round 9 Ensign T'Reshik - Pure Intention

[+ Hutch]

((FLASHBACK - Vulcan, 2362))

 

::She was supposed to be producing a historical analysis of the political and economic circumstances surrounding the last Vulcan intra-planetary war and the Awakening, but after the first few journal articles, T'Reshik found herself losing interest. At eleven years old she did not yet have the resistance to boredom that most adult Vulcans were disciplined enough to maintain, and besides, she could not see what possible applications this subject might have to her planned future career as a brilliant doctor and/or scientist (she hadn't quite decided which one she was going to be yet).::

 

::In this light, the amount of detail she was obliged to go into seemed quite irrelevant. Before Surak, her people were violent, irrational and murderous, and eventually began to fling nuclear weapons at each other until they almost wiped themselves out; after that the philosophy of Surak spread until they all became sensible and productive enough not to play with atomic bombs any more and that was that. There's your tedious bloody essay, Professor Barok: now sod off back to your archives to look at old bits of paper and leave the scientists to get on with the interesting stuff.::

 

::Knowing she would likely get in trouble for this, but not especially caring, T'Reshik dismissed the historical journals from her screen and diverted her attention back to this week's object of affection: her genetics textbook.::

 

::She opened it reverently, eyes bright and hungry for the reams of knowledge within. Formulae, diagrams, long streams of symbols denoting the secrets hidden within her own flesh... she could spend all night reading this kind of thing, and in fact frequently had, much to Barok's disapproval when she started nodding off in his seminars. (It wasn't her fault that history class was the perfect place to catch up on sleep.)::

 

::Her small finger followed the page as she read, first in Vulcan, then in Federation Standard English, and the subtle linguistic discrepancies between the two columns did not fascinate her nearly so much as the content. She thought of her own DNA, encoded deep in her cells, its chemical signals sending out instructions like a general directing her troops from the war room, tissues proliferating and growing and shedding and dying as every day her body grew older and stronger...::

 

::At first she did not realise why her eyes had paused on a specific section, re-reading it over and over before she even knew it was happening.::

 

T'Reshik: o O Iris coloration is determined by the below factors... Blue is largely the result of a recessive gene... Green eyes are caused by an inherited variance on the following and in Vulcans will always dominate that which causes blue and grey pigmentation if the superseding pattern for brown is not present... O o

 

::Will always dominate.::

 

::T'Reshik closed the book.::

 

::She did not need to consult a mirror. Nor did she seek, as a human child might have done, a family photograph for reference, or perhaps to try and reassure herself that she had made a mistake. The relevant faces had been burned into her mind as clearly as those damning paragraphs were now.::

 

::Two blue-eyed parents and a green-eyed child.::

 

::She grabbed the textbook and consulted furiously; then, after a few minutes, brought up the genetic science database and consulted that as well, scouring all the available knowledge for anything that might disprove her unsettling conclusion. There were genetic disorders that could cause this, but none that were relevant here; mutations of this kind would have caused other observable factors in her genes, none of which she manifested... ::

 

::Eventually her hands went slack on the inputs and she stared at the screen, her mind reaching for an explanation.::

 

::She already knew a little about Pon Farr, mostly from demurely-worded biology lessons and the dubious assertions of her classmates (some of which were more reliable than others - she was fairly sure that it didn't temporarily turn you into a mountain lion, for example). She was vaguely aware that she had an uncle, Shirok, who had died of the condition, and that these sort of things were rarely spoken of.::

 

::And she knew, with a cold flood of realisation, that whatever circumstances had driven her parents to conceal her true lineage - for surely a straightforward adoption would not have needed to be concealed, in a family as open and forthright as her own - they had been driven by a horrific kind of necessity.::

 

::Abruptly she returned her attention to the screen and rattled out a brief and petulant set of logical arguments for Professor Barok regarding the irrelevance of historical study to the progress of modern science. Then she turned elsewhere, back to the journal database, and this time her search was fuelled with determination.::

 

::As expected, there wasn't much out there about Pon Farr, or if there was it was couched too deeply in euphemism and scientific jargon for her to uncover as yet. The only thing she could find, hidden away in a second-rate offworld journal, was a case study, authored by one Professor Sutek of the local university, regarding the potential long-term uses of a particular hormone antagonist. Although the purpose of his research was not stated outright, the language in his conclusion hinted at the necessity of discussing such issues, the lives ruined and lost due to wilful ignorance where science could surely find a solution if only it were given the chance.::

 

::The rest of the article was mostly beyond her understanding, but T'Reshik wasn't going to let a small thing like that deter her. She hefted her biochemistry textbook onto her desk and prepared herself for a long night of study.::

 

::It was clear she had a lot of work to do.::

 

 

Ensign T'Reshik

Science
USS Constitution
D239311T10