Daren Diary

[Mreh K'hal 0]

"Freak!"

 

The insult, hurled across the playground by a pretty young boy with curly brown hair, hit its target. Then was duly ignored. The recipient wasn't one to feel the sting of an insult, or even a sting if a 15 cm combat knife in his thigh for that matter. Luckily the latter hadn't happened. Yet.

 

Luc Daren IV merely continued his job, assigned by a gangly girl that could loosely be called his friend. Every seat of the swing set was occupied, though none swung higher than the girl, as Daren's job was to push her. Considering, even at the tender young age of eight, he was already nearing two meters in height and 100 kilograms, pushing someone on a swing set to dangerously high levels was, in this case, adult's play.

 

Under most circumstances, a child barely surpassing one meter wouldn't dare insult someone that much larger, but Daren never did anything about insults or other malicious treatment, so the insult hurler felt safe, and apparently justified. He wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last to be rude.

 

Considering the time, the mid 24^th Century, it wouldn't be uncommon to see a creature far odder in appearance, at least to human norms, wandering around. There was even a Klingon in the neighborhood. Though insults in that direction never went unnoticed, of course. Daren wasn't an alien though, in the strictest sense of the word. Just a mutant, and that apparently could still stir the innate cruelty of some.

 

Aside from the impressive stature, Daren boasted other unusual traits for a human. Most noticeable was his skin tone, a rich coral. It started, as it always did in Daren children, very pink. Not pink in the way many often referred to skin, but if the newborn Daren IV had been placed in a bed of pink carnations he would've been expertly camouflaged. As age progressed, the skin deepened, and by the time he was five the bold skin tone he sported was permanent. It could become a bit deeper if he was out in UV rays for a while, but the mutated melanin was far more efficient at protecting the skin. His well structured face also sported a VISOR, as he was born blind, as was his sister and father before him.

 

Behind the mask, so to speak, changes in the brain structure, specifically the hypothalamus and frontal lobes, have made the Darens an extremely unflappable bunch. Luc Daren II once joked, reportedly after a week's consideration of the concept, that Vulcans went about emotional control the wrong way. Instead of Surak, they should've just had an accident. From a medical perspective this isn't entirely accurate, as the mutated brains still allow for the more complex emotions. However, without the basic emotive responses triggered by a standard hypothalamus, the Darens really have to work at it to succeed.

 

Unfortunately, not all mutations are good ones, and besides the blindness other weaknesses popped up with the changes. The Daren immune systems are rather unresponsive to microbial infestations, and the altered hypothalamus doesn't reset the body's thermostat to the high setting to help combat the issue either. From birth, vaccinations and treatments to counteract the immune deficiency are required. Thankfully, modern medicine has been able to augment this deficiency, though of course the universe is full of tricky bugs.

 

Nearly two months after making his joke Daren II was sliced, accidentally, on the thigh by a 15 cm combat knife. Because the brain doesn't quite trigger pain the same way in the Darens, he nearly bled to death before he noticed he was cut at all. Daren III however was able to practically whistle through a torture episode during the Cardassian war. This trait fills the category of "circumstantial advantage/disadvantage."

 

So the young Daren IV, as he finished out the recess period by giving his female friend a few giddy seconds of free fall on the swing, was not in the least bothered by the insults. Though karma was apparently keeping score, as the pretty young insulter was later killed by an angry Nausicaan who thought that he had been insulted.

 

***

 

Thankfully Klingon ships were built to withstand the pounding of their heavy crew's feet, so Daren never really had to think twice about his footing as he patrolled the dank, dark corridors of the Qob. Neither did he have to worry about matting the piling of carpet, either.

 

His assignment to the Qob had been a natural fit, something the personnel department of Starfleet had actually done right for a change. After a few years on a cramped Defiant class, it dully registered to him that the Qob was an improvement after his transfer.

 

He'd taken the night shift, when the surly Klingons were even surlier, and it had suited him well. It was perhaps that, even through all of the danger and intrigue that the ship had gone through, that had kept him relatively unnoticed by his superiors during that time. Somehow, though, the situation changed and he'd received a communique alerting him that he was now the Chief of Security. An accomplishment, really, for a human, to gain enough trust that he could bust enough heads and lead teams in glorious combat on a Klingon vessel. He was large even by Klingon standards, could throw drunken crew members an impressive distance across the mess hall, though admittedly with less enthusiasm, and considered application of pain-sticks to tickle, he fit in rather well with the Klingon crew he served with.

 

He was as apprehensive as it was possible for him to be though, moving to first shift. He'd barely seen or spoken to most of the others higher in the chain of command, especially as changeable as it had been of late. It would behoove him, he considered, to be visible, not that standing out was any problem for a 2.54 meter, coral colored human.

 

The hardest part, he knew, would be to laugh at the appropriate time for a Klingon joke.