A Better Time

Posted on 03 Aug 2025 @ 10:10am by Lieutenant JG Serran

889 words; about a 4 minute read

Starfleet Academy, Earth – Year Three
It is illogical to romanticize the past. Memory, being inherently filtered through the lens of personal experience, is subject to distortion. And yet, there are moments—isolated, precise—whose clarity remains undiminished.

I remember such a moment.

It was early spring in San Francisco. The air was brisk, sharp enough to sting the lungs during morning formation. Most cadets complained, wrapping themselves in regulation jackets, hands buried deep in pockets. I did not. I found the cold…clarifying. Especially compared to the heat of Shi’Kahr, where I had visited extended family only once.

The campus was quieter than usual that morning. My systems analysis lab had been canceled due to a power recalibration exercise in the operations wing. I considered returning to the dormitory, but instead I diverted to the gardens near the southeast reflecting pool—an area seldom occupied outside of meditation hours.

The Academy grounds are designed for aesthetic variety, a compromise between practical architecture and the emotional expectations of over a hundred species. The gardens served little purpose beyond reflection, but I found their arrangement pleasing.

That morning, I sat alone on the stone bench beneath the Andorian pine, a tall, twisted conifer imported decades earlier. Its needles dropped in spirals, and I had often observed how they fell with nearly mathematical predictability.

I had brought no PADD. No tricorder. Nothing to simulate productivity. I simply sat.

There is a concept among humans: leisure. Often equated with pleasure or relaxation, but at its core, it is a kind of sanctioned stillness. I did not fully comprehend its value until that day, even though I had spent almost my entire life here.
Birdsong drifted from the treetops. A sparrow, I had seen many in my life up until that point. Though I had no interest in the creature itself, its cadence reminded me of rhythmic Vulcan water chants—a repetition that was neither
monotonous nor irregular. I slowed my breathing to match it.

Four beats in. Hold. Four out.

I had spent much of that year suppressing something I could not fully define. My instructors praised my performance. My peers tolerated my presence. But there was a growing dissonance within me—a persistent awareness that I was, despite every adaptation, always a half-beat out of sync. Not enough to draw attention. But enough to feel.

Perhaps that is why I noticed her.

A young woman—likely first-year—rounded the path near the pond, carrying a large container of soil in both arms. Her uniform sleeves were rolled, and one cheek bore a smear of dirt. A gardener, then. Or a volunteer from the xenobotany division. She stopped short when she saw me.

“Oh—sorry,” she said, as if she had interrupted something private.

“You have not,” I replied.

She smiled politely, then moved toward one of the planters. The effort was clearly taxing; the container was poorly balanced. I stood without thinking and approached.

“May I assist you?” I asked.

She blinked, caught off guard. “Are you…sure?”

“I am capable of lifting forty-two kilograms without strain.”

She laughed. Not mockingly—just surprised. “I wasn’t questioning your strength. Most people don’t offer. Thanks.”
I took the container. It was poorly packed, the soil wet and uneven. Still, manageable. I carried it to the planter and set it down. She followed, brushing hair from her face.

“I'm Cadet Juniper Vale. First year. Xenobotany and habitat sustainability track.”

“Serran,” I said.

“No first name?”

“That is my name.”

She tilted her head. “Vulcan?”

I nodded.

“Cool.” She grinned. “Most of the Vulcans I’ve met haven’t talked to me unless I was wrong about something.”

I considered this. “Correction is often viewed as a form of assistance.”

“Sure,” she said. “But sometimes helping someone means just carrying the dirt.”

I found no logical rebuttal.

We planted in silence for several minutes—well, she planted; I helped redistribute the soil. She explained the purpose of the project: a testbed for floral resilience in mixed-climate environments. The planter we worked on was meant to simulate temperate-to-tundra transition zones, with flora from both Tellar and Earth.

“They said it wouldn’t work,” she said. “That the species weren’t compatible.”

“And you wish to prove otherwise.”

“No. I just think they might surprise us.”

I pressed a root bundle into place. “Is that not the same thing?”

She smiled again. “Maybe.”

We parted without ceremony. She wiped her hands on her uniform and thanked me. I returned to the bench, my boots marked with soil. I did not clean them.

That afternoon, I resumed my coursework. No deadlines were missed. No protocols breached. But something had shifted. Not in the curriculum. In me.

Humans would call it connection. Vulcans might deem it irrelevant. But I have come to understand it as presence. A moment without utility that nonetheless carries meaning.

I never saw Juniper Vale again. She may have changed
tracks. Transferred. Or simply existed in another orbit. That is unimportant. What remains is the clarity of that morning: the cold air, the bird’s call, the unexpected weight of damp soil in my arms.

And the understanding—new then, but lasting—that sometimes, one may serve not through brilliance or precision… but by simply showing up, and offering to carry the weight.

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