Sien'temehludet (Part 1)

Posted on 03 Jun 2024 @ 11:23pm by Lieutenant JG Montgomery Vala & Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor
Edited on on 04 Jun 2024 @ 10:34am

4,161 words; about a 21 minute read

Mission: Episode 19 - Tomorrow's Galileo
Location: USS Galileo-A - Vala's Quarters
Timeline: MD06 - 0300hrs

[ON]

==Multipurpose Lab 2==

The procedure had become more difficult since the emergency lighting had kicked in.

Vala gently slid a vial into the chrono-synaptic analyser, the small pool of light from his head torch providing sufficient illumination to ensure it was fitted snugly and correctly.

He had not been entirely honest with Ensign M'Lyr'Zor… why did his mind insist on correcting that to Sera? Strange.

His claims about checking the integrity of the other Galileo's data were not entirely fabricated - he had done that within the first hour much to his satisfaction. But his real desire for power in the labs would not have been… easily understood by her. Not in her state in any case.

He tapped the analyser’s console and it glowed into life, beginning to work through the very specific instructions Vala had fed it. A series of small, irregular flashes let him know that the configuration was correct.

Few people were aware that you could jury rig a chrono-synaptic analyser to carve a small hole in the fabric of space time, and fewer still knew how to stabilise it in order to obtain chronometric particles from a different time. Thankfully, Vala was one of these few.

His fingers skittered across the panel, moderating the reaction and keeping it contained. He closed off a few subsystems that he'd usually like to have on in order to reduce the power needs - it wouldn't do for anyone to come asking about excessive draw.

After several minutes the flashing stopped and the device settled into silence. Vala fumbled slightly with the case, but eventually slid out the vial. He held It away from the light. It had a slightly ethereal glow. Perhaps it would be enough…

==Vala's Quarters==

It took longer than he would have liked to return to his room. With no turbolifts the only way was down ladders and through tubes, and he had to carefully and methodically in order to not risk his precious cargo.

He sighed some relief as he stepped through the door, his breath a cloud of mist in front of him. It was dark in here, bereft of even emergency lighting. Just lit by the stars through the window.

He sat down and opened his satchel with shaking hands, removing the vial of glowing particles. It was hard to say if it would be enough.

In front of him was a long syringe with a vicious looking needle. It had to pierce into the bone marrow for this to work, so the comforts of a hypospray were not an option. He carefully slid the vial into the mechanism at the top and it sealed with a small hiss. About half the particles were then fed into the syringes chamber.

He removed the vial and set it aside. Getting this done correctly was paramount. It was excruciating to fail.

He took a deep breath, but just as his hand was moving towards the syringe the chime at his door sounded.

Sera stood at Montgomery's door at the agreed upon time. Ha, time. What a word. Time was the great unraveler, wasn't it? Distracted suddenly, Sera turned and looked about the dimly lit, currently empty corridor. She had a feeling that she was being watched, but by whom? Ah...that was the crux. There was no one there.

The doors hissed opened, and Sera whirled back around to face the now open entryway, with a momentarily surprised look on her face before it melted away to schooled neutrality.

"Lieutenant. You requested to speak with me?"

Vala stood slightly inside the door to one side, his face illuminated by the red lights of the corridor. "Sera," he gestured for her to enter, "this is far from official Starfleet business so I hope you will allow for a little informality.

"...As you wish, Montgomery." Sera responded softly. The alien name did not suit the tall Rihannsu at all. She strode in past him and stopped once she was through the doorway.

He walked to the small seating area by the window and took a seat. He had been expecting, or rather hoping she would come, but he had little to welcome her with. He had laid out a jug of water and two glasses, and a blanket sat nearly folded at one end of the chair. He recalled her shivering in the Jeffries tubes.

"Do take a seat," he said quietly as he poured out some water.

Sera sat and graciously took the blanket and wrapped it about herself. Shivering was an unusual--and uncomfortable--physical manifestation of various stressors within her. The blanket would hopefully help ease things.

Once adequately situated, Sera turned her attention back to her host.

Vala placed a glass of water in front of her and gave a small nod of acknowledgement. He was glad she had taken the option of the blanket. He walked away for a moment in thought, then turned back.

"I am-" He paused for a second, then nodded before continuing, "I am going to share something with you that I would prefer remain between us." He looked at the starlit silouette of Sera - her face was lightly illuminated by the vial of particles lying on the table.

"I cannot hold you to that but it is my preference if at all possible... and, well, if you do not then me telling you will hopefully still have served it's purpose..." He was almost speaking to himself, but gave a definitive sort of nod before refocusing and continuing, "This is the third occassion I have travelled in time."

He did not pause to allow for any interjection, were any desired, but instead forged on, "During my time in the Star Empire I worked extensively with highly volatile and little understood science. We took many risks and on two occassions the consequences were me being torn from the correct place in space time and thrown into another."

He blinked, and shook his head - it was not a tale he wished to recount in detail, "That suffices for context. What is important is that when people are torn from their time it causes exceptional strain on their minds. For psychically dull species such as humans or Klingons this strain may take a long period to set in, but for formerly psychically active species such as Rihannsu," he gestured to himself, "Or active ones like..." He trailed off and nodded in Sera's direction, "The impact can be most deleterious."

Sera tilted her head in consideration, however she forgot to look at Montgomery while she was doing so. "Deleterious, how?"

"It is a condition we call sien'temehludet, a loss of time. In the Federation they call it temporal psychosis," he shifted a little uncomfortably.

"It has a wide array of effects. It makes you feel... not yourself, like you are an imposter in your timeline, or that you are missing from it. In extremis you may feel like you are not the correct version of 'you'." He watched Sera closely as he spoke, "We called it 'drifting'. You begin to feel like nothing matters, that... uhm... you should live in the moment as it is all that matters."

He paused for a few seconds then continued, still in a soft tone, "I have suffered from it before, and I have studied it. It is... not easy to cure in an orthodox manner..." He glanced at the vial.

Sera's eyes finally found Montgomery's. Her carefully cultivated neutral expression cracked ever so slightly. "Psychosis...unfortunate." Unfortunate did not begin to describe what she was thinking about what the science officer had just revealed to her.

Sera turned her attention to where his eyes went to...a vial. Had that been there? How had she not noticed it? "Why am I here?" Oh, an age-old rhetorical question if there ever was one

Vala slowly sat on the floor next to the table, crossing his legs. He caught her gaze in the dim light, then spoke with exceptional caution, "Sera... I do not wish to patronise you. If you do not think any of the things I have just mentioned are of relevance then... well I am not keeping you here. Though I would fear you might be in some form of denial..." He picked up the long needle, "If I have begun to suffer from this ailment then I would say it is certain that someone more psychically sensitive is..."

"I can't go back to Vulcan. I won't.." She added emphatically. Sera felt as if insects were crawling all of over her extremities and she suddenly stood and began pacing in an attempt to bleed off the agitation she was experiencing. That Lieutenant Vala was pointing out that she was losing her sanity was a rather difficult concept to reconcile.

All of her struggles to recover, and on her first assignment back on active duty everything would be lost? The arbitrariness of the universe seemed rather unrelenting from her current point of view.

"I... uhm..." Vala trailed off - of all the responses he had expected to hear that was no amongst them. He looked up at her from his position on the floor, "To... to Vulcan? That is not necessary or... well... possible?" His tone was laced with concern, but he felt slight trepidation within that the engineer may do something... erratic. He grasped the syringe tightly.

She walked over to the viewport and stared out into the vacuum of space. The inherent beauty of the Pleiades cluster was lost on her in the moment. "Where else would an insane Vulcan be sent to, Lieutenant?" Sera said in a rhetorical manner.

To receive confirmation that something was terribly wrong within her was in no way validating or reassuring. It was a catalyst that brought her delicately constructed house of cards collapsing down. Her hands wrapped around and squeezed her upper arms, as if the painful pressure would somehow ground her. It only served as a visual demonstration of a woman who was desperately trying to hold herself together.

"And...if...if we get back, we will still not be in our own time. Will we not be a duplicate...an echo? Alive...dead...here...there.
Schrödinger's cat. A thought experiment made real. I should have listened to Viruk's attempts to educate me on the intricacies of quantum mechanics...but I did not understand."

She was babbling. Very un-Vulcan-like. Sera suddenly spun around, her eyes wild as if searching for something only she could discern. Her head pounded and she was suddenly quite dizzy. It would also appear as if her stomach was readying itself to evacuate its contents. "I am...lost."

Vala placed the syringe back on the low table and got to his feet, "This is not insanity, Sera," his voice took on a gentle tone, "It is an illness. It may be difficult to understand in this moment, but we are tangible here."

He walked over to the window to stand next to her, "Lost would indeed be a more apt way of putting it, but to be lost does not mean we are undiscoverable. Our own time awaits us, and this afflication can be treated, and will pass."

He stood with her for a moment in silence - he could almost sense her inner turmoil. He knew it well - when he had first had to deal with the sien'temehludet the sense of disunion with the present had inflicted damage that had taken much time to recover from.

Hesitantly, he lifted his hand and attempted to put it on her shoulder in what he hoped would be a reassuring gesture.

Sera bared her teeth and recoiled from him, lashing out with her hand clawed in aggression before he could touch her. He was going to lock her away! There was no time left and she wasn't going to be anyone's prisoner.

Nirsh! She hissed in Vulkhansu. "Nash-veh skil-tor't kal-tor du!" (I won't let you!)

Vala put his hands up in a gesture of peace and slowly backed away. "S'Ers-a," he pronounced her name in its correct form, rather than the bastardisation she used for the convenience of humans, "I am trying to help you."

Some fear laced his voice as he carried on, all too aware of the imposing power of the distant kin, "You are far stronger than I, it-it would be foolish for me to attempt to detain you."

"Strong? Strong!?" Too strong, not strong enough. Cold and hot, and never the right thing at the correct time. The roiling in her mind would not abate.

"Broken...missing. It's gone now. Just emptiness." The hostility fell away as if a flip had been switched off.

Vala kept his hands up, attempting to appear as unthreatening as possible. Her condition was acute... He knew the sensation - it was quite unlike anything else.

He switched to Rihannsu in the hope it would connect with her better than Standard, reciting a part of the Song of the Sun,

"Fused, the atom dies, yet by its dying we see,
Day by day, as the light
boils up from the depths of the starheart:
if the Elements for your sake
so burn themselves to nothing,
how much more you for each other?
How are you less than They?"

He took a cautious step towards her, still leaving some distance between them.

Sera did not react to his movement. Her eyes were far away in the moment and her lips moved in silence at first, but as she found her voice Montgomery understood that she was reciting the beginning of the poem he had just quoted her in careful Rihannsu.

"I am They; I am the light of their shining:
save by me, how shall you see and behold
Them?
How shall anything else be seen
save by the light of Their burning?
How shall the shapes of things be known
except that Truth burning give light thereto:
how shall reality be disclosed
without Them burning Themselves away?

"Out...out of order." She replied in Federation Standard.

"There is no order to poetry, only intent," he stepped a little closer, still attempting to express his passivity, "We choose the order to define meaning."

He attempted to catch her gaze, but her face was shrouded in shadows. All he could see was the occasional glint of blue as the starlight reflected from her eyes. "What is lost may be found, what exists is immutable,", a proverb often repeated back when he had been doing experiments back in the Empire. It was an assurance of reality and a path leading to it.

As he took another step he could think of nothing else but to speak one of the few words in Vulcan that he knew, "Kaiidth."

"Is recitation of proverbs regarding finding and losing things and affirmation that reality is what it is part of the process to return equilibrium?" Sera could feel the irrational urge to lash out rising. He talked too much! Why was she here? Wasn't there something that needed worked on in engineering...or was Montgomery simply using this as an excuse to get her alone.

Now that was a fascinating thought. Sera felt the corner of her mouth pull into a rather alien smirk. Somehow all of this was suddenly rather humorous.

"They... have been proven to..." He cleared his throat, "...help ground people in such circumstances..." Vala's voice faltered slightly as he noticed the smile in the low light, "Uhm... what..." He cleared his throat again, "...have I said something amusing?" He shifted uncomfortably on the spot.

How did her people ever adopt logic so thoroughly? For logic directly opposed instinct...and instinct in the moment was sending her some very interesting signals.

She took a slow step closer to him. "You chose to speak with me...alone. If you had concerns for my physical or mental well-being it would have been logical to direct me to sickbay...instead you welcome me to your quarters."

Vala blinked, his mind not quite comprehending the turn in the conversation. There were some voices in the deeper recesses of his mind that clamoured for him to take a step forward and embrace chaos. Glancing at the syringe, discarded on the table, he became very aware that he had not taken his own medicine.

"Uhm... Sickbay... I do not think they would necessarily have the most..." It suddenly felt quite warm, despite the frost in the air, "... the most efficacious treatment. Nor would they necessarily approve..." He trailed off again, unable to look away from Sera's diamonesque eyes, "I am... attempting to help."

"Are you unwell Lieutenant Montgomery Vala?" Sera asked in an almost sing-songy voice as she stalked closer. "You appear to be having difficulties speaking concisely...are you stressed? I can think of an activity that is quite effective in releasing endorphins. The effect doesn't last very long...but with less than 20 hours left it would be onlylogical to take things moment by moment." Sera tilted her head back and a sultry purr escaped her throat. Over the last 24 hours she had made some rather atypical sounds that no logical Vulcan would allow.

Given the compromise in higher functioning, it was somewhat comforting to note that at least her limbic system was operating within normal parameters.

Vala took a stumbling step backwards, attempting to put a little distance between him and her intent. The last time he had seen Sera had only been hours previously, and that encounter had led him to believe that this meeting would go better. His judgement was clearly not particularly sound

But it was quite clear now that she had mostly given in to the sien'temehludet. This was far from an ideal situation, and what was worse was the very distracting voice in his own mind that seemed to be desperate for him to cave in to animal instinct.

"W-We are both unwell," he stammered a little as he took another small step backwards, "And while you are a m-most attractive woman..." He trailed off. And she truly was, the voice in the back of his mind acknowledged. Was he really going to pass up a very easy win here? The internal voice seemed closer to the forefront than ever now. Always such a figure of propriety, going to such lengths to show what a noble, aloof Rihannsu he was. What did he have to prove?

"Very attractive..." He whispered. How long had it been? Maybe she was right... the ship may never find its way back to the correct time. 20 hours may be all they had to live the rest of their lives...

Vala blinked and bit the inside of his mouth, hard, the taste of coppery blood giving him something else to focus on. "S'Ers-a y-you do not truly want this," the back of his leg hit the coffee table, "Please let me help you."

Her lust-hazed eyes sharpened at his words. "Do not tell me what I want! You do not get that right. I never thought..." Sera's eyes darted back back and forth as if trying to figure out what to focus on until they honed in on his with predatory gleam. "Do you know who you are rejecting? You would. Of course. You must know my defects...I am good enough for a human but not for you?!"

Sera was at the point she couldn't keep her train of thought straight. Montgomery asked to her come...to help? She staggered a step backwards and then pulled herself upright in a jerking motion.

"Help or do not. It doesn't matter, does it?"

"Defects?" His mind fixated on the word, and struggled to find any. Her mind was defective... Or was it? There was a strong appeal to her nihilism. In twenty hours they might be dead. They might go back to 'their' time but it might not be the correct version of 'their' time. There was no loss so utter than being in the wrong timeline...

Vala closed his eyes. He had been so intent on something a moment ago, but now he could only focus on Sera's self deprecation. "I know of no defects. You are... compelling." No other term seemed to fit how he had felt about her since they had met only days previously...

Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, and the sensation once again gave him some lucidity. "Things may go well and... and then we will both wish to think fondly of the future," he shook his head, and his eyes caught the syringe. Even that was no guarantee... "While we live there is purpose," he said in an ethereal tone.

Sera's nostrils flared as she smelled coppery metal. He was...bleeding? Why? Had she hurt him? Eyebrows furrowed in confusion as her normally impeccable memory recall appeared to be malfunctioning. It was such an unexpected aroma that it jarred her out of the spiral she was on, at least momentarily.

"You are...hurt?" Her voice lilted up in interest...interest. It was all starting to slip again. The urge to step closer to him, to step into his space, to lick to blood from him mouth...to do more skittered through her and she involuntarily shivered.

"You have looked at that syringe on the table..." Sera's fingers twitched as she tried to recall how many times he had done so. More than once...more than enough to make her take notice. "Enough times to take notice."

There was little point in lying at this point and her intoxicating presence seemed to be accelerating what he had previously believed to be a slow decline. "I bit the inside of my mouth in order to exert control over my thought processes." He wiped the blood away with his cuff, but more quickly replaced it. "I am beginning to succumb to it as well."

He bent over and picked up the syringe and showed it to Sera, "This is... well not the cure but... a treatment. I harvested particles from our original timeline and from past experiments it seems that injecting them directly into the bone marrow seems to help."

The whispers in his mind were all too familiar and they felt carefully constructed to weaken his resolve. He had an odd temptation to throw the syringe down. It was painful anyway. So painful. Why go through that again. Hadn't he suffered enough?

'Pain...I...I think I tried that. Will more help?" She asked rhetorically studying the vial a little bit more critically. " You should take it." She said suddenly.

"Pain... only works for so long," his voice was soft, and distant, "You can use all manner of sensations to... distract but in the end it is difficult not to conclude that without your own time, nothing matters at all."

He took a step towards her, holding out the torture device, "This is meant for you..."

As Montgomery stepped forward Sera looked as if she would suddenly bolt, but she remained still outside of a subtle twitching of her fingertips. His hand was extended, and in it was a rather unusual object. “What am I do to with it?”

Vala stepped closer, bringing the implement closer. It comprised of a long, hard needle and an auto injection mechanism. He shivered a little remembering the agony of it. His mind was cloudy now on how well it actually worked, but surely he would not have gone to the effort to gather the particles if it was useless.

"You must..." His voice felt distant to him, "You must, with some force, drive it into your femur." He shakily proffered it once more, blood dripping down his chin onto his uniform.

She smelled of copper, sharp and bright from the blood trailing down his chin. It mixed with his natural aroma...it was so...distracting. Her eyes dilated into pools of inky blackness focused on the corner of his mouth.

She was at a precipice, and it was getting really difficult to focus on any reason not to jump. Her mouth watered at the thought of licking him clean, of running her fingers up the elegant lines of his ears of...she closed her eyes and tilted her head back as an unbidden pained-hungry sound escaped past gritted teeth.

The syringe was suddenly gone from Montgomery's hand, and Sera made a small, almost surprised noise as she slammed the long syringe deep within her leg until it struck bone and then sucked in a deep breath as the auto injector emptied the contents into the marrow.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

LTJG Montgomery Vala
Deputy Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

&

Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor
Acting Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A

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