Shining Star: A Pavel Chekov Fanfiction

Eleven

Pavel is thirteen years old when he has an epiphany.

The guy in his calculus class hasn't bothered him since his outburst, and he spent the rest of that semester sitting in a different seat as far away from him as possible. He doesn't even see the guy anymore. But something has changed in him since that day. When he went to class the day after his crying jag, he didn't feel embarrassment, or guilt, or dread, or anger. He didn't feel overwhelmed at the prospect of more work, papers, tests. He felt...numb.

This feeling has persisted over the past few semesters. He doesn't care about his schoolwork anymore. He does it, he turns it in, and he flies through university with a 4.0 GPA—but he can't bring himself to feel pride at that. He's going to graduate soon, and he still has no idea where he's going to go next or what he will do with the rest of his life.

Why did he ever choose to major in astronomy, anyway? He thought the stars were so cool when he was a little kid, but now they're just another source of stress, another page of equations. Why does traveling to the stars require so much math? So much physics? So many hours of his head spinning with numbers, feeling like it's going to explode? Where is the feeling of wonder he used to have as a kid?

One day, after a long three-hour session of "writing a paper" for his Stellar Cartography course—i.e., staring at a blank screen on a word-processing program and waiting for the words to come—he decides he's had enough. He closes the program without saving and opens up a new window on his Padd. He needs a break. He needs to remember why he's here, at thirteen—what fueled his love of the stars in the first place.

It takes a bit of searching, but he eventually finds it. Cosmos: A Journey Through the Stars. Apparently the original version of the show was made in the 20th century by Carl Sagan—the same Carl Sagan that Pavel used to play with in doll form—and numerous other versions have been produced through the years, hosted by all manner of astronomers. The latest version was hosted by a cosmologist from Earth named Elena Lopez and has been dubbed in 183 languages, including Russian. Pavel pulls up the first episode and starts watching.

He can't help but smile. This is not the exact episode he watched as a toddler, the one that first got him hooked on space, but he still remembers the woman's mellifluous voice, and the images on his screen still blow him away.

Lopez is showing him stars. Actual stars. Stars that are thousands of times bigger than him, bigger than Earth, bigger than anything he can comprehend. Stars that are constantly fusing hydrogen in their core, shining brightly in the sky. Stars that have exploded to form all the elements that made up his body and his blood and his brain. Stars with planets orbiting them. Stars with other stars orbiting them. Stars like the Sun. Perhaps, as Pavel looked at the stars at night, there were people on other planets looking at his Sun.

This is what those pages and pages of formulae describe. This is why he fell in love with space.

He leaves the video running, Lopez's voice acting as a backdrop, and goes to his window. He pulls back the curtains and smiles. There are so many streetlights outside that he can't really see all the stars, but he can see some of the brightest. Sirius. Orion's Belt. Ursa Major. Polaris. A few satellites cheerily blinking back at him.

Every star has its story, Lopez narrates behind him. And as we learn their stories, we learn where we came from, where we are going, and what we are now.

Her voice is interrupted by an ad. Pavel frowns and goes to shut it off—he knew he should have gotten the video through a more credible website—when he sees what the ad is for.

Join Starfleet today, and go where no one has gone before!

Join Starfleet?

He remembers all those summer days biking to the Starfleet shipyards. He remembers his conversation with Valentina at age nine, talking about how cool it would be to jogin Starfleet. He remembers staring at the stars before bedtime as a toddler, thinking about visiting them and seeing them up close.

And suddenly, he knows where he wants to go next.