Personal Log, JFarrington

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing.

~Optimus Prime, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

 

My father had a favorite saying about fate, but I don’t recall it exactly. Something like when fate deals you the wrong cards it doesn’t mean you should give up. Fate is trying to deal us the wrong cards now. I wonder if I’ll give up.

 

I was young, then – when my father said that. I was young and didn’t really listen. The young rarely do, and if they do they cannot fathom the full meaning. I remember smiling and trying so hard to understand what he meant, but I didn’t; I couldn’t. I must have been six or seven, during a time of innocence and nurturing, of growing and becoming. It was a time of hope, when my life was before me and the possibilities infinite, when my boundless energies propelled me into what I was sure would be a life of endless carefree adventure, moving from peak to summit with no valleys between. No, I certainly did not understand.

 

But my childhood was a different life. Now, fate has dealt me another one which I must live out whether I choose to or not. Some would say it is my destiny, and some my cross to bear. Whatever it is, it is mine, and mine alone to live. Yet, though it is mine, it is not.

 

And when it is over, what then? An afterlife, or oblivion? And does faith have anything to do with whether there is an afterlife? If I believe there is one, does that make it so? If I believe there is none, does that make it so? And does anything after life really matter, or is it what we do now that matters?

 

Dr. Chalice – Vilanne Chalice – is critically injured. Had she been in my seat and I in hers, I would be the one close to death. She would be the one standing here now, looking down on this waning piece of frail humanity. She would be the one wondering if I were going to live or die, if there were or were not an afterlife, or if it made any difference.

 

I know things about her that she does not, and that seems strange in a cruel way, because now she may never know. I know from whence she came and what she has overcome, and I long to tell her, though it probably doesn’t matter. Maybe she’s better off not knowing, but if she were the one standing here and I were the one lying there, I think I’d want to know.

 

I hold in my hand a piece of her removed by Dr. t’Tamarak during surgery. That Jaiysa, in saving her life, may have destroyed it is an irony beyond comprehension, yet another trick of Fate. And we, who have saved so many lives by risking our own may probably lose them, and soon. Our ship is dead in space, stalked by our enemies whose lives we have saved, and possibly those of their loved ones. If they find us before our life support gives out we’ll be executed. And if we are not found we’ll die anyway. How strange. How very, very strange.