Listen To The Voice In Your Head

Posted on Tue May 28th, 2024 @ 5:42pm by Executive Officer Jake Ford

Mission: Shackles
Location: Grotto
Timeline: April 2398
1120 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure

In the roughly three months since the 'Fractures' incident, Jake had visited the Grotto at least four times. As much as there didn't exist a full catalogue of items and relics stored there, one or two people over time had put themselves forward to try. Few had lasted more than a few days in the Collector's private stash. But their initial records remained, and Jake had been able to access the brief list.

One article had stood out, though he wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps curiosity. Or a selfish need to know for himself. But that curiosity had triggered an initial visit. Then several more.

Sequestered in an innocuous corner of the vast collection, Jake sat on an old cushion and took out the small artifact; roughly the size of a communicator badge. Some technology that he didn't really recognise in terms of its origin, but the previous curator had made a note of its function. He pressed the device against his temple. Touched the activation key. Closed his eyes.

And opened them to a long coastline looking out over crystal blue oceans, silver cliffs stretching out in both directions. He was standing, at least in his mind's eye, on the veranda of a sea-view ranch. A woman was standing at the railing, looking out at the sea. Straight black hair parted to show off her pointed ears. Green eyes glanced back at his approach.

"Where are we this time?" she asked.

Jake had become a little more accustomed to the informality between himself and the 'woman in his head'. Kilhra. The merge remain. A strangely concocted mental aftereffect of swapping minds with Liha temporarily.

"My parents' lodge, back on Vega," he explained, joining her at the railing. The scene felt real, even if it was just a memory dragged out from the depths of his subconscious.

"It's pleasing on the eye." Kilhra remarked. "So, you've returned once again. Something you wanted to discuss?"

"I don't know. Maybe I was just checking in." He shrugged, watching the distant horizon for a moment. The look he saw her give him from the corner of his eye told him she wasn't taking that answer as truth. The fact was, he'd returned to this merge remain a few times since the incident with the different time periods. They'd thrown up a few odd thoughts, and his encounter with 'himself' in the past had triggered his recollection of this mysterious woman tucked away in the back of his mind.

"You wish to talk about Cassie again, don't you?" she asked. A faint smirk crossed her lips. "You've talked about her every time we have spoken in recent times. It's obvious there is something you're seeking."

"Is it weird that out of all the people I could ask, I'm speaking to the phantom voice in my head?" he wondered.

"Yes it is. And you avoided the subject. Try harder."

"Yeah." His hand rapped on the railing in front of him. "Yeah. Feel strange to ask you, but since we're sharing a brain anyway..."

"You're about to ask me about parenthood. And whether you would be ready for the responsibilities of that, in your current position, and after all you and your partner have experienced." Kilhra stared at him calmly. She touched her temple. "I am...aware of certain things."

"So long as you're not spying..." he muttered.

"I'm part-Romulan, it comes with the territory," she fired back nonchalantly. "There's a sweet irony in knowing that you can hide very little from me. Including your obvious feelings towards the matter at hand." She turned to face him fully. "So, voice it."

Jake sighed. "A few months ago, if Cassie had brought up the whole idea of having children...I don't know, I feel like it would have been different. Seeing that child - holding them in my hands - changed me. It's hard to explain..."

"You don't need to. The feeling was somewhat clear." Kilhra commented.

"So why did that change my mind? Why did it make me hesitate?" he frowned, the frustration surfacing. "Do I not want that for myself? For Cassie?" He scowled, making a little grunt of annoyance as he stared off at the horizon again. Oh to be back on that veranda again, he mused. Far away from troubles.

"You do realise that you can't speak for anyone but yourself. Why do you think she wouldn't want that?"

"What?" His eyebrow twitched.

"You love her, yes? You wish for her to be happy." She raised a hand. "Don't answer. I know. You speak as though being with you and taking that path together would make her not-so."

"She lost people. I saw it; I saw Sebastian-"

"Commit an act of great love." She finished the sentence before he could. "I believe that's not a uniquely human behaviour. Though you really do make a great deal of drama over it."

Jake chewed on that for a few moments. He hadn't really viewed Sebastian's last act in that way. Sacrificial, brave, heroic. Loving? Indeed, Cassie wasn't the only one the man had saved that day. Eden, his wife, had been in the transporter as well. The two would never have seen one another again.

"Oh, and before you tell me that you feel guilty about sleeping with the man's wife - don't be a veruul." Kilhra rolled her eyes at him.

"So..." Jake sighed. "Come on then, you're about to force-feed me some Romulan wisdom that's supposed to make me feel inferior, right?"

"Certain it is and sure: love burns, ale burns, fire burns, politics burn, but cold were life without them." She smirked, knowing that the proverb would have the desired intent. "You are a veruul, Eihllu. Sadly, like most men, you require one of your superiors to explain it to you."

He didn't respond to her words, simply staring at the seas rolling against the cliffs in the distance. Silently, he pondered the explanation. Withdrawing and retreating from the future hadn't done him much good of late. And some would likely call him mad for sneaking off to the grotto to hide with a 'merge remain' who didn't really exist to the outside world.

"I might not be real, but I'm right," she added, seeing his hand reaching up to his temple to remove the device there.

The vista faded, returning him to the dim, grimy hollow space of the Collector's grotto. Jake held the small device in his fingers for a few moments, turning it over in his hands as well as his mind. Then he set the device back from where it had come from, rose, and started back to his quarters.

 

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