Nil Desperandum

Posted on 06 Jan 2013 @ 6:10pm by
Edited on on 10 Jan 2013 @ 2:56pm

2,375 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: Vega IX: Medical Center
Timeline: MD16 1658-2340 Hours

ON:

Ambassador Near-Jareth Azure tapped his stack of PADDs against one another and picked them off of the desk, tucking them under his arm, standing up and heading out the door of his office. This was a temporary assignment, as on short notice he was the only person who had the necessary qualification to perform the test required. Liyar, Liyar... S'tanial T'verith Liyar maat'Niram, his mind filled in.

Sekhet's request was logical, he mused with a smile. Maybe even logical enough to warrant the ridiculous trip from his negotiations to assess Severen's son. He'd heard of him, but never really met the man outside of formal functions. The rumors were pretty far-fetched, though. "Lieutenant," he said upon coming across the reception area. "This way, please. I'm Ambassador Azure. Most people just call me Near."

Liyar towered over the Betazoid, and he had his Least Happy Face on. Crossing his arms, Liyar nodded once curtly and followed him through. "Why was an ambassador sent to do my evaluation?" he asked coldly. He couldn't believe it was being done so early. He thought he'd have time. But they were leaving today, he supposed they couldn't do it en route.

"Because in the Vega system, I'm pretty much the only person who can do your evaluation. The extent of your abilities isn't known. It wouldn't be logical for another Vulcan to try, do you think so?" he asked, keying open the door. There was a wooden table and two chairs along with a projector off to the side and a bunch of hands-on equipment.

"I do not," Liyar countered. He sat down on one of the asinine plastic chairs.

"And why is that?" Near asked, tuning into his terminal. He didn't pay much attention after that, facing Liyar directly from his own chair. Liyar chose not to answer that, focusing on the terminal in front of him. He didn't answer because the only answer didn't sound very logical to him. A Vulcan wouldn't pry. "Not so talkative, then," Near deduced. Liyar was looking pretty edgy, for a Vulcan. "All right... well, let's begin. I know Vulcans use a sort of," he made his hand into an approximation of the meld position. "Betazoids don't. Are you all right with progressing?"

"Affirmative."

"Okay, and can I get you to... right, here, and there, thank you," Near took back the PADDs after Liyar pressed his thumb against three of them consecutively.

"So, have you done this before?"

"Affirmative."

Talkative, Near thought to himself again wryly. "What I'm going to do, is an immersion, but I'd like you to lead it." His voice took on a more assuring tone. "Is that all right? Have you ever extra-melded before?"

"Affirmative."

"Really?" Near said, surprised by the answer. Niram weren't exactly warm and cuddly with outsiders.

"Yes. I completed a psi-test on an outworlder approximately one day ago," Liyar told the wall behind Near's shoulder.

"Is that what prompted this evaluation?"

"Negative." Liyar went back to monosyllabic answers.

"It says here that you were able to control another being's actions. Can you explain how that was done?" Near asked, looking down at his PADD curiously.

"No. I," he gestured a little helplessly. "Attempted to shut down an essential process in its brain, of movement and coordination. To prevent it from harming us."

"And, what, this big?" he moved his hands apart.

"About one hundred six meters -"

"You're - you're obviously not joking..." Vulcans do not joke, he reminded himself in his best Vulcan-Accent. "Yes, I can see why that would be... Yes," Near agreed with several blinks. "You did this without touching it?"

"Affirmative."

"Yes, and what else have you experienced?" Near asked.

"Quantum states. Medical states. Warp. Proximity thoughts." He twisted his mouth downward slightly while he thought. "Emotions. Something, life, everything. I cannot technically explain it."

Near rose his eyebrows. That sounded like an upper end Betazoid, not a P8 Vulcan. "Do you have any trouble controlling this input?" he asked, because Liyar sounded very, very novel at it. If this was new, that was an unknown variable.

"Affirmative," the one-word answer came back out to play.

"All right. Let's begin, then." He swiveled his terminal over and began typing in the beginning sequences. The test resembled the test Liyar had given to Kiri. Liyar immediately moved to key in the answers, with a lightning precision and without touching Near at all. Near blinked at the degree of correct answers coming from a Vulcan who wasn't engaging in any physical contact whatsoever.

"Alright, okay. Good. Can you repeat that while touching me?" Liyar nodded and placed a finger against Near's arm, and the test results began including snatches of thoughts-feelings-emotions in the notepad on the side. Near didn't appear uncomfortable with that. He was Betazoid, it was very normal, in Betazoid society. Just not for Vulcans. ....not for Vulcans, Liyar repeated on the typepad, causing Near to smile. He shifted the test again to the projective area. Liyar's performance dropped at that, to way below the regular Vulcan range. Interesting. Near wrote in the test pad that he postulated Liyar was so preoccupied with what was happening around him, he couldn't process putting himself outward at the same time.

The sunset was visible outside the window by the time they were done, it was nearly nightfall, and the medical center was less busy than before. Near continued administering the test for a while, until they came to the environmental aspect. Liyar was still typing an hour later, to Near's chagrin. He decided to get up and get some uttaberry biscuits, lathering them in some confection or another and bringing the plate over. He munched on them while Liyar continued his observation portion, and then devolved into his speculation portion. He looked a little uncomfortable with that. "These results are completely confidential," Near reminded him patiently mid-bite. "And I won't be offended if you use me as an example."

The Vulcan merely nodded and continued. Two hours turned into three, and then four. The plate of biscuits cleared itself out and was replaced by another one. After four hours of writing, Liyar blinked and looked up, hitting send. Near looked at the pages and pages of text in astonishment. Liyar wasn't exaggerating. Near slid his chair over near Liyar. "You remember what I said at the beginning. I'd like you to perform a mind-meld with me, so that I can assess the quality of your mental ability and your mindscape."

"Vulcans possess eidetic memory."

"Of course," Near agreed placidly. Liyar placed his hand outward, but before it contacted Near's face, they were jerkily thrown through the inner mindspace, collected everywhere and nowhere. It wasn't the calm, pleasant meld that Kiri experienced. This was tinged with tumultuous sensations and perceptions, like a world upside down. It gradually got clearer, less shaky, calmer, until they were both standing in the desert. The sky was raging, and Liyar rose his arms and willed something calm toward it. A giant barrier was extended over, and meteors were crashing down around it, hitting it and dissipating with loud booms.

Near ducked, shielding his head with the first blast. This was one of the clearest minds he'd been in outside of the Betazoid race. The scenery was almost indistinguishable from reality, but it was choppy, magnified and resonant. "Is this you?" he asked, and felt his voice reverberate.

"Yes."

"You are very angry," Near guessed.

"Irrelevant." It wasn't a no.

"I guess it is..." Near walked over to the giant shield. "Yours looks much different than the Vulcans I have met," Near observed.

"Yes. It is necessary."

"I can see that!" Near shouted over another loud crack. "You did this without touching me."

"I had thought I could, it appears so," Liyar nodded. He tensed his fists and the barrier moved outward, repelling something large and looming in the distance.

"How does this barrier work?" Near asked.

"It is a meditative touchstone. I use it to focus upon."

"Interesting. And what is all this?" he asked, looking at the various numbers and sequences floating around them. What was all of it? He couldn't make sense of it, but he wasn't very good at higher level math. From what he could understand, this was an outright insane level of detail, even for a Vulcan. And some of them didn't even look like they were describing equations. There were graphs, charts, in gold-winding script, randomly entwining everywhere.

"Everything," Liyar answered cryptically. "Everything I can feel." He waved his hand, and the scenery shifted to something obscure, faded, fuzzy. Random bursts in the distance, closer, thrumming through Near's chest, making him tense or relax, warm, cold, pleasant, bizarre. Jarring. A pitch-point of, Near gasped and blinked. Life. Threads. Was this the Counsciousness? Could Liyar feel this much of it? There were gaping, bleeding holes in it, vortexes, disappearing and swirling into nothingness. "Yes," Liyar said, and in his mind he couldn't hide the melancholy in the affirmation.

"Elements," Near exclaimed. "This is Romulus, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Do all of the Vulcan people experience this?"

"To a degree. We are broken."

The resounding sorrow made Near's chest clench involuntarily. "I can," he breathed through the welt of pain, "I can see that. Will this heal? How can you feel all of this? How do you function? How can you interpret all of this... data?"

Liyar shrugged. "I do not know. I go on."

"When did these abilities start? When did you notice them?"

"Recently. After the Lykan's destruction."

Near nodded sadly in understanding. "Do you think that somehow it triggered this? You have experienced stress before, without this happening."

"I do not know." Liyar brought up some other things, showcasing them in moving panel-pictures. Tests, sensations, doctors, faces. Moving in and out, half-lives lived in seconds. A terrifying stream of light and color, screaming and agony comprised the Romulus-part, a shady loom in the distance, he shrouded it back in shadows to dampen it and threw it out of the shield. Not now. White walls, barriers between reality. Lost in color, fuzzy logic, he had called it internally, but Vulcans did not make jokes.

He showed some more things detailing his first psi-test and some of what he had perceived on a quantum level before he brought the meld to a close, sending them back to their own minds with far more calm than he first started off with.

Near blinked himself back into his body. "All right. Okay," he said again, standing up. "This will take some time to calibrate. Get something to eat, and come back in a few hours. It will be done then."

Liyar nodded, stood up and grabbed his own PADDs, tightly nodding toward the Betazoid and walking out without another word.

***
A few hours passed uneventfully, and Liyar walked back through the doors of the medical center, he had spent most of his time in the lobby, he hit the vending machine which spit out something awkwardly plastic-tasting and spoke to a few patients and visitors, studied mathematics on his PADD and then finally reported to Azure's office.

Azure handed him a PADD. "I know you have administered these tests plenty of times, but your score... without knowing how to control this, I am going to have to recommend you use psi-clamps. Do you know what those are?"

Liyar nodded and looked down. P11 flashed back at him, causing him to stop breathing for a second.

How?!

"Hold your wrists out for me please?" Near asked, approaching Liyar with a pair of matching silver bracelets. Liyar did so, numbly, not really listening to Near at all while he explained the rest of the test, still focused on the curve bar on his test. The graphs were accurate, but how. What could have caused this? Was it the Dominion? He forced himself to breathe normally. Kaiidth, he repeated to himself, using that internal shield on a maximum burst. Near fit the metallic clamps over Liyar's wrists and snapped them shut, typing in a code frequency. "This should prevent you from unnecessary input," he said, "And prevent you from breaking the Shi'kahr Convention. Do you understand? Liyar, here, sit down, please."

He directed Liyar to a chair, where he sat a little emptily, looking at his wrists. "How?" he repeated the question in his head, shaking his head. This could not be. He had expected, maybe, a level he'd reached in meditation, or some kind of emotional overload. Not this. Not three points in the register. Not even Sekhet could justify this. People only grew in their own level, they did not jump levels like that. Did they?

"I expect that your mind has been tampered with," Near agreed. "Perhaps by the Dominion, or maybe Romulus affected you far more severely than you realized. We may never know. What is important is learning to control it. For now, you'll need to wear those."

Liyar stood up again and nodded, pursing his lips together. "As you say. I require to leave now." He took the PADD and tucked it away, striding out without another word. The heavy weight of the metal against his skin intruded unnecessarily, illogically. Maybe they had made a mistake. They did. That man wasn't competent. He had done something wrong. Liyar shook his head to himself and threw open the doors, heading out into the chilly Vegan night. He wanted to rip the psi-clamps off of his wrists, but he knew that had been part of the conditional release to duty. Everything seemed more muted now. Duller. Just like the Tarinol. He was being increasingly trapped in a giant, fuzzy cage again.

OFF:

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

Ambassador Near-Jareth Azure
Ambassador of Betazed to Vulcan, FDC
Vega IX Kendrahl Medical Center

 

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