Insignificant Infinity

Posted on 21 Feb 2013 @ 2:19am by Raifi Zaren

3,877 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 2, corridor
Timeline: MD03: 1930

[ON]

Just outside the mess hall, Zaren caught up to Maenad. "Never a good sign when your chief engineer thinks you're in danger, is it?"

She turned around, only having made it a few steps down the corridor. "No," Maenad smiled. "I see you've made friends," she waited for him to catch up before she started walking again.

"We are all allies in the search for peace and wisdom," Zaren grinned. "But sometimes I wish fewer of my newer friends wanted to barbecue me," he added, laughing. "The benefit of her being Trill is we'll have peace, at the least. She trusts my words, I think, just not my motives. Shame, really." He looked at Maenad sideways, "Once people stop insisting on being strangers, they begin to see all kinds of fascinating things about each other."

Maenad wasn't sure she followed, but she nodded anyway. "I have a headache," she said, touching her forehead.

"Did you rest at all?" he rested a pair of fingers just under her jaw, feeling for heat and pulse at once. His fingers might have been cold to her, most humans found them chill, but it couldn't be helped.

"Not really," she said. "Well, sort of." She hadn't been able to nap after leaving Raifi's quarters, even though she wanted to. She kept tossing and turning on her couch until she just gave up. She might had nodded off once or twice, but she felt no more refreshed by the time she'd gotten up again.

She didn't feel feverish, but her pulse was still on the slow side. Zaren absently moved his fingers from her pulse point to her earlobe. "Want to try again? There's time."

"No," she said, pushing his hand away. "But I do want to go back to my quarters," Maeand smiled. "You can come, if you want."

"All right." He tucked his thumbs in his pockets with a smile. "Good news for MS1 today. Not a solution, but at least the colonists and refugees will have more resources until a permanent answer is found. Do you get a lot of headaches?"

Her quarters were also on deck two, so it didn't take long to get there. "I guess," she thought. "It depends on what kind of day I'm having." Maenad opened her door and walked inside, kicking off her shoes with her toes. She fell backward onto the couch with her legs sprawled out under the coffee table. "Tell me about your good news."

"My father's agreed to send fifty shuttles with replicators and an atmospheric condenser. That, in addition to Jool's manipulations of the Ferelex Corporation," he lowered his voice, calmly sharing the news as he dropped onto the sofa beside her. "Should give them a fighting chance. At least until the infrastructure is dealt with. And this mess that the Vulcan's research shows... Can I get you anything? Tea? Pillow? Foot rub? Head massage? Hypospray?"

Maenad laughed. She pulled her feet up onto the couch. Folding her knees beneath her, she positioned herself to lay on her side of the couch, her feet just barely touching his thigh. "Your father has fifty shuttles?" she asked with a surprised frown.

"Yeah?" He cocked his head to the side, absently rubbing her calf. "Oh, right. Sorry. Ah... my dad's Jan Cahil; he and my brothers kind of run Cahil Intergalactic. It's a fairly widespread resource distribution firm. He's got a lot of ships all over. Anyway, after you left earlier, I managed to talk him into the shuttles and the condenser for the relief effort. Granted, that only looks after the people on MS1 and there are so many other relocation zones that need attention. Hopefully the action will pull focus though, encourage other civilians to reach out."

"Hm," Maenad breathed. "Tell me about you, Raifi," she smiled. "I want to know everything there is to know."

He laughed. "That's kind of a wide gulf. If I tell you everything, there'll be no reason for you to keep hanging around." Zaren lifted one of her feet into his lap and worked on the tension in the sole and heel. "You met my brothers, that's more than most. Let's see... about me. And now I see why this question bugs so many people on the Networks... Oh. I hate bees. All Hymenoptera, really. I totally understand where they are in the scheme of plant life, but they still give me the shudders."

"Why?" she thought about taking off her tights as she peered down at his working hands. "Were you stung?"

"Oh yeah. Killed me, actually. Leaves a sour taste in the mouth, dying that way."

Maenad sighed and gave a joking shake of her head. "I've never been stung. I like bees."

"Maybe hate's a strong word," Zaren relented. "They have a purpose in the universe, on most planets. I don't go around every day, actively thinking about how terrible they are. I just..." he shuddered dramatically. "When I see them. Or hear them. I used to like the sound of buzzing. Not so much anymore. How do you feel about transporters?"

"I try not to think about them," she said. "But, there's nothing to be afraid of. They've proven to me that my consciousness remains in tact and remains in tact. Do you not like them?" she narrowed her eyes.

"I like being me; the whole version, not billions of particles." He grinned at her, "Deal-breaker?"

"It's only for twelve seconds," she insisted. "And, the entirety of you is reassembled. You stay you." She gave him a glare. "Yes. Deal-breaker." Maenad held her pretend look of disgust and traded feet.

He accepted the new foot with an insouciant chuckle and recklessly kissed it. "Twelve seconds," he concluded, "can feel like an eternity."

"It's really about seven or eight seconds because you're not assembled," she grinned.

"Horrifying," he shook his head, pressing his thumb to the pad of her foot. "Can you imagine, if I left the universe with a whole seven or eight seconds less? Of me?"

"You'll have spent more time in dreamless sleep than you'll have in a matter stream," Maenad grinned dryly. "You have bigger concerns than lost transport seconds."

"Do I?"

"Dreamless sleeps."

"Yeah," he agreed. "So now you know about me: I get the heebie-jeebies from innocuous things."

Maenad closed her eyes and let him massage her foot. After a few minutes she said "So you're terrified of bees and you're afraid of transporters. There must be more to Raifi Zaren than that."

"Look," he chuckled. "I can't just tell you who I am; you have to figure that out. I can only tell you things about me." He kissed the arch of her foot. "What do you want to know?"

That made her open her eyes to look at him. What Maenad never realised was that it was easier for her to ask people questions than answer them herself. If Raifi had asked to know all there was about Maenad Panne, she likely would have been irritated. "I don't know," she sighed. "Just about you. Not Raifi Zaren, FNN reporter. Just Raifi." A faraway smile grew across her lips. "I'm sorry, it's a terrible question."

"So you don't want to know about me, just about me," he clarified with a smirk. "No, it's a great question. Very un-vague." He rested her foot against his thigh and began working on her ankles. "Let's see... I have two older brothers, who you saw. I was given pretty much every advantage growing up. I spent a lot of time sailing. Then I Joined and sort of... wanted to change the universe. Make it better. So I try." He paused, "I really like chocolate. And gambling? I don't know," he dissolved into helpless laughter, "You try."

The question caught her by surprise. "Me?" she asked. What was she supposed to say? Maenad showed her teeth. "Well," she decided to follow his lead, "I have no brothers or sisters. I am all alone. My parents loved me very much, so I never realised I wanted a brother or sister. They sent me away to a boarding school in Quebec when I was twelve, which really upset me for many years." She frowned, staring up through the angled window over the couch. Raifi could see that she was trying to remember how to word a bad time in her life tactfully. "It really threw me," she said finally. "I didn't have any friends. By the time I went to university, I was so desperate for friends and to fit in that I did some really foolish things." She was speaking monotonously, very slowly, and was still looking at a point lightyears away. Finally, she looked at him again and gave a relieved smile that said she was glad to have bypassed her youth. "I became a professor, was recruited to teach at Starfleet Academy, then became a science officer. Now I am talking to you."

"Why?" he asked. "I mean, why did you become a science officer? What drew you to it?"

It took her a visible moment to collect her thoughts into an adequate response. For the amount of time she'd spent though, her answer was hardly impressive. "The stars," she said. "Space."

"What about them? It?"

"The mystery. How it goes on forever. Always something new to be found. You get a real sense of infinity and wonder from space, and knowing that I could be a part of it, even in my own small and insignificant way, means something." She shrugged, which was awkward the way she was laying.

"It's pretty incredible," he agreed, looking up. "Endlessly magnificent." He switched her feet, his thumbs working on her other ankle as he stared up out of the window. "Everyone does foolish things," he added. "Especially when we feel alone. When Timor-" he paused. "When Selik, one of my hosts, was left alone, he wandered off to Bajor. By himself. Left everything behind and went somewhere he knew nothing about. Started teaching monks how to use Trill medical equipment. No reason. Just did."

Maenad looked down from the stars and back at him. She yawned quietly. "Tell me about it," she said curiously.

"About Bajor?" Zaren asked, his voice softening with the pleasure of the memories. "It's my second home. I love it almost as much as Trill herself." He plucked at her stockings absently. "And I don't know how to begin explaining it. The first sixty years I was there were the most peaceful I'd ever been. I learned, I taught; it was a perfect symmetry of needs given and met. And there's an energy to that planet, those valleys are so lush and full of history and vitality. It is a place for hearts to come home to."

"I would love to see it some day," she reflected. The landscapes he had shown her earlier came to mind. But he had said that he was a teacher? "You taught?"

"Yes. Emergency medicine," he murmured. "Helped start the first interplanetary medical academy in Musilla province at the Sarashiin monastery. When I went back, with Arjin, the place had been completely decimated by the Cardassians. It broke my heart. But the techniques we developed there saved a lot of lives during the rebellion. Life cycles."

Remembering that he was more than a hundred fifty years old made her blink to herself. It was hard to imagine. She looked at him. Maenad really felt comfortable around Raifi, and she wondered to herself about why. More comfortable around him than most people, in fact. Yet, he was still a stranger to her. She closed her eyes. Was it his wisdom? His confidence? He was passionate despite his nonchalance, maybe that had something to do with it. Maenad had always liked people who blew with the wind but still had their own vision. Raifi seemed like that kind of person. And, there was no question that he liked her. Why, she didn't really know. But, she felt that the why didn't matter so much.

"Apparently the vedeks are rebuilding," he meandered along his mental walk. "Based on the original plans. Maybe someday Sarashiin will be an echo of itself." He smiled at her, coming back. "What?"

Maenad opened her eyes, seeing that he was smiling at her. She raised the corners of her lips. "Nothing," she said lazily. "Who are the vedeks?" she prodded him with her foot to go on.

"They're... hm. They're akin to monks on Earth. And akin to Guardians on Trill. Spiritual teachers and healers for the Bajorans. Wonderfully focused people."

She touched her temple and eyebrow with her thumb and forefinger. "Oh," she said with an embarrassed smile. "I knew that. I really did." She exhaled through her nostrils and closed her eyes again. It wasn't like she hadn't been to Cardassia to get some vedeks' artifacts. She nestled herself into the cushions a little more. It was because she was tired, she decided.

"Mae," he murmured, focusing on the pressure points in her heels to relieve the tension in her head. "Are you sleeping?"

"No," she muttered, then opened her eyes. "Are you?" she didn't even realised she'd asked the question. "I'm sorry."

"I don't mind. It's a compliment." He lifted her feet, stretching her out so that she wasn't crouching on one side of the couch. "You make drowsy a melody. It's infectious, you look so comfortable."

"No," she said. "I'm fine." Maenad turned onto her side as Raifi pulled her legs onto his lap. "Where do you live anyway?" she asked.

He idly stroked his hands over her calves, ankles, and feet as though he were petting a cat. "Here," he answered. "Until I go wherever it is I go next."

"You don't have your own bed?" she mumbled. His fingers made her tingle in a soothing kind of way. She wished she'd taken off her tights now, but she was too comfortable to get up.

"You saw it. It's just down the hall."

"No," she laughed, "I mean your own bed."

"Do I own a bed you mean," he clarified. "Yes. I own one. I have a shuttle docked at a station. My producer's sitting on it for me."

Maenad turned off her side to look up at him. "You mean you don't have a home?" There was no hiding her concern.

He met her concern with an appreciative and consoling smile. "Everywhere I am is home."

"No," Maenad had to say. "It can't be. You need something better than a shuttlecraft." She suddenly felt like she should have been giving him the massage. Or that he should have been the one lying down. "I have a nice comfortable bed. What is the one like in the VIP quarters."

"Fantastic," he assured her. "Want to try it?"

She gave him a playful scowl. It took her a minute. "Yes," she said finally, "But only to see if you're getting a proper sleep. If it's no good, I will make sure that Operations gets you a better one. Sleeping in a shuttlecraft all the time is just, well..." she faded and laid back down the way was. "Unacceptable," she finished.

"You haven't slept in my shuttle. You can't know that for certain." Well, it wasn't the most comfortable thing, maybe, but it served his needs. He'd had opulence his whole childhood well into adulthood. It seemed wrong to sleep in comfort, knowing that the people he would speak to the next day barely had enough to eat. He ran his fingertips up and down her calf. "What if I wanted to make sure you were getting proper sleep?"

"How could I prove to you that I sleep just fine?" she asked with a sly grin.

"That's a good question," he murmured thoughtfully. "I'd probably have to observe for myself."

"What would you do? Just stand there and watch me sleep all night?" Maenad said with a laugh. "I don't know if I could get to sleep knowing I was being watched."

"I've got three eyes," he tapped his throat, "I can keep two shut and let the third do all the work."

Maenad closed her eyes again and stopped herself from curling her lips. The eye tattoo was... interesting... in its own way, she thought. She didn't really like it, and it weirded her out whenever she looked at it or gave it too much thought. "Three eyes," she whispered back a moment later, a hint of humour in her voice.

"I couldn't very well stand there and watch, could I? I mean, I need sleep too. This would be a good compromise. I'm more and more fond of this - as a plan for going forward. Since you will not allow me to use formal techniques to verify your health and wellness, I'll just have to hang around and make sure you're taken care of."

He wasn't going to give up, she thought. He was just going to continue prodding her until either she let him scan her, which she wasn't going to do, or unless she told him. Although she didn't want to, she swung her legs off him so that her feet were flat on the floor. "I have a rare and advanced form of hemolytic anemia," she said to her knees. "The doctor has given me a hypospray with of some kind of medication designed to bring my iron levels back to normal, which should stabilise my condition." Maenad let out a heavy sigh that said she was embarrassed and ashamed of herself. "Left unchecked, its complications can be lethal." She raised her head and looked at him from the side, "I don't like talking about it."

He was out of his lazy flirtation in moments, the doctor in him snapping to. "It's caused by iron deficiencies or an overactive immune system? There are ways to stabilize the metabolic-" He paused, watching her with lifted brows. "There's no reason to sigh, Mae, the condition - while not curable - needs not be life threatening if properly managed. You have the resources of Starfleet at your disposal. Have you been taking the medication?"

"No," she said. "I didn't need it before. All I had to do was take iron supplements," she sounded like she was whining. "And then it got worse and the doctor doesn't know why. It just happens sometimes. And because I didn't need it before, I've been forgetting to take it now." Maenad rested her head in her hands with her elbows on her knees, palms on her brows, and her face parallel with the floor. "I hate this body," she grumbled.

"I don't," he mirrored her posture, pressing his arm and leg against hers. "It seems pretty magnificent from the outside. Just saying. Where's the hypospray? You can do it now. I'll get it."

She felt him sidle her. She didn't push away, but let him come. "In my nightstand drawer."

"Be right back," he kissed her cheek, then popped up, heading into her bedroom. Hypospray in hand, he returned and dropped back beside her, brushing her hair back from her neck. He turned her chin towards him and kissed her lips gently, nibbling at her lower lip, and quickly activated the hypospray against her neck. He kissed his way down to the suffusion site, then drew back, depositing the emptied hypo into her lap. "How many times a day are you supposed to be taking this? I guess Doctor..." he searched the record in his head, "Ni Dhuinn prescribed it? Or who?"

"Doctor Ni Dhuinn said to take it once a day," she told him. "It was about a week ago when she gave it to me." Maenad gave a slight shrug. "I just forget." She let herself fall sideways onto him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Once a day should be easy enough." He curled his arm around her, holding her where she rested.

Maenad stood, slowly taking his arm from around her. "I'm going to lay down," she said down to him. Although she wasn't unhappy, she wasn't the same smiley person she'd been a few moments ago. She didn't like that Raifi was now aware of her fallibility, of her medical frailty. She was no longer the same to him. She was now pitiable, and she didn't like that.

"Is that a not so subtle way of telling me to go away?"

"You can stay, if you like," she said.

He studied her frown curiously, "Is that a really subtle way of asking me to join you?"

"It means whatever you want it to mean," she said flatly. "But we're arriving at Rojar in a few hours and I'm exhausted, so I need to lay down." Maenad shook her head and walked into her bedroom. She pulled off her uniform jacket and tunic, then unclipped her skirt, and dropped them carelessly on the floor. Then, after pulling off her tights from sitting on the side of the bed, got beneath the covers.

Zaren watched her, bemused, as she climbed under the covers of her bed. Then he decided to stop trying to figure out what she meant and take her at her word. He tugged off a pair of buckled boots, dropped his jacket on the floor beside her bedroom door, and dropped onto the bed beside her, on top of the comforter, arms behind his head comfortably. "On Bajor, near Sarashiin," he said quietly, "the trees are tall and limber. Their leaves are tender gold paper that twitch in the breeze and throw light on the paths below. The air smells sweet, all fresh dirt and streams full of snowmelt from the mountains and the scent of the trees all around. The paths are dirt. And the walls of the monastery were made from rocks that were so large and heavy, no one is really sure how they got there or when or how they were built so perfectly. The sky darkens. Finoris gillribs call to each other in the evening light, over the trickle of the streams and the sound of the leaves brushing against each other. And everything in that place is peace, so big it makes your heart feel as though it might expand and expand baloonlike and take your whole ribcage apart just trying to make room for the beauty and sanctity of the universe just exactly as it is."

In the milky darkness of her bedroom, Maenad watched him tell his story at first. Then she gradually closed her eyes to only listen. She listened to his voice as he spoke slowly and articulately. She wondered whether he came up with it on the spot, or if he'd told it a thousand times. Either way. "Take me there and show me some day," she said from her pillow.

"You got it." He gazed at her ceiling. So much love in the universe. So much possibility. There just wasn't room for it all. Not in a body. Not in a ship.

[OFF]

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Raifi Zaren
FNN Journalist
USS Galileo
(pNPC Lilou Peers)

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