A Letter from a Strange Planet

[Tia 0]

(I have to back date this a bit. This would have been written a week or two before Corizon assumed command of Excalibur C.)

__________________

 

 

Sarok

 

Do you think you could take me back? I do not belong on Earth. I do not know if they will accept me in Starfleet. It is necessary to get back to the stars. I know I cannot fly the hole again, but could you possibly find another place for me?

 

At first there were few difficulties. There is a path on Earth reminiscent of Vulcan’s Forge. To get in shape for my Starfleet trials, I resolved to echo the kahs-wan. There is a walk, not quite a pilgrimage, but still a test, from the base of a place called Death Valley to the peak of nearby Mount Whitney. I succeeded in my fifth attempt. The hazard was not my own conditioning, nor wildlife, but rangers. They knew Vulcans occasionally take their path carrying nothing but a ritual knife. With my fair skin, round ears and bald head, they did not think me a Vulcan. They declined to let me pass in spite of hydration levels being a little low.

 

They did finally acknowledge I was as persistent as a Vulcan, even if they question that Vulcans are logical. They assert that if one walks Death Valley, one should carry a canteen, not just a ritual knife. One of them was of a tribe called Apache. He understood. He let me complete the walk my way, and did not have to carry me down the mountain as he threatened. He even taught me of a plant that bleeds water if cut. It is not only your people who know deserts.

 

San Francisco was harder. My mother was correct. Humans are sexual barbarians. The males will look at females and imagine things, not caring how their thoughts and emotions project. The young females are in some ways worse. They form little tribes, each female dressed differently, yet each tribe dressed like enough to to one another to be marked as belonging. Each female tribe seems determined to prove itself superior by provoking males to look at them and imagine things.

 

Your people are extremely logical. You go insane, briefly, once every seven years. Humans are insane all the time. They seem to enjoy it.

 

I have kept my goggles on, and dressed so the males at least do not look at me and imagine things. Their thoughts make it difficult to center and maintain tranquility. The females think I am ‘dork.’ I am not quite sure what a ‘dork’ is, but dorks are apparently not allowed in any of the female groups. I think this is best.

 

Starfleet does not test one against nature, against the desert, but against gravity. I had to push up this, pull up that, and run. I should have trained less for desert, more for gravity. I was sufficient, not through strength, but through will. I have lactic acid buildups, and a few muscle pulls. I may move slowly for a few days. Still, they were correct at Mount Seleya. Mind and spirit are more than mere physical strength.

 

I also passed my Science equivalency, though I am not sure how. I chose to submit and defend Self Generating Warp Fields. Instead of facing one examiner for one hour at the expected examination room as the letter led me to expect, I was almost dragged to a place called ‘Physics Faculty Lounge.’ There was one who was absolutely sure nothing could leave a black hole or survive event horizon stresses, and was not listening to anything new, but repeating a classic proof. Another was concerned about boundary conditions, and a potential zero denominator. He had never flown an event diver, though. I was able to redefine his boundary though a Taras-Sarek transformation. A third instructor thought the equations theoretically interesting, but impossible to implement in practice. He may be correct of physical machines. I admitted I new nothing about how to build the machine the equations call for, but I spoke of mind touching with the beasts below, their need to sling the spiral, their drive to break that surface that we dare not fly below.

 

In the process, I may have learned how to deal with human males, and even with the females and other races who were present. To make them think of something other than sex, you get them talking about physics.

 

But my greatest difficulty was the councilor. She was of my Father’s people, from Betazed, but she was also one of them. Remember how female humans form tribes who attempt to confuse male thought patterns? The councilor was wearing the uniform of one of the worst tribes. I could detect seven different forms of paint on her face. There were as many different compounds in her hair, apparently intended to produce spiral and sine curves and increase reflection. The tension in the upper part of her uniform was intended to suggest high probability of wardrobe malfunction. She had wrapped cloth around her legs in a way that definitely impeded movement, and she had stilts on the bottom of her shoes. All this, and she walked around with excessive oscillation and counter-rotation near her center of gravity.

 

One of them.

 

And she wanted to talk about my fear of black holes. I explained that black holes have very high gravity fields, and that there are very high energies released near the event horizon. and it was not unusual for the pilot to react. She claimed to understand this, but she insisted that fear was logical, and that if one was afraid of something, one should avoid it.

 

How can an emotion be logical? Emotions must be suppressed.

 

She proposed that fear was a survival trait. She stated a formal hypothesis that a rational being should acknowledge fear, that it was not logical to ignore fear.

 

This, of course, is fallacy. I quoted Surak. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” To advance science, some risk is required. It was required that fear be suppressed.

 

She attempted to make a distinction between mere fear and bloody mindless terror, and declared that Surak was an idiot.

 

I may not have done the logical thing, then. I repeated the teachings of Surak as I learned them at Mount Seleya, reviewed the impact of his thought on Vulcan and Federation history, and when I realized she wasn’t listening, ended the lack of communication by leaving the room.

 

They say I have to go back, tomorrow.

 

I have to get off this planet.

 

If I cannot get into Starfleet, can you take me back?

 

Tia