Mesa Garage Door Facts

West is on his bed, in the garage behind the windowful garage doors. listening to music for the spare minutes he has between shifts. He’s barely gotten a moment’s peace since the MSS 245 three cycles ago, and any downtime he has is spent collapsed in bed, dozing with his headphones on so he doesn’t miss the next shift. He hasn’t read anything fun at all since the 245, and Doc Kaas is refusing to even acknowledge his presence at all, let alone talk about what neural atypicals are or what kind of danger West could be in.
“Shut up,” was the only answer he’d gotten. And a lot of getting kicked out of the critical care unit. When the cycle change notice blares in his speakers, five minutes to Charlie, he opens his eyes and quickly hides his best projects under the mattress before slipping out the door. He’s decided to keep working on the watch, and doesn’t want it to get messed up. Some of his shipmates have broken in before. It used to be his birthday present every year, and Republic Day, and First Mission weekend: break into Baby Cocksucker’s room and mess with his stuff, leave him old high-freq guns and condoms “for his own good”. Someone once rigged a bit of putty explosive to his desk drawer.
They can razz him all they want, but the day T-Wing broke his homemade glass-ops telescope (and his nose) was the worst day of his young life. He pitched such a fit that Bridges iced his maths and reading tutor as punishment, and it was the last day West ever had lessons. And it was the beginning of a new era, when all the poxy engineers and marketeers and dipsticks on the Zeester realized: they could take off the kiddie gloves and really fuck with the little kid cause nobody was going to say anything about it.  
    So he keeps his stuff locked up and hidden, and has extra hack-proof protection on his garage door. First Mission weekend was just around the corner, after all.