For William, the Merrimack only had three places of interest: The Bridge where he was more often than not stationed, and Decks 9 & 10 where all the Major Science Labs of the Ship were stationed. He sat in his second favorite place on the Ship, his Office, a small space with a working desk and computer access. He had added several things during his time as Science Chief such as an old fashioned blackboard and several paperback books on a small shelf. He was staring at an equation, each month he chose a new previously unsolved mathematical problem and spent most of his free time attempting to solve them, the previous problem was an Andorian problem regarding the Number Zero. Today however he was staring at one of Earth’s more famous unsolved mathematical problems, Legendre’s conjecture one of the four parts of Landau’s problems.

He enjoyed this free time to ponder these problems as it allowed him uninterrupted privacy and allowed more of his staff to enjoy Freetime on the Station until they received their latest assignment. As he stared at the centuries-old problem he pondered his current position. When he first arrived on the Merry he’d been a non-enlisted crewman with only the most basic training until the Captain decided to grant him a commission and make him head of the Science Department, a rather unpredictable yet successful action the crew had come to expect from their captain. It was unfortunate that through some unfortunate trickery he was removed from his station and ended up in a psychiatric facility for far too long. It had taken him some time but now he was back on the Merrimack, the first place since Inverness that he felt at home.

CSO