Star Trek - The Human Adventure

In a quiet corner of a salon there was a little girl.

This was not just another girl and this wasn’t just any salon. The salon was in the city of Kambata, in the planet the Federation called Delta IV. The little girl was called Ilia, after her mother.

Ilia had been born before her mother reported for duty aboard the Enterprise. She was a product of her mother’s affair with the human, Will Decker.

Deltan society had room for Ilia, had a place for her when her mother went away, but it didn’t account for her mother never returning, or never meeting her father. She was lonely, all the same. Among Deltans, their peculiar pheromones work differently. In their society, they had mastered themselves. With the child, it was a little different. She found it difficult to process her impulses. When she was in public, she was at the salon, where she could study her people at their most uninhibited.

And they were her people. She was never made to feel any differently. She felt isolated, all the same. When she was told what had happened, it hardly made things easier. She was young, but not too young to know the yearning she had felt when her mother told her she would return.

It was a blessing, then, when she closed her eyes for a nap, one day, and saw her father.

“Hello,” Will Decker said.

“Hello!” Ilia replied.

“Sorry to drop in on you like this,” Will Decker said.

“That’s okay,” Ilia said, in her sleep.

“I really didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Will Decker said. “Not your birth! That’s not what I mean. Ilia didn’t tell me..I don’t mean to make excuses. I had placed my career first. Always so ambitious…That’s what brought me here in the first place, the ‘impossible assignment,’ they all said. No one could have the discipline. Well, I did. Mostly. Until I met your mother. And then I was given command of the Enterprise. It was a big assignment! They wanted the ship totally overhauled. It was practically a new ship, by the time the work was done. Some of the crew from its prior mission was retained, some had moved on. I asked for your mother. I needed her by my side. I didn’t know how selfish that would…Listen, something happened. You were told, but no one could really explain. That would’ve been, well, impossible.

“I will try my best. Your mother was killed by a machine. This machine was going to, it was going to destroy everything. It was headed toward my home planet, Earth. You have family, there, too. Someday you’ll meet them, I’m sure. The machine was something Earth had sent into space long ago, before humans had begun living amongst the stars, before we had visited other worlds, before we’d met any of their inhabitants. Before we knew Delta IV existed. Before we knew your mother’s people. The machine encountered a problem we couldn’t have anticipated, or hadn’t accounted for. It became confused, in its programming. It went in search of its creator. But it had forgotten what it was. 

“It absorbed your mother, really. It transformed her into a kind of emissary, a representative, and it…had all of your mother’s memories, but it didn’t understand them any better than it knew itself. I knew her, though. I chose to accept what had happened, and to bring those memories back…

“I stepped away from things. I don’t really know how to explain what happened, better than that. I was absorbed, too. It was the only way to explain to the machine what its creator was. This time, the machine didn’t destroy, though. I remained in control of myself. 

“And a very curious thing happened. This was the moment I learned of your existence. Your mother hadn’t told me, but the machine knew, and didn’t know that I didn’t. It was just information. It devastated me. I fell in love with you instantly. I was able to see everything, the moment of your conception, your mother’s pregnancy, your birth, the whole of your life that she witnessed…That was how I met you. I just couldn’t be part of your life. This is what I tried to explain to the machine. Your mother, the version that existed, the memory, the echo, she became herself, again, when she saw you, too, for the first time, all over again, and that was what convinced the machine…

“I’m sorry, this is a lot. You’re not going to remember…Anyway, I think we taught the machine…love. And that’s what I want you to feel, now…I hope you can. I can’t cross back over…I realized, later, that I died, too…I love you so much. I’m sorry for everything. I should’ve been there. I should be there now. We should both be. The machine learned something about selfish impulses. I did, too. Too late. Or maybe not.”

Ilia woke, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It was exactly the kind of dream that lingers. She woke happy. She thought about talking about it, but decided to keep it to herself. 

She murmured, “I love you, too,” and then went to explore other corners of the salon.

Night of the Jergen

It was past midnight, but that hardly mattered…

In the wastelands, where only the jergen thrived, had learned how to survive, where even the Tuska had never penetrated, the man who called himself Polycarp, although that wasn’t his name, waited.

Jergen were the fiercest predator. The Tuska sometimes told themselves the Danab had adapted so as to challenge them. This was folly. The Danab were Danab before they had ever called themselves by that name. Danab were tall by any standard, but even they looked up when a jergen emerged. The Danab had come before anyone knew dinosaurs had once roamed the planet Earth; this was a different world, a savage world, where their prehistoric creatures hadn’t died away. They had instead given way to the strongest, the largest, the fiercest…the jergen. Who stalked in the wastelands throughout the millennia. No one knew how they endured. Nothing else grew there. Except the jergen.

Polycarp was armed with a single axe. He brought no provisions with him, no shelter, no armor, not even his helmet. He stood truly exposed. He had been in the wastelands for a week. He was at the limit of his endurance. He had begun to hallucinate. As such, when the jergen first reared its head, Polycarp at first thought he had conjured it. At last. He had been relieved.

Then, even he began to panic.

The jergen advanced, slowly, as if dismissing Polycarp. Polycarp knelt in prayer, placing his axe down, voluntarily relinquishing its safety. The jergen sniffed and then snorted, scratching its paw in the sands. A cloud bellowed, engulfing Polycarp, who didn’t stir. 

Then the jergen roared, and Polycarp’s hand reached for the axe.

He swung upward, faster than the jergen could react, slicing into its thick hide, and the jergen didn’t even notice. He swung again and connected again, and the jergen snorted.

It was a cold night. The wastelands were unforgiving. The jergen charged, the very short distance punishing Polycarp his impudence, knocking him over. He held onto the axe. He swung again, across the jergen’s flank, and there he drew first blood.

The jergen paused. Polycarp knelt again. The jergen began to pace.

Then Polycarp threw the axe aside, and leaped on the jergen’s back. He laced his arms around the jergen’s throat, and began to tighten his grip.

The jergen thrashed. Polycarp, weakened by his ordeal, knew even in peak shape he should not have been able to hold on. He did anyway. The jergen bucked, and Polycarp held. He wiped all thought away. Long ago, a lifetime ago, when he was young, his father had told him about the jergen, how in the old days, the Danab had held them as pets. Long ago. Ancient history. The long wars with the Tuska had changed all that. It became tradition to hunt the jergen, instead. To try and prove something.

Polycarp’s reasons were his own. No one knew why he was out here. No one knew he was even here. He could die, and no one would know. 

The jergen slammed its own body into the sands. Polycarp held. Then it was his advantage indeed, since a jergen cannot easily right itself. It had in a sense already conceded defeat. Polycarp did not allow himself to believe it.

Through the jergen’s thick hide, he could feel nothing. The jergen betrayed nothing. Polycarp lost all track of time. He tried to read the stars. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. Still, he held.

He became aware that the jergen was no longer struggling. He held still. He held until it was daylight, and then for a little while longer. Then he let go. He couldn’t feel his arms anymore. He circled around the jergen, until he could look it in the eye, and then he knew. He picked up the axe again, and knelt. When he was ready, he swung the axe one more time, severing the jergen’s head, slung it over his shoulder, and began the journey…home.

The Boy Who Grew Up

Marty Sale found himself daydreaming in the middle of a haircut…

He was retired, by then, not from cutting hair, but from his optometrist office, the one he’d had in the city. He wasn’t there, now, in the city, or even in the suburbs, but in the very outskirts, way back in small town life, what he thought he’d escaped long ago. But this was the Midwest. No one ever escaped. You just kind of forgot it for a while.

Marty never forgot the boy. That would’ve been impossible. His folks brought him out to the city all in a panic. The boy had just started school and the teacher was already complaining, saying he was a constant disruption…Not because he was unruly (he surely was nothing like the president’s…son, who certainly didn’t attend a public school, but who, like his father, was…inescapable; Marty’s firsthand experience was because they condescended to using his office, too), which was obvious enough, just from how patiently he sat in the waiting room, how he didn’t even fidget in the chair, how when they brought him back with his new glasses he actually apologized…

No, the boy hadn’t needed glasses, and truth was…Marty never did figure out what was wrong, and in truth stopped worrying about it before too long, but he also couldn’t help but notice…the boy never stopped wearing the glasses. Marty never asked. Would never even had crossed his mind…

He watched the boy grow. When he showed up in the city, as a man, Marty found his name in the bylines of newspaper articles. Otherwise he never saw him. No one did, probably. There was plenty to keep everyone busy, though. 

Marty’s specialty had always been eyes. He never forgot them. He wondered…

What else had that boy experienced? He imagined that even then, the boy could fly. When had it all emerged? Probably he’d always had those gifts. His parents had never let him feel less than…loved. Rare enough. Certainly the president’s son…Too many others. What Marty saw was exactly what he’d always seen in the boy. Being…decent. 

He’d simply grown up. Maybe even as a boy…Some of us, Marty thought, are born grown. That boy was surely one of them. It just took a while for everyone else to notice. Or, maybe, stop noticing. Just started taking him for granted, even with…That paper he wrote for, sometimes about his own…It was just about selling copies. Almost turned into a tabloid, with all those pictures…The editorials, bought by the former president, penned by that son of his…It didn’t matter. Truth and justice, however elusive, and whatever the American way was supposed to be, now…

Marty shivered. The barber asked if he was okay. Marty didn’t know how to reply.

And at that moment, the boy who’d grown up, flew past.