This Year II

Posted on 20 May 2013 @ 11:36am by Lieutenant JG Kestra Orexil

2,822 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Sickbay
Timeline: MD7 0700

ON:

He wasn't good at words, or at feelings. It was the best method he had at his disposal to try and help, awkward as it was. With more stability in action than in mind, Liyar adjusted the tuning receptor at the side of the headset with two fingertips, and alternatingly watched her and the PADD in front of him. He slid several indicators to different levels and kept the sound low so she wouldn't be affected too bad by any of the alterations. He stared at it for a while when he hit a roadblock, the gears in his mind came to a visible clunk and halt, jammed by wooden stakes. He gradually crushed through it, body moving into life quickly again once he figured out how to bypass the software issue. The mesiofrontal cortex was nothing like the paracortex, but they were both near the temporal lobe, which is the part he focused on. Meaning, emotion, perception. Slowly but surely he narrowed down possible codes until bells sounded like wind, sounded like silence. Illusionwork, it wasn't a shield or a nullifier, it was an overlay. Translating input into nothing, alongside bells. He carefully turned up the sound after several more minutes of fiddling, looking at her expectantly.

She could hear his voice in her head, absently muttering to himself as he worked through the kinks of a design he'd just imagined. If she focused just on that steady stream of meaningless internal commentary - numbers and Vulcan - she could put aside the swell of chattering minds. Just focus. Focus... then it was gone. The numbers, the visualizations of brain cross-sections, graphs, and dials... A pressure began to build at the sides of her head. It wasn't silence; it was a vacuum. So deep and noiseless that even her own thoughts felt blurred, as though she were looking at them through a dirty pane of glass. Her eyelids began to flicker, forehead wrinkling as the pressure deepened, darkened- She tore the headphones off her ears and pressed her fingers to her forehead as her own thoughts and a thousand others clustered en masse back into her consciousness.

Nothingness. No, that wasn't right. A filter, additional - no, Liyar blinked and arched his eyebrows. An anticipation program wouldn't work, nor would nullifying it, there had to be a threshold. A point at which voices and perceptions got overwhelming, to stem the flow. Turn it into alternate input, calming input. He had a deep frown engraved on his face as he took the headset from her and pulled it apart, hooking it directly into the PADD from the transceiver portion of it and holding the other end up to his ear. He was working quickly and furtively, made all the more urgent by her abrupt lack of mental shielding. She'd gotten used to Endrina, the Cairn song. Excessive input, all at once. It seemed for an agonizing endless time that she was to be left there, that his idea was in fact a failure. That there was nothing but luck and quirkiness to give her that momentary peace of earlier. A threshold, he thought. It was the same problem. Poetry and philosophy were oddly relevant.

Too much, overload. Not enough, overload. Betazoids, like Vulcans, thrived on telepathic contact. With nothing, she was just as lost, moreso. Less herself, less real, unable to breathe. He didn't - couldn't look at her, too busy focused on his work, while the cortical monitor beeped in his ear and over her head. So many voices. Too many, they were writhing, meaningless things, slippery and wet and lashing tendrils of things. He twitched away from them, tunnel vision. Only numbers and wires meant anything. His fingers barely worked as he forced the last few data slots into place, twisting the wire on the crude motherboard. He had to feel it, to know it was right. He would know, it felt wrong. Wrong. Didn't match. Threshold too high. Too low. Balance. He rested a hand on her arm, against the skin. Missing puzzle pieces.

Ebb and flow. Shorelines. Back and forth. Patterns, he realized. It wasn't just input, it was input in patterns. Spots, spaces, where air could get in, a complicated network weave. The pattern in his mind got more defined, bright and gold and humming loud enough to drown out everything else. Liyar fumbled with the system until it was all in order and locked the code into place, replacing the old software, and before she could slip into the tornado, he clapped them over her ears again.

Kestra gingerly opened her eyes again as the bells quelled the overwhelming chatter. The voices weren't silenced, but it was as though they were in another room. When the bells stilled, the doors were opened again. She looked at Liyar, tears welling in her eyes, and carefully removed the headphones, offering them to him. For you.

Liyar was many things, stubborn included. "After," he insisted. "After you have recovered. When you can think." He lifted up his wrists with a small shrug, the tho'san stone captured in metal bands gleaming, resting against the bones. The psi-clamps weren't very effective, but, "They do." He could function, he had functioned for years, he could go a week, a month longer. "It will not work with my brain waves anyway," he said wanly. "It is keyed to you." Maybe he would make himself another one, when he could properly think. Did it work? Did it help? His hope that it did was a tangible thing. To bring her some measure of peace.

Couldn't he feel that it did? she wondered. Or did the music somehow quell his access to her thoughts in the same way it quieted the flow of others thoughts to her? She settled the headphones on her ears and took his hand, bringing him into the shelter provided by the bells in her mind.

Too lost in his own mind, but the shelter brought him back, returned his katra to his eyes where it had wandered off in shelves, digging through drawers and boxes, flinging out nonsense. Quiet. Warm blankets, theris'shevan. It engulfed him on a bed of clouds, he was fluff, light as air. It had been a long time since he'd felt that kind of calm, away from the poking needles of everyone. Years. "I am - gratified that it works."

We must find you such a thing for yourself as well. How can I help?

Liyar moved his head and shoulder slightly in his version of a shrug. I was given testing when we were at Vega IX. I was told that the nature of my telepathy makes it difficult to impossible to determine how something will affect it. I was P8/P9 fluctuating. When they finished the test, it showed P11. His own trepidation at that was obvious mind-to-mind. If he were a Betazoid, P11 would be average. But he was not. His mind, as a Vulcan, was not used to such high levels of input. It wasn't designed that way.

The bells continued, hushing the worrying, bickering, thought-filled minds. That gentle quiet gave her the space and time for the first time since she'd woken to put herself in order. And, more importantly - now that she could hear herself think - she could find her center. She could hear the patterns within the bell song; the sound waves thick cords of softened silk. Pay attention. One by one, she lifted them with her mental tendrils, manipulating the sound she heard and tying them in a loose weave around her psyche. It was an old trick, one of the first she'd learned: a basic shield built with new materials. A combination of technology and the lore of Betazed. We will find a way to make it work for your brain waves. I will show you how to use the sound, to hold it in your mind and use it as cloth. And I will be with you, my brother, and help you find the light as you did for me.

Mind piqued, Liyar's awareness narrowed like a laser focus. Movement, organization. Reaching-fingers, separated strands. Liyar's mind eluded him, fell out of his grasp, stretched into every corner of his skull. He tried to peel it back, separating the thin edges from the shell of his brain. Use shields like gravity, holding spheres together. Shields meant nothing. Vulcans learned that shielding was an extension of one's self, one's katra, the truth, reality. This was brand new. He lagged behind considerably; creating mental fingers that wouldn't stay, phased solidity. Then skin, bone, muscle, flesh. His fists followed suit in life, fingers uncurling. The static of bells and silence chimed in his mind, and they naturally separated into bars and numbers on grids in front of him. You mean; you believe you can help me? Liyar asked in bare hope, pressing his hands into the molded clay and attempting to shape it, guide it.

I believe that you're a great deal smarter than I am, she answered him, steady with confidence. If I am capable of controlling myself, then so are you, and together we will find a way. She thought about her own training, when she'd been a girl. Days on the shore of the lake, by the house in which her mother had been raised, her hands full of delicately linked kressia chains, petals lilting in the soft breeze. Evenings with needle and thread, listening to her grandmother's stories as she patiently and painstakingly embroidered the family name into cloth after cloth. Neater and tighter each time. Weaving, sewing, knitting - every stitch and purl centering her mind and improving her mental control. We'll need to acquire some rope, I think.

Liyar followed her through the labyrinth, pictures and stories in grass sewn together, he rested his hands against them, feeling it tickle his palms. The training that you have received is very different to mine, he said. Hand-in-hand. Meditation, control, warmth, fire. Peace. Acceptance. Reality. Harsh-truth. Storms. Self-clear-bright. Selves, connecting, A'Tha. Strength in numbers. But it seems that my mind is now different to the training that I received, he pointed out to himself, wryly resigned. She could - wanted to help. Maybe it was possible. To learn a new way, a different way.

We can teach each other, she agreed. For there's a great many things I've yet to learn of myself as I am now. It feels impossible that only two weeks ago, I was so different. Thought so different. Had such a different experience of the world. The changes that are the most off-putting are the ones that happen quickly, but this- it still feels to me as though this world might simply dissolve like the dreams did. That all this - even the utter frustration of my useless legs - is a passing affair that I'll learn is someone else's nightmare. Then they'll wake up and I'll find myself somewhere else... She frowned, shaking her head, For now, though, we will work, find a common ground, and solve both our mysteries. I believe we can. I believe we are more than capable, together.

Liyar listened to her. Perception had always been his nemesis. The thoughts of others. Her thoughts, their dreams. Trust, he said, a single descriptor. Trust in one's own awareness. Without that, what was anyone? It would take time, sustainability. He led her down into his mind, allowing her to see one of the most integral things to his own function. A wall of stone, jagged rock. He placed his hand against it. Object. Corporeal existence. You will build a place that will remind you of Truth, he said. You will not be lost. And if she did return to that place, Liyar knew he would go back and find her. Because he could, because having an anchor to that dustrocknothingnesssoftwindstreeschimingflowers. feet. floor. roots was the only thing, living in dreams were feathers in a hurricane. Truth is shifting. It changes, minutely. But it only gets more real.

Sometimes, she agreed. And sometimes it becomes less real. Truth is fickle that way. She looked down, brows drawn together. Have you ever had problems... containing your thoughts? Not hearing the outside, I know we share that trial, but since I woke up- since you brought me back (thank you) - I've been able to do more than I ever have before. I speak to a room as easily as I feel it. I used to need contact to communicate telepathically. I needed to form a link with a mind through physical contact before I could reach them beyond the room we were both in. Now- I stepped into a man's dream yesterday while I was half asleep. He was on the Venture. The admission frightened her, that was clear enough, but she had to tell someone. If they were to work together, he had a right to know what he was getting into.

Liyar nodded in the physical realm. I did enter your dreams, he reminded her. His own mind was much the reverse of hers. Reception, rather than projection. Feeling an entire room, not speaking into it. Input, information, static numbers, the math of emotionsfeelingsthoughts was everywhere now. Trija believes that your mind may have reacted to preserve itself. By forming connections with this crew, in the only way that it knows how. Through dreams, he told her. To say it did not frighten him would be a lie, but he too frightened himself. He knew it, not exactly, but enough. I will stand with you. Perhaps there is a way that these links can be dissolved, so that you can find peace in your own mind. But it may take time. Your mind may still believe it is threatened, which is why you are holding onto these links.

It isn't only this crew, brother, her voice in his mind was pale and worried. If it had been... only I touch the minds of strangers. I scare them. They think I'm just a dream, but I'm there. When I sleep, I am everywhere. And when I wake... sometimes, I cannot tell when I am projecting my thoughts. They slip from me, like water through open fingers. I touch a single mind and the room at large hears me. Worse, she added in a whisper. I begin to enjoy this strength. The control - I yearn for it, but when it's accomplished, if the power does not dissipate... there are forsaken among my people, who blossom too young into the minds and hearts of others. Who lose sight of their individuality and meld with the universe, or lose sight of their mortality and seek to replace the Deities in their power over their fellows. If I falter, I cannot be allowed to continue.

My brother is much the same way, Liyar said. An image of a tall curly-haired Vulcan sitting in a meditation cell filled his mind. He had melded with Sekhet several times, plowed through the barren wasteland in his head, helped him shape and contain himself. Before. Long ago. He too has often struggled to contain his abilities, and has spoken of the experiences in such power. His own mind worked in such a way that he couldn't relish in power. He had it in the way that chemicals did in inert states. The raw potential. But not when he wanted, not perfectly mixed. It eluded him. But if he could? He didn't know. He believed such a thing was a mixture. Personality, intent, will, and the mind itself. Before - cordsnapped. now-lab-experiment-bang. I watched out for him. I do not know how capable I am of doing the same for you, but you have my word I will try.

I would not ask it of you. We will work. We will do our best to find our balances, you and I. I trust you, if my balance fails, to do what must be done - not to save, but to end me. I only pray it does not come to that. Kestra pressed her lips together, raising her gaze to his. But first. Rope. Then we must teach you to sew.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Kestra Orexil
Patient/Former CTSO, SFS
USS Galileo

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