Star Trek '12: 2012 AD - Nacene

Eight hundred years earlier things were a little simpler.

Well, that would be the myth.  Except, sometimes, we know better.  Sometimes we’re able to see the past with clarity, without rose-tinted blinders, and we know that things were no better then than they are now, and maybe that’s why some people are always depressed, why they can’t find any positive meaning in their lives.

Well, the Caretaker, as such he had begun to consider himself, and would consider himself for another three hundred years, until his death, knew better.  Suspiria was finally leaving him.  It wasn’t anything that had happened recently, or had been developing for several hundred years, or even the incident that had brought them to this predicament in the first place.  It simply happened.  Most things that happen are exactly like that, actually.  There’s no reason.  You can certainly learn a lot about what happened before it if you look, but that doesn’t mean it had anything, in the end, with what just occurred.  Every moment in time is precious and alone and of itself.

There’s no reason to look deeper, to forge connections, to map everything as if it all had a single thread running through it.  There are patterns, is all, and perhaps it’s wise to know what they are, but if there’s a meaning, then that’s a matter of interpretation, not fact.

The fact was, Suspiria wanted to try something new.  All the Ocampa who left with her did.  In fact, they wanted to return to old ways, just as she did.  The problem neither of them realized was that they were leaving essential elements of what would have helped make that possible behind.  None of the Ocampa who departed could truly understand or appreciate what their ancestors had once had, because they were leaving the last remnants of context behind.  They would be starting over, believing that they were reviving old practices and old abilities, when in fact they were creating new ones.  Suspiria was not in the least interested in helping them grow.  For her, they were a matter of convenience, just as she was for them.  The same was true, of course, for her.  She had never known a life on her own, and yet there she would be, on her own, without her companion for the first time in her life.  The relationship she had with her chosen Ocampa was nothing like the one her companion had with the rest of them.

The Caretaker knew that.  He understood what would happen to her, even if he mourned both these losses for a very long time, and why he knew with a certainty that she would outlive him, and why he gradually forgot what that would mean, why he had known why she left, why he would forget that it only made sense, that they were no longer as similar as they had once been, why they had drifted apart, why so many things had and would continue to change.

He tried to put it past him, the heartbreak, the useless feeling gnawing at the pit of his stomach, the uncertainty about the future, but found that he was unable.  He had a purpose, and perhaps had already lost himself in it, and perhaps would remember one day that the only true path to the future was remembering to regain himself, if only for a moment, so that all his work, his triumphs and failures, would mean something again, that his efforts would not be in vain, and he could once again tell himself that he hadn’t caused more harm than good.

Perhaps he could find a new companion, a replacement, someone to lighten the load, who would understand him better, and perhaps they were far away and perhaps they were close.  He had to try…