<\/p>\n
Spock, bless his Vulcan heart, actually covered for me.\u00a0 That was a surprise, but I was grateful.\u00a0 No one would blink an eye if a Vulcan pronounced that the local flora was sentient, and I learned later that he did, indeed, confirm my report for himself.\u00a0 It was quite a picture I made in my head, him doing a mind meld with a sentient grove of trees.<\/p>\n See.\u00a0 I could so easily picture Spock doing it.\u00a0 But he was only doing what I\u2019d done.\u00a0 Probably much more efficiently, but still. \u00a0But it was profoundly unnerving, in hindsight, to realize the power that had been surging through me, the effortlessness with which I had simply tuned into that massive, living thing.\u00a0 I\u2019d felt it; understood it.<\/p>\n A man had died.\u00a0 If I\u2019d been able to be more sensitive sooner, could I have saved him?\u00a0\u00a0 Stopped him?\u00a0 And just how would that look, standing up in the middle of all those very ordinary people, insisting that the tree-thing told me they shouldn\u2019t put their lousy building in its heart?\u00a0 An aside, Reader \u2013 they did not build in the grove.\u00a0 I was happy enough for Spock to get the credit for that.<\/p>\n There were several other undercurrents going on in the wake of this episode that nagged at me, too, though I couldn\u2019t quite put my finger on anything specific, and no one was talking.\u00a0 Thinking back, it still seemed odd that Spock himself had delivered me so quickly back to the ship.\u00a0 Surely it was a job for the doctor, though of course, I would have preferred Bones to the rather intense Dr. Chiddattra.\u00a0 But no, Spock had snatched me up almost as if he was trying to \u2026 to what?\u00a0 Almost as if he was trying to remove me from the scene of the crime, before questions could be asked.<\/p>\n That surely silly but insistent thought just re-ignited the worry I\u2019d managed to keep buried the past few months: the worry that there was some bureaucrat out there who had taken a dislike to me, this faceless Culpepper guy.\u00a0 I mean, I didn\u2019t really expect to be welcomed into the 23rd<\/sup> century with fireworks and a brass band, but it had never occurred to me that my unorthodox entrance might forever brand me as a suspicious person.<\/p>\n Bones, when I asked him, oh, so casually, about Culpepper, made too big a show of brushing it off.\u00a0 He was more interested in what had happened down on Virgilian, but I didn\u2019t want to discuss that. Especially not with Bones, who\u2019d become my core of normalcy.\u00a0 He knew I practiced some form of spirituality or contemplative path; that wasn\u2019t so unusual nowadays, apparently.\u00a0 But he had no idea how deep it went \u2013 how deep I went.\u00a0 I guess I just felt weird enough without adding to my own reputation.<\/p>\n Besides, there was enough of a vibe already coming from Bones.\u00a0 Yeah, that kind of vibe; a girl can tell these things.\u00a0 The problem is, if you get close enough for actual confirmation, you\u2019ve already opened a door you can\u2019t close.<\/p>\n And I was way too confused to deal with anything like that.<\/p>\n For one thing, I was still finding my footing in this new world. Or galaxy.\u00a0 I might be a new person, but this one had inherited a lot of emotional wounds from her predecessor.\u00a0 For another, after living a life mostly solitary, punctuated only in short chapters by a man who materialized in front of me (for better or worse), suddenly I was living in the midst of a bevy of \u2018em, a fact I found equal parts thrilling and highly unsettling.\u00a0\u00a0 I had serious thinking to do about my future.\u00a0 I did not need distractions.<\/p>\n So, it seemed the only thing to do with Bones was to deflect his attention away from me.\u00a0 I grabbed at the first bright idea that came along.\u00a0 I set him up with Dr. Chiddattra.<\/p>\n Well, I pushed them together at every possible turn.\u00a0 Talked her up to him and him to her.\u00a0 Considering her considerable feminine energies, it didn\u2019t take all that much.\u00a0 Of course, it didn\u2019t last, either.\u00a0 Dr. Chiddattra was clearly a handful, too intense by far for Bones to put up with for long.\u00a0 But apparently it was pretty steamy while it lasted.\u00a0 It bugged the hell out of Jim, too, since he was so damned competitive in everything.\u00a0 That fact alone may have made it worth it for Bones.<\/p>\n And when it was over, had blown up suddenly and permanently, we didn\u2019t see much of her on the ship any more.\u00a0 They maintained a professional communication, but avoided each other almost entirely.\u00a0 In a way, it was a natural progression.\u00a0 With the bulk of the new settlers arriving, her work was just beginning on the new colony, and Bones could turn his own attention back to routine.<\/p>\n So there he was, back in my room one evening, sitting side by side with me, as we listened to a bit of Beethoven, music much too heavy to accompany a heavy conversation.\u00a0 He asked me flat out why I\u2019d been so encouraging of the whole thing, which wasn\u2019t the half of it.\u00a0 I finally realized what he was saying:\u00a0 he was a little hurt and baffled that I\u2019d been so eager for him to pursue another woman.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t really know what to say to that, and more or less changed the subject.\u00a0 But a little later, Bones laid a hand on my thigh, and I suddenly found myself choking back tears, more lost than ever.\u00a0 How good that steady, warm hand felt, how much I wanted to feel that, to feel more than that, how impossible it seemed, how impossible everything seemed.\u00a0 I felt irrationally pissed off.<\/p>\n Sometimes I can be such a damned coward.\u00a0 I took his hand, removed it gently from my thigh, kissed it lightly, and pleaded exhaustion.\u00a0 I started to say I had a headache, but being a doctor, Bones would have insisted on treating it.\u00a0 He always seemed to be looking out for me, and, yeah, you can\u2019t help loving a guy like that.<\/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 \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 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 next > \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to talk about what had happened in the grove.\u00a0 Bones kept pressing me, even after he\u2019d patched me up.\u00a0 He was getting bits and pieces of … 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>\u00a0I didn\u2019t want to talk about what had happened in the grove.\u00a0 Bones kept pressing me, even after he\u2019d patched me up.\u00a0 He was getting bits and pieces of the story from people who were there.\u00a0 Apparently the tale grew in the re-telling.<\/p>\n