“Your chosen career is one in which violence sometimes plays a part. As a doctor and I hope some kind of humanitarian—though if you ever call me that to my face I’ll knock you on your keister—I abhor violence. I detest it, and I have always tried, and will always try to find a way to avoid it, like a barn mouse tryin’ to keep away from the farmhouse cat. But I also recognize that there are times when it’s necessary, and when it has been, then I’ve tried to face it head-on. I hope you’ll do the same.”
Will listened to McCoy, enjoying the old doctor’s thoroughly informal presentation. The graduates were seated alphabetically in the front section of the auditorium, with family, friends, and observers filling out the rest of the room, and Will sat between Paul Rice and an Andorian named Ritthar. On Paul’s other side was a guy he knew only in passing named Vince Reggiani. Will could see the back of Felicia’s head, a couple of rows in front of him, but she never seemed to turn around. Will’s achievement had been better than he’d dared hope for—he had finished eighth in his class, and that knowledge filled him with satisfaction and a little bit of anxiety, as if he had raised his own bar and would now have to continue to perform at that level. He thought he could do it, but if it meant pushing himself as he’d been doing for the last months of Academy work, he would either burn out fast or simply fall apart trying.
“I started out saying I was just a country doctor,” McCoy was saying. “And that’s true. But unlike some others, I’m a country doctor who has seen incredible sights. I’ve seen sunrise on Jupiter and sunset on New France. I’ve danced with a woman who was born on Rigel VI, and I’ve listened to an orchestra made up entirely of non-humanoid, energy-based life-forms whose instruments were part of their own anatomy. I’ve set foot on close to a hundred planets, and been nearly killed, kidnapped, or knocked in the head on almost half of those. For all the trouble I’ve seen, all the war and strife and danger, I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone else’s, anywhere, country doctor or no. I trust, when you’ve reached the end of the career that you’re just beginning today, you’ll be able to say the same thing, and mean it.
“Keep that in mind as you take your next step, as you become Starfleet officers, and as you grow into the men and women that you will be. The best thing to say at the end of your life is that you don’t regret a thing. Tomorrow, that new life will start, for each of you—you woke up this morning students, and you will wake up tomorrow officers. It’s a big change, don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s not. And I only have one more thing to say about that.” McCoy threw his hands into the air. “Congratulations, graduates of 2357! You’ve earned yourselves a party!”
This was met by a wild chorus of applause and cheers from the assembled graduates, and Admiral McCoy left the stage amidst the tumult. As was traditional, after that, each graduate was called to the stage by name to receive a diploma, and when the last one was handed out the graduates burst into a new round of cheering, before dispersing to find friends and family members with whom to celebrate their accomplishment.
Will was momentarily lost in the noise and chaos. He had no one to seek out, and his friends had all vanished toward the back of the big room. But as he turned in a slow circle, he saw Dennis Haynes, face flushed, walking nearby.
Hoping that maybe his former friend had cooled off a bit, Will stopped him. “Hey, Dennis, congratulations,” he said with all sincerity.
“Thanks,” Dennis said. He faced Will but there was no hint of a smile on his ruddy face. “Heard you were at the top of the class.”
“Eighth,” Will corrected. Kul Tun Osir had been first. “Not all the way.”
“You know where I finished, Will?” Dennis asked. He made it sound like a challenge.
“I really don’t,” Will admitted.
“Dead last,” Dennis told him. “That’s quite an accomplishment, isn’t it? Nobodywas able to do worse than me. When it comes to being bad, I’m the best.” He glared at Will, who simply watched him, straight-faced.
“You may have finished last,” Will said finally. “But you still finished. You’re here, the same as the rest of us.”
“I sure am,” Dennis said. “I’m here, and I did it by myself. No help from you, obviously, and none from anyone else either. Just my own efforts, my own two hands, and my own barely adequate brain.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself, Dennis,” Will said. “On yourself and everyone else.”
“If you’d been in my shoes, you wouldn’t necessarily think that,” Dennis shot back. “But, luckily for you and Starfleet, you didn’t have to find out.”
“I’m sure your contribution to Starfleet will be an important one,” Will suggested.
“Maybe if I was going into Starfleet,” Dennis said. “But I’m not.”
“But ... you graduated from the Academy!” Will was dumfounded. “Even if you don’t want to join Starfleet—and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t—you kind of have to now, don’t you?”
“You’d think so, huh?” Dennis asked. “But it turns out there’s a kind of special dispensation for cases like mine. It’s possible to do just well enough to make it through the Academy but still bad enough that they won’t make you enlist if you choose not to. They don’t really want me, any more than I want them.”
People were streaming around them now, graduates and family members alike, and Dennis had raised his voice to the point that people cast sidelong glances at them and tried to give them wide berth.
“I guess I just don’t understand,” Will said. “I thought the whole reason you put yourself through this was that you wanted to be in Starfleet.”
Finally, Dennis smiled. “I thought that too,” he said. “But you know what happened, Will? I met you.”
“Me?”
“You, Will. I think you’ll have a brilliant Starfleet career. You’ll be some big hotshot senior officer, probably a captain someday, or an admiral. And that’s exactly why I want nothing to do with Starfleet. Because the system rewards people who are willing to turn their backs on their friends, who will sacrifice friendships for advancement and accomplishment. You’ll thrive in that kind of atmosphere, Riker. But I want no part of it. I’m going home, back to the farm. At least there when you’re up to your ankles in manure, you know where you really stand.”
Will felt anger overtake him. “I feel like I want to say I’m sorry you feel that way, Dennis,” he said. “But really, I’m not. Whatever problems you think you have with Starfleet you really have with yourself. How you did in school is no one’s fault but your own. You can’t blame anyone else for that. You could have asked for help at any point, and you could have accepted help when it was offered. You could have pulled your own weight like the rest of us did. You chose not to, well, those are the choices you make. But then don’t go trying to blame others, or the ‘system,’ for your shortcomings. As Dr. McCoy might have said, that dog don’t hunt.”
Dennis shot Will a look of anger much like the one he’d left him with the night he’d demanded help. “Leave it to you to kiss up even when you don’t have to, Riker,” he said. “McCoy can’t hear you now. But it’s perfect for a Starfleet drone like you. Have a good life, Will. I’ll think of you every time I swamp out the barn or feed the hogs.”
Dennis turned and shoved his way through the crowd, leaving Will standing there watching him go. Dennis had really ticked him off—refusing to accept responsibility for one’s own actions was something Will hated, and Dennis seemed intent on making a lifelong pattern of it. But part of him couldn’t help feeling hurt, wounded, by Dennis’s accusation, and by the bitter tone in his one-time friend’s voice. And underneath the anger there was another feeling—a vague idea that maybe Dennis was right about more than Will wanted to admit. Felicia had implied many of the same things about him.