Fog on a Mirror

Posted on 28 Oct 2014 @ 1:14am by Commander Andreus Kohl

701 words; about a 4 minute read

Timeline: Circa MD -8

[ON]

Andreus Kohl's Personal Log, Supplemental Entry

I missed it.

Starfleet Command posed a mystery to the Galileo and her crew. Following reports of strange sightings and recondite rock formations, our charge was to discover just what was happening in the mines of Lyshan Three. Despite the questionable nature of my hands-on experience as a science officer, I managed to participate. I contributed, even, to the evaluations of the terraforming results and the ministrations within the mines. I nudged the investigations forward, and then I missed the moment of discovery. I missed it.

There was a collapse in the tunnels. My away team fell into a cavern beneath. I certainly fell hard. I'm sure you've already heard all about it in the other duty logs and personal logs. I hit my head on the inside of my environmental suit's helmet. (I probably have brain damage from that one...) I was unconscious. I was asleep when the answers came. I didn't even notice it when the shockwave expanded from the obelisk. I only know of the shockwave because of what I've read in the science officers' duty logs. You know, I imagine the shock wave is why my environmental suit was so dented, even in places where I hadn't fallen on it...

The away team were immersed in a waking dream. I think... I think perhaps that same dream crept its way into my unconscious mind, as well. I remembered some of it... I thought I remembered some of it when I regained consciousness. There was an overarching vision of the non-corporeal beings' evolution, but so much of it slipped away so quickly once I was returned to Galileo. I was dispatched to my old role, and slipped into triage protocols, and the memories slipped away. I missed it.

But now. I fear... I fear they're returning. The vision, the memories, or maybe they're simply my impressions of what the memories might have been? They're coming to me while I sleep. Dreams so lucid they force me from sleep. They wake me right up. I don't usually dream of memories. I don't usually dream of anything terribly coherent. But I can remember one of the beings - I can remember its sense of fulfillment with its life down in the depths of Lyshan Three. It felt as if it was achieving its purpose, and communicated that feeling clearly. The being was suffused with a sense of enlightenment, and its rich and complex inter-relationships with its fellow beings. The being was terrified of us, terrified of the Cardassians, for the potential loss we represented. The idea that the being might lose its way of life, might lose its companions, filled it with such terror.

Which is why I find myself sitting up in bed, laughing at myself for feeling jealous of a ghost in a cave.

I'm jealous of the meaningful relationships a non-corporeal being has non-corporeally with other non-corporeal beings. (What do they even talk about?) It's preposterous. My memory of the beings may not even be real. It may only be my own imaginings. Its way of life is utterly incompatible and incomprehensible when mirrored against my own, and yet, here I am measuring myself against it. Measuring myself and falling short. I can hear my own self questioning if I should really be continuing in the sciences, questioning if I have meaningful friendships aboard Galileo. I don't know why I have such high expectations of what my relationships should be like. Does it really matter what sort of friendships I have? Or what form my romantic relationships take? I can't seem to stop myself from comparing what I have now to what I've had before, in other times, on other ships. But they say the fabric of every relationship should be completely different to the fabric of every relationship before it. Each new participant changes it wildly, and trying to shape it to match what's come before can only lead to making the same mistakes...

Non-corporeal lives, and non-corporeal friendships. I missed it. I'd better not miss it the next time.

[OFF]

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