A Perfect Join: Delta I

Lahn sat on the ledge overlooking a knife-cut ravine as a chilly morning zephyr nudged a dense shroud of lead-vermillion clouds – crowned marigold by the rising sun -- across the opposing summit. The evergreens on the top tore away at the bottom of the cloud leaving them draped in a milky veil. The silence was that of the woodlands -- not the ever present thrum of a starship that she had long gotten used to but the soft cacophony of a living world of which she was both alien and participant. The rock was damp from the morning fog that prickled against her face and hands and beaded against her uniform, but she sat anyway, content to feel any sensation through her skin when scant days before, there had been no sensation – only input.

A Perfect Join: Recovery Part III

Each day, Shamat wandered the caverns. In some ways, they were a pleasant break from the chaos of triage, hurts and wants in Paladin’s sickbay.  The dim luminescence was comfortable to his Reman eyes and the smooth pumice-like walls reminded him that he really should visit Trill some day.  His sojourns were enjoyable until he inevitably descended deeper into the caverns where the walls became cracked and pitted, the air stale, and the toes of his boots would eventually scrape metal as the walls and floor became a mosaic of stone along with sections of dank, oily machinery. The dim light acquired a nauseating waxy green hue.  He picked up his pace in these sections – the machinery, while inert, gave him a sense of forboding.  Eventually he would find the antechamber – pristine and primitive, yet ending in a pair of very modern durasteel doors. It was at these doors that he would  seat himself cross legged on the smoothest part of the floor and announce himself.

A Perfect Join: Recovery Part II

Lahn did her best to move quickly, but her leg would not comply. Her cautious jog turned into a rough shamble. Helm cajoled, urged, and issued dire warnings  at every twist in the corridor. Periodically, Lahn checked the pouch with the nanite purges.  She remembered the advice. Don’t use them unless you’re sure you’ve been stung and you’re in a safe place. Between the field inducers, the full body polarity wave, and the chemicals, the nanite purge will fuck you up bad.

“You are close” Helm rasped.

A Perfect Join: Recovery Part I

Even prepared for the explosion, Lahn was knocked off her feet and her armor visuals became a wash of green-grey static that flickered across her eyes even as she rolled herself into a crouch.  She probed her surroundings with the tip of her pistol, firing whenever the barrel touched something solid. She felt movement, so she kept firing. After an agonizingly long half-second, visuals shakily returned, giving her a glimpse of a prone borg, its chest blistered by antiproton ruptures.  Her sensor net returned shortly after and its proximity alarm screamed threat from all directions. She thanked Gods Fortunate the explosion had knocked the sentries down as well, and she fired as she ran, more to slow them down than to destroy them. Hello, welcome to the new front of the war. I will be your server today.   

A Perfect Join, Part VI

Binah

Lahn looked at Yassal’s pool, wishing her successes with her previous hosts did more to calm her nerves. The simulacrum in the pool regarded her expressionlessly with pinpoints of cold light, but Lahn couldn’t shake the feeling it was mocking her. Lahn narrowed her eyes, making a fist as she knelt by the pool. This is my mind. You cannot hurt me. She punched the liquid, letting her consciousness follow the force of the blow.

A burst of sunlight shattered brilliantly against an ocean that reached undisturbed to a cloudless horizon.  Small waves slapped a pale sandy meandering beach that arbitrated the ocean and dense jungle.  Lahn carefully surveyed the beach, feeling the heat oozing into her skin only to be brushed off by fits of cool breeze. She felt an ache in her hand, and looked down at her tightly clenched fist. She took a deep breath and slowly unclenched and flexed her hand, then sat on the beach and pulled off her boots.  She looked up and down the beach as she experimentally burrowed her bare foot into the warm sand and decided any direction would take her to Yassal.  She rose and picked one, leaving her boots on the lonely beach.

A Perfect Join, Part V

Ein Sof

Lahn opened her eyes to a soft, milky whiteness. As she waited for her eyes to adjust, she focused her senses elsewhere. The fog left a smooth distinct flavor in her mouth that disappeared even as she attempted to identify it. She lay prone on familiar stone --  warm against her cheek with  a pumice-like grittiness. The fog dissipated as she pushed herself to a crouch. The cavern floor interspersed by pools. Each pool held a figure, statues grey as the water immersed chest high in a chalky liquid. Their shapes were familiar – Sabina, Atrios, Rose, and her namesake Evlyn -- their distinctive spots inverted to cast a mute glow.  The floor was expansive, with room for many, many more pools. Lahn wondered what it would be like, to see the cavern with dozens, hundreds of pools – hundreds of lives. She couldn’t imagine.

You are my hosts only for a short while – but I am your host for the rest of my lives. I will carry you until you are legion, and crush me under your weight. I do not know what happens then, but whatever we face, we face together.  

A Perfect Join, Part IV

Malkuth

Lahn held the small thurible in her palm and lightly waved the smoky tendrils of incense to her face, inhaling an essence of moss and cinnamon combined with a faint, acrid bite that causes her to wrinkle her nose.

Lt Commander Sri sat across from her, engulfed in voluminous Trill robes. "Your requirements prohibit us from engaging in a standard witnessing. Nonetheless,  it was very helpful for the Symbiont Commission to allow me to observe one."

A Perfect Join Part III

Kether

“Captain Yassal?”  The Terran commander offered a polished grin and his hand.  “Commander Jack Forester. Friends call me Jack.” 

She took his hand, making her handshake firm. “Lahn.  Captain Evlyn Lahn. Good to meet you, Commander Forester.” They froze a second as Lahn didn’t reciprocate the offer to be addressed informally. The commander let the expectation dissolve with an easy chuckle.

“The Admiral was just sitting down for lunch, Captain. Care to join us for a bite?”

“Thank you, I already ate.” But he was already guiding her out of the foyer into a small dining room, seating her in a free chair between two other brass in uniform.  The array of food -- enough to feed twice again the number that sat at the table – was heaped on a crowd of delicate blue-veined Deferi porcelain platters. The matching place settings were framed by polished silverware that reflected the ornate glitter of a small chandelier. The officers introduced themselves between mouthfuls of food with names like Buck, Scooter, and Ace.  Only the man at the head of the table, lean and sandy-haired, paused to carefully assess Lahn.  His infectious quiet silenced the table, broken only as they all stood when he did, facing Lahn.

A Perfect Join, Part II

Netzach and Hod

Captain Evlyn Lahn broods in the low light of her ready room, a shadowy form somberly uplit  by the wan light of the PADD on her desk. Her stony expression conceals her troubled thoughts as  her mind slowly ruminates over the inexplicable events of the last few days..

Lahn’s eyes flicked upward. “Commander Grupiro, what are you doing?”

The Ferengi held two cordials and a carafe in her hands. “Narrating, Captain.”

She regarded her first officer a moment. “I am not brooding.”

“You have been sitting there for quite some time, Captain.” She set the glasses on the desk.

“The light is not dim.”

“To a Reman, perhaps.” Grupiro poured a clear, slightly vicious fluid from the carafe into each cordial glass.

Lahn dismissively waves her hand. “My mind is not troubled.” 

“Whose mind is not occasionally contemplative in these troubled times?”

Lahn sighed. “Actually, I feel rather upbeat, thank you.”

Captain Evlyn Lahn briefly sat in her adequately lit ready room, blissfully unaware she was brooding…

Lahn sighed focusing intently on her PADD. “I’m not in the mood for snail juice, Commander.”

A Perfect Join, Part I

Yesod

You wake up realizing that those closest to you were consumed in your making – you are born an orphan.  For slightly over 90 hours, two distinct and simultaneous nebula of experience collide --  dual masses strain to coalesce into a sense of self, an ego that can pronounce “I” as more a statement than a question. Part of you finds the snug familiarity of your body  violated --  your nearly vestigial pouch ripped open and stuffed with a half meter worm. The other part of you feels trapped in an alien husk, fighting the desperate urge to claw its way out, clinging to training and a sheer faith that this process – a process that no two Trill describe quite the same -- will eventually end .  

There has to be a better way to achieve immortality. Klingons try to fight their way to it. Romulans conquer. Ferengi haggle. Terrans try to fuck their way to it -- but Terrans are not alone there.

Despite the anticipated horrors and warnings, the awakening to my fourth life has been the gentlest so far.  I lie supine in a dark, cavern on a raised dais feeling rock’s warmth oozes through the layers of padding.  The light is dim. The warm, moist air smells of sweet, delicate incense. Somewhere the burble of a fountain couples with soft music.  I slightly twist my wrists, and determine the thick leather manacles on the dais remain confined to their niches carved out of the stone. My four attendants wear white robes, hiding their alert focus behind kindly smiles and slow, deliberate movement. Two stand quietly back, hypos tucked in their sleeves.  The tricorders, sensors, even emergency medical supplies, are all discretely hidden away as an attempt to reflect the old ways as much as possible, while reducing the frequency of madness, infection and death.  

A Perfect Join: Prelude

Many of those who hadn’t been on the away team who beamed over to Gul Maket’s crippled freighter found it hard to conceive this prim, fastidious Cardassian had tortured hundreds. They hadn’t seen the rooms, the tools, the logs.  They hadn’t seen what remained of his ‘patients’. Those that had were tight-lipped, pale and asked “only hundreds?”.

 “I must say, Evlyn – May I call you Evlyn? So nice to meet a colleague. You have the most lovely green eyes. What do the Terrans call it? Jade? Yes. I would mount them on black velvet. Could I somehow let you still see through them? That would be the challenge, hmm..”

“Bold talk for a prisoner, Gul Maket. Captain Yassal will do.”

He seemed to consider this a second. “Am I?”

“Lets see. I could consult the manifest of the brig of *my* ship, or I could ask any one of those security staff behind me…” She looked theatrically back to her security. Stoic. Hands on phasers. They’d been on the away team, so the Gul’s delicate, mild manner was only pissing them off. “They would be inclined to agree.”