(Babylon 5 and its characters were created by JMS, and belong to Joe and Warner Bros, and are used without permission. The rest belongs to Cathy Faye Rudolph.)

Blinking his eyes did nothing to clear the confusion from his mind. He kept trying to swallow the sour saliva that had pooled in his mouth overnight, tasted the bitterness of last night's dregs from the coffee pot. Between the tinny echoes in his head and the cramped sensations in his thighs, he knew he wasn't going to get any more sleep. With an exhalation that was more of a grunt than a sigh, he swung his legs out, and pitched himself forward out of bed.

Michael stumbled into the kitchen, and managed to park himself in a chair at the table. He heard her soft chuckle behind him, her light touch on his shoulder, her damp hair raising goosebumps on his flesh as she bent to nuzzle his ear in greeting. Clair peered into his face, her long brown hair grazing his chest, tickling his nipples. He saw a flash of her smile before she stood straight and moved over to the sink.

She returned to press a hot mug of tea into his hands. Michael felt the clouds of steam pricking his skin, rising into his nostrils. The steam clouds moved along the surface of last night's remembered dream, the product no doubt of the videos he'd watched late into the night hours and their stories of the promises of tomorrow clad in shining technology and aspirations. He shook his head slightly, hoping to loosen the dream's strange hold on him.

The dream seemed to be grafted onto his memories of last evening's dinner party. Susan had come by, with Marcus doggedly pursuing her. Sheridan had shown up, spitting fire and plans and optimism. Clair had even managed to entice Franklin to put in an appearance, to pull him into the world and away from the refuge he took in work.

The images he'd seen in sleep were of his friends, but strangely not of them, image wraiths that were haphazardly mixed and matched, colors and textures and ideas that made no sense, dream-sounds and dream-smells complex and gritty against his soul. He could not decide if his weary mind had placed his friends in a strange alien setting, or if the setting was familiar and his friends had become otherworldly. Interspersed with the unfamiliar, the strange, the bizarre, had been hope, and loss, and promise, convoluted prophecy wrapped up in worn brown paper. The dream had been more vivid, larger than life -- perhaps better than life.

He mumbled absently, watching the uneasy shimmer of the lights on the surface of the tea. He knew the dream would dance upon his attention for the rest of the day. Perhaps he could call Zack, have Zack cover for him. No one would miss him for one day, although he had been looking forward to the surveillance they'd planned to determine who was pilfering supplies.

If anyone asked, he could always say he was working on reports. He had loved writing, once. Now it seemed sterile, a means to a bureaucratic end, a way to shuffle words about in the universe, a way to punch the clock in the world of work. Yet last night's dream mocked and cajoled and flogged him. Instead of fading away, back into the night, it took more solid existence as a cluster of ideas, questions, images before his eyes. It begged to be called into written being.

Clair rinsed the last of the soapy dishes at the sink, and hung the wet rag over the faucet. "What are you thinking about?" she asked over her shoulder.

There was no single answer to give her. Their life here was quiet, orderly, controlled. They could make ends meet, almost even do well for themselves. And yet, each day, the passage of each moment felt somewhat a failure, a promise unfulfilled. A transgression.

With a start, he understood what the dream had shown him. He could be more. They could be more. He could be more than just a mid-level manager with the occasional thrill of the chase after stolen office supplies and a clandestine love of words and pictures. Susan Ivanova could be more than a part-time traffic guard whose faithful pooch Marcus waited attentively for her every day. Sheridan could be more than an itinerant revival preacher traveling with his wife in a neon-splashed bus. And Steve Franklin could do more than hand out band-aids and ice-packs while reliving his painful memories of 'Nam. They could all do, and be, more.

He pushed his shoulder blades against the chair back. It was about transgression, he realized. The deliberate turning-away from his potential, the words that had called to him, their individual potentials and gifts they all had, but so rarely embraced. It was the human sin at root, the drive to cling to a life of quiet desperation, predictable and safe desperation, than to propel oneself on to what the uncertain future would offer.

She sat down next to him, troubled by his continued silence. She asked again.

"What are you thinking about, Michael?" asked Clair Garibaldi.

His blue eyes were steady in their gaze but he sat straighter, taller, as if he'd come to a decision or understood an age-old mystery. A wry smile started at a corner of his mouth.

"What was I thinking about?" replied Michael Straczynski. He caught one of her hands in his, patted it tenderly, saw the concern in her brown eyes slowly vanish. The smile lifted the other corner of his mouth. No more faults, no more transgressions.

"I was thinking about--" he paused, long enough to fully engage her attention, a dramatic device to capture her imagination. That power of binding her attention with his words, it felt good. It felt right. It gave him courage to propel himself forward, to the future.

"I was thinking about sin, Clair."

Lives of Quiet Desperation © 1997 Cathy Faye Rudolph