Who Needs Love When There's Shopping?

Posted on 10 Jan 2014 @ 10:29pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson

1,913 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 05 - Solstice
Location: Florence, Italy, Earth
Timeline: MD 14 - 1550 hrs

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Ellsworth had seen very little of Earth. His first experience with the planet had been advanced training at the Starfleet facility in Kyoto, and that city had left much to be desired for him. Somehow it had managed to retain a rigidity and conservative atmosphere that reflected its historical roots, which seemed all the more exaggerated for having lived two years on free-wheeling Risa. Aside from infrequent forays into the city of Kyoto, the intensity of the training program had left him with few opportunities to explore Nippon, much less venture further afield, so Earth had seemed a bit of a bore up to that point.

Thus, San Francisco had been a revelation. Since arriving there, he'd changed his opinion about the planet altogether. The city seemed to always buzz with activity - shuttles flying in and out of Starfleet facilities; high-ranking members of the brass surrounded by aides making their way through the Presidio; people living and shopping in the thriving Embarcadero and haughty Nob Hill neighborhoods. As the nerve center of Starfleet, it thrummed with an energy and vitality that made Kyoto look like a sleepy backwater village.

With a revitalized interest in the central planet of the Federation, he'd dedicated some off-time to reading about the different cities and environments the planet had to offer. Ellsworth had few opportunities over the short span of his life to play tourist, so the experience was almost entirely new to him. Being a member of Starfleet made the experience seem even more surreal: the uniform granted him a certain amount of respect from ordinary citizens, access to a vast intra- and inter-planetary transport system, and an account flushed with accumulated credits from basic and advanced training that could open up new luxury experiences.

He'd forsaken most of his belongings on Risa, hastily judging them as either too juvenile or unnecessary for his new life, so his first order of travel business had been to find a place to build a new wardrobe for off-duty hours. The utility of Starfleet's enlisted uniform was not only an affront to his fashion sense but also made him feel as if he were always on duty and representing the fleet, even when he didn't want to be.

The search for fashion and shopping on Earth had taken the better part of a day, but eventually it led him to Florence, an historically significant city on the river Arno. The architecture and romanticism of the city had appealed to him just as much as its status as a fashion mecca; it also had the added benefit of being entirely on the other side of the planet from San Francisco and the kind-hearted Andorian that he had essentially used and then abandoned in quick succession. Even thinking about it pre-departure had made his stomach turn - how did the victim so quickly turn into the transgressor? - so he hoped the trip to Florence would serve as a useful and therapeutic distraction. He'd well-learned the benefits of retail therapy during his time on Risa, and he hoped to be able to replicate the mood lifting experience on Earth.

Much of Betazed's cultural heritage had been damaged or destroyed during the invasion and subsequent liberation campaign and Risans seemed to lack an appreciation for the historic, so Florence was both new and surprising to him. He'd watched two short films on the city in his bunk back in San Francisco, and they'd done a good job at selling the city as the cultural jewel of Tuscany famous for its brilliant works of art and architecture. The Uffizi Galley, Academia, Palazzo Vecchio and Baptistery all looked beautiful and fascinating, but Ellsworth wasn't exactly interested in the tourist attractions this time around.

He just wanted to shop. And shop a lot.

Shop enough to drown his feelings of guilt and remorse.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The shuttle from San Francisco had brought him to Paris, the administrative heart of Earth, and from there he'd been able to catch another shuttle to the transportation center in Florence. The whole experience of travel was new and somewhat overwhelming for him: security checkpoints; departure and arrival schedules; rules and regulations; and the rigors of intraplanetary transport had never even been on his radar before. On Betazed he'd lived in two cities his whole life, and moving around Risa was nothing like Earth. The authorities of the Risian Hedony regulated tourist traffic to insure the planet's sensitive environments weren't threatened by a crush of pleasure-seekers, which meant the humanoid population never even got remotely close to that of Earth.

The transfer in Paris had been an absolute nightmare for a young Betazoid with poorly regulated telepathic abilities; what seemed like millions of people were clustered in the city's transportation hub, each with their own thoughts and feelings. All the lights and sounds had become exaggerated for him under the telepathic pressure - brighter, louder - and for long moments at several points during the walk from one concourse to another he'd been nearly overwhelmed by it all.

Thankfully, Florence was a much smaller and more manageable municipality. The cold weather seemed to have kept most tourists away, so he assumed he was sharing the streets with more locals than visitors. A short walk on foot, guided by a map he'd thoughtfully packed for himself, brought him to the Piazza Santa Trinita in the Santa Maria Novella district that one of the films had suggested was the best place to begin shopping for haute couture along the famous Via Tornabuoni.

The piazza itself was surrounded by several Renaissance-era palazzos, each one having been turned into stores by one fashion designer or another. To his surprise, the signs adorning their facades didn't just indicate Terran designers but also fashion moguls from Andoria, Bolarus, Vulcan and several other prominent planets within the Federation. The only building not given over to fashion in the small plaza seemed to be the Basilica di Santa Trinita, an old church converted by the municipal government into a museum on local history.

All of the buildings were constructed from bricks or rough-hewn stone that might otherwise have seemed drab save for the golden hue cast by the late afternoon sun. The historical building materials made for an amusing backdrop to the loud, garish signs advertising the name of each of the stores and designers. Ellsworth thought the presence of such contemporary signs probably drove the Florentine historical society crazy, but he decided he liked the clash of old and new.

At the center of the largely empty plaza, he noted a tall column with some sort of sculpture perched atop it. Feeling a little guilty about coming to the city just to shop and not see at least one historical thing, he made his way across the cobblestone street to the placard at the column's base. The sign indicated the structure was an ancient Roman column locally recognized as the "Column of Justice" due to the sculpture of the personification of justice atop it. The placard said it originated at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and was a gift to Cosimo I de Medici by Pope Pius IV and used to commemorate the Battle of Montemurlo.

Whatever the hell all that means, he thought, although he had to admit that Cosimo I de Medici was a pretty badass name.

From his position in the middle of the piazza, he could survey the shops around him and look down the Via Tornabuoni, which seemed as much a canyon as a street due to the tightly-packed stone and brick edifices lining its sides. All of them were fashion-oriented stores in some form - haberdasheries, cobblers, tailors, perfumeries, department stores, leatherworkers. The latter he was particularly interested in, as the city was evidently famed for its leather goods.

He set his sights on the nearest store that had windows filled with his sort of clothing - form-fitting and flattering - then took off with a purposeful stride.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

In an empty courtyard down a side alley, Ellsworth sobbed quietly. Bags from half a dozen stores sat at his feet and beside him on the bench, but all the shopping in the world couldn't seem to ameliorate years of psychological trauma brought once again to the forefront from the frustration of his recent Andorian episode. Neglect and poor training had left him with a substandard control of his racially strong emotions. Sometimes a blessing, it allowed him to live and experience life to an extent that most never would, but at the same time it could just as easily be a curse.

Eventually he wept openly as shame and guilt washed over him, quietly hoping the solitude of the side courtyard would hold long enough for the emotional event to pass. He swatted several times at an incredibly irritating vine of European ivy that kept tickling his hair before finally reaching up and angrily snatching it from the wall to cast into the alley. Some loose plaster rained down on him, worked loose when the ivy was ripped free, and that seemed to make Ellsworth cry all the more. Bad enough he was hurting people, now he was destroying things with historical value.

He felt like a predator, suddenly experiencing remorse over a kill. Was it possible to sexually assault someone in the course of a consensual act? Ellsworth hadn't forced the other man to take him home; he hadn't telepathically manipulated his emotions. But the whole time he had known the differences between them and chosen to ignore it. The night was simply transactional for the Betazoid. Even in the throes of passion he'd known it was different for the Andorian, yet still he'd pressed onward. The whole time, in the back of his mind, he knew he'd leave wordlessly in the morning while his companion would awaken expecting to find him there.

He wasn't sure what he felt more ashamed about: using Keval, or feeling like one of his former clients. They had all treated him much the same as he'd treated the Andorian, but at least they'd had the decency to pay him. All he'd left for the other man was a scattering of shirt buttons, an altogether worthless currency. At the time it had seemed a cheap and juvenile gesture; now, he viewed it as probably adding insult to injury.

The pretty clothes in the bags around him had only fulfilled one of two purposes; they made a new wardrobe, but they'd done little to make their new owner feel better about himself. Even as he'd shopped, he couldn't force his telepathic impressions of Keval from his mind. The man dreamed of moonlit walks on the beach; dinner along the bay with the surf as backdrop; a life-long commitment of romance and love. They were experiences and emotions that Ellsworth had only known through literature and then never fully understood. He was as lost as many humanoids felt at his age, but for far more tragic reasons. He'd turned into what he came to hate the most about his loveless clients, even as he took their money. They seized what they wanted and refused to accept the consequences, just as he'd done with the young operations officer now thousands of kilometers away.

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PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo

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