World Enough, and Time

[Shadow 0]

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime

We would sit down and think which way

To walk and pass our long love's day.

~Andrew Marvel, To His Coy Mistress

 

World. Time. Shadow, merged with the holographic energy, absorbed bits and pieces of biological species' knowledge and cultures, but only the concepts. The meanings eluded him, like fleeting bits of nebula brushing him as he passed. Shadow knew not world. He knew not time. He simply was.

 

And yet these concepts seemed to be the basis of much interaction among these new beings with which he found himself, and so he found he must strive to understand, as futile as his efforts might be. Viciously ripped from his Bond by Agincourt's slip from one universe to another, he was doomed to coexist with them until he found a way to rejoin the Bond. But here he was trapped in world. In time.

 

He was known, among his own, as a Seeker. And now he sought those among these new beings who were also known as Seekers, though they were called scientists. In this resolve he had fixed on one known as Odlie, a scientist, a fellow Seeker, who would surely understand and aid him in his dilemma. He sought aid in understanding the beings around him, in understanding the full meaning of time and world and place. Beset with boundaries which, until now, he knew not, he resolved to dissolve some of those boundaries in the name of understanding. However, instead of dissolving the boundaries he found a new one -- the boundary between belief and unbelief. This Seeker, Odile, believed he was not real, and to convince her of his reality is quite a different dilemma than to convince her of his desire to learn. And he began to wonder, and his wondering took him back to the holodeck and the words of Andrew Marvel, had we but world enough and time.

 

He stepped back to the familiar, to the words he spoke in his panic during first contact with this entrapping universe. Friend, he said. The most simple word seemed to have the same translation for every being. And in his speaking of it, Odile understood, and she replied in kind.

 

Friend.