Solomon's Story

Posted on Oct 30, 2014 @ 3:46pm by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Edited on on Sep 14, 2018 @ 12:08am

Mission: Birth Of An Empire

"SOLOMON'S STORY"

(Continued from "I"ve Got Nothing But Time...")

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My name is Solomon Arn, and I am the Chief Science Officer aboard the starship Phoenix, currently travelling at transwarp through the Federation, bound for a space station in the Triangle. I am called Solomon because that is what my parents, Joral and Mishe, named me, and I am called Arn because a joined Trill, and that is the name of the symbiont that I host. I was born forty-four years ago in Laell City, and I have been in Starfleet all my adult life, having served aboard several starships as well as an extended period as an instructor at Starfleet Academy. I have a Human female partner, who I am planning to marry. Along with my shipmates, I am fleeing for my life from the Neo-Essentialist movement on Earth, who have usurped the Federation and have led us into a war with the Romulans. That is my life in a nutshell.

But I have had other lives. I am not sure how much you know about Trill symbionts, but you must have heard stories. Some of them are true, others are just ignorant suppositions, but the fact is that I have a twelve-inch slug living inside my body, coiled around my spine like a serpent, feeding off my metabolism and using my own energy to sustain its existence. The other fact is that I volunteered my body to host this creature. It is not a parasite, despite what our detractors say. The creature that lives within me is a symbiont, and its name is Arn.

I will try to explain what it means to be Joined. It will be difficult, like explaining colour to a blind person, or describing music to the deaf, but I will try. I am not Human, so you must not think of me as Human. I am a Trill. I am different to Humans in life experience, in physiology, in psychology. I am not one of you. Do not athropomorphise me.

When I was a child, I lived a child's life. I did childish things, and as I grew up, I made decisions to changed directions many times - what disciplines to study, what educational institutions to attend. Believe me when I say that I can no longer remember the person who made those decisions. The day I was Joined with Arn, I died, yet was born again. My family no longer really know me, my friends no longer really recognise me. I am the same on the outside, yet I am a new being inside. Solomon, son of Joral and Mishe, is dead. Solomon Arn lives.

Arn is, by our standards, an ancient being. It has lived for many centuries and has had other hosts - in fact, I am its ninth and final host. The symbionts, though long-lived, are not immortal, and Arn is coming to the end of its natural life. When it dies, I will not live long afterward. Therefore, I will die young. I have known this since I volunteered to be Joined, and I would not change one moment of my life until this point.

When a Trill is Joined, the memories of the symbiont suffuse with the existing host and a new being is born. Like all memories, sometimes I remember things a certain way, and on other days I remember those things a different way. Arn's memories are growing hazy now. The pictures of its life are blurring into fragments of colour, that although still bright and vibrant, are losing their cohesion. I still feel the emotions that those memories are connected to, and they are my memories, even though they are of lives I never lived. I feel the happiness when my first child was born four hundred and eighty-nine years ago, before there was ever such a thing as the United Federation of Planets. I remember the helpless desperation when my third wife was dying of an uncurable cancer that stripped her away from me, one day at a time. I remember losing my virginity nine times over, remember loves, remember hates. I remember dying again and again. In the hours after Arn was Joined with me, my body was wracked with fever dreams as I struggled to assimmilate eight lifetimes of experiences into my own being. When our minds touched, we were one. I felt everything that this ancient creature inside me felt, felt how absolutely and completely grateful it was that I had given myself to the Joining, and experienced the total serenity of unconditional love. I will never be able to adequately explain that part of it. It is not the love of a parent for a child, or the romantic love of two people who are mated, or the unfathomable love that a higher intelligence might feel for its test subjects. It is different from all those things.

That is what being Joined means. I am no longer the child growing up in Laell City. I am the amalgamation of those nine hosts. From many, I am one. Arn is part of me, and I am part of it.

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Location: USS PHOENIX
Stardate: [2.14]10.
Scene: Captain's Ready Room


I had made up my mind to ask Captain Kane about Dido a few days before I actually went to see him. Following our rushed departure from Earth, I realised that we could no longer put things off any more, that our lives as we knew them were over. I gained a greater appreciation for the moment.

The turbolift doors to the bridge opened and I stepped inside. I threw a nod to Commander Jos before pressing the bell to the ready room.

Captain Kane answered immediately. [[Come!]]

The doors opened and I stepped inside. He was sitting in his seat, looking out the viewing port behind his desk. The starfield was a blur of white streaks as we powered our way through space. It is a sight that still takes my breath away.

Captain Kane did not look like he was in a pleasant mood. I have known him for many years now, but we have never had any relationship beyond the professional. He is a complex individual, given to extremes of temper, yet is fiercely loyal to his crew. I do not think he has any friends. He seems to occupy a strange paternal-disciplinarian place in the collective mind of the crew, who regard him somewhere between fear, awe, and simple dislike. I myself treat him as professionally as I can - in return, he treats me with a kind of aloofness that I choose to believe means he trusts me to do my job without the need for his supervision.

I could see there was something on his mind. The Captain always looks like he is dwelling on worrisome things, but his demeanour has been especially foreboding these past few days. I stepped up to his desk, and stood stiffly.

He turned to face me. "Lieutenant Arn.What can I do for you?"

I have noticed that Captain Kane generally never addresses any of his shipmates by their names, but by their rank. It is probably some sort of strange psychological thing that they teach command officers. I cannot say that it bothers me overly. "Captain Kane," I said, "I am here to make a personal request."

He did not flinch. "Go on."

"I would like to marry my partner, Dido Loftus," I said, as evenly as I could. "I am here to request that you conduct the marriage ceremony, as befits your station as ship's captain."

"Oh," he said. I could tell he was mollified. He was silent for a moment, then he actually smiled at me. "Have you informed Miss Loftus of your... intentions?"

"Yes, sir."

"And she is positively disposed?" I think his eyes were twinkling.

"Yes, sir."

"In that case, Mister Arn, it would be my privilege." He stood up and came around the table, holding out his hand for me to shake in that curious Human gesture that can mean any one of a dozen things. "Let's go and see her, right now, to arrange a date."

"Now, sir?"

Captain Kane looked around at his spartan ready room. "If you're agreeable. It will help me take my mind off other matters."

I nodded assent, and he led the way out of his office, pausing for a moment to give the bridge to Commander Jos. Then we were in the turbolift and heading down into the ship.

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Scene: Deck 8, near Science Centre


When the turbolift doors opened neither of us had said a word. It is a common misconception that those of a nervous disposition try to fill up silence with meaningless conversation, but in all my years living on Terra I have never encountered anyone of that mindset. Like all immigrants to the Human homeworld, I had to learn their sometimes-strange social customs and do some studying on interpersonal Human behaviour in order to better understand them. I learned how to recognise social cues, common behavioural traits, and I consider myself an expert at the meaningless conversations which they call 'small talk'. It makes sense to me - big talk is important, small talk is not. Except those times when it is. Truly, Humans are a fascinating species.

Captain Kane did not make any big or small talk in the turbolift. He stood there silently with his hands behind his back in a stiff military posture. Observing him sidelong, I was once again sure that something was weighing heavily on his mind.

As we stepped out onto deck eight and walked towards the Science Centre, a strange event occurred which I feel compelled to note for this treatise.

A small dog dressed in a Starfleet uniform was urinating onto a nearby bulkhead.

We both stopped in our tracks. I recognised the creature instantly - it was the companion animal of my fellow Trill, Owen Arion, which he uses to assist him in his counselling work. Owen is also Joined, and in conversation, he has told me that Humans sometimes respond better to animals than to other sentient humanoids.

I know about dogs, of course. Trill, like Terra, is teeming with animal life, and when I moved to Starfleet Academy I took a short course of Terran xenobiology that covered everything from indiginous virology to observing enormous lumbering herd animals named 'elephants' in their natural habitats. Over the millenia, as follows all dominant sentient species in the galaxy, Humans have domesticated lower life-forms for food and companionship. Dogs were among the first animals to live alongside Humans, and over the centuries they have been bred for many different tasks, such as fighting wolves to simply being aesthetically pleasing.

Lieutenant Smooshy - the name which Lieutenant Arion gave to his dog - was not bred to fight wolves, and whether he is aesthetically pleasing is a matter for debate. His breed, called a pug, are small, chubby little things with a frankly alien appearance. They do not have the elongated snouts once commonly sees in other members of their species. Instead, pugs have flat, short-muzzled black faces and a curled tail. They have fine, glossy coats, and a compact square body with well-developed muscles. Lieutenant Arion dresses his pug in a miniature Starfleet uniform of counselor's teal, and has even placed two golden rank pips on Lieutenant Smooshy's collar.

Not perturbed in the slightest, Lieutenant Smooshy looked at us while he continued urinating.

I glanced at Captain Kane. He tends to keep his distance from animals. While we were aboard the Discovery, there was a certain incident involving an orange cat named Puddles.

I was about to apologise on Lieutenant Arion's behalf - the pug had obviously escaped his quarters and was roaming the ship at will - and to assure the Captain that the matter would be handled without the need for his intervention, but he surprised me by going down on one knee as the pug finished urinating on the bulkhead. He held out his hand and made a clicking noise with his tongue. "Come here, boy," he said gently. "Come here."

Lieutenant Smooshy obediently toddled over and started to lick the Captain's fingers. I was worried at this point - Captain Kane's temper occasionally masquerades as a maddening calm before exploding, and the thought crossed my mind that he was about to inflict some awful violence on the pug, now that it had strayed into his kicking range. But no - the Captain patted Lieutenant Smooshy's head, scratched behind his ears, and when the pug rolled over for a belly rub, the Captain obliged.

He looked up at me, and I think his eyes were twinkling. "The Starfleet uniform," he said.

I nodded.

Captain Kane reached up to his collar and took off two of his rank pips, affixing them to the pug's collar. "I recognition of your valorous service to Starfleet's mental health," he said, "I hereby promote you to Captain, with all the rights and responsbilities that rank entails."

Captain Smooshy panted happily.

At that moment, Lieutenant Arion came around the corner. He was in a breathless state and exhaled audibly when he saw the pug. "There you are!" he exclaimed, striding up to us. As the odour of the pug's urine hit him, the looked down in horror to see a widening stain on the bulkhead. "What have you been doing?"

"This is your dog, Lieutenant?" asked Captain Kane.

Owen's face fell. He knew he was in trouble, so he stood up straight, determined to take a berating like a Starfleet officer. "Yes, Captain. I apologise, he must have got out of my quarters when I wasn't looking."

Captain Kane was doing that thing where he seems to become a black hole, draining warmth and light out of his immediate surroundings, fixing a stare on the object of his attention and waiting for them to confess everything. Junior officers are especially susceptible to that kind of thing. "Indeed," he said pointedly.

Owen started to stammer as he got sucked into the black hole's event horizon. "Yes, sir. So I, uh, came looking for him. I, uh, I'll be more careful in future, sir. I'll make sure to clean up his, uh, mess myself."

"That would be a good idea, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir. Uh, sorry again, sir."

A third voice cut across us. It was Commander Jos. [[Captain Kane to the bridge.]]

I have never seen anyone look so relieved as Owen Arion did at that moment.

The Captain spoke into the air. "On my way." He turned to me. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant Arn, we'll have to do this some other time. Get back to me when you have the details."

"Understood, Captain," I said, as he marched off, leaving me alone with Owen and Lieutenant - no, Captain - Smooshy.

"Was he mean to my dog?" asked Owen, picking up the pug holding it to him like it was a child.

I eyed the rank pips that Owen had not seen yet. "No. In fact, I think it's safe to say that Smooshy is moving up in the world."

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Scene: Science Centre


When I got back to the Science Centre, I was not happy to see several of the department's crew standing around gossiping. It has only been a few days since we launched, and there is much to do. Equipment needs testing and cataloguing, and all our hardware needs to be checked and stowed. I have thirty-four crew under my command, most of them survivors from the Discovery, and it was of this that I overheard them talking. Specifically, they were talking about the marine commander, Major Thytos.

Stephanie Trimble and Kate Sarsfield, two Human females, were muttering to one another.

"We can't trust her in the slightest," Stephanie was saying. "The sensor nets are one thing. She's able to spy on you just by looking at you."

"She's violent, too," said Kate. "Did you see how she killed that marine who was guarding us on the Discovery? They call her the Butcher, you know."

"And now she's here," agreed Stephanie. "The Captain is a fool to trust her."

I spoke loudly and started fixedly at them. "On the other hand," I said, "she was instrumental in saving your lives from the Neo-Essentialists. Furthermore, if you suspect Major Thytos of being a spy, then why not report your suspicions to Captain Kane?"

They both jumped and looked at the floor guiltily. I walked past them into my office, where Dido was organising the reports. She does not have much to do aboard the ship - it seems we have little use for an architect.

She stood up hopefully. "What did he say?" She was referring to my asking the Captain to marry us.

I took her hands in mine. "He said yes."

She was happy. I am happy. And I hope you, too, will be happy to accept this invitation to my wedding. Once I complete the arrangements with Commanders Crichton and Jos, I hope to use one of the cargobays for ceremony. I will also ask Captain Kane for special leave when we arrive on Limbo so that we might have a honeymoon.

The wedding itself will have to be a simple, functional affair, but I hope it will be a distraction from the troubles our shipmates are enduring. At the very least, it will change the topic of conversation so that we do not lose our spirit of teamwork. And, I suppose, Lieutenant Arion will dress his pug up in something suitably appropriate.

I sincerely hope to see you this weekend at our wedding.

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NRPG: Mawaige.... mawaige is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawaige, that blessed awangement, that dweam within a dweam... and wuv, tru wuv, will follow wu foweva... so tweasure wur wuv!.... Have you the wing?

We're getting close to Limbo now.


Jerome McKee
the Soul of Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Commanding Officer
USS PHOENIX


"Skip to the end... man and wife, say man and wife!"
- Prince Humperdinck, "The Princess Bride"

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