembered what that apprehension felt like, had completely forgotten it, for at least a hundred years.

He shook his head. The future hadn’t given him apprehension in a long time. For longer than he’d care to admit, he felt the future was for younger men and women. While by no means ancient in a Confederation where there were citizens walking around who had offspring older than him, none of his personal friends were of his age. They were all younger, and by decades.

All his friends from his childhood, all his friends form his twenties and thirties and forties, were all long gone. 

Such was life. Live long enough travel enough, and there comes a time. Oh, there comes a time.

This Starbase wasn’t a bad place to be a civilian commissioner of security services.  At least, the first eleven months had been relatively stress-free for him. For a base this size with a civilian population this large they had a respectable force and of course Fleet Security had the primary responsibility for the sensitive areas of the station, and off station operations. Thad’s ‘police force’ had an acceptable closure rate over the last eleven months. Could always be better, but would never be 100%. That fact didn’t cause him stress; might have 100 years ago. But by this point in his life, he couldn’t work with anyone who couldn’t live with imperfection. 

But otherwise, he persevered through adversity.