Off of the Influence-- SD 10305.11

[LoAmi 0]

Arphazad Lo'Ami sat alone in his quarters, back on Arcadia.  The ship had arrived moments after the crew escaped the crashed Blue Note.  Most of the action now would be in the hands of the Marines, whose job it would be to free the slaves remaining on the planet below and overrun the remaining pirates.  Lo'Ami temporarily left the science department in the hands of his capable assistants.  He was only to be disturbed should an emergency situation arise.  He was just now beginning to comprehend the jumble of feelings that had been nagging him since he woke up in the Blue Note's sickbay.  First, there was the all-encompassing emptiness.  It was a loneliness of a kind he had not felt for years; because, the past few years he had never really been alone.  Second, there was the fear.  It was not a fear for his life; he was now safely aboard Arcadia.  It more resembled a fear of failure.  Fear that he would be unable to fulfill his duties as Arcadia's chief science officer.  Fear that he would be unable to live up to the expectations of his father, the model Starfleet officer and ambassador.  He looked down at his uniform and at the two pips on his collar.  It would not be long before this lack of confidence showed, before he would be shown to be a disgrace to the symbols he wore.  He felt an urge to go back to the slow life of the academic, huddled for hours in a laboratory on a quiet planet on the quiet side of the galaxy.  But, that life was no longer his.

 

It has been said that if a Trill were too weak to control a symbiont, the symbiont would take complete control of him and override the host's personality.  Arphazad had never been selected as a host.  The fact of Lo'Ami's presence inside him was a pure accident of time and space.  He knew that had he gone through the trials, he would likely have failed.  Human ethics place great value on the independence of the individual.  Despite the burden of philosophy, Arphazad Lo'Ami wished for nothing more than to be reconnected with the true source of his strength before his peers realized the truth.  "There must be some way...," he thought.