Twenty Questions with Lake, Part 2

Posted on 15 Sep 2018 @ 4:08pm by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant
Edited on 15 Sep 2018 @ 4:09pm

945 words; about a 5 minute read

Circa MD 32 of Episode 15 “Emanation”


Previously on “Twenty Questions with Lake, Part 1”:

I consider myself an active listener. I’m able to balance informational listening, critical listening and therapeutic listening. It’s essential to my career as a counselor. But. But do you ever get to a point in a conversation where you can’t even remember what question you asked in the first place?

I paused. I considered my surroundings. The woman standing across from me in a Starfleet medical uniform wasn’t really called Nancy. Nancy was a pseudonym for this support group of Counselors. Nancy was here because a so-called non-corporeal lifeform had persuaded her to grope a co-worker. I was here because I crashed a shuttle into a navigational marker bouy, years ago, nearly killing me and my then-husband. However, the support group was taking a break. That meant Nancy --or a non-corporeal being within her-- was standing between me and the buffet table.

…And now the continuation.


[ON]

Lake ir-Llantrisant’s Personal Log, Supplemental:

Again. She did it again. Nancy plopped herself down between me and my brioche. I don’t believe the Vulcanoid tongue is sensitive enough to tell the difference between freshly-cooked and replicated food, but, I promise you, real brioche is one of the only things I miss about Earth. Really, though. One of the only. I certainly don’t miss Nancy.

One of the things that frustrates me the most about Nancy is her prediction for small talk. She has the uncanny ability to speak five-hundred-words without actually saying anything. Without presenting an idea or a perspective of her own. It’s a unique ability and it has a tendency to tire my brain out. After two full paragraphs of nonsense, I can’t really keep listening. Of all the things I can accuse Nancy of, I couldn’t accuse her of small talk on this night.

“Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?” Nancy asked me.

That was a hell of a question to ask to. Especially when Nancy knew I don’t even know how or why I had tried to— or hadn’t tried hard enough to avoid— ending my own life a few years back.

I think I stammered out something like, “I believe... well, I believe everything happens because of causation. Every happening is a direct result of the happening that came before it. Secret patterns beneath the surface, destiny... I don't see it. Not even if I squint real hard. If I look at destiny, I can see only death. Romulus burned out and the colony on Tracken II collapsed even before its atmosphere was poisoned. Now, with everything happening on Starbase Seventy-Four, it’s like destiny is trying to get me, and it keeps failing. How can destiny fail?”

Nancy told me about her own philosophy of the strings pulling behind everything we can see. There were maternal undertones to what she was saying, perhaps borrowed from Gaea philosophy, and the words she chose sounded like a summary blurb, perhaps from a book she had once read. Once she was rolling into that mother/child view of the universe, Nancy asked me, “Do you think you would make a good parent?”

Immediately, I started listing the reasons why. “With my in-born neuroses, my eating habits, and my paranoia? My burden of knowledge of everything —everything— that can medically happen to a small child?” Definitively —or mostly definitively— I told her, “I don't think so. Any child of mine would resent me by the age of twelve. By the age of sixteen, my child would overcome a fear of heights and learn to fly a shuttle, just to run away. Mind you, my daughter would know how to break a nose in two places with one punch.”

After Nancy told me about her own children, and advised me against teaching violence to a child, and told me about her wishes to meet the people her children were going to grow up to become, she asked me another question. Nancy asked me, “If you could ever travel through time, when would you go?”

“I never— I don’t fully know why my family defected to the Federation,” I told her. I hadn’t even shared that with Kohl. I don’t know why I shared that with Nancy, just then. Maybe it was the shape of her face, or the anonymity of the support group, or maybe Nancy really was a good counselor, despite her problematic sexual ethics. “Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention or I didn’t ask the right questions, maybe my parents were really good liars… I don’t understand what happened, back on Romulus. Why we had to leave and why we would escape to the Federation. The Federation of all places. I’d go back so I could see what happened.”

And then, without any fanfare, Nancy asked me, “How many chocolate croissants can you eat in one sitting?”

“If you’ve bet against me,” I said to her, “You’ve made a huge mistake. I just listened to James spend forty minutes —forty minutes— talking about how he can’t make any friends on his starship because he’s a counsellor. He seems to think his career is his only barrier to healthy, meaningful friendships. …I suppose his passive-aggressive, judgemental nature has slipped his notice. Did I mention he talked about it for forty minutes? Chocolate croissants are my only recourse. Let’s go find out how many I can eat.”

Computer, End Log

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