by Denise Moreno
101007.2300
After Galatea’s Last Gift
-=The Temporal Investigations Ship Commanded by Paul Andrews=-
101007.2300
After Galatea’s Last Gift
-=The Temporal Investigations Ship Commanded by Paul Andrews=-
Misery should by all rights have been granted no physical form. It was an intangible quantity; that empty draining suffering that spilt upward from one’s heart to pool upon the curves of their face. Yet the pathetically sullen site of this one old woman, sitting silently in the darkness of her cell, with her head bowed low and her eyes half closed, could have been given no other name.
She was not crying. Sadness brought one to tears. True misery placed one on the other side of them. So instead Denise simply sat unmoving, attempting to draw in a breath so deep that it containing some spark of the life that had left her, but finding her lungs possessed no such strength right now.
She’d felt trapped for decades in this life, so perhaps she shouldn’t have felt so closed in between the four walls that now surrounded her. Yet there was one hint of freedom; that flickering flame of foolish hope, that had until the lock on her door had first clicked shut somehow kept her heart from freezing. That flame had been sustained in her dreams, the cruellest part of any human being that you can ever take away, which had for longer than she realised let her look up to imagine something more. Her eyes however were now directed to the floor, her body nearly too limp to ever stand again, as she asked herself how it’d possibly come to this.
It was a curious and destructive sensation when one realised that with all the wrong they’d done that even giving away their only chance at happiness; the very sacrifice of all they had just to do what was right, gave them no sense of pride. She’d sworn to herself that she’d stop feeling sorry for herself though, so she felt no pity for the woman she’d become.
She was alone here. That was only naturally how she’d always ended up. Whether out of fear for her safety, or some passing respect for her meaningless former station, they’d separated her from the rest of the crew into the smallest cell in the brig of this ship; from a far younger and more necessary generation, than the one she’d once commanded.
Her ship, the once great and mighty USS Poseidon, was dead.
Her engines were burnt out before he’d arrived and Paul Andrews hadn’t wanted to bother dragging her all the way back home. So after she’d been stripped of her crew one by one, some taken back to the Sera and others like Denise taken to Andrews’ ship itself, they’d simply decided to destroy her with a single blast of weapons far superior to her own design. Denise hadn’t even seen it. Had it not been for a casual comment in the conversation of her guards, coming to deliver her food while disregarding that she was even here, she wouldn’t have even known it now. It made her wonder if when she died alone, if anyone she’d once known in her former life would ever learn of it.
She didn’t know quite what the future entailed from here. She wasn’t quite crazy enough to think she’d escape imprisonment, which was a shame because if she’d been a little madder maybe they’d have treated her and let her go. She’d known exactly what she was doing and so she would surely live out her life in a cage; an exhibition for the observation to all those who would dare to dream of challenging the unbendable will of the Department of Temporal Investigations.
It wouldn’t be like this cell though. This cell was practically an anachronism through the crudeness of its design. There was no forcefield for those can so easily fail. This cell was designed for the enemies, but for their own agents who’d lost their way; even those of her very nearly treasonous ways, surely she’d be headed to be a prison with a more civilised guised. Depending on how important they thought she was, maybe she’d even pass the famous Jonas Vox; the man who’d played far more of a role in beginning this whole mess than her, as he headed for his freedom.
Four walls however were always four walls to the person stuck between them.
Finally raising her head, though it was a struggle against her neck to even try it, she tried once again to look around. She wanted to absorb some sense of this place; to know all she could because that was the only way she knew how to live. Before she had any such chance to learn, her head and her eyes snapped violently down to the ground, forced to fall against the overpowering horrific weight of what she saw.
There was not a lot to see. There was so very little furniture in this room. There was this unadorned bed, barely strong enough to support her weight, which doubled as her seat. The sheets were plain, the mattress uneven, and the pillow was sewn into the frame to ensure it stayed in its proper place.
On the uncarpeted floor sat her breakfast tray, the porridge like substance they’d served her left untouched and the plastic spoon remaining firmly plunged into its centre. Of course against the opposing grey wall, at most three steps away, were the minimum required facilities for such a potentially lengthy journey. Perhaps intentionally chosen for atmosphere they even included the requisite dripping sink, the solitary sound of individual drops of water slowly striking one after another, perhaps standing in place of her tears, reminding her each time her thoughts were silenced that this room was to be her dining room, her bedroom and her bathroom all in one.
None of that was what made looking up so hard to bear. It was the fact that over the sink, clearly visible in spite of how low she’d turned the lights, sat the most vindictive object she could have ever imagined them placing here with her. It was a mirror. The face she found there appeared to have aged to far older than should be possible within a single lifetime. Her eyes were red and baggy, though she swore once they had sparkled. Now wrinkles and imperfection wrapped like a lose net around her skin, trapping the woman she’d once known in somewhere very deep underneath.
She was so very tired.
She saw no point in trying to fight it anymore, and so she allowed her body to fall gracelessly onto its side. She didn’t bother to move up to her pillow. Simply closing her eyes where she was she found herself finally in real darkness. There were no more faces of the people she should save, or of those who’d hurt her. There was simply nothing there, and she felt like finally she could rest.
Her body did feel so heavy right now and before she was even aware it was happening, her mind began sweeping her away into sleep.
Then suddenly it was daylight and she felt the warm spring sun strike her skin and heat her back.
The grass beneath her feet was wet and felt strange as she moved. In fact, she realised, it was between her toes, and she couldn’t help but to think that it tickled.
There was a sound, one she hadn’t heard in years, the simple persistent buzzing of a bee as it moved past her ear. It was a bad sound on its own but since it spoke of the return of the kinder weather it was one she always loved to hear.
She was in the shade but only barely of a rake thin tree that towered above her, bearing no fruit. It appeared she was in a garden as she saw the a few sparsely placed flowers; common daisies that seemed quite a bit bigger than they should be, yet somehow she didn’t think of their size as her hand reached out to grab one.
Yet it wasn’t her hand. The skin was smooth and fair. The fingers were perhaps a little pudgy but they certainly weren’t arthritic anymore. This was the hand of a child of maybe six, and how oversized the flower appeared as she yanked it with all her might from the ground seemed to support that entirely.
Then she brought it to her nose and it tickled, much like the grass on her bare feet, and she couldn’t help but think how funny that was. It was then she heard another sound she hadn’t heard in even longer than the bee as she realised she was giggling at how it felt.
“What’s so funny?” a voice absolutely overwhelmed with affection asked her, as she felt a pair of loving arms wrapping around her.
“The flower,” she answered, still giggling as her nose still felt a little funny even now it was gone.
“Oh, so, you like flowers do you?” her mother asked as the child felt herself being lifted from the ground.
“I think it’s pretty,” she answered, now twirling the stalk around in her hand.
“Well you know what?” her mother asked with just about the biggest smile that child would ever see. “So, do I.”
She continued to twirl her flower, looking at it in complete fascination.
“When I grow up, I wanna be a gardener,” she added absently, completely forgetting her plan from last week to be a dancer.
“Well you can be anything you want to be,” her mother assured her with absolute faith, placing the sloppiest kiss on her cheek, which made her laugh again.
“Then I want to be just like you,” she said, finally turning from her flower to craning her little head up to examine her mother instead.
The woman looked so happy, in that way a child can’t quite understand is only because of how much they’re treasured, and as she swung her around the child laughed again.
She felt herself getting a little dizzy but she didn’t care, until the sun’s glare caught her eyes as she span and so she shut them tight, not needing to see the view to enjoy the experience. Then suddenly the spinning stopped with the sound of a thud and a creak, and she opened them, to find she was a very old woman again.
She didn’t turn or even sit up, but as she heard the deafening finality of the locks once again she knew that they must have just taken her breakfast tray away. Staring upward at the beautyless patterns where the ceiling was joined together, much as that child had stared at her flower, Denise was suddenly feeling more isolated than alone, as it really occurred to her all she wouldn’t be seeing or doing anymore.
Her mother’s garden was of course long since gone. Yet even when it was there, she hadn’t taken a walk in it since she’d been a child. It’d been outside her window all through her teenage years yet she couldn’t recall even stopping to feel the grass between her toes or to pick a single flower again. She just hadn’t taken the time.
She hadn’t even thought of that day in years. It was no surprise, now that she thought about that child with an adult’s retrospect, that she would have tried and failed to do so much. She did want to turn our just like her mother; that loving family woman who could handle anything. She’d also wanted to turn out just like her father; the powerful Starfleet overachiever, almost never around, who’d worked his way up from the bottom.
Now that she thought about it, he was exactly the reason she’d chosen to join TI. It was supposed to be the ultimate fast track; to give her plenty of time when the career was firmly in hand to deal with those far more difficult matters of love. The first dance she’d ever been invited to she’d turned down telling herself she had to study, when she was really just afraid of what would have happened if she’d said yes.
Now she looked on that moment longingly, she squeezed her eyes tightly for just a moment almost as if attempting to convince her younger self to take that risk that was no longer open. Only then did the tears finally come, beginning to flood her closed eyes and spill out.
She knew that even if she had gone to that dance and that nervous young man had found something in her to fall in love with, that she wouldn’t have had the son that she’d started all this for. She would have had her family though; some people to miss her if she ever made enough stupid mistakes to end up somewhere like this.
No one would miss her though. If you can disappear from the Earth without anyone even noticing, she wondered, did you ever really live there?
She couldn’t help but consider, as she found herself softly sobbing, if her life had all been a waste. Maybe it was more than just one bad decision; maybe she’d gotten them all wrong.
Many people believed that life was a path of your own creation, where every turn you added could lead you to a far different destination. Yet Temporal Investigations taught you that it was more like a river, with very few forks where you could choose to go another way, meaning that all the rest of the times when you’d fight to go left or right, were just a pointless and tyring struggle.
In the end it was still in the hands of others far more than your own. She had learnt from the protestations of Lieutenant Wilson as they had all been dragged down to the Poseidon’s brig that he’d ordered Stacey Geller, a Lieutenant Denise never really got to know, to bring a security team to main engineering; a team that never showed.
If they had they would have no doubt be able to stop her or at least to delay them all a good long time, and Brody would have gotten his wish. This was not some technical oversight; Geller must have made the decision to hold them back. It was like in that moment when someone finally had a chance to make it happen, Geller wanted Brody to fail. Maybe Denise would never learn why that was but it was the single difference that meant she was still alive.
More than that, she was scared.
Her sobs had suddenly turned to shakes, like the rushing waters of her sorrow were running so fast as to move the surrounding shores.
All the numbness she had felt in misery had abandoned her and she was now so very terrified of what was going to happen.
As much as it felt like the end of her journey, this was one of those forks in the river. To the left she had the chance to live out the rest of her life in four walls. To the right, there was a chance she’d get better.
William Lindsay had made her an offer that until this moment she hadn’t even been able to consider. Officially her role in what had happened was unclear. Under interrogation her crew had all said so far that they’d always believed she was nothing but Brody’s puppet.
So in benevolence she didn’t really understand, Will had been able to officially offer her the chance; if she cooperated and told them the logistical secrets that only she’d known, that she could have her time at Temporal Investigations resequenced away and then be set free. After all, she was an old woman and it probably wouldn’t be that long before she was more suited to a care home than a prison anyway.
Yet resequencing was never intended to be used on the scale of wiping away a career that had lasted so long. It was the difference between correcting a mistake with a fine brush and drenching the effected area with turpentine; more likely that not ruining the rest of the painting in the process as it dripped down.
She would be losing all she’d become, if not all she’d ever been, and as much as she was crying right now at the prospect of her future she still didn’t want to die.
Yet as she thought of that little girl she’d been, she considered that even if she’d never be her mother, her father or even a dancer, perhaps she could be a humble old woman with a garden. She knew what the right choice was.
As frightening as it was and even though she still didn’t really understand at all how it’d actually come to this, she was going to start anew.
Denise Moreno
Former Commanding Officer
USS Poseidon
Former Commanding Officer
USS Poseidon