<\/p>\n
\u2015 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The second evening of my new life, I was invited to join Jim and his staff in the officers\u2019 lounge for dinner.\u00a0 This invitation was extended via the same disembodied female speaker-voice, piped into my room, where I was recovering, at Dr. McCoy\u2019s orders, from the work he\u2019d done on me earlier in the day.\u00a0 I thought I detected a twinge of something like awe in the youngish tones.\u00a0 I guessed maybe dinner with the Captain was impressive.<\/p>\n While the doctor couldn\u2019t do the deep systemic detox he insisted was needed, he had, in short order, balanced my hormones and adjusted something in my inner ear to facilitate my adjustment to living on a constantly moving vessel.\u00a0 Turns out that the wave of nausea I\u2019d felt, those first few moments standing on the bridge, seeing the stars sweeping past, wasn\u2019t entirely the result of my sudden fear that I\u2019d made a very bad mistake in coming here.\u00a0 According to the doc, it\u2019s not so uncommon, this condition he laughingly called \u201cstarsickness\u201d.\u00a0 Physiological disorientation.\u00a0 An odd psycho-physiological processing of some combination of the vastness of space, and the relative claustrophobia of being in an enclosed (and constantly moving) environment.\u00a0 The doctor told me cadets washed out of training sometimes if they were too prone to the effects, though he assured me I was going to be fine.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t so sure, but, when it came to my physical well-being, anyway, it would turn out that Dr. McCoy always could read me like a book.\u00a0 Considering how much of my later life was spent, shall we say, in transit, it\u2019s a good thing I was able to adapt.\u00a0 Though, to be honest, I\u2019ll still take almost any decent planet over a spaceship any day, all things being equal.<\/p>\n They were all sharing a laugh when I entered the Officers\u2019 Lounge to the sound of lively voices.\u00a0 Uhura and Dr. McCoy were, yes, lounging on one of the couches, which were low, comfy looking, covered in a warm red material.\u00a0\u00a0 Jim stood chatting with an unfamiliar man, robust, ruddy-cheeked, with a genial smile.\u00a0 When he introduced himself as Chief Engineer Scott, or Scotty, I recognized the Scottish burr from earlier in the day, the one who\u2019d given Marilyn permission to help me get some breakfast.<\/p>\n Uhura looked lovely and exotic in a flowing robe, with elaborate, elegant gold earrings.\u00a0 The men, too, wore what were obviously some kind of civvies, casual, but each with his own distinctive style.\u00a0 I felt a tad under-dressed in my non-descript tunic and pants.\u00a0 And even with the obviously informal tone, I found myself hanging back a little, trying to take my cue from the others, totally uncertain of my own place in the pecking order.<\/p>\n It quickly became clear that, whatever decorum was observed elsewhere, this was down time.\u00a0 Drinks were poured, and I took the safe choice of whiskey, which the doctor was drinking, while everyone else, save Mr. Spock, who apparently didn\u2019t imbibe, drank stuff I\u2019d never heard of, in various colors and quantities.<\/p>\n Jim was holding forth about our recent adventures, filling in Mr. Scott \u2013 Scotty –\u00a0 on how they\u2019d pulled it off.\u00a0 Mr. Spock held his own in the conversation, although his contributions were all very logical, even scientific.<\/p>\n I felt the whiskey going to my head, too fast, flooding me with smart-ass thoughts, smart-ass being my default attitude when I was insecure or self-conscious.\u00a0 So I\u2019m silently asking myself: if Mr. Scott was, with obvious affection, called Scotty, did anyone ever address Mr. Spock as, say, Spocky<\/em>?<\/p>\n Get a grip, Hani, get a grip\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n Just watching them, though, and listening, I felt a wave of warmth, replacing the terrible sinking feeling I\u2019d had after arriving.\u00a0 Maybe there was a place for me here, after all?\u00a0 Maybe I could belong?\u00a0 At the least, I felt myself relaxing into the atmosphere of friendship.\u00a0 I took another sip of my drink and decided to let things play out, decided to stop worrying about where I was going from here.\u00a0 Right now, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.\u00a0 Yeah, little old me, partying it up, so many light years from home.<\/p>\n Scotty sat down beside me, and I couldn\u2019t help but return his beaming smile.\u00a0 \u201cSo, lassie, how do you like her so far?\u201d<\/p>\n The only other \u201cher\u201d in the room, Uhura, laughed and translated.\u00a0 \u201cHe means the Enterprise<\/i>, Hani.\u00a0 She\u2019s his baby.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, she\u2019s\u2026 lovely,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cBest starship I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Okay, not my best comedic effort, but it got a laugh all around, and I relaxed a bit more.\u00a0 After being bombarded with new information at every turn, ever since I arrived, I\u2019d developed a niggling fear that no matter how smart I\u2019d been \u201cback home\u201d \u2013 and yeah, I considered myself pretty smart \u2013 I would never be anything more than some permanent remedial case here, a kind of poor relative destined to sit in the corner, permitted to attend the ball, but not quite able to dance.<\/p>\n So, the fact that I even got a few laughs bolstered me considerably.\u00a0 Still, the vibes I\u2019d gotten earlier, the ones that hinted of a lot more going on than I\u2019d been privy to, kept me mostly quiet.\u00a0 There was so much I needed to learn.<\/p>\n As I listened to them talk, casually referring to their experiences, I pieced together a sense of the organization they served, Starfleet, which I began to gather was part of something called the Federation of Planets, a kind of inter-galactic governmental body that had superseded smaller entities like the good ol\u2019 U.S.A.<\/p>\n With that understanding (which I was mostly picking up from the indirect commentary), I made a note of how they were more or less on a first-name basis, at least in this setting.\u00a0 Here, tonight, it was definitely \u201cJim\u201d and \u201cBones\u201d (Dr. McCoy) and \u201cScotty\u201d.\u00a0 Uhura seemed to have only the one name, as did Mr. Spock, kind of like Sting, or Madonna.<\/p>\n Oops.\u00a0 More cultural references I was going to have to dump.<\/p>\n I made a decision to take the civilian route and go with first names.<\/p>\n I swore I would never, ever, address the Vulcan as \u201cSpocky\u201d.<\/p>\n Apparently, Jim had a long and uneasy relationship to Starfleet, that vague \u201cthem\u201d somewhere out there.\u00a0 I\u2019d already been corrected by someone earlier when I referred to the ship as a military vessel.\u00a0 Starfleet was not military, I was informed, but a force for peacekeeping, exploration and diplomacy.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, as far as I could tell, things operated with military precision and regulation.\u00a0 Though, from what little I knew of Jim Kirk, he was not a standard issue kind of guy, by any measure.<\/p>\n According to the way they told the story that night, both for Scotty\u2019s entertainment, and to catch me up to speed, \u201cwe\u201d had saved Earth from total devastation, saved it from the rapidly accumulating effects of Lester Worsham\u2019s planetary-level evils.\u00a0 I noted with some surprise the natural way Jim and Dr. McCoy \u2013 Bones –\u00a0 warmly included me in that communal \u201cwe\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 My expectations of men actually sharing credit with women were, I confess, pretty low, based on much of my own previous experience in the world.\u00a0 I was still feeling these people out, but it wasn\u2019t a bad sign.<\/p>\n However, Jim had also defied Starfleet command, broken any number of regulations, and had only the evidence of a displaced 21st<\/sup> century person to show for it, a fact in itself that would necessitate reams of paperwork (or its paperless equivalent), and, eventually, no doubt, hearings back at Command Headquarters.\u00a0 Apparently, too, being called in for hearings wasn\u2019t new to Jim, nor did it seem to bother him much.\u00a0 If anything, he seemed to take a kind of perverse delight in the idea.<\/p>\n In the meantime, though, Starfleet apparently got the last laugh, assigning the Enterprise<\/i> and her crew \u2013 and her wayward commander \u2013 to what was essentially a bureaucratic drudgery job, overseeing the establishment of a new colony.<\/p>\n Parts of this assignment might be interesting to people like Scotty, whose eyes gleamed at the challenge of setting up power grids, housing, sanitation and water systems, but everyone seemed to agree that once the colonists themselves began to arrive, it was likely to be all about petty politics and endless power plays.\u00a0 I smiled to think bureaucrats hadn\u2019t changed much in the last few centuries.<\/p>\n The conversation meandered over a long dinner that included vegetables grown in the ship\u2019s arboretum, and something that tasted like chicken but \u2026wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 I\u2019d had enough of the \u201cnew\u201d for now.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t ask.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After a while, I stopped trying to follow all the conversational references and as the drinks and talk flowed, and for the most part, no one thought to stop and clue me in.\u00a0\u00a0 In a way, this, too, was comforting, this feeling that I didn\u2019t stick out so much they felt like I had to be conspicuously brought along in the conversation.\u00a0 So I listened, enjoying the warmth and ease of the interactions swirling around me.\u00a0 As I did, I gathered the universe or galaxy or whatever (forgive my impreciseness.\u00a0 I only reflect my conceptual framework of the time) was a pretty active place, good guys, bad guys, peace treaties, wars, interplanetary monkey business, the whole thing.\u00a0 If Earth had apparently solved a lot of its own problems in many years ago, I gathered that karma was still playing out full force for both good and evil across the starry, starry night.<\/p>\n It was the doctor who wound up walking me back to my room at the end of the evening, though not before Mr. Spock made a point of informing me that he had designed a course of training to assimilate me into my new time.\u00a0 He would expect me in the science lab at 0900 hours, if that met with my satisfaction.<\/p>\n What could I say but yes?<\/p>\n Dr. McCoy \u2013 Bones – and I strolled amiably through the hallways together.\u00a0 I decided I liked the nickname.\u00a0 It suited him, and I noted the affectionate way Jim used it.\u00a0 Bones was a little smashed, I think, but then again, so was I.\u00a0 I\u2019d only had two short whiskeys, but it felt like drinking at altitude, hitting me with an unexpected punch.\u00a0 Or maybe I was still time-lagged.\u00a0 Century-lagged.<\/p>\n I noted the hallway seemed less bright than before, thinking maybe it was the booze, but he explained to me that the ship was synchronized to a 24-hour bio-clock, so that lighting throughout the ship simulated the solar cycles of an Earth day.\u00a0 When we got to my room, he stepped in for a moment, curious, checking it out with a nod, asking again if I had everything I needed.\u00a0 For a moment I wondered if he was trying to put some drunken moves on me, but no, he was apparently just being\u2026friendly.<\/p>\n I did have some questions, but nothing I felt comfortable asking him about.\u00a0 I\u2019d already decided to ask Uhura about a few of the more personal aspects of life for women in space.\u00a0 So I said no, thanking him.\u00a0 He took my hand in both of his, smiled a very courtly, mellow smile.\u00a0 \u201cWelcome aboard,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re delighted you\u2019re here.\u201d\u00a0 He lifted my hand and kissed it, gallantly, and said good night.<\/p>\n I went to sleep with a smile on my face.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n < previous\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 next ><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" < previous\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 next > \u201cAlice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid … Continue reading ![\"300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17\"](\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u201cAlice had got so much into the way of
\nexpecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to
\ngo on in the common way.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThrough the Looking-Glass<\/em> <\/i><\/p>\n