Shining Star: A Pavel Chekov Fanfiction

Two

Pasha is four years old when he opens his final birthday gift of the day: a book. A book with SPACE printed on the cover in big block letters, right above a picture just like one he saw in the star show that day—a cloud of gas, blue and green and purple with a tiny red dot at the center.

A real, grown-up book. He knows how to read, well enough to comprehend most of the picture books in his local library—but this is different. This is real. He spends the rest of his birthday sitting on his father's lap, sounding out the bigger words. Supernova. Spacecraft. Galaxy. He learns that the thing on the cover of the book is called a nebula, and he reads about how stars are born and how they die. He didn't know stars had lives, just like humans. He thought they were just there, forever. He even learns that the sun is a star—so, in a way, he has seen a real star up close!

He learns about the Space Race and the very early days of space exploration (the first man ever in space was from Russia, just like him!), and traces the journeys to the stars all the way to the Starfleet vessels of today. He'd seen ads for Starfleet occasionally, but never really knew what the organization did until now. He reads about not only the planets in his own solar system, but also extrasolar planets and the races that lived on them. It brings him solace to think that as he looks up at the stars at night, there are probably other people on other planets looking up at his star, too.

Within three months, he can read the big words with no problem, and he reads the space book again and again. He practically has it memorized, cover to cover, and when he doesn't understand something it says or wants to find out more about a topic it brings up, he asks his parents to look up the explanation, then memorizes that too. Strangers often stare at the little curly-haired boy in the shopping cart who enthusiastically spouts facts about neutron stars and black holes.

His parents quickly pick up on his love and, without fail, get him more space-related items for each successive birthday and New Year's. A child-sized NASA shirt. A small telescope. More space books, which he devours. His mother even crochets him a little doll of one of the old astronomers, Carl Sagan, after seeing how absorbed Pasha is in learning about his life. Pasha and the Sagan doll are practically inseparable.

Our Pasha is so smart, his parents say to each other sometimes when they think he isn't listening. He'll have no troubles in school. He will be just fine.

If only that were true.