Not As Advertised

[Tachyon 0]

“Not As Advertised”

Lt. Anastasia Poldara

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Wanting is so much better than having. But this recurring truth seldom makes itself apparent until after the fact. Smote by hindsight, there is little you can do except pick up the pieces and try to figure out where to go from here. Try to make choices. Pick new paths. And remember that it's fine to want, but not always good to have.

 

As a young girl, Ana's mind had been filled with fantasies of reaching out and grasping the stars. She would speak for hours on end to anyone—whether they cared or not—about her future with Starfleet, how she would single-handedly stride entire planets and engage in dialogues with strange new species. She devoured all of the training manuals, read the histories of Starfleet, not to mention every log of Captain Kirk's historic five-year mission. Then, when she was old enough, she entered the Academy.

 

And then her life, as lives are wont to do, changed of its own accord. Her interests remained within the realm of science and exploration, but they shied away from space, instead delving deeper into the mysteries of the mind. Even as she completed her degrees in astrophysics, she took courses in cybernetics, wrote essays on the development of neural networks, and somehow wound up working at the Asimov Centre. Before she knew it, the Anastasia who wanted to go into space had ceded control of her destiny to the Anastasia who wanted to build robots.

 

It wasn't a bad life. She had been happy at the Asimov Centre. She had met several great guys, a couple bad ones, dumped all of them, met Michael, and married him. Her recognition in the field was almost unparallelled—except for that horrible Tracey Chambers, who did not, as far as Anastasia was concerned, deserve the Coulton Award for Cybertronic Development. Still, Anastasia had been fortunate, and she was only twenty-eight.

 

Why then, when the call came, did she answer in the affirmative? What sudden switch flipped, like a bit in a binary matrix, to make Anastasia change her mind for the second time in her life?

 

She pondered these questions now, as well as a third one, the one that pained her most: was she reconsidering her reconsideration?

 

Her time as science officer on Challenger had not lived up to her expectations. Murder, hostile encounters with alien devices, hostage encounters with alien warriors, not to mention trying to save a planet full of those same ingrates. . . . So far, Anastasia was not enjoying her planet-striding adventure, and she was wondering if this entire thing had been an infatuation, a fling that, once the novelty and passion had dissipated, revealed itself as unfortunate chapter in her life.

 

Wanting had motivated her to join Starfleet, eventually leading to her involvement with the Asimov Centre, eventually leading her to Michael. Having had given her headaches, adverse reactions to Risan food, and a nagging voice in her mind that said, Maybe you aren't really cut out for this after all. Maybe you should give up.

 

Lacking a warranty, or even a 30-day-money-back guarantee, Anastasia had to live with her choice. The past—excluding some highly unethical and probably illegal time travel—was fixed. What remained was her future, the choices that lay in front of her, possible wavefunctions waiting to collapse....

 

Maybe she would be better off if, like many people, she wanted what she couldn't have. Because so far, having was a disappointment.