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Archie Phoenix

Lamenting Immortality

One of the displays in the bank of engineering terminals at the back of the Saint-Epoch’s bridge was showing a copy of the sensor readouts that had just grabbed everyone else’s attention. There could be no mistaking that the long, thick form undulating toward the ship (as evidenced by its rapidly increasing size on the sensor display) was a Pacifican Serpent. The only other inhabitants of the nebula were the ships of the serpent hunters, and if any of those had been designed to look and move like a Pacifican Serpent, Archie very much would have liked to meet its engineers. The approach of the great beast was gradually strengthening a feeling that had crept into Archie’s mind when the Saint-Epoch was carried far into the unnavigable depths of the Cloud of Pacifica -- a feeling that the ship would not be returning from its voyage into the nebula.

 

What made the feeling worse than anything was the knowledge that Archie himself would return no matter what.

 

Of the crew assembled on the Saint-Epoch, only Commander Alces, perhaps, could properly understand Archie’s fear. The Commander, too, had a life force that could be separated from his body and introduced into another -- the mysterious Trill symbiont. If his symbiont was old enough to have experienced previous transfers, the Commander would be no stranger to outliving friends and loved ones, to surviving untold years while those around him perished. It was a burden that Archie was too young to fathom, but one that he surmised could be too much to bear.

 

Of course, if the Saint-Epoch were destroyed out here in the Cloud of Pacifica, the Commander’s symbiont would not likely survive. That was a key difference between Trills and Renazians. Trills carried their living life insurance policies inside of them, perpetually tied to their host bodies by living biochemical pipelines which were necessary to the survival of both; if a freak accident killed one, the other had little chance of survival. Archie’s soul, on the other hand, was safe and sound inside of an indestructible chunk of crystal in his quarters back on Arcadia. If he perished in the Cloud of Pacifica, the Renazian Mystics would simply return his soul to Renazia and bring him back to life with a new body, but with all of his old memories and acquaintances in tact … and all of the accompanying guilt and loss.

 

There was another difference between Trills and Renazians. Each new Trill host was a distinct individual with his own unique personality. The bitter memories of past lives might still be there, but how much could a mourning process be aided by the fresh perspective of a completely alternative mind? When a Renazian is brought back to life, he is the same Renazian through and through.

 

On the Renazian homeworld, this was never a concern. With very few exceptions -- the rare soul-murders and the handful of Renazians who chose not to be revived -- no one on Renazia ever truly died. A Renazian’s loved ones would be there with him, in one form or another, forever. Perhaps this contributed more than anything to Renazia’s poor outlook of space travel and interstellar relations -- a fear of the temporary, of associating with other beings that some day would not be there any longer.

 

This was one of Archie’s great dilemmas in joining Starfleet, a military institution, where death is more commonplace than in ordinary life. He was surrounding himself with people that he was doomed to outlive, one generation after another. If he served two hundred years in Starfleet, how many crews would he pass through, how many lives lost around him? He often questioned whether he would be able to handle it in the end. What did his tutor back on Renazia, and all the others who tried dissuading him from joining Starfleet, constantly tell him? That he would learn soon enough that the Starfleet life was not for him? That he would realize that he belonged on Renazia among others like him? Among others that could not die? Those were the things they kept saying to him. But what was really their reasoning? Was it more their bigotry toward outsiders that drove their outlook, or more their fear of the temporary which defined the lives of other species?

 

Archie looked at Samantha, seated at the front of the bridge dreading the same sensor images that were in front of him. In all the chaos of studying the Saint-Epoch and making sure it carried the crew into the nebula safely, Archie still hadn’t had a chance to speak to her … aside from warning her away from a security gun which had sliced his body in two places. He remembered at that point feeling as humiliated with himself as he was concerned for her safety; there he was bleeding all over the corridor, all over -her-, because of his ineptness in not realizing the danger of trying to break through a sealed door on the ship. Now his fear for her safety was overriding everything, as was his deep regret that he still hadn’t spoken with her. If the serpents were stampeding, it could mean the end of the Saint-Epoch, and the loss of her life. The thought of being on Arcadia in a month, thinking about her, wishing that she’d known how he felt about her, wishing she were still alive …

 

Even when the Saint-Epoch was stranded, Archie had felt a steely resolve. He knew the ship had to have secrets that could help the crew steer it back out of the nebula. That’s why he’d blundered into the line of fire of a security laser, and why he wouldn’t let Commander Alces talk him out of making a second attempt at the sealed hatch. Though his own life was in no way jeopardized, his desire to protect Samantha and everyone else on the ship drove him as if it were.

 

The serpent loomed larger on the sensor display. Archie’s feeling of impending doom grew. So did his resolve -- no matter how much he bled, he would do everything in his power to help get the ship back home.

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