Studies On the Tome

Posted on 28 Jul 2024 @ 7:27pm by Lieutenant JG Selon Illialhlae

1,852 words; about a 9 minute read

[ON]

If there was one thing Selon had mastered it was baiting and switching his mind to complete one task by avoiding another. What he was supposed to be doing was writing the foreword for the second edition of A Walk with Love and War, his narrative non-fiction about planetary unifications he had studied on the Oakland. Equal parts bloody and optimistic, even romantic, the fitting title had come easy to him before he had even finished the book. What he found himself doing instead was reading something else entirely. If there was an equally thematic title for the collection of stories contained on the PADD in his hand, it eluded him. It was the (heavily redacted) collection of ships logs and after-action reports of the Galileo for the last four years, which read not so much as a coherent, uplifting (if moralizing) collection but as a veritable tome of tumult. Hmmm, not a bad title. Testament of Turmoil? Like every ‘clever’ academic, Selon loved alliteration.

Starfleet was not a sedate career path however, no matter how unglamorous the titles of “transporter repair technician” or “xeno-ornithologist” sounded. To be in Starfleet was to not only surrender the path of one’s life to the adventure that was exploring the unknown, but also to confront the depths of one's own ignorance and test one’s incredulity. To teleport from one place to another, to travel faster than the speed of light were parlor tricks compared to science and technology that was indistinguishable from not just magic but miracles. In short, what was “possible” or “probable” was tested each and every day one was out here. The “laws” of the universe were regularly upended, bypassed or simply broken, and the crew of the two starships Galileo had seen this more times than most. This was to say nothing of the more mundane, but still spectacular, ordeals they had gone through. The circumstances of the loss of the original Galileo particularly tugged at Selon’s heartstrings. What was it S’Task had said? “Woe to the fallen for now their struggles have ended, weep for the survivors, their troubles unceasing.”

His sea green eyes, always reflective of his current mood, must have been swirling particularly widely, for he often got looks from the others in the mess that he saw out of the corners of his eyes. Or maybe it was that he had held his mouth agape for several minutes, leaving the fork in his other propped up hand floating above the table and the food he had replicated what surely must have been an hour ago.

“May I join you?” A pacific, logical, familiar, voice echoed from across the table, interrupting Selon’s reverie.

“Of course.” Selon said without moving his body or even his eyes at all. His trance had been intruded upon but not broken. A testament to what he held in his hand.

The figure that belonged to the voice sat down, its posture rigid and immaculate as it began intricately digging at the food in front of it.

“Sorry you were saying?” Selon responded to dialogue half-imagined, or hallucinated, as if the words on the PADD were themselves ringing in his ears. Finally looking up for the first time, his eyes found Selok, the very paragon of Vulcan-ness, sitting across from him.

“I said nothing.” Selok continued cutting into his tempeh, a dish Selon had introduced to him during their time at the Academy, methodically, never varying the measure of his slice. Raising his eyebrow barely a centimeter, he was able to convey a quizzical concern. He was the very reason Selon found himself here in the first place, the link in his chain between the Oakland and the Galileo, and yet they had spent little time together over the last few days. Not that Selok was offended. Necessarily.

Selon sighed as he put down the PADD, half from the pain of his wrist breaking its long held position. “Sorry I’ve been absorbed in these reports ever since I left the Oakland.” He pushed away the stack of PADDs for the plate of food long turned cold. “It’s been days and it’s all I’ve been able to think about.” Selon shoveled some macaroni into his mouth, almost in defeat.

“Your dedication is impressive.” Selon ascribed all manner of undertones to Selok’s cold delivery. It was a game. Selon’s neuroticism and penchant for reading into things versus Selok’s implacable stoicism.

“One way of putting it…” Selon continued taking large bites of his food, making up for lost time.

“Are you anticipating that you will not be able to perform your new duties adequately?” The syntax of the question was rich with subtext, if not its tone.

“No, not quite.” Selon furrowed his brows into a tortured position as he struggled to come up with the words to explain his anxieties. If not to his own satisfaction, then to Selok’s, futile as that might be.

“Then what has evoked such an anxious response in you?”

Selon always appreciated how Selok’s probing always seemed to cut through the ‘nonsense’ that often clouded the minds of more emotionally handicapped individuals like himself. It was a sort of ruthless compassion that said “why do you doubt yourself?” It wasn’t a singularly Vulcan way, but an individual talent that Selok had, one that made him a deep and treasured friend and confidant.

“They’ve just been through a lot these past few years and I wasn’t there for it. I guess I’m thinking it might be like how it was after the War, when we were on our Cadet Cruises. How there was a divide between those who had been through the War together and those that hadn’t. It wasn’t so much that we were new but that we hadn’t been through what a lot of those crews had. We weren’t forged in fire and we didn’t have all the shared experiences, bonds… traumas, that come with serving together through something like that.”
“You are worried you will not fit in?” Selok’s… illustrative tone put particular emphasis on that last turn of phrase, as if he was both mocking and sympathizing at the same time.

Selon set the fork down and leaned back in his chair, rolling his head back with a light sigh before turning it once again to Selok. “Yeah I guess.”

Was all of this really just a shroud over an anxiety that had dodged him his entire life? First Vulcan, then Earth, it had taken him seventeen years to find a place where he felt he truly belonged and where his social success was equal to that feeling. It had been at the Academy, where he met Selok and other Vulcans who could accept, even appreciate him as he was. He had long since given up looking for acceptance among his father’s people but after two decades he had finally found it, right after he had found people who accepted him for who he was, Vulcan, Romulan or no. When it rained it poured. Selon had always known that. He just hadn’t expected that particular storm.

“Did you ‘fit in’ on the Oakland right away? A ship that was already well into its Five Year Mission?” Selok’s angling was obvious.

Selon sighed. “Not right away, no. That came with time.” Selon had not been the lauded Second Contact expert he was now when he stepped aboard the Oakland, nor had he been the widely missed and mourned officer whose going away party had short-circuited an EPS conduit on the holodeck. It had taken time and more importantly, effort on his part, to become that fixture of the ship and its mission.

“Then it is logical to assume that, with time, you will find your place on the Galileo just as you did on the Oakland, and at the Academy.”

Selon wanted to find faults in Selok’s logic but his tone was so without equivocation, so clear, that he couldn’t help but bow to the wisdom of the other Vulcan’s words.

“I think I just needed to hear that outloud…” Selon mused with a smirk and looked over to the pile of PADDs between the two men on the table.

“Your self doubt is illogical and self defeating, you are ready.” Crisp, clear and concise, all the things Selon was not, but which he most admired in Selok.

Silence passed between the two men as they finished their food, letting the catharsis of their previous conversation steady them and return them to a baseline. Well, more Selon than Selok.

“How was your most recent trip to Vulcan?” Selon inquired as he finished wolfing down his food.

“Satisfactory. It was agreeable to see my family again, we spent much of the time on constitutional excursions.” Selok’s dry wording belied affection and pleasure.

“Hiking trip? Sounds nice. My parents always wanted to take us camping along the Forge but we never did. We used to spend summers with my foreparents on the outskirts of ShiKahr and they would take us on walks with their Sehlats, that’s as close as we got.” I-Cha and T’Llow were amazingly still alive, ever watchful wardens of his paternal family’s ancestral home.

“It had many impressive sights.” Selok took up the last slice of packed rice with his fork and delicately chewed on it. Selon would get little more out of him unless he asked for holopictures that Selok certainly didn’t take. “Will you go back to Earth to see your family?” He asked, shifting the conversation back to Selon’s own family.

“Briefly, I’ll stay with my parents for two days before heading out to Deep Space Eight and then into the Pleiades.” Selon had just seen his parents earlier in the year when they joined him for a shoreleave on Starbase 24 but it would be nice to see ‘home’, such as it was. Selon had only ever really appreciated Cambridgeshire as such once he left Earth.

“And your siblings?” Selok took a sip of water and left the grenade he had casually tossed into the conversation to detonate.

“No.” Selon said in an unusual display of terseness.

Selok knew better than most the details of Selon’s fraught relationships with his siblings. Simply put it stemmed from differing views on their shared childhood being shuffled around to various outposts by their scientist parents. Each experienced that time differently and resented and reveled in different aspects of it. That difference in perspective had set them on different trajectories that continued to this day, making the differences in their personalities even starker. He could feel the pressure in his head start to build again.

“Would you be interested in a new meditative holoprogram after our meal?” Selok offered respite after repast, no doubt sensing the anxiety building in Selon once again.

Selon smirked. “I think I could use it.”

[OFF]

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Lieutenant Junior Grade Selon Illialhlae
Anthropologist
USS Galileo-A

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