Katra at Rest

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A tender, elderly hand lowered a lit match and gingerly touched each of five large candles. With a short flick, the flame danced up into the air and dissipated in a trail of smoke. The elder Vulcan set the spent match onto a small tin plate. She steepled her spread fingers before her as her ancestors did in deep meditation.

 

Closing her eyes, Una Knollwatcher began her vision quest. The dimly lit room she occupied began to dissolve to a place of the past. What was once the walls of the meditation room became long reaches of red sand. What was once a stone cobble floor was now the path towards Vulcans ancient and sacred temple. Within the sacred temple stood the familiar visage of Surek, meticulously carved in marble and poised high above an alter.

 

Unas sandaled feet were deliberate and even as they climbed the alter stairway. Her mind was clear, purging itself of negativity and alteration, preparing itself for the strict logical teaching it was about to obtain. Tossing her sandals aside, she stepped onto the stone flat before the idol. In a deep, even tone, she spoke the only words to be spoken here:

 

"Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations." Then the elder Vulcan kneeled, clasped her hands together, and closed her eyes slowly.

 

Just as before, the scene around her changed, and drained like line of paint into the past. Though now, Una stood in the corridors of the USS Arcadia. Her grand daughter Andrea led her down towards the ships sickbay by the elbow. With even strides, Una closed in the space between herself and the sickbay entrance.

 

"Just a few more steps, Gram. Ill be on the bridge. This is the ship Starfleet assigned me to helmsman. If you need me, you can comm me, or you can just ask for the Chief Medical Officer or the Counselor."

 

Una nodded. She stood before the doors of sickbay and waited for them to open. However, when they did, what scene was before them was not that of the sickbay, but of Vulcan again. She was at the alter again, though it was different somehow. Like before, she knelt before the alter and strained to speak:

 

"Definite Intricacy in Definite Contortions."

 

Una looked up at the figure before her in shock. That was not the national symbol.

 

"Infant...Infancy..adversity...conflictions..."

 

Once again, the room faded into the sickbay of the Arcadia. The staff were bustling about in a frenzy to help a new mother who had just given birth. Una raised a brow and stumbled as the realization settled in that she actually knew these people, though she was sure she had never met them.

 

She grasped her head in pain. "No! Illogical. It is ...Illogical!"

 

Trying to keep her composure, Una nearly lost consciousness as the pain level elevated. She cried out in agony as a tingling sensation overcame her. It felt as if she was being separated into categories like the dashes and zeros of a computer program. Then, with one electric jolt, Una faded out like a tube.

 

Andrea gasped. With a flash of the mind, her Grandmothers Katra exited though the nerve endings in her fingers and into the Ark. The ornate box received the elders essence and then closed and sealed itself in one motion. The Medical Chief exhaled completely and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

 

Only a quick breath brought recovery to her meditation as the pain slipped away.

 

And the Ark calmly rests.

 

Lt. Cdr. Andrea Knollwatcher

Chief Medical Officer

USS Arcadia NCC 1742E