Tonight is my last evening on the starship Enterprise, NX-01. As I write this, on a PADD that came from a darker parallel universe, it is June 5, 2156.
Tomorrow, I will be focusing myself on intense meditation, preparing myself to transfer my body, my bioluminescent centipede, and my belongings across time and space. My destination is the Federation starship Voyager, Intrepid Class, NC-74656 - it is a ship stranded in the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy, in the year 2375. My unusual psychic abilities allow me to do this... it was how I was able to transport myself to the Enterprise, many months ago, from my original time and place.
I have served on Enterprise as its ship's counselor. I have talked with and counseled many members of the crew, trying to help them through their various issues to the best of my abilities. They have become like members of my family, and I will miss them very much. Saying goodbye to them has been so hard, and I know there will be times in the near future when I will be crying, missing the tight-knit community, the practical jokes, the concerts.
Yet there is need of my services on Voyager. I have aided them with my psychic abilities before, even as I have served on Enterprise. There have been several time travelers who have arrived there, much less experienced than I, and they need my help in integrating into their new environment. With Voyager being in the Delta Quadrant, so far from home (basically, diagonally opposite from the Alpha Quadrant), the stress and worry about returning is always an emotional undertow.
And... there is Chakotay. The former Maquis leader, the former captain of the Val Jean, and the first officer of Voyager. Within days of making my acquaintance, he was smitten with me! I wasn't even in the same time or place, and yet he flirted with me... and I found myself falling for him as well. There is... something alike about us, at a deeper level than what I've usually encountered with people. I know his history, and his ties to his own past, yet also belonging to the future - it is very much the same for me. He is an expert with lucid and shared dreaming, and with my psychic abilities being as powerful as they are, we were able to meet in our dreams... and our romance continued from there. It seems so insane, sometimes - how could I fall in love with a man I never met, and how could he fall in love with me? But... I don't particularly want to question it. When I go to Voyager... I will finally be united with him, and we will continue our relationship in reality.
He is going to be a form of stability for me, that which I didn't have on Enterprise - there were times when my knowledge and my awareness of other timelines was overwhelming me. But, with him... I will finally have someone to turn to, who will help me feel safe and strong, and not so very alone.
There is little I can do now, except meditate and wait. Tomorrow, I will get a fresh cutting of the lilacs I brought to Enterprise, from my ancestral home, so Voyager can raise them as well - a special gift from the past, and from Earth. Then, I will transfer Lucio to a smaller container, shoulder my backpack... and concentrate on being with Chakotay, on being on Voyager... and I will go.
There is a saying of Surak, the spiritual influence for Vulcan's philosophies: Nam-tor wak vah yut s'vesht na'fa'wak heh pla'rak. Translated, it means this: "Time is a path from the past to the future and back again." It is a saying like this that gives me hope - even as I leave Enterprise tomorrow, there is always the chance that I will return. And I know I will be welcomed back.
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